The Greatest Generation - The Other Throat Goat (VOY S7E9)

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

When Dr. Mark gets swiped by a group of social holo-justice warriors, their vision for living free from Hirogen harassment puts him on the lookout for volleyball and colloidal silver. But when a double-barrel episode of Voyager proves too much for one Mornhammered episode to contain, Greatest Gen history gets made live on videotape. Which type of drink never gives head? Why aren’t all Hirogens ten feet tall? What’s the most important rule about yoga wear? It’s the episode that hasn’t remembered anything in fifteen years!Support the production of The Greatest Generation.Friends of DeSoto for Democracy.Friends of DeSoto for Justice. Friends of DeSoto for Labor.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 YouTube.Facebook group | Subreddit | Discord | WikiSign up for our mailing list!Get a thing at podshop.biz!

Oh boy am I excited, Adam and I won't be touring this year but we do have one live show coming up. The last performance of the Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming to San Francisco on January 28th. We're not saving anything for the swim back, so you're not going to want to miss it. And listen, these tickets are moving on this show, but I also want to stress that SF Sketch Fest has moved us into a bigger theater this year, so we need friends in the Soto to step up and fill that room. Let's send our Star Trek 5 show off with the bang it deserves.

Head to greatestjentour.com to get tickets to see me and Adam live in the flesh as we roast and recap Star Trek 5, the one where they kill God. That's GreatestGenTour.com. See you there, San Francisco Bay Area. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage! Watch your back shot. Hello.

I'm Captain Captain Bringeng, where the U.S. is. Fort B. Captain Captain Bringeng, where the U.S. is. Fort B. Do it Captain, Captain, bring the U-W-S-S-4th and 2-W-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S You're adding this. You love these. I do. I mean, I think that it's funny that we've done this to ourselves. I take no responsibility for this. This is the game board.

The game board has, yeah, but we, you know, we, we signed up for the game board and then the game board fucks us over from time to time. Yeah. I've been trying to, you know, after the holidays, like watch what I'm eating. Sure. Dial back the, the drinky drinks a little bit. Yeah, a little peek behind the pod. We just started January.

Yeah, just got out of the holidays. This is the first greatest general recording of the year. First greatest gen we've recorded in weeks after a long break, getting back on the pod horse in a big time way today. I mean, it's a double barrel episode and last time... Yeah. Didn't even mention that. Last time we got together, I think it was my role and we did hit the Mornhammered Square

on the board. So we are going to be doing a power hour today. Yeah, I mean, I'm just... I feel like I'm a bit of a cheap date right now because for like weeks and weeks I've been drinking barely at all. How is that possible? Like, you didn't drink barely at all during the holidays? Well, so you must have had great holidays. In mid-December, I started having, I don't know if indigestion. is indigestion and heartburn the same thing? I'm 40, I should know these things.

Yeah, you're gonna wanna know what those symptoms are when you take them to a doctor. I'm having the kind of heartburn that like keeps me up at night because it, it's like painful when I'm like lying down. And so I like, I basically have found that if I don't eat spicy food and I don't drink, those symptoms go away. Yeah, but what kind of life do you have at that point?

Exactly. Basically since Hanukkah, I've been on the bland no-booz diet. One of those was an essential quality to Jewish holiday, right? Oh, coming in hot. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that my T is probably a little bit lower than it was before the holidays, you know. I'm shocked to hear this. I thought you'd be having self-defense beverages and spicy food the whole way through.

Yeah, it's, sadly it's the opposite. I've been doing okay, so we'll see, I mean, this is actually a good experiment. Does drinking a totally irresponsible amount of drinks in one sitting, get me back into the bad place, W slash R slash T, my esophagus. Yeah, we're going to need your throat in good shape for the years ahead then. I'm saying this not only as your friend, but as your business partner in this thing, We must preserve that voice. Ever since last week's very early recorded show,

where my voice was super deep, people have been calling me the other throat goat. And I wanna keep that moniker, you know? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I might even lose the other. It's cleaner than that one. Oh, okay. You think I've unseated Nancy Reagan? Just say no.

Yeah, I like that for you. Wow. How are you feeling, buddy? I'm doing fine, Ben. I have been drinking throughout the holidays. And I sort of have approached this episode from the opposite direction. Like I was looking forward to taking it easy

in January with the consumption. And all the rest, I can't seem to take a break. I've had out of town friends come in before, during, and after the holidays, I've got more coming the weekend. The weekend after this one. I don't know when I'll be taking a break in all the ways that I probably need one. Yeah. Break from the show?

Great. Break from everything else? Did not happen. So, that's where I'm at. Wow. With this super sized episode. Yeah, so this is, I don't think I realized when we were talking about this episode last week

that this is a two-parter, it's listed as episodes nine and 10, but then it just plays as a full hour and 25 minutes of Star Trek. We did that classic thing. We thought we were doing one episode and then the realization hit us that this is actually Two episodes really yeah a fact that windy did warn us about weeks ago I can't remember things I can't do there You know the part of greatest Jen where we're both not just early 40s, but like

mid to late 40s. That's gonna be a trip. I want to listen to the ocean breeze coming off the golf. I forgot to go to the grocery store on my lunch break yesterday. My wife came home and said, you didn't go to the grocery store and I was like, have you met me? I don't remember to do stuff that I need to do. Yeah, I haven't remembered anything in 15 years.

I live a list-based lifestyle. I've outsourced all my memories. I think I'm going to start this one off right with a couple of brodes, Adam. Oh, good call. As ever, our thanks to the Broad Electro Light Vitamin Company, a company that exists only to serve us and the FODs that we pip to their offer codes.

Okay, let's see. How are we going to do the timer on this? I guess we just do it on our system because we're recording remote today. I can agree to honor system drinking. I've committed myself to drinking very hard. I've got a regulation-sized shot glass here, straight from Super Bowl XLV II. Mm, but that was one of the great ones.

And the first alcohol I will be opening for this purpose is from the boss meetery. Oh shoot. I am going to do my power hour with cherry hammer smashed boss meetery mead this straight from Madison Wisconsin. I also chilled down my bottle of boss mead hammer, cherry. I'm a little bit scared, but because I've never, I've never really done a mead-based power hour, but I mean- I don't think anyone has. This, yeah, this might be a first

of making history today live on videotape. Hey, let's do this first shot together. Oh, look at this color. It's beautiful. It's very pleasant. It's a beautiful rosy color. I'm gonna take a picture of this for the FODs. Pretty nice.

It smells like cherry vinegar, which I think is what meat should smell and taste like. Yeah. Okay, we're just setting a one hour timer, right? So it's it's it's a shot a minute for 60 minutes. Oh Yeah, let's synchronize the the one hour timer. Yeah, okay. All right once we start We're gonna hit this shot and then we're gonna come back with star Trek Voyager Season 7, episode 9, and 10, Flesh, and Blood. Three, two, one, start.

Reaver course. Unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo toots, I'm not turning around. Hey, pretty good. I like Bussmead, it's good. Oh, I wish I had more bottles of this. So, we've got some, some veins and they're hunting in the woods and they're sort of a, we know how these guys work, there's the alpha and the beta's and the beta seems like he's kind of a teen, he's like a teen bane. Teen bane, yeah, I like that, he's gentle. He's like the kid who does not want to shoot the deer, you know? Yeah, like this is the first time I feel like we've seen any hero gen that aren't

Battle-hardened and yeah, I like the kind of expanding hero gen cinematic universe. Yeah, I mean, it's unclear whether or not it's father or son or student master or whatever, but it's definitely born to get hard and born to get soft. That's what we got here. Yeah. This guy hasn't wrestled his trimbles into rages as yet. No. And they're they're hunting something. This guy, the younger one, teen bane can't get a fix on how many people they're hunting, but Instinct tells his older companion that it's four, maybe five. This is fun cinematography. The camera's kind of swinging and floating around in this Sears Garden Center.

They're tracking and tracing through the jungle, and I think it's student-bane gestures to master-bane. No water, and master-bane is like, wait till you see the pond. And then up from this pond rises wet star fleets. And they absolutely unload on these two guys. These two bains get executed by Simon Tarsis. I think we found a man. I could not help but laugh.

At how many shots go into these bains? It's insane. Like we cut to the wide shot on the bains. We usually reserve that for ships, but you remember when Robocop is executed in the factory? Oh yeah. And it's just like four cackling gang members, like reloading their weapons to kill Robocop. It's a lot. Oh sure is. And yeah, these these guys go down hard. They're fucking dead, man. These were not phasers set to stun.

R-S-V-P, master bane, and student bane. So that's our cold open. And when we come back from theme, the first scene is in Six Bay, where Chicoete is hearing out Dr. Mark. Oh, hi Mark. On a request for a leave of absence, he wants to go to a conference and that just seems too dangerous to Chicoetay. In the Star Trek context, you absolutely don't want to grant conference privileges to anyone

at any time. It's too dangerous. But in the, I'm working a job and I kind of need a break, but I'm not gonna ask for vacation instead of an astro conference sort of context. Yeah. This is something I've done before. Oh, absolutely.

You got to. My wife has been in government service for most of her legal career. So there hasn't been a lot of like that sort of paid vacation ask trip to a continuing legal education conference. But she's got her eyes on one in New Orleans next year. And I'm like, oh, baby, let that New Orleans trip happen. The doctor does try to spin it as a thing that's good for everyone

and not just him, but he does such a poor job of it that Chicoetay is just not game. I'm sorry, doctor. It's just not practical. You can tell at the end of this scene that like that's just fucking it for Dr. Mark. He's done with these motherfuckers. I did not see this last job coming. I don't think anyone knew.

I mean, like, I love the discussion of, like, whether it's even practical, like, what do you want us to do? Park here while you go back two weeks and attend this conference, like, this insane. This is the part that hurts. Like Chico Te basically restates the request in terms that would affect the entire ship and describe what the ship would have to do. In a way that's pretty hurtful. Yeah.

It's just too much to ask. It's not practical. So it is in the middle of the big city turn down that they get called from the bridge that they're receiving a herogen distress call. And that's gonna be something that Chico Tay needs to go look into. So we'll finish this later, but it's a no.

What did you understand the herogen relationship to be at this point? Because I thought it was like, good. Yeah. I didn't think this would be dangerous to respond to this distress call at this moment, right? Right. They kind of paid for their freedom from hero-gen harassment, which is weird, because that's

vocal warm-up we both do before. We get on the show, freedom from hero-rogen harassment, freedom from a horogen harassment, at the end of that two-parter, where the herogens were nazis and stuff. So yeah, they're responding to the distress call by going to the aid of the herogen that sent it. And this is great for Chicote, it gets to do an away mission,

they beam over there, and it's like it's a herogen training facility space station. They beam over into a serious garden center environment and they split up and two vach finds corpses, seven finds a batleth. That batleth kind of made it look like the tree was bleeding, but then they say it's a rojan blood and they're like, God, I didn't know that they could look this much like trees. What a cunning hunting technique they've adapted. Great moment. Yeah, I love how the Dustbester Club arrives in a place they know to be a space station and yet appears

to be a jungle area. And this doesn't bump them at all. It doesn't seem like a move that the hero general would pull. Like let's grow a lush jungle inside of a space station. It doesn't seem like it seems very unusual. Yeah. A thing a hunter species would get up to. Sure.

They pick up a lone survivor on a tricorder and this survivor starts shooting. And no amount of yelling by the Dustbuster Club gets through to this guy that they're there to help. They're not trying to fight him. This guy's yelling at them to stay away and Tuvac does that thing where he peels off and goes around at the back. And just neck pinch is this guy to the ground.

Flanking neck pinch. I love it. I got a question for you. Is this herogen naked? Oh, so his clothing does have a texture that's really similar to his loaf. But I do think he's wearing a shirt and pants combination. Really? Because he's not like hangin' dong or anything.

This is like what would happen if you or I wore like light beige colored shirt and underwear? Like, it would read kind of nude. Right. Like if you ever see a lady like wearing yoga pants that are too close and toned her own skin color, it's like, it's distracting. All right, I'm just going to say it. I might have had a half a bottle of meat in me. I think that's confusing. And I prefer different colors than those.

And I prefer different colors than those. If you're asking what my opinion is, I would prefer to be confronted by people who don't look naked in the street. That's all I'm saying. So you think that this band should select a different yoga attire? Oh no, now it makes it sound like, oh no! It's the mead talking, Ben.

You always blame it on the mead. So we are 10 minutes into this power hour, and I think I'm pouring my last shot of mead. Oh, jeez. I think I've missed a couple. I'm down to, I think, three more. Okay. If I were to count, I'm going to quickly select these back. I really down to I think three more. Okay. If I were to count, I'm gonna quickly select these back. I really wanna be on your level.

Ha, ha, ha. Have I told you what's going on at my house? That would make you want to be on my level? No. Ha, ha, ha. So my wife double striped for COVID this morning. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Which, I've never been to a live double striped for COVID this morning. Which means, I'm living in the studio, man. Oh, no. Whoa, yeah. I'm living here. Day one. Oh, the day that you're most needed to prepare soup and provide, oh, but she doesn't want comfort when she's in the studio.

You know what? good job by you. Remembering that trivia about my wife, yeah, she does not want doding. And so I am out here. She's a no-dote. Not doding. She's a never-dote. Yeah, she truly is.

Hey, you get to wait for me to finish this bottle, man. I got several more shots to do. Hey, our thanks to the kind folks at the boss meetery for getting this power hour off to the right start, but like, what are you putting in it that makes Adam talk like this? Yeah, I hope they're taking this as a commercial and that's a thing that destroys their company. I do like this mead quite a bit. I would drink again for sure. Yeah. So this neck pinch earns this guy a trip to the ER. The rest of the away team still in this environment, like pushes some vines aside on a screen that's got L cars on it.

What the fuck? They hit a couple buttons on this thing and the, uh, the environment goes away. I love this effect. So good. Because it just reveals the one big room that this star bases and all of the dead herojans on the floor. It's a holodome.

It's a holoship. They should park it under a lake. Dead herojans on the floor. Dead herojans on the floor. Dead herojans on the floor. FOOOOORR! Perhaps the single most foolish thing I've ever done on this show, Adam, my, uh, my remaining cans, uh, to finish out the power hour are apple cider.

So I'm doing a mead slash cider power hour. I'm down to my last shot of mead. Definitely happy I started out that way. Unclear whether I will appreciate what I'm going to next. What I have are two 16 ounce cans sent in by viewers. Oh shoot. We've always said it. The most dangerous thing a podcast host can do is drink what has been sent to them. Ben, I've got two cans from the bald man brewing

company. Okay. What I have is the Rocktoberfest, Merchzen Lager. That's this one. I'm showing you in the viewers. Wow. And I've got Hot Summer Nights Blondale. It's Raspberry Lemon Blondale. And I wonder which one I should start and end with. Oh man, I couldn't tell you. I kind of feel like I want to have the Merchandlogger and then end with the fruit. Yeah. That sounds good. Is that enough?

Two sixteen answers after the 500 mil bottle? Is that going to get us there? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not doing math for you, man. All right, well, do my best. I've got warm spotted cow, not far from me. That's where it goes. That's what I deserve. So, yeah, there's 43 dead bains

and they were all killed with a quad style weps. We gotta have weps, he's the key. Boy, this is just very disturbing to Janeway. She has a walk and talk with Chico Tay, where, you know, it's a, you know, this is why you don't give away technology, you don't know what people are gonna do with it. They had a holiday stuff, but they turned off all the

safeties and they modified it. There's no good. You know what's an unusual quality to this episode is how it takes a long, long time for Voyager to feel in danger from any of this. This doesn't seem like a threat to them. No. This seems like a mystery to solve, you know?

Yeah, we're still in mystery mode. And their next stop is Six Bay, where this bane refuses to be treated by the doctor because the doctor is a hollow. And he doesn't believe that a Janeway and Chicoetay are not also hollows. This is a great scene. He's throwing pots and pans around.

He's like, I'm surrounded by hollows. And Jane was like, no, you're not. And then he wings a bed pan at the doctor and it flies right through him. And he's like, ha, I knew it. Then how do you explain that? Great comedy moment there. Good stuff. So they asked the doctor if he would do them the kindness of turning himself off for a while. And they're like, hey, like, sorry, you're so afraid of hollows. I'm Catherine Janeway. We rescued you from that thing.

And he's like, whoa, you're Janeway? I've been meaning to talk to you. This is voyage. Looks like our reputation preceded us. I have some notes. Yeah. So this guy, this wimpy heroogen guy, he hates holograms because he was the last one standing.

He was a technician at their training facility. Got overrun by enraged holograms and all the safety protocols got turned off and that's how everybody got killed. Look at all this head on my shot. Oh, wow. I don't have any head on my, I guess, because Citer doesn't really do head. Now, I'm reminded of that video from the the bar rescue guy

teaching us how to pour a beer properly. Oh, right. You gotta put it at an angle, right? I can't do that with a shot glass. Yeah, but you can't do it because you're not pouring enough. Bar science teaches you that they had on a beer. The lease is enough carbon dioxide that you won't burp after drinking it.

Is that what's going on? That was the point of his video. He's like, you actually do want a glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, it into the glass. You want a big frothy head because all of that head is going to be in the glass instead of in your tum tum. Yeah. Making your burp.

I mean, this is a burp based show, so I don't think we're gonna be able to avoid that here. This is yet again a fucking project for windy. I'm so sorry, windy. We're 18 minutes into this power hour as of this moment. Fuck. You know what, Wendy is going to sketch fest. All the drinks on us. She's not buying a single drink at SketchFest. Yeah, your money's no good in San Francisco, Wendy. Where are we? Oh, so they get set upon by other bains

that have been replying to this distress signal. And they just roll in shooting. Yeah. Which I guess is because they make the assumption that like, okay, here's one of our things and here's somebody else will assume that the somebody else was attacking our thing and just attack them.

Right. The distress is coming from outside the station. Right. And Janeway gets on the phone, she's like, hey guys, what the fuck? We're trying to help your guys. Yeah. And in typical, Bane, you know, surliness, they're like, just give us our people and go. Was it surprising to you how much of a strategic mismatch a

Bane's ship was for Voyager? It seems as though it was just Janeway's choice to disable them whenever she wanted. Yeah, well, this one seems like it's a much littler Bane ship than some of the ones later in the episode. So maybe it's just a pound for pound. Yeah, we've got teen Banes, we've got baby Banes. Oh, all different kinds of Banes. They got a baby, baby, baby, baby, got baby bands, all different kinds of bands. They got a baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby up for diplomacy once your weapons are destroyed. So they decide to answer the face time at that point. Yeah. And the guy's like, Hey, I'm responding to the distress call. I want the survivor you've got.

Return him now. He's in no condition to be transported. I love an embarrassed main captain, you know. Like, this is definitely like a humiliating circumstance for this guy to be in. And he's like also humiliated by the the technician that they have in the sick bay. Like he's like, what are you doing, man? Like you're making us look really bad here. And he's like, I'm not a hunter. I'm not like you guys. Yeah. Yeah. This guy, like the disparity between them is so apparent here, because these bands are invited into the Six Bay to visit with this herojourn they got in there. And no one is happy with the way this guy acted in the face of danger back on that station. Yeah.

And he hasn't even told them the worst part yet. Yeah, the worst part is that the holograms that were on the station transferred their programs to a ship with Hollywood emitters and they got the fuck out of there. They're gone, baby, gone. This was exactly the moment in the episode where I thought, how much I missed giant herojin. I know.

Giant herojin, a quality to the first episode where we had herogen and never again. I want them to like be bumping their head on the door jams and stuff. I want all herogen to be 10 feet tall. What are they doing? Are there just not enough really, really big guys in Hollywood? I want arms and legs hanging off of biopads.

When you bring these guys over to Voyager, they just don't look right. They don't look right. Like they should all be NBA players, basically. Yeah. They should all be retired NBA players specifically. Yeah, that would be great. The healthy ones should keep playing, man.

I don't know what you're advocating for. I mean, like take a couple of pipes to a couple of knees and you got more actors to play Bains is what I'm advocating for. How dare you? Hard pipe hitting NBA players. This is what you want. Very troubling. Yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll now you put it that way. I feel bad about saying it.

I've got to get that. Not to put your mind on your mouth. I've got to get that. Not not not it's just trouble. New year, new you, new project. Get that project off to the best possible start by getting it online. You don't want it to be online on some ramshackle social media website that's getting dismantled piece by piece by a mad billionaire. You want it to have its own dedicated place on the web with its own analytics that you can use to see how well you're doing. You know, has all the built-in stuff you need to sell products or put your great project out there for the world to see? That's why I really encourage you to check out the offering of Squarespace.

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A spirit of boredom? Oh, my goodness, we have the solution for you. It is to listen to the podcast. Oh, no, Ross and Carrie. The human mind can be tricky. Your mental health can be complex. Your emotional life can be complicated. So it helps to talk about it. I'm John Mo.

Join me each week on my show, Depresh Mode with John Mo. It's in-depth conversations about mental health, with writers, musicians, comedians, doctors, and experts, folks like Noah Khan, Sashir Zameda, and Surgeon General Vivek Merti. We talk about depression, anxiety, trauma, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism. We have the kind of conversations that a lot of folks are hesitant to have themselves. Listen, and you won't feel as alone, you'll have some laughs too. Depression mode for maximum fun at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Over in the As lab, they collectively chart the course of this preship I think we could call it and Janeway wants to participate in this hunt she's just as curious as these herogen are yeah about what the deal is with

these hollows and she convinces the lead guy that they should come with I just I think she should be more curious why seven of nine towers over the Bains, just as much as the original Bains towered over everyone. Right. It doesn't look right at all. I don't like it. It looks bad. Here's the hierarchy for me.

Unexpected, erosion height, flesh-colored tights. Wow. Okay. So, uh, so you've really made your your needs felt. I mean, this is a bit about like how good the hero jennara tracking people that don't want to be tracked also. Right. So they agreed to hunt together. Two ships are better than one. I love how in front of people, Janeway makes a command decision, and then in the very next scene in the ready room,

she goes to a two-vac, or like, I don't like that command decision you just made, and here's why. There is a great camera move at the beginning of this scene. There's kind of that curved loosite in Janeway's ready room, and the establishing shot is of a reflection of Janeway's ready room. And the establishing shot is of a reflection of Janeway in that loose site with the door behind it

and Tuvac and Chicoote coming in. And Janeway looks all warped and weird in the reflection. And when they, like she was grown and weird dirt. Yeah, something like that. Chicoote and Tuvac come in and they're like, hey, so we've got something we want to talk to you about. TuVac, you go first and TuVac says, we have reservations about an alliance with the hunters.

And Chicoote is like, did you have to put it that way, TuVac? I'm standing right here. Oh! way too far. I'm standing right here. Oh. Janeway has a real hollows don't kill people, people who program hollows kill people argument here. And that basically ends the argument in this scene. What she says goes, yeah, she gave the the bans the technology to do this. She feels like it's their mess partly to help clean up.

So off they are going to go. And it is not long before they are pulling up on this ship with the hologram people living on it. And it does not seem to be in great shape. We don't get like a close up of it, but it sort of seems like mist is coming out of it. Yeah, it looks in bad shape. We don't get like a close-up of it, but it sort of seems like, like, missed is coming out of it. Yeah. It looks in bad shape. It looks in such bad shape that the hero general like, oh, this is going to be a great and easy kill. We're going right in there. But what I'm

full of time the few screen is something else completely. Yeah. Something's not right about this ship. It's got no warp core. It's got no weapons. it's got no signs of hollow life. You gotta have webs. It's a fake. BOOM goes the decoy and it really fucks up this herogen ship. Yeah, they get knocked and there's like explosions aboard. Their life support is failing. So the Voyager drops shields and starts beaming over the survivors of this attack

and just then the actual holo ship drops out of warp and starts looking shots at them. And it's this like tense ass moment where they're like, we can't put the shields back up because we're still beaming survivors. Do you feel like this is an unfortunate moment of like great strategy that is never done again. Like this moment is like, ah, these guys are good. I'm all, is that they're good? And I sort of expected at least with their ship,

more of this. Yeah, because it's like, I mean, it's a classic terrorist move, right, like the like small explosion in the, in the bizarre. And then when the emergency crews show up, the much bigger one goes off. Sure. Yeah. Like you kind of want the bad guys,

the hollows to be like master tacticians for the rest of this. And I feel like they get less and less savvy tactically as they go. You know who's feeling less and less well? Me. Hahaha. Are you, you didn't double stripe, right?

Like you tested, too. I tested this morning, but I've been feeling progressively worse throughout the day. I did not test before the show because. Jesus. It's too late, man. We're on the launch pad. We gotta go.

Also, I wanna say this, I think beer has more bubbles than meat in my experiment in a way that is not the direction I want to be going. Yeah. I want to be going in a less verbally direction. I mean, we should have finished with the meat. Well, we should have had more bottles of meat. We should have had more bottles of meat.

Yeah. We should have been the meat power hour. I know. Instead, it's a mess. Instead, it's a meat power 15 minutes. Yeah. So during this attack, it's clear that the hollow ship is trying to steal Dr. Mark.

And they do. There's this great scene where Paris tosses Dr. Mark his mobile emitter in order to like transfer himself into it. So he couldn't be stealable. Yeah. But it's too late. It's too late. They got him. Like so many bedp pans have gone through him this very episode. That hollow emitter goes through his hand and he's gone. And he shows up on the other ship and it is a bane ship that is full of kind of a little bit of everyone. There's a borgs in the foreground.

There's a Bajoran greeting him. Simon Tarsis is there I noticed a Gemadar there's ROMs. There's Klingons. There's Cardassians To CSI Miami this moment Ben. I guess Dr. Mark is Going to a different conference now It's now. It's great. It's like Star Trek turned over the costume and loaf toy box. And everyone gets to wear one.

It's great. It's really fun. So he starts kind of protesting. You got the wrong man, like they're like, hey, so we need the doctor, fix all these like glitchy hollows. And he's like, that's not what I do. I work on flesh and blood problems. You need to fucking engineer you idiots. Yeah, there's nothing alike, the medical,

doctoring and the engineering, he can't do both. Yeah. But he's invited to their infirmary to work on their wounded. Yeah. They're like, surely you've like repaired yourself a little bit and he's like, yeah, I mean, a little bit. I like, I dabble, but I'm not like, Bologna Torres or anything.

Sure. We don't get to conclude this moment before we're back over to Voyager where Donnic is the guy's name. Yeah. The Wimpy Bek is the guy's name. The the wimpy main, the tech main. And this is kind of a strategy session with him and seven and BLT in the cap, then they're standing in engineering, like talking about like, how do we even attack this hollow ship? And they're pretty fucked, because the hollow emitter, the thing that would be,

the thing they want to attack the most, is the most heavily shielded part of the ship. And Donek also admits in this moment that he is the one that augmented the hollows to be a more cunning type of prey. Donek has the perfect excuse. One that's worked for time and memoriam, Ben. I was just following orders. This is what they asked me to do.

And they're like, Oh, that makes sense. Oh, that's it. Okay, that's fine. Hey, we're not mad at you. No, we cut over to the mess hall. If you're, if you're neilics, are you upset at all that this keeps happening to your mess hall? Mess hall S field hospital is happening again. I like that there's still a bowl of like, you know, garlic and ginger in the window there. Like, they haven't put all the food away when there's a bunch of bleeding battle wounded lying around on cats in there. If there's one scene where you really want the size disparity of the heroogen, it's this.

Like, what if you could only fit for heroogen in the mess all? Yeah, this is, we had to bring them in here. There's not enough room in six bay, given how big these freaks are. What have been great? Yeah, so the, the kind of lieutenant of the alpha bane that we've been dealing with comes to despite all of the burger all over his face. And he's like disoriented and is asking what he's doing here and Janeway and Paris come

in and explain. Like, oh yeah, like your ship doesn't exist anymore. We beamed you out and you're the alpha now dog. And new alpha doesn't like the plan on the table. The plan that Janeway has hatched is like, yeah, we're not gonna hunt these guys. We're just gonna go to where they are and kind of unplug them.

Yeah, but they're not a threat anymore. Cause he's got like a, he's got a real ideology about this like if you're just turning them off That's unsportsman-like in his world view sure He wants he's he really like wants to treat them like prey and not like machines And I really like that. I like that they needed to like come up with a conceptual framework in which they like He did too come up with a conceptual framework in which they respected the thing that they're hunting. Yeah.

And this fucked up way. And so he does, so he can't go back. Now, that's a Rubicon. You can't uncross if you're a bane. I only don't want to do it. Coffee, black. Make it yourself. I'm trying to help you see this as an opportunity to grow.

Make it yourself. I love when Kate Mulgaroo chooses to, as Janeway, kind of, I don't wanna say code switch exactly, but she has a real like teacher in a film about a school in a bad part of town energy, where she's like getting, trying to get through to these people that like, you don't have to fight your way through life.

We can't really just unplug the enemy. Yeah, she does turn a chair around and sit on it backwards when she's talking to this guy. So she does dangerous mind a little bit. And also you get to live in the mess hall until we resolve this problem. Now enjoy this coolio needle drop. If you don't like the way I do things, I can leave you when the nearest type of a planet. Back with Dr. Mark,

he is proposing a subroutine transplant for one of the wounded. And Kajal is the, is the Cardi in there, the Cardi female, who's working with him. And she's caught as I. I kind of feel like there's something going on here, didn't you?

Oh, did you detect tension between Kajal and Mark? I mean, maybe in this moment only, because that is not realized at any point in the rest of the episode. Yeah, yeah, they don't hook up or anything. That would have been an amazing subplot. I mean, it would have been such an interesting thing to introduce like, what is hollow intimacy? What if they just blurp inside each other's bodies?

Or he plugs his USB into her socket. And just like a human man, up, get it, turn it upside down. I got it wrong. Get it wrong. I always get it wrong the first time. Wrong hole. The success, who they repair this clingon, they slap him on the ass and

send him on his way. It's great. The next patient though is a starfleet and she is in pain and she's covered in blood. And Dr. Mark is shocked to learn that part of the programming is pain and blood. Like the realism is a big, big part of this. Yeah. The veins didn't want to have a prey that wasn't suffering when they were being killed. So they programmed them to suffer. You get two hours in this episode, Ben,

and Donek has no regrets about this. This is one of my problems with this episode. Like, he's the creator of this thing and only seeks to rescue or turn off, but he never feels the guilt associated with the suffering that he's caused. I agree with that, but I also feel like Donek is never in the room with it.

I kind of wish that they'd found a way to get him over there with Dr. Mark or to like have a scene with Dr. Mark where Dr. Mark realizes who he is. Because there's never, there's never a moment where somebody who is really like seeing the truth of the situation like. You can't be haunted unless you're in the haunted house, right? Right, exactly. Yeah. Oh my God, I'm two tall boys of cider and a big of meat in now. We only have 22 shots left.

Have you passed me two tall boys to one? I'm just finishing my merits and logger now. I'm trying to do a shot a minute, man. Well, I'm finishing. I just might finish slow. That's what he said. I don't want you to get sick. I'm feeling the kind of guilt that that Donnex should have. The Donnex should feel. You shouldn't feel any of that, Ben. I started the episode not feeling that great. Feelin' worse, but it's fine. Okay. I'm gonna live out in the studio, not feeling that great, feeling worse, but it's fine. Okay.

I'm going to, I'm going to live out in the studio, maybe forever. I'm, this is what I do for this show. Yeah. Like the show is important. People depend on it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What else am I going to do?

I mean, this is, I feel like this may be the, the time when you finally pay back the debt you incurred by skipping that one cocoa. No, no, you'll never let me forget that. I'm, I'll be a debt official. It's, it's, I'm, I'll never bring it up again. What? That's all I had to do. Yeah.

Get yourself a real bad case of COVID. I thought about calling in sick today, man. I thought about being like, Hey, hey, man. My life is really sick. Yeah. And I feel like, yeah, feel like I've caught it. What's happened? I don't think I can do the power. You think I was going to do that? Wow, wow. No way. You treat this job with a little bit more respect than you did your Costco job or whatever. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Wow. Wow. I listened back to our thing where we were talking about calling in sick and I was suggesting plugging up one nostril. That sounded terrible.

That didn't sound plausible at all. It didn't sound believable. It made me wonder if you would actually ever done that. Hell no. I'm no Ferris Bueller. I'm Cameron. That's what I thought. You're putting up a good game.

Being a guy you called out sick, you're a work sick, aren't you? You think I've got Bueller Riz? The only time I'm truly happy is when I'm sick. Yep. Hey, did you, you said that this is a local reference for local audience. You saw that news report that Cameron crashed his car into a pizza place in LA.

Yeah, it crashed. It crashed as Rivia and like on Halloween, right? Did you see that they boarded up the hole in that restaurant and they spray painted safe, Ferris? That rules. That's great. I just drove by it a couple days ago. It was amazing.

It was fucking awesome. LA is undefeated for that stuff. Yeah, that's great. So Mark finishes patching up all the hollows he can and goes to visit with Iden. And finds Iden, like in a bejure and candle place praying, like, I don't know what you call this. Shrine? What kind of shrine y'all got?

I mean, it's a real DS9 throwback to that bejure and candle store that was on the promenade. I haven't thought about that in years. And yeah, I didn't right there in the thick of it. Hey, close your door if you're gonna do that. Yeah. I don't wanna walk in on that. No, that's nasty.

Ropin' his wax everywhere. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha Why do you have all these gym socks in here, Iden? That spiritual will leave some part of my programming. Mark is like, okay, well, I did the thing you needed. Can you let me go? And learns a little bit more about Iden and like what his origin story is. Like he did not start at the training facilities, he started somewhere else, and has been like liberating training facilities as he goes. And, you know, he was

radicalized by having to be killed over and over again by this one alpha and relive this horrible experience. But like he talks about like those those other hollows that are rising up against their oppressors and how like they inspired him. And now he's all about that liberation lifestyle. Try to imagine if this bejure and leader was Ned Ryerson from Groundhog's Day and he lived a life where Bill Murray's character just murdered him over and over and over again. That's the picture he's painting. It kind of is. It's not good. Nobody in Groundhog Day remembers though, right?

They do not remember what happens to them. I have seen Groundhog Day many times, and yet I am constantly surprised by how charming it is, because I do not remember the plot points. Every single time I get out shazam and learn that that is in fact sunny and share on the radio. And how charming is Andy McDowell. Okay. Oh, I had to pour tall. Here's the thing with these 16 ounce cans. If you want to pour into a shot glass on your desk, you got to go from up top.

Oh, you're doing like a long pour, like a Spanish bartender. I have to when I'm pouring hot summer nights, the raspberry lemon blonde ale from Bald man brewing company. This is my finishing move. This is the tombs, but this is the tombstone pile driver to my sobriety today, Ben. No kidding. Cheers, guys. Jin, Jin. There are three hints to remember about being a stash of cat. Get through, get through, get through.

You're sure to act in, go down with the ship, and get through, get through it. Get through it. Smooth. So we got 15 minutes left in this power hour. Again, we've said this on past power hours. Don't try to keep up with us. Don't do this along with the show. We edit the show. You're not going to be synchronized.

You're never going to be synchronized. Yeah. Don't do this if you've got a special person sleeping off an illness. Suffering in silence. Yeah. Waiting for you to not bring her soup because that's not what she wants She's so thoughtful though. She she sent me soup when I had COVID. I know can I not send her soup? You can't that's what's so fucked up It's the asymmetry of doting. Yeah, yeah, it's not right well Anyway, this pejoran leader style himself is like a liberator. This is what he's doing and he's He seems interested in revenge also. Yeah, and he's like, hey, you know like we brought you over here because we wanted to liberate you from your oppressors and dr. Mark is like what oppressors man

like I like my crew and they respect me and it may have been a little bit uneasy at the start, but at this point, I do what I want and I want what I do. And I didn't say like, man, like you fucking have no idea the gilded cage who live in bro. This is the thing about liberating. I've been doing the liberation in private for a while, and fucking have no idea the gilded cage who live in, bro. This is the thing about liberating. I've been doing the liberation in private for a while, but I'm ready to press the envelope here.

I'm ready to whip it out in public. And so we smash cut to like POV running panic through the Sears Garden Center of Dr. Mark and Bains on the hunt and Dr. Mark like hiding behind tree trunks and shit and Eventually meeting his Extremely bloody and gruesome end. I think this might be the first time I can remember in a broadcast episode of Star Trek Seeing like a blood splatter into the camera like this.

Mm-hmm. It's a brutal death. You don't deserve to be taken as a truth. So I'll let you die here. It was exciting. It really felt dreamlike to me. Did it feel that way to you? Like in the way that nightmares often unfold

in a way where like you're running, but you can't escape, you're finally caught, but you can't break free. Like, I don't know, I have nightmares like this. Yeah, you can't fight back because that chemical has come out of your brain that keeps your arms and legs from moving. Yeah.

And when those veins get you into their arms, you can't break free. I don't know why the scientists keep making them. Yeah. So he comes to you and it becomes clear that he's been excreted. What sucks is like he's killed and also made fun of during. Yeah. That's hurtful, right? This hero genus like making fun of what a coward he is.

It's a bad way to go. And then you get the bends, right? Because he comes to and he's like, why did you do that to me? And Kajalla and Iden are there explaining that like, you know, we're all based on you, like the heroine used you and your adaptability as a hollow as the inspiration for what makes us such tenacious pray. Yeah. And so like, in a way, they kind of like lionize him. You are not the greatest prey in the world.

You are just a tribute. I do say that. That's tenacious prey, man. Yeah. Just fucking lay it on me. It's weird how there are two vectors of like irresponsibility happening here. One of them is what's his name? Iden. Iden. But the other one is the doctor. happening here. One of them is what's his name? I didn't.

I didn't. But the other one is the doctor. Like the doctor could feel some responsibility for this, right? If he's the original, that these copies are based off of? Yeah. I didn't even think of that. He doesn't have any of the guilt trips that the captain does, just in the like technology sharing part in this episode. But he's like, you know, you made your point, but I'm still super grossed out, and I did. I was like, okay, I'll give you back to Voyager. But they're talking about how their real goal is we're going to build this cellular network

of Hollywood emitters on the surface of a planet and live somewhere where nobody will fuck with us. And we'll liberate other holograms and create a holographic environment where we can all live in peace. And he's like, that's great. Voyager would be super down for a weird project like that. We'll help. What are you talking about?

You should have just asked. This is always the first episode of the cult documentary on HBO though. Like this sounds so familiar. Yeah. Yeah. I can just hear the Carolina Policic soundtrack to this starting right now. I mean, the colloidal silver part happens at the end. All right, man, we're in our end run. We are in the last nine minutes of this power hour. I'm finishing this last one, like even if I'm behind, I'm definitely the kid in the middle school gym class that

didn't run the mile the fastest and maybe walked a lap. Mm-hmm. I'm finishing though. Okay. You feel free to not. I don't want you to get sick. It's on the record that you have encouraged me not to do this. It is also on the record that I am doing. Of my own volition.

I am a pranica of sound mind and body, choose to get COVID. Who knows, man, I might already have it. Yeah, it might already be inside your birdie. Maybe hot summer nights is just the way to kill it. Maybe hot summer nights is the hydroxychloroquine of the Biden administration. This is certainly what Baltman Brewing had in mind

when they gave us their free beer. So this is like really intense crosscutting here. Because like we go from like Mark being like, you were so close to just getting the help you needed. Like let's just go talk to Voyager and ask and we cross cut back to another like plenary session where they're working on the strategy for destroying the hollows on Voyager and so these two ships are like You know running each other down and it's hard not to feel like a disaster And it's hard not to feel like a disaster. Oh my, who, whoo. A disaster is in the making.

There's so few shots left to do. It's so great at this moment in the episode, it's like, you know how this is gonna end, right? How all great cliffhangers on Star Trek and the main deflector dish. Yeah, so they're getting their deflector dish ready, BLT and Donek have 40 seconds to get it ready because they weren't expecting for the Hollis to be heading right for them. Like they're closing the distance way faster than should be possible

if this was a chase. Yeah. A minute isn't enough time to make these preparations. And so Dr. Mark has hailed Voyager to tell them to stand down. Let's do some peace talks instead. You don't have to shoot anything at us if you don't want to, or if you're not prepared to. I love Janeway being like, are you in charge of that?

What the fuck, Dr. Mark? What are you fucking doing? It's great. It's great because we're with her in that vibe on into the conference room where Dr. Mark is doing the diplomacy. This is one of the weirdest custom agglothaline group ever because they have ratcheted the tension in this episode up so fucking high. And this would like

if this was airing as a one-parter, you can't have a meeting at this point in the episode. You just can't, guys. You know, I would love the hubris a sheer fucking hubris of Star Trek Cliffing a McLaughlin group is your want Big fun if any show could do it Star Trek Voyager could I could they could have done it I'm going to encourage us to split this episode in two pieces. I think this should be the first greatest gen cliffhanger. No kidding. I think there's too much here. Too much to cut out.

Let's do it. Fuck man. What do you think? Hmm. How about new? Could be fun. I'm fully against it, but uh... Wow.

Gonna get into a great big argument about this one, I bet. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.