00:00SPEAKER- Okay, the power's only flickered off twice,
00:02SPEAKERmaybe three times so far, so I think we're good,
00:04SPEAKERbut also we might be recording this on borrowed time.
00:07SPEAKER- It's a good thing you're on a laptop
00:08SPEAKERthat has like 20 hours of battery.
00:10SPEAKER- Well, the laptop's got plenty of battery.
00:13SPEAKERThe internet devices in this house have zero.
00:15SPEAKER- What, they're not hooked up with the NUT server?
00:17SPEAKER- I'm afraid the NUT server
00:19SPEAKERdid not make the cross-country trip with me.
00:21SPEAKER- Oh no, oh no.
00:22SPEAKER- Nor is there UPS in here to hook the NUT server up to.
00:26SPEAKER- Once again, you're at your childhood home.
00:30SPEAKERMy parents are in the process of selling
00:32SPEAKERand moving out of my childhood home.
00:34SPEAKER- Oh no, that's like my worst nightmare.
00:35SPEAKERI've fought and thought about that awful scenario
00:38SPEAKERand what I might do in retaliation.
00:40SPEAKERWhat's your plan?
00:42SPEAKER- I mean, I'm encouraging them to do this.
00:45SPEAKERI think this is a good thing because it's--
00:47SPEAKER- Hang on.
00:48SPEAKER- Yes.
00:49SPEAKER- You're saying you're putting their needs
00:50SPEAKERin front of yours?
00:52SPEAKERThat's probably the right thing to do.
00:53SPEAKER- No, I'm thinking about my future
00:55SPEAKERand what it will be like if I have to deal with this
00:59SPEAKERand them dealing with it now is much better
01:00SPEAKERthan me dealing with it later.
01:02SPEAKER- So this is fulfilling your needs as well.
01:04SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a win-win for everyone.
01:08SPEAKERSo they bought a place a few years ago
01:10SPEAKERthat's closer to some other family members
01:12SPEAKERin Northern Virginia and so they'd been maintaining
01:15SPEAKERtwo fairly substantial,
01:19SPEAKERit's not like palatial estates or anything,
01:20SPEAKERbut they're small toy farms
01:24SPEAKERand it's a lot for people that are my parents' age
01:28SPEAKERand I was glad that they have less stuff
01:30SPEAKERthat they have to do on the home maintenance front now
01:34SPEAKERas a result and hopefully can enjoy themselves
01:35SPEAKERand do some other things now instead.
01:37SPEAKERSo that is good, but I'm a little sad
01:39SPEAKER'cause I don't know that I'm gonna get back
01:40SPEAKERbefore the childhood home goes away.
01:43SPEAKER- So that was my question was whether
01:44SPEAKERthe sentimentality has kicked in yet.
01:47SPEAKER- I mean, a little bit.
01:47SPEAKERThey're sending, I'm getting a lot of the pictures
01:50SPEAKERwith like, do you want this for things
01:52SPEAKERthat I haven't thought about in 40 years,
01:54SPEAKER35 years in some cases?
01:56SPEAKERAnd I'm like, hmm, no, I think I'm probably good on that one
01:59SPEAKERit's a little bit easier to get rid of it now.
02:03SPEAKERLike, do I need my water skis
02:04SPEAKERfrom when I was in eighth grade?
02:07SPEAKERDon't really have a use for water skis where I live
02:09SPEAKERand like, I'm not living a boat kind of life out here, so.
02:13SPEAKER- What if your daughter reaches the eighth grade
02:15SPEAKERand decides that she absolutely wants to take up water skiing
02:18SPEAKERmore than anything else in the world?
02:19SPEAKER- The interesting thing is as little space
02:22SPEAKERas we have in Northern California
02:24SPEAKERand as much as it costs to like have a storage unit here,
02:27SPEAKERit is much cheaper for me to just buy her
02:29SPEAKERa really nice set of new water skis
02:31SPEAKERthan for me to store water skis for two years.
02:34SPEAKER- I imagine that 80s water ski tech
02:36SPEAKERis probably pretty outdated at this point.
02:38SPEAKER- Well, and so the fun thing about this,
02:40SPEAKERat this point, the skis that I learned to ski on
02:42SPEAKERare probably antiques because they're wooden,
02:45SPEAKERlike Cypress Garden, Dick Pope Jr. Cypress Garden Classics
02:48SPEAKERfrom when my parents got their first boat
02:50SPEAKERin the late 60s or early 70s.
02:52SPEAKERSo yeah, they're not like, they're the kind of skis
02:56SPEAKERyou might hang on a wall at this point.
02:59SPEAKER- I'm sorry, who, Pope Jr.?
03:01SPEAKER- Dick Pope Jr., he's a famous professional water skier
03:04SPEAKERfrom 1974 to like 1982.
03:08SPEAKER- I want to call him up and get his opinion on the matter.
03:10SPEAKER- I mean, look, this is the kind of thing
03:13SPEAKERthat's dangerous to look up on eBay
03:14SPEAKER'cause it could be a hole, right?
03:16SPEAKERLike it could be like, oh man,
03:18SPEAKERthese are some real classic skis.
03:19SPEAKERLike they also have a set,
03:20SPEAKERdo you know what trickster skis are?
03:22SPEAKER- No.
03:23SPEAKER- Okay, so like normal water skis are kind of long
03:26SPEAKERand skinny and have a fin on the back, right?
03:27SPEAKERAnd you put your foot in the middle and like you get up.
03:29SPEAKERSometimes there's another slip in on the back
03:32SPEAKERfor your, for slaloming, whatever.
03:34SPEAKERTrickster skis are about three times as wide
03:38SPEAKERas a normal ski and they have curves up on both ends,
03:41SPEAKERbut they have no fins so you can spin and stuff.
03:43SPEAKERThe only way you can steer them is with the edges.
03:47SPEAKERThey're a really good way to break your ankle,
03:49SPEAKERbut you can do all sorts of cool stuff like spinning on
03:52SPEAKERand like doing spins and I don't know,
03:55SPEAKERmostly it spins, it seems.
03:57SPEAKER- Hey, spinning is a good trick I've heard.
03:59SPEAKER- Yeah, like you look cool when you're doing it.
04:02SPEAKER- Hey, what's a broken ankle or two when you look cool?
04:06SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:19SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:34SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
04:38SPEAKER- I'm Brad, hello, hi.
04:39SPEAKER- Hi, hello, hello, hi.
04:41SPEAKER- Hello, hi, hello.
04:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so to like put a wrapper on that,
04:47SPEAKERit's a little, like there's a little bit of nostalgia,
04:50SPEAKERbut also I'm constantly presented with the
04:53SPEAKERnot having a sustainable amount of space
04:56SPEAKERin the house in which we live.
04:58SPEAKERSo it makes it easy to make smart decisions, I guess.
05:00SPEAKERI don't know.
05:01SPEAKER- That's right, slash and burn.
05:02SPEAKERThat's probably the right call, except it's not.
05:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like I got, she's sending me
05:11SPEAKERmy high school yearbooks.
05:13SPEAKER- Okay, yes, that's crucial.
05:15SPEAKERI mean, those are memories, that's something
05:17SPEAKERyou can't replace.
05:18SPEAKER- I did go and look and they're all on the internet,
05:20SPEAKERit turns out.
05:21SPEAKER- Wait, what?
05:22SPEAKER- Like my high school just posted PDFs
05:24SPEAKERof all the yearbooks that they had.
05:25SPEAKER- Like officially?
05:26SPEAKER- Yeah, official ones.
05:27SPEAKER- Oh my God, I have to find out right now if,
05:31SPEAKERoh, I shouldn't type this into Google.
05:32SPEAKER- No, you should not type this into Google
05:34SPEAKER'cause what you're gonna do is they're gonna go,
05:36SPEAKERthey're gonna find our yearbooks now.
05:39SPEAKER- I'm not gonna say where I went to school or anything.
05:42SPEAKER- I mean, we both grew up in small towns.
05:43SPEAKERThere's a limited number of options.
05:45SPEAKER- Oh no.
05:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it's out there.
05:47SPEAKER- Oh my God.
05:48SPEAKER- We may call this over again.
05:50SPEAKER- Oh no, I think I'm good.
05:52SPEAKERI see a list of what may be my high school class,
05:58SPEAKERbut no pictures.
05:59SPEAKER- Okay, that's good.
06:00SPEAKER- Also, a lot of these names are extremely wrong.
06:03SPEAKERI think this might be crowdsourced yearbook information.
06:06SPEAKER- Oh, it's okay.
06:06SPEAKERSo my high school literally has like a hundred years
06:09SPEAKERof yearbooks just posted in PDF forms
06:11SPEAKERwhere somebody stands professionally.
06:12SPEAKER- It's actually really nice.
06:14SPEAKER- I think I'm on, first of all, I'm on a laptop.
06:18SPEAKERI'm tiling in Mac OS in a way that I can't see much
06:20SPEAKERof this browser right now.
06:21SPEAKERBut I think the address for this high school
06:26SPEAKERis one of the, like a fake auto-generated
06:29SPEAKERby some skeezy affiliate transaction,
06:32SPEAKERsomething, something website chain.
06:34SPEAKER- Look, don't worry, Brad.
06:36SPEAKER- Not official.
06:37SPEAKER- The Discord will figure it out for you.
06:39SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
06:40SPEAKERAnyway, enough about, yes.
06:43SPEAKER- Speaking of walks down memory lane
06:45SPEAKERand revisiting my middle school and early high school years,
06:48SPEAKER- Dan Pine.
06:49SPEAKER- And yours, we threatened to do this last week
06:53SPEAKERand people seem to react pretty positively.
06:55SPEAKERAnd also you've been traveling and it's a hard week
06:57SPEAKERto do a hard hitting technology episode.
07:01SPEAKERWe're gonna talk about the Star Treks.
07:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I was a little worried that there were too many
07:06SPEAKERStar Trek The Next Generation podcasts out there
07:08SPEAKERon the internet already, but people seemed into it.
07:10SPEAKERSo, and also you, I don't know how much you want
07:11SPEAKERto get into it, like you've had some recent Star Trek time.
07:14SPEAKER- Well, okay.
07:15SPEAKERSo I stream often from like eight o'clock until midnight.
07:20SPEAKERAnd then after that, I need something to kind of like
07:22SPEAKERusually get a snack and have a glass of water
07:24SPEAKERand like, you know, wind down for a little bit.
07:26SPEAKERAnd it turns out that a Star Trek The Next Generation episode
07:29SPEAKERis almost exactly the right amount of time
07:31SPEAKERfor me to like wind down.
07:33SPEAKERSo I'll come out, I'll make like a,
07:34SPEAKERI'll make a little snack.
07:36SPEAKERI sit down on the leather chair, I flip on a TNG episode
07:39SPEAKERand I'll watch one TNG episode.
07:41SPEAKERSo I've been doing this for like the last year
07:42SPEAKERand a half, basically.
07:45SPEAKERAnd then when I got sick over the holidays,
07:46SPEAKERI was in the hospital and they had Netflix,
07:48SPEAKERwhich also had access to TNG and a bunch of other shit
07:50SPEAKERthat I didn't want to watch.
07:52SPEAKERSo I would just watch a bunch of TNG episodes every day.
07:54SPEAKER- Oh, that's the best.
07:55SPEAKER- It was, I'm gonna go and tell you,
07:57SPEAKERit could have been worse, could have been a lot.
08:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the being in the hospital part,
08:02SPEAKERthe organ issue part or whatever, maybe not the best,
08:05SPEAKERbut nice consolation prize.
08:07SPEAKER- Yeah, like having some quality time to hang out
08:09SPEAKERwith my friends on the enterprise was pretty cool.
08:11SPEAKERI was okay with that.
08:13SPEAKER- I will tell you, the only,
08:15SPEAKERI was a pretty diligent college student about going to class.
08:18SPEAKERI was not a skipper.
08:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:20SPEAKER- I was not, I was not a truancy problem,
08:23SPEAKERexcept for the occasional time
08:25SPEAKERwhen the "Star Trek The Next Generation" marathon
08:27SPEAKERwould be on Spike TV.
08:28SPEAKERYou and I missed a lot of class.
08:31SPEAKER- We had very different college experiences.
08:33SPEAKER- Perhaps so.
08:36SPEAKERSo, okay, so I started watching this like a year,
08:38SPEAKERlike about a year and a half ago,
08:39SPEAKERyear, year and a half ago.
08:42SPEAKERAnd I did, I realized as I was going through the list
08:44SPEAKERthat I bounced around from Paramount Plus
08:47SPEAKERwhen we have Paramount Plus on to Netflix,
08:50SPEAKER'cause the Paramount Plus versions seemed
08:52SPEAKERa little bit cleaner for whatever reason.
08:54SPEAKER- Really?
08:55SPEAKERWell also, so we should address this probably up top.
08:57SPEAKERApparently they're about to be the only versions as well.
08:59SPEAKERI don't know if it's--
09:00SPEAKER- It's leaving Netflix at the end of this month.
09:02SPEAKER- Is it the end of this month?
09:03SPEAKEROkay, I'll triple check, but.
09:06SPEAKER- No, no, Netflix literally tells you
09:08SPEAKERwhen you watch a TNG episode, it's like, yo.
09:09SPEAKER- Oh, this is leaving on April 1st, it's gone after.
09:12SPEAKER- Yes, last day to watch on Netflix, April 1st.
09:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so.
09:17SPEAKER- More fools you if we're thinking you could watch "Star Trek"
09:20SPEAKERon Netflix after this month.
09:22SPEAKER- Well, okay, so it was interesting watching this,
09:25SPEAKER'cause when I was a kid,
09:27SPEAKERwhen I was in like middle school and high school,
09:28SPEAKERthis was appointment viewing on Saturday.
09:30SPEAKERIt came on on Saturday night at like seven or eight o'clock,
09:32SPEAKERand the whole family gathered around the TV
09:35SPEAKERbecause of my proclivities,
09:37SPEAKERand we watched "Star Trek The Next Generation"
09:39SPEAKERtogether as a group,
09:40SPEAKERwhich occasionally was uncomfortable
09:43SPEAKERdue to the extreme horniness of that show.
09:46SPEAKER- Man, is it really that horny?
09:48SPEAKER- Dude, it's pretty horny.
09:49SPEAKER- I'll let you make your argument.
09:50SPEAKER- Like the fully functional android in the first season bit,
09:54SPEAKERthere were a lot of uncomfortable moments.
09:56SPEAKER- Yes, actually, now that you mentioned it,
09:58SPEAKERthe influence of Gene Roddenberry manifested itself
10:00SPEAKERin all sorts of ways.
10:01SPEAKER- I convinced some of my friends in seventh grade
10:06SPEAKERwho happened to be girls
10:07SPEAKERto watch this cool show I was really into,
10:10SPEAKERand it was the episode that begins with Troy and Crusher
10:14SPEAKERdoing yoga and talking about how flexible they are
10:17SPEAKERin an incredibly horny way.
10:19SPEAKERLike the whole thing, it's horny all the way through.
10:22SPEAKERThere's all the Geordi episodes being horny.
10:25SPEAKERLike Geordi's the horniest guy on that ship by far.
10:27SPEAKER- Oh yeah, Geordi in retrospect,
10:29SPEAKERthere are some aspects of him that are maybe
10:31SPEAKERa little bit uncomfortable.
10:34SPEAKER- Look, there's a lot of inappropriate holodeck etiquette.
10:37SPEAKERLike the holodeck etiquette is clearly not developed yet
10:39SPEAKERat this point in the Trek-averse, I think.
10:42SPEAKER- Oh yes, well, I mean the, yes.
10:44SPEAKERThe episode, I don't know if we'll get to the episode
10:45SPEAKERwhere the real Leah Brahms shows up on the Enterprise
10:48SPEAKERand finds out that he has been hanging out
10:50SPEAKERwith a virtual Leah Brahms on the holodeck an awful lot.
10:53SPEAKER- Marrying her in the best of both worlds, in the finale?
10:58SPEAKER- Yes, I think he is actually married to her
11:00SPEAKER25 years later.
11:02SPEAKER- It's like, there's a lot of-
11:04SPEAKER- Boy, yeah, before we move on,
11:06SPEAKERyou just made me realize like
11:07SPEAKERhow many different episodes there are
11:09SPEAKERwhere some kind of intoxicating agents
11:12SPEAKERtakes control of this ship
11:14SPEAKERand they all just start doing it with each other.
11:16SPEAKER- Non-consensual horniness happens.
11:19SPEAKERThere's a lot of weird, anyway,
11:21SPEAKERthere are some weird choices in there.
11:23SPEAKERThe nineties were weird, we all know.
11:25SPEAKER- Well, A, Roddenberry was a giant sleaze bag,
11:27SPEAKERbut B, he also wasn't super involved with that show
11:29SPEAKERpast the first couple seasons, but-
11:32SPEAKER- Well, he died at the end of the first season
11:33SPEAKERor something, right, second season?
11:34SPEAKER- Seconds? - Yeah.
11:36SPEAKER- Second or third?
11:37SPEAKER- His influence loomed large, let's say.
11:39SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the thing is,
11:41SPEAKERhe was also from that sixties era of science fiction
11:45SPEAKERthat Heinlein and all those guys came from
11:47SPEAKERthat was also very fucking horny.
11:50SPEAKERI can't believe we're talking about horny Star Trek here
11:52SPEAKERto lead off this conversation, but yeah.
11:54SPEAKER- Let's not spend more time on Gene Roddenberry,
11:56SPEAKERhe kind of sucks.
11:57SPEAKER- Yeah, but both, okay, so the upshot, though,
11:59SPEAKERfrom watching this again with fresh eyes as an adult
12:02SPEAKERis that there's an incredible number
12:04SPEAKERof really good one-off kind of genre episodes of the show.
12:09SPEAKERLike, they're hard science fiction,
12:11SPEAKERthey're detective stories, they're, I don't know,
12:15SPEAKERlike monster movies. - Courtroom dramas like that,
12:16SPEAKERyes, yes, there's like monster movie horror episodes,
12:20SPEAKERthere's also psychological horror episodes,
12:22SPEAKERthere are courtroom dramas,
12:23SPEAKERthere are straight up action movie romps,
12:27SPEAKERlike it is very much working, yeah,
12:29SPEAKERit's like working in different spaces
12:30SPEAKERdepending on the episode.
12:32SPEAKER- Well, and it's the thing that I like,
12:34SPEAKERI didn't realize as a kid
12:35SPEAKERthat this is what I liked about Star Trek,
12:37SPEAKERbut it's the same thing that Marvel's doing
12:40SPEAKERwith the MCU right now, right?
12:41SPEAKERThey're taking familiar characters and these character arcs,
12:44SPEAKERyou know, and then they're like, you know,
12:46SPEAKERtaking one genre, outer space superheroes,
12:49SPEAKERand jamming it into another genre, you know,
12:51SPEAKERlike psychological horror with the new Doctor Strange movie,
12:56SPEAKERor the one where Beverly gets stuck in time
13:00SPEAKERin the increasingly small universe, like--
13:03SPEAKER- Oh, you mean Remember Me, one of the best,
13:05SPEAKERthe stealth best episodes of the series.
13:08SPEAKER- Yeah, so, okay, so here's, here is,
13:13SPEAKERbut, okay, so the other thing about my youth
13:15SPEAKERis I started dating and had a car
13:18SPEAKERmy junior year in high school,
13:20SPEAKERand therefore Saturday nights at seven
13:22SPEAKERgot occupied by other things which continued into college.
13:25SPEAKER- Poor data.
13:26SPEAKER- Well, I didn't see a lot of like the back half
13:31SPEAKERof that show, like from probably season five on,
13:34SPEAKERI feel like I saw Best of Both Worlds,
13:36SPEAKERI'm sorry, yeah, Best of Both Worlds,
13:38SPEAKERand, you know, some of the,
13:43SPEAKERlike I'd catch an occasional episode,
13:45SPEAKERbut it wasn't like a regular occurrence.
13:48SPEAKERBrad, I have a terrible story to tell too.
13:51SPEAKER- Oh boy, let's get it over with.
13:54SPEAKERSo in seventh grade, at the height of,
13:58SPEAKERthis was in 1987, it was probably the end of season one,
14:00SPEAKERI was like, you know who's really cool?
14:03SPEAKER- Oh. - Commander Data.
14:05SPEAKER- Oh no, wait, is this related to Halloween by any chance?
14:08SPEAKER- There was hair, oh no, no,
14:10SPEAKERit's much worse than that, it wasn't Halloween.
14:11SPEAKER- Oh no.
14:12SPEAKER- There was hair product at the house,
14:14SPEAKERand I was like, you know what, I could do this,
14:15SPEAKERI could have Commander Data hair.
14:18SPEAKERSo I moosed up the hair, got it all straight back,
14:21SPEAKERwalked around the house, tried it out on Sunday
14:24SPEAKERwith the family, they were very pro.
14:25SPEAKER- Oh no.
14:27SPEAKERWas there any pancake makeup around?
14:29SPEAKER- No pancake makeup, thank God, no makeup.
14:31SPEAKERI went to school on Monday morning with the hair back.
14:34SPEAKER- Oh my God, how did it go?
14:36SPEAKER- It was not good, Brad, it was profoundly not good.
14:40SPEAKER- Were there any swirlies or wedgies or lockers?
14:43SPEAKER- No, I made it about eight minutes.
14:45SPEAKERI went to my locker, the people around me were like,
14:47SPEAKERhey, what the fuck happened to your hair?
14:49SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, I don't know, man,
14:51SPEAKERI just tried something new.
14:53SPEAKERAnd they were like, whoa.
14:54SPEAKERAnd so I went to the bathroom real quick
14:56SPEAKERand got my hair super wet,
14:58SPEAKERthinking that that was gonna solve the problem.
15:00SPEAKERBut moose, it turns out, the hair product
15:03SPEAKERthat was available to me in the drawer
15:04SPEAKERin my bathroom as a child, it was a bad day.
15:08SPEAKERSeventh grade was a little traumatic.
15:10SPEAKER- You remember they made an episode
15:12SPEAKERabout this exact thing, right?
15:14SPEAKER- No. - You remember?
15:15SPEAKEROh dude, well now I need to find it.
15:16SPEAKER- Oh, it's the little kid.
15:17SPEAKER- Yes, there's a kid. - The little kid
15:18SPEAKERthat wants to be like Data, it's the one where the,
15:21SPEAKERis it the one where the kid's mom dies on an away mission?
15:23SPEAKER- Yes, I think he's pissed off at work about it.
15:25SPEAKER- His parents die and Data saved him, I think.
15:29SPEAKERAnd he basically wants to emulate, yeah,
15:30SPEAKERhe quite literally makes his hair Data hair in that episode.
15:33SPEAKERThey made an episode about you.
15:35SPEAKER- God, I wonder if that was why I did that.
15:37SPEAKERIt would've been the right time.
15:40SPEAKER- I don't remember the name of that one
15:42SPEAKERoff the top of my head, but we could find it.
15:43SPEAKER- Well, anyway, the upshot is,
15:45SPEAKERthat's actually, that was a close third for my list here.
15:50SPEAKER- Okay.
15:51SPEAKER- It's also a real good Worf one.
15:51SPEAKERThat's the one where everybody's dealing with this,
15:54SPEAKERthere's basically like only two or three episodes
15:57SPEAKERwhere people die that they actually,
15:59SPEAKERlike it's actually done well, like the character death.
16:03SPEAKERBecause usually it's just like some poor bastard
16:05SPEAKERgets blasted and they're dead and everybody's like,
16:07SPEAKERoh wow, this is really sad.
16:08SPEAKERBut sometimes they set it up and like they have a whole,
16:11SPEAKERthey have an earned character death.
16:13SPEAKERLike Lower Decks is the classic example of,
16:17SPEAKERhey, something bad is happening to this person.
16:21SPEAKERAnd like they have an entire arc and a life
16:24SPEAKERand an inner monologue, the whole thing.
16:28SPEAKER- There's a buildup to it.
16:29SPEAKERThere's an arc, there is a lesson.
16:31SPEAKERAlso, I mean, if we get to that episode again later,
16:33SPEAKERthere's, that's actually a callback to a previous episode.
16:36SPEAKER- Is that a question TOS episode?
16:38SPEAKER- No, it's a different next generation one.
16:40SPEAKERI think we'll get there.
16:42SPEAKER- Okay.
16:43SPEAKER- We'll get there as we talk about some episodes.
16:44SPEAKERI think what we're gonna do here
16:46SPEAKERis not talk about all of the famous episodes.
16:48SPEAKER- Yeah, well, we've done that before.
16:50SPEAKERWe did it on, this is only a test like 10 years ago.
16:52SPEAKER- Okay.
16:53SPEAKER- But also like, do you want to make,
16:56SPEAKERdo you want to read the list of episodes
16:57SPEAKERwe're not gonna really talk about?
16:58SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
16:59SPEAKEROur short list of episodes
17:00SPEAKERthat don't need any more discussion
17:01SPEAKERare Best of Both Worlds, Measure of a Man,
17:03SPEAKERThe Courtroom is Data,
17:06SPEAKERDoes Data Have Personhood or Not episode.
17:09SPEAKER- Which is I think my all time favorite, just to be clear.
17:11SPEAKER- Oh, it's a fantastic episode.
17:12SPEAKERFamous for a reason, but also it's been discussed to death.
17:15SPEAKERAll good things, the series finale, Chain of Command,
17:18SPEAKERthe two-parter where Picard is tortured by Cardassians.
17:21SPEAKER- How many lights are there, Brad?
17:23SPEAKER- I can't say. - I can never remember now.
17:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's supposed to be,
17:26SPEAKERwait, how many are there actually?
17:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:29SPEAKER- I don't remember.
17:30SPEAKERIs it that there are actually five
17:31SPEAKERand he is forced to say there are four?
17:33SPEAKER- I think he wants him to say that there's five
17:34SPEAKERand that there are actually four, but I don't remember.
17:36SPEAKER- Yes, because he's defiant in the face of his captors.
17:40SPEAKER- That whole episode and also Casino Royale
17:44SPEAKERare my two touchstones
17:45SPEAKERfor uncomfortable torture in pop culture.
17:48SPEAKER- Sure, I could see it.
17:50SPEAKERAlso, we're sitting here discussing episodes
17:52SPEAKERwe said we were gonna discuss.
17:54SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay.
17:55SPEAKER- Darmok, the everyone speaks in metaphors.
17:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:59SPEAKER- The inner light, which is probably
18:00SPEAKERthe actual best episode of the series.
18:01SPEAKER- I think that's probably true.
18:03SPEAKER- I wrote down yesterday's Enterprise question mark
18:05SPEAKERbecause I think yesterday's Enterprise
18:07SPEAKERis a pretty common touchstone for why Next Generation is good.
18:12SPEAKER- Look, I like yesterday's Enterprise.
18:14SPEAKERI'm the only person in the world
18:15SPEAKERthat thinks the Tasha Yar episodes are almost all bad.
18:18SPEAKER- Oh, I don't know about that.
18:19SPEAKERI mean, I don't have anything against Tasha Yar in particular
18:22SPEAKERbut I don't think she was necessarily
18:23SPEAKERlike universally beloved.
18:25SPEAKER- I just feel like, especially in the back, rewatching.
18:29SPEAKERSo the continuity episodes are my least favorite
18:32SPEAKERof the episodes, it turns out, in the rewatch as an adult.
18:36SPEAKERAnd I felt like in the later seasons, they're like,
18:39SPEAKER"Hey, we need a character here.
18:41SPEAKERLet's just fill this plot hole with the time-traveling
18:44SPEAKERTasha Yar and it'll work itself out."
18:46SPEAKER- Right, I totally forgot that.
18:47SPEAKER- Yeah, without Yesterday's Enterprise,
18:49SPEAKERnone of that happens, so.
18:50SPEAKER- I forgot, I forgot that was after
18:51SPEAKERshe would have left the show.
18:53SPEAKER- Yeah, she seemed back.
18:55SPEAKER- They're like, "Well, Denise Crosby's solo,
18:57SPEAKERher movie career is not maybe working
18:59SPEAKERthe way that she hoped.
19:00SPEAKERI'm sure she would do a guest spot."
19:02SPEAKER- Yeah, and Lower Decks is the other one on this list.
19:06SPEAKERI had to read Lower Decks on my list
19:08SPEAKERbut when we made our new criteria, I was like, "Yeah, okay."
19:10SPEAKER- Lower Decks is the one that focuses,
19:12SPEAKERit's the only episode of the entire series
19:14SPEAKERthat focuses on junior officers
19:16SPEAKERand kind of the rank and file of the Enterprise
19:19SPEAKERrather than the bridge crew, the big shots.
19:22SPEAKERBut it's fantastic for that.
19:23SPEAKER- Yeah, it's told through their perspective
19:25SPEAKERand it tells four interlocked, it's really well done.
19:30SPEAKERIt spun off an animated series, it's really good too.
19:33SPEAKER- Yes, yes, and it ends in tragedy.
19:35SPEAKERSo it's a real heartbreaker, a real tearjerker
19:38SPEAKERkind of at the end.
19:39SPEAKER- Well, the episode that it calls back to
19:41SPEAKERis one of the ones I was gonna bring up later
19:42SPEAKERso we'll get into that stuff.
19:43SPEAKER- Okay, cool.
19:45SPEAKER- I guess I don't have a lot to add
19:47SPEAKERto our Star Trek origins because mine is almost exactly
19:50SPEAKERlike yours except time shifted
19:52SPEAKERhowever many years younger I am than you.
19:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
19:55SPEAKER- Because Star Trek was also on here
19:57SPEAKERat 7 p.m. Saturday nights.
19:59SPEAKER- Probably on the same, well, it was on actually.
20:02SPEAKER- It was on our local Fox affiliate at 7 p.m.
20:05SPEAKER- Oh, we got it on ABC, I think.
20:07SPEAKER- Unlike you, I could not convince the rest
20:08SPEAKERof my family to watch it with me
20:09SPEAKERbut I was there on TV.
20:13SPEAKER- So, yeah, we all took turns.
20:15SPEAKERI did it Saturday night.
20:17SPEAKERI gave up Tuesday or something so we had,
20:19SPEAKERmy sister made us watch Alf every week
20:21SPEAKERwhich was fine, I liked Alf.
20:23SPEAKER- I was young enough to watch it through to its conclusion
20:25SPEAKERand I still distinctly remember the day
20:28SPEAKERthat All Good Things came on.
20:29SPEAKERThere was nothing that was going to stop me
20:31SPEAKERfrom being in front of that television.
20:32SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say like I did,
20:35SPEAKERby the time All Good Things came on
20:36SPEAKERI was probably a sophomore in college
20:38SPEAKERand we actually had, like there were some like-minded
20:42SPEAKERindividuals that I'd become friends with
20:44SPEAKERand we sat down and we all watched All Good Things together.
20:46SPEAKERSo both episodes. - That sounds like a fun
20:49SPEAKERcollege thing to do.
20:50SPEAKERAnyway, so I had the same experience as you
20:52SPEAKERexcept with Deep Space Nine where I was finishing
20:56SPEAKERhigh school as Deep Space Nine premiered
20:58SPEAKERand then so most of that show was on while I was in college
21:01SPEAKERand was not watching a lot of television.
21:04SPEAKER- No, it turns out. - I've never seen
21:05SPEAKERDeep Space Nine to this day.
21:08SPEAKERI would watch, there are a lot of people I know
21:11SPEAKERwho I trust who would really like DS Nine
21:13SPEAKERand I should go back and watch it at some point.
21:15SPEAKER- I totally understand why it's revered.
21:16SPEAKERI keep waiting.
21:17SPEAKERI kept hoping they would give it
21:19SPEAKERthe next generation HD treatment
21:20SPEAKERbecause they did such a loving restoration
21:22SPEAKERof next generation in HD
21:23SPEAKERbut then that thing made absolutely no money
21:25SPEAKERso I don't think the Deep Space Nine equivalent
21:27SPEAKERwill ever happen but-- - No, probably not.
21:30SPEAKER- But there are all kinds of like AI efforts ongoing to,
21:33SPEAKERin fact, I think they might be getting close to done.
21:36SPEAKER- Oh, to scale the DVD releases to 1080p so.
21:39SPEAKER- Ooh, that sounds good.
21:40SPEAKER- I fully intend to watch all of Deep Space Nine
21:42SPEAKERand at some point in my life.
21:45SPEAKER- So do you wanna do, do you wanna like alternate on these?
21:48SPEAKERWe each have like six or seven, one, two, three, four, five,
21:50SPEAKEReight. - Yeah, she's kinda jotted down
21:51SPEAKERsome of our favorite episodes that are not the big episodes.
21:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:57SPEAKER- Since you've got most of a rewatch pretty fresh in mind,
22:00SPEAKERwe, I mean, I've seen every episode in the series
22:03SPEAKERlike a dozen times.
22:04SPEAKERIt was, I guess the part I left out was kinda like you.
22:07SPEAKERIt was on syndication later in high school for me
22:12SPEAKERat 10 p.m. every night. - Oh, wow.
22:14SPEAKERYeah.
22:15SPEAKER- And the dinky little 13-inch Emerson
22:18SPEAKERthat I had in my bedroom that I won for,
22:21SPEAKERfrom some raffle in junior high.
22:23SPEAKERI watched Star Trek every night before bed
22:26SPEAKERfor years on end.
22:27SPEAKER- It turns out it's a really pleasant way
22:29SPEAKERto like wind down your day.
22:31SPEAKERLike everybody, there's some stuff happens,
22:33SPEAKERthere's something exciting often,
22:35SPEAKERand then there's a moral
22:37SPEAKERand it all wraps up nicely in the end.
22:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and there's, I don't use this term negatively,
22:41SPEAKERbut there's like a slightly sedate quality to it.
22:44SPEAKERLike the tone of the show is always just like fairly low key.
22:47SPEAKERYou know, it's never too grueling in any way,
22:51SPEAKERI guess I would say.
22:52SPEAKERLike it's a nice way to unwind.
22:54SPEAKER- It's unusual that there's an intense episode,
22:57SPEAKERwhich is funny because Netflix has the identifiers
23:00SPEAKERfear and sex on every single episode.
23:03SPEAKER- Of Star Trek The Next Generation?
23:05SPEAKER- Of The Next Generation, yeah.
23:06SPEAKEREveryone is like, it gives the rating
23:09SPEAKERand it's like fear and sex are the identifiers.
23:11SPEAKER- Okay, I just wanted you to repeat that.
23:12SPEAKERI'm going to write this in this document.
23:14SPEAKERWe have a title for this episode now.
23:18SPEAKERAll right, what do you got?
23:20SPEAKER- Okay, so I'm gonna start at the top of my list
23:22SPEAKERwith Conundrum, which is the amnesia episode.
23:25SPEAKER- Hang on, let me guess, because we've written,
23:27SPEAKERwe have ad-libbed our own descriptions
23:29SPEAKERof these episodes in here.
23:30SPEAKERSo I'm just gonna read what you wrote
23:31SPEAKERand then try to pick it out of my memory banks.
23:34SPEAKERConundrum in the amnesia episode.
23:36SPEAKERIs that the one where Riker is doing a play
23:39SPEAKERand he is stuck in multiple layers of unreality?
23:44SPEAKER- No, that one's good too, though.
23:46SPEAKER- Oh, that's a different one?
23:47SPEAKER- That's a different one.
23:48SPEAKERThis is the one where the-
23:49SPEAKER- Oh wait, tell me, I got, hang on.
23:53SPEAKERIs it the one where they all wake up,
23:57SPEAKERlike everybody is blacked out at the same time
24:00SPEAKERon the Enterprise and they all wake up
24:01SPEAKERand like 30 minutes are missing
24:03SPEAKERfrom the chronometer on the ship
24:05SPEAKERand they have to piece together why they're missing time,
24:08SPEAKERwhy everybody's blacked out and why there's missing time.
24:10SPEAKERNo, wow.
24:11SPEAKER- Not that one.
24:12SPEAKER- How many amnesia episodes are there?
24:13SPEAKEROkay, all right, you got me, what do you got?
24:15SPEAKER- Okay, so it's the one where they have the Bajoran,
24:19SPEAKERwhat's her name?
24:21SPEAKER- Rho, Ensign Rho.
24:22SPEAKER- Ensign Rho, and they wake up on the Enterprise
24:25SPEAKERand nobody remembers who they are or what their job is.
24:28SPEAKER- Oh, yes, that one's fantastic.
24:30SPEAKER- And like you're watching the episode
24:32SPEAKERand you're like, "What the fuck is going on?"
24:33SPEAKERThen you realize that there's this other guy
24:34SPEAKERstanding around in the background
24:35SPEAKERwho you've never seen before.
24:36SPEAKER- Right, like a fake crew member.
24:38SPEAKER- Like a fake crew member who sets himself up
24:40SPEAKERto be the captain.
24:41SPEAKER- Right.
24:42SPEAKER- And like his whole, I mean, are we gonna spoil these?
24:47SPEAKERIt's a 20-year-old show at this point.
24:48SPEAKER- Yeah, or yes, it's a very old show at this point.
24:51SPEAKER- So there's gonna be spoilers.
24:52SPEAKER- I have bad news for you also,
24:54SPEAKERbut it is much more than a 20-year-old show.
24:56SPEAKER- Okay, it's a 40-year-old show.
24:57SPEAKER- We are pushing a 40-year-old show from the premiere.
25:02SPEAKER- Oh, wow, so this is the same,
25:03SPEAKERthis is actually, it's been longer between now and TNG
25:06SPEAKERthan it was between TNG and TOS at this point.
25:08SPEAKER- Wow, okay, this is one of those.
25:11SPEAKER- Anyway.
25:12SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a great one.
25:14SPEAKERNobody knows who anybody is,
25:15SPEAKERso they're all like trying to infer
25:16SPEAKERwhat everybody's role on the ship was
25:18SPEAKERbased on just like what they look like
25:20SPEAKERand then what their personality is.
25:22SPEAKER- Exactly, but then it all, the beautiful thing is,
25:26SPEAKERthey're like, all we can do is trust
25:28SPEAKERwhat our inner morality tells us,
25:30SPEAKER'cause that's all they have left about who they were,
25:32SPEAKERand it works out nicely, and they solve the problem,
25:35SPEAKERthey keep the guy from wiping out the other civilization
25:37SPEAKERthat he wants to wipe out,
25:38SPEAKER'cause he basically wants to weaponize the Enterprise
25:41SPEAKERto solve a vendetta or something.
25:44SPEAKERIt's like that part doesn't matter.
25:45SPEAKER- It's an ancient feud between two civilizations who have,
25:48SPEAKERso this is, I wanted to bring this up,
25:50SPEAKERthis is one of my favorite examples
25:51SPEAKERof the ridiculous suspension of disbelief
25:54SPEAKERthat this show requires a lot of the time.
25:57SPEAKERSo it's two ancient, it's two civilizations
25:58SPEAKERwith an ancient feud, an ongoing centuries-old war,
26:03SPEAKERthey have very low technology,
26:05SPEAKERor they have a very limited technology,
26:07SPEAKERlike the Enterprise alone,
26:08SPEAKERthe armament of the Enterprise alone
26:10SPEAKERcould wipe out the entire civilization
26:12SPEAKERthat this guy's civilization is against.
26:14SPEAKER- Yeah.
26:15SPEAKER- Except for the fact that they apparently have
26:17SPEAKERsuch high technology that they can brainwash
26:20SPEAKERthe entire crew of a starship.
26:22SPEAKER- Well, there's a lot of like,
26:25SPEAKERhey, we're really bad at everything,
26:28SPEAKERbut we're awesome at this one thing.
26:30SPEAKER- Right, we're incredibly bad at making space weapons,
26:33SPEAKERbut we're apparently very good
26:34SPEAKERat making brainwashing technology.
26:36SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
26:38SPEAKER- Anyway, I disagree. - Anyway, I like that one
26:39SPEAKERjust 'cause it's such a role reversal,
26:44SPEAKERand there's an opportunity for some really good performances.
26:47SPEAKERPicard ends up not in charge, obviously.
26:51SPEAKERThe people who are more brash and impulsive
26:53SPEAKERoften end up in charge, and it's just a fun,
26:58SPEAKERit takes these characters that you know and love
27:01SPEAKERand inverts their traditional roles
27:04SPEAKERin a way that's really satisfying and quite good.
27:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I wish I could remember the name
27:10SPEAKERof the one that I brought up where they all black out
27:12SPEAKERand try to figure out why time is missing from the clock,
27:14SPEAKERbecause that one's fantastic too, I won't spoil it.
27:17SPEAKER- There's a couple that are in that similar vein.
27:21SPEAKERUsually there's some sort of deus ex machina,
27:25SPEAKERwhere Data is not affected by whatever virus
27:27SPEAKERis causing the problem or whatever.
27:29SPEAKER- That's exactly that episode.
27:30SPEAKERData knows exactly what happened, but he won't tell them,
27:32SPEAKERand there's fantastic character work
27:34SPEAKERwhere they get increasingly angry at Data
27:36SPEAKERbecause he knows what happened and he won't tell them.
27:39SPEAKER- Well, so I was gonna say the best,
27:41SPEAKERmy favorite thing watching these all in kind of short order
27:44SPEAKERis watching the Brett Spiner performance
27:46SPEAKERover the seven seasons go from like,
27:49SPEAKER"Hey, I'm playing a robot,"
27:50SPEAKERto "Hey, I'm playing a man who's playing a robot,"
27:53SPEAKERto "Hey, I'm playing a person who's developed
27:57SPEAKERthrough these relationships with humans over the years."
27:59SPEAKER- Oh man, we could probably do a whole episode
28:01SPEAKERabout how the personalities evolved from the beginning
28:04SPEAKERthrough the first couple seasons
28:05SPEAKERbefore they really find the characters,
28:07SPEAKERbut Picard is such a huge asshole
28:08SPEAKERfor the first 20 episodes of the show or something.
28:12SPEAKER- I thought that was just 'cause he had an English accent.
28:15SPEAKER- He was a real crotchety,
28:17SPEAKERlike there was no softer side to Jean-Luc Picard
28:20SPEAKERfor most of the first season.
28:22SPEAKER- He was pretty by the book, that's true.
28:25SPEAKER- Yes.
28:27SPEAKERYou wanna say a thing?
28:30SPEAKER- Do it.
28:31SPEAKER- These are in no particular order,
28:32SPEAKERbut I did happen to write "Remember Me" as my first one.
28:35SPEAKER- This is a very good episode.
28:37SPEAKER- It's stealth, one of the best episodes, I think.
28:39SPEAKERIt doesn't get a lot of credit.
28:41SPEAKERI don't know if it's because it's a "Crusher" episode,
28:43SPEAKERone of the very few.
28:45SPEAKER- There's only like three "Crusher" episodes
28:46SPEAKERthat I can think of, really.
28:48SPEAKER- Yes, and one of them involves her having sex
28:50SPEAKERwith a Scottish ghost.
28:52SPEAKER- Look.
28:53SPEAKER- Which is like Sub Rosa is one of the most deplored
28:56SPEAKERepisodes of the entire series.
28:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:59SPEAKER- But this one is fantastic.
29:00SPEAKERShe gets stuck in some kind of physics experiment
29:01SPEAKERthat results in her inhabiting a bubble universe
29:05SPEAKERthat is rapidly collapsing.
29:06SPEAKER- Wesley does it to her.
29:08SPEAKER- Yes, he is doing some kind of like warp bubble experiment
29:11SPEAKERand she gets caught in there.
29:12SPEAKER- Man's own hubris.
29:14SPEAKER- Yes, but I mean, the great thing about that episode,
29:16SPEAKERif you haven't seen it, is that the internal logic
29:18SPEAKERof the universe that she lives in reflects the fact
29:20SPEAKERthat it's shrinking.
29:21SPEAKERSo as it gets smaller and smaller,
29:25SPEAKERlike the size of the observable universe shrinks
29:27SPEAKERto a space of like 30 square or 30 cubic kilometers
29:31SPEAKERor whatever the measurement is.
29:32SPEAKERAnd everybody else who's on the ship
29:34SPEAKERand the ship's computer all think that's completely normal.
29:37SPEAKERLike she's the only one.
29:38SPEAKERSo it's like a real good, am I losing my mind
29:40SPEAKERto kind of psychological study?
29:43SPEAKERBecause it is very much like, you know,
29:48SPEAKERthe crew compliment of the ship shrinks to like 12 people
29:51SPEAKERand Picard acts like that's totally normal.
29:52SPEAKERLike he doesn't see anything wrong with that at all.
29:54SPEAKERAnd she's just like going completely batshit
29:57SPEAKERtrying to figure out what's going on.
29:58SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a couple of episodes that are like that.
30:01SPEAKERThere's one with Riker, the one that you mentioned
30:02SPEAKERwith the play where he's like playing a character
30:05SPEAKERin a mental institution and keeps warping back and forth
30:08SPEAKERbetween that and his job on the Enterprise
30:10SPEAKERand is going slowly mad.
30:11SPEAKERBut I think Remember Me is the best of those, right?
30:15SPEAKER- It's creepy.
30:16SPEAKER- It's really creepy.
30:18SPEAKEREventually the ship starts getting dark.
30:20SPEAKERThey like, they light the sets so they're darker
30:22SPEAKERbecause I guess there's no people around.
30:24SPEAKERI don't know.
30:25SPEAKERIt didn't like, there's no reason, but it's,
30:30SPEAKERand like there's a couple of other episodes
30:32SPEAKERthat are like this where like it's one person
30:35SPEAKERwho has to figure out the whole thing.
30:36SPEAKERLike the one where Picard has to fight the terrorists
30:40SPEAKERwho are trying to steal the Enterprise
30:42SPEAKERwhen they're doing the sweep of the ship
30:44SPEAKERand that's gonna kill whoever's in the ship
30:46SPEAKERat any given time.
30:47SPEAKER- Oh, Starship Mine.
30:49SPEAKER- Starship Mine, that's it.
30:49SPEAKER- That one is super famous.
30:51SPEAKERLike I'm stealing this from a forum conversation
30:55SPEAKERI was reading recently,
30:56SPEAKERbut Jean-Luc Maclean basically, like it's diehard.
30:59SPEAKERIt's diehard on the Enterprise.
31:01SPEAKER- Yeah, but also Gates McFadden does a really good performance
31:05SPEAKERas like, she's trying to hold it together.
31:08SPEAKERAt one point, like the thing I remember from this
31:09SPEAKERis when she's like, hey, computer,
31:12SPEAKERgive me the life sign readout on Jean-Luc Picard
31:17SPEAKERwhen it's only her and him left.
31:19SPEAKER- Right.
31:20SPEAKERShe basically says like, I want a running account
31:22SPEAKERof Jean-Luc Picard's life signs no matter where he is.
31:25SPEAKERI want constant updates on like his heartbeat
31:27SPEAKERand blah, blah, blah.
31:28SPEAKERAnd then yes, there's that moment
31:29SPEAKERwhere the computer just stops reading out his life signs
31:32SPEAKERand it's like so chilling.
31:34SPEAKER- And it's, yeah, it's as creepy as any like X-Files or-
31:38SPEAKER- It's very Twilight Zone.
31:40SPEAKER- It is very, like the best of these for me
31:42SPEAKERwere the ones that feel like a Twilight Zone.
31:44SPEAKERThey could have been a Twilight Zone episode, right?
31:46SPEAKER- Absolutely, yes.
31:49SPEAKER- Tapestry is one of my faves.
31:52SPEAKER- It's a classic.
31:54SPEAKER- I wrote it's the one where Q makes Picard a wuss.
31:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that's one way to look at it.
31:58SPEAKER- But it's the one where,
32:01SPEAKERit's the one for me where Q becomes a character
32:05SPEAKERthat's not just a, like, this is the one,
32:07SPEAKERthis is the one that's about the Q and Picard relationship
32:10SPEAKERfor the first time,
32:10SPEAKERrather than Q being an antagonist necessarily.
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
32:14SPEAKER- 'Cause it's kind of, it's a wonderful life.
32:16SPEAKERLike Picard is dying on a table
32:20SPEAKERbecause of a poor choice he made 40, 50 years ago
32:23SPEAKERwhen he was a youth.
32:24SPEAKERAnd Picard, Q was like,
32:29SPEAKERhey, if you could change the decision, would you?
32:31SPEAKERAnd he's like, absolutely, yeah, I would.
32:32SPEAKERThe decision is he got in a bar fight with some aliens
32:35SPEAKERwho stabbed him and caused him to get an artificial heart
32:36SPEAKERthat was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
32:38SPEAKERDoesn't matter.
32:39SPEAKERBut the upshot is he goes back and relives his past choices.
32:42SPEAKERHe tells somebody he cared about that he loved them.
32:44SPEAKERHe doesn't get in the fight and it completely changes.
32:48SPEAKERHe comes back to the future enterprise
32:51SPEAKERas like a lower-decks C-tier function, stooge.
32:55SPEAKERAnd he's like, oh wow, yeah, okay, maybe I should.
32:58SPEAKERMaybe the decisions I made were good in retrospect.
33:00SPEAKERMaybe they may be the person I am today.
33:02SPEAKER- Yeah, without that brush with death,
33:04SPEAKERhe had no ambition, no respect for anything.
33:06SPEAKERAnd he just sort of drifted through life and became, yes,
33:09SPEAKERa middle level science officer
33:10SPEAKERwith nothing much to show for himself.
33:14SPEAKER- I'm noticing a theme in my choices, I guess.
33:18SPEAKER- Yes, I guess you're right though.
33:20SPEAKERLike you're right about like the Q situation.
33:22SPEAKERLike there is almost a backwards affection
33:24SPEAKERfor Picard from Q in that episode.
33:26SPEAKER- Well, this is, and that was the thing I hadn't noticed
33:29SPEAKERin, I mean, I didn't know that
33:31SPEAKER'cause I didn't watch the last three seasons
33:32SPEAKERbefore two and a half seasons.
33:35SPEAKERBut yeah, like Q as the,
33:38SPEAKERthere's also a lot of like civilizations out being elevated,
33:42SPEAKERlike lifting to the ethereal plane or whatever.
33:46SPEAKERAnd yeah, that is one of the themes I think
33:51SPEAKERacross the whole season, the whole run.
33:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
33:59SPEAKER- My next episode, I wrote the offspring.
34:02SPEAKERThis is by no means a comprehensive list.
34:04SPEAKERI literally were just from memory.
34:05SPEAKERLike I was just like,
34:06SPEAKERwhat are some lesser known episodes I want to talk about?
34:08SPEAKERThere are probably a ton that I'm missing here.
34:11SPEAKERIt's the one-
34:12SPEAKER- Is this the Data's daughter one?
34:13SPEAKER- Yes, Data creates a child for himself.
34:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
34:17SPEAKER- That's one of the main conceits of the show
34:19SPEAKERis that Data was invented by like a mad scientist genius
34:22SPEAKERwho then disappeared.
34:24SPEAKERAnd like nobody else knows how to construct it.
34:25SPEAKERLike it's impossible to construct a positronic brain
34:28SPEAKERlike Data has, they can't mass produce them.
34:30SPEAKERSo he's like one of a kind,
34:31SPEAKERbut he attempts to make a child in the mold of his own
34:34SPEAKERkind of cybernetic brain.
34:35SPEAKER- Plant him, yeah.
34:37SPEAKER- Kind of, but it doesn't go well.
34:39SPEAKERLike it's a very, it's a very touching episode to me.
34:42SPEAKERLike he allows the child to choose its own gender
34:45SPEAKERand appearance and name.
34:48SPEAKERDoes she get to pick her name or does he?
34:49SPEAKERNo, he, I think he names-
34:51SPEAKER- I think he names her, I can't remember.
34:53SPEAKER- But he allows her to choose like what she looks like
34:55SPEAKERand her gender and stuff like that.
34:56SPEAKERBut like, it's pretty touching and right up until the end
35:00SPEAKERwhen like, you know, it becomes clear
35:02SPEAKERthat he did not implement the positronic matrix
35:04SPEAKERin the right way and she doesn't make it.
35:09SPEAKERAnd I have seen a surprising number of people
35:13SPEAKERsay that they think this episode is cheesy.
35:16SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
35:17SPEAKER- I don't get that at all.
35:18SPEAKERI'm like, how hollow inside are you?
35:20SPEAKERLike that episode ends with his child dying in his arms
35:24SPEAKERand saying, thank you for my life.
35:26SPEAKER- To me, the saddest part of the whole thing though,
35:28SPEAKERis that he's like, I don't have feelings, so I can't,
35:31SPEAKERlike, he's not actively sad.
35:33SPEAKER- Yeah, right.
35:34SPEAKERLike he literally says- - He seems remorseful, maybe?
35:36SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
35:38SPEAKERThat's another one of those interesting examples
35:41SPEAKERof they couldn't figure out where the line was
35:43SPEAKERon Data's level of emotion.
35:45SPEAKEROr they were not consistent with it from episode to episode,
35:48SPEAKERespecially early on of deciding exactly
35:51SPEAKERhow much he could feel.
35:52SPEAKERYeah, you're right.
35:53SPEAKERHe intellectually feels remorse that she died,
35:57SPEAKERbut he straight up says that he basically can't feel
35:59SPEAKERanything from it, you know?
36:01SPEAKER- Like he misses her presence from a, like,
36:07SPEAKERit's a weird line.
36:09SPEAKERHe talks about it later in the series too,
36:12SPEAKER'cause at some point he's having a conversation
36:13SPEAKERwith somebody else about,
36:15SPEAKERwhen he meets his mom, actually.
36:17SPEAKERWhen he meets- - Oh, that's such a great one.
36:19SPEAKERI didn't write that one down. - Sing's mom, ex-wife.
36:22SPEAKER- Yeah, he's talking, he's telling her about that,
36:26SPEAKERand she's really sad.
36:28SPEAKER- Okay.
36:29SPEAKER- And then he's like, well, I didn't actually feel anything,
36:31SPEAKERbut I do miss her.
36:32SPEAKERI do miss the conversation,
36:34SPEAKERbeing able to talk to her and have a conversation
36:36SPEAKERand all that.
36:37SPEAKER- I think this was the moment that I just decided
36:39SPEAKERthat we have conceived the "Impossible" episode,
36:41SPEAKERbecause the more we talk about this,
36:42SPEAKERthe more I'm just gonna try to add more episodes,
36:44SPEAKERand this will never end.
36:45SPEAKERLike, the one with Data's mom,
36:49SPEAKERall over the Moriarty episodes,
36:51SPEAKERlike, I just, there are so many that I just wanna sit here.
36:56SPEAKER- Can I just, so I don't,
36:59SPEAKERthe second Moriarty episode
37:01SPEAKERwas like a huge disappointment for me, because-
37:04SPEAKER- Is that the one where he escapes the holodeck?
37:06SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the one where he escapes the holodeck, but-
37:08SPEAKER- You don't like that one?
37:09SPEAKER- Okay.
37:10SPEAKER- Oh man, it's one of my favorites.
37:12SPEAKER- Brad, the holodeck breaks,
37:15SPEAKERthe only time we ever see the holodeck
37:16SPEAKERis when it's breaking.
37:18SPEAKER- Yeah, sure. - Or if it's killing
37:19SPEAKERsome fake guys. - Uh-huh, yeah.
37:22SPEAKERSome rubber mask aliens.
37:23SPEAKER- I don't think the holodeck's a safe technology, Brad.
37:25SPEAKER- No, it's not.
37:27SPEAKER- No, I think they should maybe think about, you know,
37:29SPEAKERmaybe turn that thing off, put a racquetball court in there.
37:32SPEAKER- If you had access to a holodeck,
37:34SPEAKERknowing what you know about the holodeck,
37:36SPEAKERwould you really be able to resist using it?
37:38SPEAKERLike, come on. - I would play God.
37:40SPEAKER- Seriously. - Yeah.
37:42SPEAKER- They know, look, they know damn well
37:44SPEAKERhow effed up the holodeck is,
37:46SPEAKERbut the holodeck is so rad, who would be able to resist?
37:49SPEAKER- The Moriarty thing is kind of a horror story,
37:52SPEAKERif you think about it from Moriarty's perspective,
37:53SPEAKER'cause even though he's the villain,
37:56SPEAKERhe's the nemesis for Data,
38:01SPEAKERhe's basically living in stasis
38:03SPEAKERfor hundreds of years at a time, his perception.
38:07SPEAKERIt seems awful.
38:07SPEAKER- Yeah, no body, just formless consciousness.
38:11SPEAKER- No, okay, here's one I had never heard of before
38:15SPEAKERthat I hadn't seen on any of the best lists, Genesis.
38:19SPEAKER- Man, I was mind blown that you wrote Genesis down on here.
38:25SPEAKER- Okay, so I didn't know what to expect any of this.
38:28SPEAKERIt's a late season in a time
38:31SPEAKERwhen the episodes were real up and down,
38:33SPEAKERbut it's the one where they get infected with a virus
38:37SPEAKERthat causes everybody to reverse mutate back to some,
38:41SPEAKERlike Worf gets a chitinous exoskeleton
38:44SPEAKERand becomes a horrible killing machine.
38:47SPEAKERLike everybody turns into a spider.
38:49SPEAKER- Yes, everybody starts reverting
38:50SPEAKERinto like more primitive life forms
38:52SPEAKERfrom whatever biology was on their home planet.
38:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I think Picard becomes a Neanderthal
38:58SPEAKER'cause he's French, maybe, I don't know.
39:00SPEAKER- Sure, I think somebody turns into a lemur, I'm not sure.
39:03SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot of, look,
39:05SPEAKERthere's a lot of real good prosthetic makeup in business,
39:08SPEAKERand also Gates McFadden directed that one,
39:10SPEAKERwhich I did not know. - I did not know, that's cool.
39:11SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's got that same kind of like,
39:15SPEAKERhey, something's gone.
39:17SPEAKERWell, I think that's also the one
39:19SPEAKERthat has the good bit about Picard
39:20SPEAKERnot wanting to go do some like function,
39:23SPEAKERlike one of the recurring themes that I love about Picard
39:26SPEAKERis he doesn't like doing official shit.
39:27SPEAKERLike he doesn't like going to admirals meetings
39:29SPEAKERand dinners and stuff like that.
39:31SPEAKER- He just wants to space fare, he does not want a glad hand.
39:34SPEAKER- He's an explorer, man, he's gotta be out there, right?
39:37SPEAKER- That's right.
39:38SPEAKERBut yeah, that one's a banger and the makeup,
39:43SPEAKERlike the monster makeup and stuff that they did,
39:44SPEAKERclearly they had to like scrimp and save
39:46SPEAKERon some later episode in that season,
39:48SPEAKERor maybe at that point Paramount was just like,
39:49SPEAKERhey man, last season, here's all the money we have left,
39:52SPEAKERlet her rip, 'cause it was really well done.
39:55SPEAKERIt was really awesome practical makeup
39:56SPEAKERon a ton of different, like a bazillion characters, so.
39:59SPEAKER- I think where you wrote in this doc
40:01SPEAKERas the description here,
40:02SPEAKERGates McFadden directed a monster movie episode,
40:04SPEAKERlike that description I think makes me come around
40:06SPEAKERon that episode a little bit,
40:07SPEAKER'cause I always thought of it as being pretty cheesy,
40:09SPEAKERbut I get it when you put it that way.
40:13SPEAKER- Well, like, look, it's an episode
40:15SPEAKERthat 14-year-old me would have been pissed off about,
40:17SPEAKERbecause it didn't have, there were no Borg or Klingons
40:21SPEAKERor Romulans or Ferengi or Pakleds or like any,
40:26SPEAKERlike it was not, it was an X-Files episode
40:29SPEAKERthat was a Star Trek episode, right?
40:31SPEAKER- Very much so.
40:32SPEAKER- But coming into it now, I super loved it,
40:34SPEAKERI was really thrilled.
40:35SPEAKERNow, "Reunion" is one that I wrote.
40:39SPEAKERIs that actually the Scotty episode?
40:40SPEAKERI didn't even look that up.
40:42SPEAKERAt some point I realized I'm not quite the kind of person
40:45SPEAKERwho can recite every episode's title in order, but-
40:48SPEAKER- That's probably best.
40:50SPEAKER- At some point I realized that I am moving
40:52SPEAKERin that direction of being able to just identify
40:54SPEAKERmore and more episodes by name,
40:56SPEAKERwhich you tell me if that's a good thing or not.
40:58SPEAKERLet me, let me triple check that it's-
41:00SPEAKER- "Reunion" is the cool one,
41:01SPEAKER'cause it's the first time we see like a mega structure
41:05SPEAKERin space in Star Trek.
41:07SPEAKER- I think I, no, I screwed up.
41:08SPEAKERWow, I'm glad I fact checked that.
41:09SPEAKER"Reunion" is a Klingon episode.
41:13SPEAKER- Oh, is that the one,
41:15SPEAKERthat's the one where he goes and meets the, his brother.
41:20SPEAKER- Maybe?
41:21SPEAKERI saw that Kalar, the mother of Alexander is involved.
41:24SPEAKERI just skimmed real fast.
41:25SPEAKERI can't, wow, I kind of swore "Reunion"
41:28SPEAKERwas the Scotty episode.
41:28SPEAKERI don't remember which, not hard to find.
41:32SPEAKERHang on.
41:33SPEAKER- No, it's fine.
41:34SPEAKER- I have the power of the internet at my fingertips.
41:36SPEAKERRelics, I knew that.
41:37SPEAKER- Relics, that makes sense.
41:39SPEAKER- Relics, not "Reunion."
41:41SPEAKERThat episode is so cool for so many reasons.
41:44SPEAKERLike for me, just space science nerd perspective,
41:49SPEAKERthere is, I don't even know where to start.
41:51SPEAKERLike conceptually, there's the cool part
41:54SPEAKERwhere Scotty crash landed and the rest of his crew died.
41:57SPEAKERAnd the only way he was able to keep himself alive
41:59SPEAKERfor 75 years was, of course, it's Scotty.
42:01SPEAKERHe rigged up some insane pattern buffer loop
42:04SPEAKERin the transporter and suspended himself in the transporter
42:08SPEAKERfor 75 years until he was found.
42:11SPEAKERWas there a friend?
42:13SPEAKER- There was a second person who didn't make it.
42:14SPEAKER- Oh, right, yes, that's right.
42:16SPEAKERYes, and he's very sad about that.
42:17SPEAKERThere's also a Dyson sphere.
42:18SPEAKERLike there's also just straight up,
42:20SPEAKERlike here is a classical science fiction concept
42:23SPEAKERrendered on screen in a really nice way.
42:25SPEAKERLike that's very cool.
42:26SPEAKERDyson sphere is a gigantic,
42:28SPEAKERit's a gigantic artificial shell built around a star.
42:30SPEAKERIf you don't, if people don't know.
42:32SPEAKER- Yeah, hard, it's all the power of the star, you know,
42:34SPEAKERbecause it's for technology, yada yada.
42:37SPEAKER- There's all that, but then there's also,
42:38SPEAKERthere's the emotional component of that episode
42:40SPEAKERis amazing of like, it's an exploration of a guy
42:44SPEAKERwho was way past his prime and old and feeling useless
42:46SPEAKERand you know, and also everything he knows is gone.
42:50SPEAKERLike everyone he knows is gone.
42:51SPEAKERLike that scene where they recreate
42:54SPEAKERthe original enterprise bridge on the Holocaust.
42:57SPEAKERSee, here's a perfect example
42:58SPEAKERof the holodeck proving it's worth.
43:00SPEAKERThey recreate.
43:01SPEAKER- This one was good, yes.
43:02SPEAKER- They recreate the original enterprise bridge
43:04SPEAKERon the holodeck and it's like an amazingly touching scene
43:07SPEAKERwith him and Geordi there.
43:10SPEAKERAlso fun fact.
43:11SPEAKER- Have they just made a movie or something?
43:12SPEAKERThey just made it, is that when like Star Trek six came out
43:15SPEAKERand that's why they had original enterprise bridge around?
43:17SPEAKER- No, I was literally about to say a fun fact.
43:19SPEAKERIf I'm not mistaken, that bridge they used
43:21SPEAKERwas a fan's recreation of that bridge.
43:23SPEAKERIf I'm not mistaken, I think that's right.
43:30SPEAKERI could try to fact check that.
43:32SPEAKER- There's a couple of places when I was reading,
43:34SPEAKERwhen I was doing some reading for this episode,
43:35SPEAKERthere's a couple of places I think the episode one,
43:37SPEAKERthe season one finale started out as a fan script
43:40SPEAKERbecause it was coming into the writer's strike
43:43SPEAKERand they needed a quick script to record before.
43:47SPEAKER- They kind of semi took spec scripts
43:51SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken early on.
43:53SPEAKERLike that's how some of the writers for the show,
43:55SPEAKERthe permanent writers got on board was straight up
43:57SPEAKERjust submitting their own pet scripts.
44:00SPEAKER- Yeah, it's bonkers.
44:01SPEAKERThey'll probably the last time that could have happened.
44:03SPEAKER- Yeah, real quick.
44:04SPEAKERSo I guess that enterprise bridge set was constructed
44:08SPEAKERfor the episode, but some of the elements
44:09SPEAKERlike the captain's chair were provided by a fan
44:11SPEAKERwho had built his own replicas.
44:13SPEAKER- That's amazing.
44:14SPEAKER- Just wild stuff, but that's a great touching episode.
44:17SPEAKER- And it's also like watching it on the remastered version,
44:21SPEAKERthe colors are so bright and delightful compared to
44:25SPEAKERlike A, the way you remember the TOS stuff,
44:28SPEAKERbut B, how everything on the D era enterprise looks.
44:33SPEAKERIt was really cool.
44:34SPEAKER- It's very 80s.
44:35SPEAKERCan I just say really quick,
44:36SPEAKERdo you ever, does there anything ever happen to you
44:37SPEAKERwhere you feel like if there is a divine power out there
44:41SPEAKERthat it decided at one point
44:42SPEAKERthat it was going to look out for you briefly?
44:44SPEAKERBecause that's how I feel about the fact
44:45SPEAKERthat that TNG HD remaster got done.
44:49SPEAKER- Specifically in retrospect,
44:52SPEAKERknowing that it was like gigantic financial failure,
44:54SPEAKERlike it did not make money.
44:57SPEAKER- No.
44:58SPEAKER- Which basically ensures this will never happen again
45:01SPEAKERwith another Star Trek series,
45:02SPEAKERbut they just happened to do it
45:03SPEAKERwith the one that I cared about the most.
45:05SPEAKER- I don't know, I feel like the economics of streaming
45:09SPEAKERmight actually change that.
45:11SPEAKER- I guess that's possible, never say never.
45:13SPEAKER- Yeah, Paramount Plus like think about the likelihood
45:18SPEAKERof extracting like, so those TNG remasters,
45:21SPEAKERthe problem with them was they were too damn expensive.
45:24SPEAKERLike if they had been,
45:25SPEAKERif they had priced them more reasonably,
45:26SPEAKERI think more people would have bought them.
45:29SPEAKER- Yes, they were at the time that they came out,
45:31SPEAKERthey were extreme.
45:32SPEAKERGod, what were they like 60, $70 a season?
45:34SPEAKER- 50 or 60 bucks a season or something?
45:36SPEAKER- Like granted it's a lot of runtime,
45:38SPEAKERbut that's a lot of money for seven seasons.
45:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the, anyway.
45:44SPEAKER- I never bought them.
45:45SPEAKERI've always just watched them on Netflix over and over,
45:47SPEAKERbut you can get the full run of the HD remake,
45:50SPEAKERkind of redo in one box set for like $170 now.
45:54SPEAKERI keep meaning to pick one up.
45:56SPEAKER- That seems like it would be worth,
45:57SPEAKERthat seems like it would be worth,
45:58SPEAKERI would pay 100 bucks for that happily.
46:00SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause all the seasons have making ofs
46:01SPEAKERand commentaries on the episodes and stuff,
46:03SPEAKERlike a lot of nice special features
46:05SPEAKERthat I would like to have.
46:06SPEAKER- I didn't know that.
46:07SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
46:08SPEAKER- Do they have like Ronald Moore doing commentaries
46:09SPEAKERand stuff like that?
46:10SPEAKER- Probably, I would assume.
46:12SPEAKERLike he definitely wrote some of the best episodes
46:14SPEAKERof that series, but also just people will know
46:16SPEAKERabout the production process on that HD remake is amazing.
46:21SPEAKERI would watch a whole documentary about that,
46:23SPEAKERlike they had to-
46:24SPEAKER- I think there, I feel like there was one.
46:26SPEAKER- I know there are some behind the scenes
46:27SPEAKERon those box sets that I have not seen,
46:29SPEAKERbut like they had to go into the warehouse
46:31SPEAKERand find the original film elements
46:33SPEAKERthat they shot the show on
46:34SPEAKERand recomposite and re-edit everything.
46:38SPEAKER- Well yeah, they recreated the VFX digitally,
46:41SPEAKER'cause I think the problem was
46:43SPEAKERthat the show was shot on film,
46:44SPEAKERbut the VFX were all done on video.
46:47SPEAKER- All the VFX and compositing and final editing
46:50SPEAKERwere all done on video.
46:50SPEAKERThe original film elements are 35 millimeter,
46:54SPEAKERbut yeah, so they had to redo the entire show from scratch.
46:56SPEAKERIt's amazing.
47:00SPEAKER- Let's see, should we do cause and effect next?
47:03SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:04SPEAKER- That's the time loop.
47:06SPEAKERI think that's the one that the cold open
47:09SPEAKERis basically Riker yelling red alert,
47:12SPEAKERsome bad stuff happening and the ship blowing up.
47:14SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that's a great one.
47:15SPEAKERAnd then you see the ship keeps blowing up
47:18SPEAKER'cause they're stuck in a Mobius loop.
47:21SPEAKER- Yes.
47:22SPEAKER- They're stuck in a Mobius loop and they,
47:25SPEAKERthe same thing keeps playing out over and over.
47:27SPEAKERThey keep trying to figure out why the ship is exploding.
47:30SPEAKER- But they all get deja vu.
47:32SPEAKER- Right, but they never reuse the same footage
47:34SPEAKERof the disaster and the ship exploding.
47:36SPEAKERYou always see it from like a different angle
47:38SPEAKERand a different perspective.
47:39SPEAKEREvery time it happens, it's really well done.
47:42SPEAKER- It's a Jonathan Frakes directed one also.
47:45SPEAKER- And that's another fun one, another fun,
47:47SPEAKERlike oh, Data has got some special advantage here.
47:50SPEAKERSomething about Data's internal positronic chronometer
47:54SPEAKERhappens to maintain some record
47:56SPEAKERof what happened in each loop or something.
47:58SPEAKERIt's very space magic.
48:00SPEAKER- I think about all of the starships in the Federation
48:03SPEAKERthat don't have data on board them
48:05SPEAKERand how many of them just must blow up unexpectedly
48:08SPEAKERout of nowhere.
48:09SPEAKER- Everybody should have a Data.
48:11SPEAKERI mean, look, there's an episode about that
48:13SPEAKERthat we said we weren't gonna talk about.
48:14SPEAKER- Yes, you're right.
48:15SPEAKERYou're absolutely right.
48:17SPEAKERYeah, that's a great one.
48:18SPEAKERThat's just a fun science gimmick one for me.
48:23SPEAKER- For me, it's again, it's another one of those like,
48:26SPEAKERhey, here's the hard sci-fi episode of the week kind of.
48:28SPEAKER- Totally, totally.
48:29SPEAKER- And like, just to be clear, like the, I don't know,
48:33SPEAKERwatching these kind of like the worst slash best part
48:36SPEAKERof Star Trek is when they're saying
48:37SPEAKERa bunch of absolute nonsense.
48:40SPEAKERAnd like, they're dead, like respect to the performers
48:45SPEAKERbecause like, clearly they took the time
48:48SPEAKERto learn the inner language of Star Trek.
48:51SPEAKERAnd like, there's no, like they're not playing for camp.
48:55SPEAKERThey're playing it a hundred percent straight.
48:56SPEAKERLike it's like talking about Jeffrey's tubes
48:59SPEAKERand fucking flux capacitors or whatever
49:02SPEAKERis the most serious nonsense in the world.
49:04SPEAKER- I saw linear optical chips.
49:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:07SPEAKER- Yeah, but because they play it straight, it works.
49:11SPEAKER- Yes, the writers and the actors both do a fantastic job
49:14SPEAKERof selling all the technobabble for sure.
49:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:18SPEAKER- I wrote down the survivors,
49:19SPEAKERwhich is not necessarily like a top 10 for me or anything,
49:22SPEAKERbut it's the one in I think season three
49:23SPEAKERwhere they come upon a Federation colony
49:27SPEAKERthat has been like scoured clean
49:28SPEAKERexcept for one like very perfect, tidy plot of land.
49:32SPEAKERIt's got like-
49:33SPEAKER- Oh, the square, yeah, yeah.
49:34SPEAKER- Like literally they see it from orbit.
49:35SPEAKERLike there's one square of nice like green front yard
49:38SPEAKERand a nice little house
49:39SPEAKERand a couple and an elderly couple living there
49:41SPEAKERand everything around them is a devastation.
49:43SPEAKERAnd they have to, they have to unpack what happened
49:46SPEAKERand the elderly couple won't say and spoiler.
49:49SPEAKER- It's a mystery.
49:50SPEAKER- It is kind of a mystery one and spoiler,
49:52SPEAKERI guess we're just spoiling stuff.
49:55SPEAKERThe husband is a Supreme being.
49:57SPEAKERHe is like a God, essentially.
50:00SPEAKER- Somebody who's ascended, right?
50:01SPEAKER- I don't, they don't get into his origin.
50:03SPEAKERLike they don't even say, oh, he's a Q.
50:05SPEAKERLike that's one of the great things about it
50:06SPEAKERis they don't bother to explain it 'cause who cares?
50:08SPEAKERLike it's just assumed that he is an omnipotent being,
50:11SPEAKERbut he had fallen in love with a human woman
50:14SPEAKERand married her and lived as a human in this colony
50:18SPEAKERand a marauding evil alien species came
50:21SPEAKERand attacked their colony.
50:23SPEAKERHis wife was killed in this attack
50:27SPEAKERand in a moment of anger,
50:28SPEAKERlike it's a really well done performance.
50:29SPEAKERI don't know who the actor is,
50:30SPEAKERbut he delivers this scene, this line incredibly well.
50:34SPEAKERLike in a moment of like blind anger,
50:36SPEAKERbecause he can do whatever he wants with a thought,
50:39SPEAKERhe eradicates the entirety of this alien species
50:41SPEAKERin one moment.
50:43SPEAKERLike he literally wipes an entire alien species
50:46SPEAKERfrom existence in like blind rage.
50:48SPEAKERAnd like the whole rest of the episode
50:50SPEAKERis this like morality play about like, what do you do here?
50:54SPEAKERLike he has committed a crime on an unimaginable scale,
51:00SPEAKERbut also there's nothing you can do to him.
51:03SPEAKERYou know, he's very remorseful about the whole thing.
51:05SPEAKERIt's just like, it's a situation with no solution, right?
51:10SPEAKERIt's just-
51:11SPEAKERIt's like a kid with an anthill.
51:13SPEAKEROr kind of, yes.
51:14SPEAKERLike a kid who pours water in an anthill or something.
51:16SPEAKERRight.
51:17SPEAKERIt's funny, this one didn't stick with me a whole lot,
51:20SPEAKERbut that guy is maybe the scariest villain
51:22SPEAKERin all of this series.
51:23SPEAKERI don't know if I call him a villain.
51:25SPEAKERI mean, obviously what he did was incredibly monstrous,
51:27SPEAKERbut he realizes it.
51:29SPEAKERLike also, you know, it just occurred to me
51:30SPEAKERthat I guess they don't unpack the idea
51:32SPEAKERthat couldn't he just restore them all to existence
51:34SPEAKERif he's basically a god.
51:36SPEAKERI don't know.
51:37SPEAKERCouldn't he have stopped the attack in the first place?
51:38SPEAKERWas he taking a nap?
51:40SPEAKERI think, I want to say they address that,
51:43SPEAKERthat maybe he had like committed to living
51:45SPEAKERas an actual human and not using his powers.
51:47SPEAKEROh yeah, the man of steel.
51:50SPEAKERSo actually, I think that's what makes the moral aspect
51:53SPEAKERof this episode work is that he was like a staunch pacifist.
51:56SPEAKERLike he's a god, but he's like he,
52:00SPEAKERlike they ask him, like, why didn't you just stop the attack?
52:03SPEAKERAnd he was like, I could not bring myself to kill.
52:05SPEAKERLike I will not kill,
52:07SPEAKERexcept in that moment of weakness, he killed all of them.
52:09SPEAKERIt's like, it's a really uncomfortable idea.
52:12SPEAKERDid he kill them or did he make them never exist?
52:14SPEAKEROr I think he just like, literally just,
52:16SPEAKERit was kind of like snap his fingers
52:17SPEAKERand they're just, they no longer exist kind of thing.
52:19SPEAKERThanos sitch.
52:20SPEAKERKind of, yes.
52:21SPEAKERBut like, but he's like supremely remorseful about it.
52:24SPEAKERSo it's like a, you know, and there is no conclusion.
52:26SPEAKERThere's like nothing they can do at the end of the episode
52:28SPEAKERother than say like, well, this sucks.
52:32SPEAKERIt's a hard thing to describe because like,
52:34SPEAKERyou're just left with this uneasy feeling basically.
52:38SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's funny.
52:40SPEAKER'Cause there are a handful of those,
52:42SPEAKERlike everything doesn't wrap up nicely episodes that are,
52:44SPEAKERI mean, there's a bunch of cliffhangers and nonsense,
52:46SPEAKERyou know, TV nonsense, but yeah, like it is an ambiguous,
52:54SPEAKERit does wrap up ambiguously.
52:56SPEAKERI think I fell asleep during this one.
52:57SPEAKERI maybe didn't see Brad.
52:59SPEAKER- It is very much a morality play of the week episode
53:02SPEAKERfor sure.
53:03SPEAKERAnd it's kind of slow 'cause it is sort of an investigation.
53:06SPEAKER- I like the investigation ones.
53:08SPEAKERLike there's a handful of like, hey, there's a station,
53:13SPEAKERthe one where this isn't on the list,
53:15SPEAKERI don't remember what the name is,
53:17SPEAKERbut the one where there's like an outpost
53:18SPEAKERand there's two people on it and then there's a murder
53:20SPEAKERand you have to figure out who,
53:21SPEAKERthey have to figure out who did the murder is very good.
53:24SPEAKER- So the one where they use the holodeck
53:25SPEAKERto recreate the crime scene.
53:27SPEAKER- I think so.
53:28SPEAKERAnd it's also the one with the little robots
53:29SPEAKERthat are just like an octagonal box with feet.
53:32SPEAKER- That sounds great.
53:33SPEAKER- Like the floating robots that become sentient, I think.
53:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:36SPEAKER- Anyway.
53:37SPEAKER- There are a lot of great ones that we will not get to here.
53:40SPEAKER- There are, let's see, I was surprised by a season one,
53:44SPEAKERa rare season one banger conspiracy.
53:46SPEAKER- Oh, conspiracy is a classic.
53:49SPEAKER- Like, which is like, it's like such a,
53:51SPEAKERit sets up this amazing thread.
53:52SPEAKERHey, there's an alien species, they're like soul suckers,
53:55SPEAKERthey're taking over Starfleet personnel, yada, yada, yada.
53:58SPEAKERAnd then it all wraps up nicely at the end of the hour
54:02SPEAKERand there's no problems.
54:03SPEAKER- Well, it does accept they imply that it very much doesn't.
54:05SPEAKERLike that actually, that episode ends
54:07SPEAKERon a really chilling shot of space, basically saying like,
54:12SPEAKERit's like, it's basically this parasitic bug organism
54:15SPEAKERthat crawls up inside people's ears
54:17SPEAKERand takes over their brain stems or whatever.
54:19SPEAKER- It's very Wrath of Khan.
54:21SPEAKER- And this conspiracy, this mind control has gone
54:25SPEAKERthrough the highest levels of Starfleet
54:26SPEAKERand they think that they have dealt with it on the ground,
54:28SPEAKERbut they also at the end realized that these bugs
54:33SPEAKERhave been sending a signal into space
54:37SPEAKERand it's very much like, well,
54:38SPEAKERdid the rest of them hear the signal?
54:40SPEAKERAre they coming?
54:41SPEAKERAnd they never get back to it.
54:42SPEAKER- Turns out, no, they are not coming.
54:44SPEAKER- They dropped the thread,
54:45SPEAKERbut it could have been an interesting, it's very creepy.
54:49SPEAKERAlso, I haven't confirmed this.
54:51SPEAKERI was reading that this was potentially going to be
54:55SPEAKERlike a plot thread set up for later in the series
54:57SPEAKERthat they were playing around with the idea
54:59SPEAKERof like an all powerful threat
55:00SPEAKERthat would pop back up over and over
55:01SPEAKERand that this could have become the Borg
55:04SPEAKERbefore they knew what the Borg were gonna be,
55:06SPEAKERbefore they had decided on space techno zombies,
55:08SPEAKERthey were like, maybe our recurring threat
55:11SPEAKERwill be these parasitic space bugs instead,
55:13SPEAKERbut they didn't go with that.
55:14SPEAKER- The Borg are much scarier than the space bugs, I think.
55:17SPEAKER- Definitely more iconic.
55:18SPEAKERI think the Borg are incredibly iconic.
55:20SPEAKERThe gore, the level of gore in this episode though
55:23SPEAKERis kind of amazing because they like literally phaser a guy
55:26SPEAKERuntil he explodes into a shower of meat chunks.
55:30SPEAKER- Like there's a lingering shot on like the dude's remnants
55:34SPEAKERof his torso in the captain's chair, it's messed up.
55:37SPEAKER- Yes, there's a giant ugly prosthetic like rubber bug
55:40SPEAKERcoming out of what's left of his torso.
55:42SPEAKERIt's like shockingly gory.
55:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it's another monster of the week though.
55:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it could have been a lot more though.
55:49SPEAKERI think it is more than that.
55:50SPEAKERI think the sense of dread, the creeping dread of it,
55:54SPEAKERit runs deeper than a monster of the week
55:55SPEAKERand they could have made it a recurring thing,
55:57SPEAKERbut they didn't.
55:58SPEAKER- Well, it's also the first time,
55:59SPEAKERand I don't like knowing what I know
56:01SPEAKERabout where Star Trek went after this,
56:02SPEAKERI don't know how I feel about it now,
56:04SPEAKERbut it's also the first time that there's a hint
56:06SPEAKERthat maybe Starfleet Command is not entirely on the,
56:09SPEAKERlike it's the first time there's conflict
56:11SPEAKERbetween the Enterprise and Starfleet Command.
56:13SPEAKER- Yes, and then that becomes just sort of
56:15SPEAKERlike the status quo later in the episode.
56:19SPEAKERLike anytime an admiral from Starfleet pops up,
56:22SPEAKERyou know they're gonna be an asshole
56:23SPEAKERor incompetent or both.
56:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and that's a vibe that they take forward
56:29SPEAKERinto even like the JJ-verse movies
56:33SPEAKERin a way that kind of bums me out.
56:35SPEAKERAnd I think like all the Sector 23 or 16 or whatever,
56:39SPEAKERI can't remember which one it is,
56:41SPEAKERbut all the bits about like the underlying secret society
56:45SPEAKERin Starfleet that like does what has to be taken,
56:48SPEAKERthey do whatever it takes.
56:49SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I think that's very much
56:50SPEAKERa Deep Space Nine thing as well.
56:53SPEAKER- Yeah, seems, I think that's where it kind of picked up.
56:56SPEAKER- I'll go through a couple more here before we wrap up.
56:59SPEAKERI have written down the nth degree, which-
57:03SPEAKER- This one's good, this is-
57:04SPEAKER- Oh, it's one of my favorites.
57:06SPEAKERI don't know what it says about me though,
57:07SPEAKERbecause I myself have described it here in this doc
57:09SPEAKERas an extremely fun nerd insert wish fulfillment episode.
57:14SPEAKERBecause- - Is this the one,
57:16SPEAKERis this the first Barclay episode
57:18SPEAKERor is this one of the later ones?
57:19SPEAKER- No, this is one of the mid to later ones.
57:21SPEAKERThis is not the one with the,
57:23SPEAKERit's not the one where he gets super horny in the holodeck.
57:25SPEAKERI think that might be his first episode.
57:27SPEAKER- That's the first time we saw him, I think.
57:29SPEAKER- I mean, Barclay, if people don't know,
57:31SPEAKERis like a like relatively competent,
57:34SPEAKERbut incredibly anxious engineer
57:37SPEAKERwho's lacking in confidence and people skills kind of guy.
57:41SPEAKERTo put it mildly, I guess.
57:43SPEAKER- He had some problems.
57:45SPEAKER- This is the one where an alien probe
57:46SPEAKERmakes Barclay the smartest human who has ever lived.
57:50SPEAKER- Yeah, this one's pretty good.
57:51SPEAKER- Like he has an IQ of like 1200 if I mean,
57:54SPEAKERit was the 80s, like whatever IQ meant at the time,
57:56SPEAKERthat's how they describe it, but like-
58:00SPEAKER- He basically solves all the problems
58:01SPEAKERwith the sheer force of will and brain.
58:05SPEAKER- He becomes the Enterprise computer.
58:06SPEAKERLike that's how the episode,
58:07SPEAKERthe climax of the episode is that he literally
58:09SPEAKERwires himself into the Enterprise computer
58:12SPEAKERand becomes the computer in a way
58:14SPEAKERthat they cannot extract him from.
58:16SPEAKER- Superman three problem, basically is what you're saying.
58:19SPEAKER- But on the way there, the episode is about him
58:21SPEAKERbasically realizing how smart he is now
58:23SPEAKERand how confident that makes him.
58:25SPEAKERAnd he becomes like, he becomes like a little,
58:27SPEAKERlike there's that scene where he's doing a scene from,
58:32SPEAKERgosh, I can't remember which play it is.
58:35SPEAKERWho is he?
58:36SPEAKERHe's playing Cyrano, I think.
58:38SPEAKEROpposite Gates Mcfadden, Crusher on 10th floor.
58:41SPEAKERThe episode opens with him fumbling his way
58:44SPEAKERin the most embarrassing way possible through his lines
58:46SPEAKERin this play he's trying to do.
58:48SPEAKERAnd then after the turn, he does the scene again
58:51SPEAKERfor our audience and gives this absolute tour de force
58:54SPEAKERwhere Crusher is literally weeping at the end.
58:56SPEAKERSo it's so over the top and cheesy,
58:59SPEAKERbut it's just this like Barkley coming into his own moment.
59:02SPEAKERThat's really goofy and fun.
59:05SPEAKER- Dwight Schultz, the guy who plays him is so like he,
59:13SPEAKERthat character never has like a straight line
59:14SPEAKERthrough an episode.
59:16SPEAKERIt's always like some sort of hard turn midway through.
59:18SPEAKER- Yes, go look at that scene.
59:20SPEAKERI was, well, you kind of need to see the whole episode
59:21SPEAKER'cause there's a lot of set up for it.
59:22SPEAKERBut like that scene of him in that play
59:24SPEAKERis just kind of amazing.
59:26SPEAKERI've never seen the A-Team.
59:27SPEAKERHe is, who is he, Murdock from the A-Team?
59:30SPEAKER- He plays Murdock on the A-Team.
59:32SPEAKER- I've never seen that show, but yeah, that's who he is.
59:35SPEAKER- He's, like the thing about a Barkley episode
59:40SPEAKERis you know that some good stuff's gonna happen
59:42SPEAKERwhen like the Barkley episodes,
59:44SPEAKERlike the Holodeck episodes are all up and down.
59:46SPEAKERLike the ones where Picard plays the noir detective
59:52SPEAKERare almost all bad.
59:53SPEAKERLike there's a bunch of like not great episodes
59:56SPEAKERthat follow one of the main tropes of the show,
59:58SPEAKERbut the Barkley episodes are always like lore episodes,
1:00:01SPEAKERalways good, Barkley episodes, always good.
1:00:04SPEAKERRomulan episodes, like 50/50 it seems like.
1:00:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:09SPEAKER- What about the drum head?
1:00:10SPEAKERDo you remember the drum head?
1:00:11SPEAKER- Drum head's great.
1:00:12SPEAKER- That's the, it's another one of the,
1:00:13SPEAKERwhat you would call a kind of a courtroom drama episodes
1:00:16SPEAKERabout kind of military paranoia about spies in the ranks.
1:00:21SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like the danger, it's a,
1:00:23SPEAKERthe morality play here is that witch hunts are always bad
1:00:26SPEAKER'cause if you look hard enough,
1:00:27SPEAKERyou can find anybody who's done something wrong.
1:00:29SPEAKER- Right, yes.
1:00:30SPEAKER- Or find something, you can find everybody
1:00:32SPEAKERhas done something wrong, I guess.
1:00:35SPEAKERBut it's the one, so it's the inverse
1:00:38SPEAKERof the measure of a man where Riker plays the prosecutor,
1:00:41SPEAKERthe hard edge prosecutor, and just,
1:00:43SPEAKERlike he knows that in order to set data free,
1:00:45SPEAKERhe has to leave no stone unturned
1:00:48SPEAKERand he has to really go after him,
1:00:49SPEAKER'cause if he doesn't, then the whole thing
1:00:51SPEAKERwill be for nothing and like the,
1:00:54SPEAKERon drum head, he's the defender
1:00:57SPEAKERfor this person who's accused of being a spy.
1:01:01SPEAKERAnd he's playing, like he's playing the completely,
1:01:04SPEAKERI guess there's no JAG in Starfleet.
1:01:07SPEAKER- No.
1:01:07SPEAKER- He's like no Judge Advocate General or whatever.
1:01:10SPEAKERBut yeah, it's a really,
1:01:17SPEAKERanyway, the upshot is they find somebody who's spying,
1:01:20SPEAKERthey're not doing the spying that they thought,
1:01:21SPEAKERthey're not doing the sabotage that they thought,
1:01:23SPEAKERand they get into this whole,
1:01:25SPEAKERsuddenly everyone's under suspicion
1:01:27SPEAKER'cause they bring in, as you said,
1:01:29SPEAKERthe retired admiral who's the real hard ass
1:01:31SPEAKERfor going after any kind of underhanded behavior.
1:01:37SPEAKERAnd the whole thing just rides on these,
1:01:42SPEAKERthis idea that, hey, you can't,
1:01:45SPEAKERlike look, this is an unhealthy way to live.
1:01:49SPEAKERIt turns out very much, I don't know, so yeah.
1:01:54SPEAKER- Let's see, I've got a couple more.
1:01:56SPEAKERI'm gonna, I'm just gonna mention the first duty real quick
1:01:58SPEAKER'cause that also falls into the courtroom drama category
1:02:02SPEAKERto me.
1:02:03SPEAKER- This is the Wesley coverup?
1:02:07SPEAKER- Might be one of my favorite episodes
1:02:08SPEAKERthe more I think about it.
1:02:10SPEAKERThis is, yes, this is Wesley at Starfleet Academy
1:02:12SPEAKERis involved in a training accident
1:02:13SPEAKERand there is a coverup because some wrongdoing
1:02:17SPEAKERhas taken place and it is very much just an inquiry
1:02:21SPEAKERinto the accident, like that's the whole episode
1:02:23SPEAKERis just an inquiry, people giving testimony
1:02:26SPEAKERand then Picard figures out what's actually going on
1:02:28SPEAKERand gives like one of the best moralizing speeches
1:02:31SPEAKERin the entire series and that's my favorite Picard, so.
1:02:35SPEAKER- It's a really good,
1:02:37SPEAKERit's one of the good Wesley episodes for sure.
1:02:40SPEAKER- Yes, one of his last ones,
1:02:42SPEAKERthis was after he was like off the show full time,
1:02:45SPEAKERthey brought him back occasionally.
1:02:47SPEAKER- Is this before he ascended?
1:02:48SPEAKER- Yes.
1:02:50SPEAKER- Okay.
1:02:51SPEAKER- Yes.
1:02:54SPEAKER- Let's see, my last one,
1:02:55SPEAKERI'm gonna put Data's Day out here.
1:02:58SPEAKERThis is the one that shows you like a little bit,
1:03:01SPEAKERit's like a day in the life of Data, basically.
1:03:04SPEAKER- Is it kind of recording or chronicling it as it goes?
1:03:08SPEAKER- I think, I feel like somebody told him
1:03:09SPEAKERhe should keep a diary or a journal or something,
1:03:11SPEAKERso he's like, and it's like there's a little bit about,
1:03:14SPEAKERwhen you meet Spot for the first time,
1:03:15SPEAKERbut I don't think Spot has a name yet.
1:03:18SPEAKER- Oh, is this before his poem about Spot?
1:03:22SPEAKER- Oh, okay, the cringey,
1:03:25SPEAKERmy favorite Data trope is Data doing something
1:03:28SPEAKERreally, really well that just lands flat as a pancake.
1:03:31SPEAKER- Oh, dude.
1:03:32SPEAKER- Because, yeah.
1:03:33SPEAKER- Can I just read the opening couplet of Ooch Spot?
1:03:36SPEAKER- The fucking poem is so good, it's so stupid.
1:03:38SPEAKER- Felis Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
1:03:41SPEAKERan endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
1:03:46SPEAKER- He's like, it's a really hard meter to do.
1:03:48SPEAKER- It's like, you know, it's not bad.
1:03:49SPEAKERLike they at least got that, they got the us.
1:03:53SPEAKERThat's a fun, like one of the rare, like just kind
1:03:55SPEAKERof lighthearted ones.
1:03:56SPEAKERI think there might be some conflict towards the end,
1:03:58SPEAKERsome threat of the weak to the enterprise or something
1:04:01SPEAKERthat he deals with, but for the most part,
1:04:03SPEAKERit's like a fairly light thing, if I remember.
1:04:07SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the thing that I like about it is,
1:04:11SPEAKERit shows, like he goes through his day
1:04:14SPEAKERand you see him solving like normal space problems,
1:04:19SPEAKERbut he like goes to, it's like, it's also shows you
1:04:25SPEAKERwhat it's like on the enterprise.
1:04:26SPEAKERHe goes to Commander O'Brien, Chief O'Brien's wedding.
1:04:29SPEAKERHe helps solve like pre-wedding jitters for Keiko.
1:04:35SPEAKERHe, they solve a mystery.
1:04:38SPEAKERHe uses some Star Trek, he uses some Sherlock Holmes
1:04:42SPEAKERbusiness, like stuff he learned playing Sherlock Holmes
1:04:44SPEAKERon the holodeck.
1:04:47SPEAKERI guess maybe there are good holodeck episodes,
1:04:49SPEAKERbut he applies that to solving the mystery
1:04:51SPEAKERof this missing Vulcan ambassador, yada, yada, yada.
1:04:54SPEAKERI think that's a spy episode too.
1:04:56SPEAKERI can't remember, but yeah, it's really fun.
1:05:01SPEAKERAnd this is, I feel like this is either a prequel
1:05:04SPEAKERor a postquel for Measure of a Man,
1:05:07SPEAKER'cause I think he's recording this stuff for Maddox,
1:05:09SPEAKERbut I can't remember.
1:05:10SPEAKER- That sounds right.
1:05:11SPEAKERYeah, Maddox is the guy who originally tried
1:05:13SPEAKERto have him designated as property.
1:05:17SPEAKER- Dismantle and rebuild, yeah.
1:05:19SPEAKER- So he could take Data apart and study him.
1:05:21SPEAKERBut yeah, that's like an interesting piece
1:05:23SPEAKERof character work for Data that he kind of becomes friends
1:05:26SPEAKERwith the guy who wanted to take him apart.
1:05:30SPEAKERBut this is-
1:05:33SPEAKER- There's a baby born on the enterprise that day,
1:05:34SPEAKERlike Crusher has to go do some stuff to deliver a baby.
1:05:37SPEAKERLike it's- - That's a nice episode.
1:05:39SPEAKER- It's like, hey, this isn't just a spaceship
1:05:43SPEAKERwhere they go do like spaceship stuff.
1:05:45SPEAKERThis is also like a town that a thousand people live in.
1:05:48SPEAKER- Right. - It's a cool-
1:05:50SPEAKER- It's a good reminder that not every single day
1:05:52SPEAKERon the enterprise has got some insane like scientific
1:05:55SPEAKERor military like threat to humanity taking place
1:05:59SPEAKERor like some weird anomaly isn't happening every single day.
1:06:02SPEAKERSome days are just like kind of mundane.
1:06:05SPEAKER- Exactly.
1:06:07SPEAKER- My last episode, which totally random one to end on,
1:06:11SPEAKERFirst Contact, not to be confused
1:06:13SPEAKERwith Star Trek First Contact,
1:06:14SPEAKERthe second next generation film.
1:06:17SPEAKER- Yes.
1:06:18SPEAKER- This is an episode where Riker is embedded
1:06:20SPEAKERwith a civilization that is about to discover faster
1:06:23SPEAKERthan light travel, we're about to invent it.
1:06:26SPEAKER- Okay. - Have you seen this one?
1:06:28SPEAKER- I remember this, he gets captured, right?
1:06:32SPEAKERThey find him out and then they start interrogating him.
1:06:34SPEAKER- So they do the whole thing where they surgically alter him
1:06:36SPEAKERto look like the alien species because on Star Trek,
1:06:38SPEAKERevery alien species is just humans with something
1:06:41SPEAKERon their forehead.
1:06:42SPEAKER- Well, it's 'cause they were progenitors
1:06:44SPEAKERthat spread bipedal life throughout our portion
1:06:46SPEAKERof the galaxy, clearly.
1:06:48SPEAKER- I intentionally did not put the chase on this list.
1:06:51SPEAKERI'm pretty sure that's the name of the one
1:06:52SPEAKERwhere they actually explain why every alien
1:06:55SPEAKERin Star Trek looks like a human being.
1:06:57SPEAKER- Is that the archeological race one?
1:06:58SPEAKER- Yes, yes, that there literally was a progenitor race
1:07:01SPEAKERthat seeded every planet with life
1:07:03SPEAKERwith their own genetic material.
1:07:05SPEAKER- So as somebody who read a lot of books
1:07:07SPEAKERbefore that episode aired,
1:07:09SPEAKERthat was a well-established concept in the novel verse.
1:07:12SPEAKER- Oh, I believe it, I believe it.
1:07:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:14SPEAKER- That's not my favorite episode, but this--
1:07:16SPEAKER- I like it because all the aliens are standing around
1:07:20SPEAKERyelling about shit and then nobody gets the thing
1:07:22SPEAKERthat they want, but there is a bad episode agreed.
1:07:25SPEAKER- Nobody learns the lesson that their progenitors
1:07:26SPEAKERwanted them to learn.
1:07:28SPEAKER- Yeah. - Anyway.
1:07:29SPEAKER- Well, I think Picard does.
1:07:31SPEAKER- Yes, sure.
1:07:32SPEAKER- Picard is the most smug in that episode.
1:07:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's probably true.
1:07:36SPEAKERAnyway, the first contact is really interesting
1:07:39SPEAKERexamination of like the politics of the society
1:07:41SPEAKERas they are on the verge of this momentous discovery.
1:07:45SPEAKERAnd what happens when people who are too afraid
1:07:49SPEAKERof rapid societal change start to assert themselves,
1:07:52SPEAKERyou know what I mean?
1:07:53SPEAKERLike Riker's problems are almost incidental
1:07:56SPEAKERto the actual thematic core of the episode,
1:07:58SPEAKERwhich is that like they actually,
1:08:02SPEAKERthe episode ends with the society deciding
1:08:04SPEAKERto suppress faster than light technology
1:08:06SPEAKERbecause they are-- - 'Cause they're not ready yet?
1:08:08SPEAKER- I'm sorry, it's not that, it's that they become aware
1:08:11SPEAKERof the wider, like what's going on in the wider galaxies
1:08:17SPEAKERthat, oh my God, there are thousands of alien species
1:08:19SPEAKERzipping around our planet all the time
1:08:21SPEAKERand we didn't know it.
1:08:24SPEAKERThey decided to suppress that information
1:08:25SPEAKERbecause the whole standard procedure
1:08:27SPEAKERwhen a species discovers warp drive
1:08:31SPEAKERis that the Federation reveals themselves to them, right?
1:08:33SPEAKERSays like, hey, we exist, like we acknowledge
1:08:36SPEAKERthat you are going to now be mixing it up with us
1:08:38SPEAKER'cause you're gonna be flying around out here
1:08:39SPEAKERand we're going to like let you know of all this
1:08:43SPEAKERand let you decide if you wanna join up with us
1:08:45SPEAKERor what's gonna happen here.
1:08:48SPEAKERBut yes, let's say the, I guess more reactionary factions
1:08:53SPEAKERof the society went out in the end
1:08:55SPEAKERand they decide to suppress all information about this
1:08:57SPEAKERbecause they think their society can't handle it yet.
1:09:01SPEAKER- I mean, I think that reads given how they reacted
1:09:04SPEAKERto finding out about Riker.
1:09:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's fair.
1:09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it's funny.
1:09:11SPEAKERWell, so this is the thing that I like
1:09:12SPEAKERabout that Lower Decks show on Paramount
1:09:15SPEAKERis that they're on a ship that specializes
1:09:18SPEAKERin second contact, which sounds really stupid,
1:09:22SPEAKERbut it's like doing the block and tackle problem solving
1:09:29SPEAKERof like how do we integrate you in the Federation?
1:09:31SPEAKERLike who's gonna be your ambassador?
1:09:34SPEAKERWhat kind of weird traditions do you have
1:09:35SPEAKERthat we didn't find out about during first contact?
1:09:37SPEAKER- Right, like all the highfalutin,
1:09:40SPEAKERall of the highfalutin historic glad-handing
1:09:43SPEAKERhappened already, the ceremonies are done,
1:09:45SPEAKERand now we're here to actually implement the changes.
1:09:48SPEAKER- Yeah, the papers sign, here's the actual work
1:09:51SPEAKERthat has to happen now.
1:09:53SPEAKER- Also really interesting guest appearance
1:09:56SPEAKERby Bebe Neuwirth in first contact.
1:09:59SPEAKER- Really?
1:09:59SPEAKEROh, I missed, I forgot that.
1:10:00SPEAKER- Yes, you should go watch this episode
1:10:02SPEAKERif you don't remember it.
1:10:04SPEAKER- It's pretty early, right?
1:10:05SPEAKER- Oh, I think it's mid.
1:10:06SPEAKER- It's like post-period.
1:10:08SPEAKER- Oh, definitely, yeah, I think it's mid-period.
1:10:12SPEAKER- Okay.
1:10:14SPEAKER- Yes, it is season four.
1:10:17SPEAKER- Oh yeah, okay, so I would have watched that
1:10:19SPEAKERway along, like middle of last year probably, so.
1:10:22SPEAKER- It's a good sleeper.
1:10:23SPEAKER- I'll definitely go back and track it down again.
1:10:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:27SPEAKER- Well, Brad, this has been really fun.
1:10:28SPEAKER- What a great show.
1:10:30SPEAKER- It's a walk down memory lane.
1:10:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:32SPEAKER- It's shocking to me watching some of the,
1:10:35SPEAKEReven the later seasons, stuff that I hadn't seen before,
1:10:36SPEAKERhow it still feels pretty relevant.
1:10:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:41SPEAKER- And it looks surprisingly good
1:10:43SPEAKERin the remastered version especially.
1:10:45SPEAKER- I think it holds up quite well.
1:10:48SPEAKER- I was, I started out on this process
1:10:50SPEAKER'cause I was like, do I wanna watch this with my kid?
1:10:52SPEAKERThis seems like a fun thing to watch with my kid.
1:10:53SPEAKERMaybe she'll be into it, maybe she'll like Star Trek
1:10:54SPEAKERif we do this, and I think I'm gonna start,
1:10:56SPEAKERI think I'm a little afraid 'cause it's pretty horny.
1:11:00SPEAKER- Mm, yeah, I guess that's, hey.
1:11:03SPEAKERAlso, just to let your kid find their way
1:11:05SPEAKERto the things you like naturally, maybe.
1:11:07SPEAKERI don't know.
1:11:08SPEAKER- I mean, look, we don't force.
1:11:09SPEAKER- She's into it, she's into it.
1:11:10SPEAKER- We just watch a couple episodes, and if we like it.
1:11:11SPEAKERLike with The Simpsons, we started,
1:11:13SPEAKERwell, we watched like two episodes of The Simpsons,
1:11:15SPEAKERshe was like, this is amazing, I wanna watch Simpsons.
1:11:17SPEAKERAnd now we're on, we've watched a lot of Simpsons.
1:11:21SPEAKERBut we have also reached the part of the show
1:11:24SPEAKERwhere we thank our patrons.
1:11:25SPEAKER- Yes, thank you, patrons.
1:11:27SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.
1:11:29SPEAKERIf you would like to join the TechPod community
1:11:31SPEAKERand help support the 100% listener-supported
1:11:35SPEAKERBrad and Wilma to TechPod,
1:11:37SPEAKERyou can by going to patreon.com/techpod
1:11:40SPEAKERwhere you will get access to the fabulous TechPod Discord,
1:11:42SPEAKERwhich is full of wonderful nerds that are talking.
1:11:44SPEAKERI'm sure, I hope, that people are gonna post
1:11:47SPEAKERtheir favorite episodes in this week's episode thread
1:11:50SPEAKERthis week.
1:11:51SPEAKER- Yes, they can stop talking about my hair
1:11:52SPEAKERand start talking about Star Trek.
1:11:54SPEAKER- I mean, your hair is a noteworthy topic, I think.
1:11:56SPEAKER- Oh, boy.
1:11:57SPEAKERI made a mistake.
1:12:00SPEAKER- I'm just glad that they've stopped looking
1:12:02SPEAKERfor old pictures of me and Maximum PC at this point.
1:12:04SPEAKER- Okay, so I took the bullet for you,
1:12:07SPEAKERmoved the conversation along.
1:12:09SPEAKERI posted a photo I should not have.
1:12:10SPEAKERI mean, it's fine, it's just a dumb hair photo.
1:12:13SPEAKER- It's a good, look, you have a lot of hair,
1:12:15SPEAKERyou should be proud of it.
1:12:16SPEAKERIt's a righteous mane and it gives you your powers.
1:12:19SPEAKER- You know what, I feel trapped by it.
1:12:21SPEAKERI feel like there's so much sunk cost now
1:12:25SPEAKERthat I don't know what to do.
1:12:26SPEAKERLike, I can't just cut it off, can I?
1:12:27SPEAKERIt's been so long, it took so long to grow it.
1:12:31SPEAKER- When mine got cut off, I felt immediately
1:12:32SPEAKERlike there was a weight lifted.
1:12:35SPEAKER- Literally, I'm sure.
1:12:35SPEAKER- Think about, the fun thing watching Star Trek again
1:12:38SPEAKERis I was now thinking that maybe the next haircut
1:12:41SPEAKERthat I should take from Star Trek is just Picard's
1:12:42SPEAKERand just keep the sides, shave the top
1:12:45SPEAKERbecause it's less up there every year, so.
1:12:48SPEAKER- You'll have to practice your British accent, though.
1:12:50SPEAKERYou gotta, you need to show the authority.
1:12:53SPEAKER- That's true.
1:12:54SPEAKERThe funny thing was, one of the funny things I noticed
1:12:56SPEAKERis that Patrick Stewart played Prospero a few years ago
1:13:01SPEAKERand there's an episode where he's like giving data notes
1:13:04SPEAKERabout playing Prospero in a play, which is--
1:13:07SPEAKER- Patrick Stewart's classical training as an actor
1:13:10SPEAKERbled into that show constantly.
1:13:12SPEAKER- It's a very, like, for such a doofy
1:13:17SPEAKERscience fiction, 90s science fiction show,
1:13:23SPEAKERit surprised me how well it continued to land.
1:13:25SPEAKERAnyway, we're thanking patrons.
1:13:28SPEAKERIf you would like to join the show,
1:13:29SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod
1:13:31SPEAKERand for as little as two bucks a month,
1:13:33SPEAKERget access to the fabulous TechPod Discord.
1:13:36SPEAKERAs always, we're going to this week
1:13:38SPEAKERthank our executive producer patrons,
1:13:41SPEAKERincluding Chris DiBona, Andrew Slosky,
1:13:43SPEAKERhashtag Bunny Crimes, sorry, Octothorpe Bunny Crimes,
1:13:47SPEAKERJacob Chappell, Joel Krauska, Very Fungible Twinkie,
1:13:51SPEAKERI don't know about this, David Allen and James Kamik,
1:13:53SPEAKERthank you all so, so much, we really appreciate it
1:13:55SPEAKERand appreciate everybody who supports the show.
1:13:58SPEAKERThe TechPod Discord continues to make my life
1:14:01SPEAKERa better place, so I'm stoked that everybody else
1:14:04SPEAKERseems to enjoy it as well.
1:14:05SPEAKER- Same on all counts.
1:14:07SPEAKER- I guess that's it for us this week, Brad.
1:14:08SPEAKER- It is, apologies to any, or for any like weird
1:14:11SPEAKERproduction stuff around this.
1:14:13SPEAKERLot going on here, I'm on a new MacBook,
1:14:15SPEAKERI'm mobile recording set up, let's say,
1:14:18SPEAKERI'm in a different place trying to make this podcast
1:14:21SPEAKERcontinue to go, so.
1:14:22SPEAKER- I should have just given you my Zoom recorder
1:14:25SPEAKERand you could have plugged in your,
1:14:26SPEAKERtaken your XLR mic, I didn't even think about that.
1:14:29SPEAKER- Oh, that's a pretty good idea.
1:14:30SPEAKER- Next time, yeah, anyway.
1:14:32SPEAKER- That microphone is too new and too afraid to travel with,
1:14:34SPEAKERI'm still baby.
1:14:35SPEAKER- You need a little Pelican, you need a foam case.
1:14:37SPEAKER- It actually, it comes, I mean, for price it better,
1:14:40SPEAKERit comes with a nice hard travel case, I just,
1:14:42SPEAKER- Oh, ooh.
1:14:43SPEAKER- I'm just not ready yet.
1:14:45SPEAKER- Okay, okay, fair.
1:14:47SPEAKERThat'll do it for us this week.
1:14:48SPEAKERThere's a new FOSS Pod on Thursday
1:14:50SPEAKERand another episode of the Tech Pod next week.
1:14:52SPEAKERWe will see you all, oh, you can find the FOSS Pod
1:14:54SPEAKERat fosspod.content.com, F-O-S-S.
1:14:57SPEAKERWe will see you all next week.