The Greatest Generation - So Many Bubbrles (VOY S7E21)

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

When Voyager gets a mission from Admiral Philip Baker Hall, Harry Kim tracks down the ancient probe on an irradiated planet. But when the away team encounters bagMEN on the surface who give the Vidiians a run for their money, all it takes is some medical treatment and odor eaters to make their planet habitable again. Which adjustment might be too nippular for the costume department? Who has a dolly grip look? How much loaf can the transporter handle? It’s the episode that wants to launch more menacing probes!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

Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage! Watch your back, Sharluka Luke. I'm Captain Cap, bring Janeway to the U.S.S. for adventure. I'm Captain Cap, bring Janeway to the U.S.S. for adventure. I'm Captain Cap... 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 Adam Pranica. I'm Ben Harrison. The embarrassment is ongoing. It's a lifetime mission. Yeah. I'm not quite sure what got my wife to go into the drawer that she went into, but she went into a drawer of my dresser.

Oh my god. And discovered my embroidered polo shirt with the Brenner Information Systems logo on the breast. I'm Chris Brenner. Brenner Information Systems. You know, Interface Operations, NetAccess, Channel 90. That Chris Brenner. Wait, you keep shirts in the nightstand?

No, in the dresser. Okay. All right. You thought this was gonna be a fleshlight story? No. It's a shirt story. Dear fleshlight, you'll never believe what happened to me a few nights ago. She was like, what company is this? Because the shirt doesn't look like it's a joke. You remember like the SafeLight jingle?

SafeLight repair, SafeLight replace. You know that one? Oh, I don't know that. You watch enough TV to hear that commercial? Don't know that song. FleshLight should have a jingle. It's like, FleshLight jacks off, FleshLight feels good. Anyways, I was like, it's true. I want to be clear.

I would admit if I'd ever used one, I've never used one. I don't know if it feels good. I assume they feel good. Masturbation technologies are all about that. That's like one of the main things. Either they're like explicitly about feeling good or explicitly about feeling bad, you know? Bad in a good way. Yeah. Yeah.

But anyways, yeah, she was like, what company is this? And I was like, you know, operations net access channel 90. You did it. I did the thing. He's doing it. Didn't ring a bell for her because not a Star Trek fan. Yeah. And then I explained what it was like, oh, it's like a, you know. Why did you do that?

Gift from a fan. This is how you get hurt, Ben. And we now sell these shirts at Podshop.biz. And she was like, all right, but like, do you need all this? And I was like, I like it. I wear it sometimes. Don't let her change you, man. That's just the thing, dude.

It's not bothering anyone. It's in your part of the drawer. I know it's in my drawer. Yeah. I don't know. Always an opinion about how many, how many shirts I have for some reason. Oh, but you better keep your fucking mouth off of her end of the closet, and it's big trouble, right? I mean, I'm not trying to make her a villain.

She was just like, she was incredulous. Oh, this is a very villainous story. You know what you did. And then she goes a little deeper in the drawer and finds my flashlight, and she's like, what is this? Is this your idea of sex? This you can keep.

The other things that give you joy? No way. Did you ever watch that show Dave? No, I love the movie Dave. I've not watched the show. Show just as good. Really? Very different.

Uh-huh. He has a male-oriented sex toy in that, that has, it's like just a butt, and then there's some legs that come off of it to dangle down the side of your bed. They're always flopping around and looking funny in shots. I just picture if my wife did, like I don't actually own a sex toy,

but if my wife found something of mine that was for that, it would be that embarrassing, I feel like. Ben, in the event that this stays in the show, and Wendy doesn't correctly edit it out. How about no? You have made Bill Tilly's life a living hell. Because now for the next couple of months, he's going to get pictures of sex toys

that folks want to send to you. Used, lightly used. Please don't send pictures of sex toys to our consigniary, Bill Tilly. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. He's not a sex time consigniary in the Godfather parlance. It's not like that. Well, Adam, probes that have embarrassing results are also the topic of today's episode.

Yes! Woo! Do you want to get into... the first Federation mission on Star Trek Voyager since the beginning of Star Trek Voyager? Do you want to get into this? With a pivot like that, I feel like we got a good one on our handspin. Star Trek Voyager, season seven, episode 21. Friendship one. Rebirth Course.

Unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm not turning you around. The cold open is the Friendship One cruising through space and it's got a super boring speech on a loop. And some aliens are twisting some knobs on their radios, trying to clear up the signal. I did like that it had the plaque with the naked man and the naked woman, but because this is broadcast TV, they had to tile out the naughty bits. Everything you're seeing here is conveying threat. The ship isn't supposed to be threatening, but if you don't know what it is and this thing just pops up on your screen playing a bunch of music you don't understand, like,

they don't understand what mean this music. It could be like Ride of the Valkyries, presaging something terrible, you know? That would be so funny. Ride of the Valkyries and not Sprink and Cherto. Right? We don't sigh war off, leg it loud. And the Romeo Fox brought Shall We Dance. But they have no context for this anyway, so it might as well be.

We should send more menacing probes into the cosmos. But this is menacing if you don't understand the reason for its being, right? Yeah, yeah. That's the whole point of this episode. I guess so, yeah. So this music is perplexing to these scientists and this thing is falling into their atmosphere. They don't know what mean and that's our cold open. After the theme, we're in the ass lab and Janeway catches up with an Admiral that looks a ton like Philip Baker Hall.

He really does. Holy shit. He's like Philip Baker Hall, but with a Mr. Pitt accent. You've made first contact with more species than any captain, says James Kirk. If Philip Baker Hall really got into Equinox later in life, this would be that Philip Baker Hall. And she's kind of catching him up on some of the adventures that they've gotten into over the last seven years.

And I love the kind of like, I don't know, it's like an uncle being told by a nephew or a niece about, you know, what's going on at school. Like, oh, that's very nice. Yeah, I don't get the sense that this is really doing it for Philip Baker Hall. I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. He pivots the conversation into orders he wants to give

to Voyager and the orders go like this. Friendship one, flew over the fence into the neighbor's yard and I want you to go knock on the door and grab our missing frisbee. Did you clock the completely fucked up bad situation on this Admiral? It looks like he slept in his uniform. What is happening there? He's very rumpled. Is that what you're saying? We've been on sets all the time.

I feel like the very last thing you do with, with an actor about to go on camera is like the last little wisps of hair. Like you're making sure everything is just so, how is no one on the badge? Yeah. Maybe it's too nipple proximate. Like, you know how when you hang a lavalier mic into someone's clothes,

like you gotta be very prescriptive about that. You gotta be... Steering clear of the tender places. Right. Maybe the badge is just too nipular in this way. Like, no costume person wants to over-zoosh the badge, you know? Maybe they had Philip Baker Hall actual on set that day and he was like getting ready to do the scene and had some difference of opinion with the director.

And it was like, fuck this, I'm out of here. And like ripped off the uniform and they were like, fuck, well we're lit. And like, we got to make our day. So like, look at how, we're lit. And like, we got to make our day. So like. Look at how rumpled this is now. And they just grabbed like a dolly grip that happened to look a little bit like Philip Baker Hall through the uniform on him.

This guy's got that dolly grip look, doesn't he? Yeah. You can push me on a dolly any day, Admiral. He has the RP accent of every dolly grip I've ever met in the industry. I have my Admiral hat on today, Catherine. Oh yeah. So they have a McLaughlin group.

Issue one. Where we talk about this mission, and this probe is super famous. Something that you learn about in school, something that you memorize the speech of. Something that could have gotten humanity exterminated many, many times over should it have encountered the wrong alien species. I love this.

Our ancestors had no idea what was out here. It predates Starfleet or the Prime Directive. It is like a thing that got sent out very shortly after Zephyr and Cochran's first war play. This is how we should have brought back Kevin Uxbridge, right? This should have been the fence that this thing flew over. Who's going to get this out of my yard? It's crushed my petunias. I have a kilometer square on a otherwise dead world that nobody visits and somehow this

lands here. How dare you imagine the bad luck. May day just get a whole lot worse. So yeah, they've got a search grid and they're going to see if they can find a little piece of human history out here in the D quad. And we cut to the bridge where they're doing the search. This is not work that Janeway or Chakotay are on. Tuvok has the con and is working with Ensign Kim on this.

I'm a fucking my way through Fairhaven. It's my favorite way of relaxing. You search the grid, Harry Kim, while I search my own grid. I'm told there's a man in a boat somewhere in this search grid and I'm determined to find him. I think it's cute how much of a tryhard everyone is catching their first mission from Starfleet, right?

Yeah. You really want to do a good job. And Kim is the first to get out in front of this. He's done some extrapolating to narrow their search based on stuff that they know about that Starfleet might not. And it works. They pull up on a planet that's got the kind of antimatter radiation that they're looking for. Score Harry Kim. Yeah. So everybody heads down to Six Bay to get inoculations for their trip. And what do you know it?

Lieutenant Carey is here. I love what a bump it is to see him every time after witnessing his death, you know? It's such an interesting bit of anxiety that he presents in every scene that he's in. Like he doesn't know, he doesn't know he was dead. But we know. When BLT rolls in to get her poke,

Paris takes great umbrage with the idea that she and her unborn child are gonna go into harm's way and away from the group, they have a discussion. And BLT is like, I need to get out more. This sucks. And Paris is like, I need to get out more. This sucks. And Paris is like, well, poisonous atmosphere. So that wins the argument. Yeah. He says, do I need to tap the sign? And he taps the sign next to the Delta flyer that says, if you are pregnant or think you may be pregnant, do not board this ride.

Yeah. That's a persuasive argument to BLT. And so the mission begins. Yeah. I mean, she does extract an agreement out of him that they will swap roles if they go for a second child. He will be the one to carry it. He's eaten Neelix's food, so he knows what it feels like to carry something big to term. Bon appétit. When she says you're carrying the next one, did you notice that he turned and looked at Lieutenant Carrie and then like turned back at her? Like, are you implying that it's not mine?

Yeah. The term carrying is known among the Voyager crew as when Carrie dumps in you. As when you let Lieutenant Carrie Carrie dumps at you. They set off to fairly big away team on the Delta flyer, going down through the chop, uh, and in over these kind of post-apocalyptic nuclear winter looking ruins on this planet's surface. It's clear somebody used to live here. Yeah, I mean no life signs at the moment, but there were maybe a long time ago and Paris sets the flyer down while a bag man watches from behind a piece of rubble. No, you can't trust a bag man. They behind a piece of rubble.

No, you can't trust a bag man. They'll always step across you. I call him that of course because he is wrapped in bags. Yeah, yeah. He looks like a backup dancer they didn't wind up using on the Missy Elliott video. On the Super Duper flag. Yeah.

Yeah. He didn't watch the landing, he heard it mostly. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't watch the landing. He heard it mostly. Either that or like a sweeted Darth Vader situation. Yeah. Yeah.

I love the first contact era, spacesuits getting brought back out. I loved the boot going into the thin layer of ice in a puddle on the ground. I gotta say, outside of like the actual uniforms that the main cast wears, the value they're getting out of these EV suits, on Voyager especially, has been incredible, great job. Yeah, really nice to see them be a part of canon, you know, it's not just a one-off for the movie. And yeah, so they're like, they're walking around it's, uh, it's Tom Paris, Neelix and Lieutenant Kerry walking around, they find a toy that

plays like a midi version of the Vivaldi song that we heard earlier. Uh, they spot some silos that are loaded with ICBMs. How are you making a toy that looks like a bomb like this? I was on the edge of my seat during this. This reads so much. As soon as the music box stops, the clown's going to pop out and the whole thing's going to explode. It looks like the thermal detonator from Star Wars.

And yet it's just a delightful children's toy. I mean, I guess they're scanning it with their tricorders so they would know if there was like fissile material in it, right? I guess. It just looks very threatening. It looks like it's for a gothic child. In some caves nearby, Paris, Neelix, and Carrie have split off and they find an improvised science lab made up out of some scavenged junk. But it works. It's not just junk. It actually works. And there's also pieces of friendship one in there. Yeah, they found it right there. So it seems like it's mission accomplished because they radio out to Chakotay and Kim

and they're like, hey, we found it. We're gonna start beaming stuff back to the Delta flyer and Chakotay and Kim were like, cool, we'll meet you there. But right after this radio transmission ends, that's the exact moment where they're ambushed inside this cave from a bunch more bag men from an elevated position. This is like the shower scene in the rock.

You can't give up the elevated position. You're down there, we're up here. As a group, these guys reminded me of the Harkonnen soldiers in the David Lynch dude movie. Oh yeah. And one of them is also back on the flyer. He's like rifled through their glove box, which Jacote discovers. I love the idea that the the flyer. He's like rifled through their glove box, which Chakotay discovers.

I love the idea that the Delta flyer has a car alarm and that car alarm is going off when they get back to it. It's great. Harry Kim gets bonked trying to open up a closet and Chakotay phasers this guy and they start getting hit by antimatter weapons from the surface and they realize that the rest of the away team has been taken hostage and Chakotay makes a tough choice here he decides to

bug out rather than sit there and get dead. Because then how are they going to help the hostages? In many action movies and some science fiction films, you run into this moment. This is the part from Rambo 2, where Erickson decides not to land the chopper. And Rambo's right there with the POW. He's right there. There's men down there. Our men!

No, it's too dangerous. They're taking too much fire. So Chacote takes the flyer away, telling Kim that they're just going to have to come back later when it's more convenient. So Paris gets to meet the leader of these bag men. He's a very bubbly personality and face. He fell out of the meatloaf tree and hit every branch on the way down. This guy got hit with the meatloaf stick.

Yeah, he really did. This guy's name is Varin. He's very pissed off at... He's Varin not easy on the eyes. He's very pissed off at them for having sent this probe and done all the damage that they do. He hails Voyager and Janeway and Chakotay run up to the bridge to talk to him. And he's basically your classic hostage holder.

Like he wants a helicopter and a bag full of money. And they're like, what are you talking about? Why? We haven't done anything to harm you. You committed genocide. You know what I love is Varan knows what he looks like. So he very specifically chooses not to make this a FaceTime call.

Right. This is audio only. Audio only. He wants a new planet, a planet that doesn't suck and isn't going to irradiate everybody. It's sad, you know? Like when we saw the people in the control room at the beginning of the episode, handsome race.

Yeah. You hate to see them all bubbly like this. Yeah, so many bubbles. to see them all bubbly like this. Yeah. So many bubbles. I don't know how I would spell the word I just said. In Andorian, it's unpronounceable. He considerately gives them three hours to make with this, this mission to take

them off the planet and repopulate them elsewhere. Or something non-specifically bad will happen to these hostages. So just know that. I mean, they're going to start getting bubbly pretty soon anyways, right? The longer they don't wear those spacesuits, yeah. Yeah. So in Sixth Bay, Dr. Mark- Oh, hi, Mark. Explains that the bags that everybody wears down on that planet

are impregnated with the same mineral that's in the Star Trek caves down there, which provides some but not all of the protection one might want from the type of radiation this planet has. Also, their birdies are totally irradiated in this way that explains why they weren't able to detect life signs when they pulled into orbit. This is such a moment of restraint in the face of something that could be really funny. The way the doctor holds up these shredded bags and comments on how ill-suited to the task they are.

Like he could go any number of directions with this. He could fill them with meatloaf and just have it spill out onto the floor. Imagine this pitcher of iced tea is really a gallon of your feces. This is the guy that we brought up from the surface. Hefty hefty hefty. Whippy whippy.

I'd forgotten that they'd brought a guy up and then the camera swings over and there he is under the arch on the bio bed. The guy they brought up isn't the guy Chakote shot trying to get at Kim, right? Or was it? It is. Yeah. I thought there were two people in there. No. Okay.

No, just the one. Okay. And Mark believes that this guy is treatable, even though he's even bubblier than Varan. He seems to hold no ill will about being shot. I thought that was good of him. Yeah. He's chill.

He's chill about it. Yeah. So he explains like, oh yeah, so good of him. Yeah, he's chill. He's chill about it. Yeah, so he explains like, oh yeah, so before your probe showed up, none of us had ever heard of antimatter. So we obviously put two and two together that you are the types of aliens that go around exterminating all the locals on a planet by giving them technology that they won't understand.

And Janeway's like, if we wanted to steal your planet from you, why would we contaminate it with this shitty radiation? Like that sucks. Yeah. Look at you. We don't want a planet that makes you look like that. Why would we do that? Janeway's like, I am attracted to all kinds of people, but I'm just going to look in the middle distance in order to finish this conversation.

She's like, how could you think that about us? And he's like, look at the evidence. And she's like, oh God, don't make me look. Don't make me look anymore. There are three things to remember about being a starship captain. Get to it, get to it. Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship,

and get to it, get to it, get to it. The story this guy Orton tells doesn't seem completely crazy though. From his perspective, the idea of like, knowledge inspiring you to self-Chernobyl yourself, ahead of some conquering force to come later and clean up. Yeah, self-Chernobyl or auto-Chernobyl is another way they refer to that.

If you don't know anything about anything and this is your first contact, like you kind of get it. Yeah. I can get on this guy's level. I mean, not with how he looks. I mean, my acne isn't that bad. God, these guys are really tough to look at. Yeah. Like they kind of give the Vedians a run for their money

in the gross loaf department. give the Vedians a run for their money in the gross loaf department. If we were going to have a Mr. or Mrs. Delta Quadrant pageant, only it was like for loaf. Yeah. We're slamming the grossest loaf. Who wins in a Vedian versus whoever these guys are. I think it's these guys. It's more upsetting to me. Yeah, I think so too.

So in the caves, Kerry is in pretty bad shape, and I'm scared for him. A lot. But there's also a pregnant woman in the caves, and she seems to be a little kinder than the rest of the folks. She gives Paris some water for the washcloth that he's using on Carrie's head wound. And Paris kind of tries to do that thing, that hostage bonding thing you tried to do. What you want to do if you're a hostage is like make yourself into an actual person instead of just an about to die person. Right, gotta humanize yourself.

That a hostage taker would prefer, yeah. But that can backfire when you realize you're not talking to a human. That you could only hear yourselves. And can especially backfire when the way you're trying to establish commonalities with that person is by talking about how you're also expecting a little one and not really reading the room on how hard it must be to have live birth

on a planet that's this fucked up. The thing that hurts the most is that Paris does that thing to try to find like common cause and assumes that she's pregnant and she's not. Paris, you can't just do that. Oh, that's not nice. It turns out the loaf goes all the way down when you're exposed to this level of radiation. It's just another bubble. We're very bubbly because of the radiation and that's a really particularly big one in a certain spot.

God, this conversation is so rugged. Cause it goes down the road so far before the payoff. You see it coming far sooner than Paris does though. Like Paris is almost willfully obtuse in this moment. Am I making any sense here? By the end of it, we learn that this mother has really been through some shit and suggests that, you know, Dr. Mark may be able to help in a situation like this,

but before he gets an answer from her, she just turns away after having endured a pretty difficult conversation with a stranger in this moment. In the ass lab, we learned that there are about 5,500 people still struggling to get by on this planet. And the closest M-class planet that they could move these people to is far enough away that it would take them three years worth of work to take people back and forth, you know, using the limited capacity that Voyager has. And this is just kind of a non-starter.

They're like, we're not setting everything aside for three fucking years for these people, even though this is kind of our fault. Chainway's take is so weird here. She's like, our reputation is already so bad with these folks that I don't want to go in there and like storm the castle and save the hostages. Like, that would just reinforce our reputation. But what the hell? Like, these Lofi survivors on the planet, like they're the only ones who believe this shit about the friendship won. Like they're not saying shit to anyone. They're loafy survivors.

I'm a lovey survivor. I love Rashaun. And I want to know why this probe is in my backyard. I'm just supposed to mow around the probe? Hey, the Federation, are you not going to fix your divot? -♪ DING DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG D I like that it's like a 12 ounce soda can of Nanoproofs. Or like those blank cans that have nothing printed on them that like really small microbreweries use. I love that. This dude, Otren, is like,

what did you say you extracted? From where? I love this guy. Like, I love a never heard of a Borg and therefore not afraid of them alien. He's just curious about this and is like super down to get treated for bubble. And she talks to him a little bit about how

this is gonna fix him up and also, you know, I think plant some seeds that maybe this isn't, this isn't the place full of ghoulish monsters that are trying to steal your planet that you thought it might be. Yeah, he seems different from the other guy, that's for sure. Down in the Star Trek caves, Carrie is really not doing super well. They've put a bandaid around his head, but they're, they're starting to succumb to radiation sickness. And I guess they're not being allowed to sit there in their spacesuits, which would have been nice.

Yeah, they don't get to keep any of their own tech. That's kind of an ongoing problem for the hostages. In the shadows emerges a meatloaf girl. emerges a meatloaf girl. And the group goes into a kind of baby talk with her that is just so grating and patronizing. She does not like this. She does not like that Neelix is different from them. They try to ply her with the kids' toy

that they found on the surface, and the second she hears the song, it makes... She's like, no, no, not that song! This is a kid that's watched Miriam friends die on a playground after playing with these bomb toys. So Varan, for some reason, has a meeting with Neelix. Neelix, being the chief morale officer and diplomat, decides to try to persuade him that humans aren't so bad. And he would like to negotiate between Varan and the captain in all ongoing communication.

It's a real Metreon Cascade game recognized antimatter radiation game situation. He's like, my planet went through something very similar. Fatal flaw though. If we talk about this all the time, do not get into a trauma measuring contest with someone who's grieving. Just like be there for the person that's grieving without making it about you. I mean, Varan does ask, is that why your face is like that as part of the conversation?

Hey, I noticed you're into foot stuff. If you take off that pregnant lady's boot, you're going to see some crazy shit down there. Some burbles like you've never believed. You know how these negotiations go with hostage takers in movies. They ask for the bag of money in the helicopter and then the negotiator replies with, why don't you free one of the hostages and we'll get you some pizzas and a bus ticket. Yep. Yep.

That is what Janeway calls up and offers and Verad's like, cool, yeah, sounds great, and gets Lieutenant Carey ready to beam up and phasers him, like, as he is dematerializing, I guess. So we don't actually see this on camera. I was just gonna say that. How do you do Josh Clark like this? Like the actor who plays Carrie? He gets shot off screen and he arrives dead off screen. You want to have your death scene if you're an actor. But I guess you could say he already had his so maybe that's the point of this.

Yeah, it's sad to see him go. But we do like to watch him leave. What an ass on Josh Clark. What a bad guy move for Varan though. I like the move for him to cement himself as the alpha here. This really heightens the danger that we feel for the other two hostages and the danger that we feel for the other two hostages and demonstrates his resolve. I think Janeway realizes that the way to deal with this guy is not to pussyfoot around after this. I've got to get that latinum, put your latinum where your mouth is. I've got to get that latinum, I think you've just drunk gold. This year I've been trying to get better at playing golf

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Listen to We Got This with Mark and Hal, only on Max Fun. Your topics asked and answered objectively, definitively for all time. So don't worry everybody. We got this Janeway finally concedes to Varan They're gonna agree to the evacuation plan, but in the back of my mind I'm like, oh yeah, we'll beam these guys up into the cargo bay and then open the garage door opener on them, blow them out in the fucking space. Pieces of shit. How dare you do that to Carrie.

In the caves, the pregnant woman keeps talking to Tom Paris and it seems as though she's willing to switch sides. Like it's a very quick scene, but it's just meant to remind you that like she's going to be a figure in all this. Yeah. And that the people on this planet are not a monolith, that Varin doesn't speak for everyone 100% of the time. And that's, I think, further established in the scene with Otren in Six-Bay.

Seven's nanoprobe treatment of him has started to soothe some of the boils on his face. When Otren unties his hair and lets one half fall across his face, that one half is beautiful. I thought he was just kind of artsy and weird, but in fact, he's super fuckable. This bet only pays half at this point. Am I a bet? Am I a bet? Am I a fucking bet? Bec, he's super fuckable. This bet only pays half at this point.

My bet? Am I a bet? Am I a fucking bet? Seven tells Oatrin the kind of bad news, which is like, hey, nanoprobes work great for you, but you gotta want the nanoprobes for them to work. And Varren isn't interested in taking them or giving them to anyone else.

But you know, a new leader could rise and half of you could be that leader, Oatrin. The good looking part, I mean. The part with Riz. Maybe if you just face this way in all of your speeches. The part whose hair doesn't look like rusty steel wool, I think has a political future. You remember Aaron Eckhart's role as Two-Face in the Batman movie? Even though you totally destroyed half of his face and make it look monstrous and grotesque,

like, goddamn, if the other half still isn't Aaron Eckhart, still a great looking guy. Like, that could be you. That's what I'm saying. Here, let me pop in this tape to demonstrate. They talk about the idea of learning from one's mistakes. Ever heard of it, Oatrin? And meanwhile, down on the surface, Paris is getting roped into helping

this pregnant lady with her delivery because it seems like the baby is coming early and he's the most trained medic around. It makes me wonder how popular the Lightning Crashes music video from Live Was around this moment, because we kind of get a Lightning Crashes music video moment here when we cross cut from in the caves to outside of the caves when the Delta Flyer landing party comes in. Because the contractions start and it's, oh, it's too early. And Parris is like, can I look at your vagina? I can't do it without the med kit.

And then they cut to the outside and people are getting ready with the weapons and then inside things are really going sideways and the lightning is starting to go off outside. The loofy baby opens her eyes. I mean and the dust-bust your clubs coming in hot outside the caves and oh no oh no Ben we're we're seeing a dead wet baby. Yeah. This does not look good. It's scary and like Tuvok gets captured by a bunch of these bag men. They put a clip show device on the baby and it's like, what clips are there even of this baby?

This baby's brand new. What are they gonna show it? It doesn't seem like it's gonna work until it does. Look, the baby's not blue anymore. Everyone's really happy. And Tuvox perp walked in right at this moment and he's held it at dustbuster point by another bag man but this isn't a bag man it's the doctor and

they start shooting everyone. After they kill the first two guards they didn't hesitate pop guard number three because what difference does it make? Did you notice what Tuvok did? He gets the Dustbuster tossed to him and he neck pinches Varan while shooting another guy at the same time. He's like the raisin brand son in this scene.

He's got two scoops of badass getting dropped on these folks. The mother who was like recently given birth, it like seems to like be back in clothes and like holding her baby in a way that I was trying to remember when my wife gave birth. I feel like there was a long time in between pushing the baby out and being ready to have a conversation with somebody. I mean, being ambulatory. This lady is just walking around having conversations. Yeah. And Paris is like, no, I really got to take your baby up to the ship where we can actually like treat it medically. And she's like, all right, well, yeah, hope you bring the baby back.

Lot of trust. Why can't she come with the baby? Great question. I don't know. Maybe she's covered in so much loaf, like the transporter can't recompile her. It's too heavy for her. Paris is like, see? I wasn't so off base. I'm the asshole. The transporter can't even do anything with you.

So baby is given, baby is beamed away and in six bay, baby is getting better as Janeway and Dr. Mark watch over him and the captain's orders at this point are to leave. And Paris is like with the baby? She's like, no, we beam the baby back down and then we leave. And Paris and Kim have a real hard time with this because they're like, can't we just fix the radiation problem that you could argue we kind of caused? They don't have to give consent for this. This is an unconsensual radiation fix that we want to do. And I think we should be able to do it. And Janeway's so cold in this scene, isn't she?

She's like, why would I help the people that killed Carrie? And Paris has an interesting point, right? He's like, it wasn't all of them. Like you said, Ben, earlier, it wasn't just some monoculture of assholes. It was just one of them that's bad. Yeah, don't judge them by the one asshole. They're good loafs on both sides.

Oh, boy. Right? So yeah, there's this plan that like Otren had something to do with coming up with the theoretical basis for. It a little bit reminded me of that moment in Oppenheimer where they're like getting ready to try a nuclear bomb for the first time and they're like, none, zero chance this sets the atmosphere on fire and destroys the entire planet. Just letting you know, like we did the math, we think it's pretty unlikely.

It is that. So basically what they have to do is set off this chain reaction that will neutralize the Radiation in the atmosphere and Otren who's doing even better. He's now he's now sexy on both sides demonstrates this right next to the warp core and Try to imagine this farty smoke in this tube is the radiation Now watch as we've introduced Oda Reader's brand insoles. Yeah, so they got to use photon torpedoes to atomize the insoles and spread them throughout the atmosphere.

Otren goes back down to the planet and everybody's like just ignoring how great he looks somehow, like it doesn't come up. This part drove me nuts. Like, I've got to believe that a significant amount of these people are looking at him going like completely absent of any other concern for the planet or their wellbeing are like, I would give anything to look like that. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, as he pitches this idea to the group,

Varan is there and Varan is still being a bit of a Karen. Mm-hmm. You're being irrational. What's irrational is cooperating with the enemy. He's like, yeah, well, what about all the people that are dead? What about them? And Otren is like, yeah, well, what about all the people that are dead? What about them? And Otren is like, yeah, I don't know what to tell you, man.

Like, there's not a chain reaction we can set off in the atmosphere on their behalf. But they decide to give this thing a try. It is great seeing the ship zoom through the atmosphere and start shooting torps. Yeah. Watching them go off. I love this. Yeah.

It's, it's really cool. And like, it turns into one of those like, you know, Oatryn and, and Varren are like at loggerheads. And then like, you know, the guys are pointing guns everywhere and the guys with the guns like are not taking orders from Varren anymore. Now he's not good looking enough to take orders from at this point. I hope you fucking die, Harley Jarvis! Get him out of here!

It's just a popularity contest at the end of the day, isn't it? Yeah. It's whoever's handsomest. Always has been. But this is like, this is no joke, right? The bangers are really intense, like tons of dust is coming down on them in their Star Trek caves. And this is a military installation where you only need one set of keys to open the silo doors and launch the nukes. Yeah.

Feels pretty dangerous here at the end. It does. Pairden gets really close to firing one off, but fortunately is stopped. And they all go outside and see the atmosphere starting to clear and they don't even have to wear their bags anymore. Little meatloaf girl leads them to the sunshine. Pretty nice. Finally we get a scene after Janeway's log updating us that friendship one is in their

cargo bay now. They're, they're taking it home. But the death of Carrie is hitting everyone pretty hard. And Janeway sits at, this is Carrie's quarters, right? That was my interpretation. Yeah. Cause they've got his, his ship in a bottle. He's been making a Voyager model in a bottle. Janeway's gone through all of Carrie's personal effects

and is like, look at this very embarrassing polo shirt I found to Chagote. Why would he have this? It's a Brinner information system shirt. What an idiot. What she spends a lot of time with is this ship in a bottle that Carrie's been working on. And there it is, Voyager inside a bottle.

How do you think he made it? It seems impossible. And she gets all wistful in this scene. She's like, what must it have been like to be visited by this giant floating jukebox that caused them to auto-C Chernobyl so many years ago. Like, why do things like this happen when all we're trying to do is explore? Is the action worth the juice? Is really the big takeaway?

This is a question without an answer. This is how the episode ends. I mean, for Chacote, the action is the juice. Yeah. How'd you like this episode, Ben? 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 really liked it. I thought it was, I mean, like, I think that maybe like the one thing I sort of wish they had done was make this something that went out post the foundation of the Federation and Starfleet. Like make it something that they do bear a little bit more guilt over. Right, because they don't feel responsible for this because it predates every official type of spacefaring mission Earth had ever done.

They just sort of blame it on the cavemen space guys for throwing their shit up into space. And I think that that would make it a slightly stronger metaphor for colonialism and the things that have fucked up all of the places that Europe fucked up in the past. Like it seems like that is like pretty explicitly what the metaphor is about. And I mean, I think that it can often feel really hard to take any ownership over shit that happened in the past like that for anyone. Right. But like colonialism is not an apt comparison here.

This is pure exploration. Right. Well, yeah, it was like pure, hey, what's up? Where the earth sends us a note if you get this. But the fallout is so grave that I kind of wished that... I think it makes it a much harder episode to write because so many of the feelings surrounding these things and like the way we grapple with, you know, the crimes of the past are hard issues that I don't think anybody has like a really perfect answer for.

Matthew 10 But like, again, do you really feel like this is a crime what's happened here? Like... Well, that's what I'm saying is I kind of wished that they had made... I wished that they had written the premise a little bit more to it having been a crime. Yeah. Yeah, because this is like incident versus intent. Yeah. So that aside, I think that they did a great job with the premise that they wrote for.

And yeah, I thought it was a really interesting episode. I also just wanted to see more of these people unburdened of their loaf by the end. Like, I wanted to see the pregnant lady cured. I wanted, you know, I kind of wanted to see Varan cured so that he could have a moment where he's like, oh, fuck, I was so hardened and angry about everything. I mean, probably just not enough time in the episode for it, but. Yeah. Have Harry Kim find a sexual opportunity down there.

Yeah. You know shit is glowing from all that radiation. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know shit is glowing from all that radiation. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Have a few more people carrying babies by the end. Yeah. Harry Kim's not coming back.

You're on your own. Yeah. I like the episode, Zubin. It does get itself off the hook in a convenient way, but as I said, like I'm arguing that there maybe is no hook to be on. This is like the, the flagellating of the captain at the end, the self-flagellating seems unnecessary, you know? Like they're explorers.

Stuff is going to break when you're exploring. And they tried their best to fix it. And I think that's a good moment for everyone involved, you know? This wasn't their fault. This wasn't their mess to clean up. But they did their best. They gave the baby back, right? They gave the baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back. That's the dark ending to the thing. It's like, we do for you. If

we get to take this one with. The way the baby puppet like moved and opened its mouth reminded me of the Borg's baby puppet. I wonder if it was the same one. Yeah. It's like, it's close enough that it's like, it seems like it's probably the same rubber mold at the very least. Yeah. But yeah, that limp little baby is so sad. Yeah. They really did a good job with the moisture. Yeah.

Ben, speaking of, uh, of moisture, when do we see what's dripping off of the priority one messages? Yeah. Let's see what's dripping off of the Priority One messages? Yeah, let's see what's dripping off of them, Adam. 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. Ben, our first priority one message is from Rachel. It is to Graham. The message goes like this, I'm buying this P1 five months before your birthday. Did you ever notice that your birthday is exactly five months after the date of the Enchantment Under the Sea dance?

Whoa. I wonder if anybody Anybody! knows when your birthday is without Googling it. Happy birthday to you and she who is your partner. Wow. Wow. Every back to the future nerd knows this date.

October 27th, 1952? What is, now I'm gonna Google it. What's your guess? I'm gonna guess November 12th. November 5th, 1955. God damn it, it almost rhymes. November 5th, 1955. So we both missed it.

Fuck. Wow, well, happy birthday to Graham and she who is your partner. Our next P1 is from Richard, your brother, and it's to Grant, my brother. Goes like this. I wanted to give a shout out to the best younger brother anyone could ask for. You are the best man in my wedding. You are my best friend. I'm so happy we can enjoy this Dick and Fart podcast together, especially as Ben and Adam review your favorite Trek series, Voyager.

There's coffee in that Tin Man drop. There's coffee in that Tin Man. Chris Brenner drop. I'm Chris Brenner. Brenner Information Systems. You know, interface, operations, net access, channel 90. That Chris Brenner. Ass Lab Drop. We'll be in the ass lab. Deck 8, section 29. See you there. Report to the ass lab. The ass lab is your baby. She had such a great ass. Great ass. Here, she got on. Great ass. The ass lab is your baby. She had such a great ass. Great ass. Here, she got her.

Great ass. The ass lab requires additional energy. We'd like to enhance the ass lab. I see. Great ass. Great ass. Wow. Well, you snuck it in before the end of Voyager.

I'll say that. Yeah, we're getting very, very close to the finale here. Nice work. And anybody that would like to get something in in time for Enterprise, I would recommend getting your P1 now. We're getting ready to start. Yeah, and thanks for doing P1s. They're a great way to support the show. Hey Ben? What's that, Adam?

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Incredible. Drunk Shimoda! I'm going to give it to, uh, to Kerry. Just to honor Lieutenant Kerry. A real one that almost made it home. So sort of like the Academy Awards in memoriam reel. Like we're gonna give this Shimoda to Kerry.

I can get on that level. I like that. A Shimoda in memoriam. Yeah. Yeah. I want to do that too. RSVP Carrie. We really quite literally barely knew you. Adam, why don't you head to gach.biz slash game. I'm gonna tell you about our next episode. It's called Natural Law.

It's season seven, episode 22 of Star Trek Voyager. Seven and Chakotay stumble upon a race of primitive humanoids isolated from technological progress by an energy barrier. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Sounds nice. Sounds like people that Chocoktae could definitely hang with, you know? I mean, his tub technology is probably gonna blow their fucking minds.

Heh heh heh heh. Yeah. Rolls up there as a future man. I never considered this. Ben, we're on the top floor of the game of buttholes. The will of the caretaker. I remember that. Square 97. Just three squares ahead.

The end of the game board, the Mournhammered Power Hour episode. But before we even have the chance to get there, we are on the doorstep of a space butthole which would drop us down to the row of 70s and a square requiring extensive research an nth degree square. Alright. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. What shall it be? Ben I hit neither.

We're on square 99. Ho-ho-ho! Chubla! Did I win? Hardly. Dodged him. Wow. Right in the middle.

And you know what that means? It's going to be a regular old episode next week. Regular old episode. I'm into it. The possibility of timing the last episode of Voyager with a Mournhammered seems of timing the last episode of Voyager with a Mornhammered seems increasingly unlikely. Unless we do a Mornhammered the episode after next, we go back down to the beginning and then we catch some sort of square that gets us back up to the very top, right? Yeah, we would have to roll magic rolls all the way, I think.

I don't know, I think it might be mathematically impossible, Yeah yeah that's it. That's okay. Oh wait if we hit the caretaker F which is square 10. Yeah we could we could potentially hit that. Huh. It might happen I mean it's long odds. Yeah. Very long odds. You know I'm a betting man. I don't know if I want to get that drunk for a double-length episode anyways, you know? Yeah, I don't either. No. You heard it here. Don't want to do it.

Well, we gotta thank all of the kind friends of DeSoto who support this production on a monthly basis. Thanks to everyone who supported us in the drive. Thanks to everyone who leaves a nice five-star review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you're using. If you're using Overcast, just star the episode. That helps. It could not be easier to give Greatest Gen a great review on Overcast. That one button. Yeah. You tap it and you're done. Got to thank Windy Pretty, our producer and editor.

You know, basically the, the glue that keeps Uxbridge-Shamoda together. We got to thank our social media and marketing director, Rob Adler and our consigniary, the great Bill Tilley, Cardani. We got the finest crew in Star Trek podcasting, don't we? We really have the A-Team of away teams. Any minute now, they're going to mutiny us. Ha ha ha. We deserve it.

Thank you to Adam Ragusea, who made the original Janeway song off of Dark Materia's inspiration. Go join a community of Friends of Risotto. They're all over the internet. DrunkShemota.com, Facebook.com slash GreatestGen, Reddit.com slash r slash GreatestGen. All of the places that cool people hang out online. And with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode Star Trek Voyager and an episode of the greatest generation Voyager where Chakotay and seven wow people with their tub manufacture technology But we'll see if they wow them with their

loincloth technology Just how primitive are these people? Well, I mean, the way you wow someone wearing a loincloth is you kind of pull that thing up. Wow. Wow. Hike up your loincloth a little more and show the world to me? That's it exactly.

This is a real episode of late 90s rock references. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.