The Greatest Generation - Hog First (Greatest Trek Film Fest: Alien 1979)

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

When nobody invited Ben and Adam to program a film festival, they decide to go rouge and put one together themselves. But after Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic almost gave them both a seizure, they’re more prepared to see the franchise’s latest release at the theater. What isn’t practical to bring aboard the Nostromo? Who can sit with both jocks and nerds in the lunchroom? How does Robert Altman’s Alien differ? It’s the episode that gets value for its mucus!Support the production of Greatest TrekGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!Greatest Trek is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam RaguseaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestTrek and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social

Hey friends of DeSoto, in the Greatest Gen feed, just wanted to let you know that Ben and I have a really fun project going on in the Greatest Trek feed right now, the Greatest Trek Film Festival. It's where we're talking about a bunch of films that have inspired us, brightened us, and made us laugh. We even have a special surprise guest on an upcoming episode, and you're not going to want to miss any of it, starting with this episode about the original Alien film from 1979. So if you have an Adam and Ben talk about movie-sized hole in your heart, stick around

and listen to this and grab the rest of the episodes by subscribing to and downloading Greatest Trek. My friends, the great experiment. We should analyze the optical properties of this movie. We've got 50,000 movies in the database. There must be something worth watching. This is a movie house. This place isn't about function. It's about fantasy. You could always read a book. Welcome to Greatest Trek. It's a new Star Trek podcast from the makers of The Greatest Generation, except today we're filling more time by beginning the Greatest Trek Film Festival. I'm Adam Pranica.

I'm Ben Harrison. Welcome to the Greatest Trek Film Festival. Back when I used to live in Seattle, the Seattle International Film Festival, one of the biggest and best film festivals, I think, was such a thing every year. And I used to go to it all the time. I have a lot of fond memories of attending film festivals over the years. Have you ever shown work in a film festival? I have, and for many years,

I used to enter the 24-hour and 48-hour film contests. Oh, fun. With my production friends. And those were, I still can't believe I ever did that. Just an insane amount of work in such a short amount of time. And just so much fun. For the uninitiated, like the idea behind these is you sign up, you join, and then you get a premise at a certain moment in a day, and you have 24 hours

from that moment to put together a film that hits on the theme or, you know, sometimes you'll have to have like a certain kind of, you know, costume element or a phrase uttered or something like that. But yeah, to make sure that you haven't pre-worked on your film. And so you've got to assemble a team made up of people who can do multiple things, right? Like acting and writing and working with a camera and setting up shots and stuff. Like it helps to have a production team

that can do multiple things at once because you're not gonna find a lot of people willing to put in the work on a film festival film with that amount of time. Yeah. Yeah, those are super fun. I never did one of those. You know, I participated in the student film festival at my college, but I never actually submitted anything to a real film festival and got in. And yeah, I kind of wish I had. I like those and those 24 hour things I never did either. I used to, there used to be like events around New York City where, you know,

filmmakers could show clips or, or, you know, music videos or things that they were working on. And when in my music video director days, I would, days, I would go to those and throw one of my videos on to get that feeling of seeing it in a room full of people who'd never seen something you made before. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I love going to film festivals. I've been to a lot of them and I'm excited.

We're film festival programmers now. That's something I've always wanted to do. You know, like, let's invite Adam and Ben to a film festival and have them do some programming. Well, guess what? No one's invited us to do that. So we're making our own film festival until new Star Trek comes back. And it's a project I'm really excited about. It's fun to talk about movies with you anytime. And with this particular movie, really excited to. It's fun to talk about movies with you anytime. And with this particular movie, really excited to get into it, Ben. It's the 1979 start of

it all for the Alien franchise. Yeah. In Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Alien. Masterpiece is well put, I think. Yeah. I don't want to jump to the review section too quickly, but what a great movie. And it's so wild right off the bat. The 20th Century Fox logo comes up and it looks like a relic of the past. It's like, this is what it looks like to go to a movie in 1979?

Are you fucking kidding me? I'm so glad that they kept the original logo. Like so often you'll get remasters and so forth. And the version I watched was a 4K remaster. And they'll go so far as to give you the new logo, the new studio logo. Fuck that. Fuck that shit.

Beginning to end, I was really blown away with what they chose to improve and what they chose to leave alone. Yeah. So I think that this is kind of the clean-up and remaster that was done in 2003. And I actually went and saw it in the movie theaters when they did this. And it's such a great movie to see projected in 35, like just

an absolute banger of a movie theater experience. I don't watch this film nearly enough. I watch Aliens all the time, but I really should mix the first movie in far more than I have. Yeah. So we open with some, uh, some very slow credits over Starfield and that iconic title fade up where it's just piece by piece putting the word alien up on screen. And, um, and then we are introduced to the Nostromo, which is a spaceship that I don't't, like, totally get the layout of the Nostromo. And it's something that, like, sometimes bothers me about this movie and sometimes doesn't. But what is unmistakable about it is that it's fucking huge. It is such a big starship.

It's... We learned that it has 20 million tons of ore and it's coming back to earth with, you know, just like industrial raw materials. And it is hard to believe that it's anything but the size of a city. And then you see the inside and it looks empty. Like we're looking at empty hallways and down corridors and these kind of, these little still lifes basically, just

establishing the location in a way that already feels a little bit haunted house. You're right because some of the things that are the most scary to a human being, and it doesn't matter who you are, are big and dark and empty spaces. And that's what this is. And the moments where you see the entire ship in frame, you still don't see the entire ship. And when you see later on in the film, the escape ship being prepared,

you only see it with the rest of the Nostromo filling the frame in the background. So you don't even get the sense of scale between theromo filling the frame in the background, so you don't even get the sense of scale between the escape ship and the primary ship. Right. All you have is your imagination to fill in those blanks. Seems like the ship that they're on could have a hundred people as easily as it could have seven.

Yeah, it is insane to me why anyone would bring a cat aboard a vessel this large. You're gonna lose that cat. You're never gonna see that cat again. Also just like watching the cast credits roll by as this movie starts, it is just like banger after banger. Like every actor in this is so fucking great and so iconic in their own way.

I love how in introducing the ship and introducing our characters, we get so much long and lingering tracking shots over these empty spaces. And I love the motion in these spaces too, motion that occurs, like the weird, like, bobber birds on the lunch table, like going into the glass of water, like the papers being rustled around because of the HVAC. There's movement without life in these places in a way to set you up to expect something weird and creepy. And like that the first jump scare in this movie is

the sleeping pods opening is such a great choice. That's not scary. That's not supposed to be scary at all. But with how you've spent your time up until that moment, it truly is. We get this like computer like coming to life and that seems to trigger the sleeping pods to open. And I got to applaud my man, John Hurt, for being willing to be center frame

for this shot of the, of the sleeping pods. Cause he really gets introduced to us hog first. It looks like a loose baggy diaper type of brief he's wearing, which makes sense. If you're sleeping for months or even years at a time, you're going to want to choose something absorbent to wrap your junk in, right? Absolutely.

You're not gonna be waking up to change in the middle of the night on this kind of voyage. Right, like they're frozen, so maybe when you unfreeze, you just have to evacuate. I think we've seen this question answered before in other movie franchises. Evacuation. Evacuation.

Evacuation. Everybody is up and just kind of like going about their business. They're all kind of groggy and shooting the breeze. They're having breakfast. Gaffit Kodo as Parker is eager to have some conversations about how much they get paid for this run. And Dallas, the Tom Skerritt character, is incredibly dismissive of these blue collar ass dudes wanting to get paid full shares for their work. I feel like I immediately distrust Dallas just based on his like dismissiveness surrounding them feeling

like entitled to more than they're getting paid. You get what you're contracted for like everybody else. Yes, but everybody else gets more than us. It establishes a tension right away and a class system between the folks who work on the ship that continues throughout the rest of the movie. I think it's so interesting when everyone wakes up, the assumption is that they've arrived home. They're near earth, they're ready to go home,

and so money is at the forefront of everyone's mind. Like finally the trip is over, the work is done, I'm gonna get home and get paid. And they all meet to discuss what's up with them being taken out of hyper sleep while they're not near Earth at all. It actually takes them some time to orient themselves to where they are in space. I feel like Dallas finds out in the computer room that they're not near Earth, but the rest of them are like in the cockpit, just kind of like, all right, let's like land the ship or whatever.

And then they're like, wait, where are we? I mean, classic horror movie thing, right? Like waking up and not knowing where you are is so fucking unnerving. They kind of have a McLaughlin group in the mess. Issue one. Where Captain Dallas tells them what mother told him. Mother being the name of the supercomputer that they get their orders and information from.

And it's interesting how close this hews toward a kind of maritime law, right? When you're out in space and you get a signal of an unknown origin, it seems understood that you're gonna go investigate that signal. And that's what's happening here. They've been woken up in order to investigate the signal that they've received.

Like Parker's back to like, what am I gonna get paid for this extra work? Yeah, it feels like overtime in kind of a shitty way. Yeah, but the contract anticipated this and they won't get paid anything if they don't fulfill their obligation as far as this maritime law goes. So with that, we are like looking at these planets that are near where they came awake and they're putting the ship in for orbital injection and it separates from its load.

I mean, like, I mean, this movie has been described as being about a bunch of space truckers and this kind of feels like they're pulling the tractor away from the big rig trailer in this moment so that they can land. I love that description. It's not a cargo bay door opening and a ship flying out of it like an aircraft. It's metal on metal and you can practically hear the shearing of that as these giant objects separate. The technology to show them setting down on this planet came so far in the interval between this movie and aliens coming out. Yeah.

We don't get much, you know, we don't get like them coming down through the clouds or anything like that. I mean, it's really intense and exciting, but like the closest we get to seeing the exterior of this ship is like heavily fogged as it puts down on the surface. And they go down with a pretty hard bang and a lot of klaxons go off and they've got, you know, structural issues and things that will need to be fixed right off the bat. This was not an easy landing for them. There's something so scary about going to a place

and not being able to leave whenever you want. And I'm talking about a party you've been invited to, or a restaurant you've been told to go meet some folks at, or a planet that you're unsure about. This idea that they're kind of stuck there for an undetermined amount of time really gets you early. Yeah, Parker and Brett are sort of the wrenchers of the crew. So they're giving their exaggerated engineers estimate of how long it's going to take them to get the ship fixed up and ready to fly. This is $17 for it.

At least 25 miles. Meanwhile, Ian Holm as Ash is showing Ripley and Dallas the scans of the atmosphere he's making. And he describes it as a primordial atmosphere on this planet. This is like a planet that could be like Earth in billions of years, but right now it's just, it's just this soup of shitty frozen carbon and stuff like that. The horror movie beats continue when the crew gets separated. We've got Dallas, Kane, and Lambert tasked with the walkabout while Ash watches from the ship and Parker and Brett do the repairs.

And Ripley is kind of going between the bridge and the repair section, smashing some balls whenever she can. You get to understand Ripley's relationship with these folks right away. Very jocular, very willing to dish it out and take it at the same time. She's great from jump and the beginning of a great career starts here with Sigourney Weaver. She's so magnetic and like, she's definitely like toward the management end of the crew.

So like, I feel like is loyal to Dallas and like kind of flips shit to Parker and Brett right off the bat. But she's the kid in school that can sit with the jocks and the nerds in the lunchroom. Totally. I love the sequence when the airlock opens and like there's all that shit in the atmosphere

flying around. It's like, that's almost a jump scare by itself. Like you just don't, you don't expect it to look like that when the door opens. And so they're trudging off. Ripley wants to like run the transmission through a decoder and gets permission from Ash to do that. It doesn't take long before the away team, for lack of a better term, discover this kind of horseshoe shaped alien craft crashed on a ridge and are inside it really quickly.

Like there's nothing about the shape of this ship that projects terror. It's just the retrospective memory of terror that gets me every time I see this derelict ship in an alien film. Like the way you're introduced and reintroduced to it, I get chills every time I see it. And it's not because it looks threatening from the outside, it's just a spooky place, but you know what happens in there and it's the very worst thing. It does do such a great job of looking unearthly though, in a way that like so few ships in sci-fi successfully do.

It's not symmetrical in a very alien looking way. Yeah. I mean, they find the pilot of this ship pretty quickly. And this is kind of our first like truly creepy image of the movie, this kind of desiccated pilot corpse and he's huge. He's, you know, five times the size of a human and he's got the wound of a chest burster, but we don't know what that is yet. Like it's just, it's kind of like very casually remarked upon like, oh yeah, it does sort of look

like he exploded from the inside out. This mystery of the space jockey would endure for decades. Like it's incredible how many alien films they were able to make without going back to who the hell that guy was and what were his people like, you know? Yeah. At what point did you begin to detect Jerry Goldsmith's hand on the score?

Because something that I really love about this movie is how sparse it is in terms of its score. And this is not a bombastic Jerry Goldsmith out front Capital J capital G Movie score. This is this one really lays back in the cut in a really fun way Yeah, it's just like little notes here and there like it doesn't yeah stray away from using the like, you know high dissonant violin strings to Underline a moment moment of terror and stress.

Yeah. But yeah, you're right. Like it's kind of ponderous and lets you do a lot of the stewing that makes this so tense. It's ponderous and sad is how I find it, you know? Yeah, because they're getting fucked. They don't even know it. On Nostromo, Ripley has soon figured out with the help of the computer that this beacon that they've been seeking is not a come and help type message. It is a warning. It is not an SOS.

And this is a conversation that she has with Ash. And Ash is like, in the time it takes you to go out and warn them that this is a warning, like they will have already completed their mission and they're on their way home. So like, what's the point? It's probably best just to stay here until they return is his semi convincing argument. This is where on tour Adam gets super pissed off at Ben. It's like, why didn't we just fucking decode the message before we went out to do the thing? And I'll be like, I don't know.

I didn't think it was going to be a warning. I thought it was just going to be an SOS. I thought it was a reasonable assumption, Adam. Sequel after sequel. It happens that way. So they are exploring this derelict and for some reason get like a winch together so that they can lower John Hurt's character down into this cave and this is the big hall with all the eggs in it.

How much of a clumsy fucker is Kane? Like there doesn't seem to be any reason for Kane to fall into like past the laser defense and onto the floor where the eggs are. But this fucking dope does. Yeah, I mean I don't want to victim blame him but... You got to do better than that Kane. What were you doing down there in the first place? Why did you go into the creepy hole in the floor of the ship? And why did he go alone? And why is the carpet all wet, Todd? I don't know, Margo.

I mean, the scene is iconic. The way it like, the way the egg opens up, the way it's slow and not fast, and then it's so fast. It really is. And this film and its filmmaker has the good sense to cut away before the terror because what we get instead is something elliptically happening here. We cut back to the Nostromo where the landing party has returned and they are freaked out because something has attached itself to Kane's helmet. And they're in the airlock, like begging to be let in, and Ripley is trying to get some information about what that something might be. And I love this scene because you can totally see both sides of it. They're like, this is an emergency. We need to get this guy into the

medical bay ASAP. And she's like, I don't know what that is. I don't necessarily want it in here with me or the rest of us. And she's got policy on her side, but Ash ignores that policy. This scene really punches above its weight. It is so, so, so important to establish Ripley's relationship with the rest of the crew in this way as someone who who can argue aside, as someone who is fucked over by this crew. Yeah.

She is the chief O'Brien of this crew. In terms of her placement in rank, I think she's a non-commissioned officer here. So she is both together and separate from this unit in a way that gives her the ability to speak her mind in this way. And it is proven much later that she's right. At the moment, what you need to know is that she's a part of this and her opinion is welcome, even though it's not taken. The, um, alien surgery scene happens, and I mean, I feel like another scene

where somebody kind of low on the org chart is making the sensible argument, because Parker's like, hey, throw him in the freezer. Like, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. You know? Parker and a bunch of other folks are outside the Sixth Bay watching this happen, and his is the best question.

Yeah. I tell you guys don't freeze him. I completely agree. Watching this ship, like seeing the sets that they built for this, like it's such a fucking gorgeous set. Every little nook and cranny is super detailed and considered like somebody, you know,

snaked little hoses between bolts and like back into crevices so that no matter where you look, it just looks like this is an important piece of equipment somehow. Yeah. And like they have this huge six bay for this seven person crew, which sort of makes me think that maybe this ship is like designed to have a much

bigger crew than it does, except for the fact that the escape pod has such limited capacity. And the ship is also so dirty, it made me wonder if this is a very old ship that is kind of on its last legs or something. Or that the work of mining is specifically dirty work, even in the future. Right, so yeah, the Six-base seems so advanced because it's got this

you know body scanner that's showing them like live video of what's going on inside him and the face hugger has wrapped a tail around Kane's neck and it's like respirating for him and there's something going down his throat and Oh Man, so fucking creepy and is like respirating for him and there's something going down his throat and oh man, so fucking creepy. When they cut one of its fingers and it's revealed that it's got acid for blood, there are scientists who know the answer to this, but like,

what makes acid stop burning finally? Because deck after deck, this spilled acid goes, it's very strong stuff. It goes down several decks before finally stopping. It's amazing to me that it stopped at all. And the fear on the ship is that it's just going to go all the way to the exterior of the hull and they're going to die. Yeah. It's got to the ship is that it's just gonna go all the way to the exterior of the hull and they're gonna die. Yeah, it's gotta just be like that it runs out of reactive capacity or something. And I kept wondering like, oh, like could they put like a bucket of water under it

to like thin it out and neutralize it or something like that, but they don't have time. Could you make an acid that never stops burning? I don't know, probably not. I also love that it burns through like the toe of a boot. That was such a great detail. It could have just been the floor, but it was like the floor and everything

that was on the floor. Once this immediate danger is gone, Ripley confronts Ash about opening the hatch against her specific quoting of the rule book. In this scene, you notice a few things on rewatch that maybe you might not notice the first time, which is how careful Ash is to turn off the monitor as he's studying this alien, how he seems to be drinking the hydraulic fluid that all synthetic people need to run on in order to live. And Ian Holm as an actor is so, it's hard to guess what sort of direction an actor like this gets for a character like Ash,

because he presents as just a serious doctor figure in a way that doesn't necessarily read as robot in any way. And doesn't necessarily read as evil in any way, other than just the idea that we're supposed to root for Ripley, even though we don't really know her. And what's this guy doing going against what she's recommended? You almost feel like the movie is trying to make you sympathize with Ash a little bit at the beginning because like, you know, there's that moment when Parker comes back into the lunch room and tells Ash to get the fuck out of his chair. And then he like, he like wipes off the chair, like Ash has like contaminated it or something.

It is clear to everyone on the crew that Ash is other in some way. And not because he's a synthetic, but because he's just not as cool or charismatic or whatever is the rest of him. He might be the second officer. Like Ripley talks about herself as the third officer in her, like, in her captain's log at the end of the movie. And Ash is the only, I guess Kane maybe is the other person that I was like, oh, maybe he is potentially the second officer.

But Ash is the science officer and like gets deferential treatment from the captain on questions of science. So, Ripley is fucking pissed because this was a question of science and he did the wrong thing from a scientific standpoint. Yeah. She's rip shit. You also forgot the science division's basic quarantine law. No, that I didn't forget. Oh, I see. You just broke it.

So, later on, it is announced that the facehugger has fallen off of Kane's face. And for a moment, no one can find it. There's a scene where they kind of search all the nooks and crannies of the Sixth Bay with these little wands, until finally, its dead body falls on Ripley's shoulder. This is another jump scare in this movie. it's amazing how effective it is given how

much it is telegraphed. From the second they start poking around with these flashlights, you're like, there will be a jump scare in this scene. Then she's standing there and you see the things, tails start dangling down and you're like, okay, here comes the jump scare. And then the jump scare happens, you're like, fuck, here comes the jump scare. And then the jump scare happens. You're like, fuck, I got a jump scare, oh God, oh God. I mean, what you've described is great value

for the jump scare. Totally. Because you get kind of three cracks at it. And it's totally sold by her performance that like, get it off me, get it off me. Yeah. Feeling. But not in a lady scared of a mouse and hopping up on a chair type way, in a like, yeah, this

thing is fucking gross and everyone is scared to be in a room with it after seeing what it's done to Kane. It was killing me that they didn't close the door when they went in. I was like. Right. Well, I mean, there is a shot that picks that up. Like finally after it is dead, they do close the door and they put this thing in a tray so they can start to dissect it a bit. And it is a handful of oysters is what it looks like. Yeah, I was thinking maybe it was like chicken gizzards or like pieces of mushroom or something. Like there's so much interesting texture in there.

And it's like, it is not the latex bullshit of so many, you know, alien autopsy scenes in there. And it's like, it is not the latex bullshit of so many, you know, alien autopsy scenes in movies. It's, it's really fucking upsetting looking. You get a lot of value for mucus in a science fiction horror film like this. You do. Mucus it up. Yeah. And it's also like very carnal. Like, I feel like the, the meaty flappiness of it is like not unevocativeppiness of it is like not

unevocative of a wet vagina. Hearing you say that pimps me into bringing up the film studies class that I took that posited that all the alien heads were phalluses and Ripley is Eve and this is just a movie series based on penises chasing vaginas. And a like very specious, like very film paper type argument that the professor was making. I have heard very film paper type arguments that kind of fly in the face of that though, which one of which is that I think that they did gender blind casting on this. So like all of the characters names are in the script without genders attached to them, except for Kane, who they specifically

wanted to be a man because part of the like thematics of this are about the horror of forced birth and the body horror of pregnancy in general and wanting to make that relatable for the entire audience because so much of that the depiction of those things is just women necessarily in most movies but this movie just women necessarily in most movies, but this movie was making an effort actively to make men think about what it is like to have something grow inside your body. I have no idea how much of that is true. I don't know, I haven't ever heard Ridley Scott say that that was what he was trying to do. I mean, we've been to a cheesecake factory before. I think we get a pretty good idea of what that feels like, Ben. Let's sell yourself short. So for a sequel of this episode, listen to,

to our August bonus episode over in the bonus feed where we went to the cheesecake factory. Yeah. Anyone who eats buffalo chicken blasts by the dozen is going to understand what this is like. It feels like an encounter with a facehugger for sure. Ripley bumps into Dallas in the hallway and she's like, what's the deal with Ash? I don't fucking like that guy. I don't trust him. I don't trust anybody.

It seems like this crew didn't know each other before this run in a way. They're just employees that get assigned their ship and this is what they're doing for this run. And Dallas is like, yeah, I've had this other science officer and then like two days before we left on this trip, he was replaced with Ash. And Ripley is expressing some concerns about getting out of here and like the ship is not all the way back together, but Dallas is like, fuck that, we're just taking off because this place sucks and I want to get out of here. And like the ship is not all the way back together, but Dallas is like, fuck that, we're just taking off because this place sucks and I want to get out of here. Well, as soon as we patch this thing up and get out of here, the sooner we can go home, this place gives me the creeps.

So they make it back to orbit and Kane has woken up. Kind of a miracle. Didn't see this coming. Kane's sitting upright. He feels like he had a bad dream about smothering. And people are being really cool about not telling him how many times Parker suggested they freeze him. Yeah. Parker's looking around like, you know, I was just joking about that guys, right?

This guy, let's definitely not freeze him. That's been my position this entire time. You know, it's because Cain likes the cold. Yeah, back to the old freezerinos. Meal time, everybody wants to grab another meal before they refreeze themselves and spend another 10 months traveling back toward Earth. We get this, the Last Supper, and no visual reference to the Last Supper. They didn't take the easy framing that they could have. Good restraint by them. Nothing else about this scene is restrained.

I forgot that they were talking about beating pussy when the Chess Brewster scene happens. Yeah. That's why I don't like to talk about it. You're more of a doer. This scene is legendary both for its shocking nature, but also in how it was made. That everyone involved in this scene was not told what this would look like to create the reaction that it gets from the actors is miraculous.

Because I gotta believe you don't get a lot of takes here. You've effectively splattered your actors and the set with gore in such a way that like, you only get one great first react. Totally. And what you get here when the alien comes out of Kane's chest is incredible. It's got to be wild to be an actor with a lot more miles on the odometer ahead to like do a thing and know like that's going in the memoriam.

Like that's going to be the thing that they remember me by. They're going to have to show my clip in black and white at the Oscars because it's so bloody that it's like can't go out over broadcast TV. What a moment. Ben, you don't know Kane at all. You know him as a guy with an adventurous spirit who repelled into a ship because he was curious. Maybe he was a little dopey, falling into the egg storage area.

You feel sad that a facehugger got him, but when you see him go out like this, no one deserves this. Yeah. It's such a well-directed scene also just for how out of the blue it feels. Not only from a, I didn't see that coming in this moment standpoint, but the vibes in the scene up until that are almost like a Robert Altman film.

Like there's so much crosstalk. People are just bantering and joking. You can't really even follow what anybody is saying. I love the idea of Robert Altman's alien. And there's like 14 more characters here and it's three and a half hours. Like we'll keep the weird sexual comments made toward Lambert because, you know, Robert Altman. Speaking of Lambert, as memorable as the chest-burster scene is out of Kane,

when Lambert says, oh God, in this scene, I can hear it in my mind right now. There's something so iconic about the way she says those words in reaction to what she's seen that feels so real. Yeah, like that, that we didn't know it was happening-ness of it. I mean, the only other thing that I can kind of compare that to is like when they told Mark Hamill what Vader was going to actually be saying in the scene in Empire Strikes Back, where it's revealed that Vader is Luke's father. And part of the fear of that moment for him was they were like, if this leaks, we'll know

it was you that said it to somebody. Oh, wow. And you can't reset the scene. So the takes that they got were the takes that they got. And the way Lambert says, oh God is unlike any other pronunciation of those two words I have ever heard in such a perfect way. I love how the mood here is a perfect combination of, I am afraid of an alien and we've got to kill this fucking thing that killed Cain. It's vengeance and

fear at the same time. At this point at least. Because they do their burial in space and he does not get any of all the souls I have encountered in my travels. His was the most human. He gets no Lord's Prayer like in Master and Commander. Like nobody knew him. No. Like the crew knew Him about as well as we did. Anybody want to say anything? They don't put away the leftovers from the meal.

They go right to work and the plan quickly comes together. It's like how do they capture this little alien guy? They land on cattle prods and motion sensors and a net. Yeah. Like that seems to be sensible. And once they catch this thing in the net, they're gonna blow it out an airlock. Why did they have that net?

Like this is a ship with a bunch of mining ore that they're taking back to earth. And they have like the kind of net a gladiator would take into the Coliseum on board. It read to me as the sort of net that you store things in near the ceiling of a cargo area. It looked like that sort of cargo net material. Yeah, and like Ash has built this tracking device

that they're gonna use. And so they kind of split into two teams and were creeping around the ship. And Ripley goes with Parker and Brett. And another moment of Ripley being onto Ash being extremely sus is, which I never noticed before was her. She goes like micro changes and air pressure. What the fuck is he talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, it sort of seems like this tracker works on something else, right? Like he knows something about the alien so that they can actually track it. When they corner what they believe is the alien and is revealed to be Jones the cat, Brett does a bad job in cornering whatever this is.

And because he let Jones go, poor Brett is tasked to go get Jones as a form of punishment. I love it when a character does something stupid in a movie. You know, like you don't get that many of those before the movie is just like, okay, this is a stupid movie. But like one character making like a bad choice

in a scramble of a moment like this is a stupid movie. But like one character making like a bad choice in a scramble of a moment like this can be really effective. It's just like, hey man, you fucked up, go get the cat. Eee, kitty. Eee, kitty, kitty. Science fiction is thinking that you could find a cat aboard a ship the size of the Distromo. Like this is nuts. Poor Brett's left alone. And you know what happens to folks who are alone in horror movies. Nothing good. Brett gets taken off the map first after finding skin that appears to have been molted off the version of the alien they encountered previously. And this alien is so big now. It is not like a graduated process of tiny chestburster alien

to an intermediate couple of aliens that they encounter. It has gone from gopher to basketball player. The mind reels at like how that happened. Like did it find something to eat somewhere? Like why did Jones the Cat get spared is a question. I keep wondering why are all of these rooms on this ship so wet is another question. Like what's, what is the rain and chains room for? Yeah. Uh, Bolligai Bandejo is the guy in the alien suit and we got to give him props. Uh, this person was a non-professional actor who was found and scouted

for his alien-type proportions to his arms and legs. And they thought, what a great person to portray the alien in such a way where we wouldn't have to use puppets or machines or anything like that. Like, let's put a guy in a suit and have him act like this. And all throughout the movie, we see his portrayal of the alien as the thing that, you know, much like the director of a pilot episode gets like the credit for the look and the feel of the show from then on,

this actor's work made all of the aliens happen afterward. Absolutely. And he died really young. He died at 39 years old, unfortunately. It probably takes years off of your life to be working in a hot latex suit the way he had to. Yeah. So RSVP Brett, they start talking about what they can do with this thing now that it is super big and capable of just killing, you know, like they thought they were after something sub-cat size and now they're talking about being after something bigger than any of them. But it went up into the air ducts with Brett.

And so this could be a great way to get it out the airlock because the air ducts seem to run through a specific part of the ship and they can like block them off and just kind of like corral it toward the opening and get it out there. So that's the new plan and the new plan also involves flamethrowers. An idea like this is so perfect for a group of folks who are just kind of trying to figure it out as they go. The understanding that living things

tend to be afraid of fire, why not use fire to drive this thing into the airlock is the best idea they've got going right now. So, I mean, absent anything else, Dallas takes it upon himself to go ask Mother, the supercomputer, for advice on how to kill this alien. This makes sense. So he goes into the supercomputer room

and asks a bunch of questions, and this computer can't give him any answers. This is so familiar to anybody who's ever had a toddler who's obsessed with nursery rhymes and songs that are in Spanish and tried to get Siri to give you those songs. And Siri is either like not good enough at here understanding your pronunciation or not good enough at translating it herself.

Cause the computer's like, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. It doesn't seem good. You know a great way to get a toddler to stop asking you inane questions is sit them down in front of 1979's hit science fiction horror film, Alien. And be prepared to never get asked a question again.

Yeah. Driving into the airlock and zapping it out of space. This little bitch is huge. I thought that Ripley was going to be the one in the air vents because she sort of said it was going to be her, but it winds up being Dallas, which is more heroic of a move than I would have given him credit for up until this point in the film. But it makes sense if you're looking at the ensemble cast here and you're like, I mean, Captain is usually biggest star, biggest star at this point in time. I think you could

make the case for Tom Skerritt in this moment. This scene is probably the reason you take the part. You know? I want my hero turn if you're Tom Skerritt. Yeah, but it's also like great misdirection in the tradition. Because they're not going to kill the captain, right? Right, yeah. So like when he buys it, it's so devastating.

And I loved the sound design of this scene because they're building tension basically with this little beeping sound effect and the like rasping metal on metal sound of those apertures closing as he moves through the air ducts. And when you find floor goo in an alien movie, that's usually indication that your moments are numbered, right? It is looking pretty bleak for the crew at the after mission meeting in the mess hall.

Oh, we should just say RSVP Dallas. Sure. Lambert is just gonna put it out there. Let's abandon ship, but they don't have room in the lifeboat for everyone. Yeah. And the math of abandoning ship is so cruel. They can't do it right now. And the unspoken part of it is they can't do it until more people die. It sort of feels like Ripley is in charge now, but also nobody respects the fact that she's in charge. Like, she's getting talked over in this way

that's very rude and unproductive, you know? Like... I love the idea of the horror film scene as conceived by Benjamin R. Harrison, a very polite discussion of the means of escape and how everyone could possibly get out of life. But in a very respectful way where everyone lowers their fucking voices. We're in a life or death situation and you're not observing Robert's rules of orders?

With Dallas off the board, it opens up mother to other crew people to use. mother to other crew people to use. And this is an unspoken hierarchical choice. The captain's dead. Does it mean anyone can use mother or, or just Ripley as the next up can answer? Anyway, she goes in there with more questions about what the hell this alien is. And in asking some questions, some answers are confusing and they're related to special order 937, an order that is just for the science officer. And that's weird because you'd think the captain would be aware of any and all orders pertaining

to the crew. And when she digs a little deeper, this order is what the ship was told to do. Capture and retrieve the alien, the crew being expendable in the face of this mission. And like the moment it is revealed that it is the heel turn for Ash, their Ash is in profile, right behind Ripley. Which is like, the jump scare, I feel like has a bad reputation in, like I'm, I don't move in horror

circles, but it's seen as like a cheap scare. And it's like one of the key types of scare in this film. They ring the jump scare bell over and over again, but I love that it has such variety because this is one that is not a cat hissing. It is not the alien going, bleh. It is just, she leans back and there ashes

and you're like, oh, fuck. I don't like jump scares. And it's one of the reasons that I avoid most horror films until I can hear from horror film fans, whether or not it's a jump scare type of horror film. I like creepy and dark and menacing and gross. I don't like the cheap heat of the jump scare, but the ones in this film feel less cheap.

They all feel earned. Totally. She, you know, has just learned that he knew all along and was, like, totally in on this, and he starts closing doors and boxing her in with him, and she calls for help, but it doesn't seem like help is going to come, and he starts beating the shit out of her. It takes Parker and Lambert to rip Ash off of her. And then Parker starts hitting dingers.

Yeah. With like a fire extinguisher or something, right? If his head comes clean off, that's funny in a way you don't want it. That it does not come off clean and is attached by gore makes this fight seem so, so dirty and awful in such an effective way. It's, it's best like this, isn't it? They also like totally licked the cookie of, like, milk as gross horror, like, substance. Like... It's supposed to be the giver of life, Ben.

I know. It's supposed to be what mothers nourish their children with. Yeah. I heard an interview with the director of Ex Machina years ago, and he was talking about designing the robot effects for that movie and how hard it was to find robot effects that didn't look like they were trying to evoke in another movie. Like if they put anything gold, it sort of looked like C-3PO.

Just all of the care that went into making sure that it was clear that they were not trying to make this robot look like something else unless like sending people down a rabbit hole that wasn't really there. And I feel like if anybody uses milk or a milky substance as the like lifeblood of a robot ever again, like it, it reads as you're knocking off alien, or this is a cheap homage to alien or something. And it's so fucking gross and scary.

And like those little balls that come out, it was like, what is that? What are these things? It's like- Yeah, the things that operate the synthetic person remain a mystery for a long time. But what is clear is you can attach jumper cables to what remains of Ash's body

and you can animate his head, basically. And in this moment, they're trying to get information from Ash. And as horrible as so many scenes are in this film, the moment where Ash's true evil is on display is the moment where he almost takes joy in the human circumstances here. He admires the alien he always has.

He specifically admires its purity. It's couched in very Nazi-ish rhetoric in a way that was very noticeable to me. And yeah, he seems to be enjoying that they are so scared and alone with nobody to help them so much so that when they turn him off, he's got this like horrific smirk on his face. A smirk that Parker wipes off with a flame thrower.

So that's it. Ripley's plan is to blow up the ship and take their chances in the escape pod. And before they board the shuttle, they need to get coolant for the shuttle and errands that they must separate for in order to accomplish. And you don't like this at all. The preparations are made and Parker and Lambert are going to go get those cooling tanks and Ripley prepares the escape shuttle, but oh no She hears Jones's meow and so Ripley goes after Jones while Parker and Lambert do the cooling tank Mission and something is not so cool in the room with them, huh Ben? Hmm something that paralyzes Lambert with fear.

And Parker tries to save her. Parker is so brave in this movie. Like at every turn, he is as scared as anyone else is of the alien, but he is not scared into paralysis, either by Ash or by the alien. Cause yeah, Lambert's kind of a deer in headlights when she sees it. And it's amazing how much that scene

is just covered with close shots of Lambert and Parker. Like, we don't really even get to see much of the alien at all. I mean, I guess we get the, like, very close up of the mouth opening in that moment, which is so iconic. But, like, you don't see the alien, like, standing over her. You see the shadow that it's casting when it's standing over her. It's something that I've grown to dislike

in modern films with action set pieces. When the action is so close, you can't really see what's happening. In this moment, it's effective, and it's effective for a reason. You've got an $11 million budget, and you're trying to make a scene of terror with what you got.

And your imagination does so much more than they could have done then. And I feel like, like my great hope is that filmmaking will return to this in the age of like cheap AI imagery. Like I think that spectacle and like the big, huge feeling movie will become so trivially easy to achieve that the real thrill will be like, man, they built this whole fucking set. It's so cool looking at this movie. This movie looks so much better than anything that Marvel Studios has ever done. And it's because they took that 11 million dollars and put every fucking

scent of it up on the screen. I hope Veronica Cartwright got paid well for this movie because she is an absolute scream queen and when she goes out here is a demonstration of that. Just so loud, so terrifying, two more crew people are not making it to the escape pod. RSVP Lambert, RSVP Parker. Ripley is like dealing with this in her own little horror experience because she is hearing it all through her radio. And she realizes that she is hearing it all through her radio and she realizes that she is alone. And this starts the part of the movie where it is just Ripley and the cat and

the alien and all of these scenes where she is like running headlong down corridors and sometimes they cover these in POVs and I think these, just the POVs are really scary because the corridors are dark and you feel like she could run into something. And like just bonking her head could be like the difference between her making it and not making it right now. Isn't there something so uniquely alien franchise by these POV running through the hall shots

and how they're lensed? Yeah. Like I feel like the focal length of these moments looks like this franchise and no others. Yeah, I don't know how they achieve that. And there's very few of those moments in this movie, but they're carried forward for sure. I wanna see an entire documentary

about how they designed the self-destruct sequence also, because I love how like a submarine film level intricacy it is like, oh, you've got to put this lever up, then this lever up, then over here on the other side of the room. So you could never mistakenly do this. A door opens up and then you have to do these like, sort of mindless little, little procedures that you

can never slip and throw the switch, you know? There's no attempted auto destruct with like a hesitation mark. To auto destruct means going all the way and it takes some doing and some screwing. But after all of this, we've got 10 minutes left until this thing blows big. I love the design of the warning label on the auto destruct. I love all of the little like machine parts that extend out and the switches in them and stuff. It's just so fucking good.

So on our way to the lifeboat, Ripley encounters the alien and she runs, the way that she has to in order to live. She's not equipped to fight the alien. She has to cancel auto destruct before it's too late to do so because as the computer voice of the ship tells us, after five minutes, it's over. There's no going back after that.

So I do have a quibble with this part of the design of the auto-destruct. I feel like it should be very easy to turn back off. You know? No, there's unscrewing to be done. Yeah, it's like the exact same procedure, but in reverse. And she misses it by seconds. The reason to cancel the auto-destruct is because her path is blocked, right? Like she's trapped in an area of the ship

that she can't access the escape pod is the problem here. So she attempts to cancel the auto-destruct before it's too late. And she is too late by only a couple of seconds. And it's agonizing how close she is to canceling it. It's nuts. Some weird like continuity errors in the, like, they will cut into an insert of the timer on the auto destruct.

And then a couple of seconds later, you'll hear the voice saying a time and it's like, we already passed that time. Like, why is the voice out of sync with the screen? It doesn't make any sense. So with her remaining time, Ripley's got to get Jones and get to the lifeboat and avoid the alien. And she needs to not have a seizure from the strobe light effects in order to do all this. I thought about how hard it must be to be an actor on set doing this with those lights flashing in your face for as long as they must have. It was powerful strobing.

The kind that you rarely see in a modern film for reasons. I watched this on the biggest TV we've got, as loud as we possibly could, and this was intense. So Ripley is able to evade the alien, get to the lifeboat, hit some switches, and at the 30-second mark, I love the change in the voice of the computer. She starts counting every second from 30 seconds down. And so often a movie tells you 30 seconds are left, and then we cut around and we have no sense of time because we're seeing all this action and we don't get the count of every second. Here we hear every single second, you live in every second as time runs out. And the race is for Ripley and Jones and the escape ship to get out of the blast radius of the Nostromo. And nothing is said about this radius or the safe distance

from it. You can just tell from her expression that it's going to be close and it might not even happen. You're just with her the whole time. And I love that choice. I love not knowing whether it's going to matter or whether she's been too late. She's just going to keep going forward. It's the only choice she has. And when you're down to your last speaking part in the movie, like, I mean, she says like, I got you, you son of a bitch, but like, she's not narrating for us like, Oh, this one's going to be close or anything. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so good. Uh, so the trailer that they have left behind blows big. It's like this nuclear fireball in space. So the trailer that they have left behind blows big. It's like this nuclear fireball in space. It's impressive. And it happens multiple times. Yeah. What is that stuff?

What's the second explosion? I don't know. So yeah, it feels like we're in the clear. She starts to take deep breaths and get Joan set up for cryo sleep. This cat seems to be down to take an extremely long 10-month nap and she starts to get ready for her own 10-month nap. She gets into her absolutely iconic underpants and A-frame t-shirt look absolutely iconic underpants and A-frame t-shirt look and is like going to like turn some knob over somewhere

and the alien hand pops out. It's so awful. The idea that you think you've escaped and you haven't. And not only that, you're at your most vulnerable because you're just wearing underwear, three sizes too small and your cat's already been put in a sleep pod. Like, what do you fucking do?

What she does is she gets really still and she gets inside of a space suit and loads a harpoon gun, which probably isn't a harpoon gun, but that's what it looks like to me. I don't know what you're harpooning with this device. I think it was a harpoon gun because there was a rope on it too, right? She thinks she can kill it and she straps herself in to some restraints and blows the airlock

and this alien is not leaving through the airlock that easily. The harpoon and rope combination gets stuck on the door so the door doesn't shut all the way, but the rope and its attachment to the alien does whip the alien around in such a way that the jets of the rocket are the thing that eventually kill it. This must have been so hard to make look good because they didn't have any CG to lean on

to like, you know, make the alien be weightless out in space or, you know, it's like, it's a guy like hanging from a rope on a soundstage and they're hitting the lens with water, I think, but the water is meant to evoke like whatever plasma is flying out of the back of this and it looks fucking fantastic. And yeah, the alien goes into the rocket cone of her plasma is flying out of the back of this. And it looks fucking fantastic. And yeah, the alien goes into the rocket cone and she hits a button to set it off and RSVP alien.

This film ends abruptly. All of the energy of its climax has been expended. And we have a denouement here where a final report is given by Ripley. It's recorded into the ship's log and there's not a lot of dialogue in this movie. So what you have is all you get in order to make a judgment of a character. And the way Ripley describes what's happened here and her chances of being found ever is just so matter of fact, she's obviously traumatized, but is not demonstrating trauma. She's like, yeah, everyone's dead.

The ship and cargo is gone. Maybe I'm going to be found. Maybe I'm not, but I'm going to get some sleep because that's the only choice I have. The only choice I have is kind of Ripley's whole deal as a character, right? Totally. Always forward. That's Ripley. And in the final shot of the film, she is almost angelic. Our hero is asleep with her mouth slightly apart, like one last great choice from one of the greatest actors of her generation. That's it.

We have no choice but to stan an alien killing queen. Yeah. What a picture. You like this movie, Ben? I should reach the frontier in about six weeks with a little luck when that one will pick me up. I fucking love this movie. It's a perfect movie. I mentioned to my wife last night

that I was going to get up this morning and watch it so that we could talk about it on the podcast. Oh, the rare morning screening of Alien. It was a weird vibe, like sipping my coffee and watching the horror unfold. Uh-huh. And I am not a horror movie person, so it is very rare for me to like a movie as scary as this one is.

My wife is also not a horror movie person, and what she said to me was, you showed me a lot of your nerd shit when we first got together. And I remember Alien was probably the one that I thought I would like the least of the movies that you like inflicted upon me. And it's probably the fave of yours that I liked the most.

Like it's such a, it's a perfect movie. Like I think that the benefits of it are self-evident to anybody that watches it. It's fucking great. Yeah, it's one of the movies that rises above it genre to declare its greatness, right? Totally. So often a horror film or a science fiction film even

are thought of as lower films compared to the prestige films of our culture. And this one through sheer force of will, like the quality of its filmmaking, the quality of its performances and casting choices, that it's such an atmospheric movie, as much as it is a monster film. You know, like the Nostromo is kind of the character in the film then. Oh man, I didn't think we'd hear that film paper

sound effect one more time. That's nice. I watched Aliens multiple times before I ever watched Alien because it was the only film I thought I needed from this franchise back when I was a teenage rascal. But in the same way that, and here's a film paper for you, in the same way that Rambo First Blood Part II

is an amplification of the sensibilities of First Blood. I think Aliens is that to Alien, but you got to go back to the original to really appreciate what follows. And as a source, it doesn't get any better than this. What an incredible movie. I love how each movie in this franchise is kind of its own genre in a weird way. Like, they kind of all work together, but they're also kind of all totally different types of movies. Sigourney Weaver is just magical. And like the way she yells at people, the way she calls mother a bitch, the

way she calls the alien a bitch at the end. It's so good. She's special. She's got special stuff. Yeah. Uh, well, do you want to see if there's anything special in the Priority One inbox, Adam? I mean, I thought we blew these messages out the airlock, but I guess not. Go check it out. Priority One message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel. Ben, we got a Priority One message here from Steven, and it's a promotional message.

Check this out. My name is Steven, and I'm an alcoholic. In October 2018, I put out a cry for help on the Greatest Gen Facebook page. The FODs were there for me in my time of need, and today with the help of the good folks in Sober Shimotas and Jim Shimota, I'm five years sober. Hell yeah, Steven. I power lifted over a thousand pounds in competition and I'm raising money for Nationwide Children's Hospital by running in the Columbus Marathon in October.

Okay. Go to tinyurl.com slash Jim Shimota, that's spelled G-Y-M-S-H-I-M-O-D-A to help out some kiddos. And they've requested a road drop here. Wow. Hell yeah, Stephen. Sounds like put things in a much better trajectory for yourself and now you're doing it for other people? What the hell? Some of the magic of this show isn't just like

the Facebook group period, or the Discord period, but like the micro communities that have formed, like Jim Shimoda and Sober Shimodas. I keep hearing more and more about the communities within the communities like this. Yeah, I need to find a Shimotas that have one mysterious itchy patch of skin on the back of their leg. I feel like there's a niche for everyone

and I need to find mine. I think what you're talking about is ashy Shimotas. And I think that's gotta be one of these groups. The call to action again is go to tinyurl.com slash Jim Shimota, G-Y-M-S-H-I-M-O-D-A to help out some kiddos. Thanks for doing that, Steven. That rules. Yeah, as happy as I am for Steven, I'm proud of the FODs out there who rallied around him and continued

to support great causes like this. Bulls. Well, if you'd like to get a P1 on the show, don't spend that money here. Go to tinyurl.com slash jimshimota, but if you've already done your contribution to that, you can also point your browser to maximumfun.org slash Jumbotron and set up a P1 for one of our upcoming Film Fest episodes or if you're looking further out into the future an upcoming lower decks episode lots of inventory available on the greatest trek. Hey Ben. What's that Adam? In the film Alien. Ben, did you find yourself in Edward Larkin?

I'm gonna give it to Yafet Koto. I just love every moment that he's on screen in this movie. Like Parker is my character that I'm rooting for from the beginning. I want that guy to get his full pay and not have to do any extra bullshit for this horrible company. Hey, Yaffa Koto that I think must be mentioned would play one of the great television characters of all time in Homicide Life on the Street, a TV show that is coming back to streaming after being able to get licenses for all of its music. If you haven't seen Homicide, one of the great TV shows and Yaffa Koto

is one of the reasons. I'm super excited about that. He gets a special credit at the, you know, in the opening credits, it's like with Yaffa Koto as Parker. Yeah, yeah, because he's already a that guy in 1979. Yeah, and God, he just lights up the screen. And he's also, like, the funniest character, I think.

Like, that Edward Larkin energy of, like, this is a fucking disaster, but he is still a funny guy to watch in a disaster. It's, uh, it's right there. Yeah. I'm gonna take the other engineer figure. I'm gonna take Brett as my Edward Larkin. I think it's only appropriate that these two characters are paired up. Who's the dopiest character? You could argue Kane is the dopiest for falling into the egg nest, but Brett, Brett's

scared of a cat. Brett lets Jones get behind him and that ends up killing him. What a way to go out. Brett, you just needed to catch the cat and maybe things would have been different for you. He was so unafraid when he went into the rain and chains room. He's like letting the rain fall on his face and taking off his hat. Doesn't have his head on a swivel. There's a verticality to these movies that is so apparent in that scene, like the chains and the rain and the swaying. These are qualities to alien films that start here that continue many films into the future. Totally.

Well, this has me really excited to see Alien Romulus, even though I got so scared I had to close my eyes when I saw the Red Band trailer when I went out to the movies recently. Wow. I could not believe what I was seeing in that trailer. It's given me a lot of hope that I hope isn't false for another film in this franchise. Seems like it's been made with a lot of care. So I hope that's what we experience on screen. Me too.

We're going to talk about what film is coming up next in the programming of The Greatest Trek Film Fest. But first, Adam, why don't we do our beloved signature segment that we do at the end of every Greatest Trek episode. We call it Warning Boise. We appreciate tremendously when people leave a nice comment about our show online, whether that's reviewing it on Apple Podcasts or whatever other podcast app or leaving a nice comment on Spotify or recommending it on social media. Prepare a buoy and launch it when ready. Warning, boys. An emergency buoy.

A warning buoy. Ben, we got a review here left on Podcast Addict. And this is one of the Miriam places an FOD can leave a review. And this one is from Mirror Universe Spot, five stars. Their review goes like this, well, I'm writing this because I've used Podcast Addict every day for the last 10 years and I did not know there was a review feature until the last episode. Hey, you and us both, Mirror Universe Spot.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and this is my only listen every week show. Ben and Adam bring an authentic voice to the show that I appreciate and there's nothing else out there like it. Wow, that's really nice of you to say, Mirror Universe Spot. I feel like Jones is potentially Mirror Universe Spot, right?

Oh, I like that idea a lot. A lot of famous science fiction cats, huh? Yeah. And a lot of them are orange. I know. Why is that? I don't know. Probably an homage. Well, yeah, please consider leaving a nice review on whatever podcast app you use and maybe you'll hear your words coming out of our mouths sometime soon here on Greatest Trek.

Yeah. We just recently uncovered a lot of Spotify reviews of our show. So no matter what podcatcher you use, these reviews really help get the word out on our show. So thanks. Well, Adam, we're going to let Wendy announce what the next film is on the Greatest Trek Film Fest. This has been a ton of fun.

I love watching movies with one of my best buds. I can't wait for the next one. In the meantime, we're going to leave it with Wendy from here. Greatest Trek is an Uxbridge Shimoda podcast on the Maximum Fun Network. It's hosted by Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica, and it's produced and edited by Windy Pretty. Next week on Greatest Trek Film Fest, it's the 1993 film Jurassic Park, another classic from a celebrated director that spawned a franchise. As always, we want to thank the Max Fund members who support this show financially.

Members get access to all of the network's bonus content, plus the new bonus episodes Ben and Adam put out every single month. You can set up your membership in just a few minutes at maximumfund.org slash join, and we really appreciate it. Thank you to Nick Dittmore, who created the show art, and Adam Ragusea, who composed our theme music.

There's a lot to see on the Greatest Trek YouTube channel so make sure you're subscribed over there and there's also the new Greatest Newsletter that comes out monthly. Sign up for that at gach.biz slash mail. Thanks to Rob Adler and Bill Tilly for their work on the at Greatest Trek social media pages. Follow those accounts and use the hashtag Greatest Trek when you post about the show online. Just follow those accounts and use the hashtag Greatest Trek when you post about the show online. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week for Greatest Trek Film Fest.