The Greatest Generation - Didn’t Even Consider the Bangers (S5E16)

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

Worf’s run of bad back luck continues, and this time it’s a prognosis worse than death for the carpet-clad warrior. Now Dr. Crusher is desperate to stop another space Mengele from using Worf as a loafy Guinea pig, and Riker is disgusted with the Klingon’s fatalistic belief system. Is the ‘bay the only thing Worf hates more than doors? Are all spinal surgeons this Sajaky? Why are all of Picard’s opinions so chill? It’s the episode with the 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 friendsofdecisoto for labor.com. That's friendsofdisoto 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 brought to you by Big Rod. I don't know, I just wanted to see what that sounded like. This is a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast

and who are not in the pocket of big rod. I'm one of your host, Benjamin Art Harrison. I'm your other host, Adam Pranika. I like your second intro of the best bin. That sounds more like us. Yeah. Adam, I was looking at our Facebook group the other day and this will be like a little bit old by the time this episode comes out But people were coming up with a drinking game based on our show Which is an idea that I really like Is it the Ron Canada drinking game?

Frankly, yes, I think that just seeing Ron Canada do something is all the excuse anybody should need to have a couple of pops, right? Oh, you know, you say it like that. It sounds like you need a beverage to get through Ron Canada performance. That's something that I don't believe in at all. How dare you smurch the good name of Ron Canada?

What I'm trying to say, Adam, is that it's automatic celebration time. Oh yeah. And Canada is popping off. That's true. You know? We need a Ron Canada horn. Yeah.

So people are coming up with rules. Rules for a drinking game while listening to our program? Yeah, so Brittany suggested this I think and she So she came up with some some kind of seed ideas You drink win for example, we say we've just lost listeners you drink when Kifferne X bridge shows up on the program That might be the worst time worst to program. That might be the worst time, worst, uh,

experience I've ever done. Oh, you know, like it's getting worse, the further away from survivors we get, we might just have to start rewatching survivors at the end of all of this. I think it's over and over again. It's like that, that one podcast that just watches Paul Blar, mall cop to every year. year. Maybe we just do a survivor's episode regularly. That might be the right move. Six Bay is a drinkable moment. Yeah. Lawyer Picard is a drinkable moment.

Yep. Big dogs is a drinkable moment. Yeah, so. Not a lot of room to catch your breath with all these. You're drinks better be the kind that are like the the tequila popper, which is like like half tequila, half sprite, like you got to really dial down the alcohol of these drinks because you're going to be drinking a lot. It's almost like a century club type situation, right? Just line up your shots of beer. Yeah, you want to

You want to have kind of a battle plan going in because you know like if you're doing shots of beer once a minute You're gonna inevitably need to pee before the 100 minutes is up. I recommend that most people listen to our show in the bathroom anyway. So they can do the drinking game in there. They're ready to pee. You're probably going to want to take those last drinks over the toilet anyway. Well Adam, I just think that I just love the idea of this drinking game and there's a great thread with people suggesting things to provoke drinking and I would love to I would love to hear more ideas. As a person who has an adjunct podcast that

that is who sole purpose is to encourage drinking that doesn't surprise me that you would have that position. Well as the person who has been on it most times, as a guest at him, I'd be surprised if you couldn't get on board with it also. Yeah, I'm on board. Count me in. This is something we could never do in a live show format, right?

They wouldn't let us drink on stage at one of the venues. Yeah, there was some weird thing where we could drink, but we couldn't open a drink or something, right? Because we wanted to like open a beer and they were like, oh, you can't open a beer, that would be, you know, that would get us in hot water. Yeah, it's like that thing when you go to a concert or baseball game, like they have to open the beverage for you for some reason. Otherwise, you can turn it into a projectile. And we're like, we didn't record the sound effect, and that's like the most important part about it.

And I'm like, this beer is not for throwing, it's for consumption. Right. It's for throwing into my mouth. Right. And also, like the concern at a baseball game is not that the shortstopstop is gonna take a close brewdog and chuck it at a fan, you know No, we don't have those kind of viewers. No, I think that the logic in that was all messed up

But it was like a letter of the law not spirit of the law type of situation and I think if there's one thing that's sure you and I are spirit of the law people aren't we? Right, you know who's not a spirit of the law type person atom is lieutenant warf Hmm, I see what you're trying to do Ben you're trying to elicit a pivot to season five episode 16 Ethics. It's hard when it's just one word.

Yeah, and instead I decided to give it the question mark. So we're doing some scanarus in the cargo bay. What's the deal? There's like a leak, something's leaking. Yeah, they got a leaky drum. And my question for you is Ben, why is Warf on this duty? Like they're doing leaky drum scans and it's Jordy who is like perfectly suited

to inspect for leaks. Yeah, well, it wears barkley. And, who likes barkley's not there. He's got special, on special leave to host his right wing radio show. Another convenient absence for plot. If I were a wharf, I'd be pissed. This seems to be below his pay grade.

Sort of like, well, it's also just like as a plot device, a strange choice because there's lots of scenarios I could see Wharf being in that would get him a back injury. And this is so pedestrian, you know? Yeah. Yeah, like he could. So let's talk about what happens. They're scanning for a leaky barrel, and Jordy confides in worth that he's a card cheat.

That was unbelievable. I was shocked at this. I mean, I believe that Jordy would cheat at cards, just based on some of his other behavior. Yeah. Like poor impulse control type stuff. And for an engineer, poor impulse control is a career limiting thing to him.

Hey, but yeah, he uses his visor to look through the cards. And I think we've speculated about that being a possibility, right? Warf is telling a bad beat story, which is the most boring story for anyone to listen to if you play any cards at all. He's going on and on about a Troy Bluffs him. And shorties like, you just can't see things the way I can. And he sort of taps his visor.

Oh, that would make me so angry if I were Wharf. And for whatever reason, Wharf sort of shrugs it off. It's weird, right? Because that, like, it is a big deal to that you don't know what somebody had if they went around, you know? Car shooting is without honor. Like, Buffalo Bill was shot because, actually, that's not true at all. Like, people die at card games for accusations like that. Yeah, I was, have the, have the 30-somethings that you play cards with in Seattle

uh, been known to draw... draw weapons on each other if uh, somebody's suspected. Well, I didn't mention how contemporary that problem was been, but... But a long time ago, in uh, in Deadwood, that... that could be a thing. You mean the time that you went to Deadwood to do drone videography? Yeah. Yeah it didn't happen then either. But I knew it was that sort of place. Yeah. Okay. So you didn't you didn't bring any of your fancy shuffling techniques to to Deadwood with you. I did. I did. I left those in the room.

Well yeah. So they're there scanning Warf is brushing off the fact that Jury is a damn cheater and There's like a barrel that that I guess they they can't Despite all the tricorders in the room. They can't localize whatever is leaking and there's a barrel up on a high rack that starts kind of sagging because it's getting a little milty and a big giant barrel falls off the rack and takes more fat. Look out!

What happened? The port is a 6-bay medical emergency and cargo bay 3. I think about this a lot, like you go into a like a home depot or a Costco and things are just like up in the steel. Really high and it all looks really heavy. Have you ever been to a winery? Yeah, same deal. It seems impossible. Yeah, like they're so heavy, you feel like, I don't know, it just seems, it just seems

insane to let inertia be the only thing keeping anything there. Yeah. Especially when it's in like, you know, wine country in the US anyway is pretty tectonically active. It's true. This ship has bangers dropped on it frequently. Why would they stack barrels that high? Oh God, you're right. I didn't even consider the bangers.

Yeah. They have bangers dropped on them out of the blue, like several times a season. They never cut to the storage bay showing all of these barrels fly around. I'd love a cutaway to the barrels. You want to see the cutaway every so often. The closest they ever get is in the movie Star Trek generations. They do a lot of cutaways during bangers

and they show like kids falling off the top bunk and stuff That's always fun if you're a child actor I think that that's a whole genre that you try to go for the falling off the top bunk genre. Yeah, yeah That's that's nice work if you can get it. Yeah You don't want to get typecast as a as a bunk guy though. No, yeah Yeah, cuz if you you do two bunk, bunk falls in your career and casting directors are not gonna see you as anything but a bunk faller.

Yeah, yeah. One thing that is really disappointing about this is, do they can never get something that is clearly like an empty plastic container that probably weighs like two and a half pounds to look really heavy. Yeah. Like, it's the same problem when they have like

somebody moving boulders around and it's just a Styrofoam fake rock. Yeah. It just doesn't fall right, you know? It doesn't look like something that would actually hurt. This is hundreds of years into the future and it's weird that like rack stacking technology has not changed.

Like, there are, there are like confinement beams for prisoners and stuff. And here they are stacking heavy objects up in the steel, and there's no, there's no beam safeguard at all. It's just barrel on barrel. It's really like, it's really bad safety practice, you know. They're gonna have to go up to that banner and roll back the days since the last needless injury.

To zero. Now when you stack in barrels up in the high steel, you can't wanna use a fork lift that's been inspected within the past four years. You'll know that your fork lift has been inspected properly by the sign-off sheet posted on the steering wheel. Federal regulations stipulate that the load manifest of a barrel lift. I can't even... I'm reaching for specifics that I already know I don't have. It's hard enough to do it for like house references. Like, yeah. What warehouse safety rules is like a

whole mother. Yeah. We got it, we got to bail out of that pit. I'm sorry everybody. I know that everybody loves this old enterprise. So a barrel on top of a barrel mushes down the barrel beneath it and flings itself onto wharf and wharf sees it coming and sort of turns his back to it and absorbs the entire barrel with his back. Yeah. And he's a guy that has not had good back luck. You remember when he was thrown over that balcony

last season? Oh yeah, and he broke his neck and died. He's died from this. Anytime he goes to a room that has Bay in the name, he should have his head on a swivel. Yeah. So, Wharf has worse luck with Bay's than he does with doors. Hmm, it's true.

So Wharf gets taken down, and it's not looking good. They throw to commercial. One of the more intense cold opens we've had. Yeah. One of the more intense cold opens we've had. Yeah, well, speaking of cold opens, he opens his eyes in six bay, and Dr. Beverly is there to explain to him that he is not in fact in a confinement field the way those barrels should have been rendered paraplegic because that barrel crushed like half of his spinal column. Yeah, I think she says like six or eight vertebrae, which is an incredible amount of vertebrae.

Yeah. This is an episode where we get to know a lot of Klingon anatomy. Yeah, they go deep on Klingon anatomy. And there's some fun world building, like they talk to the Klingon medical people, and they're like, yeah, no, we don't really study any of this crap. Like we just let people buy it. I get the feeling like, you know how when you go

to a doctor's office and they have the giant walls of file folders back there, like for patients. Sure. That the Klingon version of that is just a burn barrel. Beverly's complaining like I tried to get some intel from Klingon 6 Bay and they just Yeah. So Worf is stuck here and to try and help the situation, the good folks at Starfleet have dispatched the hood to deliver a doctor who specializes in this type of spinal injury. Ben, a point of order here, that ship was called the Potemkin.

Was it really? It was, and the doctor they dispatched ran and slow motion down the stairs to the transporter pad. What? I don't know what that reference is. It's a little battleship Potemkin reference for all our film students out there. Now? That's a two percent or isn't it?

Never seen it. Drake. Ha ha ha. So Dr. Russell is the spinal surgeon and she's like a big fan of Dr. Crusher's you know tries to get on our good side early. She's got some real Pat Sejack here. Yeah she does she's a little bit Sej Jackie. That's not a bad call. She also has like a weird frock. Like she's from, I thought she was from Starfleet, but she doesn't seem to be dressed like she's from Starfleet.

Yeah. She's dressed like she's from like Starfleet Central Intelligence or something. They got weird with the costume in this episode in a number of areas Yeah, it's like for instance Worf Worf is dressed in carpet remnants I guess that's a road that's part of this recovery. Yeah, Worf's pajamas look like they're made out of the carpet from an airport lounge Yeah, they really like it's a good thing you can't move because I'm not sure he could move anyway.

Like it is closed, it looks very stiff. Right, it's up on the starch, Bev. Right, and like, you don't want that much tensile strength in a pajama, you know? It's not necessary. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So Dr. Russell has, uh, pretty advanced ideas about how spines can be repaired. And she's got some mingle of vibes, too, right? Yeah. Like, she seems more interested in experimentation than giving any sort of bedside care.

I know that as a starship, Dr., you have to maintain close ties with patients. But I think it will be best if I maintain a discreet distance. That way I can give you a completely objective opinion regarding treatment. And at the time, I didn't really think much of it, but it totally builds her character as a, like, experimenter. She can't.

I don't want to make a connection. Right, yeah. Exactly. She doesn't want to get attached to the cow that she has to slaughter. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're not supposed to name the frog that you have to dissect in science class. Right. And she has a good pedigree, you know.

She comes from this research and just institution. She has some pretty advanced stuff that she's been working on. But the conflict is very early established that Dr. Crusher has ethical, like medical ethics misgivings about how Dr. Russell pursues her research and she thinks Dr. Russell is trying to push this kind of advanced, you know, untested treatment on Wharf before, you know, more well-tested and conventional treatments are explored.

This is sort of teased out a little bit in the B story. So they get wind of a downed ship in a adjacent sector. Yeah, this is even like the C story, I would say. Yeah, it's, I mean, not to quit. Really in the background. What's what letter you're putting on? Yeah, it's like, it's lower KSD.

But yeah, shit is really popping off. I feel like anytime there's kind of a, like a doctor-centric episode, they like to throw a ship that needs like hundreds of people to receive medical treatment into the mix just to make things interesting. The accident they describe sounds incredible and we don't see any of it. Dr. the Transposure of Denver struck a grvitic mind left over the Kardashian War that sustained heavy damage. Their last message said they were attempting to crash land on one of the planets in the Maracore system.

We should arrive in just under seven hours. How many people were born? The Denver Standard Crew complement is 23, but they were transporting 517 colonists to the Belati sector. And they need, it's sort of like on all hands-on deck situation, like they ask for all the civilians with medical experience to report for duty because they get a beam some bodies up and nurse them back to health.

It's like a real civil war battlefield situation is what they're painting us and we don't see any of it. Yeah, it's all kind of implied. Yeah. Well, Riker at the three day mark finally gets around to going down to Six Bay to focus head in on a wharf, which I just thought was unbelievable.

Like Riker and Wharf are thick as thieves and how long would it take you to visit your best friend who had been paralyzed? Yeah, was paralyzed in the hospital. I'd be there like that day. Not only that, Ben, you live in the hospital where he's a patient. Like it's not like you have to drive three hours to get there.

It's a matter of an elevator and a hallway. Yeah. We see a montage of Riker just like going from work to home to 10 forward to Holodeck to home. Dealing, dealing himself out some solidaire in his quarters. He's like, I'm really doing great at the poker game. Something's different about this table. Well, he eventually gets down there and Worf is like, listen dude, I'm not too upset with you, letting me just lie here rotting for a few days, but I could really use your help.

I have a personal favor to ask. Name it. I want you to assist me in performing the heck most ceremony. What I need is for you to go get that crazy knife from my quarters and bring it back here, I'm gonna use it to take my own life because that is the only path to honor that I have at this point.

Klingons are not allowed to be paraplegics. Riker is not great about this request. Ha ha ha ha ha. is not great about this request. Now, he doesn't entertain the idea, even for a moment, I would say. I mean, like, he's thinking about it a lot, but he's not at no point does he give any serious consideration to helping Warf do this. And just in case the viewer was confused, I'm pretty sure they smash cut from the Six Bay into the Ready Room, and Riker's just screaming at Picard about this.

Like, it's an emotional any-per-e-can-you-in-that-ready room. He's like, I can't kill my friend. That is completely idiotic. And Picard, who is basically our stand in for Klingon culture is like yeah man it's just their way sometimes you just got a kill of rent at a mercy to me this this kind of evoked two things why does my Picard always turn into a hippie that seems to be a that seems to be a

late motif that I'm giving him yeah Yeah, I mean, he's not really that chill of dude. No, he's not. But all of his opinions are super chill though, right? Yeah, when you distill them down, they're pretty chill. But the way they're delivered is there's no rasta on it at all. I'm giving them a terrible line reading. That's what I'm doing. I'm giving them a terrible line reading, that's what I'm doing. I'm giving them a raster line reading.

The two things that this scene evoked for me is one, like, it's got to be unbelievably rare for people to be paraplegics in the federation. Like, this is like an insanely crazy injury that the doctor can't repair, you know? Like she can repair all kinds of shit. So it's gotta be like pretty intense, like just like a person who like literally

has never heard of somebody being a paraplegic in this time and place is basically being asked to consider going through life as one now. Did you get the vibe that it was because he was clinging on or because it was unique that the damage to him was so great? I thought it was the latter, but they don't make that clear. But the other thing that this evoked for me was, like this kind of speaks right to the problem with the prime directive,

which is, Riker has this discomfort with the morality of helping Wurf take his own life. And Picard is like, hey man, like it's not your, it's none of your fucking business. You know, which is like, I think it is. I think if I'm being asked to make a moral judgment here, I don't want to help my friend stab himself with a weird poison serrated knife. I understand how a friend of Worf could feel that way and a senior staff member could feel the way that Riker is explaining.

I'm a little surprised that this is Riker's opinion. Like, I don't know. Like, I don't really have much to support that contention, but it seems out a character. It seems like Riker without having begun this episode would be the type that would help Worf die, because he loves him that much. I think that under different circumstances he would be down, but to Riker this doesn't seem like a suicidal scenario. Right. Yeah, they even make the case. Like, the cards like, how would you feel if you were looking forward to a remaining lifespan of pain and humiliation and rikers like, Worse not going through that, he's not in any

pain, like he just wants a way out. Yeah. They have a pretty sophisticated argument about this. Yeah, I mean, I'd say that like, this may be, like, in a weird way, this is a Riker episode, because Riker gets a bunch of big dialogue scenes where, you know, he has this big confrontation with Picard over this and later he has a big one

with Wharf and I think he has another one with Troy even like it's kind of about like what Rikers going through More than it is about what Warf is going through isn't it interesting how it it ends up that way so often with him like This is painted as a Warf episode and the same way best of both worlds was supposed to be a Picard episode, but like everything lands on him. We let Alexander Seabour finally, and that's been like even more days than it took Riker to go see. And I guess Dr. Beverly and Dr. Russell come in with this kind of B-rehead plan, which is put some straps on or slag legs. And when he's done dovening, he can start trying to walk around again. Yeah, they lay it out in terms of percentages, right? They're like, look, you know what,

with a little practice and these straps and... To fill in that we'll put on you. Yeah, like we'll give you 60% of your mobility back. And warf is like fat. What I was thinking is like, like it's hard to know if those are acceptable losses to him because most of the time Warf is like really into acceptable losses. Yeah. Large numbers of them. But does he have to yell towards Stovacore at like 40% volume to let Stovacore know that like part of his body is coming?

Portion of warriors. That's why. body is coming? Portion of warriors. That's why. Yeah. I mean, the other percentage that's given here is the percentage likelihood that this crazy treatment that Dr. Russell is working on will work, which is like 37% I think. Even a holographic patient would block those odds. And that's like 37%.

He will survive the treatment. Not the total. Not that he like 37%, he will survive the treatment. Not the, not the, not that he will recover fully. 37% as good. Yes. And, I feel like Wurf is much more into that as a percentage than 60% better. Data, here's these percentages of death and he's like, huh, yeah, like, you know what

team I'm on? You know what I would advocate? Beverly is super clear with Dr. Russell. She is like, do not present this as an option to wharf. We don't need to give him the idea that there's a miracle cure out there. These straps are what it's about. We're gonna go straps. Staps is the plan.

It's a... I don't know much about medical ethics aside from the casual reading a New Yorker article I've done from time to time. But I do feel like when a patient wants to try an experimental treatment that's given some consideration, typically, right? Oh boy, we're going to get letters. I get the sense that it is far more difficult to undergo experimental procedures than I think many

patients would like. Well, it's definitely like a big point of contention, but Dr. Russell and Dr. Crusher have to drop the their argument for a moment because the dancers from the opening number in La La land have been beamed on board and need some medical attention. Yeah, they came from the USS Primary Colors. The USS Color Wheel. Yeah, I guess the shuttle bay has been turned

into a triage ward and they're walking around. There is a lot of nasty looking cuts and burns on different people. There's sheets over faces, so you know it's bad. Yeah, and I think Dr. Crusher's like working on somebody and she looks over and Dr. Essel is like, it's like covering somebody up that has just passed away and she's like, what the fuck just happened there?

It is the most chill on screen death, like, but you could ever see. And yeah, Dr. Russell's like, yeah, oh, well, I was just trying one of my, like, completely, completely far-fetched experimental treatments on this guy, and it didn't work, but the data that we gathered in the process is invaluable. And Beverly's like, penicillin would have cured this person.

Like, what are you doing? All the prognosis called for is a couple of a leave. Yeah. This was madness. This patient had diarrhea. And this is like this kind of speaks right back to the crux of their argument. I think you used this situation in order to test one of your theories just like you're trying to do with wharf. That's what this is really about, isn't it? Lieutenant Wharf.

And so, Dr. Crusher walks out in a huff and she's in her office and Picard comes down and he's like, Hey, listen, I think that crazy doctor who keeps doing mangle-ish it to people, I think you should hear her out. I think she's got a lot of really good ideas. Hey Bev, you know, maybe we should just try out some of these experimental drugs and stuff. Legalization. Let me just close this door and roll up a towel and put it on the bottom edge of it. Do you want a puff pass with the... This really seems like a leap to me.

Like, Picard comes out of nowhere to advocate for this experimental procedure. Yeah. Without... I mean, he just seems... It seems like he was engineered to do this. Like, I don't see any character motivation for it. Klingon or no, he is going to have to accept his condition. Beverly, he can't make the journey you're asking of him. He doesn't illustrate his reason in any personal way. He's not like, look, we all love war if we need to do whatever it takes to put him back to 100%.

Like, he doesn't even make an emotional case. He makes sort of a practical medical case, and that's the part of it that rang empty to me. It doesn't read as Picard, it reads as any character. Yeah, like, it could have just as easily been Riker if Riker wasn't... It could have been Ogawa. Right, yeah. Well, Ogawa has been pretty silent up to this point, but I guess this is enough to talk

pressure into going forward with this. And so, the next thing that happens is Riker comes in and kind of lawyer Riker's warf with this suicide plan. I am ready, Commander. I've been studying this ritual of yours. You know what I've decided? I think it's despicable. I really admired his lawyer ring in the scene.

Yeah, it was like, hey, listen, I like, I looked into the, you know, precedents surrounding this, read some of the court cases. And it's not me that should have been asked, it's your son. He walks in with a towel and a knife. And this cling on knife, the suicide knife, Ben, it's like covered in fish hooks and barbs. Yeah. We get a little glimpse. I mean, we hear a little bit about what

the suicide ritual is. And it involves plunging the knife into one's own heart, pulling the knife out and then wiping it on the person who helps. Like, the heart's coming out with the knife, right? Like, do you see all the backwards pointing barbs? I don't know how you get it out of your own chest. Yeah, you would think that you would be too dead

to do that at that point. Yeah, you can need some help pulling that still beating heart out. pulling that still-beating heart out. But this is like, you know, this is a second scene in a row where an impassioned case is made and the and the obstinate character sees the light. So Alexander comes in and warves his leg, hey man, I'm gonna do something that's even scarier than kill myself. I'm gonna not kill myself. All of his special dad moments with Alexander or so terrifying.

Like a couple episodes ago, he was like, you want to know the most dangerous thing that you could do. It's allow me to be your dad. Are you ready for that? He's like, yeah. This scene, he's like, nothing's more dangerous than me trying to walk around an apartment filled with knives. Are you ready to witness this? Alexander's like, sure. I'm in. Yeah. He's like now, now run on back to the room with this terrifying knife. Yeah. Not the right person to give that knife back to. No, too small a child to be handing something like that. My love is a people's longing for that which long

the nurse has let me see. Tell me more, you're the boy. We've made back up and everybody is in those surgical scrubs that starfleet officers wear. Oh, come on, Jerry, you got to see the operation. They're going to cut them open, his guts will be all over the place. It's really like they've got the built-in FES. Yeah.

It's like a unitar that goes up and over the head, but for some reason they've chosen a FES top to it. What we don't know yet is that Moroccan medicine will be the form of medicine practiced far into the future. Yeah. They're really betting it all on Moroccan medicine, aren't they? Yeah, they share our world builders.

This is like the tense surgery scene that we rarely get in this series. They got the surgical theater, Jerry and Kramer are up there eating a box of junior mints. It's real shonda rhymes, too. There's a med speed happening. Focus the Drectal beams on the anterior and posterior spinal roots. Focused. Initiate. Yeah, on the anterior and posterior spinal roots. Focused. Initiate.

Yeah, a lot of nice techno babble. They flip-warf over. And Adam, were you aware before this scene that wharf had backloaf? I was not. I was really delighted to see the backloaf. I think, you know, when you're going through adolescence and you deal with face acne, often people forget about the back acne. Yeah.

And I guess it's just- Any time you go to a pool party and that stuff is exposed, it's just devastating. Yeah, I think we probably shouldn't be surprised that a person with headloaf would also have some backloaf. But there it is. Yeah. You should ask Beverly about a backutane prescription. This surgical procedure seems really intense. They've got this substitute backbone in a tray next to the operating table.

We'll open the peritoneal cavity, exposing the body's internal organs, nurse retractor. They've got war flipped over, and I guess the idea is they're just gonna swap out his back bone, right? Yeah, it's like when you do an engine rebuild on a car, like you hoisted out rebuild on a car, like you hoist it out, and take it over and bring the new one in and lower it down.

There's a lot of like, there's like a gummy worm that I guess is the replicated spine that they're gonna put into it. Into the patient! What do you mean? Into the patient. Into the patient, literally! They get pretty. Into the patient. What do you mean, into the patient? Into the patient, literally. They get pretty explicit with the surgery. Yeah, it's pretty g- it's pretty gnarly stuff.

I mean, there's no like over the top into the whole shot. Into the whole? Yes! Double! But they definitely show some, some gore. There's some, uh, some more blood and guts in this episode than we normally get.

I mean, there's, there's plenty of marinara splattered all over everybody in that cargo bay, so. Yeah. They cover us back with foil when the surgery is over. Put them in the fridge. Yeah, well, you let it rest for five or ten minutes before you serve it. Because. Yeah. You can't. That's true of loaf. That's true of a burger.

That's true of a steak. Yeah. You can't have a surgery scene been without losing the patient. Yeah. And what, as Warf circles the drain, they basically have that scene where the doctor electrocutes the patient over and over again using a loaf stimulator that Nusso Gawa applies to his head loaf. He just smushes it right in. It's one of those scenes

that kind of exposes how soft the loaf really is. You know, like I think we're kind of meant to think that that is, that's, you know, pretty tough stuff. There's another scene that gives that away too when Alexander is crying and he visibly cannot touch his head. Like he has been told, do not touch your own loaf. And he sort of like holds his hands hovering over his eyes.

Well, he's a little kid, you know, he's gonna be tempted to lick his fingers and be touched with some loaf, you know. Who wouldn't be? Yeah, not a bad performance by a little Alexander though. I mean, like, I thought it was a pretty effective break down. He's good in, he's not good by himself, but he's good playing off other actors. Yeah, and Troy's there. Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty, pretty rough little

scene. And yeah, they're all just kind of like standing around going like, holy shit, wharf is fucking dead, man. He's dead. Did it seem to you that the first time you saw this episode that this was real? Kind of a lot of time goes by that with Wurf's dead body. It seems like they passed the point in no return. And I remember when I saw this episode for the first time, I was like, holy shit. It's almost the end of season five.

Like they're gonna kill off another main character. This is it. Yeah, and I was in watching this, uh, this episode before we recorded today, I was like, what the fuck is going on here? Because I know that there's wharf in subsequent episodes. Like, how the fuck is he dead? What's going on? They kill him for a long time. How the fuck is he dead? What's going on? They kill him for a long time. Yeah, but the deal is they've been planting little seeds the entire time about all these redundancies in Klingon anatomy. Klingon's refer to as the Brock Low. Almost every vital function in their bodies has a built-in redundancy in case any primary organ or system fails.

One of them that they weren't aware of was some kind of neurological redundancy that wasn't enough to help him with his spine injury, but is enough to help him recover from his spine surgery. And he starts like moving his chin around and taking little breaths and they like flip on the life support again and start pumping them with new drugs and looks like he's gonna make a full recovery. They vacuum out his underpants, which have been totally filled upon his death. They got to get the wet dry

shot back. Oh yeah. Just sort of clean out that whole area. Yeah, there's something that they, it's something that they never talk about on this medical shows, but Star Trek is not afraid to lean into. You know what sucks is like, aside from shopwacks? Yeah.

Yeah. Is Riker is completely absent again from this. Like they do a little around the horn of crew members being preoccupied during the surgery and that's tastefully done. But like when he dies, where is Riker? Riker should be there as much as Alexander. And if you're wharf, aren't you super sad that no one has warned

Klingon heaven that a warrior's coming like no one else. I was kind of expecting Alexander to do that Me too Maybe they recorded it and it was just too cheesy. Yeah, it's possible I am a cute is a ball. You will assist us. I am a cute is a ball. You are a ball. Worf bounce is back. There's a final interaction between the two doctors who have been hating each other's guts so much this whole time. I thought the Beverly was pretty immature about this whole thing. Totally. Like Dr. Russell took a big risk and it paid off and she's getting the fucking silent treatment from pressure. I mean, on the one hand, I understand,

like you don't want to, you don't want to be nice to Mengele. You don't want to normalize Mengele. But on the other hand, she saved a good friend's life. But on the other hand, she saved a good friend's life, and I think that deserves not to be silent treatmented, right? Yeah. Like, she knows that you disapprove. I think a simple, I think professional courtesy is okay in that scenario, versus continued social discuracy.

Yeah, it's weird. Like on the one hand, Dr. Russell should be severely censored for what she did to that guy that just needed some... She should be in prison. Some basic medicine. Yeah. Like, for sure she needs to have her license seized. And, you know, whatever the medical equivalent of being disbarred. She needs to experiment in toilet hooch.

Yeah, like there's a, if there was any money in the Federation, there would be a major medical malpractice lawsuit gearing up for this poor survivor of this crash, right? Because it's like, God, he just went through the most horrible thing you could go through, survives this terrifying crash on a planet's surface with hundreds of his fellow crewmates passing away. And he survives, and all he needs is some light medical treatment, and this fucking crazy woman comes and tries some crazy experiment on him and he dies. Yeah, so I mean, I guess, given that...

The punitive damages alone are gonna be insane. She deserves worse than silent treatment. Yeah. But it's not really Beverly's place to be doing that. Yeah. So the last scene is a, like, wharf in physical therapy scene. He's got the ballet bars on either side

and he's learning how to walk again. And young Alexander is there to help him. It's a real touching, saccharin moment. You get a close up on his Klingon Bunions. He has low-fi feet in addition to low-fback and standard issue headloaf. Yeah. He's got loaf that like Frodo Baggins would bulk at. You kind of see the whole thing. Like you really get a tour of Wurf's body in this episode.

Do you think it has loaf on his dork? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do they circumcise klingons if that's the case? Well, I mean... What do you think klingon forskin is like? Based on what happened when they had his... his bar mitzvah ceremony, I'm gonna assume that Warf is cut. Oh man, yeah, God.

What if that's like... It's not a fair assumption, because you know, that's not always compulsory, but... Sure. But I'm gonna assume. It's probably real gnarly. Do you think it has a silhouette similar to that knife, Adam? Well, if it does, you're not getting it out once it goes in.

Yeah, who knows. Who knows how their anatomy works? Yeah, the button is a happy family button, isn't it? Strange choice. Yeah. Did you like this episode Adam? I think I did. I mean, it's nice to get a,

it feels like it's been a while since we've gotten a War of Centric episode that doesn't, that isn't 1,000% about his family. Yeah. It seems like we don't get warf unless we get family anymore. Yeah. I mean, it's also a nice devil wharf centric episode that doesn't involve like the politics of the Klingon home world. Yeah. Interesting when it happens, but it's, I feel like a little bit

Interesting when it happens, but it's I feel like a little bit Overdone at this point maybe I'm a little done with federation politics Yeah, right now. I'd like I could I could probably get back into some shoot-em-ups to be quite honest Hmm. Yeah, I could go for some shoot-em-ups. Yeah, so Did you like the episode Ben? I liked it more than I thought I would. And I think on balance, it's like a pretty interesting episode. But I feel like it made me wonder more about medical ethics than actually enlightening me about medical ethics. There's the medical ethics thread and then there's the right to life thread.

Do you feel like the episode was persuasive in any way on either of those? Well, I don't know. I mean, I just feel like totally unqualified for whatever reason. You're qualified to state an opinion about yourself. Do you believe that if you were in Worf's condition that you would hope that someone would put you out of your misery. It's the pull the plug question that every married couple has to have. I sort of looked at Worf circumstance in those terms, which is why when Riker objected so strongly, my immediate response to that was, whoa, will.

Like, don't you at least have to consider this guy's wish, like, if he's your friend and this is his custom? Like, I found myself on that side of the issue and maybe a surprising way. But I mean, I think that that's like the basic problem in like all society interacting, you know, anytime society has interact with sets of morals that are slightly different.

Yeah. Like, I feel the same way about like a culture that forces women to wear head scarves. Like I have like a reflexive, negative feeling about that. But then I also have a negative reflexive feeling about like a log being passed to like Outlaw that because I feel like it's not The government's place to say yeah, and and it like and it's like one of those things where I like I really see the

The argument on both sides of this and I don't really feel like I Am confident enough to know what the right answer is and And I felt the same way with this conflict. Like I can totally see where it's coming from, and I can totally see where Riker's coming from. Do you think it's possible to rewrite this episode where Riker is willing to do what Wurf asks? And for instance, Picard talks him out of it. Like, I feel like there needs to be one more point

of conflict to really make it interesting. Like, it's not quite there for me that single point of inflection on that decision with Riker and the thing that's being asked of him. Yeah, I mean, I think that if I was gonna rewrite this episode, the only thing that I would really focus my energy on would be getting rid of Dr. Russell and writing it as Dr. Polasky coming back to the ship.

Oh, that would have been amazing. Yeah, that was all I could think of the entire time. I was like, this woman is like a C-Polasky man. This woman can't drink. Yeah. Great call. Polasky would have had a scene where she was like knocking back shots with Gain

and then she's like, well, I gotta go do surgery on Worf. Bye. Like the airline pilot in the lounge. Yeah. Oh man. Hey Ben, do we have anything on the blower? Aside from a .08.

I'm talking about advertisements. Advertisments. Ben. Let's check. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. I need a supplement on. A supplement on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on that. supplement on that? supplement.

supplement. Yeah, it's extra. How do you interest alone? Could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, we have a personal message here, first in the queue. It is from you absolutely know who. And it is for Jason in the Union Park neighborhood of Boston. That's very specific. Yeah, it's also Jason with a

why, so that's even more specific. I feel like Jason's gonna know who this is. Yeah, and the rest of us will just have to guess. Wish you a new life year with Riker's luck, data immortality, or useful frankness on Yelp. Troy's insight, Jurti's secret jackness, Geinen and Rose bad assness, and Picard's sexually diplomacy as many good ideas as Wes, the boy, and as much love as Beverly

with that trill guy during their best days. It's a lot of love. If only Adam and Ben could see your hair. Man, sounds like Jason needs to have a hair cast episode. Sounds that way. I mean, is you know who saying that we need to see Jason's hair because it needs critique? Are we... is this a super cut situation here? I don't know. I mean, it seems like one way to read it and I would love to be involved with taking

one of our viewers to super cuts. It's like one of those remote segments on the late night show. Yeah, somebody on one of our social networks was talking about how they started doing the Star Trek sideburn. Or that you know they get the pointy sideburn. Oh! I'm kind of tempted to try that. That's interesting. My wife would allow it though. I've got the, like, I grow facial hair terribly. And, like, one of the spots that is very difficult for me to grow facial hair is in between the beard and sideburn. Like, there's sort of a hair desert there.

There's a, there's a demilitarized zone. Yeah, and so I'm pretty tied to the length of my sideburns, unless I were to grow them out in length and sort of comb them down. Like a K-pop star? Yeah, yeah. Do we have another message? I don't know. Sure do, Ben.

It's from the dorky dog and it's to the perky pigeon. As it goes like this, happy birthday to my greatest gen. My love, who is a peeper. It's been over 25 years since you started watching this show with me. And now we get to share it with our next generation. Here's to the continuing voyage of the USS Perky Bird. May I always be your number one. I love the idea of pet names that are actual pet names. Yeah, yeah. We should point out that greatest gen was spelled with a J in this scenario. Greatest, like the name. It's true.

It looks a lot of fun. Yeah, man, 25 years. That's awesome. Yeah, that's a good run. I am almost to 10 years of relationship with my wife. Yeah. And, man, it's been great not saying it hasn't been, but 25 years, quite an achievement, dorky dog and pretty pigeon.

Good job, by you. Well, I like this round of P1's at almost two birthday messages that seem to be as deep in the weeds with the self-referential in jokes as our podcast has now gotten. I'm glad our birthday messages aren't just us appearing from the kitchen, clapping and unison, singing a terrible restaurant song.

So much better than that. Because Warner Chapel illegally claims to own the copyright of the real happy birthday song. Yeah, yeah. You get that hamburger restaurant birthday song. That's no fun. No, it doesn't work,. Doesn't work as well. You just see the creeping death behind the waiter's eyes.

It's singing that song. They know, they know just as well as anybody that this is not classic Americana. If you're interested in bestowing some of that classic Americana onto a friend or a family member going through a friend or family member. Going through a birthday or any other life event, you can call Ben and I from the kitchen area. We'll come out and read your birthday message to anyone you want. Personal messages are $100. Commercial messages are $200 and they help with the ongoing production of our show. A Greatest Gen Live Show is something you don't want to miss.

Why? Well it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment. Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it! The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places.

Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info. That's GreatestGenTour.com for dates and ticketing information for the share your embarrassment tour. I'm Jordan Morris and I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the space weirds.

Pat Noswald. Could I get a ball rock burger and I call it having the spaceweirds. Pat Noswald. Could I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Nanjiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are already open. Just pull it out.

Give Jordan Jesse Goat try. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Whoa, Russ. Hey, baby, oh, I'm about to count you in mine. go try. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, rats. Hey, hey. Oh, I'm about to count you in line. These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line and boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they've such short nacks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this all. We've got to get on the art. It's about terrain,

thought it's about to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Kerry? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boats. We came two by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Kerry, available on MaximumFun and Outdoor. Hey, man. What's that Adam?

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda! I did. My drunk Shimoda is kind of like, I guess like... I'll give it to Nersogawa, but I think what the real culprit here is is like union rules about how many lines a character can get. Nersogawa goes through this entire episode, lineless until they get to the surgery scene and then she has like four things that she says. Like it's pretty clear that they were like, all right, we're gonna pay her for four lines.

She's not gonna be a featured player. So there's at least three or four scenes where she is in the mix, but totally silent in the episode because the producers didn't want a fucking pony up and pay Nersogawa a little bit extra to be a featured player, even though she's a repeat character on the show at this point. Yeah, and the way they frame her, like frame her for dialogue even though she's not delivering You know in a way that like leads to expectations, right? It it seemed very clear to me a couple of times that she probably had a line in the first draft of the script And they like pulled it out right before to save a couple of shackles on the yeah on the production budget

Yeah Did you have a drug Samota yourself Adam? couple of shackles on the production budget. Yeah. Did you have a truck Samota yourself, Adam? I do. I mean, I don't know if you had as much of a difficult time as I did finding a Samota this episode. Found a pretty difficult, to be honest. What I did enjoy was the scene in surgery where they're just having a hell of a time with this

back insertion. And part of it is this prop on the table, the backbone prop. And they're scanning it with lasers. And the lasers aren't really like boring through like the turtle shell that is his back. And Beverly is like, I thought you practiced this thing. And Nurse Russell is like, yeah, I did. And it only works like a quarter of the time. It's terrible.

So she whips out her backup device, which is like, we didn't really paint the picture of this surgical set, but it's pretty sophisticated looking. There's like some lasers. Yeah. There's the standard issue barbicide. There's some like crackly lasers and neon. And then there's a couple of scanners.

Well, scanner B that Dr. Russell produces is like a hotel room remote control. It is, it's the worst prop we've seen, I think all season. And I just laughed at this prop. It's really bad. They could have grabbed anything off the table except for this thing.

Pfft. We've never stayed in one of those hotel rooms with one of those, like, those, like, clean remotes. Now, you seen this? Now, this is something I've encountered a couple of times in my travels, where you walk into the room

and there's a remote that is like specially engineered to be something that you can like hit with Windex to disinfect. You can throw it in a dishwasher. Yeah, and it's just like, it's one of those things where I know that there's like real germaphobes out there that are terrified of the hotel remote and I'm sure that they appreciate this, but it's one of those things where it just, it makes you think about the fact that every other remote you've ever touched has probably been in somebody's asshole.

Yeah, I mean, what you're describing is the Merlin Man Rule. Have you heard about this? The Merlin Man Rule is that anything that can be in a human butthole in a hotel room has been in a human butthole in a hotel room. That's very interesting. I mean, because I think that like when you see this remote

and they're kind of brand promise that it has been cleaned thoroughly, all you can think about is. Is there a cheaper tip and like some ribbing? Well, you're gonna want a tapered tip but you're also gonna want a flared base because you don't want it to go in and then get stuck. If you're gonna do some polar region stuff. Now with anal sex toys you're gonna want a flared base. That's all I'm gonna... Yeah. Please continue you are gonna go. We'll cut all this out. You were gonna go. We'll cut all this out.

Hahaha. Yeah. Adam, our next episode. Hey Ben, Ben, what are we watching for the next episode? Get us out of this bit. Our next episode is season five episode 17, The Outcast. A rescue mission leads to a dangerous romance between Riker and a rebellious member of an androgynous

race. Do you remember this episode, Adam? They're all dangerous romances for one well-riker, Ben. Yeah, he likes a little element of danger, doesn't he? I do like and remember this episode. Yeah, well, we don't have any vetoes, so that's what we're watching at him. I remember a husk being involved, Ben. Yeah, you brought up that husk a couple of times ago. I'm excited to see if we see this husk or if it's just mentioned in passing.

As a young person, the idea of this husk was very memorable. Then it informed anything about your sexuality as an adult. Well, a very... You have a husk fetish, Adam. A very brief interest in husk porn, but that's it. You ever go on a deviant art and search husks? No, I haven't thought to you until this moment. I'm going to do a little research before the next episode, Ben.

I'll let you know what I find out. I'm looking forward to that little research before the next episode Ben. I'll let you know what I find out. I'm looking forward to that. Well, that will be our next episode. In the meantime, go on iTunes and leave a nice review for us. It helps people find the show. Go to maxfundstur.com and get some of our great merch. And, hey, we are in the thick of preparing a plan for our upcoming tour, which is looking like it's going to happen later in the year, and also greatest GenCon 2017. If you want to be in the front line of people that learn about those things, I recommend you go to gach.biz slash mail and sign up for our mailing list, because I think that's

probably going to be the first place that news goes We're not sending people a bunch of mail. It's just when we have announcements and we don't have many Literally, we've never sent any mail to this other than here. Here's a show we are doing and here's how you can go It's one of the great mailing lists that way. Yeah, we will not abuse this thing now We should thank Adam Ragusia and Dark Materia for our music. Thanks, Jens. And if you want to interact with us online, there's a greatest Jen subreddit. There's a great, greatest Jen Facebook group.

And as always, the greatest Jen Twitter hashtag is full of delightful things and you can follow Adam at Cutter Time, me at Benjamin R. EHR. That was a fairly complete conclusion, Ben. Well, with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. start trek the next generation, and an episode of the greatest generation that's in the dungeon with that dungeon family atom. ATLians. Oh, alright, yeah. Really really needed some bumpers on that joke. I'm gonna be like at least a 35% Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Make it so.

Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Make it so. Maximumfund.org.

Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Listener-supported. Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, artist owned Listener supported