The Greatest Generation - The A-Team of Away Teams (S1E5)

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

The Ferengi do an e-brake slide into the series (and into our hearts) after the show finally adds to the alien facial putty budget. Meanwhile Riker, having just read The Art of War, will not shut up about it. And when he grabs some alone time on the planet's surface, it becomes clear that the planet is attracted to all sources of power...even his. It's an episode where we've finally achieved "podcast mastery"!

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. Welcome to the greatest generation, a Star Trek the Next Generation podcast by two guys who are remained embarrassed to have a Star Trek the Next Generation podcast. I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Prantica.

I might even say that my shame grows from episode to episode. Yeah, well it has been a bit of a slog, but I think we're starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the quality of the writing and execution. Oh, I thought you were talking about our podcast, which... Oh, you mean just that it's almost over? Yeah, I think we're almost done with the series. And you know what Malcolm Gladwell says. I mean, you get four episodes of a podcast done. I think you've achieved mastery in the podcast realm.

So, feeling pretty good. We're trying to have these be like between 30 and 35 minutes each. But we record about about 2500 hours per episode and then cut it down to the best, you know, 30 minutes. So, I mean, by episode four, that'll be 10,000. Anyone who's stuck around with us to episode four knows that all the content in every episode has been the best of the best.

Just been top shelf. Just top shelf shelf dick jokes. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Well, shall we start talking about season one episode four, the last outpost? Oh yeah, let's do it. This is becoming a speech. You're the captain, sir. You're in type one.

Hmm. I'm going to type a r ramble on about something everyone knows. Not really getting any better, I don't think. The episode starts and the enterprise is chugging along in space in pursuit of a Ferengy vessel that has stolen some kind of equipment from a Federation outpost. And I think that in episode one, they actually talk about the frangie, but it seems pretty clear to me that they hadn't kind of decided

what the frangie were gonna be at that point. Yeah, the reputation sounds real scary, which is laughable when once you realize who and what they are down the road. Yeah. So there's some talk on the bridge of what the frangie are going to be and they compare them to Yankee traders which yeah. At no point did they speculate that their heads look like the back of elephants. It's a big reveal and when they do finally catch up with this

Ferringi vessel, the ship fires on them. It does do the e-break maneuver that you talked about in the last. It wasn't quite as exciting as I remembered. They showed them the pointy end of the ship, which is the better end for sure. It does look like a cool ship to be in, because if you're in that back section, just with a window looking out toward the front,

I feel like that'd be a pretty cool view. Looks like a pretty big ship, you know? It kind of looked to me like the bridge of the enterprise. Like if you took that general shape. Oh yeah, it turned it into a ship and maybe stuck a fork in the front of it. Maybe the model team got got a little drunken. Had to had to scramble at the last minute. Like so I suppose the the Franky ship fires upon them them and gets pretty tense and then they start to have power drains all over the ship.

And they're convinced that the Frengy have some sort of ability to suck the power out of their ship that they're unaware of. And they had gone in thinking that the Frengy were similar technology level to the Federation, but now they're worried that they might be far more advanced. Yeah, and Wurf just wants to destroy him immediately. It seems like he knows more about them than he's saying, but at no point does he say anything useful about what he might know about the Prangie, which is weird. So they finally get this for Angi Daemon on screen. And I actually really like the scenes where Picard

is talking with this character because they shot it in this pretty crazy way where they'll shoot from behind Picard and have the view screen fill the entire frame. So you have this crazy,, crazy close-up of the diamond in a way that like, it's like not a shot that you see very often, and it makes them really menacing and scary. You really get into every fold.

No, yeah. The high definition has not been so kind to the earlier makeup work in this series. So anyways, they realize based on something that the diamond says, that the Ferengy are not in fact behind this power drain. And so they go into the observation lounge where they have a 3D hologram projector on the table. They discover that there's like lightning beams hitting both ships from the planet's surface

and there's something down on the planet that is causing the power grain. So they go back on the FaceTime with the Frangie and talk them into a joint. You up? and talk them into a joint. Hey, you up. New phone, who does? Yeah. Which is a surprising choice because they've been pursuing these forangi for being thieves. And now they're going to do a joint mission of exploration

on the planet's surface to see what's causing this power drain. I guess they don't really have a choice. You skipped over the fact that Picard surrendered to them, which is the second time he surrendered to a foe and four episodes. They really want to establish his character as being French, you know. Well, it's clearly frustrating to the rest of the crew who... Yeah, yeah. Well, it's clearly frustrating to the rest of the crew who, I mean, Picard has seemed to surround himself with bloodthirsty, bloodthirsty, warmongering bridge

crew that he just frustrates at every turn with his surrenders. They might be the most bloodthirsty warmongering people from their utopian post-scarcity society. Yeah, yeah. Two war fiends and a sex addict compliment him on the bridge. That's, boy, that's a tough break for a card. In class. The best thing about this is that you're a big fan of the best thing about this is that you're a big fan of the best thing but so they beam down and something on the planet surface has caused the

transporter beams to scramble them all over the planet surface. So Riker finds himself totally alone on the surface of the planet and there's a very weird scene where he like goes out onto a cliff and yells. It then just turns and walks away from the cliff and finds everybody in the other direction. Basically does that thing where he screams into a thunderstorm. Also a major props to the to the set dressing department breaking out the dry ice in a real big time way. Totally. I think it's the first kind of primitive or undeveloped planet surface that we see in the whole series. So this is like, this is the unveiling of the like Styrofoam rocks and very close up

psych that become kind of watch words of exterior set design and Star Trek, the next generation. Later on they go to like that establishing shot matte, you know, that white angle matte and they couldn't do that in this case for whatever reason. They wanted to shoot those crystal cactuses up close. Yeah, so yeah, so the planet surface is, they start kind of finding each other. It's a yard, Jordy, Riker, and Data. Is Warf there too? Yeah, it is. It's sort of like the A-Team of Away Teams.

Yeah, that's what you want if you're playing fantasy away team, I think. A-Team of Away Teams is a good name for this episode. Oh, yeah. OK. So the surface is covered in these crazy crystal structures, and the crystals are the reason that Energy is being dissipated and absorbed by the planet

when the Firinga way team starts attacking them by flinging Lightning bolts out of these crazy blue whips. Yeah, if there's one like style of weapon that you want, you know, for aiming at someone far away You definitely want its method of discharge to be like whipping it around your head and and sort of snapping it across yourself. Yeah, super accurate from the the 50 yards that they were shooting them from the 50 yards that they were shooting them. Well, maybe on Ferenganar, they train them from youths. You're learning your rules of acquisition and you're learning your whips gizzles.

Oh, baby, stop, baby, stop, baby. Quiet, if you're not thinking, not thinking, not thinking, not thinking, not thinking. I will say, I really like some of these early episodes for just kind of like trying anything standpoint. Yeah, like they finally got weird with what an alien looks like and they got weird with what an alien weapon might be. Like it's not your standard issue like Dustbuster phaser, like they bring down to the surface,

like they actually got creative. Yeah, like there's the Dustbuster phaser and then there's also the like key fob phaser that sort of looks like the garage door opener version um and and I don't know like I guess like y'all always has has like the bigger ones but Riker I feel like we've seen a couple times now with the little key fob one which yeah I feel like is a great uh, I mean if you could actually get a beam weapon that small, like that's what you want, right? Because you could like, keyster that and smuggle it into an alien prison. I think it's weird, like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has ever gone John Wu with a phaser and gone, like, one in each hand, right?

I was totally thinking about that in this episode, like, it would be pretty awesome. You're like, ah! Anyways, when they start shooting at each other, the crystals really start absorbing these energy bolts, and it awakens Portal 63, who is, it's like a cloud of energy at first, and then it sort of like coalesces into a humanoid. And... Clearly related to gozer the gazorian from the Ghostbusters universe. Yeah, it might be the love child of gozer the gazorian

and Tim from the Monty Python and the search for the Holy Grail. Yep. But so he is some sort of representative of the Takan Empire, a very powerful star empire that disappeared millennia ago because of a supernova. And he's sort of like, you know, Japanese soldiers stationed on islands in the Pacific, unaware that the war is over, and unaware that the Tecon Empire no longer exists. So he sort of thinks he's in this in position to pass judgment on current space-faring species and they're trying really hard to make him understand that he has no idea what the fuck he's talking about. So we're four episodes into what should be a hit science fiction series.

So this awesome ship is gonna be flying around. It's the peak of human technology and exploration. But basically, we're just gonna fly around being judged. Uh, we're not gonna get into too many adventures. We're just gonna meet people who judge us. Basil, I lot of judgment. It's sort of like the George Lucas philosophy of the Star Wars prequels, like let's take the coolest part about science fiction and just ignore it completely.

The basic allegation that's being leveled against both the Ferengi and the Federation is that they're, you know, savage barbarians. And the way Riker convinces the portal guardian character that they are not is by quoting a few lines from Sun Xu from the Art of War, which is a surprising choice I guess, but uh... The the portal is impressed by Sun Xu the way any high school student is the first time they read it and because it was immediately inseparable by talking about it non-stop. Yeah well let's just be glad that he quoted Sun Zoo and not Ein Rand, right? Right, yeah.

I'm sure that idea was floated in the right-usroom. So the portal offers them the opportunity to destroy the Ferengi, but Riker declines saying that if the Ferengi are destroyed they would learn nothing. So benevolent that William Reiker, he shows grace and sympathy in a way that he doesn't usually show it in the bedroom.

That's for sure. Yeah, I think he sort of treats the Ferengier like men that have no chance in operating in the same league sexually as he does. Right, right. Yeah, you can see that. Yeah, kind of big brothery, kind of, you know, like, ah, those guys are cute.

There's also, like, there's all this stuff going on in the planet surface, but there's also the B story up on the ship where things have gotten real cold. Right, yeah, the, all of the life support stuff is failing and, you know, there's a weird moment where I think Troy is walking around with the thermal blanket and she just gives it to somebody else and then is super cold after that. And it's like, why don't you guys just have more,

like the second power started draining, you should have just replicated a thousand thermal blankets and you'd have plenty I was really Disappointed by the blankets like it seems like a modern Emergency blanket technology is far better like where's the foil? There's no Should have should have been foil should have been astronauti Um, this was another great scene where Beverly Reversed to Wes as her son when talking to Picard.

Like just to make that clear again, Captain, Wes is my son and she actually proposes sedating him so that I guess like she can put her son down the way she would put down a beloved pet. So so he wouldn't suffer. And Picard's reaction, this is so great. Like, Picard doesn't want her to give him sedatives. And I think we both know that it's because like his tolerance is so great. All the sedatives that Picard himself has given Wesley. Like, I think the secrets out at that point. So he's he's strongly discourages his mother from sedating him. Don't roof him, he bro.

The way team beams back up and power comes back to the ship. Everybody sort of wakes up. I guess they were really like right on the verge of losing their lives. Yeah, everyone's all slumped over their station. Yeah, it's real dark. Yeah, Beverly goes to the bridge and sits next to the captain, which I thought was another interesting choice by here. I mean, four episodes, she is just throwing herself at him and he is just not getting it. Maybe captain, we could stay close

for warmth. The day is saved and Riker suggests that they beam a box of Chinese finger traps to the Furengi as a ironic thank you for, I guess, not killing them. And data is like continuously stuck in them, right? Is it supposed to be the smartest invention in all of the universe. He can't get himself out of a finger cuffs. They really picked the wrong character for that. The second episode is where he bangs Y.R. right? Yeah, that's correct. Maybe he needs to stop sticking himself into things he doesn't understand. Hey! 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. Can I get a ball-rock burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Nanjiani.

I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are already open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Whoa, Ross.

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 nacks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this off. We've got to get on the art. It is about terrain, about a spout to destroy humanity.

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Here we go. Come on, kids. Angela. Here we go. Good. Good. I think this episode is solid up until the judgment scene. Like, when I think when the portal appears,

it's where it takes that left turn into being bad. But I think we should give credit to the first portion for not being completely insane. Like, it sounds like I hate this show, but I really don't. We should probably full, this might be a good time to full stop and just say, we both still really love this show.

There's just a lot to make fun of. Especially in S1. Yeah, a lot to make fun of. But I will say this is a much better episode than the three that have come before it, in my opinion, low bar to clear, but I think it starts to hint at some of the potential of the series. I think that we talked a little bit in the last episode that we have misgivings about

the design of the Farengi as being pretty explicitly anti-Semitic. They're anti-Semitic, but they also communicate in a, like, they sort of hop around and flail off there. Yeah, all of their body languages, really, insanely, like, conniving. And it's like the only thing they know about humans is from watching West Side Story. At one point, one of them steals Riker's Com Badge, and there's like an extended shot of its creepy little fingers,

like hovering and gripping on this metal badge. And it's like, it's so gross. And it's hard to imagine that the design of the characters got approved the way it did. You know, this is a race that winds up being like pretty seminal in the rest of the series and in the subsequent series. I mean, one of the actors playing the Ferenke winds up being a main cast character on Deep Space 9.

Yeah, interesting choice. You know, like if you're going to buy stock in any character at this point for the long term, like, can't see yourself buying that one. Yeah, it's very strange. Do you have a drunk Shimoda for this app? Incredible! Drunk Shimoda! The only thing I wrote down as a possibility

was the portal character, because he's just so ridiculous. You know, I think my drunk Shimoda might be Tasha Yar. You may remember, like, she gets, you know, like, what a Quentin Tarantino style, like Mexican standoff is. It's when like, everyone with a gun has a gun on on someone else, so it's like a mutually assured destruction. So the day on there, and everyone's allalling and then Tasha Yara pops out from behind a crystal cactus with a it's just her and a single phaser and three of the Faranghi have

three of their whip phasers and she gets into like basically a polar standoff with them like it's one versus three and the Faranghi are like are super scared of Tashiya, both because she's a close woman and evidently her one phaser is enough to overcome their combined power. I thought that to me seemed like a pretty drunk display of confidence. And so I think for that reason Tashiya already gets my my vote for drunk Shimoda. That's pretty good. That also we should mention in addition to being disgusting capitalists the Ferengi are also Raging misogynists every alien really likes Tasha Yarr. Yeah Yeah, that's true. I mean we an episode has not really gone by without somebody

Making an inappropriate sexual comment about her It only makes like and you know spoiler alert for exactly no one, but like, but they, but they build up the sex icon of the show, the female sex icon. I think we both agree that Riker is the male equivalent of that. But they, they build Tasha Yara up into being this like female sex icon. And then they kill her at the end of the season. Like, I think they kill her mid season. Oh really, is that coming up?

It's coming up not that far, not that long from now. Interesting. I would guess we have 10 weeks before Yara is gone. Well, we better enjoy her while she lasts. I am a cutesy ball. enjoy her while she lasts. So the next episode is called where no one has gone before. So the Enterprise is ordered to undergo a series of tests that will propel the ship at unfathomable speed, but Raker has misgivings surrounding the equations and theories presented by their arrogant designer. Only Wesley puts together that the designer's

assistant is the one behind the whole scheme of things. Oh, good. It's a Wesley-based episode. What do you remember about this? I remember that it's some more great head and face makeup for an alien. Basically, they had a bucket of silly putty and just say, roll your face back and forth. Yeah. I remember actually liking this one.

I thought this episode was a good expression of just the possibilities of the show, being instead of being trapped on a planet or being judged by someone the reception was Mixed I guess you could say which a Mixed reception review would be far and away better than the Improvement any other episode we've watched It got away with some things that would have killed other shows,

Stone Dead, that's encouraging. It works if only because it tickles the part of you that wonders exactly what might be out there. I like that part being tickled. Well, it's a little teaser for next week's episode. This next week's episode might be the episode where I tell you something really embarrassing about myself with regard to Wesley Crusher.

Oh wow, I'm excited to hear it. You mean Wesley Crusher who is described as being a Khloéing geek that you just want to strangle according to this review? Yeah, that sounds like we're talking about the same guy. Hopefully there'll be an episode at some point in the future where we really definitively find out whether or not Picard is pursuing an abusive sexual relationship with Wesley Crusher. I hope we never find out the answer because the speculation is so entertaining. Well, I think that's probably about all I can stomach for one day. Are you sure?

Yeah. Thanks for everybody that's been writing reviews about the show on iTunes and tweeting about it. I know your hearts are in the right place, but we really are embarrassed about this podcast. So please stop. Yeah, quit trying to say that it's alright and that you somehow share in our geekery. That doesn't make an any better. Yeah, but you know, as Adam coined on Twitter, subscribe and delete.

Yeah. But that I've been, been Harrison. I've been Adam Pranaka peace and long life see you next time I guess we really staggered to the finish line there yeah I guess we we sort of need to have like a signature sign I figured out at some point we do I feel like it's going to reveal itself to us and maybe it hasn't yet.