The Greatest Generation - Horn of Plenty (S1E17)

Episode Date: March 21, 2016

The Enterprise crew is excited to meet the mythical Aldeans until they propose a classic "children for information" exchange, but when Commander Riker balks at the deal they take some kids anyway. This is a real problem for Captain Picard, because Wesley (the boy?) is among their victims. Why'd the Aldeans take only the white kids? How long can Picard go without Wesley? Didn't we already fix the ozone layer? It's the episode where there's no calculus allowed!

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 Starfleet. Engage! Welcome to the greatest generation, Star Trek Podcast by two guys who are a bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek Podcast. I'm Adam Prandtica.

I'm Ben Harrison. Ben, this is episode 16. Did you ever, in your life, think you were going to have 16 episodes of a podcast about Star Trek? The next generation? I didn't. This does prove that we can get something done. Our friend John Roderick in his ad read said that we were gonna drop this in episode 15. I know these two guys. They're gonna do this for 15 episodes and they're going to stop because neither one of them has ever finished a film. And I feel like this is great that we're really sticking it to him by blowing past that number in such a big way. My only goal for this show is to find a way to stick it to John Roderick. Of course, friend of the show, John Roderick, musician.

He's also got a couple of great podcasts out there that are far better than this one. He took the time out of his busy two-hour podcast where he opened up a bunch of presents that listener sent him. Seriously, that's how he spent a two-hour episode. He was opening up fan mail and gifts. What this is going to do is it's going to drag down podcasts everywhere.

To be fair, he spent about 20 minutes talking about the documentary that you're making about him. Sure. Yeah, that was nice. I believe the context for that was how it was a failure because I have not delivered on the promise of that. Who's fault is that? He hasn't done anything interesting enough to make an end to the film.

I'm not going to put that on him. I think we've talked about this many times. My failure to complete is a major issue. And that's one of the reasons why we even put together the show. It's to sort of prove to ourselves that we could come up with a project and actually see it through. And unfortunately, it's the of prove to ourselves that we could come up with a project and actually see it through. And unfortunately, it's the most shameful variety we could have ever come up with.

Well, ours Technica has now covered the show. Covered it with a blanket? Yeah. So anyway, if you're interested in hearing basically a 15 minute roast of me and Ben and this podcast, be sure to find the podcast roadwork with Dan Benjamin and John Roderick, episode 20. So it's about halfway through.

It's pretty scathing and fun. Our thanks to Roderick and roadwork for giving us that shout out. Pretty cool. Yeah, I played it for my wife and she thought it was really funny. And as I've said many times before, she is really rethinking this whole marriage thing since I started this Star Trek podcast.

I got about 10 seconds into playing it for my wife before she just left the room. So I think I like how your marriage is going better than mine at this point. Well, you guys have been married a little bit longer than we have. So I just think that Rachel is less close to the end of her rope than she probably will be in the next 18 months or so. Yeah, I really give it a little bit more time for her to get a hate on. Like, does she not care when she opens up iTunes and she sees that awesome logo on the front page? How could she not be thrilled by that? She is exquisitely embarrassed by that. Does this show qualify as an irreconcilable

difference? Does this show qualify as something that you could bring in court in a divorce proceeding. Those poor jurors. Hahaha. Like the dep- there isn't a deposition, it's just all 16 episodes of the show. Hahaha. Hahaha. Ah, that's terrible. Exhibit E, generally human.

Hahaha. Your honor, do we have to keep listening to these fucking dick jokes? Objection. Cool and unusual. Oh geez, I think with that we should probably dive right into season one, episode 16, when the bow breaks. You want to take us through Ben? Yeah. Gag. Gag. Gag. Dot Biz. This is becoming a speech. The cat comes in very tightly.

I'm going to type a ramble on about something everyone knows. We start this episode finding out that in the future, seven-year-old boys are still not big fans of calculus. I guess the opening, the like cold open of this episode is a kid running through the hallway of the Enterprise, which is always, there's always tons of people walking around these hallways. I feel like mostly people are going from place to place

on this ship and not actually sitting in one place, doing their fucking job. But the kid plows into Riker as he's running and this is kind of our introduction to, our re-re-re-introduction to the idea that the enterprise is a ship with families living on it. But we don't spend too much time with this episode because Riker gets called up to the bridge.

And Picard has kind of a rye look on his face and his calls raker over and says, you're going to love this. We're following a trail of breadcrumbs, I guess, I don't know, technological trail of breadcrumbs that ends here. And this is the Epsilon-Mino system where the legendary planet of Aldia is located. And Aldia is a planet that is legendary because nobody's ever seen it in real life. It's reputed to exist but is unfindable. And no sooner have they established this mystery and legend than the planet

decloaks immediately in front of the enterprise. Yeah, they almost ran into it. That would have been a disaster. How to suck. Which sort of, you know, like, I don't know, I don't know from cloaking technology, but you would think that they would be able to detect the gravity well that a planet would create. Yeah, you're only cloaking the image, you're not cloaking its mass. Gotta avoid bumping in the stuff. Yeah, this episode almost ended really early. Yeah, the just untimely and unexplainable destruction of the flagship of the Federation and then they just end the series. Well, everybody died. I think if you're a studio executive, you sort of put a pin in that part of the

script of all the scripts that you've read like, well, you know, if it's really bad after this many episodes, we can just end it here by crashing the ship into a planet. Yeah, yeah, so nobody will miss this cast at this point, so fuck them, let it burn. And so Patrick Stewart gets to check out of his hotel room with the quickness, his unpacked luggage. Still intact, yeah. Still ready to go. All he has to do is dispute that porno bill on the in-room television and he's out of

there. So Troy gets a whiff off of their first communications with this planet that shouldn't right. Yeah. They're doing more and more with Troy. But they talk to this hot lady who's representing the Aldeans and confirms that this is in fact, Aldeia, and that they have a trade that they want to propose. So I think they beam up to the ship first, right? They beam right through their shield, which demonstrates that the Aldeans are rocking some technology

that is a little bit outside of what the enterprise is capable of repelling. Yeah, they do that thing that where they're too excited For their meeting. Yeah, it's like Like they they agree to meet at some unspecified time and they're like great, okay, and then bang They're there on the bridge sort of like yeah, it's like getting a girl's phone number and calling her later that day It's like guys. That's exactly it. Yeah play it cool a little bit Yeah, they do not play this cool at all. And they come up with a big bouquet of flowers.

Yeah, they have a horn of plenty. I don't think I've ever seen like an actual physical horn of plenty. I've only seen them in illustrations, but the all-dians have them all over the place. It's like one of the main set dressings. It was, yeah, as we'll come to find out, they blew all their budget on that horn of plenty. Other thing that's weird about them beaming up,

is they look really surprised when they arrive. Like they beam up and they like, they like, they like, you know, touch themselves to make sure all of their parts made it. Like, oh, really, I didn't get that. Yeah, it was just a, like, you know, it was a two-second little moment, but they don't seem to be used to beaming. I guess maybe they don't, you know, since they're not traveling around,

they don't do it that often. No, but that's how they get around their planet. They beam everywhere. Yeah. What the hell? I don't know, man, I think you're projecting. I didn't get that sense at all. I think they got under the ship

and they were sort of repulsed by the bright light. Yeah, so that's the other thing is that everybody is ridiculously pale on this planet. I think it's Dr. Crusher, Danitroy and Riker get sort of summarily beamed down. Like the Enterprise doesn't get to pick their away team on this one because the Aldiens are calling the shots. So Picard is sort of left

somewhat alone on the bridge as everyone leaves. He's like, huh, interesting choice of people and then we cut back down to the planet surface. So they explain that they've been unable to bear children for many years and they have taken the strange step of revealing themselves to the enterprise in the hopes that they could trade some technology for the kids that live on the enterprise so that the Aldeans can kickstart their reproductive biology. Yeah, it's your classic children for information exchange story. We need some of your children in payment. we will give you information that would take you

centuries to acquire. Yeah, better than arms for hostages. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe not, actually, maybe way worse. Riker is pretty firm and shuts down this idea of exchanging the kids for anything. I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think moneyless society, these people can't be that great at negotiation, right? Right, right. It's not like there are Armenians. You know what? You just turned off a huge swath of our listenership by making one of the Armenians spin. How dare you?

I apologize. So Radu has been rebuked by Riker. His offer has been sort of turned down. And so, Radu is not a Radu. Oh, God. You've really given me a lot to edit out of this. Radu, you might recognize as deep throat from the X-Files. Did he look familiar to you?

That's Jerry Harden. Yeah, that's a real actor there. Yeah, he actually got a real guy to play him. Yeah. Good job casting agents. So anyway, Riker says no way to this whole exchange and Radoo's like, fine, I'll snatch up those kids ourselves. And so you see a scene on board the enterprise where this yellow spotlight is

sort of panning around to all the kids, a bunch of the kids on the ship are getting hit with the spotlight beam. Yeah, it's definitely related technology to the stuff that the Herodon used to scan the holodeck a couple episodes and screw up the hard boiled detective novel that Picard was doing. Right, exactly. They're clearly cut from the same light cloth. So there's zoom in this light around and they're scanning a bunch of the kids

and then bang, they grab eight of them. And Wesley's one of them. The boy? So they all disappear from the enterprise. Did you notice when they disappeared Wesley, they cut away from the doctor and there's a shot of Picard looking shocked and they just looped in a little bit of audio of Gates McFadden going they've taken my son. Yes I did because one of the primary rules of season one

start direct the next generation is any references to Wesley must include either the boy or they've taken my son from Beverly. So we got one of those there thus checking that box. I feel like they just should have cast a kid with red hair so there would be no question. Right, yeah, they could have. Or just red it up Wil Wheaton's hair again. This goes back to the casting decision of Wil Wheaton you you've taken who is demonstrably you know a pretty fine child actor and completely ruined him on this show. Dispoiled him again. I don't think this is his fault. This is this is his handlers. This is this does not rest on his shoulders.

So the kids are all beamed down and were made pretty quickly to understand that they decided upon these children. They decided they were the best and the brightest of the enterprise kids. And in one bit of creepy subtext, they're all white. Yeah. They scan a bunch of different races and and ethnicities of children on this

ship, but no keepers among them. Yeah. It's not necessarily overt racism this time. Oh, it's overt. Let's be honest. They would they would rather have a a chubby white girl as the one playing the music than any other race doing so. Right. I guess, you know, the Aldeans look human, which is, you know, not a choice that they always make. I guess that's a more, more first-season choice than, because

I mean, they're still working on the original series logic of like the Klingons in the original series just have like weird beards, you know. They don't have any head meat loaf. No. So I guess that's maybe what's to blame for that. But it would be weird if they were like really creepy looking aliens and they're like, we want your children. Yeah, but go figure to plan it full of white people who want to repopulate the planet in their own image. So yeah, great. Keep their area in master race going. Sure. So and then and we come to understand

that as they're kind of touring these kids around, they sort of like dole out the kids to the various families that are gonna be looking after them. The Chubby blonde girl who's gonna be a musician is given to Grandpa Munster, the kid from the beginning of the series who hates calculus is given to I don't know some members of up with people. Yeah, and they look so much alike. Yeah, it's like a man and a woman who are in basically the same costume and basically have

the same haircut. They're going to teach him how to be a sculptor and Wesley goes with an older lady with weird dyed hair. Go figure that West would be attached to an older person. It's probably where he's most comfortable. Yeah. 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 Sherry Reembarishment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info. That's greatestgentour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour. I'm Jordan Morris and I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the space weirds. Pat Noswald. Can I get a ball-rock 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 Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Pull it out, give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Whoa, rats, hey, hey, hey, oh, I'm about to count you in line. These clouds are really 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 naps. But I'm hearing we need to get on this off. 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, but we're actually, we're podcasters.

We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so 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? Ona Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. Speaking of where Wes is most comfortable, she takes them down to the computer core and introduces him to the custodian. What does the custodian do? It frees us from all burden. It takes care of all our needs. They're living in a real like brave new world type of society, where it's totally utopian and there's just unanswered

questions that they've never even thought to ask. It's at this point in the episode where they start really peanut buttering over the metaphor of, you know, environment and technological hubris. Right. And when you're talking about matters like that, I think it's important to include as many child actors as possible to tell that story. Yeah. Ben, you've worked with child actors before, right? I worked with a child rapper one time. It was very uncomfortable. Did you talk to him the way that Wesley talks to the children down on the planet? And by that I mean, you know, there's a voice that people have when they talk to

kids sometimes it's very high and sing songy. It's a voice that you would feel very condescended to if somebody used on you. Right. That is a voice that you would feel very condescended to if somebody used on you. Right. That is a voice that just sort of permeates the entire episode in a way that is just so grating. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to write dialogue for children that is plausible because kids have a very, you know, like they have a very different way of communicating from adults.

What? No, I'm serious. It's true. Look, man, I don't know where you read that. So anyways, the crew of the Enterprise are understandably pretty rip shit about this whole hijacking of their children. That, you know, Picard holds a conference in the observation lounge with all the parents who have been wronged and the, you know, Harry, the kid who hates

calculus's father is especially upset because the last time he saw Harry, he was yelling at him for bumping into Commander Riker and skipping out on his calculus class. The youngest girl who will come to know as Alexandra Her mom is there and maybe the most 80s character we have ever seen on the show. Oh, yeah, she has She has a lot of perm going on doesn't she? Her I feel like this is as much of a hairstyle show as it is as start to show sometimes I feel like this is as much of a hairstyle show as it is as Star Trek shows sometimes. But we have our obsessions. Her hair cannot be contained in the 4x3 frame of the television.

It is incredible. Yeah. It's pretty fucking rock and roll. So, but anyways, Picard promises to do everything he possibly can to upset the Aldean's devious plot. And so, the Aldeans have been saying the whole time, like this is, we want this to be in exchange, and even after they unilaterally abduct the children, they keep saying, like, we're going to give you all this information.

So, it's a fair trade. And so, to, in order to basically buy time, well, you know, data and journey work on ways to defeat the planetary shielding and beam the kids up, Picard agrees to negotiate with them. And so they beam down and one of the conditions that he stipulates before they even discuss

things is that Dr. Crusher has to go see her son. And they allow it, and she beams over to the apartment where Wesley is living, and surreptitiously hands him the scanning module from a tricorder and he very not slickly accepts it. He's like, he actually comments vocally on the fact that she is trying to like palm this thing off to him and he goes like, oh, what? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and it goes, and like walks around the woman that is going to be his

adoptive mother if this plan goes through and behind her head like waves the scanning module around while Dr. Crusher keeps the open tricorder in the pocket of her lab coat. Like if Dr. Crusher and you were going out to dinner at a nice restaurant and you showed up and there were no tables available and she was trying to grease the matrede. That would be an utter failure. She was completely incapable of doing that handoff but the old lady just didn't notice it

all. She was a little baddy. So you blamed that on Dr. Crusher because I really thought that it was Wesley that was blowing their cover. I mean, now that I think about it clearly, you need both palms greased to constitute a successful greasing. Yeah. Well, maybe if Wesley gets back to the ship, they'll have to practice some surreptitious

spycraft techniques together. I mean, we know Wesley's got experience with greased up palms. I just don't think that in this context he's very experienced. I was looking at our iTunes reviews the other day and somebody gave us a four star review and was like, it's a pretty good show, and they're pretty funny. But they seem to think that Picard is raping Wesley all the time. Is that why we got dinged a star?

Yeah. How is that a good reason for dinging us a star? I mean, we basically do everything except put that in our show art. Like, this is a show about Picard raping Wesley. Wow. I thought, thought like I was a little miffed at miss at losing the star but I thought that that was a funny enough reason that I let it pass. I don't understand what what the stars mean

like are you if you were to rate a podcast do you give stars based on how much you liked it or its quality? Because it seems like we're getting dinks to stars because people don't like the content. But we say what we are. We are a filthy comedy podcast about Star Trek next generation.

And people don't like that. We're not as filthy as we could be, too. I say we're holding back. Well, we have so many more episodes to do. I can only imagine, but that's where we're going. We're soon to be the two live crew of Star Trek Podcasts. Negotiations are broken down and Picard does not want to agree to accepting any of this fancy data the all deans are offering without any concessions on their part. Do you think it's a mistake that they don't even know what the data is that they'd be

getting back in exchange? What if it's amazing? Yeah, I mean, and you have to estimate there are billions of people living in the federation. What if this is information that could improve life on the scale of billions? I feel like in any prisoner exchange, you should at least look at the goods, right? I guess so, yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's the way they describe the information does sound really lame. It's like, we have information on parts of the galaxy

you don't even know exists. It's like, yeah, we fucking want to explore. That's our whole fucking thing. Like, if we just knew about it all of a sudden, we'd be out of a job. I think that's another pin that the producer put in. Like, you know, maybe we can end the show by them actually agreeing to this deal.

They learn everything they need to know, and then the enterprise just goes back home. Yep, the end. Five-year missing over. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I mean, how do they get all this information? Did they just cloak the planet and drive it around? I don't know. Yeah, they had like a more adventurous era in their past or something. Anyways, they got Picard beets back to the ship and, you know, no progress has been made. And the all DN say like, listen man, we mean business.

So you can either agree to this or you can fuck right off. And they shoot an energy weapon out from the planet, kind of like orbits around the planet and hits the enterprise. And the enterprise goes a spinning off into the wild black yonder. And when they come to a stop, Jordi announces that they are a three day trip from Aldi at maximum warp. And when

they, Picard is like, get us back there as fast as possible. And warp has never felt slower. They go to warp and it's just like, oh man, this is going to be a long slog to get back. Yeah. And Radu gets on the screen and he's like, do not even think of fucking with us again. If you don't accept our terms, the enterprise will be pushed so far away that by the time you return, your children will be grandparents. Yeah, it seems pretty threatening, but Picard directs the ship to return to Aldea.

And so during the trip, Dr. Cresher has time to review the scans that Wesley took over his old lady. Right, so they have these two things to contend with. One is maybe we can just fix the Ald to get through that shielding and take them back ourselves. And so they're kind of in parallel working on these two problems in the three days that they have to get back. Right. And I think we know how motivated Picard is to get Wesley back at this point. Yeah.

Yes. I mean, think about having to drop everything for three days. He is just really pent up by the time he gets back to the planet. Really edgy. He's really short of people. There's some fun and games when we see the kind of different stuff the kids are up to. The little Alexander Girl plays a strange video game. The girl that goes with Grandpa Munster

learns how to use a strange instrument that just plays notes that you're thinking of in your mind. And an instrument that can only be played while sitting on an old man's lap? Yeah, that is like basically the creepiest. Like I'm all of the kind of implied violation of children that this series has done so far. This is by far the most explicitly creepy scene.

But it's real troubling. It's especially troubling because she plays a song and the guys like, do you know anything happier? She's like, no. This is actually how I feel, old man. But no scene was funnier to me than the scene with Harry, the kid that loves calculus, finishing his carving because he is literally polishing his dolphin. The man goes, goes, just like, hey, come see what Harry's doing. God, you do not want

your parents walking in on you while you're polishing a dolphin. That's for sure. And as this is happening, the crew has found a flaw in the shielding that the planet has that is exploitable enough that Riker and Data can beam down to the planet and they beam down into the computer core where the custodian is located so that is that's that's as the negotiations renew. ["Domok and Jalat and Denarga." ["Domok and Jalat and Denarga." Wesley has sort of organized the kids around a table and he's like, look kiddos, I've got a plan. And that plan is passive resistance.

Which, up until now, is a plan that I feel like Wesley could have deployed for his own safety on board ship. Sure, sure. This seems to be a new thought for him. So he tells all the kids whenever whenever these nice old people offer you anything just turn it down. Just turn it down and don't play ball. Yeah, don't don't do anything that they ask you to do. Just like like we're not gonna or gonna not gonna do anything violent, but we're not gonna make things nice for them. So data puts together that the reason that the Aldiens are all sick is because their funky cloaking shield has weakened the ozone layer of their planet.

Then you remember the ozone layer, right? It's all anyone talked about in the late 80s, early 90s. Yeah, I did sort of wonder in this episode, what, what ever happened to the ozone layer, I say. I think we fixed it, right? That's great. No one knows about it anymore. Everything's going great down there. Yeah. Now, this, this episode does like tiptoe up to getting really preachy about the environment. And it doesn't really get crazy preachy. I think it sort of implies that technological hubris is a negative trait. Well, you can only take it so seriously when a bunch of kids with nerf bats are beating the message into the ground. Yeah. And so when an away team beams down, the first thing

Radu says is like, look, what is up with these kids? You got to fix them. They're being real jerks right now. Yeah, we don't know how to raise kids. What's your problem? Yeah, I think Radu actually tells Picard, like, look, I'm not good with kids. You got to do something about this.

And Picard kind of smirks like me either. Yeah. The Aldeans are basically shit out of luck whenever they try to use their technology against Picard after this point because Riker and Data have defeated the computer and and so Picard has it an opportunity to kind of argue with Radu over as an opportunity to kind of argue with Radu over what the real solution to the problems that LDF cases are. And it's turn off your stupid cloak and fix your radiation sickness and get real, like, stop being infantilized by this supercomputer that runs everything in your society. Yeah, give us our kids back, Jerks.

Yeah. And to his credit, Radu, after pretty minor intellectual resistance, recognizes that he's been quite wrong in this matter. And they return the children to the enterprise. And to Picard's credit, he offers to help the LDNs fix their shit and the LDNs accept. Yeah, Picard's like, keep that weird shield off and commence with a fucking. Yeah, I feel like they come very close to having this final interaction with Radduke be a pretty interesting examination of

a, you know, somebody who's setting their ways kind of determining policy and having that be sort of insufficient, is insufficiently good policy for the problems at hand. You know, like this is how we've always done it. We can't change this kind of kind of character. And it was like almost a pretty interesting argument, but I think that they just didn't have enough time in the episode to dig into that. And I thought that was kind of a shame. I mean, it's like, at many turns, this episode is almost interesting. I kept being distracted about the idea of,

like in episode three, it was super okay for Tasha Yard to get kidnapped by that planet's people. And they were, I mean, they were really a lot better about that than when kids got stolen. Was it just because they were the kids that all hell broke loose? Yeah, I mean, they also like went to greater lengths to sort of understand where the planet and code of honor was coming from in stealing Tashiya or where as they all deans, like they don't really sympathize with that much.

Yeah, interesting. How these are similar situations treated so differently. Hmm. Hmm. This episode was directed by a man named Kim Manners. Is that name familiar to you? Uh, that sounds familiar to me. Well, Kim Manners is a significant figure

because he directed, produced and directed a shitload of 80s and 90s television, including the X-Files. He only directed one episode of Next Generation and this was it, but he was really like a beloved figure in the Hollywood production community. And when he died, it was like a real shock to a bunch of people. So much so that X-Files reboot. Have you seen any of those episodes? I have not watched it yet. Well, there's a scene in one of the episodes.

This isn't a spoiler where Mulder gets drunk in front of the tombstone of what we are believed to know as like to some random tombstone. Like the tombstone doesn't have any significance to us in the show, but the name on it is Kim Manners. And it's like his birth date and his death date. And it was sort of done as a tribute to him because he directed like a quarter of the episodes of the X-Files.

So Kim Manners. He's, he's, he will be missed, not least of which is the fact that he threw more gas than ever on the fire of suspicion over what Picard is up to with regards to Wesley. He's doing all he can. I feel like, like some, some episodes are enabling the behavior. Some are like a call for help. Yeah. This episode represents one of those calls for help.

Absolutely. Hey, Ben. What's that, Adam? You have a drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda! I should remind people that drunk Shimoda. Drunk Shimoda! I should remind people that Drunk Shimoda is our award that we have named after Jim Shimoda, the Assistant Chief Engineer, an episode two who gets drunk and takes all the isolinear chips out of the warp core.

It's just an honor for any character who is having a great time or just generally acting drunk or ridiculous. My drunk Shimoda for this episode is Radu, just because his plans suck so much ass. Like I cannot imagine being the head of an entire society that has a crazy existential problem like this and being so committed to your planet being a secret that stealing eight children from a huge conglomeration of species like the federation is really a worthwhile gambit. Like it's some fucking ignorant ass shit. Like they know everything about the enterprise

when they get there. Like they've been monitoring their communications. They know everything. They know what did they think was gonna happen? Yeah. This dude is supposed to be in charge their whole society is a fucking idiot. I feel like one of the biggest dangers of space travel

is getting your shit stolen. Yeah. They turned from being the most cultured planet into just base space pirates. Yeah, that's exactly what happens. How about you? Occasionally, we will bestow this honor on someone who is not a character of the show. I've called you a drunk Shimoda before. For this episode, I'm going to give the drunk Shimoda to composer Ron Jones. One thing we didn't bring up when we were doing the episode summary is that this entire episode has a soundtrack of like a trickly ice cream truck and it is it's

really bad like I get what they were going for. You know, you have your musical prompt for whenever kids are on screen, but it is, it really beats you over the head. And it is, Tweekly and Harpy and Synthy and, uh, it's, it's really grating. So, I mean, Ron Jones has gone on to do masterful work throughout the series. The guy is a total pro, and he, you know, in many episodes makes the show better. This is not one of them. So. Yeah.

And in an episode where one of the challenges is write a melody for a child who's supposed to be a budding musical prodigy, you know, that little like that little harp riff that her strange her strange computer instrument makes. Not wildly impressive. It's so sappy. It's like, is it possible to play music through actual sap? Like physical sap? Is there a sap filter? I'll have to check in Adobe Audition. Yeah, it's like that. It is just real drippy. So, sorry, Ron, love you ordinarily,

but not this time. Sorry, bro. What do we got coming up next? I am La Cute is a board. You will respond to my questions. I am La Cute is a board. You are bored. Our next episode is called Home Soil, a powerful microscopic life form declares war on humans and takes over the enterprises, lab, and computers and threatens to destroy the ship.

What do you remember about this episode, Adam? I don't remember anything about this episode, not a single thing. What I remember is that it's like a terraforming lab and there's sort of like a like a who-done it. Like there's a murder at the lab and they can't figure out who did it and then you know spoil or they trace it back to this entity that's been living on the planet. One of the reviewers said that the director of this episode had a bizarre insistence on unnatural, stagy blocking and an obsession with extreme close-ups. That should be fun to watch. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that from a production perspective.

I guess we'll check it out on the next episode of The Greatest Generation. Yeah, if you want to talk to us, you can find us on Twitter always. We're on Twitter too much. So I'm at Cut for Time and Ben is at Benjamin R. A.H.R. Yeah, and you can use the hashtag greatest gen to see what other people have said about this show and their grandfather's. Thanks always to Dark Materia for our awesome soundtrack. Yeah, what a generous person to let us use that even after we went ahead and used it and then asked for permission after the fact. People have asked us where they can get it and

seriously the answer to that is everywhere. There's about a hundred sites that host that song. Yeah, if you just search the Picard song. All right, we'll see you next week with another exciting episode. And two shameful guys taking you through. I've been Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pryanaka. Later. Back.

Back. Back. Back. You're the God of the Youth. Back. Back. You're the God of the Youth. Back. Back. I'm gonna get you.