Two Hundred A Day - Episode 101: Star Trek TNG: A Fistful of Datas

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Welcome to Twenty Dollars a Day, the podcast where we explore our favorite holodeck adventures in the Star Trek universe! Nathan and Eppy go back to the Ancient West in TNG S6E8: A Fistful of Datas. The Enterprise has some well-deserved downtime, and Worf can't invent enough work to keep him from joining his son Alexander in the Ancient West town of Deadwood. Elsewhere, a test of Data's interface with the ship crosses some wires, and suddenly the villains of the Western adventure... are all Data. Sure, it's a silly episode, but it's also charming in its enthusiastic homage to Western films, and we had a really fun time talking about it! Happy April, everyone! This is our fifth look at a Star Trek holodeck episode that follows on the themes of our first love, The Rockford FIles. Hope you enjoy it! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Michael Zalisco * Dael Norwood's historical research (https://daelnorwood.com/) * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Jay Thompson, Matthew Lee, Kip Holley, Dave P, and Dave Otterson! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Welcome to 20 a Day, the podcast about the holodeck adventures in the Star Trek universe. I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. And Nathan, you chose this week's episode. I sure did. So as we've been going through our holodeck adventures i think we can yeah we we can see kind of a spectrum of what they entail and some of them are more um you know more more an element of something else that is going on in the episode like the plot of the episode is about something

and the holodeck happens to be involved and then others are here is an episode of star trek that we want to do something fun with is it going to be a holodeck episode or is it going to be a q episode and so for let's do star trek but a western they chose to make that a holodeck episode in season six or in the next generation season six episode eight a fistful of datas so this is a very interesting thing you bring up because there's a um there's a thing that happens with science fiction as it ages as it matures like a fine wine or a cheese um where a fine klingon fire wine yes a fine klingon fire wine um where what happens is the uh i'm gonna say excuse the alibi the earlier alibi for something

gets abandoned okay let me let me let me go back let me say this do you are you familiar with the the role-playing game gamma world i i know about it but i've never played it so so gamma world is a post-apocalyptic wacky completely gonzo mutants everywhere you know it's after uh nuclear war and all the radiation has caused all these different mutations and things like that that's from uh the 70s right and then at some point in the early aughts there was a remake of it that was like they said we know that radiation doesn't do this right but they still want the mutants everywhere so it's a nanotechnology apocalypse and so this is the same thing like an early star trek episode not next generation but early star trek if they wanted a western they would land on

a western planet right right yeah it's just a western planet we don't have to explain why is one of the episodes yeah yeah and then um or they do explain why but it's a little, you know. This is a race of aliens that has only like the gangster one where it's like this race of aliens has exactly one book from our world and patterned their entire society around gangs of Chicago. Yes, exactly. And then at some point we're like, well, that's cheesy. That's ridiculous. Like, well, that's cheesy. That's ridiculous. So instead of abandoning the idea of a Western world, what they do is they're like, no, it's inside the holodeck.

So I guess what I'm saying is there's this thing that happens in sci-fi where they don't want to abandon the concept. They just want to abandon the excuse. So they keep trying to update the excuse for why it happens the excuse needs to be more quote plausible because yeah right for you know because we're all such because we've advanced as a society uh in how we understand our fiction i guess but yeah sure okay it's still pretty silly i would say very critically that uh people in the 70s knew that radiation didn't do the thing that you know like right this is it almost always it's based on some misunderstanding of why people just enjoyed the original anyways you know uh but anyways uh that's a soapbox i don't need to be on for this episode because it happened and we could just enjoy it yeah that's the thing i

think this this whole uh uh preliminary i think is making it sound like we don't like this episode i think this is a fun episode yes absolutely and i think maybe we'll talk about maybe a finer nuance of what about it is good uh or what aspects of it are the good part um may we'll get into at the end but um but yeah fistful of data's so our you know uh uh staff uh overview this one is a story by robert hewitt wolf um and then he uh did the teleplay and then brandon braga he did the teleplay and then Brandon Braga redid it or co-wrote it or whatever. I feel like without getting deep into reading all the books about all the production and everything, because I have not done that, TNG had a very like writer's room-y kind of thing.

So the credits are sometimes a little hard to parse about exactly who did what. A little scattershot. Yeah. But Wolf ended up to produce and write for DS9 and was very involved with Deep Space Nine. Braga was a staff writer for TNG, wrote a bunch of episodes. He's wrote a bunch of episodes for other shows.

And he also wrote what I think is probably the best Next Generation movie, First Contact. He did the script for that. Oh, okay. Yeah yeah the director for this one is patrick stewart interesting yeah um he directed five episodes of the show this is the third one and apparently there was a last minute switch that put him in the chair uh i just wanted to kind of hit a couple trivia points from memory alpha just because i think i thought they were fun to learn so this was a result of a pitch so wolf the the writer

or the original writer whatever uh story by a guy uh i guess he pitched multiple scripts some of which he ended up doing in deep space nine um So this was the Western one and it's the one that ended up getting picked up. And so it sounds like production wise, everyone knew there was a Western episode coming up and people were very excited about it. And so Patrick Stewart was like pumped to to get to direct it because it was a bit of a, I don't know, a bit of a fun thing. Right. I mean, they've been at this for six years now. Sometimes it's fun to change things up. Well, and one thing that I thought was an interesting note was that it's been a while.

So in the run of the show, it's actually been a while since we did a holodeck episode. So for us, we're only watching the holodeck episode. So all of them are like, okay, it's another holodeck episode. But this one, yeah, apparently they hadn't done a holodeck malfunctioning story in three seasons which i would have to go check the tape that seems like a long gap but sure but you know if you're watching them you know in sequence and then in syndication you know you maybe you don't feel as like oh another holodeck. I do think it kind of stands out as a, like not just a,

a holodeck episode, but a, all right, we're going to let Brent Spiner do his thing episode, which I feel like they leaned more on as seasons went on, but that's a separate issue. Um, but yeah.

Uh, and then one other kind of, I guess element just to throw out there and then we can maybe pick up on it as we go through is that neither Brandon Braga, who, you know, punched up the script, nor Patrick Stewart knew very much about Westerns. Which, you know, which lends kind of a bit of, I think a bit of just like, it is not a jaded kind of look at the Western or a let's re re-examine the western which i feel like is kind of what happened in the 90s right like let's re-examine the genre yeah um it does feel very much like a oh oh let's do this this is fun kind of approach yeah stewart apparently would go watch movies at night and then come back to the set the next day and be like okay here's what we're

gonna do and people who knew westerns were like okay we know what movie he just watched which is which is very funny that's great there's my fun trivia notes that i get as as is you know my unique source for such things memory alpha yeah your inside edge my inside lane on all the on all the trivia. But yeah, that all said, we should go right into our cold open. All right. So I did not know until we started recording and I looked at the IMDB page that Patrick Stewart had directed this, which makes this opening,

I mean, just a little bit more delicious. It was already delicious. So we have picard playing his uh penny whistle i'm assuming to to get into some nerd lore that's his flute that is from do you recall the episode where he i think it's the inner light is the title where he like lives an entire life on an alien planet and then oh yes yeah and then like learns that flute um and then it's like kind of a character trait after that that he is you know continues to okay it and stuff that's a star trek lore reference but yes it's basically a penny whistle yeah the resekin flute resekin

oh all right something like that and and he's playing this along with a recording uh which first of all i really enjoy the fact that uh the star trek computer has midi capabilities he's able to uh stop the recording and ask for it to play back by switching out two instruments the clarinet for the oboe i think is what he wanted uh and i i went through this series of uh of emotions let's say let's call them emotions where i desired this capability and then realized that this capability exists and then i could have it and then suddenly didn't care but i like because i thought if i could just tell a computer to take any recording and swap out that instrument for that instrument, I mean, that would be like just you would spend endless hours just seeing what songs sounded like when the guitar was a flute or a trumpet. And then I realized that a Casio keyboard can do this, right?

Like this is what a MIDI does. Obviously, you can't take an actual recording and do that, like a recording of actual people playing instruments. But if you programmed... And then I also realized that I have, in fact, done this in the past. There's a programming language that's specifically about making music, and so you can just swap out the voices and, you know, like what that's like. Anyways, I don't know why i went on a tear there but it just made me think of uh it's yet another way in which the star trek of the

late 80s and early 90s prefigured the future yeah exactly and then he gets repeatedly interrupted i don't have the order in which he's interrupted here i think uh versus data and jordy because they want to test using data as the backup for the main computer for whatever system so the the main thing is that they have two days of of dead time they're waiting for a rendezvous that's been delayed so our cold open tells us this is going to be a fun episode like everyone's chill they have two days of r and r so data and jordi want to hook up Data and see if he can run systems by himself as a backup, whatever. Then Dr. Crusher comes in and wants him in her play, which is... This is a fun bit of dialogue here.

Where he's like, I'm not much of an actor, which is great. Yeah, chef kiss. But then he gets kind of offended because he only wanted him for the butler. Yeah, yeah. It's not much of a role. And then Worf comes in. Okay, so we get into something here. And this is, like, my notes are, this is the classic Star Trek enforced leisure.

There's a thing that happens in a lot of star trek episodes where the humans are enjoying their leisure time and the blank doesn't understand it and the humans have to teach them how to relax as if this was a fundamental human trait that other aliens in the world or in the universe uh can't perceive or aliens or robots like you see it with vulcans but that's not actually what's happening here there's a totally different thing happening here but it is fun at this moment to see it like where wharf is like trying to make work for himself and picard is like just chill dude just chill you have the free time use it yeah he wants to run security drills but that doesn't make sense because they're taking on new staff soon.

And so he's like, I'm going to run simulations. And Picard's like, take a break, my man. Yeah. My dude. And we do see that Picard finally gets to settle into his flute playing before we follow Worf to find out the real reason why he was trying to make work for himself yeah wharf goes back to his quarters where his son alexander is where his son alexander is playing the world's thickest ipad uh i i put like i had a lot about this video game here. I was thinking about how advanced Star Trek technology is.

Basically, they have tablets, right? They hand those around. They have this weird thing where instead of everyone having a tablet on them, you're handed a tablet with the data that you need on it. There's no Wi-Fi. Right. data that you need on it there's no wi-fi right though there is as we learn later in this episode because there's a yeah information retrieval but yeah they have the whole thing where it's like purpose-built tablets yeah which when you think about it like at first it seems like oh they just didn't get that technology right but they also have replicators right so maybe that is the

technology done right like if i could give up my phone like if i could just throw my phone away and then just replicate a new one whenever i need it yeah why not like that's um okay anyways yeah that's we're getting some galaxy brain thoughts on here i was just thinking yeah i have a you know a kindle and a phone and i use them for different things that's a thing anyway but this is very chunky, and it makes me think of all the computing power in it. That must deliver the most amazing experience. We don't see it. We just see the back of it because he's looking at it. And it makes standard video game noises, so we know it's a video game.

But we can extrapolate from the fact that they are a very technologically advanced society, and that this thing is so big uh and by so big i mean like the size of a novel or something like that or uh an encyclopedia i should say um that is probably delivering like terabytes several terabytes of ram like just the most amazing experience i'm guessing. But is it as amazing experience as going onto the holodeck for Alexander's special Western program that he's been asking Worf to come do with him? Yeah. Did you know that we are a 100% listener supported show? Our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day keep us in the podcast business and in return receive exclusive episode previews as well as plus expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about media we're enjoying and the things going on in our lives. Trading Freedom, How Trade with China Defined Early America, is about fast ships, cheap drugs, and American political economy. Published by the University of Chicago Press, find it wherever good books are sold.

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little as $1 an episode, check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. As it turns out, Worf was not able to make up any work to get him out of this. And so Alexander tells him to saddle up. And we have a Western sting in the Star Trek theme as we go out to our credits. Yeah, man, that theme song gets me. I did forgotten how much that theme song gets me i did i'd forgotten how much that theme song got me yeah it's a it's an all-timer i haven't given given in yet but i do sometimes think about putting on there are these youtube channels that are just like the bridge noise from various star

trek yeah bridges because sometimes my entire desire to watch an episode of star trek is just to put it on and then ignore it while the soundscape is just in the room yeah you just want like an ambient starship that's all you want that's all i want no i get it i get it you could do your work in the 10 forward cafe right right like oh that would be so sweet like not actual starfleet work not actually in danger just just chilling the the stars going by a little noise in the background as people are collecting dishes or whatever yeah a little shoop shoop of the doors yes perfect anyhow this this episode does a pretty pretty fun job of incorporating western motifs into the the soundtrack which is pretty cool but uh yeah after our credits we start off on the straight up a hollywood backlot western town yes which is fact, what they shot on. They did do an outdoor backlot set for shooting it, which I appreciate.

And, of course, Worf and Alexander are in full Western costume. As sheriff and deputy, Alexander introduces us to the holodeck program Deadwood, 19th century Earth, the ancient West. We're going to get that a lot. Because so much farther in the future, the old West is earth the ancient west we're gonna get that a lot because so much farther in the future the old west is now the ancient west yeah exactly yeah we get a bit a bit of back and forth to also you know establish what's going to be our uh tension here uh we go to engineering where jordy is getting data hooked up to do their tests or whatever and this is a great little like oh this is why these guys are friends scene because we get the you know the kind of the banter as he's hooking things up to data's head about him trying to grow a beard and uh i i do appreciate that they're i i feel like they're um getting audiences comfortable so they don't have a reicher beard moment with jordy

right because because when they came back i don't remember what season it was where reicher showed up with a beard and there was just at the time there was like it was a controversy it was you know um but now it's like okay be ready there's a beard coming jordy's jordy's gonna have a beard i don't think i don't remember jordy ever having a beard though jordy's jordy's gonna have a beard i don't think i don't remember jordy ever having a beard though like this episode in the next episode they make a point of saying oh he's he's growing a beard and then i think yeah a couple episodes later they're like what about that beard he's like i shaved it off like it is in the text about how he tried the beard but it didn't work out um we have a good exchange of...

I must admit, Data, I never get used to seeing you like this. I do not understand. You are constantly working on similar electronic systems, yet their appearances do not disturb you. But you're not just another electronic system. Thank you, Geordi. Nor are you just another biological organism uh yeah the action starts to heat up on the holodeck as uh there's shots in the saloon and we meet our villain of the they don't

call it a hollow novel i think eventually they start calling these hollow novels but the villain the villain of the program yeah eli hoander, the butcher of Bozeman. He's killed 23 men. So I guess Alexander wrote the program. So he's giving Worf all the info that he should know in order to participate. Right. Which is kind of funny. We might have passed the thing here.

If I can just rewind just a teeny bit here. There's a Barkley mention. Yeah. Yeah. It's right before this. Yeah. walking into town and uh there is a woman on a balcony who's clearly showing off her legs and the harmonica in the background that is the music is clearly a sexy harmonica sound if you can imagine it's clearly meant to be this like like yeah and she whistles at wharf yeah and then wharf is a little skeptical and he asks you wrote this hologram program yourself and alexander responds with you know legendary creep show barkley helped me write this i will have to have a word with mr barkley yeah but when when they say that the harmonica comes back in, but it's clearly joke harmonica sound. It's the humorous harmonica sting.

So I love that they use the harmonica for both of those. I'm glad you're calling this out because one note about this episode is that it is an Emmy award-winning episode for outstanding individual achievement in sound mixing for a drama series. Wow. Okay. So I'm glad you're picking up on these things because that work is being appreciated live as we talk. I do want to comment about Eli here, if I may. You may. If you're like me me a fan of briscoe county jr and this this man feels very much like a western outlaw it's because he he played the character peter hutter who is a uh reoccurring outlaw on briscoe county jr like i when i saw it i thought i didn't remember him specifically from briscoe county jr i just remembered i just remember thinking this guy is absolutely a wild west outlaw yeah the actor is um john piper ferguson i mean i didn't recognize

him because i don't recognize most actors um but he was in unforgiven which came out like the year before this episode anyhow yeah so eli hollander is you know uh talking with his crony who is a uh kind of a mexican bandit uh stereotype um not not the best not the best character the most sensitive characterization no but fortunately not not one that's in much of the episode that does not require much more mention than that uh but yeah eli's bragging and and you know shooting at his own wanted poster so we know he's the bad guy and alexander tells wharf he's the bad guy so wharf takes his direct route walks into the saloon tells him he's under arrest and his palm strikes him in the face and sends him flying and here's a good bit of lessons for our narrative development

alexander stops the program no no no computer freeze program what is wrong that was too easy it has to be harder to beat the bad guys otherwise it's no fun computer increase program difficulty to level four go back to where my father and i first walked into the saloon i love the you know how holodeck programs have this i guess i don't know parametric quality where i guess you program them with content but then it handles scaling like like i want this to be harder like what does that mean for a western it's it apparently means more smoke in the air uh a more menacing kind of aura from the bad guys and the fact that everyone else treats them as scarier than they were the first time so we like reset the scene we go through the first couple lines again and then

this time when warf and alexander come in everyone else in the saloon pieces out and leaves them all alone yeah to to eli hollander's credit or to john piiper Ferguson's credit, he does feel like he went from level one to level four just in how he reacts to Worf. It's not like he was cowering from Worf before, but for some reason he does have much more menace in this moment. So this time it is not a simple approach and they have a little more back and forth with, I don't think that's where Eli tells him, I don't think that's a very good idea, etc., etc. And while they've been talking, one of Eli's cronies has crept up behind Worf and then suddenly hits him over the head with a chair. This does not faze him, of course, for he is Worf. But he ends up exchanging blows in a bout of fisticuffs with Eli and his cronies, including the line where he turns to Alexander and goes, I'm beginning to see the appeal of this program. Yes.

Very good. is going to have them turn over all their money and jewelry. But before anything can go any further south, there's a sudden rifle shot and his hat flies off and we cut back to the door of the saloon and it's Troy with a shotgun. Alexander asked Counselor Troy to join us. She loves Western stories. I will be honest, when she showed up and took that shot i did not recognize her and i was like oh who's this you know like i was like yeah who is this very excited to meet this brand

new character obviously like it's she's great in this like she doesn't have like a giant role or whatever but i really enjoy the role she has in this episode yeah she seems like she's just having a lot of fun yeah back in engineering they're going through various systems that data is hooked up to and then while he's in the middle of accessing some secondary systems there's an energy fluctuation in his neural net and he does some twitching the absolute worst energy fluctuations especially in your neural net this is i mean this i think we might have gone into this before but this is a little bit more evidence that like despite all of their advanced technology they they just don't have fuse boxes yeah when anything happens on the ship

their panels explode and electrocute people and whatnot and just they just have energy fluctuations all the time like the one thing they don't have control over is is the electricity aboard their ship i think my my uh headcanon from last time we talked about this was like the the nature of the technology is such that fuses like won't work for some reason like they're right they're not strong enough or they they'd have to be so strong that they'd be tripping all the time. But yes, you'd think they'd figure out some other kind of safeguards. But as we know, Star Trek technology does not have, it only has safeguards when they're conveniently convenient, because otherwise you'll never have any crises. And how else are you going to have drama?

Any advancement in technology is a compromise in one way or the other. And in this case, it is occasionally your Android gets fused with the ship's computer. And as we get farther and farther into our own future, where we just get notifications about all of our data, all of our data being compromised every three days.

Is this that unrealistic? Yeah, not so much. Yeah, yeah. So they deactivate the interface just in case they're going to try again in a couple hours. But then when Data gets up, he holsters his tricorder like a pistol. Yeah, it's a great, great little bit there. On the holodeck, Worf has taken Eli to the town jail and asks Alexander about the justice system.

Do we put him on trial or do we execute him? the justice system do we put him on trial or do we execute him so i mean he doesn't come off as bloodthirsty but it's very like do we get to execute him one one character trait about wharf that i really like is that he he is he is the most dnd alignment chart lawful neutral character like he needs to know what the rules are because he will abide by the rules. But if the rules are, oh, you execute criminals, you'll do it because that's the rule. And I think we actually see that come into play

with all of the... As time goes on, the Worf episodes and the whole story with the K clino high council and all that stuff is probably the stuff i like the most about next generation yeah and a lot of it is because of seeing his how he like balances his like sense of internal honor with all the rules of like whatever situation he's in anyway that's neither here nor there i just it's a good little bit in in uh this scene. But they're supposed to hold him until a federal marshal can take him for trial to like St. Louis or whatever.

Eli reiterates it's not a good idea because his old man is going to come for him. And Worf isn't going to like that. And Troy, who's been hanging out smoking a cheroot behind the desk the the whole time says that he's right. You're no match for the Hollanders. And we have a very fun bit here where Worf interacts with her like a co-worker and she wants to be in character. Yes. But we learned that she was just passing through and lent a helping hand when it was needed, but she doesn't have any reason to say. Counselor, I would appreciate some support in this matter durango i'm called durango yes uh counselor durango perhaps you would consider becoming a temporary deputy

it's so good i i really love uh how much troy is eating up this whole thing. Like, it's just absolutely into playing out this whole game. It's fun. It's a great contrast. It plays into that thing I was saying before, like, where Star Trek likes to have this thing where aliens don't understand human leisure. And so here she is. She's just full on into into it right because this is this is what you do you're you're space larping right why not why wouldn't you you know uh and and

wharf is starting to appreciate what's going on but doesn't still isn't you know doesn't quite get the he's rubbing up against the invisible rules of it yeah yeah, she always wanted to play the part of the mysterious stranger in the stories that her father would read her of the ancient West. Yes. It's good stuff. Ancient West. Ancient West. We get an appearance by Annie,

who is the tavern keeper. She was behind the bar in the saloon. Um, she is, uh, buxom, I would say in, in,

in a single word description um and she comes in to congratulate wharf on his success and gives him a she kisses him right i forget exactly yeah there's there's definitely a thing between her character and wharf's character right like there's yeah she's gonna see him later tonight when she's gonna make him a beefsteak and some gooseberry cobbler. I bought some special candles for the table setting. Pure beeswax. The meal, the absolute feast she makes out of pure beeswax could feed an army. Like, that is worth it for the episode alone.

I don't, I really don't understand. I don't, I do not't understand. I don't, I do not know why that would, I'm not a candle person, I guess. I don't, I don't know. Well,

shout out to joy Garrett for really killing it in this one. Yeah. Yeah. Pure. These wigs. She was on days of our lives. I guess that's not. Oh,

and between 1983 and 1985, she portrayed Boobsy Austin in The Young and the Restless. Well, there you go. Now you understand what we mean. Now, she is a little confused by Worf's reaction to everything and why Worf would want to keep

doing the work. Right, because her character clearly, as you say, has a relationship with Worf's character, but Wor as you say has a relationship with warf's character but warf yeah does not have a relationship with her so um he he kind of like he he pleads his duties to stay he won't be able to enjoy her uh gooseberry cobbler and her beeswax candles tonight and she gets offended and it's another woman ain't it it's that floozy at miss langford's house of pleasure and she slaps him so what okay a couple things i find interesting about this scene number one it's uh that floozy because i mean i don't want to this woman is coded floozy like that is i mean like literally somebody had to write the code well i I think she's being contrasted with the whistling woman.

Like that's who she's talking about. Yeah. Who is more of a promiscuous. Exactly. But then this is where we get into the this is let's get into the meat of this. Right. OK. So far, this this is Alexander's program.

Right. Worf is clearly the hero. Like if you were to play the video game you would be playing wharf right um alexander's role in this so far has been to go to the bank right now i think he is just sent to the bank to get money durango needs to get paid to stay so they're gonna she asked for 500 and so they send um yeah Yeah. Alexander to the bank to make the withdrawal. Yeah. But like the most tedious of jobs, a very dangerous job.

And we we should recognize that and know that when when when he's suggested. But Alexander made this program for his dad with the help of Barkley, in which there are two women uh one of which calls the other a floozy who are fighting over him like one works at a house of pleasure the other is uh play the other is annie here and just there's something going on here just underneath there's some psychological i don't know i can't i can't figure it out tracking the the alexander wharf relationship it it it tracks i think yeah so alexander is with wharf post his mother getting killed right right yeah another one of those the klingon storylines um and then he went to like to earth to stay with his grandparents for a while then he's back on the ship and so the fact that he has a fantasy where his dad has some kind of relationship yes that that seems to make sense to

me okay so now i am i am down i'm on board with that but now but then you have barkley involved so you know yes exactly so so they make it sexy yeah you're You're on a starship. This young kid, a young Klingon. Well, he's half Klingon, right? Yeah. I guess he's technically like three quarters Klingon. It's because his mom is half Klingon. Something like that. That's what it is.

Yeah. But anyways, this kid comes up to you and says, I would like to make this program for my dad. This is what I've got so far. Does Alexander say, can you sex this up? Or does Barkley go, you know what you need you need kid you need some more sex in this well i think barkley says well you know this is how it would be in the ancient west let's go to the source material right like yeah these are tropes from this kind of story but yeah i think barkley probably has a hand in it with those beeswax candles. Yeah.

Pure beeswax. All right, let's take a little pause in the action here so that we can all sit back and catch our breaths and Epi and I can let you know where you can find us elsewhere on the internet. Because as it turns out, we do do other things than talk about the Rockford files from time to time. Epi, where can our fine listeners find you and your work? You can find my work at www.worldswithoutmaster.com. That's worlds, plural, master, singular.

Or at digathousandholes.com, with the thousand being numeral one zero zero zero. I like complex URLs. You can also find me on Twitter at Epidiah, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. Where can we find you, Nathan? The hub for all of my stuff from games to zines to podcasts is ndpdesign.com. I recently started a new podcast called Appendix NDP, which is a solo show where I talk about various topics in games and publishing. So I will plug that for listeners of podcasts. You can also find me on Twitter at ndpaoletta, P-A-O-L-E-T-T-A.

And on Instagram at the same handle, though I probably will only have pictures of my dog. So, you know, that may be a plus. Now we return to the adventures of Jimbo Rockfish on 200 a day. Picard is continuing to enjoy his leisure time and playing back the music he had been recording, but then starts glitching into a totally different kind of music and then he asks the computer but the computer says nope this is what you asked for similarly uh dr crusher is running her rehearsal where it seems that uh reicher is probably the lead in his classic i'm not on duty pajama pant like pajama suit wear um he takes some lines again from the top and it turns out that it is not the lines of the of the play but lines from one of data's poems about his cat elis catus there's the gag of like

what are you reading the lines uh but yeah yes the play is. I just keep getting more poetry. I'm 100% comfortable with this happening to world literature. I would like actually a moment in a singularity in time in which all of world literature, all of human literature is replaced by data's poetry. And then we just have to recreate it after that. It's just a reset just uh just a complete reset just to wipe wipe this light clean yeah exactly they you know they they go to engineering of course to check it out and there's nothing wrong with the the pads uh they're fine but it's the info retrieval net so So they are talking to a database somewhere. Yeah, an IRN, an info retrieval net.

So they go to do diagnostics because it probably has something to do with this connection that they had tried out earlier. I do enjoy the vast amounts of diagnostics that are done on screen in Star Trek. I'm just a sucker for the petty day-to-day operation of a starship. I like the telescoping time amount. Like sometimes the diagnostic takes like three seconds.

Sometimes it's like, well, in six hours, we'll know. Back on the holodeck, Alexander, he's abducted while bringing his bag of cash back from the bank. He was begging for it i mean look at the size of that i mean i don't want to i don't want to victim blame here but he's shaking a big bag of coins as he walks down the street yeah it might have a dollar i'm surprised it didn't have a dollar sign on it to be perfectly honest uh but he's grabbed by some of the hollander gang goons and they take him to an underground mine i guess mines are underground by definition of the Hollander gang goons, and they take him to an underground mine.

I guess mines are underground by definition. Yeah. The purpose of which is to give us an ominous shadow who approaches Alexander asking, where's my boy? Mm-hmm. Alexander, of course, having written the program, knows that something is awry. I'm not supposed to be kidnapped now.

And he tries to freeze the program, but of course, doesn't freeze. See, that's, I honestly, that's why I like this old tech. You tell it to stop, it stops. You just pull the plug. You yank the fuse out. You just yank the fuse out.

If there were buttons, if the holodeck just had buttons. Control C. If he just hit Control C, well, unless it's Windows Windows and then he's copying. But I've seen this episode many times, so I know it's going to happen. Well, let me just say this, that right now we're getting the beginning of our Brent Spiner. Spectacular.

Spectacular. Yeah, his scene chewery and uh the the mean data is is is great uh i'm already down for more of it you get a taste of it right here like when he he kind of reveals himself as the as uh frank hollander and you're just like yes i want more of this more of angry data or just mean data i shouldn't say angry this is this is mean in a how we would normally use it but also very much in an ancient west mean ordinary yes ordinary data for sure in addition to the ominous shadow um we get the ominous lines of uh you want us to kill him senor frank no he's more valuable to us alive i believe we go to a commercial uh based on the break here we come back to standard standard data feeding his cat designing his special food

for his selective tastes but of course spot the cat doesn't want it being a cat this is and i'm going to anticipate now problems with the computers right so i thought i in my notes i was like well yeah but cats don't you know they're a cat like you you can't predict what they're going to want to eat or whatever but uh so i was like this isn't an indication that something has gone wrong and it turns out it's not an indication that something's... This might be the only way in which the replicators are going right in doing the thing that they're supposed to do, which we'll see in a little bit. The indicator of something going wrong is when data says,

vamoose, you little varmint. Yes, because Spot, in the 20... What century are we in now? The 24th century, I think. 24th century the 24th century i think 24th century 24th century cats still like walking across keyboards even if they're just touch screens yep as star trek viewers we know that whenever data does not use very particular language and uses contractions and stuff that's a sign that something is has gone. Something's up. In the saloon on the holodeck, Worf is looking for his deputy, and he is still mad at him and gives him kind of the cold shoulder,

saying she hasn't seen him, but then asks him, you know, order or get out kind of thing. He asks for a Klingon fire wine, and she responds, This ain't Kansas City. They're fancy European drinks. Frank Hollander arrives with his goons and so wharf sees him and assumes that you know data has joined the program um yeah i like this because it's kind of like a he he says something like you know commander what are you doing here and this gets like a total like no response based on how that interaction went with troy i think

he's like oh i need to play along right like he doesn't keep pressing it he's kind of like now that he knows how things are supposed to work he like gets back into character himself i mean maybe i'm reading a little too much into it because it's also just to make the story work but um or to make the reveal work that's about to happen but i i can see a bit of a cause and effect there uh hollander wants his boy wharf says he's going to stand trial for murder hollander asks if he wants anything in exchange and wharf says he has nothing he wants but there's a pregnant pause before hollander goes what about your deputy yeah so wharf realizes what has happened says he doesn't negotiate with criminals and goes to leave.

Hollander grabs him by the shoulder, but he grabs him with full data strength. And so it like hurts. Yes. It hurts Worf when we see him wince and stagger. And he's like, Commander, why did you do that? And then he realizes that it's not really Data. Data would never do that kind of thing. He tries to freeze the program.

It does not freeze. And so he dives out of the door ahead of gunshots. Very exciting. There's a line. I think Frank Hollander's line is something like, you'll regret walking out that door or something like that. And I do appreciate that. Like, he's not walking out that door or something like that. And I do appreciate that. Like he's not walking out that door. He is diving out the door.

Yeah. Um, he, uh, burst back into the, the, the jail to tell Troy that the holodeck safeguards aren't functioning. Um,

and then they try to end the program. They try to contact the bridge or security. None of it works. And then they see that whf has a gunshot wound. Yeah. So a couple of things here. Number one, it's funny to have Troy try and contact security with Worf right there. Right.

It's a little bit like standing next to Bruce Wayne and turning on the bat signal or whatever. But bad analogy the other bit though that i i'd like because i was thinking if i ever had a holodeck problem the the first person i'd go to and the first person troy of all people should go to is barkley is barkley yeah she knows that he would be the one to get him out of this situation and uh but obviously we don't have um what's his name on hand to play barkley this episode yeah and this communication goes nowhere because things are going haywire um he can't explain why frank hollander looks like data but he has alexander and then eli who's still in the cell starts mocking them and they look and it's data as Eli Hollander. Yes. Making funny faces and laughing at them.

So we are now deep within the roots of the Matrix trilogy. This will become the... The agents. Agent Smith. Yeah. Sorry, Matrix quadrilogy. And now we get to see the origin of the title, A Fistful of datas which of course is from a fistful of dollars so on memory alpha says that the original title was

actually a um good bad and the ugly riff and they changed it um it was like the good the bad and the klingon or something like that oh right okay also i mean that also works i think a fistful of data's is kind of slightly funnier yeah it at least fits the cadence better there is one very clear fistful of dollars reference that will come up a little later um yeah uh wait hold on but fistful of dollars is the red harvest one right it's the it It's the one that Yojimbo is based on? Is it? I don't remember. Sorry, the other way around. The one that I've seen the most is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. So I don't really remember exactly what differentiates that from the other ones the overall plot with like the kidnapping and the exchange is a real bravo

homage which i've seen but i do not remember because i think i watched it like 15 years ago but i remember liking it yeah so so yo jimbo was done in 61 which is one of my all-time favorite films uh and then fistful of dollars was done in 64 and fistful of dollars is is very very deeply inspired by yo jimbo and well i'll point it out later but there's a moment in this that is very fistful of dollars um that i i'm certain was a direct homage yeah the the specific like referenced influences include fistful of dollars and the good the bad and the ugly Ugly and Rio Bravo and Shane, which I've never seen. I'm sure there's all kinds of little, you know, little touches to many, many Westerns. So we continue with Troy and Worf.

Troy says that even though the safeguards are off, it's still a holodeck program. So they can get to the end of the story. It'll end and the program will terminate you know like it's always done i'm i'm absolutely sure there are other ones where it's like you know it will continue like what will happen when we get to the end it'll just continue forever right like yeah again it is a depending on the needs of the episode is what the holodeck will do when it goes haywire and so so they need to get to the end of the story so wharf will go see if he can find out where alexander is um we get a low-key uh staff meeting where uh picard and reicher are talking to data and jordy about the the issues

cropping up all over the ship and so they determined that one of the computer's subroutines got overwritten by elements of Data's programming, including recreational programming and the replicators. Because all of the replicators on like decks four through seven are doing nothing but cat food. Yes. So I wrote this down for our gearheads. So I wrote this down for our gearheads. It's subroutine C47, which is responsible for library computer access, replicator selection, recreational programming, but no critical systems. And a couple of things about that. Number one, how is replicator selection not a critical system i don't like that just seems fundamental that your food supply is is one but anyways i i do enjoy that those that subroutine c47 governs those

three very disparate uh parts of the ship right can i I give you another piece of memory alpha inspired trivia? Yeah. Apparently, I did not know this, but apparently the number 47 was a in-joke on the set originating with one of the writers named Joe Manosky. He started including references to 47 in his scripts in the fourth season and the in joke caught on. And so from the fourth season of TNG through to Deep Space Nine, when they started kind of getting tired of it, 47 is just in lots of places. Oh, interesting.

So there you go. So C47, because we needed a number and when we need a number, we use 47. Exactly. I don't care to go any further down this rabbit hole, but that's what Memory Alpha tells me. So they say they'll isolate the corrupted pathways, which Data says... I reckon the process should take less than two hours. What did you say?

I said the process should take less than two hours. No, you said i reckon according to my memory logs i did not use those words y'all must be mistaken there daddy you did it again did what the jury's like all right we'll go you know we'll run some diagnostics on you as well And then we have a little hammy moment where he spits in a potted plant on his way out as if it's a spittoon. He's got such a swagger at this point. It's great. It's just wonderful.

And I watched it with the closed captioning on. And it definitely lets you know when data is drawing, which is great. That's a great touch. In the jail, we see troy watching eli eli shuffling cards and see that he's moving with the accelerated speed and precision of the normal data so when wharf gets back um she tells him this later but so she sees that and wharf comes back he knows that alex Alexander was abducted by Hollander's men. And then Frank Hollander himself comes by to see his boy.

And so we get a good Brent Spiner talking to himself scene. Data on data acting. Always a pleasure. Now, I will point out the premise of this episode involves them trying to hook data up to the starship computers so that data could take over part of the routines and whatnot that the starship computers would have to do right like the idea of data yeah that data is such an advanced piece of technology that this is a he could replace if only temporary but um what we're also getting at, this is the thing, the fundamental flaw of the human endeavor in Star Trek, which is a single data and a bunch of holograms could do the job with less danger to human life than a giant starship, right? We should be sending out starships full of datas and holograms, right?

I mean, I think which is why the choice was made that data is essentially a unique being, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we can't. We haven't mass-produced datas. Right. And then the hologram thing, again, I always just think of how there's a whole plot in Voyager

about, like, holographic life and that essentially being a thing of like we could just have our own society like once we're sufficiently, you know, advanced. But yes, in this case, a whole team of data holograms could take over an entire Western town is what we're learning. Exactly. And strangers ain't invited. Right. So, yeah. So I think now that Worf has a different idea of the stakes at hand, he's reconsidered and he's willing to make an exchange. Eli for Alexander.

Frank makes the makes the appointment in two hours on the main street. And yeah, it gives the look to Troy and strangers aren't invited after he leaves though she says you can't trust him in every western i've ever read the villains always break their word he can't be trusted but we have made an honorable agreement they're not concerned with arno wharf this is the ancient west but uh there's a gunfighter with the speed and accuracy of an android and in two hours he's going to try and kill you so stakes are high um reicher checks in in engineering uh data is still you know still still affecting his drawing accent but they figured out that part of his memory structure was replaced by info from the recreational database, specifically the ancient West. Yes.

So they're doing a progressive purge in his systems and in the computer systems and everything should be worked out in a few hours. I mean, you flush the cash, you reboot, you're good. Yeah, exactly.

It fixes your problem. There's no problem. Worf and Troy have a little map and everything as they plan out what they're going to do to, to outwit the Hollanders. And we have, uh, another Annie appearance.

She swoops in. Yeah. You don't want to know what she had to do to get old man Newsome to give up his telegraph machine because they need some, some parts to do some things. And she makes a final overture to wharf. Lord knows why I keep risking my life for you, sheriff.

And then we get some good facial acting as Troy tries to get him to acknowledge, you know, her or, you know, do something. And finally, he's like, I forget what he says, but it's like, I very much appreciate your assistance or something like that. Okay, that's all you're going to get. We see a clock fade of the hands going around to show the passage of time and they have rigged up something with their communicators and the telegraph machine parts um to make a temporary force field it's unstable and will last for no more than 15 seconds

they've got to use that starfleet ingenuity yeah their advantage even in the ancient west uh this is the part that i think is is the uh allusion to fistful of dollars um because that's the the scene um i was just gonna say perhaps you remember in back to the future three when he put uh a piece of a stove in his shirt i hid it hid it in his jacket so that when he got shot he didn't uh he didn't die uh thinking oh that's a more relevant uh more up-to-date and relevant but it doesn't matter it's all right the distant past yeah anyways yes so the fistful of dollars he put a piece of a iron piece of a stove i think or no it might have been a cast iron pot. I can't remember, but he wore it as armor. Um,

we get our big standoff with the classic crows con or buzzards or whatever. And calling as warf escorts Eli out. And we see all townsfolk closing down windows and scattering. And we have this big, I think I only really noticed it because in the writeup, uh, there's a quote from Patrick Stewart about how his favorite part was he got to be on a crane for the shoot. Like, because they were doing this outdoor, it was doing it outdoors on the set.

And so there's this big pull-away crane shot to, like, show the big empty road. And I was like, oh, that was his big crane shot. Oh, that's so nice. Yeah, there you go. road i was like oh that was his big crane shot oh that's so nice yeah there you go and then frank comes out with alexander lights a cigar with the slow walking prisoner exchange as we cut back and forth we see goons all datas easing out of various hidey holes with guns maybe a whole fistful of datas maybe a whole fistful of data as as our prisoners approach their their uh i don't know their their end points on the exchange frank shouts for eli to get down and the wharf shouts for alexander to you know to dive or whatever there's a moment

this is just like i mean it doesn't matter but but there's a, when they were planning, Worf was like, well, there's a rain barrel here and Alexander can hide behind it. And then here's Alexander dives behind the rain barrel. So I guess he just has good situational awareness. Yeah. I, I had the same note because I specifically, because they bring it up in the planning. I'm like, oh, it'll be interesting to see how they convince or how they get alexander to do that and he just does it it doesn't matter it just happens it's just part of the thing um and then uh wharf activates his force field and takes six direct shots from frank hollander as they spark off his

force field oh good looking out troy pops out out of hiding she's covering the goons with her her winchester but then the main goon he is now data wearing a mustache and a sombrero uh yeah throws senior frank another pistol and it there's a slow-mo of it going through the air and uh frank hollander's reaching up to grab it and then there's a single shot and it shoots out of his hand and wharf made his quick draw and got it just in time yeah and so frank goes go on shoot me there's a pregnant pause and wharf looks at alexander and sees alexander looking at him all wide-eyed and he just says don't let me see your face in this town again then the hollanders slink off clearly defeated by uh the

mighty sheriff wharf now they're dodge's problem or silverado's problem right some other town's problem it doesn't matter um they go into the saloon everyone is reunited alexander is fine but the program isn't over yet but that was the end it should end but then our final appearance of annie oh wait now she is also data yes though what you've been waiting sweeps down the stairs tells wharf that he's as handy was out with a shooting iron as he is with a woman's heart and as wharf kind of gives him a very wide-eyed stare kind of nuzzles onto his chest and then fades out as the program finally turns itself off so it's i mean it's a gag it's fine i guess i mean honestly i would be uncomfortable with any co-worker doing that so i'm just gonna read it as such we get to the end of our episode with a final

voiceover from picard everything's back to. They've made their rendezvous. Everything is great. We're back to status quo. And in our final little scene, Worf is trying to sneak out of their room and Alexander's pretending to be asleep, but he wakes up before Worf can escape. After what happened, I guess you'll never want to go back to the ancient west. I guess you'll never want to go back to the ancient west. The town of Deadwood may face danger once again. If they do, they will need a sheriff. And a deputy.

And he passes through to the other room where Worf has his western hat that he was wearing the whole time on a table and he puts it on. He looks at himself in the mirror and does a quick draw on himself. And then we get a very rare, big Michael Dorn Klingon smile in his hat. And with western harmonica in the soundtrack as the Enterprise flies away into the stars. Yeah, it's good stuff. Perhaps one could say flies off into the stars. Yeah, it's good stuff. Perhaps one could say flies off into the sunset. Oh, yeah, yeah. I hadn't even thought of that.

Yeah, it was a very fun episode. There's something about this episode where there's no there okay so there are high stakes right because worth alexander and troy are in danger and it seems like no one else in the crew ever knows it until it's done it's not one of those where it's like oh no they're on the holodeck and we can't communicate with them like this entire thing right takes place in the same time that they're like oh there's a problem with the systems well let's fix them and then by the time they're fixed they've already solved their own problem so everything is fine yeah i imagine there's a interesting conversation to have with you know dr crusher about his like bullet wound or whatever but right yeah and you don't get the scene where somebody is

trying to uh hack their way into the the the holodeck because it has to dress up in western gear to like come in and try and integrate into it or something uh yeah it's just kind of a fun like uh here's something that happens on their time yeah it it does have it has almost a cozy feel where it's like they're on their own little adventure and everyone else is on their own little adventure. And it's kind of, there's not quite enough story for either one of those to be the main story, which is why you have the A and the B like plots. Right.

Yeah. Even though they're kind of about the same thing. Yeah. The worst thing that happens to everyone else is that they just have to eat cat food for a little while, but it's only on some decks. Like, they can get replicators on the other decks. Also, I mean, I guess everyone has to read Data's poetry.

Yeah. But yeah, even though, like, the safeguards are turned off, which is more of a, like, all right, so now Worf and Troy have to act differently because of that fact than they otherwise would. But it doesn't really feel like they're in real, like, we know this is a fun holodeck episode they're gonna be fine yeah yeah i i'm kind of fond of this episode i think i like watching the brent spiner chew on scenery stuff we didn't really talk about it because it's kind of like if you know what i'm talking about you know what that's like yeah there is a good amount of that just with all the western dialogue and all that stuff.

And he gets to wear lots of costumes. He apparently had three stand ins for the shoot, which sounds like a lot of stand ins. But I did start looking for them and saw a couple in a couple spots. If you look in the background, you can see like someone who's clearly not Brent Spiner in the makeup, like in the background as one of the goons or whatever. not Brent Spiner in the makeup, like in the background as one of the goons or whatever. Also one detail that always pops out to me is when he's doing the, the cards, his sleeves are rolled up and we see the makeup over arm hair. Oh,

right. We never see his body hair. Cause he's always fully like, you know, in uniform or in sleeves. I think Riker's the only one we ever see body hair on. Sometimes we see Picard's chest because he was like v those like deep v yeah shirts yeah so that always that stands out to me whenever i watch it

because i'm like oh right like they didn't make him shave his arms for this like it's fine and i mean like that's not data specifically that's data that's a different character for the yeah exactly yeah so i'm kind of fond of this episode i think it's fun um i like i like how troy is in it like that could have been like reicher or someone it's kind of in the middle of this weird that weird movement they made towards like the troy wharf relationship that never ended up panning out happening yeah but i think this is like one of the better versions of that where they're just like being friends yeah yeah i like that a lot so it's a fun episode of like all the characters i like doing a fun thing it's not a great star trek qua trek episode okay so season six. Right. So we've had quite a bit of Star Trek, the next generation up to this point.

And but around that time, I'm 100 percent comfortable with shows doing like little experiments or just victory laps or, you know, just just having fun with what their their premise is rather than, you know, stultifying in their formula. Right. I enjoyed this episode quite a bit yeah well there's something about these like long-running episodic shows where i think it becomes less fashionable in the era of the season-long storyline right where it's like we're gonna do the shakespeare one we're gonna do the western one we're going to do the Shakespeare one. We're going to do the Western one. We're going to do the gangster one. And it's kind of like, why not? Like, you got to fill 26 episodes a season and you got the talent. Like, come up with a premise and just go for it. Just have fun with it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're 100% on the mark with the season-long arc problem, which is that during those, if you have an off episode like that, it either has to stand out in some way. It can't just be, this week we're just going to do something fun. It's got to be like, in this week we're going to have the comedic relief episode because everything's been very heavy or, you know, it's got to fit somehow into the arc.

Whereas in this case, just doesn't, it doesn't have to fit. It's fine. It's perfectly fine. It's like, I guess the original like idea of the bottle episode, right?

Yeah. It's just kind of in its own little, little thing. Um, but you know, I like Westerns. I like Star Trek. This is a Star Trek Western that is not taking itself too seriously and is cute and fun and on the holodeck.

So it fits into our format. Yes, exactly. I will say that Durango seems to be asking for an awfully high fee of the $500 to stay. I mean, fast forward about 75 years or so and you have Dixon Hill asking for his 20 a day. Yeah. That is quite the price. But it's all right.

It's all fake money. It's all good. Well, I think we've earned our $500. We've earned our $500 for assisting the sheriff on this day. Mm-hmm. Now that the town of Deadwood is in safe hands, I think we can safely move on to look at some other episodes and be back next time to talk about another holodeck episode

in the Star Trek universe. Pure beeswax.