The Greatest Generation - Pretty Chill for Assimilating Aliens (S4E18)

Episode Date: December 7, 2016

When Starfleet officers that five years previously were all on the same mission as Geordi start returning to the scene of the crime, disappearing crewmen is suddenly more than just a figure of speech. Now Geordi has to contend with the idea that he too may develop a dreaded case of lobster claw. Can Geordi CSI this mystery before it’s too late? Can’t Worf just put The Club on all the Previa’s steering wheels? Can Data stop reminding everybody that he’s an android? Where were they storing that Clip Show Device? It’s the episode that answers the question, why not Zoidberg?

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 friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdisotoforlabor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now let's get on with the show. Here's to the finest crew in a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison. Hello, I'm going to start the show by imploring all of our viewers that write for media organizations

to make sure that our show is in their best of 2016 lists. But I'm not going to do that because they already know. I want to tell you about a very funny conversation I had with my wife this week. Okay, so we're skipping the first part. We're going straight into the second part. Yeah, this is like, we're not doing that in Marin Open. We're doing this Marin Open. Okay.

So my wife, bless her heart, has never seen a frame of Star Trek the Next Generation, the subject of our podcast here. And I tweeted a little bit of this, but I wanted, you know, most people don't follow me on Twitter. And for good reason. Oh, those people have made a huge mistake. We were like doing the quaint old thing of channel surfing the other day.

And we flicked past an episode of Frazier that was on in reruns and Patrick Stewart was a a cameo character on this episode and she just goes data. Sincerely. Oh no. And I said that's actually Captain Picard and she's like well who are the characters on that show. There's data, there's Jordy, there's Shimoda. She's right about all those.

There's your characters. And I didn't know how to break it to her that Shimoda was only on one episode. She's like, you talk about him all the time. You didn't tell her the truth, did you? I did, because I didn't want her to like, I mean, as embarrassing as this whole thing has been for her, I don't want her to get further embarrassed. Wow, I mean, I would hate for her to,

well, I guess I would hate for her to watch the show and be disappointed that there wasn't as much Chamoda as she was expecting. Yeah. But also, I love the idea of her watching episode after episode expecting for him to come back. Did you make this guy up? So that was amusing. And then we watched somebody cooking something on TV for a little while and she says, what's the

ship called again? It's not the death star. That's in Star Wars, right? And I go, no, it's not the death star. And she's like, wait, don't tell me. And I was like, all right. She's like, it ends in an R, right? And I said, no, I don't, what? She's like, Voyager Explorer. She wound up guessing entrepreneur, which I think is hilarious. I think just to jump in here real quickly, like I want to interrupt the groans of 10,000 birds out there by saying that I've met Rachel several times before. She is a smart and capable and beautiful person through and through.

Yeah. But one of the ways that she is not a genius just might be having to do a Star Trek and tangentially like a little bit of the pop culture that we exist in. Yeah, I mean, she's not vastly younger than me, but she's, you know, enough younger than you that you probably didn't have any childhood shows in common. I just sort of, like, because we recently spent a couple days together when we were all visiting

together in California, like, I got the feeling that she just might have been cooler than me, like, I got the feeling that she just might have been cooler than me. Like, in her growing up. And that could account for the detachment that I think a lot of less than cool people have and use to form relationships with each other. Like, yeah. Like, this is the currency, the nerd currency that you that you share with someone to become friends And if you're cool, you don't necessarily You've got you've got rubles or something you've got you get a different currency to spread around socially

Yeah, so she didn't spend any part of her childhood knowing things about an imaginary universe Right and that like wouldn't have helped her even if she had yeah she doesn't need that I fucking did yeah like like like two crutches that connect to my forearms I needed this well anyways the other night we were out out to see a film and we walked past the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn. They knew basketball, arena, and the one that looks all rusty. She goes, God, that thing looks so futuristic. That thing looks like the entrepreneur. I am like 60% sure that she thinks that the enterprise is actually called the entrepreneur. There's a chance that she's like gas lighting me and she knows full well.

But... Well, on the chance that she may be listening, I hope she never stops that. That is hilarious. The entrepreneur D. Yeah. This isn't Kirk's entrepreneur. They'll precarious in charge. Oh wow.

It's an entrepreneur is a French word, isn't it? Sure. To go with its French captain. Well, and it also, like, it's not far off the mark, right? Like, enterprise is like a word that connotes business and success, you know? So, like, like, there's something kind of amazing about that, she guessed, entrepreneur.

The IPO alone will be enough to buy the ship. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Well, what do you say we get into our episode, Adam? These are the voyages, Ben, of the Starship Entrepreneur. It's season 4, episode 18, Identity Crisis. This is kind of a fun cold open. It's a video playback of some Starfleet officers. Most of them we don't know, but Jordy is in there. They're exploring a planet and Jordy is in a red shirt in this. And then we kind of, they're like, I don't know what they're looking for, they're looking for missing colonists or something.

And the camera pulls back and it turns out we've been watching this on a monitor in the observation lounge on the enterprise. And we are in a McLaughlin group and we didn't even know it. If you want. It's, yeah, they're sort of watching a CSI episode right there. Yeah, they're doing some forensic evidence investigation They're watching an episode of another star Trek show. Yeah They do this all the time. Yeah

So you get caught up so the the backstory that we quickly come to know is that this officer who's giving the presentation Lieutenant Commander Susanna Layton, saying that right, Layton, is looking into the disappearance of every single other person that is in this video aside from her and Jordy. And they've all jaked shuttle crafts and headed back to this planet that this video was taken on, which is Tar-Chanan 3. Tar-Chanan 3? Probably Tar-Chanan.

Yeah, let's go with that. So there's a lot of a lot of shuttle crafts getting jaked in this episode. Like, maybe more than ever. Yeah, the run-in-out-of-previous Ben. Yeah, well fortunately these aren't all coming from the Enterprise. Some of them are coming from other ships or star bases or whatever. But yeah, like these offices are like, you know, like salmon, returning to the headwaters of this mystery and disappearing in the process. This is going to be the end of the road

for a lot of salmon. That's a great way to describe it. Thanks Adam, that's why I get the big bucks. There's a cozy familiarity between this Lieutenant Commander Layton and Jority which leads me to believe that he has not stalked her before or yet because like they have a totally great friendship going and she is not creeped out by him at all it made me feel happy that Jordy could have something like this and not fuck it up.

It's a weird episode because I think that if galaxy's child had not come so recently in the show order I think that this would be an episode about a healthy relationship that Jordy has with a woman. Yeah. But every interaction I feel is colored by what we just saw. And at one point, she's losing her mind and legitimately needs to be restrained.

And he restrains her. Where are you going? Suzanne. using her mind and legitimately needs to be restrained and he restrains her. And it's like very upsetting. It's totally gross and weird. I think there are a couple of powers at work here. There is the head cannon that we've come up with for Jordy that may or may not be reasonable and true. But also, I think the binge works against our feelings about

Jordy here because season four is definitely the season of Jordy. Yeah. And we've because season 4 is definitely the season of Jordy. Yeah. And we've gotten several episodes just in this season alone that we've watched fairly close together that paints a pretty disturbing picture of our friend Jordy LaForge. Yeah. Seriously. Well anyways, one of the missing shuttle craft is

entering Tarkanan airspace and the enterprise shows up just in time to not be able to do anything about it And this is like this is like a total mirror of when Jake stole the shuttle like like Bacard is trying to talk I think it's lieutenant Hickman that's Trying to land it through, you know, entering the atmosphere safely. And I guess the enterprise is too far away for a transporter or tractor beaming. And so he's just going to try and talk him through it. But Lieutenant Hickman is non-responsive.

And I guess the channel craft hits the atmosphere at two steep and angle. Lieutenant Higman, you must do what I tell you. Reduce your velocity and bring your craft to a positive pitch of 20 degrees. Now! The shuttle is entering the lower ionosphere, sir. And pops. Man, hops. He dead. There goes another Previa. Oh man.

We gotta do something about these Previas getting jacked. Maybe the thing to do is like put put a primer door panel on all of the previors, so they're a little bit less desirable. It's, I mean, we have low jack right now, Ben. Did they decide at some point to just get rid of that technology? This is also a ship that got spotted by a transport vessel on its way. Like, just go get it. What do you mean it's running away?

Just go fucking get it. You have starships. Oh man, yeah, and this Hickman guy is not responding to any hails at all. Picard is just getting more and more urgent with his messaging. He's like, pull up, man. Hickman, you're blowing it here.

And yeah, so they watch this guy buy the farm and they scan the surface. There's two more previas down there. And they're like, well, at least this isn't a total loss. We can go get those other previas. Even if they're salv, well, at least this isn't a total loss. We can go get those other preffies Even if they're salvaged title, I think we can get some money out of them Yeah, we'll put them in the penny saver. We'll get some money They beam down and they put a search party together and they're looking for the other starfleet guys that are missing. They can't find them, but they do find some like watered up and muddy uniforms.

And some three toe footprints. Yeah. Pretty creepy shit. Yeah. A real bummer. That's $6,000 worth of uniform that is totally ruined. And you know, not to mention the fact that lobster claws are now being heavily foreshadowed. I mean, I mentioned the season of Jordy being season four, but I might

want to rewrite that as the season of lobster hands. It's a real late motif. Yeah, I think we were talking about the idea that it could potentially be the lobster club box set, but I don't know that we need to do that. We can just call it lobster class season.

Yeah, it truly is. It's, you know how every season of a long running show has a different picture on the season box, but usually it's like the main character and then an ancillary character. This one's definitely Picard and a hand with three fingers on it. Yeah, yeah. That poster paints itself, baby. What's your favorite season, Ben? Season four is pretty good. I don't know if I'm going to be able to say that definitively until we're done though. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to choose. I mean, it's made the best case for itself so far. Wouldn't you say? How would it make that case?

By having less shitty episodes than other seasons. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, like the metric has become the lack of bad episodes versus I think the myriad great episodes. I don't feel like season four has got a ton of great episodes in it. It's it's lows are just less low than other seasons so far. Yeah, it's less it's less miserable to sit through. Oh man that's a sticker that should go on the box. Now with 30% less misery. Benjamin R. Harrison of the Greatest to say that, Adam. Well, just Rachel, say that too.

She wouldn't know who Leonard Moulton is. Come on. Yeah, she. She think that was Jean Shallad. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, the away team comes back with some non-definitive evidence that the other two people are down there on the planet, but it's a mystery.

And this is a fun mystery episode where a lot of, you know, technologically appropriate mystery solving goes on. And part of the investigation lands on the doctor who finds skin cells on the uniforms. Yeah. And I guess she also finds them in Layton's body. And the doctor and data are looking to figure out what species this is that has three toes and this weird type of skin cells. Layton and Jordy are working together on trying to figure out what it is that is drawing people back to this planet.

What's flipping a switch in their head that says, like, I got to get back to that planet. And the captain is like, there's something going up on this planet, so nobody's going down there until we figure that out. And it's not long before late in the start trying to make excuses for getting back down there. You know, she's like, we can't do our investigation from up here. The fucking answers are on the surface, man. This, the tension is being raised through both her, her insistence to go down and sort of an invisible clock, right? Many years have passed between when the OA team was on this planet for the first time and

their return. And so latent and jordy are sort of wondering when that buzzer's going to go off in their heads. Like, this happens to everyone. Eventually, my number's up. When's it going to happen? And so the urgency is really being spurred here. And it isn't long before latent starts displaying these symptoms. Right.

And it's also got data pretty worked up. There's a pretty bad scene where the doctor asked data if he's like anxious about the situation and data has to re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re explain that he's an android and doesn't have emotions. You're worried about Jordy aren't you? I'm an android. It is not possible for me. Beaut feel anxiety. I really didn't like that scene It was a total turn to camera like for those of you who haven't watched every episode of Star Trek the next generation

Right, I should tell you that it's like he said have you been watching doctor Because we've been over this. Yeah, yeah. Bad. She is very condescending to be like any way that that rose me the wrong way too. Yeah. Data kind of redeems himself later though, because Jordy is like doing some work in the Shimoto Memorial Corner.

And data just comes up behind him. And like totally spooks, Jordy. Jordy, may I inquire how your investigation is proceeding? And it's like a funny little moment that like, I mean, it plays a little bit into what's going on, but not even that much, and was really charming, I thought. I really love how much action the Shimemota corner has been getting this season. It feels like it is a strong third set on the show now.

Yeah, it's in there. So Susanna, the Lieutenant Commander there that's helping them is good more and more anxious and eventually she like bales out and collapses and Jordy runs over and I guess he's probably checking for a nub in on the back of a neck just to be sure. Yeah, you got to do that. You just like I bet in Starfleet, it's it's fairly standard protocol to just do a nub in check every, you know, five or six hours on everybody in your section. I'm sure for a while they consider dropping the collar, like dropping that mandarin collar into maybe a little notch in the back. Yeah. A back V. Yeah. A deep back V. Yeah. I like that. They scrap that idea.

Yeah. A few of the few of the crewmen with with back hair protested in a pretty big way. Yeah. Well, Susanna in lieu of a nub in has weird blue veins and her hands have gone lobster. Dr. her hands have gone full lobster. Blub it's wrong with that! Yeah, Ida. That's a really like, that is like a D minuszoidberg that's that sucked. Sorry.

It's the bestzoidberg you've got under the circumstances. Sometimes you don't get thezoidberg you want. You get thezoidberg you need. Yeah, that's the thezobrick we uh we deserve right now and so we must hunt so I'd break because you can take it. Oh! Anyways the investigation has to continue but Susanna is now confined to 6 Bay and she's worsening pretty quickly. She goes from being veiny to like having loaf all over her face and veins all over her body. Eventually, like they discover that she's got some kind of weird

bioluminescence in her skin. If you shine a flashlight at her, her skin will glow for a little while. It's not looking good. And everything that the doctor is doing to try and slow this down is apparently having no effect. And he's like, oh my god, this is terrible. It's gonna happen to me.

This happened to one of my best friends. And Picard and Beverly are like, look man, I'm thinking we should probably confine you to the Six Bay so we can get our arms around this thing. And Jordi has a pretty great scene here with the two of them. He's like, what would you do Captain? Would you sit it out here in Six Bay or try to learn what it is that's got you? Maybe stop it.

I would prefer to stay out of Six Bay and go work on the problem and Picard finds this is a pretty sensible plea so they'll let Jordy go. This doesn't exactly forgive everything up until now though, which is a pattern of jaking shuttle crafts and taking control of ships by the people who are on this planet who were metamorphizing, morphizing. It would be really fun if they just cut to a scene of wharf in the shuttle bay, putting clubs on the steering wheels of all the

previas. That's just it. Ben, they do nothing to prevent what they know is coming. Like, Jordi is like, you know, you could always just check up on me every once in a while to make sure I'm still on the ship. Even though a couple of episodes ago, Beverly has the computer audibly say what Picard's medical condition is,

like second by second. Like, they could do a little bit more, but they don't. Nope. Wouldn't move the narrative forward. Would it? Adam? No, it sure wouldn't. This is like one of my favorite sequences, maybe in the whole of Star Trek, because it's

him solving a mystery with really cool tools. Yeah. And it's, so he goes back and he's like looking at the surveillance footage that they have been looking at the entire time and he notices this weird shadow that he can't explain in the shot. And this is like super well done because it's in there for sure it's a weird shadow, but it's, it's not clear what's casting it and they do a good job of making it look real and like and look like something that's

settled that you wouldn't see the first time. That's always a really hard balance to strike in production like something that a character has to notice later after we've already seen it a bunch of times. It's either going to be like embarrassingly obvious or like incredibly obscure, but not like the perfect amount of subtlety and I think they really nailed this. But he goes to Holodeck III and he like recreates the scene.

He really like fully leaps broms it up. His instinct to create ways to solve problems in the holodic a violation of his parole though? Well, it definitely made me rethink about that, which was like not helping the fact that otherwise this would have been just like a pretty like fine, okay, healthy interaction he was having with the Susanna character. Yeah. Just change everything.

Yeah, it just changes everything. It colors the whole, like everything he does from now on. But yeah, so what he does is like he starts eliminating characters, and eventually he discovers that this shadow is still there with all of the people in the shot missing and extrapolating that the thing casting it might be the same height as him. He has the computer make a, you know, it's best guess at a 3D representation of what that thing would be. And it's like this spooky gray character.

It's like not spooky gray character. Like, it's like not even a character. It's like the outline of a body in three dimensional space that appears in the middle of this scene. And it becomes clear that there was an invisible alien there when they were down on that planet five years ago. Kind of looks like a broken lava lamp. It's really creepy. It's effectively creepy for It's effectively creepy,

for sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, this episode, it takes some good lessons from the movie Alien. Like there's all this kind of body horror, thematic stuff happening where the thing that is, the threat is already inside them. Yeah. Yeah, the time bomb story. But also it's such a cool metaphor for disappearance. The characters are disappearing, they're worried about disappearing, and these creatures that they are turning into actually disappear. Like it's really fun.

It's really like cool writing that doesn't have a lot of shitty holes in it, which is nice for a change. Yeah, how about that? Yeah. So yeah, like this discovery comes like basically not soon enough because Jordy pitches over and they like cut to back of neck and he's he has also developed the blue veins and then he lifts up

his hand he gone lobster as well Adam oh god I'm coming down! The lobster is spread. This is where the big payoff for their terrible security apparatus comes though. Because we cut back to Six Bay and Beverly's slowly making breakthroughs about what's happening to Susanna on the BioBed. They've wheeled over a bunch of gear to help figure it out including a clip show device I totally would which will live show device in my notes. That's really funny Like in case they have to go to clip show they've got that at the ready. I think that's important Actually, I called it clip show rig

Yeah, oh man. Yeah that that was like in a corner, you know, in one of the in one of the hangers on the Paramount lot, they just like, hey, we're doing some medical stuff in this episode. Why don't we get that clip show thing over here? Look guys, that took to maybe three hours to make. So we're not just going to throw that away. hours to make. So we're not just going to throw that away. Yeah, so they've pretty much reversed the thing and they're like, this is great. Let's get Jordy in here. We'll do the same thing to him and we'll be on our way. And they start trying to radio him up. No answer. The last place he was, he was as far as the ship is concerned, is in the holodeck and there's no transporter record, there's no jaking been reported.

But cards like this is very exciting, this is what we were expecting by not keeping an eye on Jordy the entire time. Very good. And the doctor's ordinary. Maybe it's not that there's something wrong with Jordy, but maybe there's something wrong with the universe. And everybody's like, shut up, doctor. So they send a Dustbuster Club to the holodeck and they fan out and start a search, which is the dumbest way to look for something in the holodeck. It occurs to me that the Dustbuster Club is a great name to give this group because

they're always cleaning up the messes of the plot. Like, if they had just acted sensibly 20 minutes ago, there would be no need. Yeah. Well, they don't take the step of turning off the holodeck and then seeing what is left. They just walk in there and they're like, well, we'll have to search behind all these trees of brush and whatnot. You search the structure. I will take the perimeter. It could take hours. They, as they're looking, presumably invisible jjordi slips out because not long after the doors open in the transporter room and predator invisibility mode

Jury runs in beats the beats up the transporter operator and initiates a transport beaming himself down to Tarkan and three. Yeah it is it's sort of uh look I think we've been very complimentary about Levar Burton's body up until now, so I don't want this to come out as super cruel, but it's sort of a Toby Predator situation running into that transporter room, isn't it?

Yeah. Like sort of grimace predator, he's very pear-shaped. Yeah, maybe they put the green screen suit on over the uniform, so it's like a little bunchier than you would want it to be. Hey, is this okay? I feel like it's really bunching on the sides. Not Lavaar, it's cool. Like, we're just gonna cop it out. It's fine. You're gonna be invisible, dude. No time for vanity. We gotta get you on set. They gotta go down to the planet and find them now. And they're like, data. Can you rig up a way for us to see him in the dark?

Because he's going to be invisible. And data is like, yeah, I can probably put a UV filter on a flashlight. And so they cut to this really weird scene in engineering where data is in like almost weirdly deliberate slow motion putting pieces together in this flashlight. It's like, like we know that he can do isolinear chip reorganization at turbo speed. And he's like, he's like gingerly looking through this UV lens as though to check it for dust and scratches. It's like, well, just put it together, man.

Like how hard is it to put a filter on a fucking flashlight? And they're like, data, how much longer is this going to take? And he's like, oh, it's going to take two minutes. It's also a thing that's a little too transparent from the prop department. Like it combines two things, two different tools that we saw earlier on in the episode. Like we get close-ups on these flashlights several times in the opening scene,

and then we just get that combo with sort of a stick, like a handheld stick later on. Like I wish they had come up with something new for this scene, but they didn't. It would have been better. Yeah. But they go down It would have been better. Yeah. But they go down there and the flashlight works. Like, initially, they're like, who's anybody even here, but they start, you know, start

panning around with the flashlight and they find a whole bunch of these hobbling husky aliens. Susanna's helping, and she's not holding one of these lights. She seems to have some sort of mental connection to these other creatures. Like she's sort of half recovered but not recovered all the way. So she's got her link somehow to them.

Yeah, and I guess like in kind of going through it, she's come to understand that this is the way that this species reproduces. It kind of turns adult members of other species into them by inserting this incredibly hard to detect virus into them. Yeah, it's almost exactly like what the Borg do except for some reason worth studying instead of destroying. Yeah, well, and also unlike the Borgs, these aliens seem content once that's accomplished to like hang out in like a campsite.

Yeah, yeah. Just singing, singing songs by the campfire, heating up some cocoa. They're pretty chill for assimilating aliens. Playing some three string guitar. Yeah. Making some very simple to make gloves with three fingers. Yeah, that's an easy knitting project even if you only have three fingers to do it with. So with some with some tender coaxing Susanna is able to convince fully alienized Jordy to take her hand and come back to the ship he gives her a big hug and I guess they beamer up and and him along with her and And that's it, like they're gonna have to call the other

Starfleet officers that are missing a loss, but... Warp is like, yep. Yeah, everybody with a speaking role managed to make it through okay. Which is great. They give Jordy the same cure that they gave Susanna. Jordi's feeling great about his prognosis from there. Yeah. How do you think this process changed Jordi? I mean, I think that's the thing about Jordi is that he almost never experiences any change. Like, right. A lot of the other characters like, I mean, you know, if Worf receives discommentation in one episode,

that remains true two episodes later. But, you know, like, which already has been through all these things where he's supposed to have like PTSD or, you know, his entire body has been taken over in this episode and been like mostly transformed on a genetic level and it's like Yeah, it's like I don't I don't know if it will I don't know if we will ever hear about it again It's really strange how Jordy Get to turn a bottle episodes and his character development also remains in the bottle. Yeah

He gets that short shrift in a way that I don't feel like a lot of the main characters get the others anyway. Yeah. It's weird. Well, Picard promises that they're going to put some quarantine beacons on the planet. and the bottle is resealed, recorked. They dip the neck in wax to make sure that it looks like nobody has tampered with it and they fly off for another adventure in the galaxy. Did you like this episode, Ben? I think it's a really solid episode. There's so much to like about it. I think that we kind of have to watch this episode on its own terms, and that's hard because of galaxy's child.

But by itself, I think it's a very strong ep. I wish they did more with this. Like I think the Susanna latent character is such an interesting character. I wish she could more with this. Like I think the Susanna latent character is such an interesting character. I wish she could come back. Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of Jordi like mourning these friends of his that are turned into this alien forever.

You know, like how does somebody in a post-scarecity futuristic utopia mourn a really strange death like that? Cause they're not really dead, you know? Yeah, yeah. I hope you had more than a really strange death like that. Cause they're not really dead, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like what did, what, what's he go through to deal with that? I wanna know. Yeah, I mean his ability to have a healthy platonic relationship with someone, like makes me like,

Jordy a lot more. Yeah. For sure. This show, this episode, I mean, like, it does so many good things and so many bad things. Like this is the episode where they pull off a predator effect really well. This is also the episode where they stick a bunch of people in like purple slim good body suits and shoot them with UV light. And I feel like for a long time we've wanted practical aliens like give us all the practical effects It's so cool to see him but like when this is what you get I

Would rather not have them, you know I don't feel like the alien effect here is is good and yeah, that is the That's the part that sinks it for me. I love the interpersonal stuff. I love, like, it's real terror to see a terrible fake coming, like in slow motion, and I thought they played that part of the story really well. So I did like it with reservations. Nice. Well, I have some lights blinking here and there's only one thing that could mean, Adam. Is that an ultraviolet light? It's time to check for some priority one messages.

Okay. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. You need a supplement on that. supplement on that? supplement supplement Yes, extra. How do you interest alone? Could be enough to buy this ship! Well fuck, that was a false alarm at him.

Nobody bought a priority one message for today's episode and that means we're gonna have to shut the podcast down. Fair enough. Well, let's call this an early warning. If you'd like to keep the podcast going, what you got to do is go to maximumfund.org slash Jumbo Tron. It's a hundred bucks for a personal message, 200 for a commercial message. And it is an important part of how we convince our wives to let us keep doing this.

It's a critical part of a balanced breakfast. You got your toast, you got your orange juice, you got your coffee, you got your maximum fun-doddork slash jumbo trot. I'm a little slurry. Maximum fun-doddork slash jumbo trot. There you go. You got it, you got it that time. A Greatest Gen Live Show is something you don't want to miss. Why?

Well it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment. Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it! The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to GreatestGenTour.com to get more info.

That's GreatestGenTour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour. I'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 get 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 Nanjiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are already open. Just pull it out.

Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Whoa, Russ. Hey, baby, oh, I'm about to count you in mine. These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line and, boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good.

No, they do not, and they've such short nacks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this arc. Gotta get on the arc. Yeah. It was about to rain, thought it was about to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters.

We are podcasters. So it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Kerry? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end. So same like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boats. We came to by two. What do you think?

Ono Ross and Kerry available on MaximumFun and Outdoor. What is the part that we do next on the show? I believe it is when you say, Hey Ben to me. Hey Ben. What's that Adam? Uh, using a ultraviolet flashlight, were you able to find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Drunk Shimoda! Yeah, my Shimoda happened very close to the Jim Shimoda Memorial Corner, and it was Susanna that got the crown this time. When she collapses after kind of trying to store them out of engineering, it is one of the cheesiest takes that we have yet seen in the history of this show. It is all ham and all cheese when she like, it's like they were like, do it like you're slipping on a banana. Like, that's the level of performance here

And she's like a good actor like she really carries her scenes very well. Yeah, I really like it. It's just so fucking weird Yeah, it's almost as if she was so good throughout the episode director the director was like you get one take That's it moving on Check the gate. Yeah It felt like sabotage in a weird way. Because she's so much better than that scene throughout. Yeah. Did you find yourself a Shimoda?

I did. And it was sort of a, it was a moment, Shimoda. It was a Shimom... Shimomoda. So at the very end, like the beat before the button, the scene before the button probably Picard's in 6 Bay, he goes up to Susanna and he's like, is there no hope for the others? Susanna and Layton's like, nope! Like a single word and then they turn away from camera and walk over to Jordy in maybe four

seconds of silence. I thought that was an incredibly heubristic amount of tying up the loose thread. Like how many times have they gone way past the point of no hope and still pulled it out for other crewmen. They over explain so many things on this show unnecessarily But that nope was like with a bullet. It was so harsh. Yeah, nope. They're dead. I just loved it It was yeah, it was cold shit Yeah, and it's especially weird because Susanna was one of them like moment to go Mm-hmm. She's like, now, fuck him. Pretty cold.

Yeah. What do we have coming up on the next episode, Ben? The next episode is season four, episode 19, the Nth Degree, when a crew member is in doubt with superhuman intelligence by an alien probe. He threatens the fate of the enterprise. Do you remember this one, Adam? What ship is this? The ad.

I think they're talking about the entrepreneur. Right. Kind of a typo. Right, yeah. This is the episode where lasers go into Barclay's head. It is. It truly is. I'm excited to see this one.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny how we've turned dreading Barclay episodes into really relishing them. Like I know, I know I at one point hated this character, but I'm on board now. Cool. Well, we don't have any vetoes, so even even if you weren't there's nothing you could do about it. So we will be watching it and that will be the next ep of the greatest generation. You know what makes people feel like they have laser shooting out of their headspin? What's that Adam? The nice tingly feeling you get from contributing

to the production of our show by going to Maximumfund.org slash donate. Yeah, that is a good feeling. I have some news about that, Adam. Oh yeah? I put together the audio from our tour. And I think that two out of the three shows we got good tape on so one of those is going to rise to becoming our first donor bonus

episode which will probably come out around the time of the Max Fund Drive which will be early next year so if you want to make sure that you are in the first scrum of people that get access to that, you're gonna want to be a donor. I listened to one of these live shows, Ben, and it was really fun to listen to because I don't remember any of it. I kind of feel like I blacked out on stage up there. It was super fun to hear us do a show with such loud responses from the audience. Yeah, I was really pleased with how the audio came out. We didn't knowing not how any of this actually works. We really don't deserve the quality of tape that we got.

But the shows were all super fun and I'm really excited for people to hear one of these. So once we unfortunately the audio on the Seattle one, my mic was way too loud. So I have, I sound like a Jimmy Hendrix's guitar the entire time, but that's the wrong kind of clip show. Yeah, you're too creepy. Nice, thanks Dad. Yeah, you like that. But the other two came out really good, so we just have to pick which one we think is

like the A plus of the two and it's going to be in that donor feed and if you want to get in on that code, max. We found out our last donate. Other ways you can support the show. Leave us a nice review and iTunes. We are like pretty much, there is a possibility at them that we could get to a thousand iTunes reviews on the iTunes store by the end of the year.

I think that would be really cool, if we got a thousand reviews in the first calendar year of our show being a thing. I'm just shaking my head that that could ever have been a thing. It's amazing. Yeah. Thank you to everybody that's already left one. If you're inclined to help us reach a completely insane milestone like that, we would really appreciate it. So go leave us a review, that would be awesome. Yeah, you can talk to us on Twitter using the hashtag greatestgen. I'm on there as at Cupertime, Ben as there is at BenjaminR, EHR, we've got Facebook pages and groups, we've got Reddit pages, both

of which are super conversational and fun and funny. Yeah, thank you to Dark Materia and Adam Ragusia for our music Dark Materia made. The theme Adam Ragusia made our priority one song, and that's just about it, I think. Yeah, let's end the Shared. With that we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek the next generation, and a laser brained episode of the greatest generation. Don't look at me, I can't fit in the line Get to, don't look at me, I can't fit in the line Make it sound, make it sound

Make it sound, make it sound Get to, don't look at me, I can't fit in the line Get to, don't look at me, I can't fit in the line Make it sound. Make it stop. Don't look at God of God of God of God of God of God of God of God of God of God of God. Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, artist owned Listener supported.