The Greatest Generation - O’Brien Fingers Bashir (DS9 S3E26)

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

When the Little D is deployed to the frontier of the federation, nobody is initially suspicious that Jake Sisko seems to now be a Starlfleet Admiral. But when aliens we’ve never heard of threaten war with the Federation, it’s the diplomats you really have to be worried about. Is the Defiant on its way to Vertiform City? Why does Eddington want to kill the Doctor? What kind of predicament would make you wish you’d become a barber? It’s the episode that finally hits the Jeffries tubes from the right angle. Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Prophets! Support the production of The Greatest Generation.

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 Deep Space Nine, a Star Trek podcast from a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison.

I'm Adam Pryanaka. You know it's Adam and Barista Adam. I've been trying to be more physically expressive on the pod lately, like even if it's just me, like on this side and you on that side, I feel like it adds to how dynamic the show can become. If we're, if, for example, I'm using my hands and that's what I'm usually usually you just use your hands when I'm talking to make the jack-off motion. Yep. Well, you know what, for a second I had to look up at my computer's camera to make sure

it wasn't on. You don't have like a band-aid over the camera. Oh, I do. I've got the little post-it note on top. That's what I do. What do you do? You've got the band aid? I'm just living dangerously, man.

Wow. I had a friend, he had an office in Manhattan. It was a film production. They had like a couple of sound stages in a little production company and I would, I did work with them a bunch and- This was browsers. Come on, they're not in Manhattan.

Oh, I pronounced that wrong. It's a broadsurs, isn't it? Oh, yeah, that's more more correct. But they were on the second floor of a building in Manhattan. There wasn't really anything to stop people from just coming up the elevator of this building. So one day somebody just came into the office, spotted his laptop on his desk and he was like out at lunch or something, grabbed it and walked out and nobody looked up from what they were doing and saw the person taking the laptop. Wow. And so he had all the stuff turned on so he could like, he could like geolocate it, you know,

and like using the, find my Mac or whatever. And then we turned on the fucking webcam and watched this guy crank it to like, very fucked up porno. Oh! Like that's what was happening when he, like it was like, you know, 4 p.m. and he had like used some other computer in the office to like, to figure out where his computer was.

And he, he turns on the webcam and we're watching, we could see what was on the screen. And it was like little people porn. And we could see this guy and what he was doing to himself over the little people porn. I felt like I was living in a fucking William Gibson novel. He's like, he's like, he's like, he's like,

he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, I felt like I was living in a fucking William Gibson novel. He's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like,

he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, he the lesson of put a post it over your webcam, but I Did not learn anything that day. I mean given Given your knowledge of its geo location. Were you able to recover the laptop later? It was and also would you want to recover it after that? I don't think so It was one of those super frustrating things where you things where he called the police and they sent a couple of officers out to take a report and then he showed them on the screen,

oh yeah, we could get it to within one building where it was and they're like, that's not good enough. You would have to know which door to knock on or whatever. And he never got it back. He got the officer from... From Lebowski. From Big Lebowski. Yeah.

These guys were not working in shifts, were they? No, no, they were not exactly doing that. They did recover his credence tapes, though. Wow. Do you think that this person's interest was to find a device with which to use for porn? Like, was that the goal of the thievery? Like, was that the the the headwater of the crime? Was like crime was like

Was like I don't want to steal a computer to sell for drug money. I need something to crank it with I Think he was probably gonna sell it but in this you know in this interregnum between having stolen it and having sold it You used it for what it's there for you know Wow that you used it for what it's there for, you know? Wow. Because at that point, what's the difference? You know, a long, long time ago, you and I told the story of my wife's laptop being recovered along with a bunch of other stolen items out of a workplace rental car. And how much fun that story was, How much darker would that story have been? Had there been a FaceTime masturbation component

to the whole thing? Not good. Sort of changes things. Well Adam, do you wanna speak of teleconnectivity? I thought we might please the people with a jazz horse update. What do you say? Oh yeah, I have things to discuss. Tell me you love jazz. Horse, earth, horse.

Okay boys, saddle up! You're as handy with the shoot 9 as you are with a woman's heart. I'm beginning to see the appeal of this program. I suggest you find a new line of work. It's okay, girl, just a scratch. So, you and I are planning with a couple of buddies of yours to play Jazz Horse over the internet today. Right.

After we're done recording the podcast, we're gonna play Jazz Horse over the internet today. Right. After we're done recording the podcast, we're gonna play Jazz horse over the internet. Yep. We... have not really done this before, so we had to do a lot of prep. Part of the prep on my end was asking my wife permission to play video games with my friends.

Wow, I thought I was the only one. Ben, that was a real fucking thing. Yeah, I was like so on Thursday, Adam and I and a couple of guys are talking about playing the cowboy game on the internet. Is that okay with you? Plus, a thing I had to look my wife in the eyes and ask. Why do we do that? It sucks. It sucks, yeah. But also, she fortunately had plans tonight, and so it doesn't really affect her either way.

Mm-hmm. If I had known that before, I asked the question, I would have just not asked the question. Right. Yeah, that's smart. But... Yeah. I had the same experience as you. This game is not friendly to a bystander,

the way that a Skyrim seems to have been. My wife preferred Skyrim to this game. Oh, interesting. By a lot. I mean, they have a lot in common. It's a lot of going around in the wilderness and gathering an herb. Yeah, yeah, for some reason it is not the same.

I don't know why. I keep trying to make the case that it is. Part of the... She's like, I like it, but I don't know why. I keep trying to make the case that it is. Part of the- She's like, I like it, but I don't like that it has no glowing left-hand component. Like most pre-arranged special evenings of fun, there is some preparation involved for this group. And part of that is the game of Jazz Horse makes you jump through some hoops before you're just released into the world, the open world of the internet prairie. And it's about an hour of playing with yourself beforehand, and I'm really glad we were able to do that before our date. Yeah that was another like we are old moment or like texting like is there is there anything we have to do and somebody actually like went to the trouble of finding out and they're like oh yeah you actually do have to like

qualify into playing online with people. I really love the construction of your character in games like this. How would you describe the custom character that you made? You know, I'm always tempted to go for photo realistic to myself, but then I, in that process realized I don't really know what I look like. Oh. It gives you several options for nose, like narrow nose,

like medium and wide nose, like hook nose, and I'm like, I don't really know what kind of nose I have. Yeah. I don't really think about it ever. Yeah. I wish there were more options. It feels like there's about a dozen different versions of every part of the face.

So if you're going for something specific, it makes that part difficult. I think one of the things about the last Grand Theft Auto game is that I felt like it was more granular in that way. You could really really make a custom face and body in a way that maybe because it's the beta version of Jazz Horse Online that we aren't getting the full palette of options here. Yeah well as a as a beta myself, I can confirm that you just never have the full palette of options.

My guy looks most closely like an in-bred magroober, tried my best to approximate what he would look like in this world and uh gonna gonna name the horse meata. My name in the game is Magroober with an exclamation point. I uh I've bad news for you Adam I already named my horse meata. What? You can't do that? Yeah. You really did? I did. How is that possible?

I thought I told everyone what I was going to do. You told everybody that that's what you did on a different game I thought. Oh, and then you stole my idea. I didn't steal your idea for the horse. Are you... What does your... What does your person look like then? Can't believe your horse is Miyata. I'm gonna have to name my horse Blaupunk now. I mean you could name your horse whatever you want. I don't think there's any rule

about not having about you know multiple different horses. Wow. Having the same name. Did not expect this double cross bin bin It's not a double cross because I didn't name my guy my grubber or make him look like my grubber Hmm, I made him look like tug felps. Well, I expect after tonight We will come back with more stories. I'm expecting to get grief down pretty hard Like our our posse of idiots is gonna be released into this open world and we're just gonna be like walking ourselves off of cliffs Not gonna be great It'll be a lot of fun. I'm gonna shoot Miyata in the back of the head Don't kill Miyata

That's just parallel thinking man. Yeah, guess so. Should've kept that shit to myself. Ha ha. I mean, it'd be like showing up to the same party and the same dress, though, right? If we both write into the game on a horse named Miata. You know what, in that way, maybe I too will name my horse Miata. Except mine will have an exclamation point at the end. Wow. Wow. Wow.

You don't want to make an enemy of me, Ben. Much like you never want to make an enemy out of a founder, which is sort of what today's deep space nine episode is about. It's the season finale of season three. Season three episode 26. The adversary. of Season 3, Season 3 Episode 26, The Adversary. There's a bit of a switch of rue at the beginning of this episode. Because it's making the emotional case that Cisco may be leaving deep space nine via an admission to his commander's log. It is with mixed emotions that I record this my final

commander's log. Final commander's log but jokes it's actually his final commander's log because he's getting the big promotion and Admiral Jake Cisco is there to put the pip on his chest. Sisko isn't leaving a note in advance of taking his own life after reading his son's story on that sailboat. I can no longer live with the shame having a terrible author of the son.

Jake really jumped ahead of him in rank, right? Yeah. That is maybe like one of the biggest issues story-wise with this episode is that there isn't anybody of a higher rank there to give him this honor. And so he, you know, in the midst of this party, a federation ambassador kind of takes him by the elbow and walks him off to one corner of the room. And I guess everybody else at the party is just assuming that he's being told all the secrets

you get to know when you become captain. Right. But what he's really doing is giving him a mission. The defiant will leave in two days on a week long patrol. He's a stranger to this party and so are like eight other people. Like the attendees of this thing are the cast that you've come to know and love over three seasons

and also like a gathering of complete strangers, I guess to fill things up. Yeah, just a, like a handful of bejure and starfleet central casting people. Yeah. Yeah, this is Ambassador Krizhensky. And what he tells Ben Sisko is that there's been a coup on the Zencethi home world. And his mission should he choose to accept it is a week-long patrol with Ambassador Krizhensky riding shotgun along as an observer. Yeah, and it's just to kind of provide a show of force because I guess the Zencethi are a, we're retroactively making them a, a former foe of the Federation and a, a people that we need to be worried might invade the Federation if the wrong kind of political moment is taking hold there. They're given alien foe of the weak status, but spoiler alert, we never see them.

Yeah. Have we ever heard of them before? No. Didn't ring a bell for me. I looked it up, I had to look it up to see if I was missing something. No, they're new. Even though they have a colorful history versus the Federation, this is their first time being on a show.

One thing that surprised me in this sequence was Chifo Bryan. I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. This is fucking spectacular. Calling the newly minted captain, Cisco, the newest and best captain in the fleet. No! Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess that's true for O'Brien, given that Cisco never genocide it. Ha ha ha! A bunch of, uh, federations ships at Wolf 359 right yeah, he doesn't have that on his on his permanent record. I guess yeah Yeah, I just I found it surprising that the the chief is such a Cisco partisan given his long history with the other captain We know and love and I mean Picard is not not in Starfleet in this timeline, right? Now it's true. Yeah. Yeah, he's, uh, he's still in the game. He's still on the board. Yeah. Got to wonder what Picard did do O'Brien in the time between O'Brien's leaving

the entrepreneur and right now. Not answering any of his letters, that's why. Yeah, I guess so. Ben, we get a number of new play sets in the last episode of season three of this show. We get the Defiant Engine Room. This is brand new. We get a Defiant Turbo Lift. We get a Messhall play set, and we get a defiant turbo lift, we get a mess hall playset,

and we get a corridor in DS9 that's a more fully developed place to walk than we've ever gotten before. Yeah, it's usually the last episode of the season when the budget has really run thin, but they really spend on this one. Yeah, it feels like a show that had more budget at the end than they thought. And so not to get a draw down next season, like they want to get the same or more budget

for season four. Yeah, you got to spend it. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. This engine room is the first one of these we see, I believe, and it's a Cisco kind of like, add a Boeing, Chief of Brian, and tell them we get ready for this big trip, and walking out of the room, and then Chief of Brian having a very creepy first contact

like alone in the engine room moment, where he's here in bumps and bangs down the hallway, but never figures out what's going on. And some fun, you know, like handheld camera work to enhance the sense of weirdness and aloneness. Yeah, that composition before going to theme song is that visual language of making him feel small, right? He's in this big engine room.

He's way in the background of the shot. He's surrounded by larger objects in the foreground. And he's alone. The small one is being watched. Yeah. The sound he hears sounds like kind of an out of balance closed dryer or like the sound HVAC ducting makes. Yeah, I was kind of picturing somebody trying to like

Hulk washing machine up a flight of stairs. Yeah, I was kind of picturing somebody trying to like Hulk a washing machine up a flight of stairs. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it sounded very familiar for something that was supposed to sound so alien, you know? Yeah, well, not it also sounded like thinner sheet metal than I imagine is being used in most components of the defiant. Yeah. You know, everything you see is like real thick and like sturdy looking on the defiant. That sound just doesn't sound like something that they would have. Go to Kotl.

Go to Kotl. So the ship gets underway and begs a question that I just can't wrap my mind around Ben, which is, why are they doing so much work on the ship while it's underway instead of while it's docked on DS9? Because there's a fair amount of crawling through the Jeffrey's tubes that O'Brien is doing, and even Bashir is doing when they meet up in these tubes later on.

Like, are they too busy for maintenance on the ship while they're at the station? Well, I mean, a brand, if it's chief of maintenance on the station and the ship has a lot on its plate. Yeah, that's true. I suppose that's forgivable, but also, you know, I don't really know how much tube crawling is normal on the ship anyways, you know, like it's a small ship with very few amenities, so maybe a bunch of critical systems that you would be able to access via a hallway on a galaxy-class ship. You have to get to via the Jeffries tubes on a ship like this.

This episode specifically and this season has been so good at setting Eddington I'm Lieutenant Commander Michael Eddington, Starfleet Secure TOOS TOOS MAAAAA Up to be a hated figure to be someone for whom we have a lot of suspicion Yeah And Eddington gets some scenes right away.

Like, every time he's talking to Cisco, I don't feel like you can trust him. Every time he says something, it feels like O'Brien says something right after. Which I really liked, especially in that celebration scene for Captain Cisco, like Eddington says, congratulations, and it's almost like O'Brien climbs over him to give his larger

Congratulations. Yeah, it's great. What do you think is like the Cisco not have a choice about whether to take Eddington on a trip? Now he obviously does and he obviously Is living up to the statement he made about trusting anyone who wears the uniform. I think it's insane. Well, you're a very distrustful person in general. Right. My paranoia would never allow this.

So O'Brien's in one of these tubes and doing some of this maintenance we've been talking about when he starts hearing bumps and bangs again. And he calls out and doesn't hear a response. So he goes down to investigate and out pops Julian Bashir who claims that he was putting his star fleet extension courses on engineering through their paces by installing his own medical shit into the into the ship's power grid. Word processing, the internet, installing medical devices on starships. Starfleet career college.

be your college. But it's a fun jump scare. I feel like they do a really nice job with the lighting in here too. Like it's not super flat and brightly lit. The way it would be on the enterprise, it's very dim and spooky. Sometimes the lengths of these Jeffries tubes are shot in such a way where you can see the,

I don't know, is it a psych if it's, like it's something different, like when they put up a graphic panel to show. Well, actually, I actually know a little bit about this. Yeah, tell me. The Acme Corporation was contracted to build a lot of these tunnels. So, so Wiley Coyote painted the furtherance of the tunnel

on a flat wall. Thank you very much for that. Yeah. Really mixed results from this effect in the Star Trek series up until now. But the length of these Jeffries tubes and the angle at which they're shot in this episode, I think are really effective.

Yeah, they don't miss in this. Yeah. Sometimes you get the wrong angle and it just looks totally cocked up. Yeah. And we've had that a bunch, especially on Deuspace 9, which has these big long, kind of, slightly arcing hallways, because of the construction of the docking ring and the habitat ring or whatever. Yeah. And they have missed on this show before, but not this.

So speaking of Eddington, we get a scene with him and Cisco. And you think this conversation is going to be related to what we were talking about before. Like, I thought the conversation was going to be about forgiveness. And instead, it's like one of almost mentorship between Cisco and Eddington, wherein they talk about the meaning of making captain and how someone in Eddington's position had those aspirations, but when you put on that gold uniform,

that is a career track that is close to you. People don't have a star fleet to become commanders. It's an interesting moment because it doesn't really have much to do with this story or what's going on in this episode, but it does kind of give another point of, you know, point in the column of like, adding tennis not entirely to be trusted. He has a bit of an extra grind, you know. You could read it that way. You could also read it like if this scene doesn't happen, I think you might view Eddington

with a greater suspicion than without it. Like clearly Cisco still trusts him. The subject of his double cross isn't even obliquely referred to. Yeah, it's a conversation that I'm very familiar with. I mean, I feel like in college, everybody in film school is there because they want to be a director.

And the professors spend a lot of time trying to convince you that it is like worth your time to consider developing a craft of some kind and like getting into one of the departments because like A, you will actually get work if you come out of film school and like know how to be a sound recordist and B, like there's no one path to being in the director's chair on a big movie, you know, like people come at it from every which angle. And it's very foolish to think that, like, not learning something because it's a waste of your time

would be like an aid to you getting there eventually. Right, right. So, so I thought it was interesting from a character standpoint that Eddington doesn't see the benefit of being specialized, you know. Right. Good point. A colony has been attacked, and the assumption at this point, while they're on patrol, is that they are at war with the Zincethi. It's on. It's a hot war, you know. They get like one of those classic audio distress calls, which I feel like you're always receiving these calls.

You never actually see anyone send one out. Like the enterprise has never been under attack and Picard goes like, get me on screen and just goes like, this is the enterprise, we're under attack any ship in the area if you could come to our, like that never happens, right? But it's always the call to action. It's true.

And so, yeah, they have to assume that the Zen-Kethi political situation has turned into one of a wars of adventure and that the defiant is going to be the only ship that is going to be able to rush to their aid. If they are to rush to their aid, the little D is not going to be performing flawlessly. And it feels like whenever anyone has a technical problem on the little D, all heads kind of swing towards Eddington and potential sabotage.

I know my eyes fell in this scene. Yeah, it's funny. When Otis starts trying to send out the call to another starship captain, Eddington is dead center in the frame, even though he's the furthest back in the frame. They start to realize they're having a lot of problems. The chief and Dax had back into the tunnels and they discover a sort of like vertiform city level tangle of wires in behind one of the panels. Nice callback. And these wires are like snaking around and like punching their way into stuff.

This is really well done how this looks I think. I agree. Kind of gross. It doesn't just look like wires. The wires look like they're living in a different way. Yeah, and I don't know if it's a CG thing. It looks a little better than this era of CG, right? Yeah, sure does. So I don't know exactly how they did it. Maybe they reversed the shot. Yeah.

And they're like pulling the wires out and then making it play backwards. So it looks like the wires pushing toward something. You can't just pull these things out because they are unfortunately protected by force fields. Yeah, and they're in everything. Like all of the systems are starting to be affected by this situation and getting the force fields down is a puzzle that is going to take a while to solve.

But also, they got to figure out how they got a board and who got them a board. Because Ryan is like, hey, listen, when we left the station, this stuff wasn't here. I checked. And I guess that's why he was in those tunnels. We had to establish that he would have been looking behind these panels. Good call. You know, the paranoia in this episode is pronounced enough that O'Brien fingers Bashir for this. Cisco asks O'Brien like, do you have any suspects? And Sobriand's like, well, I weirdly ran into Bashir in those tunnels early on and I thought it was weird that he was there. He is Julian. He is who I would ask about this. And so a plan is hatched to

to suspect him without suspecting him directly. They kind of do it in a group, right? Anyone who installed these devices would then be covered in tetrian particles. And so a plan is hatched to scan crew people for these particles, and if one were to detect them on a person, much like a gunpowder on a shooter, there would be your guy. Yeah, it's a very Columbo solution to the mystery.

It shows how sensitively they want to treat this suspicion, too, because you can't just ask Bishir if he's the saboteur, like, you need to do it in this way. It made a lot of sense to me. They scan everybody on the bridge and they're like working their way toward Bashir. When they're about to scan Bashir, I loved that they showed Eddington reaching for his desk-wester like. Yeah.

I mean, he wasn't privy to the conversation that it might be Bashir. So I don't know why he wants to kill Bashir so badly. I mean, I could understand of this for season one. It doesn't seem like a season three interest this point. Yeah, if it was George Pryman,

Lieutenant George Pryman, Starfleet security. Instead of Michael Edicton? Yeah. Krizhensky is the one who tests positive, and as soon as that is revealed, he goes gold. And then into the duct work. Yeah, how do you think they shot that? They dumped a bunch of molasses down through one of the ducts

and then played it in reverse? This is an effect that's getting better and better, I think. Yeah, I agree. And they use changeling effects a lot in this episode and to good effects. It's scary and exciting to contemplate being on a ship with one of these creatures slithering around through the vents and stuff. It could literally be anywhere. And that's the paranoia of that is really well ratcheted, I think.

This is the moment that the episode changes. And this might be the moment where the series changes because once you introduce a body snatchers or puppet masters or this this type of monster movie To a show like there's no unringing this bell the idea that a changeling could be anyone or anything It is so different than how Odo was introduced in that yeah like he's always been friendly You're never paranoid around him but this changes everything right now because they can't control the ship anymore.

It's cloaked in a weapon's hot. This changeling has control of it and they have no idea how to find the changeling now that it's gone into the decked works. Yeah, I mean, like the changeling has been two steps ahead of them the entire time. So when they come up with the idea of, we'll figure out who did it. Like they haven't even considered that it's a change-ling, you know? Right. Like this really comes out of left field in a way that is surprising and amazing.

They quickly surmise that this is part of, like, this is a pretty standard triangulation strategy by the founders, right? They're wanting to start these proxy wars between the federation and its allies with each other and with other races so to weaken them so they won't be as powerful as a threat to the founders themselves. Right. The founders are going on social media and exploiting existing tensions between different races in order to destabilize the political situation overall. You could see how this would be effective. Yeah, and especially effective against the party of racism.

Right. Sorry, I got distracted. What were we talking about? Don't worry. Yeah, and especially effective against the party of racism. Right Sorry, I got distracted. What were we talking about? Don't worry. This Cloak of paranoia is such that like if you don't see someone on screen You are made to feel as though they are in danger Like much is made from here until the end of the episode of like the need to pair up Yeah, and go out in threes and stuff. And it's almost as if you don't see a character in a while, something bad is going to happen,

and that's what happens to DAX. Yeah. She gets bonked on the nog and she is in a coma and will need to be kept under for a few days. So it's not to suffer brain damage when she comes out of recovery because they're just trying to get the ship under control at this point. And if the changeling has his way, it seems like what he's gonna do is pull up

at this Zenkethi planet, decloak and start firing on everything from the Federation's warship. That will not be a good look for the Federation. So, like the stakes are basically like if we can't like get control of the ship back, we'll probably have to start thinking about doing a self-destruct so that we don't start a war because this is a needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few type of scenario. There's a lot of fun vignettes here where like the plan is to go deck to deck, jeffries tube to jeffries tube with phaser rifles tuned in such a way

that they will harm the changeling or I guess kill it. Like, I don't know if they feel like death is a possible outcome with this. The main idea being finding this changeling before it can do any greater harm and then hopefully getting back control their ship. Fasers have been set low enough to prevent damaging equipment,

but high enough to affect the changeling. And I don't think that we knew some of the mechanics of this. There's a scene that's teaching us about the rules of this problem. And one of the things Odo says is, if you scan me when I'm a rock, I will read as a rock, which means that even if the changeling is in the person of somebody they recognize, like they don't really have a way of figuring that out. And-

The hardest object I've ever become is Jake Sisko's penis. Hahaha. Things get considerably softer. The older I go. Commander Sisko's like, thank you Constable. We are taught through a conversation between Eddington and Odo. Right. Yeah, which is, you know, kind of comes across as a little xenophobic on Eddington's part

when he says, like, what would you do? Like, if you were him Where would you go and he's like well, I'm not him and It's a little bit of Eddington going like yeah, but you're one of them, you know, yeah, you're a they not a we I mean I never got I never really got the sense that Eddington was doing anything besides getting a trying to get a tactical advantage. Like, I don't think he was like, othering Odo like that. I think he's desperate to gain some sort of advantage here, but I thought what the scene did most is just show how little Odo knows about himself or his people.

Like he is utterly unhelpful in a situation like this. He's also, you know, weird way unable to unable to use his own strengths to solve this problem. I kind of think that what he should be doing is coursing through the vents as a goo. Seeing if you can find this guy, but instead he is in humanoid form running around with everybody. And what they're doing is kind of like systematically going through the ship. They've put most of the crew under lock and key to just sort of like eliminate the possibility of them being changelings.

And they're going through firing like low intensity phaser bursts down hallways and into rooms to see if it like provokes the change-link to reveal itself? Broke, I'm telling you, there's something moving in, it ain't us! It sure seems like you remember the barri-on sweep in that TNG episode? Yeah, Starship Mine, right? Yeah, I wonder if something like that would be, could be deployed in this way. Yeah. Because it is wildly inefficient while you're underway to do something like this.

Yeah. So everybody's in these two person teams. They've got their rifles. I liked when he said you'll use phaser rifles and he holds one up like as a visual aid. Just in case anybody here in Starfleet didn't know, this is what one looks like. This is a phaser rifle. There are many like it. This one is mine.

My rifle is my best friend. We get the Mexican standoff scene that a story about body snatching promises. What a predicament! It's this boolean security guy, Cisco and Kira. Cisco's got guns on both of them, and they both got guns on him. The boolean thinks Kira is the changeling or potentially Cisco is, he's really not holding his,

his fear together that well. He's like, God, I should have done what Uncle Mott said and become a barber. Fuck this. It devolves into a forced mess hall blood draw. Not be guard, not be guard, not be guard, not be guard, not be guard. Exactly. It devolves into a forced mess hall blood draw. Because the thinking is like, one thing Odo mentions is that the deal with his body is that once you separate a piece of it from the rest, it goes gold. So it goes gold automatically. And so a blood

draw is a pretty effective way to figure out if someone's a changeling, because as soon as you do that draw, if you get gold in the vial, it means you've got a changeling on your hands. And they'll turn to Odo and they're like, thanks Odo, that would have been great for you to bring up at the beginning of the episode. Yeah. But they need a, they need this repetition, right? The repetition of what happens on the bridge earlier on, where, where they do the, the tricordering of the tetrian particles.

But this one seems like it's actually going to work. Yeah. So Bashir is going around doing reverse hyposprae to everybody. And we get to see Boolean blood as blue, which was fun. We get to see everybody give blood and then he goes for Eddington. And Eddington's blood goes gold.

Uh-oh. You better come with us. He's the bad guy after all, Adam. Or is he? Yeah, cause he doesn't turn into a spinning top of, of goo the way the ambassador did. And he doesn't really protest the way a guilty guy would. Right. Like he's just trying to reason with them. He's like, guys, like, why would I be going with you to

be locked up if I was up if I was that guy? This was a great moment in the episode as they're walking Eddington to the to the break, because the doors swing open, you see a second Bashir, and then instantaneously you realize that a version of the story that Odo tells about a piece of himself being removed and turning gold is what we saw happen with the Bashir double. Like, he took a bit of himself, he made himself into both Bashir, the hyposprey, and the vial, and by taking himself out and putting himself in the vial

and turning gold, like, there's a math to this fake out that is so great. It's so effective. Right. And this goes a little slow in the draw. He shoots a big scar in the wall as he's trying to hit the changeling as it turns from bishier to changeling and goes up into one of the vents. But you could kind of, you could kind of forgive him because he's, he is being forced to do this crazy math on like what he just witnessed, you know. The math he should be doing is the right room

to do the blood draw in because say, say they do the blood draw back in the mess hall and it goes a little more by the book and they actually find a changeling. into the vents he goes again like you need to be doing the blood draw in a brick don't you? You really do so because they made that terrible mistake they realize that they're not really look it's not really looking likely that they'll be able to stop the ship from provoking this attack. So he registers his self-destruct. Kira does the first officer I concur. And now the clock is ticking. They've got like 10 minutes till self-destruct because the

planet is like 12 minutes away. The episode does a great job in setting up that ticking clock here. But it doesn't do a great job in the episode up until this point, because there was another clock in place here too, right? Like the ship on its way to go begin a war that they're incapable of stopping. I wish a little bit more was made about their proximity to their destination so that you could sort of butt these clocks up against each other. You know what I'm saying? Like you think you've got it solved, but the clock goes from taking it a normal speed to ticking a lot faster.

Ticking at double time. Yeah, I mean, I felt I felt like it was established. They just didn't check in. Yeah. Often. Yeah. Another thing that becomes clear in this around this point is that Dax was never in a coma. It was just that the facsimile of Dr. Bashir gave her a ton of drugs and made her go to sleep. Now, the only thing that can save them is if O'Brien can get the force fields down from the Verdeform city pipes in the vents. And so he's working away in engineering on some kind of device that's going to like shut down all the fields on the ship and a couple of photos show up. And it's another Star Trek 6 moment. It's Kirk versus Kirk.

I love it. Isn't it about time you became something else? I wondered watching this. There's so many like. I love it. This isn't about time you became something else. I wondered watching this. There's so many glowing surfaces in engineering. It was sometimes hard for me to tell if they were copying one auto in or not. Because there's at least one shot where there's a camera move that pans across the scene

and there's an auto on the left-hand side of frame that we then lose and pick up another auto on the right-hand side of frame. And I was wondering if that was like a motion control shot or a comp. Oh yeah. And it's hard to tell because the crap in the background is like glowing and flickering. So it kind of looks like a comp even when it's definitely not a comp. All of this more fork at this moment in time is so much more difficult than it is today.

The attention to detail you need to have about actor position and where your limbs are for this stuff. Like if you miss, if you miss by an inch, you need to retake it. And like, it's just amazing that you could do these effects right now on your home computer where at the time it is just so much more difficult. Yeah. What makes this scene different from Star Trek 6 is that O'Brien doesn't really seem to

care about the problem happening behind him. Like he's on such a timeline that he must solve this problem or else they lose the ship. I've more important things to do than play. Choose the changeling. To the exclusion of the problem happening in the room, which is great. He's like, honestly, I don't give a shit. I'm gonna go back to work.

You guys figure this out for yourselves. I love that. Yeah, have your little changeling fight. Yeah. And have that fight they do. They are like kind of... I can't believe I kissed you. Must have been your lifelong ambition.

As the fields drop on all the control panels that have been compromised, Odo and this changeling have a fight. And this changeling is kind of like, he's got like a very similar costume to changelater. And they're having like a fight where they're like, they're like gooing on each other. And it's I guess they're trying to resist linking

with each other or something. Yeah, there's like a golden hand job being given and then returned. It's weird because like you get that terminator to effect and so often in that movie the goo is is weaponized as like a sharp object or Something but but like the weapon here is penetration right and And it's at a certain point. Odo gets an entirely goode up, bad changeling over to the warp core. And he pushes him into it and he gets warflighteninged.

And then kind of reforms as the dusty, flaky version of a changeling that we've seen Odo get to a couple of times and he was sick. And peeling. Oh, that's just disgusting. No bad for this actor. He's in this episode for like three minutes and he had to go through two entire full body loaths. I thought he looked a lot like a pizza stone.

I don't know if you're like I am, but I keep a pizza stone at the bottom of my oven just at all times. Yeah, that's the right move. But boy, oh boy, that pizza stone at the bottom of my oven, just at all times. Yeah, that's the right move. But boy oh boy, that pizza stone can look pretty rugged and ashen. The longer it's in an oven, and that's what this guy's face looked like, pretty flaky.

Yeah, and flaky or still is when he dies. He turns into a pile of ash. Bernie and itchy flaky face. Ha ha ha. Solution. Neutrogena T-Jail. It works. Odo is the first changeling to ever kill a changeling.

Hey! Congratulations! Good job! But the auto-destruct sequence gets turned off. They're not going to go start a war with his end-cathy. Good feelings for everybody but Odo. You really want to do this. Here. Now, okay, okay, let's do it. The coup never even happened. That part was a lie. They were getting bad intel from

from their they just took this ambassador. This ambassador's word for truth and that just seems insane. He's not part of the he's not part of Starfleet. This poor ambassador. And Jacket or Starfleet. This poor ambassador was kidnapped on his way to Rysa. They should know by now you never take a shuttle alone to a vacation. You can't do it. Yeah. Do we know for sure that Cisco has actually been given the rank of captain?

Ooh. Hahaha. Like three episodes from now, some Admiral's there and's like, Captain says go, no, no, no. That's not what my records show. Wow, that would be so fucked up. Hahaha. We, but we had a party. Hahaha.

Everyone was there.. Everyone was there. My son was there. Oh, Brian said it was the best captain on the fleet. Well, you're not. I, I told my girlfriend. Oh, no. Oh, man. We get a very conspiracy-toned ending to this bend because Odo reveals that the last words of

this changeling to him were that you're too late, we are everywhere, and then we kind of pull back to the exterior of the station and we get our end credits. And... I got legitimate chills. Well done. Wow. Did you like this episode, Ben? I liked it a lot. I thought it did a good job with how scary it is.

And it's a fun, you know, the Star Trek has failed a few times to do an episode that sets the table for something bigger and also make that episode interesting in its own right? Yeah. And I think this episode really succeeds at both things. I also like the app, but I wonder if, if like letting this genie out doesn't change, like it remains to be seen whether or not this changes the show for the better

Or if it changes everything for the worst because Unless they're able to get their arms around this changeling problem It's going to be the centerpiece of every episode from here on out which could be cool You can't have monster the week when there's an existential threat all the time forever. Yeah, and that's what they've established here. So, and it's not like the nobins where you can easily figure out based on someone's worm diet and a thing sticking out of their neck whether or not they are who they say they are.

This is impossible. Yeah, it's going to be like gattica. Every time you go to work, you have to give a little blood sample. Yeah. Yeah, legit chills for me at the end. Tough first day for Cisco, huh? As Captain? Yeah.

Yeah. Trial by fire. Yeah, I think he did a nice job though. I think he did as good as he could. Do you want to see if we have any priority one messages for this app, Adam? Let's try our best to read them. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on this.

A supplement on? A supplement. A supplement. Yes, extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, couple of priority one messages here. Yes, extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship! Adam, couple of priority one messages here. The first one is of a commercial nature. Great!

It goes like this. John Mould, Stan Moren, and Guy English talk shit about Arrow and other superhero shows on the speedy Arrow podcast. The dick jokes are more oblique. Bent Dicks, if you will. Nobody is shooting straight. Here's the pitch. Congratulations, Ben and Adam on 10 million downloads. Made the world a little better by sharing your embarrassment. By 100 million downloads, Kevin was making real dolls of himself. Never go full Kevin.

I never give up that spark of embarrassment. Thanks for sharing. Ah, wow. That's a mighty kind. This came back in October of 2018 when we crossed the big 10 million download mark. And it looks like the speedy arrow podcast is just sending us a congratulations. Very cool. Here's the call to action. Lyssa Gore, Simpson, and Merlin Mann have a new show called Friendly Fire.

Go to iTunes for Friendly Fire. Friendly Fire on iTunes. Friendly Fire. I'm not familiar with that third name, Ben. You might have to bring me up to speed on what that guy's deal is. Oh yeah, I think that might be one of those filters that you've set up for yourself. Hey, that's great. Happy to salute another podcast out there.

Making it work. Yeah, thanks guys. And I think I recognize those names from people we've interacted with a bunch on Twitter. Yeah. recognize those names from people we've interacted with a bunch on Twitter. Um, and, uh, and good peeps, so give the, uh, give the speedy arrow podcast to listen. Ben, our second priority when message is of a personal nature it is from the Shimoda corner of the Friends of Disodotable at your wedding. Uh. And, uh, the message is for the bridge in parentheses blonde and groom parentheses marbles.

Some thinking that might have been meant to be bright instead of bridge. This could be something that was typed on a phone and auto corrected. So there you go. Message goes like this. Drunk Shimoda Logs, start at 722-28.4 Congratulations to blonde and marbles on their wedding! This P1 is being typed from the hasher and friends of DESTORO Drunk Shimoda table. Um, we're all drinking Beverly Crusher's here!

Did the code 47 beat the P1? Hopefully my spelling won't be that bad. That explains a lot, Ben! Did the code 47 beat the P1? Hopefully my spelling won't be that bad. Hahaha. That explains a lot, Ben. Wow. Urban, Ugg, Beta Z wedding trial at midnight? On,

on, raw! Hahaha. Wow. I love, I love a P1 message sent from a wedding. Yeah. That's,

as it's, as it's table is getting drunk well played It's a drunk dial, but for text Yeah Yeah, give us more of those yeah, I love that oh man that That commercial P1 If you search for the speedy arrow Podcast you won't find it, but the Speedy Arrow cast, you will find it.

And that looks like we're on our friends at the incomparable network. Oh nice. There's show, yeah. Good job. It shows over there. Yeah. Well, if folks want to drunk dial us or send us a nice note

like that, it's easy to do the head to maximum fund dot org slash jumbo tron it's a hundred bucks for a personal and two hundred for a commercial and they help us cover the cost of producing this show A Greatest Gen Live Show is something you don't want to miss. Why? Well, it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment.

Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it! The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info. That's GreatestGenTour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense.

We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the spaceweards. Pat Noswald. Could I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Non-Giani. 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. Oh, 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 neck. But I'm here and we need to get on this. We've got to get on the art. It is about terrain, about a spout to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end,

so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boats. We came two by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on maximumFun.org. Oh, there's another smartest one, smartest one. Let the budget go for control, Shimoda. Oh, you make the warp drive home, warp drive home. You give up the ship to a child, Shimoda.

Drunk, Shimoda. Yeah, I didn't intend to go into this much detail earlier in the show because I think I gave it away. It's O'Brien and that Odo V Odo scene. Just like wanting to get his work done. Wow, really the craziest shit is happening behind him. He couldn't be less impressed by the idea of two changelings in the room with him. Yeah. I just loved his need to get the work done. It is that I love this, I love his incredulity in this moment. I thought it was a really great character developing moment for O'Brien. Like I, I'm not sure I would have been able to guess what his reaction would have been before this.

Right. But going forward, I, I definitely know how he's going to respond to similar circumstances. So I'm giving it to O'Brien. What about you? He's a real grizzled warrior veteran, you know? Yeah. It's all about his work.

I'm giving it to Bashir and specifically the Bashir that got locked in that room. And managed to blow the door open in a, in a hail of sparks, like right at the moment that other Bashir was right outside the door. Yeah. Great, funny timing. And, you know, I just love that, that, that signature Bashir sense of comedic timing. Yeah, well played. What do we have coming up on the next episode, Ben?

The beginning of season four. Next episode is season four, episode one, the way of the warrior. When the Klingon Empire ends its peace treaty with the Federation, Cisco must help Klingon Starfleet Officer Worf decide where his loyalty's lie. We are now officially at the point of the show that I have not seen any of. Wow.

I never saw Deep Space Nine where Worf was on it. Damn. So I'm, I mean, this is a turning point for the show, right? This is Worf is Riker's beard here. Yeah. According to a lot of people. I'm wondering, so I'm looking at the runtime for this episode at him and say,

it's got an hour and 33 minute runtime. So it was a double app. And as far as I can tell, it was aired in that way. Do we make a double app for our show about it? Yeah, I think we do. Let's do it. Let's pack it in. It's a big one.

It's the next week is a big, big app. Great. I mean, in what way we will be doing that big, big app though, don't we? Yeah, we really do. All right, I'm clicking over to our beloved board game. Right now we are sitting on square 70. You're required to learn as you play, Role.

We've got a Quirks bar that's hitable. That's the only square of any particular type that's currently in range. I am rooting against that outcome, Ben. Chula! Did I win? Hardly. Wow, we skipped right over Quarx Bar. We are on square 73 because I have rolled a three. All right. We're getting near the top of this board, Ben.

I know. Very close to hitting that morn hammered. Yeah. Alright, buddy. Well, that'll be next week. Uh, looking forward to it. Do we have anybody we need to thank? So many people make this show possible, Ben.

I think you probably need to start with the music of the show, expertly made by Dark Materia and Adam Regusia. Yeah, I'm going to thank all the folks that leave nice reviews on Apple Podcasts and also the folks that go to MaximumFun.org slash Donate and support the show. We feel really lucky to have gotten as much amazing support out of our listeners as we have so far and we really appreciate people to do that. Yeah you guys make it happen so thank you so much. We got to thank our card daddy Bill Tilly who makes amazing trading cards for each and every

episode of the show. He goes on Twitter, puts the hashtag GreatestGen on those. Also our buddy JJ Lendle who has been making great portfolio prints of every episode of Deep Space 9, really gorgeous artwork. A lot of awesome fan art on the GreatestGen hashtag. Pretty amazing how that works weekend and week out. Yeah, can't believe it. Tons and tons of fun to be had. There's also Facebook groups and a Reddit sub

and all kinds of other online fora to talk to friends of DeSoto. You're confused by what's happened here. You can go to the greatest gen Wikia page. They go into great amounts of detail on just about every joke that we do on this show. If you write to us at drunkshamodagmail.com just know that we read every message that we get there unable to respond to every single one of them though.

Yeah but we appreciate it. Yeah sure do and with that we'll be back at you next time with another great episode. Start Trek Deep Space 9 and another episode of the greatest generation Deep Space 9. That introduces a new old character. Make it so. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture I can show. Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, artist owned Listener supported