Two Hundred A Day - Episode 134: Star Trek: First Contact

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Welcome to Twenty Dollars a Day, the podcast where we explore our favorite holodeck adventures in the Star Trek universe! Nathan and Eppy are bidding a fond farewell to this podcast with our final episode: the second Next Generation movie, First Contact. Look, it has a Dixon Hill holodeck appearance, so it counts enough for us to talk about it - and it's a great movie! Thanks for trekking through all the holodecks, holosuites and photonic landscapes over the years. End program. Happy April, everyone! This is our seventh and final look at the slice of the Star Trek universe that intersects with our first love, The Rockford Files. Hope you enjoy it! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem * Bill Anderson * Brian Perrera * Eric Antener * Jordan Bockelman * Michael Zalisco * Joe Greathead * Mitch Hampton's Journey of an Aesthete Podcast (https://www.jouneyofanaesthetepodcast.com) * Dael Norwood wrote a book! Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo123378154.html) * Chuck Suffel's comic Sherlock Holmes & the Wonderland Conundrum (http://whatchareadingpress.com) * Paul Townend recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Brian Bernsen's Facebook page of Rockford Files filming locations (https://www.facebook.com/brianrockfordfiles/) * Robert Lindsey, Nathan Black, Jay Thompson, David Nixon, Colleen Kelly, Tom Clancy, Andre Appignani, Pumpkin Jabba Peach Pug, Dave P, Dave Otterson, Kip Holley and Dale Church! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show

Welcome to 20 a day the podcast where we explore the holodeck adventures throughout the Star Trek universe. I'm Nathan Poletta and I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw and Epi it is a bittersweet moment for us. It is on 20 a day. But we we did it. Mm-hmm. We did we've we've made it with the marathon The the endless stretch of holodeck episodes. Mm-hmm if you're just joining us for the first time Welcome welcome. You should probably go back to our back catalog But yeah, it's been a journey and we are excited to I guess end this trek through the stars if you will Yes I've been phrasing it in my head as a victory lap. Mm-hmm

I'm pretty sure the Holodeck has has you know made a presence in other movies I was just gonna make a joke about now that they've stopped making Star Trek's Because when we started this I'm pretty sure they weren't making start. Yeah, they weren't making start more I mean, I think the Abrams movies. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're or we're in the middle the Abrams movies Maybe but like but those are hollow dickless. Those are hollow dickless. I'm pretty sure I don't know if I saw the last one Anyway, but we there certainly was not more Star Trek TV that actually restarted after we started the show which is wild certainly was not more Star Trek TV that actually restarted after we started the show which is wild and we kind of had to draw a line and be like yeah we got it we got to stick with what we know we had a month of company meetings trying to

figure out what to do about that but yeah but we are considering the highlight of the holodeck on the big screen mm-hmm and taking on the only movie that we've done for our series here with the 1996 release Star Trek. I think it's eight in the overall chronology. It's the second TNG movie First Contact. Sorry, the 96. I withered up to die. Were you about to say I remember when this came out? Yeah, well that's 28 years ago. Mm-hmm. Wait a minute. Wait a minute Let me do the math here Not yet, okay. All right good cuz we are 39 years from the events of the movie 28 years from the release of the movie. I see, yes.

I was trying to figure out, like, but we're getting close to that halfway point. We have not hit World War III yet, but we still have most of this year to go to see if the Irish reunification of 2024 ends up happening. It's exciting. Yeah, it's an exciting possibility. Anyway, yeah, we're going to talk about the movie. We haven't done a movie for 20 days, so we'll see how it goes. But we're pretty chill about it.

I think I am on firm ground saying it's a good movie and it was fun to watch. I made myself not take as many notes as I do for the TV show because A, I just wanted to watch the movie and B, like we don't- It's a victory lap. Yeah, we don't need to record an episode that wanted to watch the movie and B, like, we don't- It's a victory lap. Yeah, we don't need to record an episode that's longer than the movie. That's ridiculous. Why would anyone ever do that? Yeah.

We'll kind of breeze through the plot events and kind of just focus in on stuff that stands out, stuff that we want to talk about, and of course, the pivotal holodeck scene, which does connect all the way back to our first episode where we talked about Dixon Hill way back in the early days. Sweet, sweet reincorporation. I like it. It's as if they planned it from the very beginning. They were like, we're gonna do this

and then we're gonna end with the second movie and then we'll do no more movies and we'll be good. I will note that I am either hopefully recovering from possibly in the midst of some kind of sickness, so I will try to keep my coughs and snorts off the mic, but if I sound a little weird, blame being a parent of a toddler. Being sick all winter, that's just the life that we live now. You are, of course, recovering from a Borg infection. Yes.

So you, yes. Yeah. You can tell by all the little, all the little, uh, uh, gribblies superglued to my skin. Yes. Uh, I don't know, Do we have anything else to say? Before getting into our movie I think it was the winter of last year where I watched all of the the Star Trek movies

Oh, yeah almost in order. I think we Originally were going to just go and hit the highlights and then we start to fill in I learned to appreciate all of them in different ways But this is definitely one of them in different ways. But this is definitely one of the standout ones. There's that myth about like even Star Trek movies being the good ones. Right. Well, I'm going to say no. There are definitely some good odd ones and also the even ones. There are some even ones that are uneven. That's great. Yeah. Well, it's like I feel like there's been some reconsideration of especially the first one of the motion picture in the last couple of years.

Like with most things with the original series, there is a lot to criticize. But a lot of the things that people said it was a bad movie for originally, that pendulum has swung and it's like, oh no, the music and like the big long sweeping. Yes. Appreciation of the ship and this and the pace and all that stuff is like, no, that actually can be, that's actually enjoyable if you're in that frame of mind. We're going to see in this one, I'm going to probably just hammer this home over and over, but like special effects are great or fine, whatever special effects are. Actors reacting to special effects that they clearly cannot see are amazing. That is the thing that makes any of this work.

And like it's like pro wrestling. It's the selling is the actors selling it. That makes you have to sell it. Yeah. And in that first Star Trek, that long, slow scene where they approach the Enterprise, you have, I can't remember if it's Kirk and maybe it's Kirk and Bones. It's just Kirk and Bones on the shuttle. I haven't watched in a while. That sounds right. And they just keep coming back to these two actors who clearly are not approaching a starship But they're acting the hell out of the fact that they are right like they're just Delivering to the audience this

melange of emotions of this awe for the size and scope of the starship the fact that it was At least not I think it wasn't their Starship it was it's the Enterprise but it's the new Enterprise but it's like their new home based on their old home. You know just all of that is just great. In this one we're going to get not the same scenes but the same delivery. Yeah absolutely. You got some of the best acting against things that like the special effects are fine. Like they're like, I have no problem. I'm not going to like call out any of the special effects in this for any reason. But like, they didn't even have to be there.

These acts, you could have just just like been matte paintings, like all of it. And we would have been like, yeah, like I believe it. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, at the risk of going down a punch list of the good and the bad movies, which I think we can, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Say for another time. I think that no one has ever talked about before. No. Yeah. Well, I think we should go ahead and move into our move into our

I was going to say move into our credits here, not to go into the credit sequence, which is a there's so there's so many things about this movie that both good and I wouldn't even say bad, but temporally, like there's so many things about this movie. They're like, oh, yeah, this is a 90s movie. Right. Right. And one of those is the opening credit. Yeah. Having all the credits at the beginning with like the abstract background and like nothing really interesting happening. Nothing happening. Yeah. The music is doing the it's just that orchestra thing of like we're now getting in the mood.

Sit down with your popcorn and relax and prepare yourself for a cinematic experience. I think that movie's just stopped doing, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I was just going to quickly say, so as we say, 1996 is released in November, November 22nd, in fact. It did better than the first TNG movie, which I think is no surprise because it's a better movie.

In my opinion, at least. Like with everything, I think we're kind of like, if you really want to know all the details, it has been exhaustively documented. All that kind of all the like production schedule and release and how much money it made and all that stuff. It did very well. The writing credits are the story is Rick Berman, Brandon Brega and Ronald D. Moore screenplay by Brega and Moore. So it is a the Star Trek guys doing Star Trek. Yeah. And it feels like they're going to probably make some guesses about thought processes as we go through here.

But it definitely feels like people who are who have just done the whole series and are doing a movie. Yeah. At this time, Deep Space Nine and Voyager are currently airing. TNG is over. Yeah. So, you know, it's like a reunion cast, right, for that. Yeah. But these producers, Braga, Moore and Berman, are still doing Star Trek. They're doing the other shows. It is directed by Jonathan Frick's,

which, you know, you love to see it. Yeah, I did not know this was, in fact, his first feature film. He, of course, done a bunch of episodes of Star Trek and a couple of other TV directorial efforts. But yeah, there's you know, I skimmed the memory alpha on it due to some due diligence. Apparently they shopped the concept around to like A-list directors and no one went for it. So when they're as they're still trying to find a director, very is this phrase is like many of the cast volunteers to direct and Frac's quote one out,

which so I don't know what that means. All right. Yeah. But you know, he got it. And honestly, it's great. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is something that I'm going to be coming back to again. But like the pacing in this movie is nigh perfect. Yeah. And probably hard to do like because of of the two stories that they do are so incongruent.

Right. To make that pacing still work, I think that, yeah, well done. And I have to chalk that up to Jonathan Frakes being on the ball about, here is what this should feel like. Right, yeah. So as with everything, I don't know exactly the role of the editing and like other production people and whatnot. But if you're going to put his name on it, I'm going to attribute the pacing, the way that scenes flow into and out of each other, as well as the direction of the actors, which, as you said, is very good.

Yeah. You know, to the man. So thumbs up from me. When I've seen that he's directed a thing, I'm excited. I don't have like a Encyclopedic like knowledge or anything, but I remember he did a show. Was it called The Good Guys? Might be called The Good Guys. It was Colin Hanks and Blanket on Who the Other Guy is. It was a Hanks and, oh, I'm blanking on who the other guy is. It was a buddy cop show where they're mismatched.

But anyways, I was enjoying the show and I was like, this is a really good show. I found out that he had directed the episode and watched some behind the scenes stuff. The only story I can relate from any of that is that he does seem to be, I guess you might call it an actor's director. Like he just seems to get along with the cast, which makes sense. As one would imagine. Yeah, yeah. So I would suspect that this was fun to shoot and there are definitely things going on in plot B that just look like that, just look like everyone's enjoying themselves, and that's good.

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patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. So, of course, no cold open. And we already discussed the the the extremely 90s opening credits. Yes, it does drop right into a fairly arresting sequence right off. I guess it's both a flashback and also kind of I kind of wonder. I was trying to. So I've I've seen this movie a lot not I mean not as much as the fifth element but yeah I've probably seen this five or six times over the course of my life that sounds about right every every five or six times it's like every once every

five years something like that once every podcast cycle of. Yeah, I always find a podcast reason to watch. Yeah. For every every long running podcast I do. Anyway, so obviously I know the plot. So I was trying to watch it with a little bit of an eye towards like TNG went off the air. I haven't seen any of it for whatever two years or however long it's been. And also maybe I'm bringing a friend who hasn't who's not like a Trekkie, right? Right. Yes. So I'm like, how much of this movie is oriented towards like onboarding people into

because because this is one of the reasons I think we like it so much. At least I like it so much is that it's so integrated into one of the long term stories from the show. How much does it do to kind of like onboard a viewer to like here is why this stuff matters. And I feel like this is a good intro. I think so too. So the movie itself is an hour and 50 minutes. I think some somewhere around there almost two hours. I check because I was like, is this because you know, the perfect length for a movie is 90 minutes. So I was assessing that and there are 10 minutes of credits at the end.

So it's like 140 odd depending on if you watch those those front credits or not. That makes more sense because it is tight. It is a very tightly written. And I was thinking I wasn't coming from the exact same angle, but a very similar angle that you were coming from because I was like, all right, how does this movie stand on its own which is roughly what you were saying to you right like like right away we're delivered important information about our captain mm-hmm about his history with the Borg in particular we're introduced to one of my favorite Star Trek characters of all time Locutus we hardly knew ye it's should state that it's also the very classic,

it was all a dream, but it wasn't, but was it all a dream thing, but I didn't mind. Like it was fun. I really, like you knew that that was going to happen and you were just anticipating it. I remember being kind of gotten by that like the first time I watched it, right? Probably, yeah, yeah.

And also the image of the drill coming towards his eye I've got tamed that image ever since I first saw this movie. I eyeball things Content warning. Yeah eyeball things eyeball things and this is a very this is a I think it's PG-13 Like this is not a movie that is going to indulge in gore. Yeah. But there's a lot of like, eh, and then cut. But just that it's like the way it's shot and everything. I don't know. That particular scene is is a one that's engraved on my brain. Or that image, I should say.

They get a chance in this movie to make the Borg horrifying in a way that they probably couldn't on the television show, right? I'm not saying that Borg wasn't...the concept of the Borg is horrifying, especially if you're afraid of communism while also watching a show about space communists. But we'll get into that at some point because Picard gets into that at some point. But anyways there are some shots in here like there's that drill. I'm not saying that the Borgs on the show weren't scary or anything like that but there were

certain shots and decisions made during this movie that I thought was like oh that's great they're just edging it up for the movie that I thought was like, oh, that's great. They're just edging it up for the movie. They're not like, they're edging it up in a good way. Well, I mean, obviously the stakes are higher, all of human history, but that's fine. That's always kind of the thread of the Borg anyways. But there's just these very nice personal moments that make them repulsive in a great way. I was gonna say it makes them more visceral. They're a more visceral threat.

I'm just gonna call it out now. I'm not gonna wait for it because who knows what we're gonna skip over, but there's a scene where one Borg is just walking across a hallway with a crew member just holding hands, just holding the crew member's hand or whatever. And the crew member is just like looking over at everyone else and like just being led to

becoming a Borg, like sheep to the slaughter, right? Like it's just like it got me. I was like, wow, that's a nice little moment of horror because this should be horrifying what's happening right now. And of course we get this classic horror trope in the beginning where he wakes up from a nightmare to still be in that nightmare. Yeah. Around here is where I made a note that this movie looks great. I have the Blu-ray. So I was watching the Blu-ray and like, yeah, whatever they do for that. I mean, I'm sure look great at the time, too. I don't know if they did any like rejiggering of effects.

Yeah, it just looks really good. I've also been watching a lot of 70s TV, so like seeing everything very like crisp and HD and everything, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is nice. One note that I also ran across was that the design for the uniforms in this one, they're like kind of darker, like their palette for the uniforms is darker. And part of that was so that they would look good on film because the TV palette would, I guess, you know, probably look a little costumey or something. Yeah, one of those fun little things. Of course, they had the same costumer that they had for the series.

You know, they had the same set decorator, like all the all that stuff. I do like the look of Enterprise. Enterprise looks good. Yeah. You know, this is the new one, because the last one, I think, got destroyed in the last movie. Yeah, it's saucer last movie. Yeah, it's a section crash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a smaller ship, which I think fits well with the story, too.

It's a tighter it's a tightly engineered ship. It's a little more of a like a like a warship and a little less than a cruiser, I think, is the idea plot wise. We get the orders. They know that the Borg are coming to Earth, but the enterprise is ordered to patrol the neutral zone due to concerns about Picard's previous his assimilation. And so we get the exposition there. If you haven't seen that storyline where he was assimilated by the Borg, that's

who look cutest is, and then he had gotten unassimilated, but there's still concerns about his... They don't say about his loyalties, but more about his like, basically, is he going to crumble under the... Right. You know, in the face of the Borg attack. You would even have concerns about it, even if it wasn't like weird sci-fi Borg-y stuff, but like the trauma of all of it.

Yeah, yeah. These scenes are short. There's no fat. Yeah, yeah. No fat on these bones, right? It's like they're cut right at right to get into the next thing, which there's a scene where Picard is in the in his dark room listening to opera. Yeah. And everything's like shaking like, I guess, or, you know, I don't know, space turbulence. And then we have Riker's reflection, the glass of the wind

of the viewport slowly fading in as he comes up. It's really good, really well shot. I'm trying to keep my like, you know, analysis hat on. I'm like, so why like what is like, why have this scene? Right. Because it's not important. Like, it's like, oh, you know, we completed our sweep. Whatever. I guess when we get the exposition about like they're not concerned about the ship,

they're concerned about the captain. Yeah. But I mean, this I don't think this is groundbreaking, a groundbreaking observation. But the emotional core of this movie is Picard's character synthesis, like his journey. It's not like we're going to learn a bunch of new stuff about Picard's character synthesis, like his journey. It's not like we're gonna learn a bunch of new stuff about Picard, it's not that kind of character journey, but like seeing him deal with his trauma,

like you said, is like what this movie's about, like on that level. And so we have this moody scene where he's, you know, in the dark with the opera, everything's shaking around him. He's isolated and know, in the dark with the opera. Everything's shaking at him. He's isolated. And then like maybe the person he trusts most in the world slowly fades in kind of on the periphery of his of his zone. Like, it's very it's a scene to put his inner life on screen for us.

Yeah, exactly. It's it's he's standing on a parapet in his castle. There's a thunderstorm. The music that he's playing is very Picard in that it's some classical music. But it's also like, yeah, his stormy emotions and we know that. We're going to get two stories here. The Picard tale, which is Which is, I think, very smartly written. They're like, let's make Patrick Stewart

Shakespeare all over us. Let's just show off that this guy can act. We're going to take the character of Picard, and we're just going to just. Run him through the wringer. Yeah, push all of those emotions to the top so he could just give us everything. They do a phenomenal job with that one.

And then the other story is going to be a little more of a romp, just a little bit more fun. And like the stakes are still high, but like the other story is it's more like the content of one of the TV episodes. Or there's a problem. Our crew is here. We're going to do all our things. We're going to solve the problem.

Yes. Everything is going to be fine at the end. We haven't started the B story yet, which is fine. But we're at the beginning of the A story, the big thing. And I love the difference in tone in these two stories and how they I mean obviously I love differences in tone but like the difference in tone in these two stories and just how they interact and sometimes don't interact with each other but we as audience kind of go back and forth so we have like a little palate cleanser between yeah anyways so I think this scene is great because it does take that A1

and just tell you where he's headed for that ringer you were just talking about. And this whole first chunk of the movie is just is is just, you know, bam bam bam getting us to to the good stuff. So they get the audio of the Borg engagement. It's very intense. We go from very quickly from initial engagement to needing reinforcement and their casualty reports. And so we get Picard's, Picard's committing the direct violation of orders to go back. We get the good data. I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say to hell with our orders. To hell with our orders. This bit, knowing that it was in 96 is very interesting because hearing over the intercom,

the intercom over the radio, whatever, communications. Yeah, whatever subspace. The things that are happening, the panic, just the whole fleet falling apart because of this one board cube is great and felt post 9-11 to me. It felt like it would have been informed by that, but it clearly wasn't. It was five years before. But it definitely tapped into those same where you're helpless. They're too far away to do anything and they're not supposed to go there. And and this this thing is happening. And you're like, what do we do? He does the captain thing. He makes a decision.

Yep. So they go. There's something here about the timing that I always thought was a little hand wavy because like they were specifically sent far away. Yeah. And they get right back. But I guess Max Warp is really fast. Yeah. So that's fine. We get the arrival at the battle and all the ships trying to take out this Borg cube. I think this is one of the few space battles in Star Trek. Like at least in this era of

Star Trek that like looks like a space battle, which I really appreciate. I think that the special effects is really well done here. The sense of scale was very well done. The huge cube, all the little ships. Yeah, like there's actually three dimensions happening. I think we brought this up, but like the whole point to the final battle in the original next generation series is Riker brings a ship it brings it in from the third dimension and that surprises everyone. Yeah But it's because we're watching Star Trek and when you watch Star Trek you imagine it's a naval battle. That's the metaphor Yeah, and so this is actually a more of a yeah dog bite very crisp

We see enough to get the sense of the scale and the disaster. Ships that are cut in half floating. It's good. It's good. And then we get to see Wharf. Yeah, you know, I'm a big Wharf fan. He gets to do a lot of good Wharf stuff in this movie. Perhaps today is a good day to die. I'd love to see it.

I've always really liked how like, well, OK, how do we get Worf on the bridge? Right. Yes. Guess we'll save him specifically out of all of the ships that are getting destroyed. Yeah. I'm going to ask you a question here. Worf ship is disabled. They teleport them aboard the Enterprise. One character that I feel like gets a little short shrift in here is Crusher, Dr. Crusher. Yeah.

Her job is to introduce people to the captain in this in this movie, which is a shame, a little bit of a shame. But that's where we'll get that later. One of the constraints of the movie, like with the episodic TV, you obviously can feature different characters in each episode and thus balance out over the course of the movie like with the episodic TV you obviously can feature different characters Yeah episode and thus balance out over the course of the resin in the movie It's like there's kind of like one too many main characters To like really fit in what's going on and it's yeah It's it is unfortunate that we don't get more crusher, but also yeah, what are you gonna?

Do we're just talking about how tight of a movie it is. But here's my question for you. Mr. Worf, if he's commanding his own ship, is he not Captain Worf? What what's happening here? So I think the lore answer, right, is that he's piloting. He's captaining the Defiant, which is the DS nine ship. Right. OK. If you align the timelines, which you should in this movie, it's the whole point of this movie is aligning the timelines. This is Internet sleuths.

You can figure this out for us. But yeah, he he he does say his rank later. He is a lieutenant commander. I don't know that. I don't I don't know the the protocol in this case. Maybe he's Mr. Wharf because on the Enterprise, he's Mr. Wharf. More of a collegial relationship. But it's great. I'm going to love Wharf in this movie. But anyways, go on. So we get the insight here that maybe they should have listened to Picard the whole time because he's able to use his particular knowledge of the Borg to direct the fleet's weapons towards a seemingly non critical system that turns out to actually blow up the cube.

Great. But it does eject an orb towards towards the Earth. The Enterprise goes in pursuit and the orb starts shooting out chronometric particles. And again, just the efficiency of like we're caught in a temporal distortion. It's time travel. Like, yeah, like there's no reason to wait. There's not even techno babble other than like whatever kind of metric, but like there's not even like let me explain why this works. It's just like, you know, this is the premise of our movie. We're caught in this temporal wake. Now we're back in time. All right. Now the movie can begin.

They witness Earth under Borg under hundreds of years of Borg rule. Right, right. Just before they dive in and they're like, why haven't we changed? Oh, because of this wake. I'm like, yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah. That's what a temporal wake does.

Let's go. Yeah. and so I checked the time here so this is like just shy of 15 minutes, I think so like and two minutes were credits. Yeah, I already feel like I've been on an adventure Yeah, that whole thing was set up. It was also a space adventure in that Yeah, you know 12 13 minutes and just that so that pacing of it I'm always surprised to see how little time has has passed Yes through that sequence because it feels like you got through a lot of stuff there I don't know. I'm gonna come back to it again and again. The pace is just I agree

I just recently told the internet and this is me complaining not about this But about there's several recent movies that I've abandoned at this mark at the 15 minute mark Because all they've done for those 15 minutes is explain the exposition, change scenes, explain the exact same exposition in a slightly different way, change scenes, and then started explaining the exposition again. And I was like, I can't, I don't have time for this. I got to go watch First Contact. It's a 15 minute setup for the main crux of the story, but that's fine, we get the characters, we get the understanding of like,

they take their time explaining it enough that like if you were new to Star Trek, like you don't need to know what the neutral zone is, they explain what the neutral zone is and why they might be there and why it doesn't matter that they're there. And yeah, no, I think it's this is great. Yeah. So we head back to the 21st century.

We will now start splitting, splitting our stories. We meet our our protagonists from this time in this camp somewhere. We eventually learned in Montana somewhere. We meet Lily and Zephyr Cochran, who, yes, us Star Trek nerds, of course, know who Zephyr Cochran who yes us Star Trek nerds of course know who Zephyr Cochran is yeah but yeah but they will explain it yeah you know so Zephyr Cochran inventor of the warp drive he's in the pilot of the original series I think he might have been yeah isn't the plot of that they find him like off on a planet somewhere and they thought he's been dead, obviously.

I don't know. There's a lot of lore about, you know, Cochrane. So now we're getting back to the very beginning. He is played by James Cromwell. So he was in three episodes of Next Generation as various characters. He's been in so much. He was in Deep Space Nine. They just, you know, a great character actor. He apparently comes back as Zephyrn in some of the more recent ones, which makes sense. You now have a iconic actor in an iconic role.

We get the introduction of our characters, but then there are sudden blasts from the sky and this destructive attack on their camp out of nowhere. Some good, good old fashioned stuntman work. Yeah. In this that I absolutely appreciate like the the guy in the bicycle. Oh, yeah. With the explosion going off near him and like some guy like being thrown from a roof by an explosion. We'll put a mat out and you just jump onto the mat and like, yes, please.

Up on the Enterprise, they figure out their position and the exact date and we get, again, a little bit of explanatory exposition to locate for us. bit of explanatory exposition to locate for us. It's April 4th, 2063. It's after the Third World War in which 600 million people died and the most global governments have fallen apart. But it is in fact the day before first contact. So depending on when you're listening to this episode. When this episode airs, it is 39 years and three days from when this episode airs, which is not that far away. Not that far away, but it's within a lifetime. Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to point that out. They make quick work of the orbiting orb with some quantum torpedoes because the technology has moved on.

Yeah. No more photon torpedoes. Useless to us. Yeah. And so Borg thread has ended. So that's good. They just need to deal with anything that may have that they made on the surface, of course. So they beam down to this complex. There's kind of like a missile silo that they're building this thing in. And there's a control room where everyone has been. That seems to be destroyed.

Everyone in is dead. The important thing here is that Picard and data find the under construction ship. I think it's called the Phoenix. But our friend Lily is hiding out in there. I had some kind of firearm that she panics and starts spraying towards this incoming threat. I have two things to say. The first is Lily is played by Alfrey Woodard, I think is her name. I may be not doing that name justice. she's, as an actress, amazing in this role. This role is going to be a very important role,

and it's in particular gonna be a very important role in Picard's story, and she just keeps up with, the character keeps up with Picard, and the actress keeps up with Patrick Stewart, and it's great. She's maybe my favorite Star Trek character. I just really like her. And the other thing is we were about to get the the name of the movie.

Mm hmm. We are indeed. The meeting of Alfre and I was like, Lily and data would be first contact, right? That's why they knew that. Yes, of course. She she makes first contact with data, really. Yeah. Because, yeah, he in a classic data can do anything. It's data can do anything that the plot requires him to do.

So in this case, he can take a full clip of ammunition directly to the chest and back as he jumps down to confront her. And she faints upon this site. But might not just because of because of the surprise of seeing this Android. Right. She also has radiation poisoning because there's a breached nacelle or whatever on the on the ship that's in the in the hangar. So they need to take her to sick bay. And in a very I feel like this is a very post Roddenberry move of like no lectures about the Prime Directive.

Yes. There's some hesitation, but like, we're going to do this. I also like the idea that like, we have a protocol for this. I'll make her well, I'll keep her unconscious, she'll never know she was on the ship. We've all kind of agreed that that is okay. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we get the clear statement of our stakes here. It's less than 48 hours before the ship has to be launched because the fact that a warp ship is launched is it turns out to be Vulcan, a passing alien ship recognizes the warp signature and comes to Earth

to make first contact, and that ushers in the Star Trek universe. Right. Yeah, that's the birth of the Federation right there. So yeah, we get the, our stakes here is that the whole future is in jeopardy if they can't launch this ship when it's supposed to go. He of course calls on Geordi to handle it. And we get our first hint of something might be awry with, on his way out where he tells someone to check the environmental controls. It's getting a little warm in here. Yeah, foreshadowing.

There's a wonderful Picard beat here where, you know, where he's like touching the ship and having an experience and Data asks him if touching it makes it feel different and he says of course. Speaking of foreshadowing. Yeah. But I had a note at the beginning of the scene, which is this is Picard's encounter with like foundational history, specifically for him as a space explorer, as a captain, etc. Yeah. So boyhood fantasy data.

I must have seen this ship hundreds of times in the Smithsonian, but I was never able to touch it. Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of Phoenix? Oh, yes. For humans, touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way, make it seem more real. I am detecting imperfections in the titanium casing, temperature variations in the fuel manifold. It is no more real to me now than it was a moment ago.

It's great to have this discussion because we're setting the stage for the part of the A plot that is what I'm calling the last temptation of data. The A plot is a Picard story, but it's also a data story. Or maybe that's like the C plot that's tightly wound around the A plot. Whatever. I'm not going to try and figure it out. But the point is that data touches touches it but can't feel it. Right. He can interpret it through his various sensors and is unable to

experience the emotion that comes with it that Picard gets. Yeah, that's good. I hadn't I hadn't really thought about it in those terms, but yeah, you're that that is directly relevant to what they're going to do. What they're going to do to him later. Yeah. Yeah, yeah tightly written. I'm telling you very tight It's very tight It's possible that Cochran might be dead Troy's role in this episode is to like give us connective tissue for the plot Mostly like we again, unfortunately, I mean I will say unfortunately our female members of the crew Get a little de-emphasized in this very action oriented

plot which is kind of a shame, but at least she has more lines. Yeah. May have to face the possibility that Cochrane is dead. Picard has a line that says like, he has to be here. It was his dream. And knowing how the movie unfolds, I think this is also a little bit of foreshadowing, a little bit to set us up because we learn about Cochrane, right? That's part of the B plot.

And then, yeah, we get into our horror movie sequence where I thought of you, I was like, oh, this is all like classic horror tension building, you know, the engineer who hears the sound and then there's like just a shadow And then all of a sudden the scream and then and you know the woman turns around to the camera We don't see what she sees, but she screams we know we know the board in there That's when on planet side we see a Picard There's this like that there's the the audio voice like effect of kind of like the voices in his head of like when the Borg are doing stuff.

Yeah, he can hear their hive mind. Yeah. So he gets that and he checks up with the ship. Worf mentions the environmental controls as being the only thing that is strange and he has to head back up. Now, this is where they mentioned the 39.1 degrees Celsius, right? I think that's the next scene. But yeah, somewhere in here again, it always pleasantly surprises me that like we get right into the Borg stuff like now. Yeah. Yes. This movie has no slow burns.

This movie is all like, and now we're doing the next thing. But I was trying to pay attention and it's a long time before we see Borg. Right. Yeah. All of the Borg presence through this sequence is all in shadow and implication to build that tension. And I think add to what you were saying about how they're more of a... They're scarier here than they are on the show just due to, I think, the limitation of the medium, as you were saying, but also very intentionally. So with this framing, we have this good intercut stuff. They're in the medical bay with Lily, and there's a sudden impact on the door. Yes. Horror movie moment on the bridge.

That's when Picard is giving the orders to seal off deck 16 and they go over all the variables, including the whatever 39.1. Yeah. So I looked this up because I heard 39.1. I'm not entirely sure if that's what it is, but I looked it up. That's 102 degrees Fahrenheit. It's pretty warm, which is, depending on when you hear this, like a nice cool spring day.

Yeah. Yeah. And like 70% humidity or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it is a weird environment that these Borg prefer. But, yeah, now we're going to get to cameo time. They must have transported from the orb somehow without detecting them. And now if they stop us here, then they can take over the enterprise and thus the earth. It's part of their unstoppable miss.

Like if they have a little foothold, they can just creep and just take over anything. Yeah, right. So if this were a movie without context, right? Like this is a movie that didn't have the whole Star Trek universe. And we're just going to tell this story. It wouldn't work because I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to say and how I should say it here. What I really like about what's happening here is that the crew understand that about the Borg. So they immediately react to it that way instead of having to be like what are they up to? They're like okay here are the things the board can do and they will work

relentlessly towards the goal of assimilating and and so we know that like how they're gonna do that on the micro scale and and some possibilities of how they might do that on the macro scale and we need to work against that in all the ways. And again, very snappy and just right into it. Whereas like if it were a movie divorce of that context, you would have to discover with the audience that that's what they're trying to do or something. Sure. Or have an example earlier in the movie of it happening so that everybody knows that that is going to be the big problem later.

They are, of course, trying to take over the computer and Data is able to put in his fractal encryption code that the Borg are unlikely to break. Right. So they have a little bit of time to try and deal with it. And yeah, cameo time in the medical bay, Crusher has to wake up Lily because I have to escape through the tubes, manages to kind of hustle her while she's still confused and activates the EMH. Yes.

Our good friend, what's his name? Robert Picardo, is that? Yes, I think so. Yeah, Robert Picardo. What? I'm sorry. Right underneath him in IMDB, I see Adam Scott was the con officer on The Defiant and I guess I wasn't paying attention but now that I

think about it last time I saw it I remember seeing him on there. Like this is before, what was his big breakout? It was a he was on Parks and Rec yeah yeah he was that that was his big breakout one. Although I remember him from Party Town. But anyways, I completely forgot. I think last time I saw him, there's an earlier Star Trek one where I think one of Sulu's officers is Christian Slater and he has a line or two lines or something like that.

It's another fun like, hey, this person's going to go out to have a career. You love to see it. Yeah. But this is about Robert Picardo playing the holographic doctor, and he gets to deliver a line. So there's you know, there's a there's a good amount. I think we mentioned in our lead up, like this movie is made by Star Trek. People do Star Trek things and they are putting in things for fans. Yeah, I don't know if this falls under the head.

I'd line up like fans service at this point, because I do feel like it's fairly restrained. But like the first time I saw this movie, I'd never seen Voyager. So I'm like, oh, this is a thing like and it's funny in its moment. But it is a little divorced of context. But if you've seen Voyager and you know the image character, then it's a really fun cameo. Of course, this is not the doctor from Voyager, because that is a he is a fully realized

photonic being. This is just the core program that created created him. But it's our first holograph. That's true. in the episode. That's true. And I guess he does his job, which is to delay them just long enough, delay, confuse and delay the Borg just long enough for everyone to get out of the medical bay.

And Lily takes advantage of the confusion to split off and go off on her own. I just want to point out he gets the line. I'm I'm a doctor, not a doorstop. Yeah, which right. That's a call back to Bones. Bones and like Bones may have never said that. I can't remember if that's one of the things. Beat me up, Scotty is the thing that nobody ever said.

Right. Yeah. But I mean, he says I'm a doctor, not a whatever is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that he says. And so, yeah, yeah. I did note here that in this scene, we still haven't actually seen the Borg because we're seeing it from the doctor's perspective. So they're still off screen through here.

Well, we have like not Borg vision, but we're looking at the doctor roughly from the point of view of where the Borg, how the Borg would be seeing him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so we got a briefing from Picard. They're in engineering. They can't just go in shooting because it could blow up the whole ship. But if they can puncture a plasma coolant tank,

the plasma destroys organic components on contact. That will take out the Borg because of their synthesized nature. Worf informs us that they only have so many shots before the Borg shielding can, you know, adapts to their weapons. And Picard has a stern warning to not hold fire against former crew members. You may see, you know, former crew members, believe me, you'll be doing them a favor. This is, this is a theme that we will explore, which is great. It feels like a stone cold line. And it is.

It tells us the danger we're up against and you cannot give them any quarters. But also, we're going to come back to it. I like it. Like we we revisit a couple of times and each time it gets like explored a little more until we get to a turning point for Picard. Just good writing. That's all I'm saying. Just good writing. So we cut from all that drama intention to Troy getting drunk under the table by Zephyrum Cochran in the bar. To Troy getting drunk under the table by Zephyrum Cochran in the bar We have the great moment where Riker pulls the plug on the jukebox

Cochran throws a bottle at him and says who is this jerk? Yeah, a lot of gags here Troy has done her job. She found Zephyrum Cochran But he wouldn't even talk to her without having a drink and it took three shots of something called tequila before I Could confirm that he's the guy we're looking for. Yeah, this is a good this is like the Have fun with this scene scene for these for these two for Troy and and Riker This is a thing that like if you are new to Star Trek you probably don't know

But like they they drink what synthahol is that what it's called is an alcohol that doesn't get you drunk, right? Like that's that's their enjoyment So like this made it's not like they don't have access to alcohol, but this could be Deanna Troy's this could be probably at least the first... The most like... Drunk she's ever been. Yeah, yeah. Like they certainly have like, you know, like Romulan ale, right, is real, you know, or like if you get real, you can get real scotch, real whiskey. Those are in some episodes.

And there is a delineation between the synthol you get at the... Yeah. ... intent forward and like the good stuff that you might have a bottle of from a present or something I also want to point out that this is second contact because Deanna Troy is an alien. Mmm true I mean assuming we're going to treat data as an alien, which I think it's fair. He's a unique life form Yeah, and he's not not from Earth and not human. So now we're on to Second contact. I'm just gonna keep track of how many contacts we have.

It's a primitive culture. I'm just trying to blend in. I already told him our cover story. He didn't believe me. We are running out of time. Now if we tell him the truth, do you think he'll be able to handle it? If you're looking for my professional opinion as Schitt's counselor, he's nuts. I'll be sure to note that in my log. Yes. Cochrane gets the music going again and Troy just passes out on the table and we get this amazing face, like this amazing reaction shot from Riker. Just like, what do I have to deal with now? The humor here is great. The regard they clear that

they have for each other is clear here. And also it's just like, I don't know, it's good stuff. This is, this is a, uh, a refresher. Like I've said, uh, mentioned earlier, we, we're going to have like lots of strong, heavy emotions going in the other plot. And this plot is going to have a lot of nice fun antics and whatnot. I do want to ask you and maybe our listeners, um, uh, something about the music here because I don't know the exact song might not be a real song, uh, but it sounds like it's fifties rock and roll.

It does. And the year is 2063. So it's 100 years old, if it's a day. Zeffron, how old do you think he is? I guess what I'm saying is now as of recording, I am approaching Zeffron's age, if not, like, you know, and music from 100 years ago would be from the 20s and I just I wouldn't be using it as a rebellious like I like to get drunk and listen to uh you know big band jazz. Obviously Star Trek is always looking at 1950s Earth culture as like what Earth culture is.

Right, right. And can export to the world. Specifically 1950s Western culture. And that is an artifact of Gene Roddenberry and whatnot. But it just stood out to me a little bit. Yeah, I'm trying to see. I mean, the other song is Magic Carpet, right? Right. Yeah. The lyrics to this one is Ooby Dooby. Yeah. Ooby Dooby. Is this Orbison?

That's what Roy Orbison dot com says. Yep. All right. So it's Roy Orbison. I mean, like, I like Roy Orbison. I wouldn't have known Ooby Dooby. 1958. So 105 years old is what I'm saying. Well, I think part of the conceit here, though, is that it's a old jukebox, right? That could be. All right. So does he have a 80 year old jukebox that is still running that has hits from the 50s? I mean, like, the records would, would probably preserve that long, right? Or if it happened to be like a jukebox from the 90s that had 50s music on it, which is just possible at the time of the film is it perfectly plausible to have that jukebox or is it a more modern version that uses those

little eight sided discs. It's just that thing that Star Trek thing where it's always looking at that one. It's always looking at the mid 20th century for reference. Yeah, there's the A-Roms movie where they kind of do a nod slash reference to that, where they put on Beastie Boys. Oh, right. And it's like, you know, I didn't know you like classical. Right. Yeah. Which somehow feels more hackneyed to me than this. But maybe it's just because I'm used to this and the other one was new.

I don't know. Anywho. Zephrin Cochran, perhaps not the high minded visionary that we've been led to expect. Just another thing I just want to point out, depending on his age, again, obsessing over when this takes place. That means Zephrin is probably a millennial or a zoomer. Just saying he's alive now and may eat too much avocado toast. I'm just just putting it out there.

The World War Three was over. It was also called the Great Avocado War. So, yeah. So we go from that fun moment back to the Enterprise, where we get our weird perspective shots moving through hallways. So we go from that fun moment back to the Enterprise where we get our weird perspective shots moving through hallways. My note says as they move Borg's word and more rising tension. We get this the tee up of the emotion chip, Data's emotion chip, which again, if you're

not a Trek nerd, this is just sci-fi stuff. Because I think in the last movie is when they established that he just like has it now. So that's kind of a continuity, you know, thing for for fans. But he's able to turn it off because he's feeling anxiety and Picard has his data. There are times I envy you. There's a little jump scare with the with the hatch opening. But it is Dr. Crusher who informs them that Lily is missing.

And she does try to impress on Worf. Like she has nothing to do with any of this. She needs help. Yeah, yeah. We finally have our Borg reveal where we see like the shadow of a Borg. And then the scene I think that you already described where there's one just leading a crew member by the arm.

And the reveal of like, and now we see the Borg is great because it's so non-threatening. Right. Like we had all the scary, the scary lead up stuff. That's very like horror movie influenced styling. And then this is almost like banal. Like, and now here are people on the ship.'re just the board of people and set of crew members Yeah, like it's not shot like you know in a dramatic way. No, it's not up swell of music It's just like and here they are and that like it's a creepier. Yeah, it's an eerie

Is this the moment where Picard's like like lower your weapons because they're not gonna react to you and unless they perceive a threat. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just very yeah it's very creepy. I love it. I love it. I've always like I appreciate that as a part of a as a narrative device. Right. Like it lets them tell these kind of interesting stories about being among the Borg without it always being a fight. without it always being a fight. But it also it rides that line for me of like is this because it's communicating that this is such an alien mindset that they're doing something that we don't really understand but we can take advantage of or are they stupid? I read it as like the flaw in the hive mind is that there is so much going on and multitasking that you can't bring in. I really want to use the word data to mean information. You can't bring in all that information and process. If it's all coming to one central processor,

it's all coming to the queen who will meet shortly, and then she's giving directions, then that information has to be queued up. It can all happen at once. Right. Like so that's whereas humans can act independently so they could react to a change in their environment. The Borg have to wait till they're given orders to react to the change in the environment. I may be wrong there.

That's kind of a fundamental question that I think is explored more with Seven of Nine, maybe. Yeah, they're all of Nine maybe. Yeah. They're all one shared mind, right, is the idea. But then there's the queen who seems to be more who plans, who has plans, right? Yeah. So I think there's something about like the Borg can react, but they can't be proactive. Right. So without her, without her like directing them or something.

So there's, you know, which is an interesting mode. I don't know. It makes for good TV because we can have our our heroes walking through this threatening area and like walking on eggshells, you know. Yeah, that's good stuff. And they do that here to get to engineering, where they try to use the manual release and it just breaks off. And that's when one of the Borgs start to activate. Worf of course strikes the first blow, which you love to see. Yeah. Picard gets the Doored Engineering open, but there's Borg waiting for him.

Data manages to take care of that threat. We have a very visceral scene where he uses his superior android strength to break the neck of this Borg. But then we cut out to see, crew members are just going down left and right. And so they have to retreat. At the last moment, the door opens just a crack,

and the hands sneak out and grab Data's feet and drag them back under. It's right after Picard gives not the evacuation order, but the retreat order, and it's like, don't let them touch you. And then they touch Data. Yeah. The other thing that I love in this,

I just, such a wonderful trope where they shoot, they shoot a few times and then the Borg shields adapt to the modulation on the phase rifles or whatever they're called. And so since the Borg adapt, you hit them with the rifle. But like, right. It's a version of like I ran out of. Yeah. You shot all your bullets and now you have to use the gun as a weapon yeah yeah that's good stuff at the end of the scene is the escalation of the theme that you reaching his hand out to Picard begging him for help and you know, he takes a takes a beat and then rise it raises his his phaser rifle and Shoots the crewman to put him out of his misery. Mm-hmm We're heading towards Picard's Navy here is what it is. We're heading down that slope getting out of there They all seem to get split up and Picard gets jumped by Lily and the Jeffreys tubes. Yeah, he wants out.

We get the clash of her understanding with what's actually going on, which we'll explore more in a few minutes. Good stuff. But what is very dramatic here is that data isn't just getting borg. He is there's some other fate for him. Yes. As we see him secured to a table, borg are working all over engineering, doing borg things. And then we get the echoing female voice, which is a new thing. You know, we've never heard a borg speak with this voice before.

Addressing data. He says that they won't break his codes. They can't assimilate him. And the voice says that finding your weakness is only a matter of time And then you know bit of a mirror of our first first scene with Picard We have the close-up of the little drills going toward going into data's head Little Android trepidation we still get the The presence, but we have not yet seen the Queen.

So all that was pretty emotional. Why don't we goof around on the Earth, Brickett? We do go back to Earth, but I was going to say it's like there's a world in which jumping back and forth between these tones would be jarring. Right. In this movie, it's not. But here specifically, it's not actually a goofy scene. I mean it is a little bit because Cochran's kind of, you know, a goofy character. Yeah, he's mouthing off.

But this scene is where they show him in the telescope, the Orbiter Enterprise, to sell their story or to get him to believe what's actually happening. That's where they're from. He disbelieves them at first, thinks it might be a trick, but then realizes that it's not. There's this good sense of wonder. It's great because it's like we were talking about in the beginning in the first Star Trek movie, and they're approaching the starship,

and then you have to occasionally reinstill the audience with this sense of wonder. They've been with this crew that's been out in space all the time or whatever. Like yeah, that's not a thing in our experience. And also it's a great juxtaposition because it's far enough away that the people on Earth, it just looks like this peaceful ship in orbit. They have no idea the horrors that are going on inside it. And I do love that as well.

This movie, I think maybe more than most of the movies. I mean, I guess both the movies are just in the Star Trek universe, so it doesn't matter. But I feel like this movie takes advantage of its story to impress upon us how revelatory the idea of this future can be. Yes. Yes. And it uses Cochrane and it uses Lily in different ways to do that. Yeah. It has to be very intentional because it's in the writing, but it's also in the acting and just how they're framed and everything.

And it lends some depth to the movie that otherwise that doesn't need to be there like it's a fun action movie. But having these moments where it's like, so this is a moment where we see Cochrane kind of have a reaction of wonder, of like, seeing potential, seeing a little glimpse of the future. And that is what leads him to agreeing to continue with his plan. Yeah, a brief while following this, he's on board with them. I like how he gets off board again. Yeah, we'll get to that in a little bit.

And they give him a lot here. There's like it's a pivotal moment in human history. Everything changes after this. And like, that's a lot to load on someone. Yeah, yeah. And then we end with a not a not a super affirmative response, but like, what do you say? And he's like, why not? We should address the line here, which is exquisite.

You people, you're all astronauts on some kind of Star Trek. Yeah, like, OK, that's cute. That's fine. But what he doesn't know is that they're currently involved in some sort of Star War. Back upstairs the Borg are doing lots of assimilating. There's this, I think I'm sure this had to have been in the preview for this movie, but like there's just this the the shot where they like open the door with a little manual override thing and it's dark inside and then all the eye lasers. Yeah. Come out of the darkness and start sweeping around and we slowly see the outline of like just a line of Borg.

It's good. It's an amazing shot. It's so it's it's like the crew is totally hosed like they yeah. They got they cannot stand against this On the bridge war wonders why they stopped at deck 11 Names they name things that are on that deck none of which seem to be critical systems We'll come back to that but the important thing here is that the card and Lily have a interlude explaining where they are. So in the last scene, there was kind of the serve of Zephyrum

seeing the Enterprise over the Earth. And then this is the, yeah, the opposite. Yeah. The mirror. This is the spike of the Lily seeing the earth from the ship and her seeing her overwhelmed with, you know, with with with fear, but also with wonder. I mean, we've talked about it, but she sells this. She's amazing at selling this. Like, it really is. You can see like a bunch of things going on, like the wonder and all that, but also like some sense of vertigo, right, which you would have if you were like, I am that far up, you know, and they, you know, she's like, that's not there's no glass there. Yeah, there's something here where there's a lot of, I think, movies in particular, where the characters in the movie enter a situation that we only see in movies, but we've all seen them in movies. So we kind of know what they're supposed to look like. And we kind of, you know, so like, but the character has to have the reaction of like,

I've never seen this before. Like I can't like what dragons are real? Like, like whatever, you know? And so that's this moment here where she's in this moment and she makes it feel legit. Like she makes me think if I was her, I would feel the same way. Yeah. Even though I've lived my life seeing pictures of the earth from space and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. But like the idea of really being there and coming from a world that's so destroyed, working on this project that might go into space, like there's all this stuff is

wrapped up in like she never thought she would see this even if you've seen pictures or old videos or whatever. And so it makes me think like maybe there is something to like actually being there and not just seeing it in a movie. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's great. in this role. This overall experience gets her to finally give over the phaser, which was in fact stuck on the most destructive setting, maximum setting, would have vaporized him. She's got a great line where she's like, well, it's my first rate gun. Yeah. Like I didn't know what I was doing.

And then we finally meet the Borg Queen with a very dramatic reveal of the head in the bust with the weird spine descending out of the ceiling into the body with a little clasps. It's a great visual. Yeah. Another great visual. And the actress here is Alice Krieg, I think is. Yeah, Alice Krieg. She does a great job. Um, my notes were maybe a little a little little too Well, my notes just says enter data's girlfriend, right? We're now entering the The seduction of data I guess is what's happening here The there's this question I guess from the movie point of view.

So she looks slightly different from the other Borg. The other Borg look a little more haphazardly slapped together than she does. Yeah. So the question is, and they do data actually drives towards this right away, is what's going on here? The Borg, as far as they've understood,

were a hive mind and she seems to be an individual amongst them and there's a contradiction there. And I don't think the movie specifically does this, but it can easily be read as her being an adaptation that the Borg are doing to get data to submit to them. Rather than what their normal ways of doing it aren't working. So now it's time to let's present them with an individual, a little Psyop.

Is she the Borg Queen? Is she the central of all the Borg Queen? Right? Is she like the central of all the Borg whatever and that seems slightly implausible because why would she be the one attacking Earth? Right? Uh, but also whatever, like that's fine if she is and that's how the Borg work. This is still fiction, you know? Right. There's a line later when Picard finally faces her where she's where he says that, like, you were there when I became Lucutus.

I remember you, you know, you wanted me to submit myself willingly, but you were on that ship that was that we destroyed. And she says, like, you you think in such three dimensional terms. Right. terms. Right. And that line carries a holds a lot of weight, I think. Yeah, yeah. Try and resolve any contradictions here. Is this this head and shoulders with a spine, the literal singular board queen, that she was on this orb? Or like, does this is this a con there are united mind, right? So like, can this consciousness be passed into right? Maybe there's a vessel that has to be a specific way to contain the consciousness and it. But all of her stuff still lives in the minds of all the Borg because they're one hive mind. Right. Like there's something there where maybe she can transmit across time and space, because if there's a Borg there, she can be there. IMDB offers something of an answer to in that she plays the Borg Queen in Star Trek Voyager in 2001 so so something's happening there, but anyways, this stuff is good the erotic Android cyborg for play yeah of

Of this situation they get to the heart of the kind of like difference here, right? Data is a contradiction the machine who wants to be human of the kind of like difference here, right? Data is a contradiction. The machine who wants to be human, while the Borg are seeking to attain perfection, regardless of organic or robotic, you know, elements. She reactivates his emotion chip. We see the organic skin that they've grafted onto his arm. She blows on it and he has quite the response. Followed up with the, was it good for you? Oh. We are able to focus as an audience on a bad guy at this point, right?

On a villain. This is the leader. It is very satisfying and it's important for Picard, I think, at the end, to tell that story. But conceptually, it's a bit of a like, are they scarier if there's no leader that can be just killed? And that's the whole thing getting into the whole concept of the Borgra. We don't need to get into that.

We are already spending enough time. And we haven't even gotten to the holodeck scene yet. But we're on the threshold. It's time for us to take our traditional intermission as we all need a little break to head out to the lobby, take a little stretch, get a snack, a drink, reflect on what's come before and anticipate what's to come in this episode of the Rockford Files. We also like to take this time to remind you of where else you can find us on the internet. Epi, where can our listeners find you? Well, you can find me at my website dig1000holes.com. That's 1000 the number. Or you can find me

as Epidya on the Macedon instance dice. Dice.Camp or on Co-host. Where can our listeners find you, Nathan? All of my games, zines, podcasts, projects, and other work are at NDPdesign.com. You can also find me at NDP on Co-host and over on Instagram at NDP design dot games. And of course you can always find this show 200 a day at 200 a day dot fireside dot FM. And now we return to the continuing adventures of Jimmy Rocco.

William Picard, he's answering her reasonable questions about the ship. Like it took me six months to scrounge enough titanium for a cockpit. There's no money in the 20th 4th century. You mean you don't get paid. But this is also important because Picard almost kind of by rote, right? Like, as he's like, he's moving through the ship trying to find something while he's talking. But he talks about like in the 24th century, we have a more enlightened culture, the pursuit of wealth no longer underpins our society, we seek to better ourselves, all that stuff.

Just like the Borg do. We have a dramatic swell as Picard finds some Borg and moves towards them and through them, saying, I know what I'm doing. She has, I think, appropriate reactions as various horrible creatures turn to stare at her. Yes, my notes are like it's a haunted house, right? Like she has like these jump screams or whatever. Earlier, just before this happens, she actually has this wonderful reaction to the automatic door closing behind her. That's a little like not that she wouldn't

have experienced automatic doors in her lifetime because I do whenever I go to the grocery store but like she's on edge already and this is I'd like to point out third contact. So we've had Data, Deanna, Data and Lily, Deanna and Zefron, and now Borg and Lily for third contact. I'm just keeping track of our contacts. That's all. We get to our main event of the evening. We get to the holosuite. And Picard pulls up, I took a screenshot so we could see it, pulls up the holographic novel, The Big Goodbye, Chapter 12. And if you look at the screen,

Oh, this is good. there's little there's readouts of the various programs. And you have to imagine that these are Picard's specifically because these are all ones that we've seen him in. So there's the cafe des artistes, which says enjoy a meal at a French cafe. Champs-Elysees, famous section of Paris. Charnock's Comedy Cabaret, laugh in a 20th century comedy club. And then here we have highlighted the Big Goodbye, the 1940s world of Gumshoe Detective Dixon Hill. And then the remaining two on the list are the Emerald Waiting Pool, which is, from planets,

Sumiko 3, a safe experience, and the equestrian adventure horse riding in an open countryside with a choice of and it breaks off because it's the bottom of the screen. Yes, that's so good. So good. Love the attention to detail there. It's very good. We love to we're getting back and back to the world of Dixon Hill.

He looks at her gives to say something inin, and orders up something from the computer. And so we cut to the Borg finally. So there's these like two Borg that are following them. They finally open the door and they come in. We can call them Borg heavies, Borg goons. Yeah, a couple Borg goons. Yeah, it's a full nightclub lounge situation. The It's a full nightclub lounge situation. The maitre d tries to stop them, of course, because he's just reacting to characters in his world. Or we're full tonight and we have a dress code, which is good. And so they scan him with their eye lasers and we see his body

flicker because he's a hologram and get the yeah, we all see. If you have not been following our show and perhaps are not familiar with the holodeck, I think this visually tells us exactly what's going on here, right? I just wanted to point out that the maitre d is another cameo. This is a guy who plays Nelux, isn't it? Yeah, that's why I was thinking, but I want to see the name to know for certain. Ethan Phillips. Yeah, he's uncredited because as the cameo. But yeah, yeah.

Ethan Phillips is the actor. Yeah, he plays an Elix in Voyager. So great. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. It's fun to see him being tossed by the Borg too, which is great. Absolutely not what they needed to do in that situation. And so Picard is asking about Nicky the nose and the response that he hasn't been in here for weeks.

And Carly, wrong chapter. So he has to call it Chapter 13 instead. And it transitions directly into like a big band torch song dance number, which is very nice. Picard is in the full white tux. Yes. Roll and Lily is in a really nice satin dress. So there's so the singer, she gets like a focus shot for for a moment. And I feel like I've done this before and on her. So her name is Julie Morgan. This is her only credit.

Wow. I don't know if she's a singer elsewhere. She's a professional vocalist. Oh, I got juliemorgan.com but it's not loading. Parked free, Curse you Go Daddy. All right, we don't need to do any more spelunking on this. Okay. For some reason, I'm always like, oh, I wonder what else she's done. And I'm like, oh, this is literally the only screen roll. This is neither here nor there. The point here, we have a nice little moment where they're interrupted by one of Dixon Hills flames. Ruby Ruby who wonders why there's ever going to be, wonders if there's

ever going to be time for them. Um, and tells him to watch his caboose. And that's when he finally said, seesy the nose, who is in fact has a metal nose. Lights his match off his metal nose. Oh, so good. Oh, exquisite. I mean, let's face it, this movie's a very good movie, but this whole scene is the whole reason for the movie, right? Like, this is what we're here for.

You don't need to have the rest of the movie if you don't have the scene in it. Yeah, yeah. He goes over to the table, starts patting down the bodyguard. Excuse me. Hey, I'm going to take that personal in a second. No offense. Hey. The hollow deck characters are in character and Picard is just kind of like getting through it as quickly as possible to find what he's looking for, which is, in fact, the Tommy gun that is in. Violin case he grabs it

Lily helps him by smashing a vase over the head of the Bodyguard he tries to grab for it what she is witnessing right now is an absolute marvel, right? I mean they do a little dancing in here and whatnot, but like The holodeck would blow my mind after all these other things that are blowing my mind, then like the fact that you could just summon up a reality. Yeah. And I would I would have so many questions that I would I would start a I would be a part of a podcast for those questions for years. But anyways, she just goes right into playing into the story within the story that's going on. Like she drops into the role

in a nice way. I feel like there's again something very relatable about like, yes, I would be like, oh my god, this is amazing. But then because it is, I mean, it's obviously not normal. But then because the context is very understandable once you're in it. Yes. That you can just kind of be like, oh, I'm just in that like, this is just where I am now. Yeah. Anyway, the point here is that Picard gets the Tommy gun starts spraying bullets.

The holographic crowd starts screaming and then just starts disappearing as he loads the two Borg up with all of the shots, all of the ammo. I am looking for it, but I think it is also very clear as we watch his face doing the, you know, doing this, this salvo. He's going through a gamut of emotions as he just pours hot lead into these two horrors that have been taking over his ship. He keeps yelling and pulling on the trigger after the ammo is gone, after the gun's empty. Lily finally has to stop him like, hey, hey, I think you got them. He clarifies that he turned off the safety protocols and without those even a holographic bullet can kill.

Finally, we learn why they have safety protocols at all that can be turned off. Because what if you need those safety protocols in order to kill some Borg with holographic bullets? Because you can't take them down with phasers anymore. It's not like this was in mind and they, you know, the whole time they've been doing holodeck episodes, but I like taking the conceit and reversing it for our purposes here. Yes. You know, we were introduced to the EMH earlier in this, and like it makes sense that you would have to take down safety protocol if your emergency medical hologram had to do surgery to be able to cut into someone.

You would need to remove the safety protocol. The holographic projection would need to be able to change the material it's touching. Yes, yeah, exactly. Which is how I think about what the whole abstraction of the holodeck, you know, what the whole deal is. So we got our highlight scene here, but this was to an end. He wants to get a neuro processor chip that all the Borg have, because that's going to have their current orders embedded in it. And so you can find out what they're up to. He pulls one out of one of the bodies. It's very visceral.

He's just like shoves his hand in there. And yeah, until he finds it. Nice and gory. Lily sees that there's a it's a Star Trek uniform on that borg underneath all the stuff. Mm hmm. John Luke, it's one of your uniforms. Yes, this was Ensign Lynch. Tough luck, huh? That's good, yeah. So, I think you were saying the nadir of Picard's...

Yeah, so she's here to witness this, right? She wasn't there when he said you should kill your fellow roommate... Uh, roommates. your fellow roommates. Kill your roommates. Kill your fellow crewmates if you if you witness them being bored. And she wasn't there when he did that the first time. But she's here now where he is doing it and relishing it. Yeah.

Well, in one more nod to the theme of our show, we get another great cameo. Yes. Our good friend, Lieutenant Barkley. Again, one of those things where like this is a funny little scene if you haven't watched the show and now that we have spent so much time with Barkley. Yes, I feel like I appreciate it even more where Planetside, he's he's starstruck meeting Cochran and he has his like coil tubing to show to Geordi as an excuse to come up and talk to them. It's very good.

So he's he's a creepy little dude and I love it. But he's trying. He's trying. Yeah. We see Cochran sneaking nips out of his flask as Jordy keeps telling him about how it's just a little bit of hero worship. We've all grown up hearing about you in the future. This whole area is a historical monument.

He went to Zephyrm Cochrane High School. They're almost exactly in the spot where his statue is going to be. We see that he is that this this information is not exciting him. It is it is. It's scary. It's scary. Yeah. It's a lot of pressure. He's obviously a man who cannot take pressure well. All right. He might be a genius. Not entirely sure. He might be a mythic hero of legend. He's also extremely well versed in... well, he's just very good at self-destructing. Like, that is the thing. And he's like, well, what's the one thing

I can do in this moment? We have the good gag about, I gotta take a leak. And Geordi is not familiar with the slang. So when he explains it, oh I get it that's good. More evidence that the people of the 24th century just let the transporter remove waste products from their body and they don't actually have a bathroom. Picard is able to use the information he's learned to figure out that the Borg are building a kind of a beacon out of the deflector dish That can all be capable of sending signals to the Borg in this timeline

So even if they fail here those Borg will come now. Yeah accelerate the pace of everything So we need to destroy the beacon they can't just you know, blow it up. What are we gonna do and Picard with the do you remember your zero G combat trading? And work is like, no. It's good. I like that work doesn't like a form of combat. There's this great moment at the very beginning where work is like, I'm clean on get over it with Lily. Oh, yeah. Well, he just says, I'm a Klingon and like, everyone moves on.

Obviously you need to know what I am. Here it is. We got business and that's great. Let's just, also, I just want to point out this is fourth contact. We're now up to Lily and Klingon, except for main contact now. So we now have three strands of our story that all kind of go in and out here on the planet. Riker and Geordi have to track down Cochrane and convince him to continue the project. Data is getting more work done on him and the Borg Queen attempts to break free and ends up having a I think I say he ends up having an existential crisis talk about that in a second and then we have picard warf and hawk. going out in the exosuits to detach the deflector dish from the enterprise using the magmatic lock mechanisms. I'm going to just take a moment to talk a little bit about Hawk here because I've seen

this movie several times. And he's been on the con the whole time. He was on the con from the very beginning. So we were familiar with, I think he's a lieutenant, right? I think. Yes, Lieutenant Hawk. Yeah. So so Lieutenant Hawk has been a named character since you know, the first engage in this movie. He's played by Neil McDonough. I think is what we're doing here. That's the name. He's been a lot of things. He's a recognizable character. Oh, dumb dumb Dugan from the Marvel series.

If you've ever seen a Captain America, you might know who he is. A recognizable actor now may not have been all that recognizable in 96. It's funny. He looks a little bit like Chris Pine. He's one of those actors that looks like a combination of like two or three more famous actors. Yeah. No kind of thing. Anyways, what I was going to say is he as a as a household name or whatever, his recognizability or whatever, doesn't matter. He actually is just recognizable in the sea of the cast, right? Yeah. Like, yeah, you when you see him and you see him again, you're like, oh, that was the guy that was on the bridge. And if you're watching this movie for the first time, and you see him again, you're like, oh, that was the guy that was on the bridge. And if you're watching this movie for the first time

and you have the instincts that I have, you think to yourself, so when does he betray them all? And I'm not wrong, but I'm basically wrong. And that plays out here. But it definitely, I'm like, oh, now we're going to bring him, Worf, and Picard out on the hull of-hmm. I know two of these are making it back right right and I know very specifically that one of them is not Yeah, I really like all the zero-g deflector dish stuff. Oh, yeah, it's kind of like watching like a long Lovingly shot car chase that like only has music maybe through like a southwestern desert or something like yes.

It's just using there's no dialogue is just using the camera to like show us all the action and all the in the drama and various things so I really like that I forgot because I was like alright I'm gonna settle in and watch the scene I forgot that it's intercut which probably makes it more watchable that. watch the scene I forgot that it's intercut which probably makes it more watchable that we're bouncing around between our three different levels of action here. It's a fun downshift of the action in that it slows everything down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the tension is still there. But the actual speed in which people are doing things is much slower. There's no running gun battles here. They have to move at a certain pace to keep their magnetic boots on the hall and everything. Which actually makes the tension more. Yeah. I also just want to quickly,

before we go into it, acknowledge Lily's line, watch your caboose dicks before he goes out. Yeah. The relationship between Lily and Picard is wonderful in this movie. He earns her trust, and then from that point on, they're partners in a way that no member of his crew can be. And that's good.

It's good. Her perspective is critical. Yes. But yeah, plot-wise, there's good. It's good. Her perspective is critical. Yes. But yeah, I mean, you know, plot wise, there's three, there's very conveniently three Maglock locations. Yes. So the three of them go to each one. They each have to disengage. They have to get through the basic protocol and get to the manual override. And then I do appreciate how physical the locks are.

Like, this is a very, again, TNG thing where like everything has like a physical override. And then I do appreciate how physical the locks are. Like, this is a very, again, TNG thing where, like, everything has, like, a physical component. So, like, it has the big thing. It's like pull out and then spin back in. It's really I really like it. And as each of them deactivates her thing, one of the Borg that's working on. So we also get that they're doing their things and the Borg are doing their things where they're putting tubes into things and leaning things and turning things on to make their beacon. We see that one Borg gets shot off

the Enterprise spinning off into space. So we see what happens if you get shot off into space but they immediately adapt to the phasers. Warfest used his zero-g combat training to and he very you know thought ahead and he brought his I forget what it's called but like the knife. Yeah not the batlet but the other one yeah. That I think is his actual kind of specialty I think is a thing but whatever anyway he brought that with him which was very smart so he's able to literally disarm his Borg opponent, but not before he gets a there's a cut through his His suit leg. Yeah, his atmosphere starts gassing off into space. This is after he did his his lock

So, uh, what's gonna happen to wharf? Wharf engages a guy hand-to-hand destroys him but is wounded and wounded effort. Picard uses his brain, shoots the deck and that releases some gas and that shoots the one coming to him off into space. Unfortunately, poor Hawk does not get his thing unlocked before Borg just grabs him and just carries him away. I do appreciate how that one is a Klingon Borg. Oh yeah. Because the Borg don't need to wear spacesuits so these just like, apparently I guess they

don't, well I guess they don't, I guess they don't breathe. They recharge with like, in their little cells, whatever, doesn't matter. I mean they like methane, but who knows, who knows what's going on with the Borg. Yeah, who knows. But I appreciate that like the Klingons are the ones who are, you know, strong warriors even amongst the Borg. Yeah. Picard manages to use a slick zero G spin move to get over the Borg to that panel, get the lock released, and then Hawk reappears. And then he turns. We see he's been Borg'd.

And he starts punching Picard and trying to crack his helmet. But that's when Warf reappears. He's OK because he used the cable coming from the severed arm of his enemy to turn a kit, his suit, so he wouldn't lose any more air. I love this visual because it's this hand floating out and it just looks like it looks like viscera that he's using or something. Yeah, it's such a specific Star Trek next generation brand of badass or II. Yeah, right Like there's just just so exquisite this movie does more to show that wharf is the most badass fighter than like the entire series right

Because wharf was always getting his ass kicked, you, by all the aliens that are stronger than anyone and whatever. I remember hearing the writers for the Justice League cartoon talking about this problem where they were like, in order to make something a threat, you have to make it beat up Superman. So then you just start writing a bunch of stories about Superman being beaten up. And then like, how is he Superman? Right, like I feel like that's the same problem, right? Like in order for it to be a threat, it has to beat up the strongest guy in the room, Worf.

So every single story you beat up Worf, and then you're like, well, how is Worf the strongest guy in the room then? Well, that's the secret. Data is actually the strongest guy in the room. But then we end with a good, Worf could say assimilate this as he shoots the floating deflector dish and explodes it.

It's very action movie, one-liner, good stuff. I have to say, going into the scene, much like yourself, I was thinking, oh, I'm going to see the whole thing all at once. Well, I wasn't consciously thinking it, but I knew that I was assuming it. I also remember going, I love this scene. Yeah. Done watching it. I love this scene.

It's so good. It's so good. It's a great way to, again, just change the pacing of your action without dropping any tension. The fact that this Borg picks Hawk up and just carries him away over the edge of the you know deflector dish or whatever is like yeah that's it he's dead yeah it's very good it's this movie does a really good job of never repeating

itself mm-hmm none of the scenes repeat earlier scenes and none of the moments in scenes repeat a moment from the earlier in the scene. Like everything is iterative and builds. Yeah, like it'll echo or reincorporate, but right. Repeat. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's maybe why it has such a forward rhythm. Sometimes I watch a movie and it feels like I'm getting beaten up because it's so relentless with its painting. This doesn't feel like that. It's more like every time I look up I'm like,

oh I can't believe only this much time has passed because all this stuff has happened. I think that's part of it. It's never repeating itself. And I will make one note about the soundtrack, which is we do get a nice Star Trek-y, melee-y soundtrack. For when, I think it's when Worf tosses away his phaser rifle, and then the beat gets almost that... It's not the exact one from the classic series, but it just has that feel of the... Dun, dun, dun, dun, you know, kind of. It's not the exact one from the classic series, but it just has that feel of like the dun dun dun dun, you know, it's good.

So this is all intercut with the stuff with data, where we get more about talking about different interpretations of perfection, which is philosophically important here. He's trying to move more towards humanity. And that's distinct from the Borg trying to attain perfection Right where that incorporates assimilates if you will humanity, but does not end there. Yeah One of their goals is to gain the codes that he you know, the computer lockout, you know code that he did But in getting the Queen says in getting my goals. I'm willing to help you get yours and get closer to humanity So they've grafted a whole chunk of skin onto his arm. Yeah.

He manages to break free. There's a fight, but one of the Borg cuts his arm, and that stops him in his tracks. Like, my notes are, data going ham on the Borg. Yeah. I love it. I just love it. The tension here is that he is still dangerous to them. It's not just that they want something from him, but like this is a gambit that they have going on.

And I love that it is the being torn, his flesh part being scraped that's like, yeah, he's laid low by pain. He's not familiar with it. He doesn't understand what's going on. He says that, you know, my processors were never designed to process these sensations Mm-hmm. I think that's why I say it's like an existential crisis. Like I have never had this right What does this mean? Like who am I? there's a one-two here, but There's a villainously disingenuous bit where the Queen's like, well, if that means so little to you, just rip it off.

Right. And he can't bring himself to. She uses this as like, see, having this organic combination, it does matter to you. It will move you closer to perfection. But also it's like, he's experiencing pain for the first time. He's not going to rip his own skin off. Yeah. pain for the first time he's not gonna rip his own skin off yeah he has a line just before that that's like I'm simply imitating the behavior of humans and

first of all topical like it's great because he is trying to figure out what he's doing right yeah like is he feeling something or is he you know yeah no it's good I love it I love the the yeah her turn where she's like don't be tempted by the flesh yeah no it's it's a it's a good game of chicken to be playing with yeah yeah and there's an element here where I wonder like do the pork feel pain because there's a there's kind of an element where she's like triumphant like like, see, you can't even do that. Where are your ideals now? And it's like, if if she knew what that sensation would be, right, maybe she would not be crowing about it so much. Because guess what? You have to be in a pretty bad place to start ripping your own skin off. We of course, and speaking of sensations. Yes, we do end with the queen asking him if he is experienced with physical forms of pleasure and a gag about him being fully functional

and the exact time since the last time he, which I believe is a reference to- Tasha Yar? To Tasha Yar, yep. Yeah. Aw. Aw. Dana's got a new girlfriend.

He allows himself to be kissed Yeah, yeah, oh, oh, they just got a new girlfriend He allows himself to be kissed and then he returns in kind and we cut with some ambiguity about Where he's gonna go from here also somewhere in here? Ryker phasers Cochran to finally chase him down He doesn't have time for this Because I don't want to be a statue. It's necessary for Cochran storyline. But also if you're doing this movie, the data and the Picard storylines are too captivating for you. You as the audience are a riker in this moment. You're like, there's too much stuff holding my attention. I get in lines. Yeah,

like just There's too much stuff holding my attention. I get in lines. Yeah, like just Yeah, so sequence wise we end with the explosion of the deflector dish And then we go back to the planet with Ryker joining Cochrane in the rocket telling him there's an hour to go doc So we have an establishment of our timeline He's ready to make history. I just think this is funny how like Ryker of course gets to be a copilot Well, I'm present for the dawn of warp drive I'm gonna be here too I'm gonna sit in this seat. Mm-hmm

He's hung over and whatever the his laser laser gun did to him, but he's ready to fly But we do get his statement of his motives because he's heard enough of the great Zephyrum Cochrane You want to know what my vision is? dollar signs money I but enough of the great Zephyrum Cochran. He states for us what we have gleaned, I think, from these things that, like, they're putting all this pressure on him as this great historical figure and he's like I never wanted to be a historical figure. I wanted to make some money. Yeah All right, so we go from that statement to another statement up up on the enterprise the board girl on the move again They're overrunning all the security positions and we have Picard ordering the there his crew to stand their ground

Go to hand-to-hand combat if they have to. Worf protests as this is clearly a lost cause. The weapons are useless. We need to auto-destruct the ship. And there's a great moment with Worf. There's all these little pregnant pauses where it's kind of like, is anyone going to say anything? And then like Worf steps up, which is fantastic.

Good stuff. He says that you're letting your experience with the Borg impact your judgment Picard says the enterprise is not lost not as long as I am in a command and he calls wharf a coward Yeah, the c-word who? Any other man I would kill you where you stand Picard leaves Crusher says to carry out the captain's orders once he's made his orders He expects the crew to follow them and He's like well we can blow up the ship and leave let's do it

Yes, voice of reason so yeah, we see you know because he she is outside of his orbit She is the one who can yes break through to him this upcoming scene here The like obviously the holodeck sees the whole reason why we're here. But if it weren't, this is it. This is so good. So, yeah. Willy confronts the captain in his ready room. He tells her about his assimilation, how they made him into one of them. As you might think, he has a unique perspective on the Borg. But she says that she realizes it's so simple.

They hurt him, and he's going to hurt them back. Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale. And he refuses to admit the premise that it is about revenge. She yells at him to blow up the damn ship and he yells no and that's when he flails with the phaser rifle he's working on and smashes his glass cabinet full of model ships. It's so good. I just want to like convey to anybody who might be listening, who's like either hasn't seen the movie or is like, I haven't seen in a while or whatever. We're going we're recapping this. But like you really need to see Patrick Stewart and Alfred Woodard act this scene out. Like it is, it's so good. Yeah, it's the heart of the movie. And it's like, it's Picard's, you know, dark moment of the soul

or whatever, whatever that references. What I really like here, you know, this is from the script. So like, I really like how, you know, this is present here is that Picard verbalizes the emotional impact of what the Borg have done. Yes. It applies to both the macro of what they do, what they're doing in space, but also like what they've done to him. We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here, this far, no further.

And I will make them pay for what they've done. So he... ...admits it in his passion, in his fury. Yeah. And there's the great beat before she just quietly says... You broke your little ships. It's so good! And then she's, uh, see you around him. And then Picard, of course, with his extensive knowledge and training, he quotes the relevant

passage from Moby Dick and she, well, she's never read it. Okay, so I got to talk about Moby Dick for a moment here, because this is great, right? Not the first Star Trek movie to quote Moby Dick at the climax of the movie because that goes back to the Wrath of Khan from Hell's Heart I Stab at the I think maybe I should have looked this up but I think like Picard comes right up to that doorstep and doesn't say that line like I think he's he's getting as close to it as he can. Right, so Picard, we've talked about this earlier, there's this whole weird obsession with the

history of the earth from before the 1990s that everyone seems to be very familiar with. But in particular, like I can't point out specific incidences but like throughout We have like an earlier one where he's listening to the music and he corrects Ryker on what? Yeah, what composer it is. Yeah. Yeah, but like Ryker or Picard has this what we would call cultured Background look at things. He'll quote people Shakespeare, you know when and quite often like that stuff is presented as a I am going to make an appeal to a great work of art that it

happens to coincide with what I want and you are going to go along with me because it's convincing that I that I've made this appeal to it right but what happens in this scene is that Lily makes an appeal to a great work of art and it changes Picard's course. Instead of like looking for the quote that fits what he needs and wants out of it, he realizes he is wrongheaded about this situation. He has to correct his course here and it's so wonderful that she never read Moby Dick. Like that where Picard has to correct his course here. And it's so wonderful that she never read Moby Dick. Like that where Picard has to teach everyone about the culture that he's referencing,

it's just something that's in her culture still, right? Plenty of people who've never read Moby Dick will reference Moby Dick. Like I've read it. I just want to let you know that I'm cultured. But like there are plenty of other works that I will reference that I only kind of know because of osmosis and whatnot. Anyways, it's just nice. It's this I have no idea if the writers intended any of that. There's plenty in this that's really good that I'm like the writers absolutely intended that like, you know, but this reversal of it is good.

The reason it works is because Picard is so cognizant of the fiction, right? Of what Moby Dick means, that once she puts him into the shoes of Ahab, instead of justifying what he's doing, because then that would justify what Ahab did, and he knows as a reader of the book, as a classically trained individual that you know That's not what we're meant to get from from Moby Dick, right? That's not the interpretation you know the the character is supposed to come off as Obsessive obsessive and and losing you losing himself in his revenge And so once so because Picard has that reading of the text, it changes his reading of himself.

Yeah. If we did a caricature of a highly cultured person, we would often have them quoting great works to support what they want to do. And that's it. In no case are they motivated by the actual...the fiction they present is that they're motivated by these great works, which isn't the case. They're just picking quotes. The Constitution, for example.

Yeah, yeah. They're just picking things that they want to justify they did. And it's just great that Picard in this dark, dark moment is still able to be persuaded by the art that he holds dear. It's just a great trait for a character to have. And again, amazing that it's delivered by this character who's like, yeah, I'm never gonna forget it, sorry. Like, I tried. And so we end the scene with Picard putting the rifle down, going out to the bridge, and saying,

prepare to evacuate the Enterprise. Mm-hmm. All right, we now go to another juxtaposition sequence where we go from the auto destruct sequence in orbit to the launch sequence on the ground. Yeah. So of course, Jordy gets to be on it too. It does make some sense to have Jordy on board. It does. We do get the good, you know, apology where Picard tells Worf he regrets some things he said.

As a matter of fact, I think Worf's like, some? Yes. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think you're the bravest man I've ever known. The rest of the crew's in the escape pods. Picard is looking around the empty bridge. Again in a moment reminiscent of, I think, one of the original series movies where the ship is empty and Kirk, it clicks around empty bridge Then he hears data's voice in the Borg

Scramble that that comes to him in the rocket Cochrane is freaking out before he finds his little green Octo disc to blast his Music magic carpet ride for the takeoff. I could see those taking off in the next 39 years. The launch goes off just fine. It's a little shaky, a little rough. But then we get the shot of Cochrane seeing the earth from space for the first time and his face, he just goes, Oh, wow. Yeah. And the work he does to communicate like everything has changed for me in this moment.

Yes. I am becoming the person that delivers the line you quoted to me earlier. Right, right. Because Riker gave him some line. He was like, that's rhetorical nonsense or whatever. And now he's like, oh, OK. Yeah. All right.

Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments. Ah, yes. But yeah, there's just that moment like, okay, now he's his interests are going to shift what he wants to do is going to shift now because he has had this experience. Mm hmm. Like that is captured in that. Oh, wow.

And it's great. It's great. Lily realizes that Picard isn't leaving. He says that his crew didn't give up on him and Picard owes someone on this ship the same. The same regard. This is the the bow tie on the end of the. Yeah. Where he starts and says, if you see a simulated crew members, you have to kill them. And now, you know, and that's the like result.

Like, that's been the big result of his trauma. Right. He went was assimilated and got unassimilated because nobody gave up on him but on the other side of that he can't imagine going through that again so he is telling himself that he's doing others a favor by ending their life before they become Borg because being Borg is worse than dying. And I came back but I'm, that's just me. I'm Picard. You're not Picard. Yeah. So yeah, so he finally gets to this place. And of course it's Data who has, he

has a special relationship with Data and, but it could be any crew member he would, this point of the story he would do it. But of course it's Data. So we have our confrontation with the Borg Queen at last. Yes. The great line about thinking in three dimensional terms. It doesn't take much to get into engineering, which is fun, because in the beginning there was a lot of trouble. Well, now they know, you know, it's just him.

So now we deal with the Policule. He is of the opinion that she wants a counterpart. She wants an equal. She is unsatisfied being the sole ruler. Yeah. Patriarch. Kind of the sole mind, like the sole decision maker, maybe something like that. She doesn't want just another drone. And he says that he's offering to take his place at her side be low cutest again of his own free will be her

counterpart if she lets data go. This is a man with a lot of confidence. I just have to say like he literally he's like, oh, the board queen. I'm going to attempt to seduce her to woo her. I maybe woo her. Maybe that's the I mean, you know, he's in the space where he's like, I have nothing more to lose. Right. Yeah. Well, and also in the back is like the ship's going to get blown up either way. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you can get data off the ship, it doesn't matter

if I'm look cutest because I'm going to get destroyed. Yeah, exactly. They look to data as he is freed from the clamps. And he has his horror monster movie, Halfskin. Yeah. On his face and everything. It's got a very moody look about him, too. I like it. He is free to go. And he says, no, the board queen has already found an equal data, deactivates the auto

destruct, frees the computer, stands with her, says he will make an excellent drone. And that's the end of the movie. That's the end of the movie. There's an element here of like, I mean, obviously I know what happens, but the trying to remember the first time I saw the movie and just being kind of like, I know this is going to get resolved. Right. The Star Trek movie.

I know that data is not going to end up being a Borg. Like this is going gonna get resolved. But I really had no idea which direction it was going to go, right? Because there's lots of possibilities here, which is nice. It's not deterministic really. We go back to space where the rocket has disengaged its launch stage and is ready to go to warp. So Cochrane says, engage. And we get a good smile from Ryker and Geordi out the window.

They see the Enterprise looming closer like, oh, they're just giving us a good send off. But on the Enterprise, they're bringing his rocket up on the targeting computer, launches the quantum torpedoes. The board queen starts to exult in her victory, and then they see them just barely miss and fly off into space. They both look to data. Resistance is futile. He smashes open one of the plasma conduits. Oh, so good.

We go, we cut between Picard's desperate climb to safety with Cochrane finally going to warp. There's a great Terminator-esque conclusion as Data, with all of the skin melted off of him, all his flashing lights and everything, rises out of the plasma mist to grab the Borg Queen and pull her down into the plasma, keeping Picard safe in the cables above. And then I just have a note here where we see Cochrane discover wonder through the flight. Yes, with the shooting stars past him. There's a moment where obviously they didn't work all that far. Right.

And but there was a moment where they're like, oh, it's enough work for now. And I'm like, you have to work to get back home, don't you? You can't just run. Yeah, unless you've worked in a circle, but that they see turn around and they see the earth as a smaller. Right. So, you know, in the distance. Yeah. But it's about to get a whole lot bigger. All right. And then we have our final catharsis with Picard in the Borg. I think this is what I was saying why it's like important for there to be the singular

character where Picard finds the skeletal part of the Queen, just like the little head with little things sticking out of the eye sockets and the twitching spine with all the lights on it. And he gets a look on his face and then just snaps it in two and throws it on the floor. So he does get his revenge in the end. Oh, part of data is sorry that she's dead and because she was she was unique. Unique is always special. And then the gag here. Oh, what's that? For a time, I was tempted by her offer.

How long a time? 0.68 seconds. Which for an Android is an eternity. He has this line that she brought me closer to humanity than I ever thought possible. And I was like, he's like those feel like data lyrics for a nine inch nail saw. Yeah, that was a good call. All right, and we wrap up our movie with a Captain's Log entry as we see the Balkan ship land in the camp make fifth contact. Fifth contact.

But first contact in the history books. Yes. History is made. The crew makes a discreet exit, but not before Picard says goodbye to Lily. They have a nice moment. She says that she envies him going back to his, you know, to his world and he envies her that she gets to build a world, which is extremely Picard. ask, there's a thing here where Zephrin is the one, Zephrin is the one who makes first contact, which is what happened in the history books and that's all fine. But Lily, who like we established in the earlier part of the movie, she's the one dragging him towards this before the enterprise crew shows up, right? She would have been in one of those co-pilot seats.

Yes. If the crew wasn't there yeah and she is more vital to this moment than anyone but maybe data and and she does not go up with him too so my question is is this Chewbacca at the medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars, right? Like, should Lily have been like walk up at least side by side with Cochrane or is it like, oh but it's fine because there she's always good to work in the background of things or something like that. I feel a little bit of injustice here that he's the one who gets to make first contact. But of course, the whole movie is about how he doesn't want to be the one to make first contact.

You think that she would just at least be with him and because of the interference in the timeline, you know, she ends up saying goodbye to Picard instead. But yeah, that's a good a good a good thought. Well, thankfully, they were able to hide the enterprise in the moon's gravitational field, so they were not detected by these Vulcans, which would really cause some problems. But they can recreate the Kronotons to take them back to their time. Picard says, make it so. And we end on Earth with Cochrane hosting these Vulcans at the bar with his favorite Roy Orbison music

fading into the Star Trek theme as the camera pulls up and out and out to the stars. Giving us our picture of the future from this moment on. It's a good thing that Vulcans can't detect chronometric activity. Also a good thing that they were able to gather all their escape pods back without detection from this Vulcan ship. It's all good. Yeah, they have 24th century technology. I'm sure they can cloak it from 21st century Vulcan technology.

They've got hundreds of years to pull that off. And a movie. First contact through fifth contact were made. That's a wrap on Dixon Hill, folks. made That's a wrap on Dixon Hill folks and that's a wrap on Dixon Hill. That's true We got all of the all the appearances There was a passage about working titles that I thought was kind of funny Oh, yeah, I'm Ray alpha like I guess the whole starting concept was like we should do a time travel movie, right? Is it gonna be in Roman times? Is it going to be American Civil War? But honestly, much better choice. Oh, yeah, they made some really, really good choices here and and not digging around in

in history from the 1900s or earlier. Pre 21st century, I guess is what it was. So the original title was actually, first of all, apparently they wanted Tom Hanks to be Zephyr and Cochrane and that didn't work out, which I think is fine. But it was originally titled Resurrection, but then when it was going to come out, Alien Resurrection came out. So they're like, okay, we need to change the title. Wasn't there Star Trek Resurrection after that then? I

Was insurrection insurrection. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah other proposals were Star Trek destinies Star Trek future generations and Star Trek Regenerations as well as Star Trek Borg and Star Trek generations to because the first one was generations. Ah, right Honestly, these were all bad titles. They divided on a good title. I mean, I made some hay about how it's about the fifth contact and not the first contact, but I still far prefer first contact as the title. Yeah, I mean, I guess Destiny's is okay. But anywho, doesn't really matter.

Yeah, that is all neither here nor there. Great movie. Chinese is OK, but anywho, doesn't really matter. Yeah, that is all neither here nor there. Great movie. I mean, you know, we're biased. We've seen it. We already knew we liked it, but I was happy to have an excuse to watch it again. Yeah, talk about the holodeck scene. But yeah, it's just there's I mean, it's a good Star Trek movie because you love the characters and, you know, they really nail all the start, you know, all the Star Trek ishness, if you will. Yes. Yeah. But I feel like it's just like a good standalone movie in a way that like the first one that generations is like, really only works if you like really know track and then the next one, which I forget what it's called, is the one that just kind of feels like a very long TV episode.

Yeah, that is that that one might be that might be insurrection. It's the one with the aliens who are like rotting. And yes, yeah, the because they left the zone that. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It was a very long episode, basically, which is a danger with these kinds of things. But yeah, no, this one was really good. And like you said, it was, I enjoyed the excuse to watch it again.

I even paid to watch it. Did you, like me, go to Paramount because that's where they've been streaming and learned that they all moved to Max this year? That's exactly what happened, yes. I had a Paramount account that we started so we could re-watch all the Indiana Jones films. And I was like, going into this, I was like,

yeah, all right, it'll be on Paramount, obviously, and I'll just watch it. And I had to rent it off of, I don't remember what service, but it was whatever, it was four bucks. But it was just kind of funny because that's just how it is nowadays. You just chasing things around. All of Star Trek is there except for specifically the movies, which on January 1st went to Max because of some deal.

It's like, OK, but not the Abrams movies. Those ones are still on Paramount Plus. So anyway, like I said, I do have the blu rays, but I was going to watch it on Paramount because it's easier to just watch it on the computer and do my notes at the same time. Yeah. But what I ended up what I ended up doing was ripping the blu ray and putting it in my flex library so I could watch it on the computer because I didn't want to sit out

in the living room because it's going to be late at night. That's fine. Yeah, I don't know. Good movie. Glad we watched it. Yeah, it's time to bid adieu. Bid adieu to 20 a day. We've 20 a day. We started off, you know, hitting all the real holodeck, holodeck episodes, ended up having to branch out a little bit from our remit

to deal with more tangential episodes. SID DERKIN Episodes in which a holodeck existed. TOM MIRCHANDAN Yeah, but and so this is kind of the ultimate extension of that. But, you know, it's been fun. And it's always, always great to have an excuse to talk to you about Star Trek. We're gonna have to find something else to some other show to try and talk about at some point. But until that day comes, we should do like a detective show. I mean, Dixon Hill was our original entry point. We should find something, some some kind of P.I.

Yeah, would probably be a private investigator. Yeah, probably would be a little less musings on the nature of causality and how technology works. But maybe some of the moral arguments will still be. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thanks for hanging with us through however many episodes we've done of 20 a day. It certainly is more than I anticipated when we started it. I can tell you that much. I don't know. Until we speak again, just make sure to every so often look around and just check with a

end simulation. Excellent. Computer and program.