The Greatest Generation - Fish vs. Dog (S1E7)

Episode Date: February 15, 2016

When Worf gets shocked working on an electrical panel, he learns a hard lesson about what happens when you try to do a union guy's job. Meanwhile, a bunch of Cantina Aliens are exploiting the "no door locks" policy on the Enterprise. Later, Data takes up smoking a pipe, and Picard demonstrates the advantages of backing up his information into the cloud. Endings don't get more abrupt, especially for Engineer Singh.

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 a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison.

Not too embarrassed to say our names, Adam Pranica here on the wheels of steel. Yeah, I've really been going down a hole with this. I mean, I've always been kind of an ambient Star Trek watcher, but I looked at my Amazon recently looked at, and there was like a DVD box set of Deep Space Nine and a mega blocks Starship enterprise E in there. And I was like, oh my god, I am really turning into a horrible manchild.

Well, you know, you have a problem when you're you're getting in a physical media. Yeah, I'm not going to do it. I was just I was mainly curious to see like had had the enterprise ever been licensed in a plastic building block format. And I feel like mega blocks is real low rent. Do you have a collection of Star Trek collectibles?

I don't. I used to have the action figures when I was a child, but I think I sold them to the used Toy Store at some point. Hmm. Yeah. I guess because you shared something very shameful in the last episode Maybe LT's a little story about about something related to that idea a little bit later. Oh my god I am on tinter hooks

I don't know what a tinter hook is, but I'm on one. Yeah, it could be really nice. So Adam, this is episode six titled Lonely Among Us. The Enterprise is en route to a planet called Parliament with delegates from two warring planets and Parliament, I guess, is kind of the Switzerland of this part of space. Not to be confused with like a planet known for its minty flavor. Yeah. Or its funcodellacness. Right, right. Both at those. So the two warring races, like we get, we learn very early how deep their hate is for each other when a bunch of lizard people, these are the salay and they can be aboard and say

that they can already smell the anticans who are the other race that is aboard. It's basically your standard fish versus dog story. Yeah. I mean, first of all, these are rubber mask aliens. Like they are, they are not paint on the tip of the nose aliens. Like you might, you might be used to in the Star Trek universe. These are a lot more akin to your planets of the apes,

kind of characters. Down to the unmoving mouths when they talk. Yeah, it's real country bear jamboree style alien process here. Yeah, and so the CLA are, they sort of look like, they have like cobra heads, kind of kind of, kind of, Kelly Green cobra heads. And then the anticans are like, weird, bald, canine.

If Dr. Murrow tried to crossbreed a hairless dog with a monkey. Yeah, yeah, that's accurate. That checks out. Oh, you have your Dr. Moro calculator on your desk there. Yeah, so the enterprise is basically just kind of operating a a ferry service to get these two two races of assholes. I will venture to say from one place to another and on their way they

encounter a weird cloud of energy, and Picard is curious enough to direct them to take a close pass, and we see Wharf and Jordy in the sensor room, which I don't think that we ever see this sensor room again. But it's kind of a cool little set, and while Jordy is distracted by something, Worf gets blasted with lightning, and it's one of the greatest Worf screams in his entire, like, 10 or 11 season history as a character on DNG and DS9. I felt so strongly about that performance that it made me feel like if you're casting for the part of Orphe, isn't that all you're casting for? Like give us your best energy beam through the through the panel and into your

hand. Yeah. And the casting director, I feel like spent a good week having people come in and growl and fall down just for hours at a time. And Michael Dorn got the part, I think, on the strength of this performance. Yeah, fucking kills the growills. So, Wharf is now passed out and taken to Sick Bay, where Dr. Crusher starts examining him and when nobody's looking, she gets infused with this energy. And so, it sort of passes out of his body and into hers. And she starts acting like a real weirdo. It's kind of made me wonder why Worf wasn't just

going around acting like a weirdo. Like why did it knock him out, but she was able to just kind of absorb it and walk around. She like wanders onto the bridge and, you know, data is still such a naive character that he can't tell the fact that she's acting super weird means that she's been taken over by an alien intelligence.

Yeah, look, I mean, they only trust Michael Dorn to growl and fall at this point in the series. Like they're clearly giving Beverly Crusher's character a lot more to do. Yeah, yeah, Warfare really hasn't hasn't had many many lines or scenes at this point. And he's been out of entire episodes too. Yeah, that's true. So she kind of transmits the energy into the science console that she's using. And then the ship starts to sort of fall under the influence of this creepy alien intelligence. It drops out of warp and they call up the assistant chief engineer Singh, who is almost immediately killed, which I felt like was a real shame,

because I think Singh, he seemed like a really charismatic character. Yeah, and it was kind of seen in Indian man. Yeah, as part of the crew, I thought that was cool. Yeah, I kind of, I felt like that was kind of a missed opportunity to just have this character get introduced and then killed immediately. Did you know Bititrivia, he was the first character killed on the show, the first Enterprise crew character.

Oh wow. Number one. So, so drink if you had a bet on on engineer sing. Yeah So Picard orders like a murder investigation and makes a a tangential reference to Sherlock Holmes and And then for the rest of the episode, data is walking around with a crazy pipe smoking it and like talking in a very arch tone and using deductive Sherlock Holmesian investigative techniques,

which is the kind of, the first introduction of a late motif that runs through the entire series of data being obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. A related late motif to that is also just data being incredibly annoying. I feel like this is the character really like showing some range that we don't usually see. Like he's usually so measured and Brent Spiner really plays these moments for comedy.

Like it's so silly like. There's some real capital A acting going on with Brent Spiner. Yeah. Anyways, so this episode gets really up on its high horse about a couple of things. Early on, Picard kind of talks about how part of their dispute is over an economic system, and he really is dismissive of that being a legitimate reason to have a dispute. And then the whole crew is really horrified that the anticans eat actual

animals for meat. They're really offended by that because they're all used to eating replicated food. I think it says a lot that we're spending so much time on the gas cloud storyline versus the fish versus dog conflict because the steaks don't really seem that high in this and this whole diplomatic dispute at any moment. Yeah, it's like these aliens are ridiculous, maybe you should just let them hash their stupid differences out and not like sweat there. They're a little problem.

So anyways, Troy starts trying to hypnotize Worf and Dr. Crusher, finding that they can't remember what happened to them when they were under the influence of this being and eventually the being finds a way to precarred. And then everybody realizes they are in some deep shit because when Captain Picard is acting like a weird space kid at, they, you know, nobody can pull rank on him other than the doctor, but she has to be pretty sure

why she's pulling rank on him and like medically taking him out of service. He really big dogs, Beverly and Riker when they try to do a little intervention on him. Yeah, they come in and say like, hey, Captain, like we think you should submit to a psych screening. And his big comeback to that is like, well, I think you should submit to a psych screen, which they have no comeback for. They're like, okay, and they kind of back out of the room and then go take the psych screening

to the gym. Yeah, they go take them. That's a fucking order, man. Orders is orders. He orders the ship to turn around and head back toward this energy cloud and then starts kind of explaining that he has merged his intelligence or this alien has merged its intelligence with his and has convinced Captain Picard to explore the galaxy with him as a being of pure energy and that this is what Picard wants and so they can't talk him out of it and Picard

goes down to the transport room and beams himself off the ship and doesn't rematerialize on the other side as matter just rematerializes as energy. And so they're like, holy shit! The captain just fucking wasted himself! And then Troy senses the captain's conscience out in the cloud. Wait! It's the captain. I think Picard saw the advantage of putting his information in the cloud. Picard saw the advantage of putting his information in the cloud. You know, this show has been very influential to the designers of technology gadgets.

You know, your flip-flown is based on the communicators from the original series. Pretty unimpeachable backup. And it turns out the crew could recover that information when they wanted it. Yeah, so they push the enterprise into the cloud and data figures out a way to like rematerialize the captain and all as well. And the captain doesn't even remember anything that happened before the entity entered his body. So they continue on their way now super late to get to the peace conference. The End.

Did you think that the end of this episode was really weird? Like any weird dukes of hazard style ending? Like they beam Picard back to the ship. He's like, what the hell happened? I don't remember anything. And right Riker and Tasha, like, well, some crazy stuff went down and we've got this whole like fish versus dog thing going on on board and Picard's like number one why don't you go and take over I'm gonna go grab a nap yeah he totally leaves right here holding the bag it's such a thick

move and then the riker and y'all sort of look at each other and I was full on expecting like free-shrame roll credits on like on like that shruggy smile look that they give each other. But that's it. Like that's the end of the episode. Yeah. It was like the end of chips. You remember the end of a chips episode? Yeah. They'll be like riding their motorcycles off in the distance and like one of them will look at the other guy, free-sframe credit credit and then they'll go back to real time and then the other guy will look at the other guy

Freeze frame roll credit. It was real awkward. Yeah, we're definitely coming out of an era of television where they felt like Ending a show was just way too much to even contemplate All that was missing was like the the mat lock and Theme song to even contemplate. Although his missing was like the, the mat lock and theme song. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that the biggest thing that really stuck out to me is like the doctor comes back from her fugue state on the bridge and she doesn't remember how she got there.

And everybody's going like, Dr, are you all right? And she's like, I don't, I don't remember what I was even doing in here. And I would think that a federation doctor on a starfleet ship would raise more of an alarm. Like she's a commander. She should be like, right.

Either I have like just like gone into a fugue state or had a stroke or something, something that happens like over and over in Star Trek where a character will not just say something to the person next to them that would cause everybody to kind of change what they're doing. Another thing about her and how she acted that I thought was weird was we have a bunch of examples of this. So, Ryker in the very first episode is able to watch an entire episode of Star Trek to catch himself up on what's happened.

Yes. So, we're pretty clear that there is a log or a record or a flight data recorder on the enterprise. Right. You can see what people have done. But, Wurf gets shocked by the thing in the sensor booth. He can't remember what happened, and everyone just sort of takes a disface value. Like, huh, he can't remember.

The doctor can't remember what she was doing on the bridge of that engineering station. Couple episodes ago, the traveler is like entering in, at least complicated computer settings to take the ship faster than it's ever been. No one knows how he does it, but why doesn't the ship have a recorder of every button that's ever been pushed? It seems like the easiest thing.

Harder to write that series, I guess, that was internally consistent. Well, I would say that like this is definitely another one of those episodes that would have flown in the original series, but would not have flown past season two of Star Trek the Next Generation. Yeah. Like, I think that there was a lot more well-established internal logic by season two and a lot of these early episodes just kind of don't really consistently interact with that logic The last thing I had on my list was talking about Troy because I feel like she really comes into her own in this episode The list was talking about Troy, because I feel like she really comes into her own in this episode.

She has some real scenes where she's actually doing some stuff. She's interacting telepathically with Picard's energy pattern when it goes out into the cloud and it's not just there to kind of announce what emotions need to be experienced by the audience this time. I don't know, she's a character that I really like and I feel like this is the first real stab at character development that she's had. She had a scene that wasn't so great though when Picard hits the lights on the bridge and starts shocking everyone. Yeah, this is a pretty exciting scene. Picard

grabs the two consoles at the front of the bridge and lightning bolts go into everybody's chest and they like can't move and data is like trying to get an arm out to like grab onto Picard and he can't do it. You remember which Roy says though? It's a zombie movie! And like my eyes went directly to Jordy and that moment like looking for an eye roll that I knew I wasn't going to see. Yeah, you can't see through that visor that well. Yeah, exactly. Do you have a drunk Shimoda? For this episode Adam? Yeah, I think I do. My drunk Shimoda is Tashiyaar, the purported security chief of the entire ship.

For some reason, the captain's acting weird, and the chief of security doesn't have the agency to, you know, relieve him of duty or take him down with a phaser as soon as he starts electrically shocking the two helm consoles. Like, yeah, she seemed pretty useless in this episode as a character. Oh, and also like, let's, let's not forget the Antikins and the Salay. They're just having their run of the entire ship. And as chief of security, she seems completely powerless to lock a door from the outside. Yeah, they keep catching, catching the Antik the antikins or the solei attempting a murder caper on each other.

Yeah, real bad job, Tasha Yare. Yeah, I mean, they confiscate these weapons and it's like, that's not gonna cut it. Like confiscating the weapons is step one. Like, there's a bunch of other things you could do. You could also lock a door. Yeah, I guess we haven't really established whether or not any doors can be locked on the ship, the stupid ship, because the only other time when one would have needed to, it's

when Tasha's boosting scarves from Deanna Troys quarters. I mean, you can tell the crew's getting frustrated with the ship, too. This is not the first episode where they're sort of bitching about it. Like, the ship's supposed to be brand new. Why are we having these power fluctuations? Yeah. I think you're out of space, Doc. I think the lack of door locks is presenting a real issue.

Yeah. Maybe they go in for a refit at some point in between season one and season two. And we can only hope. My Drunk Shermota are the delegates. You know, we've talked quite a bit about it. What, what bickering babies they are. They're trying to join Starfleet, right? Is that their deal or are they already in?

I think that they say at some point, like they're trying to broker this piece so that the Ferengi don't broker the piece instead. Which is just another like kind of egregious attempt to set the Ferangues up as this major adversary that they never wind up feeling like. That's a fun group of rubber head people. Ha ha ha.

You would think that space-faring species would have any amount of skill as diplomats and they're like literally act like six year olds the entire time. And yeah just didn't quite come across as plausible to me. I lost your signal completely Ben. I don't know if you can hear me, but I can't hear you anymore. I lose you Still can't hear you. Hello. Hey, there you are. I don't know what happened. I don't know either I just finished a Thought so maybe we can just kind of call that the end of that chunk and move on Maybe I'll say something like that's a very interesting thought, man

And that'll be a little Easter egg for us. Yeah oh man. How did you feel about this episode just as a whole given what we've seen up to and including it? what we've seen up to and including it. I would say that it had, I would say three moments that really made it fun for me to watch the Warf scream at the beginning, the data Sherlock bullshit in the middle and the lightning deck at the end. So, you know, I would say that definitely not a terrific episode, but held my interest more than some of these others have.

Yeah, I would say I liked parts of it, but it felt pretty weak to me. The cool parts I thought were, like, just the idea that someone could beam themselves out into space and not die. They don't really give you any background for how that's possible or why. They just sort of talk around the idea that, you know, there is energy and then there is physical matter and Picard beamed energy out into the cloud. So, I mean, we aren't meant to truly understand what that's about, but the idea that we all thought he was dead and then he wasn't was definitely exciting. But I thought everything- They definitely like play it like, yeah, like we might not get this guy back. And, and I felt like that was emotionally effective. Yeah. Uh, this is one of many

times Riker thinks he's captain and he's like, okay, well, I guess we better uh, go back to Parliament. Yeah. Most of everything else was, was not great. I mean, this is pretty clearly a bottle episode, you know what I'm saying? Like, we never come back to either of these alien races again. Yeah. Like, it just sort of exists on its own and then we're on to the next. Although I did read in the Wikipedia that they get used in like background if they ever needed like a bunch of weird aliens walking around in a background

because it's just like a weird rubber helmet essentially. If you don't need them to talk, they're pretty cool looking. Right. That's their greatest use, I think, sticking them in the background. Like really, George Lucas, sing them up. Yeah, these are Cantina aliens, for sure. You just kept talking talking one long, incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had the chance to interrupt.

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 spaceweards. Pat Noswald. Could I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries?

Thank you. And Camille Nanjiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard.

Be dumb instead. Whoa, rats, hey, hey, hey, oh, I'm about to count you in line. These clouds are really frigging 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. We've got to get on the art.

It is about terrain, about a spout to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie?

We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boat. We came two by two. What do you think? Ona Ross & Kerry, available on maximumfun.org. Alright so the next episode is justice. When Wesley is sentenced to death for innocently violating an alien planet's custom,

Captain Picard is forced to choose between negotiating for Wesley's life or adhering to the Federation's Prime Directive, which prohibits interfering with another civilization's way of life. This was one of the most memorable episodes for me, I think, just going off of what I recall. I remember Wesley falling into some bushes and getting into some big, big trouble. Yeah, I remember this being an episode that really explored the idea of side-boob in a way

that Trek has not traditionally done, and also that there's a lot of man package on display in this episode. Almost to the point where you can't believe that they aired it on network television. Yeah, I mean I definitely wouldn't veto watching this episode. It doesn't sound like you would either. No, not at all. I'm I'm pro nudity. I guess I guess that means folks will have to join us again next week for another exciting installment of the greatest generation. I mean, they don't have to do anything. And actually, we'd probably prefer at this point

that they don't. Yeah, you know, this is one of the first episodes we're recording since we actually started releasing episodes of this. And I just want to say, like, we're really embarrassed by this show and all of these people that go on iTunes and leave reviews and then, like, write notes about how much they like it on Facebook and Twitter. I understand that you're, like, it's nice of you to do, but it's very embarrassing for us, so please stop.

Okay? That's me talking to you, the listener. It's sort of like a nerd sex tape going viral. You know, like, we're doing a thing that we feel a great sense of shame about and people won't stop talking about it. So. Kind of vexing. a great sense of shame about and people won't stop talking about it. Kind of vexing.

Yeah, I don't know what to do about it. I guess we'll just have to keep recording these episodes. Yeah. I mean, if somebody wanted to continue that feeling of vexation, they would go to iTunes and leave a five-star review. And it's just clearly mocking us. They could also go to our website, Gakda Biz, which should now be fully functional the way Commander Data is fully functional in a multitude of techniques and positions.

Yeah, it was a weird silvery yellow... ...diddick. Silvery yellow Did it I've been Ben Harrison. I've been Adam Pranaka. Don't call down right Make it so.