The Greatest Generation - The Metaphor Has Been Mengele’d (VOY S5E8)

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

When BLT starts wearing an anime lizard shawl, everyone is up in arms over Doc Holoday’s Cardassian consultant. But even after BLT declines treatment on principle, Captain Janeway makes a call that sends shockwaves through the crew. Should something else have been added to this episode’s warning cloud? What question are we sending to the The Delta Flyers podcast? How deep is BLT’s well of I-told-you-so energy? It’s the episode made for FOBPs!Support the production of The Greatest Generation.Friends of DeSoto for Democracy.Friends of DeSoto for Justice. Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Caretaker!Music by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFollow The Greatest Generation on Twitter, and discuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen!The Greatest Generation is on Twitch.Facebook group | Subreddit | Discord | WikiSign up for our mailing list!

Priority 1 message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Hey friends of Disodo. Before today's episode, we just wanted to take a moment to talk about the historic labor actions being taken by writers and actors in the American Film and Television industry. If you're a fan of the work done by the people who make Star Trek, we hope you'll join us in standing in solidarity with the folks who actually bring these adventures to life. Over the past several years, the AMPTP, the organization that represents the American Film and Television Production Studios, have reduced the profit from movies and TV going to workers. And in so doing,

they've attempted to weaken the labor unions that represent those workers. They wouldn't even engage the unions on many issues in their negotiations. And so a strike was the only course of action to take. Adam, Wendy and I have been having a lot of internal discussions about how best to stand with the unions and we are continuing those conversations in a dynamic situation. We're doing our best to understand where the picket lines are in these digital spaces,

and we would never intentionally cross one. With the information we have, we feel like we can do more good talking about and supporting the strike and continuing our show as planned. We'll keep you informed about what all this means for greatest trek specifically. Today we're making a contribution to the Entertainment Community Fund. This fund exists to help all the people whose livelihoods have been put on hold because the AMPTP refuses to negotiate

in good faith with the unions. It provides financial support for writers, actors, and all the thousands of laborers who make the shows that we talk about here and without whom we wouldn't have Star Trek to cast pot about. Those folks are all out of work because billionaires, company shareholders, and the executives of these companies don't want to compromise on the length of their yachts. We hope you'll join us in supporting entertainment workers in a challenging time, especially after they've already endured several years of challenges brought on by the pandemic

and season two of Star Trek Picard. We've set up a page where you can also contribute. It's at friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdececoto for Labor.com. That's FriendsOfDecoto for Labor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now let's get on with the show. Bringing what the U.S. is for the U.S. is for the U.S. is for the U.S. is for the U.S. Welcome to the greatest generation. It's a Star Trek podcast. But a couple of guys who are just a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast.

I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pryanaka. Adam, have you heard about this chat G.P.T. website? I mean, I heard you. I heard you. I heard letters and numbers. You heard me say that. But I have no idea what you're talking about. I really don't.

So this is a, this is this new AI, like they say it's like revolutionizing creativity. It's like one of those websites where you describe, you know, Jordan Peterson playing with a train set and it gives you a realistic artist rendering of it using the power of internet. Hey, here's something that would revolutionize creativity.

Living wage. We wouldn't know anything about that here at the Experts Your Motor Corporation. But I thought maybe we could lighten the load on ourselves by seeing if the chat GPT program could generate some banter for us to open a show with. So explain to me how this works. I understand that it's an AI thing, but how exactly would it do this? Is an example the best way to teach me how this works? Because I still don't, I don't think I get it. It might be. Like, people will put in a prompt, like,

solve world hunger or tell a story. Is this like AI madlibs? No, it's kind of like, it's gonna replace us. It's gonna be, this is gonna be what people listen to instead of podcasts in the future. I'm just trying to get it on board early, because I think that, you know, like if we could eventually just put in a prompt, like do an episode of the greatest generation

about season five episode eight of Star Trek Voyager and then like have just AI, you know, recreate our voices, then we sit back and we cash checks, baby. And we don't even have to work. I'm shocked about this 180 that I'm experiencing right now. A couple of years ago, you will not replace us. Bad, really bad, bad thing to say. And now, I don't want to be replaced by this thing. It was not you. It was something that rhymes with you that they were saying.

And that remains bad, Adam. I don't want AI to replace me. I mean, I, maybe I'd like to call it in sick from time to time. Maybe in a way that's bad, Adam. I don't want AI to replace me. I mean, I've, maybe I'd like to call and sick from time to time, maybe in a way that's not perceptible to the viewers. Is that what this will allow me to do? Yeah, that's kind of what I'm hoping for. Like, yeah, like if...

Maybe you write in Adam calls and sick to work from my Star Trek podcast, what does that sound like? I've written a prompt here, generate a script for Adam and Ben to talk for three minutes at the opening of their podcast about Star Trek 4. Should I get any more specific than that? I think you should be as specific as possible. I think AI is pretty dumb, right?

It needs inputs to work. Well, that's the thing is that people say that this is really great. So I'll say make it funny. All right. Yeah, make it funny. Okay. Be funny, AI.

Okay. I think I can share my screen with you, right? Can I do that? Yeah. Is it going to generate a script and then we're going to read it? It is generating a script as we speak at them. You can see it typing out right there. Can you read that? Is that eligible to you?

Yeah, if I make it big, I can do that. All right. So you've got the first line here. So this is a chat GPT marion of the greatest generation. Welcome to the greatest generation. It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of robots who are just a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pranica. Hey Ben, how's it going? Not bad. Just trying to keep my board game plants under control. Huh! Good luck with that. So are you excited for today's episode on Star Trek Voyager? Absolutely! I mean, what's not to love about the USS Voyager getting lost in the Delta

Quadrant and having to find their way back home? Yeah, and let's not forget about Captain Janeway and her no-nonsense attitude. I mean, who else could take on the Borg and come out on top? Definitely not me, that's for sure. But hey, at least we have seven of nine to provide some much needed eye candy. Oh, man, don't even get me started on seven of nine. Talk about some serious alien hotness. And let's not forget about the doctor. He may be just a hologram, but he's got some serious skills when it comes to saving

the day. Yeah, he's like the ultimate Swiss army knife. Well, I think we've gushed enough about Star Trek Voyager for one day. Let's get on with the episode, shall we? Sounds good to me. Engage. And scene. Wow. I mean, I was expecting it to be more awful. I'd say we can, this is better than our show, right? Hey, what would happen if you entered in the episode of Voyager that we're reviewing today? Like, generate a script for Adam and Ben to talk about the Star Trek Voyager episode, nothing human.

What happens then? Let's see. I should probably spell it correctly, right? Yeah. And I'm gonna add, make it really funny. Yeah. How about make it really horny? Yeah.

And horny. Like, comma, really horny. Like, fled your server basements, open AI. This will be a closer facsimile of our show. Oh wait, what happened here? I'm sorry, but I am unable to generate content that is inappropriate or explicit. Oh no, okay, so I'm not allowed to make it horny.

Hey, Ben, it sounds like you and I get to keep our jobs. Like keep our jobs. It's that all that stuff about 7 of 9 being a serious, alien, hot year, whatever. Yeah. I'm gonna confine my request to it being funny. Oh, man. Man, this is not that different.

The second generated script. They talk a lot about Blanna and Tom and testicles. So, let's go ahead and read this. What do you say? Let's go back to one. Captain, Captain, bring Genoa to the U.S. as 4-8-2. Captain, Captain, Captain.

Welcome to the Grey's Generation. It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of robots who are just a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Prandtica. Hey, Ben, how's it going? Not bad, Adam.

Just trying to get over my obsession with Captain Janeway's hair. It's like every time I see it, I just want to run my fingers through it. I know what you mean. But seriously, are you ready for today's episode on Nothing Human? Absolutely. I mean, what seriously, are you ready for today's episode on nothing human? Absolutely. I mean, what's not to love about an episode where the doctor has to save a member of a species that's basically a giant ball of testicles. Oh wait, that says that says tentacles. Excuse me. Yeah, you read what you want to read and I guess so. Yeah. Yeah, and Let's not forget about the moral dilemma of using a convicted

war criminals memories to help save the day. Definitely a tough call. But hey, at least we have Belana and Tom to provide some much needed comic relief. Oh, man, don't even get me started on Belana and Tom. Talk about some serious tension on the ship and let's not forget about two fox poker face. He's like a vulcan emotionless robot, but somehow he always manages to clean up at the table. Yeah, he's like the ultimate poker pro. Well, I think we've teased enough about the episode for one day. Let's get on with it, shall we? Sounds good to me. Engage. I'm starting to see a theme. That was really bad. That was worse than the first one. It was worse than the first one, and yet even better than our show, like paradoxically. There's something very Matthew about one of us talking about a thing and then the other person going, oh man, and what about

this completely unrelated other thing that I'm interested in? Like, that's not how a conversation works. That's not how any of this works. Yeah, tell me about it. And don't get me started on how a conversation doesn't have to work that way in the first place. Ben, I'm ready. I really want to do our show our way and get this fucking AI taste out of my mouth. Yeah. That was a... I feel awful after that. I feel like that was an interesting experiment, but I am satisfied that our jobs are safe for the time being.

I think so too. I think they need to tighten a couple of screws over at the AI robot labs. I think that a long way to go to perfect what we've got going on. Let's see if there's any screws that need tightening over on the Starship Voyagers. What do you say? Yeah, let's check those screws, Ben, as we discuss Star Trek Voyager. Season five, episode 8. Nothing human. Reaver course. Unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo toots, I'm not turning around.

Don't get me started, Ben, on this episode. Not to mention this episode, there were a few. episode that were... So we open with the doctor doing sort of vacation photo, montage down in the holodack, and this really has some data's poetry, energy, everybody hates sitting there and watching the doctor show his pictures from an away mission. Oh, but I haven't finished, Dad! There's more. The best is yet to come, Lieutenant. At first, I thought this scene was bad because it represented how much power they gave to the doctor to elbow himself into the society they've made on the ship.

Like, there's a compulsory aspect to this. Like the crew must attend the doctor's presentations, and I'm using plural, like plural presentations that the doctor's doing here, and they've got to all attend. Can you reprogram or something? When I watched this happen, I was like, this is a mistake.

They never should have given him, you know, the sort of autonomy that would make a moment like this possible. But the more I thought about it, then, you have to have this scene in this episode because of everything that follows. Yeah. It actually is super useful because you want to ask that question here in this moment instead of later on when you really got to decide whether you need to listen to the doctor or not,

when the shit really goes down. I noticed that they're interested in the presentation really did turn around when they started showing closeups of Vulcan reproductive glands. Yeah. That was pretty exciting, right? You know, the warning, verbiage, when you start up a show

and it says like, profanity, nudity, what have you. Right, extreme closeup of Vainey Gland. Yeah. Vainey Gland should be in the warning cloud. Good. I also love the bit that Chico Tei is doing by letting them suffer through this. It's his watch on the bridge with Ensign Kim

and he's just going to let them twist in the wind, wondering when their requested yellow alert is ever going to come through. They've been in there over an hour. Sounds great. I love all the grumbling they do after the meeting of Jern's and on the corridor like, where was the yellow alert?

I thought the yellow alert was going to happen. What the fuck? No I thought the yellow alert was gonna happen. What the fuck? No yellow, no yellow. Definitely grounds for court martial. I went on that Tinder date and left very explicit instructions to my roommate. Yeah. You know?

I'd rather be in the first wave. Like, Kim and Shikote know what this is. I'd rather go and cold than expect an awful presentation. Right. Like, these people clearly did. Because, yeah, the anticipation is as torturous probably as the presentation itself. Exactly.

I'd be twisting myself up thinking of excuses for how to bail. Brutal. I was thinking also just about all the, like, socialization lessons that the doctor has been doing with Seven of Nine. It doesn't seem like he's picking up on the social issues here. Like the eyes are rolling super fucking hard in the crowd at his presentation.

He does not have the room. Yeah, and at this point in the episode, the wave of goodwill for the doctor begins to roll back. This is as good as it gets for him this episode. Yeah, well a couple of folks head to Nielix's restaurant to get a piece of pie and talk about the movie they just saw. You'd like to get a piece of pie and talk about the movie you just saw. Delicious. It's probably some root pie that Nielix has got. probably some root pie that Nielix has got. Root pie and root coffee.

Yeah. Leola strawberry pie. Yeah. I mean, when in season, you know? This is the scene where it's clear that the presentation is tailored toward the specific audience every time. Yeah.

There's like a compromise on BLT that other people have seen that Tom Paris has not. Yeah. What? Really? Well, I seem to have missed that one. I don't like the doctor having those materials. I also don't like the Tom's idea that he's going to email it to the whole crew. That's that nice, Tom. Yeah. Like, that's your lady. Don't humiliate her to her workplace.

Yeah, but Paris has been humiliated every presentation with that mud photo, right? Look at all that crud on him. Yeah. Whoa, what happened to you? Did you fall into some mud or something? Yeah, I did. Yeah, but that's not her fault. Like, he should find something embarrassing about the doctor and circulate that. You know? Rewengue. What does it mean?

It means, Omae ta. It means Rewenge. I love the behind the production thought of this moment. Like, they covered him in mud and they took his picture. They had to do it. Yeah. That's the picture I want to get an autograph of when I go to a convention. Yeah. That's the picture I want to get an autograph of

when I go to a convention. Yeah. Like, could you imagine your homemade printout of the town Paris portrait? Yeah. And you bring it up to a to be dunks' table? That'd be pretty fun. Yeah.

Do you think that that was shot? Like, is there a 35 millimeter print of that photograph somewhere? Like, did they send a professional photographer to take that picture and then scan it into a computer? Or was this in the era where they could take that picture on a digital camera and load it into the episode that way? Does the Delta Flyers podcast have a listener mail segment?

I think that's the question I've got for them on that show. We've got to ask them about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The scene really reminded me of in college we had a roommate who got for them on that show. We've got to ask them about this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The scene really reminded me of in college, we had a roommate who got a, like a Michelangelo mask and plastic nunchucks set, like to dress up as an injuturtle. And I guess it was for like maybe a friendster or something.

You wanted us to take like a bunch of pictures of him dressed as Michael Angelo doing like nunchuck tricks around the dorm room. You do not want to do that. That's how you turn into a Star Wars kid. My roommates emailed every single professor in the film school and like a bunch of admin staff, like a trove of these pictures. Yeah.

Yeah. Like my boss at my work study was like, what is this picture? What is this? Who are, what is he up to? Is he drunk? And I was like, no, he's not drunk. He's just like that.

I hate that you were a party to that. I wasn't. I didn't know what happened. I found out about it the next day at work. He was pissed at them. He made them like go around and apologize in person to every single professor that received it. Wow.

It was quite the kerfuffle in my domestic life in college. So I don't like that the doc is doing this to Paris, and I don't like that Paris wants to do it to BLT. Try it and I'll kill you. There's a lot of shame to go around. Yeah. So they're sitting there drinking some late night coffees when the whole ship starts vibrating.

And we cut up to the bridge, and there's a massive energy wave heading at the ship. And it's also like following them, like they try to change course, and the massive energy wave changes course. Yeah, it's easy to get a little lost in the description of this, I thought, because you're not seeing the exterior as they describe it. It's following them.

Like that's fucking terrifying. That'd be like if praxis blew up, and then the explosion just like went and found the Excelsior somewhere. If Sulu's order was like turn her away from the wave and avoid it and get the wave pursued the Excelsior, how surprising would that be for Sulu in that moment? Talk about a moment to drop your tea.

Yeah. Yeah, And this energy wave just absolutely hammers the ship. And the ship can't break free because energy waves are strong. Scientists keep making them. We come back from the opening title sequence in Media Wave, and it passes and it's like, so that seems to have been fine. It shook them up a little bit, but it didn't cause any damage. And then they find that they now have an audio track in their database. Yeah, this is just bizarre. This is hard to understand also until Kim plays it back.

The idea is this wave pass through dropped a cassette into their player and then went on its way. So Kim hits play and it sounds like this terrible screeching sound. Can I hear the most annoying sound in the world. Yeah, it's got like a cranky bird kind of energy, too. I hated hearing this. No. I didn't like it at all. No.

I was like, God, I hope they don't play that anymore times in the episode. I'd say it's a pretty good bet somebody's trying to tell us something. They pivot very quickly from, oh, this is awful. I hate it to where did this come from? And Paris is like, we can go there right now. And then they do. Yeah. Like bang, bang, bang.

They arrive at this ship, the source of this awful tape that they received. And there is one David Kronenberg type life form aboard and it's in pretty bad shape. Yeah, we see like the beat up ship and then we are like in six bay with this life form and the captain and BLT and the EMH talking about it. This thing also kind of reminded me of the critter that comes out of Zorg's desk in the fifth element, you know, when he's like banging on the buttons. Yeah. It's like a less cute version of that guy.

Or like that guy fucked us a face hugger, maybe. You like that. You're gonna love this. We get a talk about this alien before we move on. The design. Were they going for scary? What were they going for here? Because I don't think they could go for scary. And that's why it looks the way it does. Right. It's not cute, it's not

scary. It looks like Pokemon to me. Like I've never played Pokemon, but what little knowledge I have of it are like the characters in Pokemon look like this. They look like scaly, tentically floaty guys. It definitely looks like it came from the same creative shop that produced Paris and Janeway turned into lizards, puppets, you know, it doesn't look anything like those, but for some reason it has the same energy as those. Like the... The people who were fired from the Jim Henson Muppet studio got together and made this out

of their dumpster dive parts. We're gonna make our own puppet studio with Blackjack and hookers. They're too nice over there. This is what they came up with. I mean, BLT is there to greet for some reason. Yeah. Why is that exactly? This presents as both a medical emergency and an engineering problem. Right. And I guess it's like the ship is in really band shape and they're trying to figure out things about the ship. And she's down there to say like, oh yeah, like we might not even be able to interface

with this ship because the alien gives biochemical commands to interface with it. I guess it's like excreting stuff on the computer in the ship. And that's how the computer knows what to do. Yeah, I really should have put down a tarp in six bay. It'd be like at the beginning of this episode in order to generate the script that we read,

I had just like popped a pimple onto my computer screen. And you know, that's what caused it to generate. So some plausible banter between Ben and Adam. As gross as that thought is, I do feel like some liquid would be welcome here with this alien. I think part of why it doesn't work for me is that it just looks like a piece of plastic.

It just looks dry. Yeah, it's not gooey at all. And I think that that was one of the like real strokes of genius with the xenomorph is like, it's always coated in goo. Yeah, no one's having any fun here because it's so dry. And when it jumps on BLT, there's a security person there that has to be told not to shoot. Don't shoot this thing because you might hit BLT, but I was wondering why Janeway doesn't

shoot it at point blank range. Janeway is right there. She could hold a dustbuster to its body. Is that like being electrocuted? Like you don't want to shoot an alien attached to BLT because the energy from the discharge would hurt her. Oh, yeah, if you shot set the vape, would it pass from the alien to her, automatically? That's what I was trying to figure out.

Yeah. What the hell is going on? That's what I was trying to figure out. But we don't really get an answer to that. You're just made to fill in the blanks yourself. Yeah, it all happened so fast that by the time the doctor explains it, like, it's like in her vascular system. It's like, God, it's tendrils like so involved

in her birdie that they can't get it off by any conventional method. Did you understand this either because it feels like I'm really going after this episode right away. And I think part of it is it's lack of detail. Part of what made the alien in the alien franchise so visceral is like you see the schematic. You see the X-ray in the medical facility of like a thing going down a throat.

And you're made to feel how awful that's gotta be. BLT's wearing this thing like a lizard shawl and you're not really sure exactly how the alien is getting into her birdie or if it is at all just by its proximity. How is it affecting her? All we're told is like she's getting pumped full of some kind of shit they don't understand and her organs are failing as a result.

Yeah, I mean, if they weren't saying those things out loud, you'd just be like, wow, BLT got one of those anime body pillows. All right, if that's what she's into. Yeah, Tom Parris works long hours and she's got to fall asleep too. I guess she got Pokemon on hers. Yeah. I guess it's the only thing that'll help her wind down. So, yeah, the upshot is that there's no obvious way to get it off, but it is like slowly

harming her. It's not killing her, softly, it's killing her gently. It's like paralyzing her and, you know, drawing from her kidneys or something. And like, Paris is down there at this point, you know, having a full-blown freak out at the captain of the doctor, like like get this fucking thing off her and the doctor's like, Terris, everybody is talking about getting this fucking thing off her.

Like that's not the dispute. We're trying to do that without killing her. Jamie, it's like I wasn't aware you were still together. I mean, what is really going on here? How many months has it been? Like have you had a what are we conversation yet? Some episodes, you barely talk to each other. Even though emergencies are happening all around us.

Ha, ha, ha. So going from zero to a hundred in like absolute record time, the captain like marches into the doctor's office and is like the solution to this problem is to make a second holographic doctor that can consult with the first holographic doctor about exobiology because this is such a weird alien. I was really surprised by this

because when you start an episode about the doctor's inherent vanity, and then you start an episode about the doctor's inherent vanity and then you suggest an idea of an additional doctor to quote unquote help, I thought the doc's reaction would be, what, I'm not good enough for you. Like I'm all a ship could ever need. I'm the best. His professional curiosity overrides what could be a more interesting argument against this idea.

Yeah. I was just like amazed at how quickly they got to this weird idea and how quickly everybody agrees that it's the best idea. Right. Even though like we've seen Harry Kim try and make like a substitute EMH before and how badly that went, it's apparently much easier to make a substitute like consulting EMH than it is to make the the original flavor. It is very important that we create a character distinct from this weird alien on built-in's body. We must never look at that alien.

We must never look at that alien. Yeah. So down in the holodeck, Harry and the doc get to work on creating this character. And they just like look up like who's the best person at exobiology of anyone? And they come up with Krelmoset. And he appears and appears to be a Cardassian. of anyone and they come up with Krelmoset, and he appears to be a Kardashian, and Harry Kim launches into a racist tirade immediately.

Have you mentioned to anyone else that this guy's a Kardashian? What difference does it make? Yeah, why don't you cool it with the anti-Cardassian remarks there, Harry? I mean, I'd expect that from the make-wee screw. Make-wee? But from Harry? Right.

It's surprising to hear it from him. And I was like, okay, I get this. This is going to be an episode about this Cardassian having been a really great dude. And it's going to teach us all an important lesson about prejudice because they're all gonna be weird about him initially. And then they're gonna be like, it turns out that Cardassian's doctor guy was a saint. We actually like him better than the doc. And his presentations, they're amazing.

So entertaining. He's got bits like the order of the photos is scintillating. You're on the edge of your seat the entire time. Yeah. He also had some pretty good ideas. And it's never at the expense of any of the other crew members. You know, it's never like, oh, I'm getting a laugh because I'm embarrassing one of my friends and colleagues, you know. Yeah. There are three things to remember about the English Times version of Kroha said that they begin with

and a couple of turns to the screwdriver later. He sounds like a fun cool dude. He's got that neighborly vibe, right? Like someone you run into from time to time on the sidewalk. That kind of nice. Yeah, just pleasant to pass the time with for a bit. You never know them that deeply. Yeah. You never know what their backstory is, for example. Why would you want to know?

They seem nice enough. You don't need to know their dark secret. No, no. So he meets the doctor. It's a little bit awkward at first because the doctor does not have a name. And that's like kind of zoomed past really quickly. That was like a big storyline for a while. And I feel like Voyager just kind of like was like, yeah, we don't give a fuck about naming this character at this point. Yeah, Krell Mossett sounds linguistically like Gold to Cut. Like there's a don't-do-don't to a Cardassian name, isn't there? Yeah, we were talking a little bit before we heated the mics up about how familiar this guy looked.

And I was like, is Mossett a name that we've heard before? Or is it just that like we haven't seen Cardassian loaf in a long time and so like looking at a guy in Cardassian loaf is, you know, like, oh yeah, that guy looks vaguely familiar to me, you know, like is that what's going on here? It's incredible how much weight the Garrett character carries for all cardassians everywhere as a counterpoint to every other cardassian we meet in Star Trek. Right. Like he is the exception. He really is. They all suck kind of except for Garrett who also sucks a little bit. Yeah. For reasons we don't get a ton of detail about. Yeah, but you know, seems to maybe have done bad things or maybe not, who knows?

Who can really say? Certainly not him in a way that you could feel pretty sure of. Right, yeah. I have nothing to hide. Doc and Krelma said hit it off immediately. They have got like a professional crush on each other big time. Yeah. I mean, it's love first souped up tricorder, right? There were husbands practically. Yeah. Yeah. Because like Krelma said, like modifies one of the medical

tricorders in 6 Bay to scan in some way that would be better than what is normally done. And he's like, oh, yeah, I've been telling the people it's starfully to do this for years. They don't listen to me though. It's so weird. Like every time you hit a certain button on this tricorder, a random bejorin dies, like somewhere on Bejor. Like it seems

at the time unnecessary, right? Why does the tricorder have to do this? And it's going to save the life of your crew member, but every button press kills a random bejorin, and it's like, is that a trade-off we're willing to make? Yeah. The doc does not see this as a moment in time to ask a lot of questions. He's just grateful for the help. Yeah. And not like professionally threatened by the help at all. Yeah. Meanwhile, Janeway and Chico Te, there's all other part of this, right? There's that transmission that they played over the tape recorder. And they're like, well, can we translate this thing?

And Janeway is like, we could, but here's what happened when I turned every note of this music into something visual. And what's on screen is just not a code that anyone is going to track when you look at it. No, what you know what it looks like is like a microscope view of ropes flying past the screen. Yeah. I mean, this is buried as a sea story problem to solve and then

gets elevated into a story status later on at a very weird moment in time. But yeah, like part of the challenge is is their inability to communicate with this thing or people of its kind. Speaking of people that are having a tough time communicating, we meet seven of nine down in the engineering section and she's working with Ensign Taybore, a real-life majoring on scanning the computers of this alien ship and he does not take kindly to receiving orders. Like, he's a make-wease. Make-wease? He's not even getting orders from a star fleet at this point.

He's getting orders from seven of nine. And he's like, yeah, I just don't, like, this is not really what I signed up for. Like, I was just trying to be like a small-time terrorist in a part of a larger organization. Now I'm taking orders from an XB and like super high heels. What's going on? You think of all the Mayquise.

And of all the Mayquise, the Bajoran Mayquise, probably of the biggest axis to grind, right? I'm kidding. And how lucky is he that for all the buttons that the doc hit on that tricorder, he's not been killed yet. Hahaha. Yeah. And like, he's like, so does it kill like specifically a bejorin that's on bejor, or is it like any bejorin anywhere in the universe?

And like, what if they're like half bejorin and half, you know, Romulan or something? Like, like, do hybrids count? The show doesn't want you to like tape or up top, right? He's doing a lot of piping up at seven. Seven's is trying to get these alien data banks transferred over to Voyager before the ship destroys itself. This doesn't seem like a good time for his many opinions about how this should be done and who you should be taking orders from.

No. And at this point in the episode, like, there's a visual language to the show that you get used to that I feel is thrown completely out the window during this moment of tension that comes next because as the alien ship makes it clear it's going to explode, all of the angles during this scene are crazy. They're like from the floor up, from the ceiling down, through a railing. What is going on here? I feel like we are so used to seeing the bridge from the other side. The camera is really over toward the right hand side of the of the bridge for a lot of this episode. It's weird how different that feels, right?

Yeah, and I think it's also like underlining how unusual it is for seven of nine to be the person that declares the red alert. Like they're working in engineering, seven of nine is the one that calls it and then we're like up on the bridge, the camera's on the floor, like way over the right hand side

and Janeway and Chico Tehrer, like running onto the bridge to, you know, order the ship to back away so that it doesn't get us bloated when this alien ship, like goes critical because they tried to download its database. What kind of design is this? Fuck is going on over there.

Yeah, you'd expect to cut back to the alien boa, just kind of flopping around, maybe having some kind of reaction to its ship exploding. Yeah. It's not what happens at all. No. Seems fine. It's chilling. Yeah.

So this alien ship off the board and Crel and the duck continue their medical pattern. This is a, I think the second shot of BLT in the biobad with the alien. Yeah. I think the less they show of this, the better. This just looks like miserable work for Roxanne Dawson, right? Yeah. Like, can we say that? Sure. The entire episode she's laying on this bed with this thing around her neck and bearity, like made to emote in a way that seems very difficult.

It's like, you know, not everybody wants to be public about their Anime body pillow, you know Yeah, it's the sort of thing you want to put in the in the checked luggage You want to open that one you get in the hotel room. One of the things that the doc and Massette are talking about is this doesn't seem to be an attack. Like it definitely could have killed BLT at this point. If that was what its goal was, it seems to be, you know, harming her slowly, but that wouldn't be like a great way to do it

if that was what you were trying to do. And so the theory now is that this thing is using her to like keep itself alive. And so, Mesette is like, oh man, like, I really want to work this out and figure out a way to get it off her, but it just sucks not to have like my abattoir. Oh man, like I really want to work this out and figure out a way to get it off her, but I could just suck not to have like my abitur.

I mean, did I say abitur? I meant my laboratory. You know, you see how the two words are so similar. So based on his request, they set up a hollow lab for Krell. Great idea. Give him what he wants. We're just using the holodeck for literally anything else. Meanwhile, Paris and BLT have a conversation.

She's had a couple of moments of lucidity where she will wake up from the coma or whatever she's in. Paris is threatening her with rock and roll. Like, you know, you're, now that you're pinned down, I can play you all my shit-he-old music. And that she rolls her head over to the other side and notices that there is a filthy cardie

in the doctor's office. And she's like, what's with him? There's this like, oh yeah, that's the guy that's gonna help get this thing off you. Relax, it's just a hologram. She does not take a kindly to this. I don't hate you. Cardi is what the L.T. says. I hate what you're trying to allow me to become, which is a person without this giant bug on me. Yeah. Paris is like, that doesn't even make any

sense. What? What? It's like, it sounds like an idea, but it isn't. Like the more you think about it, the less cohesive it is. Paris also uses this time to just kind of ask, what are we? You and me, like as a relationship. Yeah, what, like are we like exclusive or? BLT is like, I feel like you don't think I'm attractive anymore.

Do you consider this body pillow to be like a substitute for me or something that you need in addition to me? Like it's fulfilling a need that I can't or what? I mean, when we talked about opening up the relationship, I didn't think you were just going to invite alien body pillow into it. Yeah, I was really what I had in mind as our first three way. So, down in the holodeck, they're walking into the laboratory that they've set up for

a missette. And he kind of just casually tosses off that, oh yeah, it was part of the occupation of Bejor. I didn't have all this fancy stuff back then. Oh, don't tell me, you were forced to improvise. Yes, I know what that's like. Yeah, all of these torture, I mean, surgical implements were not clean back then. Nice to see everything kept in a nice shine. Yeah, it's cool to use stainless steel

for these things. We did not when we were occupying Beijor, you know. Yeah. It's just so scarce those days. Creld is a great job at in conversation, kind of constructing a career history that is adjacent to the Cardassian military industrial complex, like sort of related, but not actually a part of it, like in a very vague kind of way. Like as soon as the questions get too close, Krell is very deft at like kind of steering the answers into places without great detail. Or if bejorins were involved in any way.

Very slippery when those kinds of issues come up. Not unlike what we wish that alien looked like, like if it had more goo on it. Yeah, yeah. The dry alien or a version of it is holographically reproduced and they start looking it over. Yeah. I did really like the, like when they cut it open and there's like pulsing shit inside. Oh, you liked when they tortured the alien bin? Yeah, I did.

That was cool. How dare you? This god shot when they make the alien appear on the biopad though does really lay bare what a silly. They should have gone to black and white here to like fully emphasize the metaphor. In the captain's office, she's talking over the situation with Jakote. And she's like, so we got this message, we cannot translate it. It just looks like ropes when we put it up on screen. And it sounds like a cranky bird when we play it back as audio.

But what if we shot it out as like a distress signal and see what comes back? You know, like a car with a great sound system, slow rolling through a neighborhood. What if we just played at a top volume? And Chicoate is like, that sounds awful because none of the neighbors want to hear this shit. And what if people get upset by what we're playing? Janeway is not even trying to hear this. She's like, do it. Coffee in that, just press call, right? So they do this pulse and the pulse looks exactly like the wave that knocked their ship around at the beginning of the episode and I was like, fuck, they could get someone killed with that thing. Yeah, are there other ships turning into the wave or away from the wave

that we can't see? Probably. Yeah, are they worried about tearing someone apart? Yeah, a lot of T sets were broken on this day. Yeah. So this alien does look like it is full of testicles. Right, was it testicles or tentacles that it looks like it's full of I forget or are you talking about when they cut this thing open? I forget what the robot told me to say how is it dry on the outside and dry on the inside Yeah, these things this fucking I can tell you why it's doing so bad medically. It's not well hydrated a class is a day medically, it's not well hydrated. Eight glasses a day. Ha ha ha. There's your problem.

It's like they rescue the goldfish from a fish tank and then just put it on a dry bed. Ha ha ha. And they're like, what's wrong with it? They're like hitting it with a salt shaker and they're like, this seems to be making it worse. Nobody likes salting this nail, but she gives you no choice. She doesn't leave you with any option.

Or a whole thing. And why is it making that sound? Ah. Ah. Ah. What's up, suckers? They are in this moment talking about what the priorities are, because they can cut open this gritter with this crazy cardacian scalpel that looks like a can opener slash

torture implement. But Maceette is like, hey, listen, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but program starts like glitch, and so he has to be put on pause. Yeah. We cut over to Six Bay where Kim and Tibor are working the problem of the Crel program. Yeah. They booted up, and this is when Tabor sees the program that the doctor's been running for the first time. And the doctor gets a much bigger reaction from this

than he ever got from his vacation photo collection. Yeah. It's strange how oblivious the doctor is to BLT in this moment, going so far as to like double down on the idea of Crel, maybe becoming a more permanent member of the crew, in the face of BLT's growing umbridge with the entire idea. Yeah, there's this sort of weird energy to just like how, like how much the truth has been

seeming like covered up from them. But like, Teibor knows all about this guy and this really recalled that doctor from the the metrian cascade. Yeah. That was like an early Voyager episode when, yeah. Neelix sort of had the same thing, like this guy did a bad thing, like don't trust him under any circumstances, but it's also like very clearly a Joseph Mangle metaphor that's being made here. And I would argue that the metaphor has been mangled. In this episode, my friend.

Wow. Probably the most controversial title and episode of this show will ever have. People love the word play on this show. Yeah. Ooh, what's this Star Trek podcast? Let me click on this. So Dave War like seems to forget that he's talking to a hologram and like wants to beat up.

Yeah. We're almost at. Take it easy, Dave War. Yeah. Krollmissette. Take it easy, Tay-Bor! Whoa! And the duck. For the second time in two scenes has to turn off the Kroll program for different reasons.

They just go ahead and train to bring him back to the hall of the X so that this guy doesn't start a fight in here. Yeah. We don't need a bar room brawl in my office. Yeah. Right. Got a ticket set.

Luck, number, get that roll. Metal, hodgements, here. I've got tickets set that's not going to get that roll, but a large, rich, rich, rich, I've got a ticket that's not going to be selling a heist. God. A greatest-gen live show is something you don't want to miss. Why? Well, it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post show hangs, to make friends,

and share their embarrassment. Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it. The Sherry Reembarishment Tour is coming in August 2023, and we've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to greatestgentour.com to get more info. That's greatestgentour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour.

I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the spaceweards. Pat Noswald. Could I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries?

Thank you. And Kumail Nanjiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are already open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry.

Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead Well, rats. Yeah, I'm about to count you in line these clouds are really freaking me out I hate having to stand in line and boy These giraffes do not smell good. They do not and they've such short But I'm hearing we need to get on this. I gotta get on the art. It is about terrain, about a spout to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah?

Yeah, I know we look like humans, but we're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that. And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so same like something for us to check out.

We would love to be on the boat. We came two by two. What do you think? Ona Ross & Kerry, available it, do it. Teibor tells the doc about Krell's experiments in the next scene. This is done with Jakote, sort of corroborating what he's saying, because he's heard things too, as a make-weez. Make-weez? You hear the legend of Krell and all the terrible things he's done.

And the doc is still defending him. Like it's so weird to see the symmetry of this. Like, Taybore and Shikote are like, yeah, this is like living history and it's bad. And the doc is like, what if not all bad? What if also good? What if it's sort of in that gray area, the charisqiro of evil and good arguing with the doctor is like arguing on the internet, like that's what this scene is. Wow. Yeah, just by engaging you've already lost. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, like it's interesting to make a the gray areas of a political issue argument to two guys who before you met them were terrorists. Right. Like, Dave Warren, Jekote are uniquely bad at seeing things in anything but black and white. But also, I kind of feel like until this episode, the doctor has been written that way in a lot of episodes. It's like, I've taken this vow and like, I will not do this operation due to that or whatever has been a thing that the doctor has made a firm rule several times. The outshot of this scene is to bore going,

I want the hologram and all of the research that the Creole character has done that may be in our computer banks, I want it deleted. Delete him, delete the information. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad to have. Back in Six Bay, BLT, I told you so is Paris. While there's a fucking alien sucking under neck. She's going to have a hell of a hikki. Where did she get the energy for this? Where did she get the energy for this? As people whose partners I told you so us all the time, I think we know that the well for that kind of an inexhaustible. Yes, inexhaustible.

She goes so far as to say that she will not let Krell operate on her using the knowledge that was gained from his torture. Yeah. And just then, BLT starts to code. Like, those could possibly be her last words. And she passes out, secure in the knowledge that they will never let Krelma said, do anything to her body. Right. Over in engineering, a really surprising scene takes place because Kim and Seven have gone from trying to

self the mystery of the aliens message to proving or disproving to Boer's accusations against Krell. Like I had a really hard time with the elevation of this into a priority. Like alien message still very important. Yeah. Maybe a solution to the problem of what's happening to BLT. Possibly. But we've just given up on that because it's difficult, right? It might have made more sense to me

if there had been a stitch a dialogue about like everybody else on the crew is working super hard from the decoding. So the two of us just decided to do a little bit of a deep dive on Google to see if we could corroborate anything about what table or told us. And it turns out like they could corroborate everything. Like, my sets big claim to fame is defeating the fastoso

virus on Beijor. And they're like, yeah, like the shit that he ordered, all the like drug requisitions and stuff. Like we have all those records. This super looks like he experimented on innocent civilians to determine how to beat this illness. And that smashes us to the holodeck where the doc tries to kind of confront Missette about the bad things that he, not he, like the real person that his hologram program is based on did. I think this is one of the better, if not the best scenes in

this episode, because this is a interesting back and forth about how subjective ethics can be. Ethics are arbitrary. Like, what is the thing that really matters? Like, can you begin with the thing that matters and then construct your ethical architecture around that? Or do you start with having your own ethical architecture and then you use that to confront whatever situations arise. Like, it's an interesting moral order of operations thing

that is really interesting to think about. And then like, add to that the dimension of, like, you made me, like, I... I didn't want to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's like, I don't think that this is this bad shit is even that bad or that much of it happened, but even if it did, like who gives a shit?

Like I can help you man. It's that is so unintentionally funny the whole like, you know, if you think I'm a monster then why did you make the monster and all of the monstrous things? Yeah, we're standing here in my abattoir that you program. think I'm a monster, then why did you make the monster and all of the monstrous things? Yeah, we're standing here in my avatar that you program. Would that not make you the monster, doctor? Yeah. Me thinks the doctor does protest to.

Yeah. We cut over to Dakota's office and to bore walks in wearing a combat, but clearly wanting to take it off. He's a conscientious objector to this whole Krell situation. He doesn't want to serve a board of ship that would use a Krell hologram or Krell medical documents or anything. He may be a terrorist, but he has a line. does. Don't you wish to coat a code switched a little bit with make-wee's? I feel like in the first season or so you got a little bit of that between him and BLT. Yeah, and like the occasional punching of a lower decker in the mess hall. I kind of feel like this would be a brilliant moment to kind of bring that back, like where they can drop a rank just a little bit and go like, look man, I know what you mean. This shit is crazy. But instead, like Chico Tay does not

break rank. Yeah, he's really become a company man. Yeah. And the last four seasons, in a way, that is like noticeable based on that. Yeah. I understand how difficult this is for you, but you've got to let go of the past. Do you think he's doing it for love? Like the way some people kind of change their personalities? Right. Based on a love interest they have? Chico, day back when we were make-wis,

you didn't even like dogs. You always said you hated baths and loved showers and yet you've got a drawing of a bathtub on your desk. What's that about? It's not that simple. It is to me. You weren't even religious when I knew you. And now it's a kuchimoia this and a kuchimoia that. Bindle, bindle, bindle. Like you're really playing that up for some kind of dramatic effect and I'm not sure who it's for. But it doesn't wash with me, Bucco. You know what I'm just gonna say it, she's never gonna be with you man. She's never gonna be with you, she's not gonna be with someone, she doesn't respect

and that's you. We've been on this mission for five years and she still has that fucking frame picture of her dog and that plain ass white guy on her desk. You think you're replacing that? For the clothes you love to live in. That's what she likes, okay? She's got a type and it's not you. Also, I quit.

I quit. I quit. I don't wanna do this anymore. At Jiko's to his like, you can't quit. You're fired and then forcefully rehired. Sorry, you can't quit. I'm not sure if you've noticed, Mr. We don't have a lot of crew people. We're going to need to keep you around. So they have a Mugloffland group. If you want

where Paris is the one that is sort of riding for do whatever it takes up to and including using Krelma set to do this operation. The doctor is sort of saying like, I think that we can carve out an ethical framework in which we can feel okay about this, but a lot of the rest of the room is really skewed out by the idea of letting Krelma set do anything. And Tuaq is the one that makes the like really like strong pure ethicist argument for this justifies the kind of experimentation that the real crelimoset did on Beijor and therefore cannot be tolerated. We're in the middle of the Delta Quadrant.

Who would know? We would know. It's really intense. I could have used a longer scene here. I think this is the centerpiece scene of the whole episode because you have Paris having a great argument, which is what wouldn't you do for the person that you love? Anything to save their life is the side the Paris is on.

When he gets into Cote's face, about Cote's ethical lines, I fucking love that. That is one of the strongest B-Dunk's moments of the whole season was that moment. I love it. And and what Robert Belchrand does to kind of like absorb it, I thought was another great moment. I like them arguing together. They're good like that. It really reads like you really understand why they are both passionate and behaving the way they do in the situation and you understand why they're at such loggerheads about resolving it. It is a real genuine surprise for me in this scene when the captain comes down on team

Moseth. Like she's been like hearing them all out on this and she like announces where in the fifth act of this episode We really don't have time for a lawyer Star Trek episode to begin right now This is one of those episodes where there's kind of a lot of day new month So we really need to get done with the surgery scene because that's sort of the climactic moment It is a good moment for Janeway because she doesn't just make a decision and end the meeting. She's like, I'm making the decision, but I'm also taking the responsibility blowback.

Like, whatever moral mud gets flung around here, I want me to look like the Paris picture from that presentation in the beginning. And Paris is like, oh, come on! Everybody always has to bring that up. You remember that embarrassing picture of Paris covered in mud? Well, I want to be covered in moral cred.

My girlfriend is in six-way fucking a body pillow right now and you got to insult me like that? Yeah. I know you don't want to do it. Perfect blood. Make it yourself. I'm trying to help you see this is an opportunity to grow.

Make it yourself. So they get the operation a roll in and meanwhile up on the bridge, another one of these ships pulls up and starts playing their incredibly annoying sound over the comm system. In a way that like they can't even filter out, like it's happening in a way they can't turn off. It's like can't you enjoy your music at a really high volume with the windows up? Like that's cool. Play it as loud as you want. Windows up. Why do I have to be subjected to your loud music? I don't care to

listen to it. I like it. I think it's fun. Yeah. Sometimes I learn about new music that way. Yeah. Two Valkas like, uh, I love this scene. Do you hear that screaming? Anyone else hear that screaming? It's the vessel. And I love Janeway's confidence here. She's like, well, it sounds like screaming over there, but maybe talking is how we could negotiate ourselves over there, but maybe talking is how we could negotiate ourselves through the situation. Like, do you ever do this, Ben? Like, Daron is scream crying at you, and you're like trying to talk sense into him, like using adult vocabulary. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it doesn't work, but, you know, eventually we'll get that poopy die-die off of him and we'll resolve the problem.

And sometimes the talking is as much as for me as it is for anyone. That's my point. I feel like this talking is for Jane Leigh and the crew. She proposes this like we come in peace kind stuff. And then we cut back down to the operation where my set is like, how do I turn up this scalpel? So it's like really, really cutty. And he's like, you know, doing the knob at the bottom of the thing and the doctor's like,

hey man, you really go and kind of wild with that thing. Do you want to maybe turn it down and go a little softer? Were you confused about whether or not this was a real procedure or the practice one? The thing that threw me for the first couple of scenes was that this was happening in the holodeck and not in Six Bay, which is a place that Krell can go. I thought for sure they would do the procedure in Six Bay.

Yeah, I think I would have staged it in Six Bay if I was directing this episode because I think that that does bump you. But I think also maybe they're going for that alien abattoir energy so that it's like more scary when he keeps turning the volume up on his Pokey device. I think it's more scary to see something awful happen in a Starfleet 6-B, like an outsider performing their dark surgery in a place that should be,

you know, that has certain expectations about ethics and how doctors practice medicine. Like, I think that would hit super hard if, if Krell is in there like stirring with with his stir stick knife in the back of this bug alien as it screams and responds. He is making a real butcher job of it and the alien ship throws a tractor beam onto them that starts kind of like sapping energy out of the ship including the holodeck which is going to be really banned for BLT if she's both being sucked dry by

this alien and also falls from the height of a bio bed onto the floor. This is, I mean BLT is almost asleep and so that's really got to suck here too, right? Like, this is the point of having the bug body pillow. Right. It's like, come on. Can I get one minute of pleasure to myself? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's working. Yeah. They inject the bug with some drugs, some bugs drugs, and they kind of stabilize it. Yeah. after Doc Holiday has taken over lead on the operation and pursued a less efficient approach, which I thought was crucial. They stabilize the bug and then once it's good to transport, they just transfer it directly to the alien ship and the tractor beam drops and there's like a couple more words of

screechy content exchange You're welcome and they're out of there But I really thought that there was going to be more made of the fact that Doc Hollow Day was the one that ultimately like accomplished the procedure You mean both yeah, it doesn't come up again. It is not really a part of the math of this. So the first scene of wind down is in the captain's office where the doctor is kind of reporting on, you know, BLT's condition and like how she reacted when he told her what they did. And she is predictably pissed about it.

Yeah. The question is floated about like what we're gonna do with the Crel program going forward. Like, great success this time around, right? Yeah. We save BLT, we transferred the body pillow back over to the body pillow ship. And I don't know, we're gonna keep working together.

And Janeway punts on this. She's like, look, I took the crud for the initial decision, but whether or not you want to work with this guy going forward, that's going to be up to you. Hey, interesting, because the doc did earlier in the episode suggest like, I love this guy. We're gonna, he's gonna be like on the team. He's gonna be a main cast character going forward. Yeah. And that is so much not a, an energy that we have in this scene.

Now, the captain goes down and pays BLT a visit and BLT is ripshit pissed and is like trying to chill out with Klingon incense and some books. Yeah, this is just not going to dispel demons, right? This is another moment of, you know, make-wease versus starfleet sensibility. Like when BLT says that Janeway had no right to make this call. She's wrong about that because Janeway absolutely did. Have every right to do it as the captain. Right.

And to Janeway's credit, I don't think she apologizes. And I don't think she really tries to explain it outside of as your captain, it's my call to make, and it's a call that I made, and you're gonna have to deal with it. And I like that she was not instructed on how, just that she needed to. Yeah, like we need a chief engineer

in that curly hair red headed guy that you were competing with for the job earlier in the series, we haven't seen for a long time, so. Yeah, we kind of have a lot of make-wis engineers on this ship in a way that I'm growing uncomfortable by Yeah, it seems like they all got kind of shunted down to the engine room. Yeah, it's like You know that the engine room is not like a harmless place for them to be hanging out, right? There was a time when we had a serial killer on the crew working in engineering and

I feel no more safe now than I did then. Speaking of uncomfortable conversations, the doc goes down to the holodeck, which is still running with Krell Macek in there. And he's like, Hey, doctor, boy, this is the start of something great. What a collaboration. We really knocked it out of the park on that one. Crelcy's the breakup coming and is the person just wanting to never stop talking? Like, don't give the person a moment to break up with you. Just keep talking. Just keep listing all the good times and really trying to downplay all the bad times.

Also, make some plans for future stuff together. Hey, I booked this a trip. I'm just on my phone booking a flight right now. I used your skymiles, I hope that's okay. In an episode that doesn't reflect well on the doctor, this I thought was one of the moments that reflected the worst is that the doctor can go off script when he does performance vanity to the rest of the crew via multiple presentations about how great he is as a

doctor. But when the rubber meets the road about making a decision and telling someone a hard truth, he's got to read a script to tell Krell what he's going to do. And if this was an opportunity to grow the character in any way, it's a total fucking miss. If it's instead just the depiction of the limitations of the doctor character and that this is not a character, this is going to grow in a conventional way, this is not a character like someone else who will reach the end of an episode and go, we all really learn something here, you know, me most of all.

And I'm going to act differently. Like, I wonder if this is just an example of, of the doctor reaching the ceiling on potential. Because this kind of sucked. The reading of a, it almost feels like a judicial finding. Yeah. And he also tosses in problematic phrase constructions like in human practices.

Uh-oh. My very name is racist. So, you know, not a great look for the tech at the end. I mean, I think you did the right thing by turning off the program. But I'm also like, I kind of wish this episode engaged a little bit more with the question that was posed in the surgery scene of whether he could have

done this without Mousset the entire time and whether this was like a crutch in some way. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those endings to an episode that kind of drops the gavel. Like, when the doctor turns and walks away from Krell after having deleted him, like that is the episode turning and walking away

after dropping an ethical question onto a television for 46 minutes, you know? Yeah, yeah. Did you like that episode, Adam? You know, I made it easy to get along with most of the time, but I don't like bullets, I don't like friends, and I don't like you. I love this too. Well, I can tell you, I wish they showed less of the alien. Like, is there a way to do this episode where you just don't see the alien at all?

It's tough. I mean, this is like, this is science fiction trying to rise to the enormous moral and ethical question that science fiction often is able to do really elegantly. Is this writer is this wrong, but it also has this weird alien puppet. And it's hard to concentrate when there's a body pillow in an episode like this. I think it's emblematic of a form of Star Trek that we don't really get anymore. I think modern Star Trek poses an interesting ethical dilemma and then answers that question strongly.

Like, yeah. And this is back in a day when Star Trek used to just sort of go, here's an interesting idea. We're not going to take a side. But what did you think about this? And I kind of missed when Star Trek was more like this, but it also really frustrated me for all the reasons stated. I mean, it did make me think a lot about how we came to this conclusion surrounding medical ethics, because when I think about Paris's position,

there isn't anything I wouldn't do or want to do or want to use. Like, does it make me a bad person for saying that if medical knowledge exists, that could save my wife's life, that was gotten from people who are dead and the medical people who practice that form of medicine are also dead. Like, that is wrong of me to want to use. Is it the reason that it's ethically wrong to discourage future bad behavior that way? Like, I think so. I understand all the reasons that it's wrong,

but man, when it really comes down to it and it's you. Yeah. That's tough, man. I think that's super relatable. And I mean, I think that like, that's why like medical ethicists exist because I don't think that anybody going through it is really equipped to like grapple

with those things in a way that satisfies both the like pressing nature of a medical crisis, but also like the long-term ramifications of, you know, of that stuff. And like, I think that this episode like disappointed me in many places where there was some idea that it seemed to imply what like didn't quite engage with. But overall, like I feel like it is maybe stronger for some of that, like that that it got us thinking about all these things and got us asking ourselves questions is. That's what good TV does best. got us thinking about all these things and got us asking ourselves questions is. That's what good TV does best.

Right, like evidence that it like had a bunch of interesting thoughts to put in front of us and it did it in a way that was like mostly a pretty compelling program that like overcame something as silly as that puppet, you know? Right. That's not easy to do. Yeah. How much easier would this episode have had it without the puppet?

Hey, Ben, I was looking up whatever happened to the puppet prop. You can guess who was the winning bid on that, right? Oh, it's just scared one. Yeah, bid on that on eBay at like 1999. Why did he buy all the puppets? Was that just like, oh, I'll have like a complete collection? Or was it something grosser? I don't know.

I mean, that's an example of greatest generation asking a question. We don't really bother to answer, huh? Hmm. Well, I have a question that I think I know the answer to you, Adam. Would you like to check out the priority one inbox? Oh, yeah, I'm already there. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Need a supplement, Lincoln. supplement, huh?

supplement. supplement. Yes, extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Stop a little longer. Stop a little longer. Stop a little longer. Stop a little. Yeah, it's extra. The interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, we have a few P1s here today. And the first one is of a promotional nature. It goes like this.

Are you a production manager or a manager for a musical act? And you need a professional design and lighting designer and a programmer to go along with it. Craig at BlueShiftDesign is a designer and programmer with over 20 years of production design expertise, an ear for timing and energy, and experience to bring your tour or event to new creative heights. For everything from your holiday production of Shakespeare, your sold out arena tour, BlueShift design can help.

And you can go to blueshift.design or find them at BlueShift Design on Instagram. You know, I've seen a lot of live shows in my life, Miriam live shows, you could say. Wow. And I followed bands from, you know, like their smallest club shows. And there's that moment when a band makes the leap from like club show to getting an LD.

And like actually doing some stage stuff with the show. Yeah. And that is like such a fun part of a band's evolution. It is like when they recognize the value of that kind of thing. And I love people in Craig's line of work, like collaborating with bands and performers to do this kind of thing. It's really great. It makes good things great. Makes great things more fun.

Makes a difference. This is a, I'm looking at some of the work on BlueShift.design. Craig has worked with some, some name acts and tend some like conferences and stuff like that too. Oh, cool. Really awesome stuff. Yeah. So Craig, a BlueShift design going for that greatest

Gen bump. Yeah. Man, I know that we do have a couple of people that like, do tour at this level that listen to the show and it's like weird and embarrassing to think about people like that listening to this shit. But like I hope something comes of this. This would be really cool to know that a big touring act that we're friends with reached out to Craig and got an LD.

reached out to Craig and got an LD. Yeah, pretty great. Ben our next priority one message is from Mark. Oh, hi Mark. It is to you know who. Message goes like this, dear you know who. Thank you for the 40th birthday P1. From way back on Voyager Season 2 Episode 12. And once again, sorry that I apparently listened to it so late that I must have

thought it couldn't have been for me. And you had to play it back for me later. Now happy 39th birthday to you. Wow. And in parentheses, I will make sure to play this directly at you when it drops. Thanks, B&A. Oh, Mark. This would be how it goes, I think, were I to attempt a P1 for someone in my life? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like Mark and you know who have as almost as big an age gap as you and I do.

So, I honestly think that's part of the fun of a P1 like advertisements come and go those are dynamic right those flow in and out of shows they change all the time depending on when you download an episode these P1s are baked in they're a monument. So if you're a friend or the targets of your message doesn't listen in that moment you can play it back at them. Yeah pretty cool. You can roll by their house with the windows down. Playing the P1 Super Loud. Like Olivia Rodrigo just blasting. We have one final P1 here today from Bridget at BridgeMakes and it's to the former Twitter

FOD. It goes like this. I don't know if Twitter will still be a thing by the time this goes out. Not that it matters as with all that has happened. I had to leave. Not being on Twitter has been positive for my life in general, but one thing I sorely miss are the good folks on the FOD group. That group was to coin a metaphor Freeman when the callies came Screw flanders.

when the callies came. Screwflanders. Hmm. Man, I, uh, I really vibe with that. Good friend of mine, like, had a person harassing them, like, over and over again on Twitter, and that person had been permaband from Twitter and was recently reinstated, and it's just, like, such a drag.

Like, I know I'm kind of an outlier being a person that just, like, actually genuinely liked genuinely liked it and like had a lot of fun on there I feel like very lucky that it didn't become a thing that I felt I had an unhealthy relationship with but uh boy Gonna miss it, but I don't think I can do it anymore Personally, it just sucks man. Billionaires are bad and stupid and I wish this didn't happen. Yeah. You burned it! Someone making toast? Well, farewell Bridget.

I hope you'll join one of the other great groups of FODs out there. There's a bunch of them and many life rafts being built on other social media platforms. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing we can say about FODs. Like you can ruin the social media places, but FODs are everywhere. And you can find them and make great places out of where they gather. Well, if you'd like to get AP1, you can head to maximumfun.org slash jembo-tron and get one today and it would probably be good overall to help our show out.

You know? Yeah, whether it's over here or over on Greatest Trek, prior to one, messages are a great way to support the show. Both shows. Every show. Hey, Adam. Step in. Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Incredible. Drunk Shimoda! Body pillow bug. Shimoda Body pillow bug That's body pillow bug That guy is so silly. The silliest part of this episode is that body pillow bug. Yeah. Unbelievable.

This shit is so hard. Like I try to imagine like the great professional challenge it is, making alien Ben, no notes. Just make something we can attach to a person, and there you go, and here's $30. That's the budget. And it's gonna have pulsating stuff inside when we cut it open.

The only constraint, make it dry. Really dry. Like, I can appreciate the great challenge of this. Yeah. And I think the exception is the rule here. Like so often you get great alien creation in Star Trek. Sometimes you don't. And this is just one of those moments where like,

it's a distraction in an unfortunate way. Yeah. And now it lives on Garrett Wong's mantle. Where it belongs. You think you put it on his mantle? Yeah, he covers it with Christmas lights, Ben. It's there the whole year through. You put a little pumpkin on it for Halloween.

The head and leg have fallen off, but can be reattached. It's not just a Christmas light spin. It's there the whole year through. You put a little pumpkin on it for Halloween. The head and leg have fallen off, but can be reattached. You never see the underside of this thing. Probably for good reason. Yeah, what's going on down there? Is it finished or unfinished, you think? Yeah, it's like a basement in the Midwest, you know?

We'll really cold down there. Don't really want to go down. What's the fucking stupid thing the AI had us say to change the subject? Not only that, but we should move on to the... Okay, well, the next episode is season five, episode nine, 30 days. Paris defies a direct order when he insists on helping a people whose maritime planet is in danger of becoming uninhabitable. Hmm.

Maritime, you say. Yeah. So it's like toward the eastern side of Canada. Yeah. Yeah. They have delicious oysters there. Feels like a long time since we've had an episode that that centers Paris. Yeah. As a character. So I mean, to that. Yeah. All right. Adam, I've got the dice in my hand, of course, the Renabout is on square 14 right now and there is a Quartz bar. It looks like we get hit. And I think if I hit the six, that would get us an eyes-uncovered square. And that's, of course, the square where we have to employ Tamarion metaphors all

through the episode. Everyone's favorite episode. Cool. Yeah. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. All right. I am rolling. I rolled a three. Two-la!

Did I win? Harvey. Both of those remain in play. Okay. Squarespace 17 at the doorstep of that Quarx bar. All right, I can pick up the spare there. Okay. Well, that'll be your role next time, and that'll be next week's episode, my friend.

You want to take this thing home? Well, Ben, we're in the new year. Time to do our credits in a whole new way, right? Yeah, indeed. We got many people to thank. Friends of DeSoto. Yeah. That support the show.

Always first. We could change our credits in Miriam Ways, but friends of DeSoto always come first. Or not at all. Yeah, depending on what they're into. You know, we're not here to judge. Yeah. You know, and if you thought that body pillow stuff was judgmental, that wasn't what we were going for at all.

We were just saying that was what it reminded us of. Right. In a non-judgmental way. Absolutely. Yeah. Shout out to the Body Pillow FODs out there. Yeah. Shout out to BodyPillow.fods.reddit.com.

Those are F-O-B-P's? Yeah, dumb. Hahaha. If you'd like to support the show, it's MaximumFun.org slash join. It really helps us keep the lights on around here. Don't know if anybody out there has noticed, but the cost of doing business has gone up pretty significantly in the last year or two. And so if you're in a position to swing five bucks a month our way, it would help us tremendously and we really appreciate it. Yeah, set it up for the whole year.

Now's the time. But to get so much bonus content. It's ridiculous. Yeah, going to make some more bonus content this week. Sure are. That's what we're doing. Adam, who else do we got to think? gotta think Wendy Priti our producer who does a great job editing every episode, keeping all the production calendar stuff spinning.

Wendy just sat in with us for a QA on an episode of Greatest Trek. Go listen to that. Just past your one-year probationary period at Exper Exped Shimoda, I think we might keep her around. She's entering into her second year of her two-year probationary period. Right, now... Gonna have to make some hard decisions, probably a year or two from now, about whether or not to retain her services.

That's so far, so good. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We gotta thank Bill Tilly, who runs our social accounts at greatest trek everywhere Which probably look at some other places to establish at greatest trek accounts So that the history doesn't leave us behind. Yeah, if you if you need one point of contact for where FODs are Bill would be that person One place you can find a whole lot of them

is drunkshamoto.com, the Discord. Yeah. Has thousands of people on it, talking all the time. Truly. It's a great place to meet a friend of DeSoto, I think. It sure is. We've also got friends of DeSoto.social

as I mastered on group. I recently made an account over at Post.News. Yeah? Yeah, as of this recording haven't really done much with it yet, but you know, maybe I'll start posting over there. Who knows? Hey Adam Ragusia, makes a ton of the fun music we use on this show, including its theme music, dark material.

Compose the track you're hearing right now under the credits. Yeah. Probably the one piece of audio that's played the most on the greatest generation, greatest track like it's everywhere. It really is. Dark Materia did that. Yeah. Adam Ragusi is our actual pal in real life and we recently did an episode at his show. Go listen to that, it's so good. Yeah, he knows what he's talking about. Well, what else?

Podchap.biz. Yeah, get a fun thing a Podchap.biz. It's a store without an inventory, so keep that in mind. Yeah, and with that, we'll be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Voyager, an episode of the greatest generation Voyager that is going the Maritimes E. You'll be the one doing the voice for that episode. Oh shit. I don't have a handle on that one. I'm fucked! Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists don't. Audience supported.