The Greatest Generation - Fractionally Loafier (S5E7)

Episode Date: January 30, 2017

When Admiral TKTKTK gives Picard an emergency message, it’s news nobody wants to hear: It looks like Ambassador Spock is being a rebellious teen. Now the Captain and Data will have to go to Romulus to make sure there’s a chaperone at the party Spock went to. Meanwhile, the Entrepreneur is trying to figure out what the pawn shop was thinking when they sold a ship that the Vulcans were still making payments on. Is this how Picard talks to customer support? What does Romulan Burlesque look like? Are all great strategists also stuffy pricks? It’s the episode where Data and Picard bring all the things.

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

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

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

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

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

I am your other host, Benjamin R. Harrison. Ben, did you get a package from me? I did. A care package is what I called it. Yeah. Yeah, that was a fun one to open up. You told me that it was on its way, and I had no idea what to expect.

And it wound up being very on topic for our show. Yeah. I don't have it up here with me. And I don't have a perfect memory of what was in it, but it was like a LaWoxonetroy toy, commemorative, worth plate, some beautiful paintings that a viewer brought to one of our live shows.

Yeah, those are the nerdscapes pictures that our friends at Nerdscapes sent us. Did you get a couple of those? I did, yeah. They were good enough to send two copies of both images. Oh, awesome. Because I didn't want one of us to have one and the other not. Well, a viewer might be getting the idea that, you know,

I'm so kind that I would send you the only copies, like that, not that kind, man. If there were only two copies, I would send you the only copies, with gifts like that. Yeah. Not that kind, man. If there were only two copies, I would have kept them. Yeah. That said, Adam. Why don't we open a couple of packages of baseball cards? OK.

That surprised you with that one, didn't I? The game is five cards. The game is exceeding very simple. Why does this just start there? Time to plug a pendulum. You still have a signed card waiting to happen. Yeah, I keep like every show I start with a pack of cards in here in front of me and I often don't get the opportunity to open it so. I got an arsenal of freedom card here. That was a fun episode. That was a, was that Dildonic weapon episode?

Yeah, Echo Pop is 607. Yeah. I got a contagion, which is when the poopy got on the poff. A drumhead, aqueuille. And this might be one that I don't have yet, rightful air. More visits, the planet Boreth, where followers of Kaelis wait for their leaders return That one's coming up Yeah, sure is Why would why would people follow Kaelis if they had the choice about whether or not to follow

God remind me it was named in the The run the dumpy cling on God Oh, I think that is Kaelis slimy. Oh No, it's not a slimy. Oh, uh... No, it's not. The slimy one, for. Who's like a Veclar? Veclar, but...

Yeah, I mean, you could follow K-Lar, but I think if given the choice, I would follow Veclar, wouldn't you? Go, Veclar. The followers of Veclar are just wearing handkerchiefs, dry their nose. Gotta mop up all that drool bin. Yeah, it's a messy lifestyle following Fechlar. Oh man, it's an anti-histamine-free lifestyle. They've sworn off all Benadro Ben.

Well, you got any interesting cards in there, Adam? No, I got all repeats again. I have all repeats and no special edition like comic book style cards. The trouble with this card bit is that it really starts to get boring toward the end. Yeah, you know what I was sort of hoping was that you know how like in certain baseball and football cards you get like a clipping of a uniform? Hmm, I've never seen that. That would have been fun.

You get a little... That would have been fun. You get a little postage stamp-sized piece of a warf uniform. For instance, that would have been fun. That would have been really cool. A loaf clipping. Yeah, each piece is worth $3,000. Yeah, that gets expensive pretty fast.

Well, should we get to dance in with who brung us at him? Yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about season five, episode six. Unification. One. Every star piece of this is to the truth. This episode starts been with a credit opiate. Yeah, RIP for a recently departed Gene Roddenberry. Big Rod himself. So it might be a good time to talk about our at times conflicted feelings about big Rod.

What would you say on the occasion of a credit opate for Mr. Gene Roddenberry? There's so much about Star Trek that I think is amazing and I think is directly creditable to him. Right. It was a team effort, but he was the jobs behind the whole affair. Right. And I think that the imagined better future is so cool. There, I can't think of many television shows or fictions of any kind that look into the future and imagine it being unbalanced better for everybody. Yeah. And it's the kind of future I like to imagine

and I wish we had more fiction like this. Yeah. And I think that that is right. I think that all of that stuff is Rod's contribution. I think that when it comes to making actual good TV, maybe he wasn't as much of a genius, but the fictional universe that he created, and we talk about this a lot now,

like if Star Trek is a place, he's the person that invented that place, and he did a great job. I think that Steve Jobs comparison is interesting because you know, Roddenberry constructed the universe that we enjoy here. And I think the thing I'm most grateful about is that a lot of sci-fi falls into the religious trap. This is the reason that I like Star Trek more than Star Wars. religious trap. This is the reason that I like Star Trek more than Star Wars. Star Wars feels like a far more religious metaphor than Star Trek does because in Star Trek the religion is science. That's a and that's an angle that I appreciate especially. There's no there's no Muaddi bin Star Trek.

there's no Muaddi bin Star Trek. Where the job's comparison works for me is that, you know, jobs set the tone and created the culture, but he also made the Lisa, you know, like he also had some massive misfires. There were things that he failed at. fail that. And I think we know what those failures are when we consider, you know, how vast and long in terms of time the Star Trek universe has occupied. So I am especially grateful to to big ride. For all the great entertainment that we've received, while at the same time loving the universe enough to criticize its many faults, like this is not a perfect place. And he was not a perfect creator.

No. But, but we're here because of him. And I think to, to minimize that or to finish that in any way it would be wrong. So, this was the, seeing the credit there is a good opportunity for us to just sort of restate that for the record in a way that I think up until now we've taken our shots at the Roddenberry Industrial Complex, but deep down, I think we know how important he was and is to this whole thing.

Yeah. Well, and I think that we should just say for the record, while we admire Gene Rodden-Berry, the man, we have no financial ties or any other ties to the Rod and Perry industrial complex. Right. And we would never sell our show out in that way. Never ever. And we just want to make that abundantly clear that we are not in the pocket of big rod. As ever out of the pocket of big rod. No puppet. No puppet. You, no puppet.

You're the puppet. Well put, Ben. Okay. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet.

You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. You're the puppet. This episode, once we get the RIP banner out of the way, starts with some shit popping off. The Enterprise was going to go do some terraforming, but that has been cancelled, and the Enterprise

has been recalled to Starbase 234. And the captain is meeting with Admiral Brackett, who tells him that one ambassador's spock has gone missing and much like the ambassador, Vulcan Ambassador, that they ferried to the clutches of the Romulans before. They have discovered that Ambassador Ambassador Spock is on planet Romulus. And I assure you it was an unauthorized visit. Did you get the feeling the Admiral Bracket was a temp name that actually made the show?

You mean like the time that they had sub commander TKTKTK on the Romulanship. Admiral Lorum Ipsum. Has some concerns that she shares with the card. Admiral this space intentionally left Blake. Yeah. How many words of Lorum Ipsum can you recall, sort of like digits and pie? Oh man. Is Dolor the next one? I think it is, but I don't know anything cast Dolor.

That's a dumb content. Yeah, I can't believe we even played the, uh, who wants to be a millionaire music for that. What idiots we are. I'm going to save myself the work and just edit that out. So the next stop for Picard is the Vulcan Homeworld. He's going to pay a visit to Seric. And according to Seric's wife, he's not doing so hot. I think one of the reasons that Seric is doing so poorly is they've got him set up in an uncomfortable marble bed.

Yeah, Cerec's house is shitty. He's sort of writhing around uncomfortably. I think you got to roll a craftmatic in there, Ben. For some end-of-life comfort. Feel better and sleep better in the craftmatic adjustable bed. We have this whole scene where Picard is talking to Perrin. She who is Cerex wife, as portrayed by Joanna Miles, who personally signed a Star Trek card of mine.

Yeah. Like hey, we are pretty sure that Spock is defecting or something, something is up with Spock, and he is on Romulus, and that is usually concerning to a lot of people considering he's been a really important mover and shaker in the Federation for like 90 years. And she's like, yeah, he's a real prick. He didn't even say goodbye to his dad before he left. He said possible he could have been abducted. No.

The tone is said that Spock has sort of rebelled out. Do you think Spock is a little bit in this episode inspired by Doug from the state? Yeah. Do whatever dad, I'm out of here. Sarah is, in fact, a pretty cool dad and Spock is looking to rebel against somebody that why would you even rebel? I don't know. Well Joanna Miles is doing a nice job here.

And the other, I guess, around that scene is when they also establish that there's some crap all of that the Vulcans want the Enterprise to look into. They have like a bunch of parts from a Vulcan ship that are busted up. And this ship was supposed to be in like the pawn shop and they found it all shredded and busted up. So they want the enterprise to see why it wasn't in the pawn shop anymore. The Vulcans have been making payments and they were gonna go get it back.

And now it's all shredded and strewn around the cargo bay floor. This is going to be like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle and you don't even know what the picture supposed to be. Yep. This introduces a really fun idea in science fiction, which is the idea of the wrecking yard or the ghost fleet. You know, what happens to the ships when people are done using them? So the wreckage of this ship was supposed to be in one of those depots, and so that sort of begins the mystery.

Yeah. Picard gets Saric to snap to it for about five minutes. And it's enough time for Sarah to give them some pretty critical information. We've basically picked up where we left off with Sarah, which is that he is totally falling apart. And he's a lot worse than last time. Like there's nobody that can use their psychic power

to hold his mind together. Like a mug that's fallen on the floor that you can, if you use both hands, keep in one piece, but we'll follow a part if you reach for the glue. He is also wearing a Batman gelab. Did you notice that? Once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. He stands up from his marble table bed and starts walking around and he has the clear

Impression of the Batman wings across his shoulders. Yeah, it's true. It's like Christopher Nolan Batman symbol Yeah, they're kind of like stretched out Nolan Nolanized one. Yeah Yeah, this isn't your daddy's Batman. This is a dark gritty Batman theman. The card's like, I'm trying to hear you talk to me, but all I hear is that inception horn. Hehehehe. Hehehehe. He's like, hey, Sarah, what's going on with your son being unromilous? Spock? Unromilous? Hehehehe.

You gotta go get him. No more! KIT! Get him back, my card! You gotta chase Spock, because he can take it. Go from me! He's not the diplomat we need. How does that line go?

I can never remember. He's the diplomat we need, but not the diplomat we need right now. He's the diplomat we need, but not the diplomat we need right now. He's the diplomat we deserve. And it's like, I mean, it's another one of these like, he's a little bit dimmented, like by the end of the scene, he's like kind of forgetting what's going on in the conversation. But what Picard walks away with is Spock believes that it can be achieved a reunification between the Vulcans and the Romulans. And I guess the backstory on this is that they're like long lost cousins.

Spock has been in touch with this senator, named Pardek, in the upper reaches of Romulan society. in the upper reaches of Romulan society, and it is presumably gone to Romulanists to look into the idea of opening a normalization between the Vulcans and the Romulanists, which would be a big deal, because the Romulans have been the grade A number one assholes of the quadrant for a long time. Yeah, they're sort of paying off this idea that we've seen throughout the show, which is they look exactly alike, shouldn't they be related? Yeah, I think the Rommelands are like fractionally low-fier than the Vulcans. Yeah, the bread box cover really emphasizes the low, I think.

Yeah. This scene ends with a single brass instrument of profound sadness. And other than like bleeding out of the mouth, I think it's the one thing the show does to telegraph that someone's about to die. Yeah, it's some sad stuff. Like, Sarah is a beloved character for good reason. Yeah. He's been a very interesting force on two series. It sucks to see him like that. The last time we palled around with Sarek on the show, he was already becoming more and more lost in his mind.

To see how much more far gone he's become is sad. And it's a contemporary sadness that comes with seeing an aged loved one circled the drain mentally. Yeah. That is enough for Picard to decide that they got to go. They got to go to Romulus and see what's going on. So he and Data are going to go on this mission and they decide that they're going to use a cloaked Klingon ship. So he's going to have to go ask his buddy Gauron a big favor. But it turns out Gauron has been doing some ministry of truth shit about the history of his ascension to the Klingon throne.

This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period. And they've sort of white-washed Picard out of the story. And the new version, there is no mention made of the Federation's help and his rise to power. Gauron is not exactly the even-handed leader that I think Picard was led to believe. You are worried that your country is in the hands of this unpredictable man, but don't worry, it's not. Obviously he's no duras,

but he's definitely like moving the klingons away from their friendship with the Federation and is like more volatile a leader than Kempak ever was. So that's concerning and it's that's kind of related to them by wharf but by the time they get to cling on space you know Picard is like ready to kick it to Gauron what he needs and instead they get this very low-ranking guy on the FaceTime. I regret to inform you that Garan and the High Council are quite busy and we'll be able to speak with you today. They get like an admin, which is really fun to see like how he plays his character.

Like he doesn't get a lot of screen time, but he sells it like a middle management bureaucrat so well. Captain, go around wishes it were possible to talk with everyone who wants an audience, but he is one man, but the man's only his time are formidable. If you would like me to take him a message. A message! Picard is like, hey listen man, this is nothing against you. It's just that I know for the fact that you can't help me with my problem, so I'm going to need to talk to your manager.

Can you put him on the phone? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What they've done is they've called the bank, but they got a call center. Yeah. And they're having to sort of go through the phone tree.

Yeah, yeah. Picard is like, what country are you in? You're in Nevada, huh? I'm not sure I believe that. Being very condescending to this operator. Yeah. It's also fun to see the way Picard plays it, right? Yeah, because he plays it so cool

as if to be passive aggressive, right? Yeah. I think that he knows that like the two things that somebody that works in this capacity has to contend with is they don't want to become a problem for their boss and they get a roll calls, you know, like they make money by volume. So he's trying to get Picard off the phone pretty quickly and Picard is like, listen, I would hate to have to make this embarrassing for Gauron.

Yeah. And that really like, that really gets this functionary character on his side. He's like, oh, okay, we'll do you a sell-in. And he delivers. Yeah, Picard gets his ship. I like the way he says, I require a cloaked ship. Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna give me a cloaked ship.

That's what's going on here. It seems like this is not too far after a pretty badass Klingon Civil War. I'm a little bit surprised that they've got a spare ship. And that it's not blown to pieces. This is just a couple episodes later. Yeah. So I guess the cardin' data are going to get fitted for Romulan drag. And meanwhile, he and Jordy and Picarden Jordy and Riker meet up in the cargo bay and they're like looking at all this

twisted metal and they're like, yeah, the Vulcan's tell us it's like a deflector dish. And we're still scratching our heads as to why it's here or what's going on. And Picard's like, well, I mean, I'm going to be gone for a few days and the ship doesn't have anything else to do. And Riker's like, well, why don't we turn the other half of this episode into a who done it? Yeah. She's always fine by me, Adam. It's an interesting crew left on the Enterprise because I think most of the time when Riker

has command, data is on the bridge too. Data is his right hand man for sure. Yeah, and so who is Riker's exo if it's not data? It's war, right? I guess so. I mean, I think that probably Jordy would rank, but Jordy is gonna be doing his engineering stuff most of the time, right? You rarely get much exposure to a riker, Jordy interaction.

And I wonder if that's because riker at his core finds Jordy to be loathsome. Yeah. Could you imagine two more opposite people? No. No, it doesn't exist. One of them is, you know, men want to be him and women want to be with him. And men want to be with him and women want to be him. And the other one nobody wants anything to do with. Yeah, this doesn't seem fair. Yeah.

So Picard and Dada's Uber has arrived. And they're like, hey, Uber for Picard? Yeah, but this is like an Uber pool where the rating is not going to hold as much weight. It's a real gypsy cab Uber. Yeah, they get over to this thing and the captain is, the captain of the Klingon ship is big dogging Picard as soon as he's on board. It never stops, right? This guy is constantly implying that members of the Federation are we and you know can't take sleeping on a hard bed and

implies that Picard can't stomach their food. He gives him a really aggressive tour, right? Yeah, yeah, where is it? Where is a normal tour? You'd be like here are here are your accommodations. Here's when the buffet starts. Here's where you can get extra linens. Right. At every stop on this tour, he's like, oh, I bet you're not gonna like this. And if you don't like that, you're definitely not gonna like this. I feel like this must be what it's like

to take a tour of that US Navy ship that the North Koreans captured and give tours of in Pyongyang. Yeah. Like, here is where the week Americans took several bullets from one of our AK-47s. Right, right. Here's where the imperialists scum the Americans control their ship from. You will sleep, cling on, style. We do not soften our bodies by putting down a pack. I've heard it that way.

So the enterprise and this Klingon ship split up and a real fun shot of like the Klingon ship flying off in one direction and the entrepreneur like doing an e-break and flying off in the other direction. I really like those shots. Getting to see the ship do it nearly 360 turn is really cool. Yeah. You never get to see that Yeah, it looks elegant. Yeah, it looks great

So they pull up to a bone yard where they get on FaceTime with the a bone yard where they get on FaceTime with the administrator of this thing. And it's really cool, right? It's like when they pull up, it's like a Wolf 359 level of scattered starships in the in the sky. Yeah, you see a couple Honda Dell Soul type starships. You see, you see like a starbase in the deep background. Yeah, there's a bunch of shit there. This, this is a very ripe setting that I know we don't like to go into the future too

much on the show, but man, you could really do a whole episode here. You could do a lot of episodes here. How scary do you think that giant empty star bases? Super scary. So scary. Yeah, and this guy's, this is a, another like phone operator who wants to get them off the phone. They really have a bad phone luck, aren't they?

Yeah, this is not like call center worker, phone operator though. This is more like small business man who has like, you know, you're not adding to or subtracting from his income, you're just wasting his time, so he doesn't want to talk to you. You know, like, like if you call like the, like the place you're supposed to take paint when it expires or whatever to ask them like what their hours are, you get the gruff guy on the phone who just like really doesn't care to be talking to anybody at this time of day.

I need some information about a Vulcan ship that the power was sent to you a few years ago. Did you arrange an appointment? An appointment? No. Then I will be unable to help you. You may communicate with scheduling. It's real service industry vibes, right? Like sometimes you'll go to a mechanic and the mechanic

just does not give a shit that you exist. Like when the imbalance is that you need something from them, they just don't care. And that's the vibe here. Yeah. And they don't have like an obvious way of getting leverage over him either. Right. So they, I think that, I think it's a Troy that talks to Reikern. She's like, you know, like this guy is the king of the hill and you're going to have to figure out a way to give him something he wants. And what he wants is a beta soared to hang out with. Yeah. Is like one of those scenes where it's like, oh, Troy is about to get given an interesting character trait.

She's, she's actually counseling riker in a useful way. Oh, no, she's just being used for sex appeal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, her pot is being used for sex appeal. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, her pot is being used for arm candy. Yeah. Terrible. Well, they bring this guy aboard and he gets the look around the bridge

and he's really impressed. He's like, wow, the lights are on, no ghosts or anything. I don't usually see them in such good condition. You know, he's the same race as as CalMilk or Game Guy, right? Oh, is he? Yeah, he is a Zach Dorn guy. That's interesting, because they were like... It's sort of a deep callback. That is a deep callback, and they really sold that race as like strategists. Yeah. This guy has got lots of character traits in common

with that guy, but they aren't that he's a great strategist. They're more that he's like kind of a stuffy prick. Yeah. And like he's like got some like father-in-law vibes when he's talking to Troy. Like, um, I don't know what to tell you about. So I'll tell you about like a new tool I bought for my shed, you know? I once found a 14-foot Caleldorian eel on board of freighter in someone's locker. Are you serious?

If you have time, I'll show it to you. I still have it. It's totally awkward holiday conversation, isn't it? Yeah. It's like the answer to the question, what have you been up to and you're not really interested in that answer. Right, like do I explain to my mother-in-law's best friend what a podcast is?

Or do I just say, oh, you know, working hard. Yeah, and the look on Troy's face is a look that I feel like you and I have run into quite a bit. Whenever we bring up the podcast to our wives. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just a sort of vacant eyes, but a smiley face otherwise, like just really like going through it. Well, they tell them about this it up Vulcan ship and they,

like the guy looks into his computer and he's like, well, that's aboard the, what is it, the Starship Tripoli? Yeah. I guess it's like a shuttle, so it was beamed aboard the Starship Tripoli and they're like, well, let's go check out the Tripoli, see what's going on with it. And so they fly over to it and it's not there.

They're not here. It's not and it really, this really pisses off the owner of the depot. He's like, he's like, Ducacin. He's like, my shit's tight all the time. Yeah. Like, the idea of losing a ship is totally repugnant to him. In all the time that the Zack Dorn have operated this depot, nothing has ever been lost. Never. Because what's happened here is, he's lost two ships. There's the original Vulcan ship that's in pieces in the shuttle bay, and there's also the ship that this other ship that's supposed to be parked on the yard that's gone.

Mm-hmm. Have you ever been to a bone yard atomized sort of suspect you might have? I have been to both several automobile bone yards, but even better, I have been to the airplane bone yard in Victorville, California. I went to the one in Mojave, California. Awesome. And I mean, it's a stupendous thing to behold. And it also kind of forces the question, how do they keep track of all this shit?

Because you'll be standing there and you're standing unlike dirt in the middle of nowhere and there's like a six foot chain link fence with some razor wire on top of it. And then beyond it is like 650 jetliners that are just like rotting away on the ground. And you're like, you know, like these probably, none of these are probably

flyable at this point. But like, how, like, like, they are also all worth two million dollars, you know, minimum. There's a feeling that I got at that bone yard, which was like an unexpected true sadness about it because I really love airplanes. I work with large airplane companies in my video production work. And like, I love them. I'm a plane nerd and so to see them totally fucking kicked. Like, it made me feel sad in a real way.

And one thing that I noticed about this scene at the space bone yard is the lack of that feeling. And I think that could have been remedied with like showing us a ship type that we love in the bone yard. We don't get that in a way that- Show us a couple of reliance close up, you know? Well, there are a couple of reliance there,

but like give me an old Excel sheer or like an Enterprise A-style starship. Or like, or the Hulk of a Galaxy Clashhip from Wolf 359, like give me something to be sad about. Like it would have been, they've got the models and it would have been a throwaway shot, but I would have liked to have felt more for that, because I think there's an opportunity there.

I think that's a good point. And I think that, like at this point in television history, just showing that it is at all a bone yard, is probably so fucking expensive. Yeah, totally. At this point, Picard and Data are getting too Romulus and it's really fun. They get dragged out, you know, they put on all their makeup and their wigs and their and their bread boxes They do looks like a real Romulan. I am eager to test the success of our efforts

It does remain to be seen whether the Romulans will accept us. They look great. They really do. They don't look camp or weird I mean besides the Frankenstein hair, like, like they look, they look totally appropriate. What was weird for me, Ben was like, why didn't they test the makeup on the enterprise? They're clearly wearing this stuff for the first time. Yeah. On board the Klingonship. And this made me think of a concept that you and I talk about all the time, which is bring all the things, right? When you're gonna go do a production, it's important to bring everything that you have because invariably if you don't, if you make a gear list, you're gonna forget something.

Right, because when you're writing something on a piece of paper, you're not necessarily gonna remember to bring the like coiled up power cables that you need for your light if they're a different place. And so the idea of them test fitting the shit for the first time, far away from the enterprise. Give you a little production anxiety. Total production anxiety.

Oh my God, like there's so far away from home. Yeah. What if they forget an ear? Oh, fuck! For a student film that I directed, makeup that we used for one of the characters, we cast one of my college classmates as a very old man and put him in old man makeup.

And a makeup artist that I trusted very much showed up and put him in makeup that was laughably bad. And we just didn't have the time budget or wear with all to do a test shoot to see if the makeup worked. And on set, I just had to roll with the makeup being a fucking catastrophe. You put four beauty filters on the lens?

Yeah, this could have been that for them. And fortunately, Dr. Crusher is a, uh, a, a really top notch Mua. Yeah. Didn't even need to test it. I wonder what you also don't see is how they put it on. Like I wonder if it's a latex Halloween mask type situation. Yeah, like a, like an early mission imposter. Is it an early mission impossible movie type situation? Or is it more like a late mission impossible type situation

where there's like a 3D printer involved? Yeah, it's gotta be the latter. But what you don't get also is like the trapper keeper with the loaf inside. Yeah. Like I wanted to see how that shit traveled. Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, they don't even show them carrying the loaf inside. Yeah. Like I wanted to see how that shit traveled. Hahaha. Yeah, they don't even show them carrying a loaf case.

Yeah. Do you have to keep it in liquid? Like, is it made of real skin, I wonder? Barbersol. Yeah. I don't know. Well, they start walking around on Rhymeless and they're like, where is this guy?

This, what's the guy's name? His name is Pardek. They sort of set up shop at like a ramen shop. Yeah. Like with a stand up table, order a couple of soups and start talking over strategy. Yeah, and I like their little interaction with the lady that keeps the shop

because it really is illustrative of what kind of society we're looking at on Romulus. Eachers soup, courtesy of loyal establishment, Joland troupe. It's a society where the proprietrix of a soup shop is willing to give two strangers free soup just in case they are government stooges of some kind. Yeah. She is eager to express her loyalty to the autocratic Romulan government. Yeah, it's sort of a hostile loyalty. Mm-hmm. I mean, she just doesn't want to disappear, you know, like it's some real East Germany shit. Yeah, and the only cost to her is a couple of bowls of soup, which do not appear to be appetizing

Super card. He has a real hard time choking this down. Yeah, it's like It might even be gruel like it could be miso maybe but Being with bacon soup the Campbell's bean with bacon when you were growing up. No, that was a staple of my household Growing up and it looked like that to me. Yeah. Well, that doesn't sound too bad. Well, I don't think Picard's into that flavor of soup because he is like doing everything he can to not gag. Yeah.

And that would give it a way too. Yep. Yeah, I can't eat the food here. It's fucking disgusting. You eat this shit. It's fucking gross. It's fucking gross and I like gah, okay? You know, like when you're traveling, you can pretty much count on a children's menu everywhere. Like no matter how exotic you get, you can find the chicken strips. This little get. You're going to find the chicken strips. This little ramen shop does not appear to have the chicken

strips on the menu. I went to Africa to shoot a film several years ago for work. And I arrived in Nairobi at dinner time. And a bunch of the team was there already, including the executive producer. And the idea was floated that we go out to dinner, and we wound up at an Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya, and I ordered a dish that I forget the name of.

It's a fairly common Ethiopian dish that is mainly raw beef. And I was about halfway through eating it when I realized like, I don't know what the like health code situation in this country is. I could have just killed myself. Why did I order this? And how did you feel later on?

It was delicious. I had no problem with that. I actually did get sick from salad that I ate. And that was because it was washed with, you know, I think like, it wasn't that it was bad water. It's just different water has different stuff in it in different countries. Like I got sick in Ireland in a very similar way.

And yeah. And I think it was just like your body kind of gets used to different places. Gets used to the water. But yeah, I was definitely like, I was like sticking the fork full of this stuff in my mouth when I remembered where I was and what I was doing and I was like, oh, fork. I love that that occurred to you halfway through. That's great.

Well, you know, I just fresh off like a 20 hour airplane trip, you know. Pretty zonked. I was like, what's the beefiest thing that I can beef on right now? This is becoming a speech. You're the captain, so very entitled. I'm going to type a ramble on about something everyone knows. So a couple of spooks have been eyeing Picard and data in their Romulan drag, and it doesn't matter how much soup they've been they've been spotted yeah, and so Romulan security Stick them up and drag some down into a cave those those Romulan Tommy guns are pretty scary looking too

Yeah Doesn't look like things are gonna work out well for Data in Picard They get to the bottom of this cave Well, it's before we get to the bottom of the cave, let's talk about what happens with the enterprise. So we end with the bottom of the cave, right? Good call.

Back at the entrepreneur, Clim has explained to them that they use the triply as basically the cold storage of the boneyard. The starship triply is where they put lots of things that they don't want to have to deal with anymore. And they beam stuff over to it all the time. Like, you know, like, there's stuff supposed to get beamed to it in like two hours. And Riker pretty quickly comes up with a cool idea for what they're going to do. So they park the ship among all of the other You know murdered out starships and they murder themselves out and So they're they're hanging out there. It's like a it's like a classic cop show stakeout, right?

Yeah, it's really cool. They're like who's gonna come around? Who's gonna who's gonna come who's gonna come be here? When some stuff gets beamed to the triple E so that they can Pretend to be the triple E getting stuff be into it and then leave You get the shot though that you were deprived of the last time the entrepreneurs been murdered out Which is them actually turning off the lights. Yeah, it's great. It's really great Yeah, so Rikers in the on the bridge in the command, like he's got a giant takeout cup of coffee and some donuts, they're on a stakeout.

Yeah, and this fucking sick looking ship pulls up. It's like a black Cadillac, all black, everything, kind of ship. I feel like it's got like a real bassy sound to its engines. I know when ships have sounds in space it's like not real, you know, you can't hear anything in space it's bullshit, but I love it when it happens in Star Wars and I love a cool ship sound in Star Trek. It's got a real shooting break design to it.

Yeah, it's definitely modified the exhaust on this Starship. And it's a scary look in Starship, but they scan it, and they're like, this thing is packed to the brim with explosives. Like this thing is all weapons, basically. It's a smaller ship, but it can go toe-to-toe with us in the shoot and department. And they do that thing where they turn on the lights. It's like a teenage girl coming home 25 minutes after her curfew. Dad turns on the, you know, pulls down the little chain on the lamp in the living room.

He's been sittin' in that lazy boy waiting for her. And he is not happy. Nope. You are a big trouble, young lady. Yeah. And the young lady. Yeah. And the young lady starts phasering at the dad. Real bad. Yeah. Scary looking phaser on this young lady.

Chopping some bangers. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and they shoot back. And the like, Riker is asking War for the kind of shootin' that the Tamarians did in the Darmak episode, which is like knock out the thing that is a threat to us but leave the rest of the ship mostly unscathed. It's a warf.

Lock out of their weapon systems only and prepare to fire. And Warf is like cool, I can handle that. And much more like Han and Chewie shooting the scanner drone in Empire. This black Cadillac explodes really quickly. Yeah, it seems like Warf kind of fucked this up, didn't he? If they had the tamarians on their side, those guys are crack shots. Yeah, they should have done like an exchange program, like they did with the chaotic bros. Yeah, but it'd have been great. I know.

Yeah, so Warf uses a little too much power. Yeah. And on a ship that's already filled with the brim with explosives, it's a bad time. It's like smoking in a fireworks factory, you know? Like, the ship is full of bombs. And one little poke from the phasers on the enterprise is enough to start a chain reaction, think blows up. That would be a dead end to their investigation would it not

oops warped a sort of turns to camera structure shoulders but but so where we last left Picard and data, it seemed like the jig was up. They're far from home and it looks like they're on their way to a Romulan prison.

A couple of Romulans with Tommy Guns is trouble enough, but when they lead you down into a dark spooky cave, that's That's bad news, bears. You're gonna have a bad time. Yeah. So a moment later, Pardek centers down the stairs and he's like, data in Picard.

What are you doing here? And the Tommy gun guys whip off their bread box jackets and it seems pretty clear that Pardek has sort of rescued them from street level brought them down into the cave to confide in them. That they're safe now. We had to get you off the streets because we need you to meet someone. You may be familiar with. And they're like, well, we don't want to meet anybody.

We're actually looking for somebody. We're looking for Spock. You found him. Captain Picock. You found him. Captain Picard. You found him, buddy. You better believe it. It me. And that's our to-be continued moment. Yeah, we get a nice five-second squint to camera from Leonard Nimoy. Push in on that beautiful face. Alright, speed.

Squint's with the best of him. Yeah. He's like, oh, your first officer squints? Get a load of this. Veteran squinter. Yeah, that's what we're left. And we racks a turtle neck like Spock. A mid-season cliffhanger, Ben. Yeah.

At this moment in time, I wasn't sure that the show was capable of something like that. No, this is his first time. Yeah. Good stuff, and you don't even have to wait an entire summer to get the part two. It's coming next week. Yeah. Well, I know that this was merely part one at him, but did you like this episode? I think it's clear from the episode capsule

and with sort of how much hay we made out of the minutia. There wasn't a lot here, you know? It's a lot of table sitting. There's more B story than there is A story in an interesting way. Like the idea of Picard and Data going behind enemy lines and getting dressed up and finding Spock. Yeah. You can tell that story in five minutes. Yeah. And they really sort of stretch it out to the full 40. Yeah, it's a lot of vignettes. Like the stuff with

the Klingons is really fun. Like, and it's sort of necessary, right? Like they have to explain how they would get to Romulus without the Romulans knowing. Yeah, I mean, the most interesting parts of this episode are the help that they need in order to accomplish the mission, the help that they receive in the form of the Klingons and in the form of the stock yard guy. And those are super interesting characters to me.

It's a massive expansion of the universe in a very subtle way, because it's like, oh yeah, like there would be this kind of guy in this world. Yeah, totally. And it's kind of two different guys that have a similar but different function. And it adds up that they would exist. Like I don't think that the federation really has this kind of guy, but they would have to encounter them in their interactions with other species and other powers around the quadrant and they do.

And it's fun. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it really is. You don't have to wow us with that sort of expansion. Yeah. And they really suddenly get it done here in a cool way. Great job, guys. Did you like it?

I did. Okay. I just wanted to get that out of the way. It's important that we both say it or not. Yeah, we hear about it if we don't both say it or not. If we aren't officially a review program, that season decyst letter comes down immediately. Yeah, this is a review program. That's why it's okay for us to use little

sounds from the show. It's it's fair use in that case. Hey, Ben, do we have any messages in the box? Let's take a listen, see if we do. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on it. A supplement? A supplement. A supplement.

Yeah, it's extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Nothing this week at him, and that's okay. I'm not gonna get all pouty like I normally do. You know, we're busy, you're all busy, and 100 bucks is not small change, you know. Like you gotta, you gotta really have something worth sending it for and we feel lucky to have had as many P1's as we have had. But at the truth, if you would like to send one, you go to maximumfund.org slash jumbo-tron and it's a hundred bucks for a personal message and two hundred for a commercial message. You get to embarrass your friends or huck your wares to our tens of thousands of listeners.

And support the show at the same time. Yep. the show at the same time. 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 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.

Oh, Russ. 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.

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 Kerry?

We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so, same life, 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.org. We didn't actually talk about this scene as we chanted about the episode, but there is a very silly scene where Picard is trying to go to sleep and data is standing because there's no other bed. And data is like doing some sort of processing that will help him impersonate Aramulin.

And he just kind of stands there leering at Picard. And so, data gets my Shimoda for just being being incredibly silly in that scene. And it's played for comedy and it's played very well, I think, I think Spiner's performance and this is really funny. In the way that the performance of the character Jim Shimoda was very funny as well.

He's sort of like Jigsaw in the room, like the Jigsaw puppet. That just sort of lifelessly standing there. And they don't play it for tension, but it's got to be creepy as fuck. Yeah. Like, Data, could you like maybe not just stand there looking at me? Yeah Fun. How about yourself? Did you have a Shemota? Mine occurs just before the scene Stephen Root plays the captain of the Klingonship and that's something that we didn't mention Stephen Root is just fucking great

Yeah, and he's given him the tour, that hostile tour that we talked about. Yeah. And the performance here that I loved even more than Roo's was Picard's playoff of him. Yeah. Because what Picard does is he sort of goes full Andrew Zimmern. Stephen Roo's like, oh yeah, you're going to hate this fucking bed. It's like a sheet of metal. Picard's like, I love sleeping on metal. It's great. Yeah. Stephen Rooots like, oh yeah, you're gonna hate this fucking bed. It's like a sheet of metal and the card's like, I love sleeping on metal, it's great. Stephen Roots like, you're gonna hate eating at the bank with everything's fucking room temperature

and crawling around and the end of cards like, no, actually, I love Gach, I'm ready to eat it. Yeah, a little while, but I always look forward to Gach. And like the thing the Andrew Zimmern does is like, he doesn't just take a nibble off of the balls. Like he pops the testicles into his mouth and like choose them up and swallow as them

and that is what Picard is doing. He's like, oh yeah, like you're selling this to me as a bad thing. I am ready to like bathe myself in this. I'm gonna go, he like, he big dogs him in a really great way because he reverses the power. It's big dog counter big dog all the way down. Yeah. I love that scene and for card plays a great. Yeah, it's fun. What do we have coming up in the next episode? The next episode is season five episode eight

Unification part two. What? I know this comes as a complete check. The card and data travel to investigate an unauthorized mission undertaken by the Federation's legendary Mr. Spock. That is a weird recapitulation of the exact same thing that they said about the last episode. Boy, they really don't want to give anything away in this capsule, huh? I feel like the capsule for part one and part two may have been flipped on Amazon streaming. I use the little episode descriptions from Amazon for these because they're usually like one or two sentences.

So the one that I read last episode for Unification Part One was Picard and Mr. Spock Clash over a proposed reunification of the Romulans and Vulcans, which does not happen in the episode we just watched. And this is like Picard and Data travel to investigate and under authorized mission. They got flipped. Well, Amazon's busy delivering things by drone. They don't have time to write these capsules. Yeah, they probably just bought them from some other company.

I almost got a job for a company that was like when I first got out of college, the job was literally watch movies and write like four sentence descriptions of them because like they needed people. Sounds like a stream job. They just needed people to like generate like metadata about movies. Yeah. And I was like, who the fuck is ever going to use this? And then Netflix and Amazon streaming and Hulu and all these companies like obviously

have a need for that, you know. I mean the cliffhanger for me is, are they ever going to go finish their soup? And what's up with the soup lady? I want to know more about her. Yeah. Do you think Picard's going to walk around the barrio? He sort of likes going on these behind enemy lines missions and like he'll put on a hoodie and just sort of walk around. I wonder if that soup lady ever had a shot at the at the emperor of Romulus that she decided not to take because she had some body-shaming critique of him. We can only hope that we will receive a full a fully realized character in part two of Unification. Yeah, we know this shows rich history of really well thought out female characters.

Yeah, well if you have any guesses about what part two is going to reveal, you can find us on Twitter using the hashtag GreatestGen. I'm on there as at Cut for Time, Ben is there as at Benjamin R. A.H.R. We are also on Facebook and Reddit. Those are very lively communities and real fun to take part in. And I'm not sure if this will be going on yet at him, but sometime soon on the MaxFundStore, MaxFundStore.com, you will be able to buy an exclusive Drunk Shremota Pine Glass. This, you know how you, you know how when you're in the band, you don't want to wear your

band shirt. Yeah. I'm going to buy these glasses. I'm really excited about it. I mean, like, like, there's a couple of unusual things on the MaxFundStore. I think there's like a skateboard deck, but mostly it's mugs and shirts. And I feel really cool that our show has a special,

non-mug, non-shirt piece of merch. And I feel like this is a fun one to actually have. I'm totally gonna buy one too. It recognizes the heavy drinkers in our audience. Well, you have to drink a lot to get through an episode of the greatest generation. It's true. It's true. I don't blame them.

Well, drinking or not, thanks for listening, everyone. Yeah, thanks to Dark Quinteria and Adam Regusia for our music. And I think that just about does it. So with that, we'll be back at you next time. Another great episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. And an episode of the greatest generation that is perplexingly reversed with the previous episode of the greatest generation. What? We should put out part two in front of part one. I think they shot them in that order too.

Ooh. Well, I got to take advantage of Nemo's big schedule. Yeah, I think that that's exactly what it was. It was Nemo, it was super busy. And they were like, well, can we squeeze you in for like one full episode? Grab a single shot for the second one. Yeah All right, I'm gonna hit stop Make it sound. Maximumfund.org

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