The Greatest Generation - All Crust, No Loaf (VOY S7E20)

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

When Voyager starts communicating in real time with the A-Quad, Dr. Mark takes the opportunity to deeply offend his colleagues. But when he’s finally convinced to revise his work, an episode within an episode barely has time to make any good law. Which vessel is ideal for champagne consumption? When is it ok to stop trying to hook new viewers? What does “let me know what you think” actually mean? It’s the episode where the alcohol shoe is on the other foot!Support the production of The Greatest GenerationGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Caretaker!The Greatest Generation is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

It's the end. It's over. We just wanted to come in here before the episode that you just downloaded to say thank you so much to the almost 3,500 people who supported in the Max Fun Drive 2024, just an absolutely overwhelming amount of support and we really, really appreciate it. We really needed the greatest gen drive, the greatest Trek drive, the max fun drive, whatever you want to call it. The Andorian words, unpronounceable.

We really needed a big drive this year and fortunately we got one. It means we're going to be able to continue doing the work that we so love doing. I don't know. I'm just relieved, Ben. It's been a stressful year for both of us. Thanks to everyone who came through and supported our shows during the drive. Yeah, and welcome aboard to all the newbies.

We really, really appreciate you making the leap. But without further ado, here is that episode you downloaded for you to enjoy. Thank you so much. Thanks a ton. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage. Watch your back, son.

Unlook. I'm Captain Captain Jenga, the USS Boyfinger. I'm Captain Captain Jenga, the USS Boyfinger. I'm Captain Captain Jenga. Welcome to the greatest generation. It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys. Just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast, I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pranica.

This is an episode of some special note, Adam, because we rolled something last time. So, Neelix's Galley Square. Just why we're both in tubs of champagne. We spent $6,000 each on champagne. We've completely used up every penny that we earned. Thanks for all your support during the Max Fun Drive. Do you think that would attract more support?

Oh. If it was like for something insane like that versus the day to day business operations that we depend on support for. If instead it was just 20 cases of Corbelle and a tub. People love it in rap videos. Oh yeah. Do we kind of appeal to the same demographic as your average rap video? Not at all. I don't think there's any part of what we do that appeals in that way whatsoever. Did I ever tell you about the time I had an opportunity to pitch music video concepts

at G-Unit? And I was- Ben's gonna talk about directing rap videos. I think it might've been like 50 cents manager or some, somebody kind of like that where I wasn't, I wasn't pitching the artists directly, but like the G unit guys were in the office. Like, it was hilarious.

It was like an open plan office where like office where like the game had a cubicle. Ben walks in to take a meeting and the admin's like, hey, do you want me to get you a coffee? There was an entire room full of, was it vitamin water that 50 Cent had a concern in? Yeah, triple X vitamin water, as I recall. Yeah, so a whole room full, every flavor of vitamin water was one thing that was there. But I went into a conference room with this guy and was like, my idea for 50's next video

is dancing ladies pouring champagne on him. We're going to twist the whole thing, flip the video on its head. But further than that, the concept of the video is it starts and like, I'm off screen miked up and he is on screen and I'm like, no, yeah, so they're going to be pouring the champagne on you during this scene. And he doesn't like that. And so we have a little disagreement about it. It seems to him that we have decided

he is not getting champagne poured on him. And during the video, you see me like whisper to the dancers, go onto the set and pour the champagne. And then the rest of the video is him doing the song in sync with the beat while beating the shit out of me and my crew. So just to recap, your pitch to 50 cents manager or somebody is to Hitchcock his music video. Yeah, I was putting myself in the video, but how far into this pitch did you get before

you were escorted out? Like a couple of words, a couple of sentences? He heard me out, but he was like, I think that's an awesome idea for a video. It's just not really the kind of thing we're doing. Like we're just getting girls and nice cars and mansions and stuff. Like it doesn't like need a concept really. It's the kind of shit that sells itself. Yeah.

Completely without you. What was your kind of shit that sells itself. Yeah. Completely without you. What was your name again? Benjamin Harrisburg. Anyway, thanks. That's a really nice bow tie. Anyways, yeah, thanks for coming down. I love your stories of rap video times.

It was like the best idea for a rap video I ever came up with. And that was the rapper to do it. Just because he was so fucking big. I wanted to really sell that he was hurting me. My professional video production career is far less fun sounding. I just saw a not insignificant amount of my footage used on an episode of Last Week Tonight. Oh, wow. Coming down pretty hard on Giant Aerospace Company, a place I used to do work that I

was proud of. Yikes. Weird time to see your work on TV. No kidding. Well, let's drink away our sorrows. We don't have a choice. It's a champagne episode and I've actually got some proper champagne from Champagne France, not Tlaxi and champagne.

Oh, let's hear about it. What are you drinking, Ben? I mostly bought it because the name was funny to me. It's a bottle I had not heard of before, but it is Champagne de Sluveur Pienne. And I feel like in college, somebody probably told me I had a Sluveur peen. Ha ha ha.

So it felt right, you know? It's penis is a walk crime. Good job by you, Ben. Yeah. Look at that. It's a fancy bottle. It looks nice. It really does look nice.

I like the green label. You get to take a picture, uh, for the gram. Oh yeah. I'll take a picture for the gram. For my part, Ben, I stole a bottle out of my wife's collection. This is a bottle of her mum. Brut reserve rosé. I hope it's not one of her best. Oh.

Methode traditionelle. Yeah. Extended tirage. What is tirage? Does that mean it's aged longer? This Brut Reserve Rosé sparkling wine was further enhanced by a longer period of time left surlise on the yeast, stone fruit, and brioche. Huuuuh! Give me a potato bun, mom!

What is this, a hamburger from 2014? Huuuh! How about that? Yeah, that's what I'm rocking. Also the vessel for consumption. The way it was intended. I've got a tall Stanley insulated cup that I'm hoping preserves its brioche-ness while also keeping it at a chilly temperature.

Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to pop this on mic. This is, this is fun audio. Everyone loves the cork pop. Everybody loves the cork pop. You ready to pop some corks with me? I popped, baby. Oh, you did? I'm popped and poured.

Oh, there we go. Now this is like the scene before a movie where they do the zoom in on the Coca-Cola product. Yeah. And you could just hear how delicious it sounds. The sound is tasty. Too much head. I've never heard of being on yeast for an extended period of time as a good thing.

Okay. I have poured half a bottle of champagne into my insulated Stanley cup. Yeah, you really did pour yourself a hell of a lot of champagne all at once. Cheers to you and cheers to the friends of De Soto out there. Yeah. As we get into Star Trek Voyager Season 7, Episode 20. Author, author. Rebirth Course.

Unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm not turning them out. Hard! It was a dark and stormy night, Adam. How's your champagne? It's good, I'm just looking down at a giant insulated cup of it thinking, why isn't champagne consumed like this most of the time?

It's very pleasant. The burbles are tickly. That would be like an $80 serving of champagne in a restaurant, right? This concept is crazy. Insulated cups are not classy. When people see method traditional on the menu, they want to drink it out of a traditional glass like a champagne flute or a coupe.

A shambong is a piece of glassware, evoking a champagne flute and also a bong, thus making the consumption of champagne faster and harder, getting the drinker drunker in a very short amount of time. I was walking my dog the other day and saw a Glass like a three or four foot tall glass bong that somebody had just put out on the sidewalk because they were getting rid of it You never see a bong in the free pile Do you you never see a bong in a free pile and it was like a pretty nice bong that I feel like I've seen in the window at head shops. Oh yeah.

It was like very intricately designed with like little divots in the glass so that if you put like ice down it, it would like hold it in a certain way and stuff like that. And I have no use for a bong in my life right now. Yeah. What was the last time you smoked out of a bong? I can't even remember. But I was like a teenager in California, so I was like, fuck, I need to like stop and get this.

But I'm like walking a dog and I like, you know, carrying a delicate glass thing sounds like a bit much right now. Why couldn't Dar put it in his mouth? He puts every other grocery item you go and get together in his mouth for the delivery home. Yeah. The thing is he'll do that actually, you know, he might've actually done it because he used to like carry stuff home all the way home. And then we put him on some anxiety meds

and he would like carry stuff a block and drop it. And I always interpreted that as a side effect of a block and drop it. And I always interpreted that as a side effect of, of being on anxiety meds that he was like, all right, I'm done with this. But he's off those meds now. So maybe, maybe he's back to carrying things a long way. Bad things happen when you go off of anxiety meds. Better ramp that down, Ben. I did.

We ramped it down over the course of like a month and a half with like a whole rubric that we got from the vet. This was done under supervision. What we got is a Dr. Mark here wearing a Hugh Hefner robe. Oh, hi, Mark. Yeah. He's like writing at a desk and there's like a nice effect of like holographic Mark forming.

And then he's, he's writing with like a fancy pen in a fancy book like The Hobbit writing The Hobbit. Where to begin? This is a quill pen, is it not? Yeah, I think it is. This cold open had a lot in common with that one where it's just revealed that Seven is playing piano and doesn't have her Borg implants anymore in that it was like, what about this is supposed

to make me want to watch what happens after the title sequence of this episode? Like I know that like that's kind of bullshit and like shouldn't be the creative true north of writing for television. Like most of the time the cold open is there to like get a hook in you so that you'll watch the rest of the episode. But like, if we're in the back half of season seven of

a show that's about to have its series finale, like it's okay to not be trying to hook new viewers right now, I think. But also, like, it should be something. You know? I wonder if, if you're working on a modern show, if you listen to the audience to, to such a degree that like you can make a decision like this in your final season, like this wasn't a show that existed during hard social media times where you could read about how beloved or hated Dr. Mark is.

But like, I wonder if today you make decisions about whether or not to kill Dr. Mark in season three based on what a Reddit thread said about him, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Can't you reprogram him or something? Anyway, you're right. This is an episode that presumes an interest in whatever Dr. Mark is up to. And that is our cold open.

The Captain's Log when we come back is about how it has been three weeks since Voyager received its instructions on Operation Watson. And we learned pretty quickly in the ass lab that what Operation Watson means is that they now have for 11 minutes per day transgalactic real-time comms with Starfleet. I love how there isn't even a whiff of Tom Mervins in this episode. She is the captain of this ship. She shouldn't have to win a goddamn lottery to use this communication device.

She should be able to talk to Tom Irvin's whenever she wants. She does not want to talk to Tom Irvin's at all. No interest. So in the ass lab, they're able to establish this first connection of this kind. And it's sort of like the antenna TV that we have in our bedroom. This is a weird quality to this.

I don't know if you're rocking antenna TV the way we are, but like, if you are completely still in the room, you can get most of the channels, almost all of them. But if you, for some reason get up to get something out of a dresser or whatever, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden the Seinfeld episode you're watching on syndication is getting all scrambled.

I don't get it. We definitely have this problem and have since TV went digital. But I feel like there was like the analog equivalent of this. It's crazy how in your mind, you're like digital TV is an HD and its fidelity is such that I presume that it would not be subject to the peril

of antenna bunny ears, but it's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. I have memories of like, when I had roommates roommates like one of us would be just like hey like can We'll take shifts, but like somebody's got to stand like right here so that we can get this show, you know You're like asking a roommate like hey should we maybe work out how we're gonna get the get the signal going in our Tiny New York apartment and your roommates like, yeah, Ben's gonna have us working in sheeps. I don't wanna talk about it.

Get it done. Because of this 11 minute thing and like Starfleet is like, you can use this, like you guys can take lead on how we use this new ability. And what they do is put together a raffle where everybody gets a number and that entitles them to three minutes of comms per day with Earth and it's just in order. So like if you're number six, you go ahead of number 130 or whatever. This is a moment, this raffle scene in the mess hall.

It's tough. Kim loses big time. He, and he's the one who wants it the most. That's what makes it hurt. Right? Yeah. Like his mom's got a birthday coming up and he is not going to be able to talk to her for the birthday.

Dr. Mark wins big though. He got the high chip. The person, I mean, I guess him and Neelix probably the the two people on board with the least I want to eat you right who the fuck does each of call it on earth Hey, who are you calling on earth? I didn't even get a chip, but I'm just I'm stumped I'm the only family you've got it. I'm right over here You could call me me I don't understand

why you can't even just walk over here I mean I get it right it stinks but you don't even need to call when you were a little kid did you ever just dial a random number like oh yeah that's what I got to believe YouTube would be into doing right like give me anyone on earth as an experiment and Ben, that should be the episode. That would be great. That's how we learn more about each of it's fun and funny, but also maybe occasionally serious, depending on who we call. Yeah.

Maybe the entire crew gets invested on, on each of experience here and like meeting all these different folks What if we connected with for some reason Jake because for some reason? Jake Cisco I love that Paris chooses to trade Spots with Kim because this is just bros being bros. Mm-hmm. And this is the Kim Paris friendship Yeah, right here. This is nice. Real mensch, Tom Paris.

Here, give your mom my best. Mark not being a bro to anyone. He's like, yeah, like I would normally trade with you, Harry, but I actually have important shit to do. And we learned that that is him getting his writing career off the ground. He is having a video meeting with the publisher of this novel that he's working on in the holodeck.

And he's bullion. I love the idea that all bullions might be professional cutters. And so like as a publisher, the bullion has like got the pages in the vise and like that that machete style thing that cuts through all the pages oh yeah that's a bullion's like to do cutting stuff ah I dream of course like last time oh no just a little off the top this bullion played by Barry Gordon who you and know, he's had a recurring role on Curb Your Enthusiasm as a rabbi. Don't try to quote the Bible. Just don't try.

But he also did the voice of Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons. Boy, am I glad to be back. God, that's awesome. What a credit. What the fuck? What a career. This guy has the life I want. He's been back for like three episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm to play a rabbi, but has also, I mean, he was on ER, he had a Deep Space Nine role, he's

done so many cool things. There's a good bit of business here in this scene because on and on this boolean goes about how great the hollow novel is generally. But once Dr. Mark starts asking specifically about some things, the call gets cut off. And that's because Seven has cut it off exactly on time. You could have let the man finish his sentence. I believe your ego has received enough stroking for one day. Seven is going to be a presence in every one of these calls just in the back. Yeah. Turning over a giant sand timer. What do

you call those things? Oh hourglass. How could you forget hourglass when it's seven, Adam? I'm almost to the bottom of my first half of bottle of champagne. Jesus Christ. Our course is locked in. Do it. Listen to me very carefully because I'm only going to say this once. Do it. So over in Six-Bay, Dr. Mark tells Paris about his FaceTime with the publisher.

And when Paris asks what the Hollow novel is about, Dr. Mark is evasive in a way that feels like a person not wanting to share their creative thing instead of like keeping it a secret for like profit motive reasons or whatever. Right. And so Paris is like, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm good at Hollow.

This is the thing we run into all the time when we introduce ourselves as nerdy Star Trek podcasters. Many times the other person is like, oh yeah, I could do a podcast. I could do it whenever I want. Podcasting is easy. This is Paris here. Maybe I could talk to your people about Captain Proton.

Am I making any sense here? Eventually Paris does persuade Dr. Mark to let him try the program out. And this is kind of something that Dr. Mark justifies to himself as like, yeah, like I should probably actually have some other eyes on this before it goes to print. I feel like real authors probably do this, like, like share pages with each other. Like what do you think of this kind of stuff? I want to be that person for someone. I want to be the what do you think of this person.

I have an embarrassing story about this. Okay. A friend of mine who is a journalist, like a pretty well-known journalist was like, hey, Ben, like I know you like sci-fi novels a lot. And I have written one and I'm like thinking about trying to get it published. And I was like, I would love to read it. And he was like, I'd love to hear what you think. And when I heard, I'd love to hear what you think.

What I interpreted that as is write notes as I read it and tell him what I think. And I read his novel, really enjoyed it, and wrote like coverage, you know, like saying what I liked about it, what I thought could be improved, like which characters I responded to. I was like, you know, it drags a little bit in act three, and I think that you could like lose this character.

And like this character seemed very similar to this character, and I had a tough time remembering which was which in certain scenes like like that kind of shit and Got an email back that was like, oh Yeah, I mean glad you read it I was so fucking embarrassed is the SAT analogy for this story something like

Star Trek podcaster to science fiction novel expert is to I work at Disney to I work at the Disney store? Yeah, I think that that's kind of what happened. And I was very embarrassed that I kind of overstepped on that. Well, apologies to Benjamin Fritz for how that probably felt. That's pretty brutal. Yeah, I don't think that he was ever able

to get it published in Sandome because I really enjoyed the book. And I would love to be recommending it to people out there. But oh well, Paris boots up the story and finds that just the prologue is really fucking boring and also somewhat concerning in how didactic it is about what you're going to learn about in reading the, I mean, it uses the terminology of a novel and the terminology of a game pretty interchangeably throughout this episode. So I don't quite feel right saying reading this,

but like in experiencing this hollow novel, you will learn about the bigotry and intolerance that this holographic character has endured. Part of the disconnect is the Mark Hefner-ness of this moment. Why is he dressed this way? Why is he dressed as a past person in order to introduce the story of a future person and all of their Miriam issues? It's kind of a clang.

It is challenging and Paris skips the rest of the intro. He's in for nine more minutes of it. And he's like, fuck that, let's get to chapter one. And it kind of starts with the EMH's first day on the job in the pilot of the show. I love how you're thrown into this as someone who experiences a hollow novel. Like Paris has embodied the doctor character

and he's experiencing this firsthand. Inwok's Bajote, who is a Bajoran Chukote, who has a face tattoo that looks like a child took a magic marker and just kind of like flailed around on his face. And he also has a rockin' pony, which I love. The pony is good. Yeah. Hey, who parked on the sidewalk?

His tattoo looks like it belongs on the small of a woman's back. Right. And then he walks carrying Marseille, a mustachioed Paris doppelganger. Yeah. I like that Marseille had darker hair. Like almost everybody that has light colored hair has darker hair in this novel. And the lighting is also very like the enterprise D where everybody has like a weird phaser belt

in that one episode. Right. This is the dark future of universal health cares that the Republicans will have you believe because there is a triage to the care being given here that Bejote takes great umbrage with. He wants to skip Marseille to the front of the line, but there's a lady on this biobed that's dying, like that's code blue or whatever. Yeah.

bed that's dying, like that's code blue or whatever. Yeah. He's already telling Paris actual in his blue outfit about how he's just a hologram and he's a tool like anything else and he can be thrown away and replaced by another tool. And Captain Jenkins walks in and hears about this little triage argument that Paris is having with Bajote and makes it real easy. She whips out a dust buster and wastes the patient that was waiting for an operation so that Lieutenant Marseille can get fixed up. I love this gear for Kate Mulgrew because she's played Captain Janeway and she's also played Arachnia or whatever. And this is like a nice cozy middle to being fully arch. Yeah.

And that's sort of, I mean, like there is a parallel to be drawn between this and the mirror universe. Like this is a fictional world, not like a actual place that they're going. But the way it's lit and the way everybody's acting and Tuvok having the goatee, it's really impossible to escape the comparison here. And I think that the like serialized fictional universe where everybody's totally arch and evil that Paris writes about is not quite what the mirror universe is. I love this interstitial scene after because in the mess hall, the actual mess hall, the

actual Paris tells actual BLT and Kim and Neelix a conversation that many friends have about a friend who isn't there, which is like, you will not believe how fucking crazy this hollow novel is that the doctor made. Like, holy moly, this is a problem. Yeah. What did you say to the doctor? Why he thinks he's written a masterpiece. I didn't know what to tell him.

This is one thing that I wrote to my friend that wrote the novel. It's like the one character that's obviously based on me didn't care for him. Yeah. Kim is, is like incredulous about it and is the one to give voice to the whole, well, if this ever goes like out into the world, people are going to have opinions about us. Like, it doesn't matter that this is a work of fiction.

Like people are going to think we're dicks. Yeah. Like I want my reputation preserved as like the ship stick man. There's nothing about my guy in this, in this hollow novel that's, that's going to support that theory. A theory I really want out there for when I eventually return home. I mean, I like the sound of being a slick back drill. Yeah. But what does it say about my crank in the book?

A weird energy is going on between BLT and Paris though, because BLT thinks Paris's big problem is jealousy. And that this is the famous Hala novel that's going to get sent back to earth and become a thing instead of the one that he has been working on for so long. Yeah. I also just like that it seemed sort of like her energy was like, who cares? Yeah. Like, let him write a book about what assholes we are.

Like I don't lose anything from that. The logic of this moment is great though, because for her to go, who cares? And then for Paris to go, oh, you're going to care when you experience it. And the very next scene to be BLT experiencing it for the first time is really useful. This is amazing. So she is playing the EMH in Sixth Bay and Lieutenant Marseille runs in with bad news about something going on in the warp core that she's gonna need to attend to before she attends to the very beautiful crewman who happens to be sitting on the bio bed right there.

I love how his news is not hilarious about crew people burning alive in a plasma fire, but the react is hilarious because he has a mustache. Mustache. Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to call this a molestache. Like he looks like a sleazy 70s porno guy with this mustache. I think this is a great looking mustache. And I don't think that a mustache should be painted

with that kind of a brush. I mean, you've seen think that a mustache should be painted with that kind of brush. I mean, you've seen me with a mustache. I can't believe you're saying this. I think anyone who wants to grow a mustache should grow one without fear for being painted as a molester. I say think twice. I'm giving you an order. I'm giving you an order. Is that understood? I'm giving you an order. I'm giving you, and you have just crossed the line. The mobile emitter is what's necessary in a moment like this.

The doctor cannot leave Six-Bay without it. And in this world, this fictional world, the mobile emitter is a giant backpack. This thing must weigh 50 kilos. You should be glad we let you out of your cage at all. Now get going. And so while wearing this backpack, BLT goes to engineering and sees her doppel

absolutely tearing the ass out of a lower ranked engineer here. Yeah. But there are no plasma fires around, except I guess the one being lit underneath this engineer. It is not a flattering depiction. I mean, like mainly just kind of like not a great hairstyle for Roxanne Dawson, you know, not a flattering look, but also, you know, kind of a horrible version of her character.

And it's clear that this was all a ruse just to get the EMH out of Six Bay so that Lieutenant Marseille could smash some other crew people away from his wife's prying eyes. Hey, Ben. Hey, Adam. Would you say this version of BLT is extra crusty? I think I would. It's all crust, no loaf, you know? Yeah.

No bullying and engineering is sort of the vibe here. Yeah. So BLT goes back to Six Bay and walks in on a thing. Yeah. Horny Lieutenant Marseille making out with the babe. It seems like a second babe is showing up to get involved. Like she knew that they would already have been at it and is like also here to participate.

I'm here for my physical. Interesting plot twist. When you make out on a bio bed, like here's the thing about this scene. It needs the bumpers of the top bunk of a bunk bed. You're gonna fall out of that bio bed, I think. Well, it's got the thing on the side that has the, you know, the rainbow arch that comes over.

You want the modesty arch up while you're making out on the bio bed, don't you? Or just like partly up, you know, like, so that you can like lean against something. Oh, like stick a leg up on the arch. I like that. Yeah. something.

Oh, like stick a leg up on the arch. I like that. Yeah. I mean, she walks in like during, and it really does look like he is like getting ready to disrobe her and proceed with the main event, you know. I found this confusing because in the earlier scene, the triaging of the patients seemed to occur very slowly in a frustrating kind of way, but look at Paris here. Yeah.

Moving them through. Moving them through. With the treatment. I mean, yeah. Adding a third to your bio bed sex does seem like varsity level stuff. I watched this scene like three times to see if I could see if he was holding a boob when she walked in, cause his hand is up. Like he does have a hand up and he like pulls his hand down really quickly. Yeah. Yep. Is he touching a boob when she walked in. Cause his hand is up. Like he does have a hand up and he like pulls his hand down really quickly. Yeah. Yep. Is he touching a boob? Kind of seems

like it. Wow. Well, uh, she doesn't care for this. We also get to see Neelix portraying the part of the EMH with the backpack in the captain's office and Captain Jenkins is a gun nut in this book. I love how much more ridiculous the main character of this holonovel looks when it's Neelix wearing the backpack. Yeah, Neelix also just looks funny in a uniform because it it's like slimming in a way that makes his facial hair look extra big, you know? It's really true. Like, his dome just looks enormous when he's not in Neelik's clothes. The conflict in this scene is the captain being pissed

that the doctor is taking up too much hard drive space. It's time you've gone too far. And Neelik's playing the main character tries to defend the main character's choices, but he is really quickly taken away by Mr. Tuvok and Kimble, which is the Ensign Kim character. What's Tuvok's name in this world? Mr. Tullock.

Oh, I didn't write it down. Why are we so bad at this? Yeah, it's like we've been making a fucking Star Trek podcast for a pretty long time. You would think that we would eventually get to a point where we're competent, bare minimum. Kind of a weird place for a chapter to end and a new one to begin.

Chapter seven is Harry Kim picking up the story after being perp walked into the turbo lift and the lift stops when three of eight asks to assist in the prisoner transport. This three of eight is a not exactly a redheaded version of seven of nine, but kind of like in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a very popular color of hair dye for the women in my life that was this shade. Totally. Yeah, this is like an era specific dye, isn't it? It really, really is.

Get ready for a mouthful of strawberry blonde haired covered balls. The Borg crap on Three of Eight is also pretty significantly different. It's like Borg's necklace and Borg's earrings and Borg's tennis bracelet. Yeah. Instead of Borg's dolphin. She looks like an aging housewife that lives in a golf course community, you know? Right, right.

She is the only ally of the protagonist of this hollow novel and is trying to help. Yeah. Her help is refused initially, but it isn't long before she gets in there and shoots the Tuvok and Kimball character and sets him free. Pretty fun. Pretty fun stuff. He isn't free for long force fields pop up and that blocks his escape. Chapter eight is when Janeway plays the main character.

The scene occurs in Six Bay and her doppel doles out the sentence for not deleting all of his data files. It kind of reads as a death sentence here. Yeah. And the captain in this hollow novel seems to absolutely relish this decision. Your matrix will be decompiled and reinitialized. You'll remain offline except for emergencies. Ready.

Do it. Yeah. It's the tragic conclusion of the story. And three of eight is like eulogizing the EMH before the EMH's tragic end. And this is when the EMH gets hauled in front of not just Janeway, but an entire McLaughlin group of interlocutors who would like to hear some answers for why he programmed them to all be such dickheads. Did you interpret that last scene as the end of the book? Yeah.

This eight chapter book that ends with the Dr. Hefner warning about, you know, don't let this happen to your hollows or whatever. That's it. Yeah, I think it's more of a novella, you know. Oof. This is awkward in the conference room. Dr. Mark is getting absolutely grilled by everyone here about his hollow novel. And it goes from grilling to chilling when the doctor admits to feeling oppressed by his circumstances, right? Like he really flips the script here. Yeah. Do you think that this would have been a tenser or a less tense meeting if there had been more horny stuff in his book? And if you were to

include so much horny stuff in the scene that it practically burst, like would this be intense tensile strength necessary for a scene like this? And then if a lot of the novel took place on like a camping trip, Would it be intense, tensile intense? It absolutely would be. Yeah. It's interesting here. Janeway Actual is as light as can be with her suggestion that, you know, your friends might be hurt by this. Like, like it's cute, right? You're doing that thing that every little kid does who thinks they're going to write a novel. Like they transpose the first letters of the first and last name of all of their little friends when they write the little story that they write.

And it never goes anywhere. But like your hollow novel is going to have some real world consequences here and you're're gonna hurt some feelings. Like, you should understand that, right? Dr. Mark has a very modern reaction to this, which is like, I say what I want and you guys just can't take it. You're too fucking woke or whatever. Yeah.

Stop trying to censor my free speech. Yeah. Just because it's obnoxious and makes you look like assholes. Yeah. I'm sorry my work offends you, but if the price of expressing myself is having to suffer the scorn of a few colleagues, so be it. Yeah, it's really, it's familiar to a person aware of the idea of consequence culture. Like, it's very funny.

Yeah. This read in this scene. But like, you can also kind of see where he's coming from. Like, he's being kind of defensive because it's like, -"I made this creative--" -"Then I never, ever see where he's coming from this episode. I just can't." ["Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad Guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy's Bad guy coming from this episode. I just can't. But like he went to the trouble of making this thing, you know, like he is defensive of it in

that it is like a thing he put a lot of work into. Like the second he actually processes that it will like hurt the feelings of and serve to disrespect people he loves, like he does change his tune, which is like so refreshing because you and I have had experiences with people that could not get there, you know? I think the choice his friends make in taking the angle of your hurting feelings instead of your work isn't good is the fatal flaw in this moment.

Because objectively, this hollow novel isn't good. And that should be the angle that they take. There's something about the publishing house that he's working with being the people that publish Dixon Hill. Yeah. And like, I think it's in the conversation he has with Paris where he's like, oh yeah, they wouldn't be interested in anything you do because they're more kind of like high brow literature people. And the one thing that they know that they publish is Dixon Hill, which is also pretty schlocky and like, you that's that's a great call like their standard

of excellence is pretty low yeah we're not talking about like Simon and Schuster here right sure yeah so I kind of feel like there is a bit of a joke baked into that yeah yeah but you kind of have to know a lot of Star Trek shit to know what they're talking about there but he knows more about Dixon Hill than I do. I've got to get that latinum. Put your latinum where your mouth is. I've got to get that latinum. I need to just drink gold.

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We raised $50,000 for charity last year. And we've added a bunch of awesome new shows. But do you think we're ready to do it again? Absolutely. Lovely new gifts are lined up. The episodes will be amazing, and wait till everyone hears the bonus content. Yeah, plus they know to go to MaximumFun.org slash newsletter so they're getting all the

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And the next scene is in the ass lab where we see Harry Kim talking to his parents who have the wrong idea about how well he's doing career-wise. They think he's way more successful than he is. So when is she giving you a promotion? When the mother figure states an intention of writing a letter to Janeway, he treats it like the mortal threat that it is. He is absolutely running around, grabbing the bunny ears, trying to make sure he's understood and pushing back on this. He tells Seven, like, Seven, don't move! make sure he's understood in pushing back on this.

He tells Seven like, Seven, don't move. Stand right there. And when Seven can't get the signal back, Kim kind of lashes out at her in a way that you may read as mean, but also everything is on the line for Harry Kim here. Like, I get it. Ah, I don't believe this. His mom has literally threatened to, like, slide into Janeway's DMs.

Yeah. And he's like, this cannot happen. Like, there's... I cannot overstate how deleterious to my entire life it would be for my mom to be directly in touch with my boss. I would allow you to tubule my dick... ...in exchange for giving me 10 more seconds to have this conversation with my mom. Take off your clothes.

So somehow Mark walked away from his McLaughlin group, having decided not to make any compromises, but to make some tweaks to his holo novel. And it's unclear what he intends to do here, but he walks into the holodeck to tinker with his creative work, fires up the program, and pranks. It's not him in the smoking jacket wielding the quill, but in fact, Paris! Kind of wish Paris went shirtless here under the robe. Right? He put himself in the game. Yeah.

He's wielding that pen that is mightier than the sword. And he's rewritten the whole pattern at the beginning to talk about being a lowly medical assistant. I really do feel like the USS Voyeur is a name used by this ain't Star Trek Voyager, right? Oh, for sure there are slash fic entries on an archive of our own about the USS Voyeur, right? Absolutely, have to be. So yeah, the EMH materializes in his red uniform

and is getting bossed around by an over the top representation of himself with an extremely stringy comb over. I love the Neil Hamburger-ness of this hair job. Yeah, he's holding three scotches and a microphone. Yeah. He's holding three scotches and a microphone. Yeah. But that's my life. Administering a sleazy like back of the porno mag hypospray to three of eight, who is in there complaining about shoulder trouble and it's clear that he's just trying

to like creep on her and seduce her. Ugh, did that like this. This hypo spray is full of boner pills somehow. Real sleazy. Yeah. And so Dr. Mark Actual catches up with Paris Actual in the hallway later and is like, what the hell, man? And it's very clear that this is just taste your own medicine, Dr. Mark. If you didn't like it, that's kind of how we felt.

He doesn't get it, though. Like, they actually have a real argument in the hall here after. Yeah. And Paris is being really specific, like, specific enough to be like, hey, Doc, you hurt me with the Marseille character. And the doctor does not care. Yeah. They get to a point where they're yelling at each other so loud

that the Star Trek sound department could not modulate their voices correctly. I noticed this too. Nobody in Star Trek has ever yelled this loud at each other, I feel like. So, like, the unset mixer just could not accommodate the volume of this. I don't care what people think. That's all you care about! You want everyone back home to think of you as a brilliant author! I'm not doing this for my ego, and if you could look past yours, maybe you'd see that! I love B. Dunks' decision here as an actor to dial it up,

but yeah, production was not able to contain the rage in this moment. Yeah, but it finally sinks in for Dr. Mark that what has happened here has been an act of profound disrespect on his part. Like he has a bunch of people that are important in his life and he kind of took their friendship for granted and wrote a story that made them all look like assholes

and he needs to do something about that. We cut over to Six Bay later and Neelix rolls up asking for help for a book he's working on, a hollow novel cookbook where the main character helps cut carrots for every single recipe in it. It is a tragedy of a hollow novel. It is so dangerous. If you turned off the safeties and the holodeck while you played this one. Cutting your fingers off. You're coming out of the holodeck with a stump, with two stumps. Like, I don't understand how they got to the second stump

after they stumped the first one. This holo novel is so fucked up. It'll get you two stumps. Once you get to one stump, he didn't care. This holo novel is so fucked up, it'll get you two stumps. Once you get to one stump, he didn't care. At that point, what's the difference? Drop of a hat, these guys will rock and roll. I loved this scene because Mark really walked away from the previous scene, seeming to have

absorbed a, okay, like I actually do need to do something about this. And Neelix walks in and is back to stroking his ego like the fucking publisher because Neelix wants to get a book published now. And so he kind of tempers Mark's opinion about what he has to do to the point that he's like, okay, so like I don't need to completely change it, but I need to do a little rewrite, like grind off some of the rough edges. I love how this moment illuminates the idea of like, you can't choose your audience.

Like this has gotta be a really dark moment for Dr. Mark to be like, oh my God, Neelix loves my work. Oh no. I have really fucked up here. I was really hoping for a cooler kind of fan. It was a rousing adventure with an important message too. Yeah. So

Neelix has a suggestion This is the Burblist talk and Neelix has a suggestion How are you doing on your bottle of champagne by the way? For the FODs watching at home, I have this much left. I'm pointing halfway up the Stanley Cup. That's all that's left of the bottle.

Wow. I still have a lot in my bottle. I need to catch up. I'm really motoring. I don't know why I shouldn't be motoring. The alcohol shoe was on the other foot tonight here on, uh, the Greatest Generation. It turns out my wife's champagne, delicious. Your wife has great taste in wine.

Yeah. So the suggestion here by Neelix is that, uh... I'm sorry. I'm just having a, uh having a cherished memory of, you and I and a bunch of friends of ours were once in Palm Springs and we'd all rented out like a bigger house and were chilling in the pool. And I think you and I were drinking a cocktail in the pool and your wife walked out and was like, you didn't make me a cocktail in the pool and your wife walked out and was like,

you didn't make me a cocktail? And you just shot back, you're drinking wine. Ha ha ha ha. And I turned to look at her and she had a full glass of wine in her hand. I think about that like once a week. I think about that like once a week. I really, you know this about me. I think one of my buttons is the idea that I may not be considerate.

When you are like pathologically considerate. When I'm obsessed with being, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Like that was a moment where I was like, how dare you? You're totally filled up with wine. You're half in the bag in a pool and you know how much of a drink your wife has left in her hand inside the house. You weren't inconsiderate.

She was inconsiderate. She was inconsiderate. We put the menus up on the wall so everyone knows what's available. What don't you understand about this? Anyways, he's on the phone with the publisher. And he's like, I got this rewrite working. And the guy's like, what do you mean rewrite?

And he's like, yeah, I got like some stuff. It's going to take a few weeks. The guy's like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't rewrite, don't rewrite. And he's like, I really have to. My friend's reputations are at stake here. This Boolean publisher is like very motivated to publish this thing as quickly as possible.

Like disappointed by the idea of a delay. Yeah. And so they leave it at a place, we learn in the next scene, where Mark very much has the impression that he has gotten what he wants from the publisher because he has gathered the senior staff to tell them that they will not come across as dicks in the final version of the novel, and he's gotten dispensation to do the rewrite. This is a moment straight out of Gladiator where he sort of takes two steps back and he's like, are you not to pieced?

Are you not to pieced? Is this not why you were here? And they start chanting, Spaniard, Spaniard, Spaniard. And he's like, what? What about Dr. Zimmerman gave you Spaniard? I'm not from Spain. I've always thought Dr. Mark should be more Spanish. He's always giving people tapas when they come to sex break.

Allow me to inject a hypospray. This might pintchel. So the next scene's in the ass lab. BLT is talking to her dad? And this is mostly small talk. I really like how this scene is constructed because these are two characters who haven't talked in a long time and there's kind of something big to discuss that they save until the very end.

And then I love how he like, the clock is ticking down and he fucking nails a buzzer beater. Like, the frame around the FaceTime like glows red, right as he's like, hey, I'm thinking about having a relationship with you. And then the frame cuts out. Yeah. Amazing.

Amazing. Amazing. He nails it from half court. It's remarkable to see BLT getting an opportunity to reconcile with her father after she kicked her cousin in half. Do you think that's why the FaceTime is so awkward? No one wants to talk about the cousin who's been kicked in half.

I mean, my brother has never forgiven me. You guys weren't even playing soccer. What's your excuse? I mean, I'm still haunted by the choice to connect both halves to life support for the week that we did before finally unplugging. It just seemed like the most humane, and I know I shouldn't use that word, the most humane thing to do to finally unplug. If you could only hear yourselves.

I know you don't want to do it. Do it. Coffee black. Make it yourself. I'm trying to help you see this as an opportunity to grow. Make it yourself. Meanwhile, we cut back to earth and we're at the boring ass office building that Lieutenant Barkley works in and he steps to Admiral Paris and he's like, hey.

I know this is going to sound weird coming from me, but I've seen a very troubling holo program. And you should know that if I'm troubled by this, this should be a red level mission. Let me just level set. I am aware of how awkward this situation is. Oof. We cut over to the ass lab where Admiral Paris has blown in a call to Janeway telling her that he has watched the holonovel. And it's unfortunately a massive hit.

How did this happen? It's a scandal. It's like in thousands of holodecks all over the place. And I mean, it's making a PR crisis basically. You know how when you play an open world video game and you like resist the rail that the game is trying to put you on, like the path and the story, and instead you go fuck around like taking baths with prostitutes or whatever. Right.

You're doing side quests. How many people are fucking Voyager crewmen and women in these holis suites, do you think? I mean, I think Lieutenant Marseille is probably a pretty popular character at this point. Yeah. I think a lot of ropes are being dropped on Brochoke's face. Brochoke? We had started calling him Bajote. There's enough champagne flowing that it's become Brochoke.

Oh yeah, I mean Brochoke is a setting you change in the holosuite to get breath clay into it. Sounds great. Yeah, yeah. Dan Savage not approved. Oh, I'm messed up, man. I've had a lot of champagne really fast. I love the, uh, the smash cut to Dr. Mark yelling at the publisher with Janeway next to him.

Like, like, what are you doing? Like we had an agreement. You didn't do the agreement. And he's like, well, yeah, that's unenforceable because you're not a person. This ignites a measure of a man episode that happens within this episode. Within the last 12 minutes of this episode, they tried to put

a measure of a man into a 12 minute chunk of episode. It's incredible. In this measure of a man episode within this episode, we are told that it occurs in three minute increments, such as the ability to communicate with HQ. I kind of regret this not being a two-part episode because I would like the idea of this being extruded over a passage of time that is very difficult to endure. Like I want to live with the crew during this. Yeah.

Like over the course of like three months. Yeah. I don't even care anymore about what happens here. I've sort of lost interest. I love the idea also that these increments are taking up people's time to talk to their like, their bubby. Whatever keeps Tom Mervins from being in contact is fine by me. It's not like FaceTiming with an Irish setter is that satisfying anyways.

Is this another love me, love my dog demand? Oof. Yeah, I mean, I love Tuvok's a great lawyer. Janeway's a part of this. To a smaller extent, Dr. Mark's involved. I mean, the trial is adjudicated by a judge that seems very patient. He would have to be. Given the weeks that this has taken place over and the two days that he needs to actually come up

with the judgment. Yeah, I was sad that he was so unfilipalouvois. Absolutely no riz to this judge. He is just a receptacle for legal arguments and he's not looking to make some great legal precedence out here. He is hearing Lawyer Tuvok out and then hearing out the Bolian publisher and the issue of personhood needs to be established. And, you know, they go back and have them a Glocklin group

after the first day and they're like, okay, well, we could argue that like if personhood isn't established, then contract invalid and the publisher like had no right to publish this in the first place, but that serves as a concession and we don't wanna do that. We don't wanna like establish in legal doctrine that Mark isn't a person. So we got to keep fighting this thing. And so Janeway is like, there's coffee and telling your real life story.

So we get a little montage of people telling anecdotes and stories about how Dr. Mark has succeeded and how he's failed and how he's become greater than the sum of his parts and all of that stuff. And like even Barkley gets in on this. I mean, this works in Barkley's favor, right? Like in the long game of Reginald Barkley. See, fucking around on the holodeck isn't that bad. You can be a good person and make real people in the holodeck.

Or like not even a good or bad person, but you technically count as being a person. If you do weird shit on the holodeck. Janeway's evoking of like the story of emancipated slaves and the civil war as part of her argument here. I don't know, man. I do not know about that. Yeah. I mean, like I think that you could rewrite this a little bit more sensitively

and just say that like expanding the franchise and expanding the definition of freedom and expanding like personal liberty as a project of, you know, human society or whatever is an ideal that we would all like to uphold without minimizing the suffering of any one particular group of people. Look at you, not drunk enough to articulate an idea like that, fantastic. I mean, I think that her invocation of gender

is also an interesting point that she makes in this and isn't something that they talk about in A Measure of a Man. I was just reeling in this part of the episode because I thought that this was going to be about Mark's little fucking novel. And we are deep in the legal weeds here at this point with like, you know, four minutes left in the episode. They're like giving their impassioned closing statements. And we're like learning that we're going to get the judge's decision in a couple of days. There's a passage of time here where in the mess hall, seven, it gives Kim her three minutes of FaceTime to use, because he's made it clear that like it's his mom's birthday

and she'd be really hurt if he didn't blow in a call to her and she's taken his angry words to heart. And Kim cannot accept this kindness. Instead, why don't you take that isolinear chip and use it yourself to contact a relative on Earth? Irene Hansen specifically, your aunt and also Admiral Hansen's sister? Can we just headcanon that maybe?

Whoa. What do you think of that? Huh? Damn. I think so. I mean, the look is right. The look is right. The look is really right.

How have I never heard of this connection being suggested? We see Irene Hansen in the ass lab and goddamn, looks exactly like she would be Admiral Hansen's sister. Just the flickery like fucked up video. Like the call does not connect cleanly enterprise. Yeah. Yep. Wow.

Irene Hansen has got the receipts from Seven's precocious childhood, the size of a CVS receipt, really. And it is an absolute dunk session by Irene Hansen. Over and over again, she goes back to the foul line and just like windmills them in, dunk after dunk. Absolutely hammering Seven here. And Seven like rightfully is like, should I just like set the phone receiver down

so you can like finish? What is happening here? Perhaps I shouldn't have called. As a former precocious child, who is now the father of a precocious child, I am watching this scene just like furiously taking notes. Like, yes, I can inflict the same trauma on mine as was inflicted upon me.

Irene Hansen's like, no, do not set the receiver down on the table. I want you to keep getting dunked on. Yeah. You're going to keep hearing a cute thing you said when you were little. None of this, by the way, is anything that Seven remembers. And that's what makes it hurt so bad. Yeah. And then she fucking makes it hurt so bad. Yeah. And then she fucking dead names her at the end.

What the hell, Irene? I know you're a woman of a certain age, but like get with the times. Finally, a judgment is given. We cut back to the trial. What is real and what is a simulation? I mean, this judge can't rule personhood with Dr. Mark, but he can rule that Dr. Mark is an artist.

He can rule there's one thing that is substantially less than a person and therefore legally less important, and that is artist. The judgment is to rule that Dr. Mark is an artist with all the controls of his work thereunto appertaining. And thus the ability to recall the holo novel is clear. You can speak to us normally. Okay, no, thank you sir.

So I shall. And so in the ass lab, there's like sort of a tepid celebration. Dr. Mark does bits on the captain for some reason, a hollow victory. Yeah, yeah, that's too bad. One thing I kept thinking about with this, we're getting video telemetry directly with a bunch of Starfleet's is they've updated the uniform. You guys have replicators. Are you not getting with the times uniform wise? Nope, really not.

No. Not interested in that. So he's not a person, but he's an artist and that's a first step. It would be great if in the Measure of a man episode, that was also what data was given. I mean, like, I do feel like that is sort of a 80s Star Trek versus 90s Star Trek tone difference where 80s Star Trek was just like, here's how it fucking ought to be, man.

And 90s is a little bit more like, here's how it actually is. Like most of the time, civil rights victories are incremental and it fucking sucks and doesn't feel as good as you hope it will feel and it is a blow. But that is kind of what I like about the little epilogue here, which is a bunch of EMH Mark ones that have been reprogrammed to work in a fucking dilithium mine, hearing about this holonovel that they have like a bootleg of and learning about the idea of holographic liberation from it. Ben, I have the most important question I've ever asked you on this show.

Wow. This is the 24th century. Why did mining never get better? This is hundreds of years in the future and we're using shovels and like mining carts that in an Indiana Jones movie, you just ride to escape the cave. What the fuck is happening here?

How are we not doing this from orbit? Even Rurupenthe had like laser mining, you know? This is crazy. This is the scandal. Yeah. Does this asteroid have a stockane? Does it have an electronic frontier? Does it have a positive review?

Ben, did you like this episode? You know, I'm really easy to get along with most of the time. But I don't like bullying, I don't like friends, and I don't like you. I miss you. I did like this episode. I think that this episode is a bumpy ride. Like, we do not have a traditional television story structure here, because the last act of it just is like so different in tone and structure from the rest of the episode.

It's really staggering. I think that it feels like the show is starting to- I am delighted at the show's ability to stagger at this point. I think that they have to start to think about what are we going to do with these characters now that we are running downhill toward the finish line. They're in touch with Earth now and that's not like a monster of the week That's gonna be a thing for future episode the next six episodes, right? So they have to start to like blend in Earth giving a shit about what's going on on Voyager and vice versa and

This is such an interesting way of doing it Like there are like legal implications to what has happened on Voyager like not least of which are the maki Like I want an episode about them stressing about this too And I hope we get it but the EMH is also a part of that and Deserves his measure of a man. So for that reason I thought it was a really interesting episode an interesting episode in that I didn't see the measure of a man element of it coming for more than the first half of it, you know? How could you?

When it's saved until the last 10 minutes? Yeah. Yeah. No one could see that coming. It's a trip. I thought it was pretty well done. It's fucking weird, but it's good. Here's what I'll say. Occasionally I'll dip into memory alpha

just to give me like the cast list and the character list and so forth. I did not like this episode. Okay. And every once in a while in memory alpha, I'll see like reception as a section, and then some person will have their review of the episode on there. And so you go to the reception and somebody's offering you, like, canapes. Canapes my ass!

Well, chopped liver on a Ritz cracker. How nice. What you can't do is edit your own Wikipedia. You can't edit memory alpha yourself. What I would like, if I could just ask a friend of DeSoto out there to add to this episode under reception, Adam Pranica of the hit Star Trek podcast, Greatest Generation, in this episode and a link to it did not like this episode Thought squishing a measure of a man episode into the last 10 minutes of a Voyager episode was a bad idea

Thought sticking. Dr. Mark into a Hugh Hefner robe was a bad idea hmm thought getting drunk on an entire bottle of champagne in an hour was a bad idea. That's what I would like there. End of section. The readers of the Memory Alpha post are not going to really understand that third beat of your bit, but I don't want them to. I want them to be be like I need to like go listen and figure this out. All right Ben, let's do the P1s. Okay. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel.

Need a supplemental income. Supplemental income? Supplemental. Supplemental. Yeah, it's extra. By the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. All right, Adam, we got a whole bunch of P1s here. First one is of a promotional nature.

Goes like this. Three friends from the North Carolina, quote, triangle, unquote, chat about anything and everything related to board games, all while poking fun at one another along the way without totally derailing themselves. Discussions are lighthearted and approachable while being substantive and engaging, and they each bring unique perspectives to the table

that both newcomers and enthusiasts alike can appreciate. Come get lost in the Bermuda of board gaming with this terrific triangular trio. And our call to action is search for the Board Game Triangle podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. I wanna give you your flowers there for an incredibly difficult read,

given the amount of champagne you've had. Holy moly. I've had all but maybe like two ounces of this amount of champagne you've had. Holy moly I've had all but maybe like two ounces of this bottle of champagne. I'm gonna I'm gonna toss them back Oh, look, I am my friend no strove. Yeah Can I just suggest a light punch-up sure to the the board game triangle podcast They're bringing unique perspectives to the board game triangle podcast. They're bringing unique perspectives to the board game table, the tabletop, something in that area in the copy that both newcomers and enthusiasts,

that both newcomers and enthusiasts alike can appreciate. Yeah, like something to bring it back around to the idea of board games and tabletop role playing and all that shit. I like that, that's a good note. I wonder what the format is, are they reviewing a game each week? I mean, you'll have to find out by searching

for the Board Game Triangle podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. The older I get, the more I like sitting around a table with some friends playing some Some games I'm like a late-in-life D&D adapter and When we show up and our and our DM has not prepared story for us He always has a cool board game for us to play and I'm gonna recommend this to him Hey go listen to this podcast get some cool games to inflict on us when you fail to write ahead of the story. Good call. Ben, our next priority one message is from Reed. It's to you and me. Their message

goes like this. Thanks for the show, your embarrassment live show at San Francisco SketchFest. Great to meet you and Windy and split my gut laughing at your STV review. Thanks for enduring the travel, the embarrassment, and the time away from your family to come out and meet FOD. Sacrifice appreciated, love the pod, I love the pod and now you know where baby triples come from. Reed really encapsulated what it's like to be a touring Star Trek podcaster. It's not all flowers. It's hard sometimes, but San Francisco SketchFest, what a great final stop for us. The best final stop for us. Yeah, the best final step for us Really enjoyed it really love our time there for just so many reasons

Indeed Adam our final p1 here is from the friends of risotto Hmm, and it's to Adam and Ben you got to stir this message constantly Goes like this narrator captain Picard sits on his toilet pondering the day's mission he finishes his business and stands up looking down at the bowl he chuckles to himself don't do it I Am constipated I Like the idea of the friends of risotto I consider myself a friend of risotto My wife makes my favorite risotto in the world. Oh, I love it so much She makes it like maybe once a year. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass

My wife makes my favorite lasagna in the world and uh and samsies. Yeah. I feel like I'm no slouch in the lasagna department. I want to eat the lasagna that my wife makes and I like I'm like a cargo cult you know like I when I make lasagna I'm like this is like almost as good. The thing that we are the most alike about is that if we were made aware that we did the thing the best in the way that made our partners the happiest, I would want to do that all the time. Yeah, I would be pouring gas on that fire weekly. My wife is just fine.

Doing risotto maybe twice a year. That is all I get. Yeah. Wait, are you married to John Podesta? Yeah. I'm married to all John Podestas. Hey listen, P1s are a great way to support the show go to maximum fun org slash join To even though it's after the max fun drive get in on a monthly support level look It's the most important way you can support the show and we really appreciate it Hey, Adam. It's that Ben. Did you find yourself a?

drunk Shimoda Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Incredible. Drunk Shimoda. That scene where Barkley, very early on, like we've just introduced the idea of regular calls, Barkley is like, hey, I got a gift for you. And the gift is basically like a child giving a parent a drawing for their birthday. It's this picture of Earth. Like, it's nice and everything,

but what they really want is a vacation. Specifically from you. And this moment, like, I know what it's trying to do. It's trying to be like, hey, I know you miss Earth. Here's a picture of Earth. Kind of clang for me. So Barclay is my drunk Shimoda.

What about you? So my drunk Shimoda isn't actually anywhere. Wow. I try to focus my drunk Shimoda as being either textual, like something that's actually in the episode, or a person that participated in the creation of the episode. This is an imagined Shimoda, but Admiral Paris's playthrough of the Hollow novel, something

we don't get to see, I was dying for. Like the extremely high stakes triage scene at the beginning of the story, the Admiral walking up to the bio bed and like seeing Captain Jenkins walk up and waste one of the two people that he's trying to decide between so that he is forced to treat. Like I also just kind of wondered like what the mechanics of doctoring were in the story.

Like, is it like hit triangle to treat or is it a little bit more roll with the dice, Baldur's Gate kind of style where it's like, like you could use medical and you have to beat 18 to succeed or it's a tiefling wizard and you have to roll something over a five to succeed or it's a tiefling wizard and you have to roll something over a five to succeed. You know, I was fascinated by the whole implied story that happened by Admiral Paris being

made aware of the existence of the novel. So I think he's going to be my, that implication is going to be my drunks from Oda, but Admiral Paris can get it for the, you know, for the purposes of like keeping track of it on charts and stuff. It is an AA only sending in Philadelphia parlance, the implication. All right, Adam, let's talk about next week's episode. I'm going to go to gach.biz slash game. I am also going to tell you about next week's episode, which is season seven, which is season seven, episode 21, friendship one, Voyager recovers a long lost space probe, which has

caused terrible radiation damage on a distant planet. Doesn't seem like it's their problem. Yeah, seems fine. Seems like that's the past people's problem. Yeah, give me a fucking break. So our runabout could potentially hit a space butthole which would take us down to an nth degree episode which of course is where we do extensive research on the episode and tell you a bunch of real facts

about its production that really happened. A beloved kind of episode. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. We'll see what I hit. I only rolled a five at him. Chula! Did I win?

Hardly. We are on square 97. Regular episode next week. No intriguing facts about how the episode was made that nobody ever knew before. Incredible. All right. We got some thank yous to remit to the people. Thanks to everyone who supported Greatest Gen and Greatest Track during the Max Fun

Drive. Wow. It's no joke. It is really important to us that we assemble the FODs into a block that can support our show year after year, and you've done it. We want to thank you for all your support now and over the years for making the show possible. I don't know what I could add to what Adam just said. It's just amazing to feel like there are people out there that really care about this completely silly thing that we do enough to

make sure that it goes forward into the future. We love you so much and we really, really appreciate it. You know how earlier we were talking about the Doctor having maybe some bad fans? I really love our audience. The FODs are the best. So I'm just really grateful for them. We're the luckiest boys in podcasting. We really appreciate Windy Pretty, our editor and producer, and we appreciate Rob Adler, the director of social media and marketing here at the Uxbridge Shimoda Corporation. Of course, the great Bill Tilly, our consigliere.

A wartime consigliere is what I consider Bill Tilly. Shit dog. Yeah, he's good. Big love to Adam Ragusea, who made the original Janeway song in his hard at work on another original piece of music for this show. Of course, Dark Materia, who made the original Picard song. Thanks again for letting us use it all these years We got a we gotta go man. We're fucking wasted. We got to get out of here

We just drank an entire bottle of champagne you and me. Hey Ben. Yes. What? Cheers to you, man Cheers to you. We did it. I got nothing left in the flute. I feel bad. Cheers thing with nothing. I got one sip left I'm gonna take it to the dome. I can take like a droplet out of this. With that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Voyager and the episode of the Greatest Generation Voyager, where our long lost probes aren't radiating. They're earning compounding interest, babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Captain John Rupicata, the U.S. 10th Santa Cri. Make it so, make it so.

John Rupicata, Carta, Carta, Carta. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.