The Greatest Generation - The Phoenix Problem (S5E1)

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

When the Enterprise chooses the flashpoint of a Klingon civil war to begin the galaxy's biggest game of Cat's Cradle, Klingon Jake's future in the empire is at stake. But when Captain Picard's most dramatic "Apparently..." story comes back to haunt him, it's up to Commander Data to take command of a little ship with a secret strategy. Does the Sutherland have a clip show machine? What's the name of the captain from Crimson Tide? It's the episode where lose all our feminist credibility by playing a terrible game that we're extremely ashamed of.

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 Star Trek Podcasts by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek Podcast, a little bit embarrassed to have five seasons of Star Trek Podcasts now, Ben.

I'm one of your hosts, Adam Prantica. Your other host Ben Harrison. Adam, the holidays have come and gone, but I was away for the holidays a lot longer than anticipated, because I was in California and fell terribly ill. So I came home and there was a huge box of my apartment that our house sitter had brought in. And it's got tape on the outside. You're gonna wanna open that mattress in your bedroom, Ben. It's from Roughneck's Scarves,

the official scarf provider for Major League Soccer, NCAA, and a couple of other sporting organizations it looks like. This was sent by Ira to me and it is a huge box. I don't know if you can see this on the webcam or not. I can. You're not supposed to send money through the mail, Ira. This is a... Yeah, Ira. This is a... yeah exactly.

Currency is best left transferred digitally, but uh... I've decided... With your fingers. Let's rip into this thing, see what we got. Was this sent to your bar? Holy shit. Oh boy, oh boy! Adam, would you look at that? This is...

What you look at that! Unbelievable.... What do you look at that? Unbelievable. Whoa! What did you do to it? I read has sent us a huge box full of custom-made, greatest generation, Shimoda stacking, isoleneer chips,

scarves. Oh my god! These are incredible. I don't believe gross. Oh man god. These are incredible. I don't believe gross. Oh man, what a cool surprise. I had no... I was like... I feel like this scarf stuff might be a canard that throw us off the scent. On the outside.

It's literally scarves in here. And there's tons of them. There must be a hunter there. It scarves all the way down. It scarves all the way down. Look at how many scars at him. Oh my God. Wow, I could bury myself in scars. This is like a scene from indecent proposal. Oh my God.

Wow. You were just rotten with scarves right now. Yeah, our cup run it over with scarves. I feel like I'm gonna wear one of these for the episode today. That last scarf you pulled out was like totally wizard sleep. Like, yeah, this is an amazing gift. I feel like we gotta come up with something cool to do with these. We gotta come up with something cool to do for Ira. Ira're gonna come up with something cool to do for Ira.

Ira, come here. You're one of the men. Geez. Yeah, thanks, Ira. That was really nice, man. A king we gif. What are we gonna do with all those scarves, Ben? I feel like they're a great prize for people

to come to our live shows. Good. Give a scarf away to one lucky winner at every live show. Yeah, it's live show encouragement. That's for sure. Live show encouragement. I feel like we could have some kind of trivia game or something at greatest GenCon 2017 and the price pack could include a scarf. You know, we announced the winner of our contest on the last episode and at this point we haven't yet sent out the price pack but we could toss one of these in there as a little added bonus.

Yeah, crystal gets a scarf. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ira. That was a real, a real unexpected treat. Adam, what do you say when we get into the episode that we came here to talk about today? Man, this scarf is really warm. Yeah, let's hit it. It's season five, then, episode one.

Redemption, episode one. Redemption, part two. This is becoming a speech. Where the cat comes to, very tightly. I'm tired of ramble on about something everyone knows. We start with a pretty awesome space combat scene between a bunch of indistinguishable click on chips. a bunch of indistinguishable click on chips. It's two birds of prey attacking another bird of prey, and the one that's getting its ass whooped is capped in by one

KERN, little brother of Worf, and Worf is serving as the tactical officer, and he is in his, his like, Klingon uniform. He is fully converted to the Klingon way of life, and, and, and... His, his tight bob, he's gotten a little looser. Yeah, and they're in like a pretty desperate situation, right? Like, I think that a lot of the time in these, in these fight scenes, Worf comes up with some cool tactical maneuver

that the Klingons are like, what? He has different ideas about tactics than your average Klingon. But in this one, it's sort of the opposite. Like the shoe is on the other foot. They're like really desperately getting their ass whooped and Wurf is like, we gotta retreat. And Karyn comes up with a pretty brilliant way

of like kicking up solar flares just at the last minute as they head into this star and kicking up solar flares in their wake to take out the other two Klingon ships. They narrowly achieve victory. It's a little like a fast and furious strategy where like they off-road the Klingon ship a little bit into the gravel by the side of the road.

Yeah. And then they're like kick and gravel with the other ships to destroy them. Yeah. How did the Klingon ships know what side other Klingon ships are on without being fired on or not fired on, right? It's got to be really hard to tell.

It's got to be hard to tell. And... I mean, to my knowledge, Klingon ships don't have their names on them, the way Federation ships do, right? Yeah. You never see the exterior scene of the USS Pah. Yeah. On its engine, this else. The cam were never lovingly pans over the name of the ship.

Yeah, and also, because there's too much poopy on the outside. Yeah, and you know that the TOS crew had to paint a name on the bird of prey that they stole. So, yeah, maybe the Klingons don't put the name on the outside. I mean, maybe that's part of their game, is like, you know, don't let them know who you are and tell you're shooting at them. At least for this scene, it's pretty clear, which ships are the baddies and which ones for goodie, and they narrowly avoid getting destroyed.

And that's our opening moment in this episode. So we cut to the enterprise and Picard has brought a couple of admirals from the Federation of Board to pitch them on this idea that he has to stop the Klingon Civil War from, you know, spreading out into the rest of the sector by ensuring that the Romulans don't get involved. So he's got Fleet Admiral Shanti, I think. Mr. Shanti.

And the other one's Ja Rule. I don't know if you... Come on, Ben. I don't know if you- Come on, Ben! I don't know if you- I don't know if you didn't- If you looked at the other one, but the other one was clearly Mike Pence. Hahaha.

Ah. Yeah, and as you remember, the last interaction Picard had with the Admiralty did not go well. I brought down the command of you Picard! So we're in a- We're in a conference between them and Picard's pitching them on an idea.

And instinctually I'm thinking, they're not gonna go for this. Admiral's hate Picard. How many times has Picard had positive interactions with the Admiralty? Now, and that's right on his yearly review. Like Captain Picard does not have good interactions with leadership.

It's something to work on in the coming fiscal year. Yeah, and definitely gonna be a note on his employee review, to give him. The admils agree to this plan, and the plan is this. He's gonna put together a team of ships that are going to go just kind of hang around in the space in between the Klingon and Romulan Empire, empires, and they're going to spread out a net made out of tachyon beams, and these tachyon beams will alert them if anybody cloaked tries to go through. So they'll be able to prevent the romulans from providing material support to the duro

side of the Klingon Civil War. I feel like the last time the Federation assembled a fleet of ships. With anything involving Picard, they lost 47 of them. They seem fairly willing to give over the fleet to Picard at this point. Yeah, and this is one of those things where there's just not that many ships to go around, right? I think they have 20 ships that they can, that they can get involved in this, and the ships are not like, they're not even working at hood levels.

Like, they're kind of, like, these are ships that they're like taken off the blocks in the shop and throwing a couple of bald tires on them and just getting them out in the field as quickly as they can. Some of them don't even have doors at all. Yeah, and you bring up a great point, like the hood, notably absent here. Yeah.

Sodo, not around. Mm-hmm. The sodo. On the other side of the galaxy. Yeah, he knows what side his bread is buttered on. And he's got some science to do. The list of ships is, it's a real like bad news bears of interstellar peace, peacekeeping forces kind of situation. Raker really wants to captain the USS Kelly Reeves.

Well, he will get that opportunity in this episode, Adam. The plan is they're going to go spread out, keep their eyes on this situation, and that will prevent the Romulans from supporting the duoross people. And once they get this whole thing deployed, we start to see like conniving Rom Yarlin, like working with her Romulan buddies to figure out how to get through this blockade. It's your commitment to Rom Yarlin. It's really impressive. This is the hill that I shall die on, Adam.

I have selected it. There's nothing special about this hill, but it's mine. I'm gonna bury you under a pile of rocks. So the coyotes don't get you. Thanks, dude. I'm gonna turn into Kirk's lorry. Okay. Okay.

Booming up, baby. Booming up, baby. Quiet, baby. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. The vibe that I got here with the Commander Sala and the Romulans was a little bit like the evil lady and power rangers. What was her name? I never really watched power rangers, but I skimmed past it enough to get the basic structure of the show, which is... I didn't watch it either, but you can tell that the producers of this show did.

Yeah, because they're just, you know, they're like, oh, like Picard is doing this. We'll do this evil plan, and it will foil it. You know, it's a lot of playing chess from a distance kind of shit. And they managed to cartoon up the Romulans a little bit in a way that kneecaps all of the world building they've done up until now. Like the Romulans were really bad people before this episode. And now they just seem kind of clumsy. They seem a little hapless.

Like Salad does not. She seems like pretty on top of it, but she doesn't have good help. Let's put it that way. Yeah. So that is going on. And meanwhile, you know, Picard is putting this, putting this rag tag fleet together,

and they're gonna, because so many of the ships don't have full crew compliments, Picard is sending some of his best and brightest out into the other ships to become supplementary senior officers. And, you know, Riker gets a command and Jordy's gonna be his first officer and data asks like why have I not been assigned to command a ship in the fleet sir and Picard's like I believe the Starship Sutherland will need a captain so data heads over to the Sutherland and meets Lieutenant Commander

Hobbson a guy that is even more biased against data than Polesky was in episode one of season two. Like, he basically, like, data walks on board the bridge and takes over the command codes and Hobson's like, hey, I gotta be somewhere. I don't trust you as far as I can through you and you are much heavier than a normal man of your size. He plays it real arch. Like, he plays it like every bad guy of a John Candy movie.

Like, all of his line readings are inflected a little bit sarcastically. Like, even his taking of an order seems very flip. You heard the captain, everyone. Yeah, this is kind of bad writing, I think. I mean, it might be a little bit of bad acting and bad directing, but I think at its core, this is bad writing because this character just, like might as well be holding like a signpost that just says,

I will have a big turnaround in this episode. It's really gonna blow you away. I can't wait to learn my lesson. Yeah, exactly. This character will be developed. The conflict here is so direct that you, you lose out on the benefit of a more subtle way of telling this story. Like, there are interactions between Hobson and the rest of the bridge crew on the

Sutherland that are so minor that I feel like I would have preferred to trade a little bit of the conflict between Hobson and data with some scenes with Hobson and the rest of the crew, like talking behind his back, or wondering if they're going to have to relieve them of command. Like, I mean, that's a trade-off that you can do, I think, and they just chose not to. Well, and I think that if they had gone that direction, it may have established the Sutherland better as a place.

Like, all we see of the Suther other land is its bridge and it's a small, you know, pretty efficiently built little bridge. It's a cool bridge, but it's nothing major about it. And I would love to have like gotten to like get the feel of that place and get the feel of the, you know, the mood of the crew that is suddenly going to be asked to place all of their trust in this one-off species that they don't have any experience with. It's the Phoenix problem all over again, and it's another Honda Del Sol type starship, too. It's the same exact type of model. Why are they showing us more of the del soul?

Yeah. What are they ashamed of? We know that they have a blank gray ready room, so they could have shown us that part. They could have. Yeah, and, and, yeah, I mean, this could have been the Crimson Tide episode in space that we've been wanting.

And it really isn't. They don't talk about the different roles of any of the other people. They don't talk about whether lipid and zonor stallions are from Spain or Portugal. They're not from Portugal, they're from Spain. They don't float the buoy. Yeah. We just cut out about 20 minutes of Denzel Washington impressions. So, hell or back. So the civil war is raging, right Adam? Yeah, you get a neat exterior of the Klingon home world

and shits and flames. Yeah, but like people are hanging, right? Like a warfoot, warfooted current go like hang out in a bar with some of the guys that they were just in a firefight with outside, like, I guess the idea is that the capital is sort of like, is sort of like, no guess the idea is that the capital is sort of like, it's sort of like, no man's land, like you can go there and hang out when you're taking a break from warring. Which makes it sound like their war is like a little bit more formal and a

little less like an actual war, more like a game of chess writ large. Well, it's always a game of chess of the Romulans, Ben. Let's sure if you know that. It's a good point. But yeah, there are elements of Klingon war that are like revolutionary war type rules where there's the formality of a break room. Yeah. You can go too. Yeah.

But in every other respect, it's like real war. Yeah, you get the sense that like there might be like cling on nobility up on the hillside watching the battles take place, you know. With a picnic? Yeah. Um. Those knives seem like they'd be great for cutting cheese,

like a hard cheese, you know? Mm. Yeah. Too bad they're, you know? Mmm, yeah. Too bad they're just using them for arm wrestling enhancement. Yeah, you get a real fun over the top-style arm wrestling scene here where the loser of the arm wrestle, of the arm wrestle gets the back of their fist stabbed through the tip of a knife. That doesn't look fun. No, and that's gotta be an interesting proposition for the winner also, because it's like you wanna win,

but you don't wanna win so much that you also poke all the way through their hand and into your own. Right, there's a guy drinking motor oil in there. You know, Worf gets extra leverage by turning his loaf backwards before getting in there. Yeah, I mean, it's a scene where you really, really drives home how different

Warf is from the other clean homes. Like he's not having fun, he's not enjoying partying with their enemies. He's drinking beverages and up glasses. Yeah, which just doesn't doesn't fit in. He's taking he's having a prune teeny They're like this is time for buds and suds warf Not those girl drinks Face it warf you're a girl drink drunk The more kids in the hall we can squeeze into this episode the better. The entrepreneur has cruised the fleet out toward the edge of Romulan cling on space, at which point Tasha Yard, Lynn, what are you calling her?

Rom Yard, Lynn. At which point, Rom Yard, Lynn gives the signal to decloke her ship in front of the entrepreneur, gets on the FaceTime and is like, hey, it me. Yeah, it's, um, I think- This isn't even bigger cliffhanger than the cliffhanger between the two episodes I thought. I thought this was a case of misplaced hanger. Yeah, off-center hanger. That cloak is going to hang really diagonal. That heavy jacket's going to fall on the ground of the closet, the way it's hung like this. Yeah.

And Picard immediately thinks it's Tasha Yara over there. Yeah. But it's not. And no, it's not. And he knows this after he beams her over and they get into the comfort room and talk things out. Yeah. So her thing is like you're massing federationships

on the Romulan border, whether or not you're doing it to achieve peace, we can only interpret this as a potentially hostile act. It's sort of like that scene in on for red October when the Secretary of Defense is for some reason having a meeting with the ambassador from Russia to the United States. And it's like, does the Secretary of Defense do this? Or would this be more of a Secretary of State type of job? But they just didn't want to have two characters. Right.

But they're like, it's casting economy. They're like, why have you sortied the entire Russian fleet into the North Atlantic? And don't you realize how inherently dangerous that is? Kind of thing. It's exactly like that. Yeah, so Romney Arlin is there to say, why have you sortied your rag tag bad news bears entire fleet into near Romneyland space? Don't you realize that like if somebody gets an itchy trigger finger this could lead to war and and Picard is like let's let's address that in a second. First of all the fuck. Yeah. Let's talk about the ears in the room right now. I think Gainin gave him like

some background on this right like while they're waiting for Rom Yarland to beam over, Gynon comes up and she's like, hey! How much do you know about what happened to the last ship called Enterprise? And she tells him yesterday's Enterprise story. She tells it in a way that also places the blame for the entire situation on Picard. It's not that Geinen tells Picard that she's over there because of you, and that's it. She's like, she's over there because of you, and also this whole Klingon Civil War is your fault too, as a result. Yeah, she puts a lot of it on him.

It's true. I kind of wonder if that's because Geinenon does it. I don't think she fully exists out of time. Like when she, in the yesterday's Enterprise episode, she had like a funny feeling that she shouldn't know how she is. Not that this was all wrong and this is why. It was like, I don't know why, but this is wrong. So I think that maybe like things as definitive as Picard having sent Yarr to the Enterprise C stand out to her in her perception of time,

but maybe, I don't know, this is all head cannon, but maybe that explains why she doesn't, like why she sort of like hangs the whole thing around his neck. It's the blackout drunk problem too. Like, you're being told that you did all this stuff that you can't remember, it's gotta be terrifying. Yeah, it's an apparently story. It is.

The card talks to Riker later and he's like, so apparently, I transported Tasha Yard, you remember her, card talks to Riker later and he's like so apparently I transported Tasha Yarr you remember her the one who died on the oil slick planet with you in front of you to the enterprise see yeah you remember that ship yeah you remember a shooter McGavin and this whole gambit where they're gonna go back and fight the Romulans to save the Klingons. Even Riker doesn't have an apparently story that fucked up. Riker's like, you beat me.

Yeah. The second shooter McGavin came into the mix. You were out of my league buddy. So Rom Yarlin's like, look, I'll tell you my origin story. I'll give you a little exposition. Here's what happened. You sent my mom over to the Enterprise C and you probably thought there were no survivors from that battle, but there were.

My mom was one of them. They transported her onto a rhymingland ship, took her back to the rhymingland home world. She became a concubine for a high ranking rhymingland person, rhymingland person knocks her up. I'm the product of the knockup. My mom tried to escape. Yeah.

The alarms went off. I started crying and my mom was executed in front of me. So that's why I hate all federation people. Yeah, she's got a major chip on her shoulder about humans, and like hates the side of her that is human. She is more conflicted about this than, you know, any half breed character on this show. And has basically made it her personal mission to rise in the ranks of the Romulan military so that she can like, exact her revenge on all of humanity. And right now, the way she's doing that is rattling her saber and trying to convince Picard to clear out with all his little buddies.

She says they have like 24 hours to end this blockade, or the Rameons are going to take it as definitively an active war, and it's going to be their ass. So, we cut back to the bar scene and Worf has decided to set down his Fufu drink. Pick up a tanker to veil and start arm wrestling. He's palin' around with these hardcore plingons when he gets cheap-shotted in the back of the head and then dragged back behind the bar where he is greeted by the Durah sisters. Yeah, it's a real like... I feel like this is like a Vodville skit level. How do we get this character into the hands of his enemies? Situation? character into the hands of his enemies situation. Yeah, it's it's some real alien whiplash because in part one, the Romulan seemed very dangerous and in part two, this unity between the Klingons and the Romulan just seems cartoonish and

ill conceived. Oh, you're the guys that go around bopping people on the head. Yeah, and the Trussistor's plan is to have Wurf knock one of them up. Yeah, they've come up with this idea that if they fuck Wurf into their team, that the alliance that he's formed with Gauron will follow part and Wurf can be their proxy leader of the Empire. Shirley Hill will be tempted by all that power, you know, because all they're tempted by is power. So they assume that that's what motivates everybody else, I guess. Ben, this is a perfect time to play an amazing game.

The game that we've wanted to play for a long time, Ben, it's called Witch Durace Sister Would You Rather Fuck? Your choices are the fair lursa and the slightly less fair betor. Who do you get? Well, Lursa seems like the alpha sister, I'm gonna say, but I think betor seems like she'd be a little bit more fun

when it comes to underpants time. Sure, yeah. I would agree with that. So I think I go the same way that they assume Warflow go. I don't go Bator. Yeah, I mean, the way that they construct these characters makes Lursa quote unquote the smart one. Right. Andursa quote unquote the smart one right and Betoor quote unquote the sexy one right and I think I mean while I am very attracted to

intelligence in this case I I must prefer Betoor yeah I never really put that together I didn't understand why every time they come on screen they play that I've got the brains you've got the looks Let's make lots of money I think Batur has more attractive loaf. Yeah, oh she's got hot versus got really long loaf Yeah, they've got like loaf that's on the same pattern, but but it's cuter on on Batur Yeah, I think so Good game, Ben. Good Yeah, I think so. Good game, Ben. Good game.

I think we both won that one, Adam. Indeed. So this plan isn't gonna work, cause Worf isn't attracted to either of them. Yeah, and also isn't attracted to power. Like, he's attracted to honor, and he considers them to be without honor and so they don't have anything to offer him. And so he winds up just being kind of a dumb

prisoner. Like he's not really a hostage, he's just been captured by the bad guys, essentially. I never thought about this until now, but Worf is a widower and a divorcee, isn't he? Yeah. You think he's still scorched from K-Lars death? Oh, like he doesn't know if he can ever love again kind of mode? Yeah. Maybe. I mean, he doesn't see.

Every time he looks at another woman's loaf, he thinks of hers. But then his eyes pan down to those teeth and he's like, nope, not good enough. Yeah. Boy, you really... say what you will about Kailar. She's some great teeth. Top notch teeth. My love is a people longing to the back, which long the nurse has let me see. How many more? You're not the boy, yeah.

Pretty much the majority of the action for the rest of the episode is taking place on the bridge of Data's Sutherland. And Data is demonstrating himself to be a pretty mean boss. Like his employees are kind of shiftless and, you know, don't do what he asks, the moment he asks, but he also really, like, doesn't have a great way of, like, managing that situation. He's just like, do it!

Do what I say! The choices he makes on how he models his behavior is really interesting to me. Like when he was in that relationship with Jenna, like he studied a bunch of boyfriends to model his behavior off of, right? And it seems like he's got Picard as a great model for being a captain.

He has the totality of Hollywood films, to a model being a captain off of. Right. And he just seems really shiftless and he just sort of reverts to angry. Yeah. I mean, he could model himself off of Ramias. He could model himself off of Mancuso. He has all the captains. Jean Hackman from Crimson Tide. Yeah, I'm sure that character had a name. The nameless captain from Crimson Tide. He could even model himself off of Tupelov. A nameless captain from Crimson's side. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha interesting because data has a hard time dropping his role as chief of ops.

Yeah. Because he'll be like sitting in the captain's chair and then he'll get an idea and he'll have to like run across the bridge to another computer and do some ops stuff. And then like run back to the captain's chair and give a command based on what he learned over there. And that's like not the most efficient thing, but we have to just give that the benefit of the doubt because they're so short staffed on the ship. But um.

So the deal is, they've got this network of ships. They've erected a sort of cat's cradle threads of tacky on beams amongst each other. And all of the ships are spread out wide so that if a Romulan ship trips one of these wires, the jig is up. Right. And Picard is trying to coax the Romulan through by making a nice juicy hole that he's going to swoop into and catch him red-handed. But it's a different kind of space but hole bend. Yeah, it's a it's like a front

butt. And so the Rimeyland Sea, this hole on there end, we do a lot of like shot reverse shot, cut reverse cut like between the Federation side and the Rimeyland side. So we see this plan began from the Federation side, then we cut to the Romulan side and they're like, this is our chance. There's a hole opening up in the cat's cradle. Let's run our convoys through. Yeah, and Romulan is like, not so fast. That is all the earmarks of a trap. So instead, what we're going to do is put out a big tachyon pulse at that ship that the Android's the captain of. And they won't know what's going on with tachyons at all in that area, and we can fly right through without being positively detected.

So they're putting this plan into effect. Because the grid is being compromised, the card orders, the whole fleet to pull back, they're going to go set it up, like further toward the Klingon Empire and try again. And data brazenly ignores that order and also declines to transmit any explanation of why he is ignoring that order, even though it really wouldn't have taken any extra time. Dental Washington's like, you got to float the buoy. And his racist first officer is real freaked out by this old situation for a good reason. Yeah, because data is acting totally unilaterally, and everybody knows it.

I'm on hops inside on this. Yeah, but what he winds up doing is figuring out a way to detect the Romulans in the Taki on Pulse that they sent out. And he shoots some low yield torpedoes at the Romulanships. It causes their cloaks to fail momentarily and proves that the Romulans are trying to help the Doros side and that ruins the day for the Romulans. They're going to, you know, turn coat and come back to fight again another time and shows, shows all the Klingons like what Duras is really all about

and it also leaves Duras high and dry with no additional supplies from the Romulans. Jake is naturally pretty upset at this development. Yeah he's almost upset enough to steal a shuttlecraft. That's the level of anger that we're seeing here. That's really is only a way out here. So we go back to the Klingon Great Hall. And, Ben, I don't know if you noticed this. There are a big pair of googly eyes in the Great Hall that once you see them, you can't unsee them.

Mm-hmm. Duross is in there ready to have his coat ceremony. Finally, they wheel in, cling on Jake. They sort of prep him for what everyone agrees is going to be capital punishment, right? Like, the Duross sisters have skipped town. They beamed out and left him holding the bag. So he's gonna have to answer for the whole

Duross family's bullshit in this little incident. And it is really fucked up how they leave him back there, which confirms that his DNA was modified and he was not in fact a member of the family, right? Because if he actually was a member of the family, right? Because if he actually was a member of the family, they would have taken him too. Well, they never addressed that, do they? No, they don't.

I, I, this evidence. But he must be like a Romulan clone or something, right? Yeah. I mean, and a shitty as, as Klingon Jake was, I do feel some empathy for him. It sucks to be left behind like that. Yeah, he got burned pretty bad. Big sisters did not have his back the way he thought they did. There's no pulling up the shuttle before it hits the atmosphere for Klingon Jake. No.

He's basically gonna argue this one in. Yeah. So they drag him out into the foyer for his execution. Yep. Goweron says, I'm not going to kill this guy. I'm going to give him as a gift to Worf, because this is really a celebration of him getting back as honor also.

I'm getting this big coat, Worf's getting his honor back. It's celebration on a number of levels here. So he hands one of those clicky knives to Worf, and he's like, go to work, field strip this kid. Yeah. Let's see what he's like, go to work, field strip this kid. Yeah. Let's see what he looks like on the inside. And this is a very human moment for Wurf

because rather than stick the kid like a pig, Wurf drops the knife on the ground and Garaan's like, all right, Kern, you kill the kid. And Wurf is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, you gave me his life, and I have spared it. I wish that they had done the like discomendation thing to the kid though, you know?

Like everybody crossed their arm and turned their back at him. Yeah. Because that should be like where Doros is at in the scheme of Klingon politics now, right? It would have been more sad. I mean, God, that's really eye-fer-and-eye shit, right? Like, would it have been a satisfying

to see the level of dishonor that Warf had to endure or given to someone else? Well, it's also... It's only fair. It's also more complicated, right? Because like, the kid was definitely not pulling the strings and shouldn't bear all of the dishonor, but

he would have to. And that's sort of like exactly the hand that Wurf got dealt. So Wurf would have to have some feelings about that, right? Like this doesn't really feel right to be like burning this kid this bad. The kid got Lee Harvey Oswalded. He's just a Patsy. And that's really the end of the episode. That's the button.

Yeah. I think Worf asks if he can come back to Starfleet and that's it. It's got a few weird. You go back up to the ship, back to your quarters. You take off all those stinky, clean, unclosed. Do you think his quarters got cleaned out already? Or do you think they just encased and cleaned him out? I don't know. That's a good question. How would you like to get Warp's quarters after he's left them? What if because? Probably a lot of weird

stains on the carpet. What if because he left they like moved the O'Brien's up up a level, you know? They got a nice nice new digs a little bit bigger than the old place and Warp comes back and they're in this awkward position of like, do we ask the O'Brien to move back out, or just Orf just get a shittier apartment now? O'Brien's like, this new bathroom is great. I've really tried and I can't plug up this toilet. LAUGHTER

Did you like this episode, Ben? I did. It's got a satisfying conclusion to you. It's a very different episode than the one that is the conclusion of. Like almost couldn't be more different. But I found myself not caring if real war popped off. Yeah, and I thought, I also think it's really interesting. I mean, we end the episode with this new villain, right?

This, this, Rami Arlin character is in the wind. And we know that she's gonna come back. But I feel like a modern TV show does not end a two episode arc with everything being as neatly tied up as this. It just definitely feels like a move that predates binge watching of television. It's like a two-liter bottle episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say I wish I liked it more, but that's wrong.

I wish it was a better episode. Yeah. It's untidy because it leaves so many loose threads out there. And really, two of the threads end up destroying the ship later. Yeah. Like they could never know how dangerous the Durai sisters were at this moment. Totally. Did Durai sisters who are as cartoonish as they get?

Yeah, they come back in a big way. Yeah. Hey, Penn. What's that Adam? You want to do an ad? Yeah. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement on. supplement Channel. You need a supplemental hook.

Supplement hook? Supplement. Supplement. Yeah, it's extra. But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Our first priority one message is of a personal nature. It is from Dan and it is too Eric, AKA the W stands for Wheeled Cxon. It goes like this. I'm so grateful that you introduced me to the Salarious Podcast.

I love it. Awwww. 2016 so off and felt like a swift kick to the moose knuckle. The show however was a constant delight. Let's rock 2017 like Jim Shimoda at a jenga tournament. Thanks for being a lifelong friend. F fancy meeting you out here in the desert. Hello, clock face. What a nice message Dan.

Is Will Cox in some kind of person that calls out Rowling, Rhythm on a boat? Oh yeah. Yeah, I put that together. I'm one of your two percent. It's not spelled the same, Adam, but it looks the same. Wow. That's another one of those P1s that has lots of in jokes that I don't fully understand, but I really appreciate how inside they are.

One of my main worries about our program, at this point, is how impenetrable and weird it must sound to a new listener. That's just starting now. You know. One of the things I'm never worried about is how appreciative you are about how far inside something is.

Yeah, I love it when something gets real deep. Adam, we have another priority one message, and it's from David and Laura, and it's to Adam and Ben. Hey, that's us. The sound effects you sprinkle throughout the show are lots of fun. Our favorite is the machine Gun Photon torpedoes drop. That's a great job. One of the best drops. As a late Christmas present to my friends who are also fanatical viewers, we'd love it if you would take the sound effects from your show,

all of them, everywhere, and fire a barrage of drops, maximum yield, full spread. Oh, this is gonna be fun, Adam. Ben, to do this, we're going to have to turn our keys at the same time. Are you ready? I thought that you took both of the keys when you killed the political officers. Oh, that's right. That's right.

So, go ahead and turn them at him. I trust you. Oh, that was very satisfying. That delivered on a lot of levels. Hopefully it blew out some speakers. Well, if you would like to blow out some speakers with a custom priority one message, go to maximumfund.org slash jumbo-tron. It's a hundred bucks for a personal, 200 for a commercial.

Helps us keep the lights on around here. Thanks, everyone, who does it? Hey, Ben. What is that, Atom? Did you find yourself a drunk shimodo? I don't know. Drunk Shimoda! I did.

My drunk Shimoda is very late in the episode. So the Durah sisters have bounced, Salah, and all the other Romulans have bounced, and there is one Romulan still hanging out in the Durah's house, like keeping Worf Prisoner or whatever. If the fuck did that guy do to just get left high and dry on Kronos? We never get his story.

Yeah, that poor guy. He just totally got ditched out on. They didn't beam him up or anything. You think that the Duras sisters would have taken them along with them when they beam out, right? I feel like the reputation of the duoros sisters has got to be such that why would you ever work with them? Yeah. If they will just cut you loose at any moment, it's pretty fucked. Pretty fucked, man.

How about yourself? Do you have a Shimoda? I'm going to give it to Winy Habson of the Southern. Yeah. Who should have Denzel Washington's data. Like, he should have been relieved of duty. Like, and instead, data threatens to relieve him of duty. He got it. It happens a lot in this universe, I think.

He got the duty tables returned on him. Yeah. The duty relieving tables. And I just don't think Hobson's fit for command in the future. If this is how he handles this sort of bridge environment. Yeah, date is the one that turns himself in for for disciplinary action at the end. And I feel like maybe it should have been Hobson doing that. Data correctly does that because he acted in the wrong, but Hobson also needs to share some blame here. But the thing is if Ho Hopson had been watching Star Trek the next generation, then he would know that no one relieves Picard of duty either.

So maybe that's just not a thing. We don't know if the Southern one has a clip show machine at him. Yeah, that's true. That's going to be installed on Tuesday. Well, isn't this place just a geographical entity? Two weeks from everywhere! Yeah, Winnie Hobson. Drunk Shimoda. Darmuk and Jalat. Danaga.

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 spaceweirds. Pat Noswald. Could 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 Goat try. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, rats. Hey, hey, 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 naps. But I'm hearing we need to get on this arc. We've got to get on the arc. It was about terrain, got us 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 life, something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boat.

We came two by two. What do you think? O'Neil Ross and Kerry, available on MaximumFun.org. ["The King of the Rings"] ["Domokrigage and July, and Denarger to death." What do we have coming up on the next episode, Ben? The next episode. What is it?

His... Five episode two, Dar Mock. The crew is rendered helpless when Picard is kidnapped and forced to go to war with an alien captain. Do you remember this episode Adam? Who could forget the enemy mind of Star Trek the next generation episodes. This is an episode that we've been looking forward to basically from the beginning. And I don't know what we're going to do. I mean, it's like the episode, right? It's like the episode that our podcast exists to riff on. It's one of the capital THE episodes of the series. Totally. It's very divisive.

I think our friends, Sarousse, far of our shared like a big argument thread on ours technique at one time of two people arguing whether Darmak is worth the paper it's printed on. I've always had the fantasy of doing this episode in Darmak language. Yeah. And we've talked about that from the start.

But the trouble is, that's madness. We don't have time to do that because you've been so sick, we haven't been able to record a number of episodes to give us the time to allow us to work an episode like that. And the one way that we could give ourselves time to do that kind of episode then is to

veto the episode. And so I'm thinking of instead of vetoing the episode for reasons of its ill quality or its stupidity, like why not veto the episode to give us time to do it right? I see your logic at him, but I think that we're gonna do a great Dharma episode and we're gonna do it we're gonna do it in the right at the right time and for the right reasons. We're going to do it in the right order.

Season five isn't going to jump over episode two. I think it's going to be great whether or not we do it in all metaphorical language. And I think that I believe in us at him. What I'm trying to say is I believe in us. And I don't think that you need to get an itchy veto finger just because I got a debilitating illness. I really like the idea of vetoing this episode and then we make it a special episode.

We make it one of our special viewer contribution apps. Oh, that's cruel. Yeah, that's not nice. We put this show out for free. The people that choose to support it, we really appreciate it. But we don't want to make it a compromised experience just because some people support and some people don't. All right, I'm putting my veto back in my pocket.

You've convinced me. I don't believe in paywalls, Adam. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this paywall. Got a nice, ronald ray gun over there. How come you pull out the the Reagan impression that often? Because it's awful. That doesn't stop us with any of the other impresses on this show.

Ben, you know what, our viewers pull out all the time? Is there wallets to help support the production of our show? Yeah. We're gonna maximum fun, diadoric slash donate, and they of our show. If you go to Maximumfund.org slash Donate and they support our show on a monthly basis, it really helps us continue this ill-conceived project of ours.

It's a respectful relationship that we have with them. We're not trying to extort money out of them by having key parts of the series be hidden from view unless you're paying us money. And we don't want to divide our viewership into the halves and the half-nots. Yeah, you know what, that's garbage. And I regret even proposing that idea. That's terrible. It'd be terrible.

That's a real Trump's America idea right there. It's already changing me, Ben. Yeah, you're gonna go take a shit on your golden toilet later and feel some real regret. Mmm. That seat's always cold. Yeah, bridging. Well, the contributions are much appreciated as are people who go and buy a t-shirt, people

who tweet about us or write Facebook posts about us or go to the subreddit. Those are all great places to chat about the show and also tell people why you like it because that's how we grow our audience. We also grow our audience through iTunes reviews, if you like the show, go there and leave us a nice one. And that helps raise our profile as well. We should thank Dark Materia for our theme music and Ed and Magusia for all of our other music.

And with that, we will be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek The Next Generation and an episode of the greatest generation that is on the ocean and at Tanagra. I got you, yo, no big gotta be you I got you, I got you, yo, no big gotta be you I got you, I got you, I got you, I got you I got you, I got you, I got you I got you, I got you, I got you I got you, I got you, I got you I got you, I got you

I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you

I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I got you I got you, I headphones? No. Oh, mine just did. Yikes. What the fuck is that about? Walking around on that carpet and little socks maybe? Oh yeah, that was it. That was it. Oh shit.

Gotta be careful. Gotta get some rubber sold socks. Oh. Well, this is the first, folks. We've got piles of scarves and Adam is being killed by his podcasting rig live here on air. It's so weird, like I set up my computer in this kitty pool full of water.

And this is the first time that that's ever happened. Yeah. The computer, your toaster, your margarita machine. My Hattachi Magic Wand. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture. Artistone. Listener supported.

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