Fleet of Dorks (S2E11)

In a total first for me and Adam, we're going to STLV this year and we're doing a booth. We talked to the folks at Creation Entertainment and we said, hey, why don't we do a little trade? We'll talk about how great the con is every year.

And you guys let us have a booth in the merch hall. So Adam and I are going to be there. The entire cast of Star Trek Voyager is going to be there. Plus well over a hundred special guests, including us. Come meet us. Take pictures, get some autographs, get some special edition merch from us that won't be available at podshop.biz. And if you stay through Monday, you can hang out at the Pranica Kavanica. STLV is coming up beginning of August.

Go right now to creationent.com. That's creationent.com for tickets and information. And if Vegas is too far, hit up the amazing conventions they're running in Orlando at the end of August, New Jersey, September 6th and 7th, and Chicago, November 22nd and 23rd. And just for friends of DeSoto, they've made a promo code. Use the code. greatest for 20% off admission passes for Orlando, New Jersey, and Chicago. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet.

Welcome to The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Adam Pranica. I'm your other host, Ben Harrison. You know, Adam, it's been a long time. It has been almost a month since we've recorded this show. Luckily, that has been an amount of time imperceptible to our fair viewer.

Yeah, everybody that's watching this podcast right now believes that they've had a totally unbroken podcast listening experience. because we recorded like eight episodes out ahead of where we were. And fortunately, Adam, not much has happened since you were gone. Yeah. No significant changes for our show. If anything happened, I wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. I was off the internet a fair amount. Yeah, you were way in the land of Spain. I was. I was. I was eating a ton of ham.

One pretty ridiculous thing we did before you left, though, was record a little opener on the idea that we may be going on the MaxFun Network. And I was very glad that we did record that because we did, in fact, go on the MaxFun Network while you were away in Spain. And so I would just love to say welcome to all of our new listeners. And if you were...

an existing listener who was interested in supporting our show, there is now a way to do that. We've definitely gotten a few emails about, you know, whether we have a Patreon or somewhere. people could go to help us make this show. And we didn't really have a great answer before now. Yeah, we've turned down a lot of money that our listeners have wanted to give us. Yeah, we have left dough on the table.

Yeah. But if you're a listener and you like the show enough to say, like, I want to put five or ten bucks a month toward making this a continuing... thing that's something we'd really appreciate if you go to maximumfund.org slash donate it's uh it's real easy to do yeah i think One of the cool things about the network is they make it really easy for people to support the shows that they like. Leave a couple of scarves on the 10 forward bar for your Guinans. Yeah, I mean...

Lord knows I'm going to need money for a divorce attorney. So I'd really appreciate whatever help you could give me. Yeah. Up until CBS starts paying us to write the new Star Trek show.

There's a Twitter account. I don't know if it's a real one or not, but it's the Star Trek writer's room for the upcoming show. What? Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea. I wish I did that. I found it and then didn't actually remember to follow it. Do you know the handle? I think it might be just Star Trek Writer's Room. I don't know. Is it real? That is a question that was in my mind when I looked at it. It seemed real-ish. It definitely wasn't a joke account.

Oh, it's got a blue check. Oh, nice. The official Twitter account for the writer's room of the new Star Trek series. What the hell? We've got to hammer this Twitter page with Greatest Gen shit. Yeah, the two ways that you can support our show are MaximumFun.org slash donate and the Star Trek Writer's Room Twitter account.

Wow. Yeah, it's at Star Trek Room if you're on Twitter. Good Lord, are they in trouble now. I thought Star Trek Room was just the name of the special place behind the bookcase in my apartment. Yeah, it's the guest bedroom closet where I go to record this show. We've got...

On the show today, Season 2, Episode 11, Contagion. It's the episode that's basically one big call to the IT help desk. Yeah, before that was a cliche, too. So this episode starts. Gwyneth Paltrow is coming back from a business trip to China, and she dies of a mysterious illness, which is very upsetting.

heading to her husband, Matt Damon. Unfortunately, she did die. Right. Can I go talk to her? Mr. Amoff, your wife is dead. I've seen that movie. Why are you laughing? Did I watch the same episode as you? Oh, man. I think you might have watched a much better episode than I did, if that's the case. The Enterprise is...

Powering into the neutral zone, which is always a tense situation because the Yamato, the sister ship of the Enterprise, which we previously saw... as an imagined thing in that crazy alien's rat trap. Inside Nigellum's butthole. Yeah, Nigellum's hole. Deep in that hole. Yeah. Yamato was all up in that hole. Oh, yeah, all the way in it. The Yamato's having some computer problems, all kinds of malfunctions all over the ship, and Picard is on the FaceTime.

with the motto is Captain. It's good to see you again, Jean-Luc. He's like, yeah, maybe these galaxy-class ships are just not... you know, they're not ready for prime time there. They might, this might be like the beta version of the software and we needed to like, keep it in beta a little longer before we ironed out all the kinks it's kind of a weird idea like we have been told from the beginning that this galaxy class ship is the best ship that you can get it's

The Cadillac of starships. Yeah. Oh, the doors close so nice. Yeah. I mean, the idea that this thing could... Like, you turn the key and it drives you through the garage. Like, that idea is kind of a foreign concept. Yeah. And I mean, like, there's all these... references to that all through this episode like I think at one point Geordi says that a galaxy class starship is the most sophisticated piece of machinery ever built which is like a real arrogant

Piece of bullshit for somebody to say, given that they're on a ship that routinely comes in contact with species that appears to be capable of overpowering it. Yeah, how weird. I'm not sure who signed off on that bit of dialogue. So the Yamato is looking pretty creepy out there. It's like the house on your street with the lights blinking on and off.

For no reason. It's sort of got a haunted house vibe over there. What adds to the vibe is the FaceTime is all screwy. There's some real VHS shadowing going on. Donald, your transmission is breaking up.

Mr. Data, try and clean that up. And the bridge of the Amato is clearly on the same design as... the enterprise but it is just a mess of circuit boards like there's there's circuit boards coming out every everywhere and it's unclear if that's just like how they set the bridge up or if those are like circuit boards that they had to like haul out of the consoles and, and work on because they're in, they're in dire straits.

Yeah, and Yamato's captain gets on the blower and he's like, yeah, the whole reason I'm in the neutral zone is because we're digging up these cool artifacts on this planet. Artifacts that... could be extremely powerful and we can't let them fall into the wrong hands the romulans could use these for evil and that's the whole reason i'm out here and picard's a little bit miffed about this yeah What are the chances that Picard's counterpart on his sister ship is also a total archaeology dork?

It's a fleet of dorks is what it is. Yeah, just a bunch of nerds with starship commands. Yeah, the test to become a galaxy-class starship captain is a... Forensic memory of the Indiana Jones saga, a big stupid hat, and an interest in archaeology. Of course. Varley and Picard seem to be approximately the same age. Do you think they went to the Academy together? They know each other. purport to have a familiarity, but they don't really go into it at all.

I think that's because everyone that Picard says he knows on the show ends up dying. Have you noticed that? All of his best friends are dead so far. What about that lady that he wanted to hit in the teeth with a ch... chair after oh yeah yeah Yeah, actually, that's a fair case. She survived that chair to the teeth. She was only maimed in the bedroom after the trial.

They're on the FaceTime very briefly with this captain, just long enough to sort of get the plot underway when the Yamato goes critical and just blows up right in front of them. And it's... One of those moments where you're like, I kind of wish we had met this captain and this ship. like for real a couple times like we've seen the ship we've heard about this ship before but it would have been nice to have this captain like be

sort of an established character that we encounter from time to time. Like, and there's, there's plenty of times on the show where they like radio up the captain of another ship. Uh, and. I think that if they had done that, this would have felt incredibly impactful. Like, holy fucking shit, like they just, like a whole ship blew up, you know? But it...

It doesn't. It doesn't really land, at least for me. I don't know. How'd you feel about that? Yeah, I think the way they played it was you can either play it as a tragedy due to relationship, which is, I think, the case that you were making.

Why don't we know a little bit more about Varley so that we feel his death more acutely? But the way the show ended up playing it was about quantity, like thousands of people died in a couple of seconds. And that is the way that the crew interprets the truth. tragedy and processes the tragedy so i i think i'm on your side i would have rather felt the tragedy more like individually I think those hit a little harder than just like a ship getting...

I thought the way that the ship exploded was especially terrifying. Like, it wasn't a total destruction. The star drive totally explodes, but then the saucer kind of dissolves. Yeah, you kind of watch it slowly burn off in space. Yeah, the skin kind of peels off. And it's a little slower than the other section. It was pretty rough. Yeah.

It kind of goes out like Ginger Jesus' chorus. Like, you know how when they were shot with that ray gun, they got reduced down to skeletons? Yeah, you see their musculature, then... your skeleton then your that's what the saucer section looks like it got skinned and then and then it got exploded after that yeah this uh this whole sequence is like okay

it's it's you know mid to late 1989 we got to get our last little 80s shit in so like the explosion effect is super 80s the music cue that they play is super 80s everything about This episode is just like, like these aha music video type characters are not going to play in 1990. So, so we got to get our rocks off now.

Like a like a car alarm going off In a city street, this explosion draws the attention of a Romulan warbird, though, who decloaks right off of their bow. being like, what the hell? I feel like there are warbirds decloaking every single time a car alarm goes off in my neighborhood. That's what you're saying, right? Yeah, that is what I'm saying.

Yeah, and their bridge is super smoky, and they are doing what Romulans be doing, which is kind of being vaguely threatening and antagonistic without ever doing any... overt provocation. Have you ever used that spray on any of your productions? The fogger? Uh, you know, it's one thing that like, I was like vaguely aware of in film school and then forgot about for like 10 years. And now like I see it in everything.

Yeah. Anytime there's any atmosphere in a shot. It's really hard to do right, I think. I agree. I mean, especially in the late 80s. But they make cans of it, so you don't necessarily have to rent the machine and fog shit up. You can just sort of spray it tastefully into the air. I DP'd a music video for another student when I was in...

on my study abroad in Ireland and we went into like a forest outside of Dublin and you only do rap videos. So was this an Irish rap video? It wasn't. It was like a, uh, it was a, it was like a, a singer songwriter. But it was a Little Red Riding Hood scenario. Uh-huh. And it was pretty fun to use the industrial-sized smoke machine in a...

peaceful Irish forest because it really made it look crazy. I bet it occasionally draws the wrong kind of attention too. Yeah, Romulans were decloaking everywhere. So here's what's going on. The Iconians, the ancient race that Captain Varley was trying to find the technology of, were... You know, some super powerful race that are, you know, vaguely mythic in the same way that a lot of these ancient civilizations that come up in this show are.

And Varley thinks that if the Romulans find the Iconian homeworld, they will find technology that is... is going to be like way past what the Federation can repel and it will embolden them to make inroads into Federation territory. So, you know, the captain's logs that he leaves behind are... are enough to convince Picard that this is actually worth running down. Should this advanced technology fall into the hands of the Romulan, we might as well dock our ships and defend ourselves with sticks.

Before they can start running it down, Wesley, exposition crusher, comes into his ready room. He totally missed your DNA's Picard in this scene. Yeah. There is no other reason for this scene to happen than to educate the viewer on who the Iconians were and why this story is important.

Right, because they haven't really addressed it up till now, and it's just like... I guess we just need to toss the boy in here, and we'll excuse it with him bumming out a little bit about the thousand people that lost their lives and the ship blowing up, but really it's... so that we can establish that he now has a silver communicator badge and that Captain Picard likes T. Earl Grey hot. Because this is also the first scene, I believe, where Picard orders his signature...

Ready room beverage. Do you think that Wesley's... silver communicator badge, which by the way is the only silver communicator badge there is on the show. Like it's a one-off. I'm pretty sure this is the first time we see it too. Do you think it just goes to Picard? It's like the red phone in the Kremlin that goes to the Oval Office. All it does is it texts Picard with, you up? And then... And then a couple of eggplant emojis. Yeah. Eggplant and squirt emojis.

But Picard's tea comes out not as tea, but as a crazy-looking plant. Didn't you order tea, sir? Now that should not have happened. This isn't like the first... The first... thing that's happened but there have been a couple of uh little indicators that all is not right with the way the enterprise is operating the ship's starting to get buggy yeah and so

Like doors aren't opening up when people are trying to walk through them. Lights are flickering. You got little failures all over the ship. They tell this Romulan ship, look. I know you don't want us here, but we're going to stick around so we can complete this investigation. Don't count on us just leaving because you want us to. We're going to chase this mystery down and we're going to leave when we're done.

fuck you guys, we're going to set a course to the last planet the Yamato went to, and they go ahead and do that. Right, and they've uncovered some footage of the previous episode that the Yamato was in, in which a... A probe comes up off of the planet's surface and scans them, and they kind of figure out that this is the triggering event for all of the...

All the failures that befell the Yamato ship. And they start to sort of link the fact that the Yamato dumped their ship log to the Enterprise to why they're having these. these little malfunctions of their own. And I think at one point Jordy says like, it's, it's going to happen slowly on the enterprise because the alien program, that's the culprit. got loaded into just the ship log area. But when the probe scanned the Amato, it affected everything all at once. And so...

The Amado was doomed much more quickly than the Enterprise. Yeah, and Geordi realizes this as the Enterprise is coming into orbit of...

Of the Iconian planet. So the Iconian planet, like, launches one of these probes. Captain. Projectile launch from the planet's surface. And Picard's like, hey, uh, hey, Geordi, check it out. I'm going to assist you in your research. We're going to get one of these probes. We're going to capture it for you so you can study it. And at that exact moment, Geordi is like, holy shit. No, sir, wait! Like, this is...

the key to the whole thing if this probe starts scanning us we're fucked but his communicator doesn't work captain captain and he uh he can't get a message out to picard so he's got to run on foot Up to the bridge. Yeah, and he runs, he tries one door, it's... It's blocked, so he goes to another, gets on the turbo lift, and he has what I will call Geordi's wild ride, much in the style of Mr. Toad's.

He's like being jerked around left, right, up and down. And at one point, like the turbo lift is plummeting. So he like... flies up to the ceiling and is like being pressed by the acceleration into the ceiling and eventually gets to the bridge where the doors open and he literally like flies out. It's like it spits him out.

Yeah, he gets pretty fucked up. I mean, unlike Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which is like an allegory about drinking and driving, I'm not sure what the message is here to Geordi's Wild Ride, but... It was pretty violent. Yeah. It fucked him up bad. So he gets to the bridge and he's like, shoot that thing. Shoot it now. And to Picard's credit, he doesn't interrogate this. He trusts that Geordi...

ran up to the bridge for a reason. His chief engineer has been vomited onto the bridge. It's a little out of the ordinary. Yeah, so Worf... Worf zaps that thang, and Geordi explains that this probe would have meant their certain destruction if they'd let it scan them.

This is the part in the episode where I started to think, why don't you just delete the logs? Like, they know now at this point that the logs are the problem. Why don't they delete them? I don't understand. I'm sure that everybody that's downloaded the Mission Log podcast feels the same way, Adam. Oh, geez. Boy, our rap feud with Mission Log is really like the coldest of Cold Wars.

We got a message from someone on Twitter that said that they started listening to Mission Log because of our show. Is there anything more insulting than that? That is one of the most incredibly insulting things I've ever heard. I'd rather be slapped in the face. Yeah. I'd rather have somebody drop a mission log on my chest. The dirty data.

But anyways, they decide to beam down to the, like, one part of the planet that still has an energy signature. And the technology that the Iconians had that... everybody's so freaked out about turns it turns out to be a way to like walk through a door into another place in the galaxy data quickly reverse engineers the iconian language based on a few languages that have similar glyphs in their writing and is able to understand the computer system pretty quickly. And so Picard, Worf, and Data.

are down on the surface and they open one of these Iconian transport doors. And that, you know, it's genuinely like a pretty freaky idea. Like if the Romulans had this, they could just walk into like the Federation Senate with. soldiers and waste everybody without you know and you know the federation would have no way to stop such an attack or i mean they wouldn't even have to go with any people they could just roll a bomb through the door and then that'd be it

That is true. It'd be a great way to deploy weapons. Yeah. Maybe they'd roll one of those make everybody into a dust person bombs that they had in Star Trek Nemesis, the feature film. Fucking Data walks right up to the doorway and just sticks his arm into it. Yeah, and Picard is like, Data, what the fuck are you thinking? That is such a dumb idea.

It's like a guy dropping his wedding ring into the sink disposal. Yeah, and reaching in after it while it's running. Yeah, exactly. What is he thinking? Data's such an idiot sometimes. Yeah. For being the smartest person on the ship, he sure is an idiot. Yeah. This is like at a high school party with my best friend who's a very, very smart guy. This kid.

I can't remember what he did. He spilled something on the floor, and this kid goes, Michael, you're the dumbest smart guy I've ever met. That is a terrible compliment. It would have been fun, right, if the scene had changed on the other side of the door and Data's arm had just been severed at the elbow? Do you think they, I mean...

They went to that planet and they had a whole lot of data parts there. Data and lore parts. Spare data parts. Do you think they had spares from that mission? And do you think that's why Data felt like one of his arms was expendable? I mean, Riker took... One of Data's arms off in court. Do you think that Data wanted to destroy his arm after what Lavoie did to it? She went and put it on the judge's chair and sat on it for half of that.

trial data has never felt clean since i can't do these scans all the fingers want to do is a come hither motion This is the worst show we've ever done. It's a rocky start to getting back on the horse. It's like riding a bike covered in dick jokes. One of the most fantastical things in Star Trek is the way you can step to a computer and be like, run an analysis of all of the species in the database and cross-reference with this language or whatever.

And the computer can just kind of do your work for you. I mean, it's amazing and aspirational. Certainly something I would like to be able to do with my podcast, for example. Respond to things Adam says and make jokes. and just have my computer take over from there. But we're not there yet, no matter what anyone says. But if you need to build a website,

We are very close because Squarespace exists. And when you go to Squarespace, you can build a beautiful website without any prior web design knowledge. It is bumper bowling for making a great website that presents you. and your business in the most professional way possible. Head to squarespace.com slash scarves for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code scarves to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Check your bonus feed, kids, because there's another episode of our hit podcast, the Santa Monica Mountains, doing a cannonball right into your area of the pool. In this episode, we've got a couple of kids who are up to no good. You just know that means they're going to get trapped in a drainage ditch or something. This episode has everything. Five pounds of bacon, bad dads, and a porn store. So get yourself into the bonus feed to get this and every other monthly episode that we do.

If you're not a supporter yet, why don't you get in there? The water's fine. MaximumFun.org slash join is how you do that and support at any level. helps the show happen. Once again, that's a new episode of the Santa Monica Mountains hitting your bonus feed. Hello, this is Alex. Hello, this is Katie. We host Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and this week we released our 250th episode. 250th episode!

Every episode stands on its own. And every episode is about a seemingly ordinary topic. We reveal the history and the science of stuff like salt and clouds and your computer mouse. And episode two. 250 is about the word hello. Hello. You know that word. You're ready to go. So let us say hello to you. Find Secretly Incredibly Fascinating at MaximumFun.org. Hi, is this Brandon?

This is Brennan. This is Ben Harrison. I'm the host of The Greatest Generation and Greatest Trek, along with my buddy Adam on Maximum Fun. I am calling because you, Brennan, have been named Maximum Fun's Member of the Month. Oh my God, I'm so honored to be the MaxFun member of the month. As member of the month, you'll be getting a gift card to the MaxFun store.

a special member of the month bumper sticker, and a special priority parking spot at the MaxFun headquarters in Los Angeles, California, just for you. That's a perk that I don't even get as a host of shows on the network. this all sounds fantastic i'm gonna have to figure out a way to use that parking spot Brennan, you have to do it just to rub it in my face alone. Have a great day and live long and prosper. I don't know how to do this. That works. I will do my best to live long and prosper.

Become a MaxFun member now at MaximumFun.org slash join.

They keep poking around in this computer and eventually data gets zapped and it is the alien program going into data. And that's bad news bears. Data is blind and like... physically incapacitated and so picard says wharf pick up data the the door that is like rotating from place to place it's like parthenon crazy desert crazy ocean And then occasionally it's showing the bridge of the enterprise. And so...

every four minutes they have an opportunity to go to the bridge of their ship. And so Worf walks through this door with data and data is basically declared DOA. Like, like they, they lie him down in engineering and it's like, Sorry, nothing Jordy can do to right this wrong. We had an expert, a matic, somebody. They really dumb-viewered that moment, too, because for some reason there's like an EKG sound that goes flatline. Yeah. What the hell is that? What exactly is flatlining with him?

It's the only way I can get off anymore, you know? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, and they do the whole... Like Geordi closes the dead guy's eyes? Yeah, yeah. Has anybody ever done that in real life where they drag their hand across somebody's face to close their eyes? I don't know. I feel like I would just go with like two fingers and grab each eyelid and move them down.

I feel like I would grab each eyelid and then flip them inside out like kids used to do in elementary school. Yeah, and then I would grab the tongue and make it into a taco. Pretty fucked up, huh? I think you want to keep it light in that moment. I'm pretty sure this is how Data would want us to remember him. Yeah.

But before Data was completely shut down, he explained that Picard could launch more probes but keep the probe doors closed so that the probe launch systems would nuke the site that this... Iconian transporter is at, thereby denying the Romulans any ability to learn from this technology.

Once Worf and Data are through, Picard sets this process in motion and barely escapes by stepping through the door. And where does he end up? With the bridge of the Romulan ship. He's pretty quickly like, there's like a bunch of Romulans that are like, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. And come and surround him with their phasers. Even by 80s shoulder pad measure, like... They're pretty shoulder padded out. Yeah. On their uniforms. I wonder when 1990 rolled around in the...

And the Romulans became a more regular part of the show if they didn't regret what an 80s-ass design they went with with the Romulan military uniform. Yeah, even Patrick Bateman's like, cool it with those shoulder pads, man. Yeah. Yeah, they're not happy to see Picard on their ship. You know, at first they're unhappy to have him there, but once they realize that they won't be able to turn off the self-destruct sequence that their ship has...

has turned on. I mean, because by this point, the Romulan ship is full-on infected with this virus. Yeah, and the only way we can, like... figure that they got the virus is by tapping into the communications between the Yamato and the Enterprise, which is a pretty scary thing to think of, right? Like, I mean, that's like... Like, how the Allies won the war against the Nazis was, like, knowing how to decode Nazi transmissions. And, like, if the Romulans are able to just...

Like freely read the transmissions between the Yamato and the Enterprise, the flagship and sister ship of the Federation. Like Federation has big fish to fry. Yeah, I'm sure they're looking at all those emails in some sort of graph presentation. What is the first officer doing sending so many emails with attachments? Yeah. Why does he have so many subscriptions to adult websites? Why does he have 14 email addresses?

What's this thing he's selling on eBay called the Riker collection? Riker buns at enterprise.com. What are all the Riker email addresses on the Enterprise? Let's go through a couple. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's going to have CommanderBoy69 for sure. Sure, yeah. First lover at enterprise.com. Live long and pork her at enterprise.com. I don't know. Does the Enterprise have its own domain or is it like...

Is it like enterprise.federation.gov? Yeah, I mean, in any government institution, the email handle is way too long. Yeah, it's just going to be an email gore. Yeah. Riker gets a fix on Picard, and because the Romulan ship is so messed up... I cannot deactivate the auto-destruct. Their shields aren't up, and so they're able to beam Picard right off the Romulan bridge, and he kind of talks shit, too.

the sub commander in charge of this ship as he's being beamed away you will die with us not i think today commander Which I thought was a pretty cool move on Picard's part. Yeah, he kind of double middles his way off the ship. Yeah. Kind of cold-blooded. Yeah. It's like a not-today subcommander. Is that your first real Picard impression? Not-today subcommander, Theo! You have to understand that my crew can beam me off the ship whenever they want, Rudy.

It just cripples me every time. He gets onto the transporter pad and is like, hey, Riker, let's get the fuck out of here. That ship is about to blow. And Riker, to his credit, sends a transmission to the Romulan ship. explaining how they can unfuck their computer core using the same turn it off, then turn it back on again technique that Geordi developed. Yeah, I mean, Picard is supposed to be a great diplomat.

And he seems really satisfied with the idea of letting them die over there. Well, he didn't know. He didn't know that Geordi solved all the problems while he was gone. I don't know. I just felt like he was super comfortable with the idea of that ship exploding. It kind of resolves a lot of problems for him. Yeah. Well, he's also a man that's not afraid of a challenge. I mean, they've read his emails. They've read his emails with Wes. I think he's probably really okay with them dying. Yeah.

Think about the smear campaign that you could get going if you had an agent in the Romulan Empire feeding you information from this wiretap. Oh, God. This is the era of data journalism. The data dump from the Enterprise computer bank would be a real fucking full-blown scandal. It'd be a nightmare for a lot of people. This would be the Pentagon Papers of the 24th century.

Clearly. And that's the end of the show. Yeah. How'd you like it? I don't know. My memory of it was better than the rewatch, certainly. Well, let's give people some context for your negative review here, Adam. You're fresh off of some Spanish oyster-derived food poisoning. Head cold. You're jet lagged. You're not your best self right now. I mean, usually on this show, you can count on me to be bright eyed and positive. Yeah.

Just the real sunshine of this show. The real raisin bran sun of the greatest generation with two scoops of love on every episode. Yeah, so I guess that is a little out of character. I thought it was an okay episode. I mean, definitely not like the best we've watched by a long shot, but I don't know. Anytime you can destroy a galaxy-class ship on an episode, I'm down. Yeah, let's see.

Let's see him blow up at least once a season, you know? Yeah, I'm into that. That one movie that's terrible is still pretty good because you get to see the Enterprise crash land on the surface of a planet. Yeah. What is that, Generations that that happens in? It is Generations. Yeah. Boy, that movie sucks. You're not wrong. That movie does suck. We're probably going to have to watch it one day for this podcast, Adam.

So brace yourself. I could get it up for that. As you were watching, did you come across a drunk Shimoda? Incredible. Drunk. Drunk Shimoda! Yeah, I have very little to stand on with this drunk Shimoda, but there's a scene as they're sort of... getting used to the fact that the enterprise is falling apart all over the place where Geordi is on some computer console and engineering and gets, gets a electric shock and data is just standing next to him and like grabs his shoulder and like,

tosses him off of the console, disconnecting the electric shock from Geordi and saving his life. And just... Just Brent Spiner's performance doing that. He's like, oh, oh. Yeah, like a man who doesn't know his own strength. He doesn't make any sounds, but yeah, like you see him in the background like, whoa, what have I done? And... It just really like made me laugh. And I got as good a laugh out of that as I ever got out of assistant chief engineer, Jim Shimoda. So that's my drunk Shimoda data.

What a weird part of the episode to play for humor. Like shit has gone real dark and they do not have a solution to this problem. People are talking about... like resigning themselves to the idea that they're going to lose the ship. Like, and this weird, like, one-minute comedy bit happens. Yeah. It's in that same part of engineering that Jim Shimoda was in, which is, like, I feel like we've had drunk Shimodas take place there, like...

Four or five times now. It's sort of haunted by his memory. It's Jim Shimoda Corner. R.I.P. Yeah. To me... Data sticking his arm through that gateway was like the ultimate drunk guy at a party telling everyone that he can jump off the deck. Hey guys, look at this. Yeah. I'm going to live forever. Yeah. Well, so Data got it twice. That's great. Yeah, twice for two different scenes. Good job, Data.

I thought Worf played up like the color of that electric shock that got Geordi looked very similar to the one that got Worf in that early season one episode. Worf at least had the presence of mind to scream to let everybody know that he was being hurt. Yeah, Geordi just sort of flopped around. Come on, Geordi. Get it together. Gotta do better than that. What do we have coming up next time? The next episode is a pretty notorious episode, Adam.

The Royale, episode 12 of season 2. Investigating the discovery of a piece of metal bearing a United States Air Force insignia. The away team finds itself trapped in the world of the Hotel Royale, a novel come to life. I don't know who writes these... these captions, but I'm pretty sure it was a NASA insignia, not an Air Force insignia. Do you remember this app, Adam?

This feels like one of those dress-up episodes that I hate. I have a real soft spot in my heart for this episode. I remember it very well, and I like it. I'm fingering my veto right now. Are you really? Yeah. I mean, so we are recording this before we know the outcome of our veto poll, but I suppose you could veto. It would...

push off any action on that poll until next season, which would be an interesting choice. I love how we appeal to our listeners. And then the idea that I would just be like, oh, fuck them. All right. No, I'm not going to veto this episode. Let's watch it. Okay. Well, I will see you there, and I will see you then, Adam. I'm looking forward to that one. Yeah, I'm not. If you have any thoughts or...

comments about this or any other episode we've talked about, you can find us on Twitter at hashtag greatest gen. I am there at cut for time and Ben is there at Benjamin AHR. And we also have a Facebook group now. Yeah. Awesome. Austin Harper, friend of the program, started a Facebook group for us at facebook.com slash group slash greatest generation. And there's been a fair amount of chatter.

Over there about the show. You know where else there's been some chatter is on the Maximum Fun subreddit, which people have been kind enough to post whenever we have a new episode. And if people want to... Talk about the episodes there. There's always a place to do it. And we really appreciate everybody who's done that over there. And I am... on Reddit pretty much every day, so I'll definitely be chiming in there from time to time.

See, I was just going to say that Reddit is a great place for weird porn and for talking about podcasts. And Ben's over there all the time. No comment. Thanks to Dark Materia for our music, our opening music and interstitial music. And with that, we'll see you next time on The Greatest Generation. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported.