The Greatest Generation - Li’lest Bɿeadbox (S6E14)

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

When Troi blacks out at a raging psychology conference, she wakes up having made some poor decisions the night before. Now she’s got to do a very dangerous walk of shame across the bridge of a Romulan war ship! Are the breadboxes the most or least kinky uniform? How far in advance do you need to book an appointment with Mr. Mot? How does Barash figure into all this? It’s the show that might have Ben’s most embarrassing admission yet.

Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet! Engage! Welcome to The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast... where we're a little bit embarrassed to be having a Star Trek podcast, aren't we, Adam? I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pranica, still embarrassed. I was thinking we hadn't done Bible study in a while. Does that have any appeal to you, Adam?

It frequently does not, but today I'm in. It's good to see you all in church. It's called the Bible. That's the way God wants it. I don't know why, dude. All these questions? Is a little blind faith too much to ask? Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

As is our way, I'm going to randomly select a page here. Go for... Oh, this is an interesting one. Toward the front of the book. This is page 11 of the Star Trek writer and director's guide. The story, what doesn't work?

How long is that chapter? Well, there are four points on this page it looks like it goes on for quite a while after this but uh we'll just deal with this one page okay first do not write a story which does not principally involve our continuing characters which is a rule i feel like they break sometimes they like uh put the put the episode on the shoulders of a slick back or something like that. Right. Yeah, that's a thing. But maybe this is, like, for speculative scripts. They're less interested in that.

Man, I really wish that that was still a thing, that you could still send a spec script in to a Star Trek show. What a great five years that was or whatever before they shut that off. Yeah. We met a guy that had like, I think he'd sold a couple of ideas to them, but none of them ever got made. Yeah.

Uh, he worked at the national center for science education when we visited and, uh, and yeah, like what a, what an idea, like walking down the street what an idea. Walking down the street, an idea for a Star Trek episode pops into your head.

I totally had an idea for a Star Trek episode the other day and I was like, I can't do anything with this. It's worthless. You could share it on our hit Star Trek podcast. I don't remember it. I didn't write it down because I was like, this isn't worth the neurons it was fired on. Yeah.

I think the best chance we have of doing Star Trek creative is probably a comic book. If that guy can make a J.L. Pipes comic book, I feel like we could do a comic book. I would love to do a comic book. Whose good graces do we need to get in to do a comic book who do we who's who's uh good graces do we need to get in

to do a comic book todd mcfarlane's good graces probably isn't he the king of all comic books should we do what um what seth uh mcfarlane is doing and just like come up with our own fakey joke trek and write a comic book about that. To me, that is even less appealing than the idea of fan fiction films. Yeah, it just seems like a bad Mad Magazine premise, right? I don't want to do generic label Star Trek. Yeah. Here's point number two. We do not do stories about psi forces or mysterious psychic powers. No matter how fantastic the events of a story, the explanation must be extrapolated from a generally accepted science theory. We have accepted the telepathy of Counselor Deanna Troi because many reputable scientists acknowledge the possibility of such abilities. But you will note that we have limited Troy to reading only emotions.

And even with her, we use her so little that it doesn't count. We're not breaking our rule. We swear. Yeah. Point three, we are not buying stories which cast our people as and our vessel in the role of galaxy police. stories which cast our people as and our vessel in the role of galaxy police. Nor is it our mission that of spreading

20th century Euro-American cultural values through the galaxy. Stay true to the Prime Directive. We are not in the business of toppling cultures that we do not approve of. We are not space meddlers. I guess not if you ignore

every single episode of this show ever. Meddling is all they do. Yeah, I think that the original series is much more meddlesome than TNG. Yeah. Like, the original series is definitely like, like, what? You guys are half white on this side, and you guys are half black on the other side, and you can't get along? Well, that's stupid.

You know. Really subtle metaphors at play on that series. Yeah. Does not put a fine point on it. The fourth and last rule on this page is, we are not buying stories about the original Star Trek characters, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Chekov, Scotty, and Sulu, or their descendants. As much as we love our original cast, they are our children after all. We want our audience's attention centered now on our new characters. That seems fair. our new characters. That seems fair.

I guess that means that when they have a Scotty or a Spock show up that comes from in-house, they're not buying that from somebody who's coming in as a private contract writer. I've got to imagine that when you're tearing open the FedEx envelope of a

spec script, like, four out of five of them have to be including original series characters. It just seems like such an easy crutch. I wonder how it worked. Did you have to have like an agent or a lawyer send it in for you? Like kind of a deal?

I don't know. I really wish there was like a page on that in here. Did you have to have a legion of viewers tweeting at the writer's room? Yeah. Begging them to get noticed? Yeah. The most pathetic thing we've ever done.

Because, you know, like, there are like jokes about how, you know, at the movie studios, you'll see piles of scripts just on the inside of the fences because people throw them over the walls trying to get their scripts produced. Oh, really? Because, yeah, most production companies that do any kind of development have really strict rules about not even looking at unsolicited material. Yeah. Like, if an agent doesn't walk in the front door with it,

if they have no provenance on it, they won't even... They'll send it back unopened and, like, scold you about it because they don't want to get sued for stealing ideas. Yeah. You know, if you could, like, make some reasonable claim that you sent them

the premise of Vanilla Sky and then they went ahead and made Vanilla Sky. Spec scripts are the heroine of Hollywood. Not even once. Yeah. I've heard it's great, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

The first time. Then you're... Then you're out blowing people in a parking lot for a spec script. That's no fun. That's no fun. That pavement's hot. Well, I'm sure that our viewers would blow anybody for some actual pot at this point, Adam.

Should we end the lesson here and get to the show? So endeth the lesson, Ben. Peace be to you. And also with you, Adam. It's season six, episode 14, Face of the Enemy. The first beauty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth.

The episode opens and it's like in a dark room with some Romulan iconography glowing in it. And there's like a sleeping bread box in there. We hear a woman's voice call for lights, and it's like, whoa, Rom-Yarlon? Is she back? Instead, we're greeted by Deanna Troi in full Romulan burlesque. Yeah.

She's little. She's the littlest Romulan. Littlest breadbox. Yeah. Yeah. She's... It's got to be hard to sleep in the breadbox. Like, I am...

Yeah, there's a spiky metal thing that goes over it. I'm a real tosser and turner, Ben. I change positions all the time. Doing all the positions at night. And the breadbox is stuck. Yeah, you got that nice new mattress, too. It's true. You don't want to poke holes in it with that metal sash.

Yeah, the breadbox uniform, ultra-confining. The breadbox is so, like, desexualizing, but that fucking sash is so kinky-looking. Yeah. It looks like something out of Bondage. It truly does. It seems like it would get caught on everything. Like, caught on your sleeve when you're eating.

I could imagine, like, you're bringing your hand up to your face to eat something, and then your forearm is just caught in it. Caught in your chest. If I was in the position to make this happen, I would like just to have like in one scene just like a piece of macaroni caught in

one of the Romulans metal sash. There's a reason you don't see Romulans hugging ever because it's like two teenagers kissing. And they just get stuck immediately. Yeah, so she gets on the lights, and it's Troy, but loafed like a Romulan. It's Romutroy.

It's Tromulan. No, it isn't. Romtroylan. No, it's not. I think Romutroy, mate. I'm sticking with the Lillis Romulan. Lillis Romulan? Yeah.

Like written in that crayon font. Yeah. Every letter is a different color. She's just so wee. And the R is backwards. Well, now you're starting to kind of infringe on Toys R Us's... Oh, yeah, I can't do that. IP, you know.

The deal is, Troy's been kidnapped while at a conference, Ben. I was at the neuropsychology seminar at Bacara 6. What? That never happens. Transit to and from conferences, always the most dangerous part of a Federation officer's job. I was attacked. Nothing more hazardous

aside from maybe the holodeck than going to a conference. They stopped going to Pacifica altogether because of this problem. Yeah, you never hear about it anymore. Yeah. So this dude with this shovel face comes in, and he's like, hey, so here's the deal.

You're high up in the Tal Shiar, which is the Romulan spy corps, and you're going to tell the captain of this ship to go to these coordinates. Come with me if you want to live. And she's like, fuck you. I'm not doing anything doing anything what's going on there is no time to explain everything you must listen it's really funny that this guy like just assumes she's going along with it without like without talking her into anything at all i've got to believe that troy also has been hip to the adventures of reiker and the Romulans.

Like, everyone knows that if you're dealing with Romulans, there's a better than 50% chance that it's some sort of holographic projection. Like, I wonder at what point Troy doesn't start just yelling at people. She's got to want to, right? He comes in and she says, shut your mouth. Yeah. Is this the work of Beresh? That's what I'm wondering.

Is that the kid that Riker meets in the cave? Yeah, the kid that Riker insists on calling Jean-Luc. Yeah, well, we can tell it's not because this guy's got a real shovel face. Yeah. Well, just for the sake of ease, I'll call him Chevulin. And he's telling her, like, so here's the deal. Like, you've got to do what I say because you are a Federation officer that is in Romulan drag on this ship. I'm going to coach

you through this. I think you can do this, but unless you do what I ask you to, you're going to be in a world of hurt. You're on a Romulan warbird right now, so you're basically up shit creek unless you start trusting me.

It's a real, like, the pilot is dead and she's got to land the plane problem, right? She is way far away from home. The only way she can ensure her survival is to go along with this guy's idiotic plan. She has every motivation to go along with it at this point. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines. She's tested right away. She's got to go up to the bridge with this guy, talk to the captain, and the captain right away is not liking her whole deal.

And it's not because she suspects that Troy is a spy or not who she says she is. This Romulan captain's got to real stick up her ass about the whole Tal Shiar Corps. Not a big fan. There seems to be a conflict between the military and the Romulan politic, and that's being, that's on display here on the bridge. And then

in a way, Troi is super lucky for this, this captain having this really strong bent against it, because I think the captain sort of misses that troy's affect the way she's carrying herself is totally insane for somebody who's a spy yeah at this point like she's meek and unsure of herself and she she does away with that as she gets more used to playing the role but and in this first scene she's like we gotta go meet this

this freighter in this system I insist I'm Tal Shiar yeah in the way that nice can sometimes read as unsure like this is this is her carriage in this scene and if there's

one thing about the captain you can say about her is that she is very sure and very not nice is this captain the same lady that was in the uh episode where riker's on the planet with the lobster hands and uh the first contact episode sure feels that way she the scientist lady from that just with different loaf? Research! Yeah, we could never know for sure. They change course, and the captain is not psyched about it. I guess she's a commander, right?

Commanders are the bosses of Romulan ships? Yeah, that's the diff. That's how they're addressed. And so they change course and they're going to go meet up with some aliens on a freighter in some system. The Caleb sector. Yeah. At this point, their mission is a little opaque yeah the caleb sector is like the uh the fraternity row of the galaxy right oh man yeah you want to uh you

want to skip that block if you're walking home yeah definitely want to make sure that you don't accept any drinks from strangers in that part of the galaxy. No studying done in the Caleb sector, that's for sure. Yeah. You get your basketball shorts pulled down if you don't pop the collar on your polo shirt in the Caleb sector. On your two polo shirts, even. Remember when people were wearing two polo shirts? Adam, we admit a lot of embarrassing

things on this show, and I will admit to having done that. Oh, God, not you, Ben. Anyone but you, I wouldn't have expected that at all. Yeah, I'm not proud of it. How do you choose what's on the inside and what's on the outside? I would typically go with a lighter colored shirt of the same hue on the inside. So like a light green on the inside and a dark green on the outside. That's just a lot of material. Yeah. I don't really know what motivated it. I definitely didn't know anybody personally who did it.

Did Dave Matthews Band music motivate it? No, I actually... This may completely absolve me of the sin of this polo shirt situation, Adam. I'm ready to give you absolution, Ben. In preparing to go off to college, I made a promise to myself that I would never, never be in a room full of white people and Dave Matthews Band playing.

And I managed to pull that off with a flawless execution. Oof. Well, good job by you. managed to dodge that uh that very long bullet with like a seven minute part in the middle of the bullet that's just a bunch of jamming like you shoot that dave matthews bullet at someone it's gonna take a long time to get there yeah get out of the way and the guy who's shooting it is just going to tell you the entire time about how genius it is. Yeah. He seems like a very nice guy, Dave Matthews.

Yeah. So we've got... Look, as with anything else, it's not the band that I hate. It's their fans. To bite a great Sloan lyric. A lot of fun happens on this Romulan ship before we get to anything with the entrepreneur. And we've established a lot of stakes.

Your only chance to get off this ship alive is to do as I say. We've established a lot of interesting dynamics between the characters. The sub-commander, Shevulin, who's going to walk Troy through this whole situation. We get to see a lot of the interior of this ship, too. More of a Romulan interior space than we've ever gotten before. I mean, the only Romulan world we've seen up to now was, like, the Barrio, right?

Where they serve the soup. Yeah. up to now was like the barrio right where they serve the soup yeah and uh and it was clearly a you know a low budget job on that this is uh this didn't didn't uh this wasn't a cheap series of sets to build they really built the inside of a of a uh of a warbird so it's it's fun to be on a warbird that's not messed up, you know? Warbird's a great looking ship also. Great job on that warbird. Yeah, good model. I was hoping for a soup callback in the one

meal scene we got in this episode. Because in my mind, Romulans love soup. But no soup callbacks to be found here. Looks like solid food all around. Yeah, it was a fun scene because the salty ass commander is like telling Troy to try some dish and she reaches for the wrong one

because she doesn't know what any of the dishes are called. And then she just insults the one that she neglected to get. I've smelled better vinaigrette on prison ships. Everyone seems to have sort of a TV dinner configuration to their meal. Like right down to the super hot dessert in that middle square. Romulans, maybe

above all else, don't want their food to touch. That is a real thing. It looks fresh, too. Like, I don't know why I... It's the kind of regimented society that they're living in. I also have it in my head that they're not using replicators. They have a real kitchen on board.

It didn't look like fake food, did it? No. Although Troy does say that, like, she's had better whatever on a prison ship, so it implies that it's not the good stuff. It's a real you eat pieces of shit for breakfast moment that she gets at that dinner table. That's fun.

Yeah. So the first we see of the entrepreneur is they're pulling up to a planet and they beam on board this guy who's like a kind of sandy blonde human, but he's got a crazy Romulan haircut. Yeah. And he's in a bread box. Find some civilian clothes. I don't want to see you in that uniform.

When you spend enough time on Romulus, the Romulan supercuts is your only option. Right, I guess so, yeah. You go to the Romulan supercuts and they have that picture of all the different men's hairstyles, but it's just one hairstyle for eight pictures. It's just repeated over and over again. You guys don't even do like a mullet or anything? Like how do you even do those four-inch sideburns? It's amazing repeated over and over again. You guys don't even do like a mullet or anything?

Like how do you even do those four inch sideburns? It's amazing. Yeah. That guy has so much volume. Yeah. Amazing amount of volume. It's sort of like the Jonathan Lipnicki bowl cut with just massive cartoonishly sideburns. Yeah.

of cartoonishly sideburns. Yeah. I went to college at the same time as what's the kid from Sixth Sense? Haley Joel Osment. Yeah, Haley Joel Osment. And this is

evident to anybody who sees him now, but his hair totally scaled up with him as he grew. He lost none of the volume of childhood that most of us lose it's almost like your hair it has a baby teeth equivalent sometimes yeah and he never lost his hair baby teeth no yeah you'd be in the in the main hall of the college and his hair was like impossible to ignore. It was just this like totally

astonishing mop of hair. Did you have to steal yourself from touching it? It just drew you in? He's like, my eyes are down here. Well anyways, the deal with this guy is he's like a human

who defected to Romulus. And he's like having this kind of interesting chat with Picard where he says like, Hey man, I defected to Romulus because I liked the kind of ordered nature of their society. It really appealed to me as a younger man. And I've sort of become, you know, the scales have fallen from my eyes. I don't find that as appealing now. And I realize that I've sealed my own fate and I'm going to be court-martialed or whatever.

But that's why it all went down the way it did. He's like, not for nothing, but does Ma have any times available in the barbershop? I heard he's the best. I would really like to correct this, like, as soon as possible. There's a time when you want to call a Romulans bluff, and there's a time when you don't. Yeah.

Like, the permanence of my haircut should not be a punishment for my crime. Yeah. I couldn't tell if he was a really weird-looking guy or just the hair is so weird that he's totally a victim of the weird cut. Yeah. He looks like he's being held hostage by that thing. One of the

haircuts in this episode that we need to do a deep dive on is Worf coming back from Mexico with a couple of braids down the side being pulled into a really smart ponytail. True indeed. He's got a rocking pony.

We have seen the advent of the Worf pony. Feels great. Yeah. Season six is like not afraid to change the look of a character. They've changed Troy's look. Now they've changed Worf's look. Evidently a year and a half has gone by between Aquiel and this episode because he gained like eight good inches of hair. Worf's look. Evidently, a year and a half has gone by between Aquiel and this episode.

He gained like eight good inches of hair. That takes a long time to grow out. There's no way he's sitting through extensions, right? That's not what this is. No. That's the way a coward grows their hair. That's more of a vanity than Worf would

afford himself. And he's definitely not hanging out in mott's shop long enough to undergo any kind of procedure you know boy no kidding yeah the thing that i didn't remember about the wharf pony were the braids down the side that just seems like that seems like a bridge too far for Worf in the decorative hair department. A little bit like something that somebody did in his tent at Occupy Wall Street. Like, hey, we got a lot of time to kill. Why don't I put a braid in that mane? Yeah.

What he's hiding underneath the ponytail are the two butterfly clips holding those braids in. ponytail are the two butterfly clips holding those braids in. I kind of wanted to talk about the idea of clarity of purpose as a value. At one time, I found their sense of purpose, their passion and commitment to be very compelling.

This Ensign admired that about the Romulans, and so much so that he left Starfleet for a position in the Romulan military. And it wasn't like what the purpose was, but the clarity of it that appealed to him. And I think that that's a pretty interesting thing to think about. I mean, like, I think that our country has kind of gone through periods of having clarity of purpose and not. You know, like the war effort or the space race or whatever can, by the war effort, I guess I mean World War II specifically.

But like, you know, I sort of feel like in some ways we are a society that lacks a clarity of purpose right now. And I could kind of dig what he was saying a little bit. I felt similarly, but also different about that. And my thoughts were more along the lines of, like, I never want to feel as though my feelings about any subject have atrophied. Like, I always want to evolve in my thinking about stuff. Yeah. And for a certain type of person, philosophical rigidity is very comforting. Yes.

And I think that is a perspective that this guy has. And that is what he found so attractive about living on Romulus. Right, or he had it. And he realized that there was some limitations there, which is a really interesting, like, especially in midlife, a really interesting evolution to go through. And it's so thrown away, you know, like they have this conversation and it,

and it provoked all these thoughts in me. And I just thought it was so excellent that it was like, they could, they could put a big idea like this just kind of casually into the episode and not trip over it or make it stupid or cheesy. There was a time when they would construct an entire episode and make this the A story around it, you know? But this is a real deep B. Yeah, and I appreciate it. I am the cutest of all. You will assist us.

I am the cutest of all. You are all. Back on the Romulan ship, the Lillis Breadbox and Shevulin are down in the cargo bay. And there's been a bunch of like back and forth with the captain about these mysterious cargo pods that have been loaded onto her ship. And Troy opens one up and discovers there's a guy inside of it sleeping. He's alive in stasis. They're laying down in like a mini recording studio. Yeah, it's the acoustical tile. It made me wonder, like, how deep is their stasis really

if they need to soundproof those boxes as big as they do? Yeah, it's a new type of stasis pod that combines latex foam with memory foam. You know, one of the side effects of this sedation technique is night terrors. These people will often wake up screaming. So we got to button them up in these soundproof chambers real tight yeah so uh the deal is these are like big wigs from the Romulan government who is it vice pro-council Moret of the imperial senate and his two top aides one of them is like the I don't know dean of students or something and uh And they're defecting to Vulcan, I guess. Like these are, the Shovulin guy is pals with Spock. You son of a bitch!

You wish to add something to our discussion, Dr. Ryan? Vice Pro-Council Moret. Might be trying to defect. They are working on establishing a way for Romulans who aren't down with the current regime to defect, to get out and like build a way for there to be some sort of cultural interchange also, I guess. So this is very much a follow up story to the to the cowboy diplomacy episodes. Spark on Romulus! You gotta go get him! God, defection seems

really difficult in the future. It is not just catching a flight across an ocean. It is light years away. I mean, it was no joke

in the 80s when you had to steal a nuclear sub and the entire Soviet surface fleet would sortie after you, right? It's true. You know what? Maybe this is a little bit of canonical October in that these pods are the caterpillar drive of silence.

They really built this. This isn't a mock-up or anything. You know? Get yourself a quiet pod. That's deep, Adam. Real deep. Too deep for you, Ben? Passing 1,500 feet. At 1,850, it's all over.

Not at all. So these kind of two things are happening in parallel, right? The human that defected and now is undefecting is telling Picard, like, this is a message from Spock. You've got to go meet up with this freighter. And Shevulin is like, hey, listen, you've got to get these dudes to this freighter so that they can be passed off to the Federation safely.

We can't deliver them into the Federation. We're on a Romulan ship, but we can hire some kind of neutral mercenary aliens to do the job. Yeah, sort of an Uber Eats type starship is who they need to meet up with. Uber for defection. They give them the insulated bags of politicians so they stay warm throughout their journey yeah i think this is like about when the the warbird meets up with the uh with the mercenaries that they're going to pass these guys off to and uh they get on facetime with this guy and he's just got a real crazy face.

He's a little bit like Thing from Fantastic Four, except not as chunky. Yeah. I like just kind of like a one-off weirdo alien like this. Yeah. They really put a lot into this alien being just a weird kind of guy. You're really right. I mean, he has four lines of dialogue, and then he's dead. But he spends longer in the makeup chair by a long shot

than he ever does on screen. He sure does, yeah. I mean, he's got quite a bit more loaf than even Worf. You know how sometimes you see a news anchor, he'll wear the shirt and the tie and the jacket, but underneath the desk is jeans? You can totally imagine this guy having sat through eight hours of makeup and he's wearing a t-shirt and...

And dolphin shorts. And dolphin shorts on the bridge of that other ship. Like there's nothing you see below the neck over there. Yeah. Yeah, your sweatpants are fine. Just put on this big green sweater over the top part and that should do it. LaForge wore this in the last episode. We're never going to see it again.

The crazy thing about Troy being here is that she can tell that this dude is lying through his teeth I have no intention of keeping their word I thought it was kind of weird that she wouldn't beam over with it was that not part of the plan that's what I was expecting maybe she felt like if she beamed over with it they would try and like take her hostage or something but like in the way that when you're given your meal at a restaurant and you don't like it if you were to stand up and throw that plate against a wall flip over the table and walk out one of the major overreactions in star trek is troy relaying this information to shovel face and then shovel face full spread destroying the cargo ship based on her word like whoa man ease down the captain is

like what the fuck just happened even on the romulan violence spectrum this is way over the top shovel face turns around and he's like all caught up in his sash. Like that was the reason he accidentally fired as he's just totally hamstrung by his uniform. Shovelface, this is a chess ship. Why are you playing checkers? Yeah, poor guy. Didn't even see it coming.

The other thing about these Romulans is like we get maybe the richest tapestry of different bread boxes we've ever gotten in this episode. It's a real array of patterns and colors. Yeah, the pattern seems to have some sort of bearing on what their role is. I guess in the way that the colors do on a Federation ship. Yeah, for instance, like the black and white herringbone pattern is given to like the 60-year-old mom type of Romulan. The hound's tooth is for the like 20-something

who's really coming into her own. Yeah. Yeah. Real classic designs. There's also the more bro-y gingham design that you'll find at the Romulan J. Crew. Yeah, that's very popular in the Caleb sector. Yeah, those gings match up nicely. The breadbox gings and a nice khaki pant.

Yeah, a boat shoe, a khaki pant, and a breadbox of ging. Yeah. A couple of cheap brew dogs and you're good to go. Some Ray-Bans and brew dogs. Yeah. Did you notice that they had a beer pong table on this Romulan ship? Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. Did you notice that they had a beer pong table on this Romulan ship? Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. I mean, you know, when in Rome.

So they've blown up this ship, which really fucks the plan up. Our plan has collapsed. Because that ship is the one that was going to go meet up with the entrepreneur, pass off the dean of students, and, you know, complete the secret mission. And so the captain of the Romulan ship is like, let's go to Cloak and see what happens here. Let's go to Cloak and see what happens here. But I'm pretty eager to get back on the mission that I was doing before this Tal Shiar asswipe showed up. And so, like, this is around when the entrepreneur pulls into the sector

and starts scanning around and discovers this debris field. And the human Romulan defector guy is like, oh, fuck, that was my ticket out of this mess. Eee. He's like, anytime I could get that haircut, guys. Like before I was being casual about it, but I'm not long for this world. Starting to feel urgent. If we could just go ahead and, like, I'd even take a slick back at this point.

He becomes the oldest slick back. Yeah, yeah. I feel like it's got to be coloring the way people treat him, you know? Yeah. back yeah yeah i feel like it's got to be coloring the way people treat him you know yeah it's like it's like a like i can we please shave the hitler mustache off of me so that you guys stop having a terrible feeling when you look at me yeah yeah he's always sitting alone in ten forward we get that montage of him sitting down at a full table and everyone else leaving. Acquiel's dog is his only friend.

What happened to Acquiel's dog getting vaporized? Oh shit, that's right. You know what? Acquiel should have been way more sad at the end of that episode. She lost her dog. Yeah, we didn't even talk about that. She'd be devastated. I would be devastated.

Love that guy. Yeah. Shevulin is like, alright, listen littlest breadbox. We gotta get these guys to this Federation planet that they were headed toward, or everything is fucked.

And I mean everything. And the only way we're gonna do that is if you continue to pull rank on the commander and make sure that it actually happens. And also, you are just so cute. I just need to tell you that. What a punim. I mean, did you get, is this a child-size uniform?

She bought it in juniors, Adam. Yeah. Troy is like, Doug, we cannot go to Draken 4 or whatever. Like, that's in Federation space, and they've got ways of detecting even cloak chips on the border. Like, there's no way to get through. And he's like, well, listen, like, we can get through if you give the secret code to get by him.

And this is, like, maybe the biggest missed opportunity in this episode, is I feel like that should have caused her to really start to question whether this was all a gaslighting operation to get her to reveal the secret codes to get across the Federation border. Seems obvious to me at the time. Yeah, like they kind of like let you come to that conclusion yourself, but never deal with it in the time. Yeah, like they kind of let you come to that conclusion yourself, but never deal with it in the episode. Also, can you imagine a

company, corporation, military, any entity of people giving a counselor figure any intelligence that would have this sort of value? What in the world would counselor troy need with these codes the gravitic sensor access codes yeah yeah give me a break give me

a break about that and also give me a break about everyone loving draken 4 like everyone loves everyone loves draken but i gotta tell you i find his music boring i heard that there was uh there was some some some static at one of the uh one of the tables at my wedding because one of my guests one jesse thorn was talking smack about Drake and one of my other guests, one Sean Romsferum of WNYC Radio, being basically the biggest Drake fan of all time. I was at that table. Oh, really?

I mean, while we're dropping names, there was also an Adam Pranica at that table. Yeah, he signed it up with Jesse Thorne on this issue? I was the Switzerland of the table who was just content to eat more and more tacos. I got told about this later, which led me to believe it was a really tense situation. Would you characterize it as that? There is a, like, one of the things I love about having conversations with Jesse is that everything is given the same amount of seriousness in terms of how he says stuff. moment where he would have what he believes to be a fun uh critical conversation about a thing and and to get argumentative in that way but in his super cool way that someone else would take great umbrage with so that part like doesn't surprise me at all but i take great joy in in hearing jesse

discuss matters in that way and so i at no, found it to be a contentious thing, but I could see how it would be interpreted in that way. Yeah. Got heated. Yeah. Well. Can you imagine getting in a fight over Drake? Come on.

Who cares? There's better things to fight about. Yeah. Speaking of hair, did you notice the helmsman on The Entrepreneur this episode looked like she had her hair done for the Orange County junior prom? Yeah. She had the most ornate updo. Like, uh... Looked like she went for, like,

a hair treatment for, like, two hours before, you know, before they got their rented limo and headed down to the prom. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time needed to get ready before work at every turn. Ensign McKnight is really like, how could we step the game up even more? I mean, on Captain Picard's bridge, I think you'll do what it takes to get noticed.

Three extra inches of hair on the top of your head? I mean... That might do the trick. You do the hair game right, you might get invited to some data poetry reading as his day world's your oyster yeah i mean i don't think we've seen helmsman jay ever since so maybe that didn't end up too well all right pj well the entrepreneur is like well bummer these guys got blowed up i guess we'll head off and the romulan ship is going to follow them and troy manages to convince chevulin to like have a talk with the engineer and tweak the cloaking device in such a way that it won't be obvious that it's not working perfectly,

but the entrepreneur will be able to detect it if they're lucky. And so they detect it. Is it possible that we're picking up a cloaked Romulan ship? And they stop and turn around, and the commander of the Rhyme Willem ship realizes that they are not quite as cloaked as they thought they were. And so she really flips out and is getting ready to destroy the entrepreneur.

The plan she proposes is so insane. This starship chicken idea she hatches about like, okay, we're going to stay cloaked and we're going to set a course right for their ship. And if they can detect this, they'll move out of the way. And then we'll get destroyed. But if they don't detect this, we'll run right into them and then we'll get destroyed.

Yeah. This is a terrible plan it's like uh like the only way they could get out of it would be if the entrepreneur did a crazy ivan right they get on the the facetime and uh and and uh littlest breadbox has taken over the ship i am major akal of the Tal Shiar. I'm Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise. She's, like, taking the commander out of command, and she's talking a bunch of shit to Picard. She opens fire, but rather than the Romulan disruptor

doing damage to the Enterprise, instead the three government functionaries that they've been secretly transporting materialize on the bridge like three little sausages lying together. They're really lucky no one was walking there. That would have been ugly. That could have been a melt-into-the-floor situation. there. That would have been ugly. That could have been a melt-into-the-floor situation.

The... I guess the crew on the Romulan bridge were like, why didn't that super-powerful blast we just unleashed hurt them at all? That makes no sense. Oh, look. There was a transporter beam concealed

in it. What a surprise. Poor Shovelface eats it. He's been outed as a traitor. Yeah. And his phaser setting was most definitely gore. Yeah, green gore. Yeah. There's nothing to scrape off of the deck plating after he dies.

It's no good for him. And you have to wonder, like, what happens to the rest of the deck plating after he dies it's no good for him and you have to wonder like what happens to the rest of the resistance back on romulus like how much do these guys know about what happened so many people are dying on this mission that cargo ships full of people shovel face mentions that like they're not the first people who've died on this one like i mean it's it's a good thing that uh this story's paid off with these three romulans and we know the true like the true scale to the mission success here oh wait that doesn't happen does it it yeah i mean we just kind of have to take their word for it that this was a big coup for peace.

I don't know that this is ever discussed ever again in the series. Yeah, I don't think so. Like, shouldn't the Romulans just be, like, super cheesed off at the Federation for, you know, this is like as embarrassing for them as the time that the entrepreneur transported one of their spies and the guys of a Vulcan ambassador to the border, right? Yeah, at least as embarrassing. The button is they transport Troy back to the entrepreneur. She gets her loaf removed she's happily herself and that's it see she barely got beamed out of there they like got her in the split second between the romulans dropping their shield and raising their cloaking device

yeah almost lost her there boy she would have been in the shit if they got away with her that would have been it she would have been big big trouble did you like this episode ben i did i thought it was uh it was a very fun cloak and dagger spy story told in this place and um it relies on you to kind of know the mechanics of a lot of how the world works and it doesn't like beat you over the head with re-explaining those things um which i feel like is a a an example of a script being confident in itself um i liked how little we got on the on the uh ensign that's you know re-defecting back to the to the federation like we get a little of his motivation but we never get anything about what he did and i thought that that was they left some nice pregnancy in his in his story yeah to uh let

let your mind wander or pretend perhaps like leave the option of having another episode with him where you could go into more detail or something. Yeah. Uh, I liked it a lot. I liked it a lot too. And I think the reason why is, is the magic trick in the beginning.

Like there is no fucking way that this story makes any sense at all. The idea that the Romulans would kidnap Counselor Troi, like, doesn't hold any water. And not only that, if people are constantly getting kidnapped on their way to and from these conferences, why are they traveling this way?

Why are they going in single shuttlecraft or whatever? Like, this happens all the time it's almost like the conference is a death sentence like i wouldn't want to go like i'll just webex in thank you do you guys have a zoom portal but the magic trick i'm talking about is that cold open is so well done the reveal is so enjoyably shocking that you're immediately on to the next after the theme song like like you get over that the reason that she's there and right into you know her existing in this universe in a way that there's really not a lot of time to consider how ridiculous it is that she's there in the first place.

So if you can suspend that disbelief, I think this is a very enjoyable episode. One of my favorite things in cooking is when I have made a whole bunch of something that is a bit of a thing to make, and then I have it, and I come up with some meal some night and realize I have a bunch of homemade pinto beans in the fridge that would be perfect for it. I feel like that kind of happens in this episode with this cold open because we've spent a lot of time establishing ram yarlin in silhouette

and like sitting back in the dark somewhere so they can really throw you off the scent in these opening moments with with troy in the dark as a ramulan and uh it just it makes it makes that that reveal so much more shocking. It's the pinto bean reveal. Yep. Ben, do we have any Priority One communications coming in through the subspace? Oh, we almost always do. I feel very lucky to say we almost always do, Adam.

Let's check it out. Priority One message from Starfleet coming in on secure channel. Need a supplemental income. Supplemental income? Supplemental. Supplemental. Yeah, it's extra. By the interest alone, could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, we got a personal priority one message

here. It's from Braxton and Colin and it's to Wakas and Kari. It goes like this. Be like JLP and remember the four lights of marriage. Love, trust, patience, communication and Star Trek.

Hope your wedding has minimum knuck and lots of bangers but save the biggest banger for the end of the night. Hey! Here's to the finest couple in DC. P.S. Hope the horgon we got you brings plenty of fun new friends

into your relationship. Wow. That was a wedding toast quality P1 right there. Yeah. Yeah, that was like just the right amount of roasting for a wedding toast. Yeah. A little bit of ribaldry to lightly scandalize the old ladies in the crowd. Maybe we'll see these guys in Washington, D.C.

toward the end of August on our tour. We are definitely going to try and show up in D.C. for the tour of August on our tour. We are definitely going to try and show up in D.C. for the tour. Yeah. Come out and see us. If you're not on your honeymoon, that is. Yeah. You got a P1 for the peeps, Adam? Sure do.

Ben, this message is from Michelle. It is for my husband, Jesse. Happy birthday! Message goes like this. I hope Adam and Ben successfully veto an app. Even fistful of datas are shipping a bottle. So tapestry lands on your birthday. Tapestry, one of the great episodes.

That's right. I love you more than I hate the veto rules and more than I love data-related holodeck mishaps. If I could go back in time, rip out my heart, and give it to you all over again, I totally would. Hashtag greatest Gen Con Boston 2017. Oh, really? Really?

Boston. Hell of a city. Do love it there. I'm a big fan of Boston. I don't know if Greatest Gen Con is going to happen there, though. No, no. Can't do it in Boston. Could be touring there, though.

Yeah, likely. If I could go back in time and rip out my heart. It's like a song lyric right there. It's great. Yeah. Well said, likely. If I could go back in time and rip out my heart. It's like a song lyric right there. It's great. Yeah. Well said, Michelle. Happy birthday, Jesse. And happy wedding, Wakasa and Kari.

If you would like to leave a Priority One message of the personal or commercial nature, you go to MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron and use the form there to fill it out. It's $100 for a personal, $200 for a commercial. Helps us keep the lights on around here. Our hosting is ridiculously pricey. I'm not

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Have you ever wanted to know the sad lore behind Chuck E. Cheese's love of birthday parties? Or my Saturday mornings are reserved for cartoons? Have you ever wanted to know the sad lore behind Chuck E. Cheese's love of birthday parties? Or my Saturday mornings are reserved for cartoons? Or have you wanted to know how beloved virtual pet site Neopets fell into the hands of Scientologists? Or how a former Mattel employee managed to grow Sega into a video game powerhouse? Join us, hosts Austin and Brenda, and learn all of these things and more at Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries, now on Maximum Fun. The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls.

911. My husband! It's my husband! Calm down, please. What about your husband? He loves the dishwasher wrong. Please help! Please help me. Where are you now, ma'am?

At the kitchen table. I was with my dad. He mispronounced those words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice, but only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman, the only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once. Only on MaximumFun.org. Hey, Ben. What's that, Adam?

Did you find yourself the littlest drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda! I don't know if it's the littlest but I did find one there is a scene in the Romulan bridge at the end of this episode where Troy has

taken over and she like disarmed the commander so the commander's had to just kind of bear the indignity of standing around on the bridge watching the commander. So the commander's had to just kind of, uh, bear the indignity of standing around on the bridge, watching Troy do the rest of, uh,

the dirty stuff that she came here to do. And the commander realizes that it's all been a trick and has not been genuine tell she our business. And, uh, been genuine Tal Shiar business. And she goes for her giant waste basket that Romulans keep their disruptor guns in and finds it empty. And they go in for a close-up on her hand, like probing deep into this basket for the gun that we have established very clearly is not there. Her holster is like a Cape Cod style wicker basket that's used for like blankets or something.

Yeah, it's, and they all have them and they're all so big that they like can't really let their arms hang comfortably at their sides. Like, there's no way she isn't exquisitely aware that she doesn't have a gun in that thing. No, she was my drunk Shimoda. She's got a couple kittens in there. They're so cute. Yeah, it's going to be the February month on my kitten calendars. Romulan disruptor basket kittens.

Oh, they just opened their eyes. Oh, little sweeties Please someone make Romulan Disruptor basket kittens The calendar I would love to see that I would buy that calendar Today Yeah Did you have a drunk Shimoda Adam

Yeah I left the episode for it though I'm just going to give the Shimoda to Marina Sirtis, who had her name on the call sheet every day. Like, she goes long periods of time without an episode of her own. And I can only imagine how great it had to be to be in just about every scene in this episode. Doing a lot of weird stuff acting acting against character and type eating weird food like yelling at people yeah uh it just seemed like a ton of fun for her to have in a star trek career where she gets relatively little of it so i mean i I think in true Shimoda fashion, I think she milks it for all it's worth. I love it when Marina Sirtis gets a juicy episode that isn't a joke against her.

Yeah. And it really exposes how underutilized she was on this show. You can't tell me that there wasn't even a little bit of character break in the beginning when she can't believe that that's the story. She's like, wait a second, what? I get to talk my way off this Romulan ship and I have a whole episode to do it? All right. I'm game.

Now we are talking. Doesn't matter how ridiculous I personally find this story. I'm going to go for it all the way. Yeah. Good times. What are we watching on the next episode, Ben? The next episode is Season 6, Episode 15, Tapestry. After Picard loses his life in a surprise attack,

Q gives him the chance to change his destiny. Do you remember this episode, Adam? Ben, this episode is the answer to the question, what is your favorite Star Trek The Next Generation episode? What? Yeah, this is top of the mountain. It's a Q episode for you? Yeah, I love this episode

I don't even know you, man I love this episode This episode makes me feel all the feelings I really wish I had a veto to use on this episode As someone who is haunted by their regrets and life choices As much as you are I'm surprised that you don't feel the same way about this ep as I do Well, we can get into it as we

discuss it because we are forced to. But I have strong anti-this episode opinions. Should be an interesting episode next time. Gonna really get into it then. I ride for tapestry.

I ride against it. Your loss. One group of people who always rides for us, Ben, are our legion of viewers who chat us up on Twitter using the hashtag GreatestGen. I'm on there as atcutfortime. Ben is there as atBenjaminR. AHR.

You can find us also on Facebook and Reddit. On Pinterest. And HelloFresh. We've got a Wikia. That's a great place to go. That Wikia is great. There's like new jokes on there that really add to the rich tapestry

that is our program. And yeah, what else? We should thank Adam Ragusea for our music and Dark Materia for our theme music. And what do you think? Is the Crimson Tide special ep out by now probably is right i think it probably is if it's not out by the time this episode comes out then it is very close like within a day of coming out if you can hear, it's probably out, and go check your donor feed for that. I equivocate so much because

I'm in charge of that edit. I'm trying to broaden the scope a little bit. Yeah. It'll definitely be out, so go enjoy it. It's great. It's one of the best edits we've ever had. Oh, yeah.

It's the tops. Yeah, I'm so psyched about the music that Adam Ragusea made for it. Yeah, me too. Alright, well, it's been a fun one. Next week is looking like it's shaping up to be contentious,

so brace yourselves. And with that, we will be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. An episode of the greatest generation that needs to do its shirt laundry very badly. We're going to find out

in the next episode which one of us has a real heart, which one of us has an artificial heart. Make it U.S.A. Captain. Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.A. Captain. Make it so. Make it so. Jean-Luc Picard. Maximumfun.org.

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