Daemon fuckin'
Timber with arms open, Tom and Rob on the ocean, ships floating on river, mid-month moon, sex.
Universal Translator activated. Hello and welcome to the show, where two men talk about Star Trek, this time with 50% less sex.
Universal Translator deactivated. Welcome everybody to the Untitled Trek, Shy.
Oh man, the fact we needed to use Universal Translator for that one. If you hadn't guessed, we're talking Darmok.
Darmok. Darmok. Darmok as our walls fell. With his fists closed. Shucker as our walls fell.
Shucker. When the walls fell. So all I want to say is shucker karn now. Shucker karn, shucker, shucker karn.
That's what I thought about the whole time was shucker karn, shucker karn, shucker, shucker, shucker karn.
So Darmok, series five, episode two of The Next Generation. Yeah. It's actually a good episode.
It was a super episode. I'm so glad you chose it. It gets a little bit of hate, but it does get a lot of love.
And I can understand the hate. And the more I've rewatched it, the more I start poking holes in it, which I think we'll get to in a minute.
But so your general feeling, first of all, of the episode, what was it like for you? You'd never seen it.
I'd never seen it before. And you wanted to know about the Lower Decks character who is Tamarian or Tamali.
Tamarian, yeah. Tamarian. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I would say the very, very beginning, maybe the first five, maybe even first 10 minutes,
I was a bit like, oh, this is a little bit annoying, bit slow when you get into it. But as soon as they actually started going, I was like, I'm into this now.
Once you get back to the planet and the action starts, you're pretty good. When Picard is just, he's an idiot.
Right. So you've got a race and straight away they are speaking in a very odd language that Universal Translator is not translating.
What you do is what you do if you're Picard is just start throwing really long sentences and words at them, don't you?
And he's doing the classic British thing, talking to a foreigner. He just talks louder.
Louder. I will have pie and chips, please, with beer, pour-fou-vore. Yeah, he was throwing a little bit of language that they know.
It was very much like that. And Riker's was the same. Riker was the same.
They're all the same.
The whole episode, Riker was on a little bit of a trip.
Oh, Riker's on a trip. Worf wants to just blow everything out of the sky as normal. We've got five seasons in and Worf is still getting erect over the weapons button.
What must I do to convince you people?
Die.
Oh, very clever, Worf. Eat any good books lately?
And he was having a bad hair day.
Oh, he was having a bad hair day.
It was like a long bowl cut. It was not a good look. He's of Worf's an attractive Klingon and he did not look good.
Yeah, he must have run out for his shift. He must have been late for his shift.
Who wants to clean up the holodeck after Worf?
Yeah, Worf must have been on the holodeck.
And there's your 50% sex.
Yeah.
Okay, look, we started something and we might follow through with it.
Have you got some questions for me? As I gave you questions on the episode that you chose.
So you fire away the questions that you have for me.
And I'm really worried because I watched this last week and I'm starting to worry that I may not have paid enough attention to it.
So, kind of easy slash hard mixture of questions. So what system is it?
Oh my fucking God. I bet you're going to call that an easy one.
No, that was my really difficult one because you gave me a ridiculously difficult one.
Did I?
Yeah, when you wanted me to know exactly what the disease or something was.
Yeah, okay, fine. Oh, I haven't got a bloody clue.
In fact, most of my might actually be a bit too difficult.
Okay.
The lemon pie.
No, it was the lemon pie. Don't start that again. The Eladrel system.
Of course it was.
Yeah, what do you want to know? And also we know that's Tamarians.
Yeah.
What's their full name? This is part of the same question.
Oh, it was something, something, something of, I don't know.
The Children of Tamara.
That was it.
That's what they were calling themselves. And then they started getting called the Tamarians.
They're like the Knights of the Templar and stuff like that. They got a name. So yeah, fair enough.
So Data says how many years they've been trying to communicate with them. Can you remember how many years he said?
Oh.
I think these are actually quite tough questions, so I apologise.
That's fine. Is it something like 180 years?
Oh, it's 100 years.
It's 100 years.
Yeah, I think it might be 100 years and they've met eight times or something, but it's 100 years.
Yeah, can you imagine if Kirk met them?
Yeah, if he hadn't fucked them, yeah.
Kirk, A, don't have sex with them.
Yeah.
Fist closed.
I don't know, so palm open. I don't know, actually.
But then he'd just talk them to death as well.
Well, we've learnt the entire language thanks to Captain Kirk because he hasn't shut the fuck up.
Yeah, imagine a porn scene with them.
Oh.
Parting like an open door.
Cushion soft.
Hardening steel. Hammering nail.
Riding a starport.
Flating balloon.
Missed opportunity.
Timber with arms open.
Shuck them in the walls fell.
Two people are left to decipher the language on the ship. Who are the two people?
Troy and Data.
Troy and Data, well done.
Troy, why? And I love the fact she has this shit grin on her when she's like, oh, I linked something and I got something right. You didn't, Data.
Oh, yeah, shit. I'll get into it. She does annoy me a little bit.
Oh, you know.
Yeah, I'll get in.
So when they ask the machine what Darmok means, how many entries does it give them?
I'm going to go with...
It's a random number.
187 again.
47 entries.
Oh, 47.
And one of them's a dessert, one of them's an island.
What was Darmok meaning on Tarsen a Five?
It was a dessert.
A frozen dessert.
What's the question? Yeah, there you go. There are your questions.
Very good. They were very hard. I'm going to make your ones incredibly hard for the next episode.
Yeah, I did. After kind of... When you sat there watching it, you think, oh, that's an easy question. You remember that.
And then actually they're not easy questions. They were all difficult. Sorry about that.
No, that's absolutely fine. I think it's going to get into a game of who can be the meanest at some point.
The biggest bastard.
Let's talk about Darmok then.
Accessing library computer data.
Darmok!
So aren't the crew and isn't John Luke Picard really lucky that he chose to wear his outdoor coat on the bridge that day?
What a beautiful coat.
Oh, mate, I would own... If I owned that, I would wear it out and about.
It's warm. It looks quite firm.
You say it looks warm, but there he is shivering his tits off out on the planet without any fire.
Well, he's only got two layers on, as you see when he gets assaulted later.
That's true.
He just has that jacket, which he doesn't zip up.
Yeah, no, well...
Ridiculous. And then just a thin jumper, kind of like a long sleeve shirt.
Yeah, you're right. Fair enough.
And then a beautifully lean belly with a little bit of hair on it.
A little bit of hair.
I did notice that.
He's a good looking man.
Oh, he is a very good looking man.
Do you think, I thought this instantly, that they actually made a language or just the actors just said some shit?
So Star Trek has got a long history with making language, hence Klingon is technically a learnable and speakable language and a language that you can talk in.
There is enough language there.
James Doohan, Scotty, was one of the people who was involved in creating it.
Oh, okay.
And it's got bigger and it's got bigger and it's got bigger and it is language now.
This, no, I think some people went away, they had a couple of ideas and they said, please don't make the characters say too much because it's fucking hard to do this.
Having just you do that beginning bit.
Yeah.
It took a long time, didn't it? Just to try and work out something that even vaguely might work.
It's difficult to do off the top of your head. I was sat there a little while.
Oh, I had to write it in English first and then think, okay, well, what does this little bit mean? What does this little bit? What's the metaphor for this little bit?
And then you've also got to consider if you're going to do it, you've got to create that back history to fit in with what they're saying.
Exactly.
So the whole story of Darmok being on the boat going to fight the beast, you've got to create that backstory as well as creating the language for it.
So I think they'd know they probably did intentionally create it. It wasn't just random crap being said, but at the same time, it must have been a pain.
When I was looking for other languages, I did also go to Being AI and asked it, I put something in English, can you translate it?
And all it actually did was just recite just stuff that was said in the episode.
Yeah.
Claiming that it was in the language.
That was the translation.
And because I knew I'd seen the episode, I was like, well, I know that doesn't mean anything like that.
And then I did find a website that looks like someone was trying to make a language.
Based on the metaphors.
Based on it. And it looks like they kind of just gave up because a lot of it is kind of just empty.
The problem is it could never progress. So our language on the most basic of levels would have started with, and again, I don't never studied language, so this could be completely wrong.
Would have started with people trying in groups that were nonverbal coming up with sounds that eventually turned into words for items.
So let's say dog. People didn't see a dog. We get maybe a woof or a bark to signify. Well, that's what the animal does.
So that's what we're talking about. And that may progress into the word dog eventually.
And then everyone gets taught when you see that that is a dog.
You need those core words first to make up their language.
So how does their language actually exist?
Or how could it exist from day one as metaphors if the stories haven't even happened?
So are you saying they were completely mute until a few stories had happened and then they built on those?
But then where did the words come from?
Well, they have to learn. You see, I start picking holes.
Yeah, they have to learn why the metaphors there like the I can't remember the two characters name of revering it down on the ocean.
Damoc and Jalad on the ocean.
Yes, blah, blah, and blah, blah on the ocean.
Well, that actually means nothing to a baby one of them either because they don't know the story.
Exactly. So but that's they kind of try and get by saying that they share their history by telling stories.
But at the same time, if you don't understand the language, how are you going to teach it?
A clever idea for the episode.
And if you start looking too deep into it, you realize it truly doesn't work very well.
But if you don't look too deep and you just accept what it is, it's fun.
It's a good idea. It's a novel idea.
I kind of wanted to ask if they know words that make up the metaphors, does that actually mean that the Tamarians are like, well, we understand words.
Yeah. So actually, if we bothered, we could learn other races languages.
Yeah. We're just choosing not to.
And we are expecting you to learn ours as a sign of respect.
Is that kind of where I think that's kind of where they were going with it in the hundred years we've met them.
No one's been able to understand them. Well, you're understanding the words.
You're just not putting together what they might mean.
But at the same time, is no one saying, well, the Tamarians are choosing to actually not try and learn our language.
Yeah. This was the issue I had with with Deanna, isn't it? Deanna Troy.
Deanna Troy. Yeah.
Being able to sense their emotion.
Because I just thought, well, fucking bullshit. Can you sense their emotion?
Because who's to say that because they speak in such a different way, all in metaphor.
The way they feel isn't different.
I put it to a point because they clearly have better technology than the enterprise.
The ship is so cool. Yeah.
A really cool ship. It's got much better tech.
They're well higher up than the Federation are, especially if you think the enterprise is one of the top ships.
You know, these guys are super, super high.
So if you think of it like I think I wrote on Discord that how I want me specifically, but let's just say me feel about an ant.
If I was going to go stand in an ant, I feel nothing for that ant. I don't have a hatred for it.
I have no malicious. My body isn't going thinking I'm going to be malicious to you.
I've just stood on it. It means it's nothing to me.
And they could feel so superior to the enterprise and not be not in the same way like a Romulan feel superior because they'll be like, oh, we're better than you.
These guys are so far advanced that they don't even have to worry about the enterprise.
So they know that they could just sneeze and blow them up instantly.
So how could she how could she sense an ill intent from them when they aren't going to portray that back because they're so below them?
Yeah.
And also they because they their language is all through metaphor, their feelings that she's trying to sense might be completely over the place.
It's you're right.
And Star Trek is terrible for it on the most part, assuming that all humanoid life forms share the same feelings and the same empathy and the same conditions that humans do.
And it's been done to aid the story, obviously, and to give Troy a reason to be there on the ship.
But at the same time, it does it does raise questions like you said, how do you know when they're feeling or what Troy is feeling is happiness from them?
Actually, that's really super aroused.
Or when she's feeling anger from them, that's not anger.
It's just confusion.
Yeah. Like we've said about this before, they need Troy on the ship. They need a counselor. All these bosses need counseling.
Do I think she needs to be on the bridge? Eh, not in this situation.
Well, yeah.
Great actress, but I just don't like the character. I've never liked Troy. I like her mother even less.
Yeah.
And even then, both of them are no worse.
They're only just a little bit better than Alexander Wharf's son.
Oh, yeah, he's annoying. Yeah.
But that's an annoying character. That's that's going down a different route.
Let's go back to the episode.
So the fact that there's we did they just randomly meet them?
No, they got a subspace message, didn't they?
What did that subspace message say? Come and meet us. We want to try.
How did they understand the subspace message?
What did the subspace message say?
It just said we're receiving a subspace signal.
That's how they put it, because I wrote it down.
That specific message, we're receiving a subspace signal from them.
So actually, they turned up. And it may not have even been for them.
We're receiving the subspace signal. Brilliant.
What does it say? Shackle when the walls fell. Oh, we must go and check it out then.
Yeah. Well, I think it might have actually been because that's when they were talking about
not having spoken to them, you know, been able to communicate with them for 100 years.
So do you think they just said coordinates?
I think it might have been them blasting out signals saying, come talk to us. We want to have a go.
I think that's we want to make zero effort and are expecting you to learn our language.
Fine. Got it. OK. They're assholes.
So they started. I've wrote picards looking flash in a velvet number.
I've got. Oh, I do like the leather shoulder pads on the uniform.
Yeah. Good legs. God, it just does look good.
I really like the uniforms and stuff. Like we said about Paris's robe and the guy in the skirt.
They all just look so good. I wish I had the confidence with those beautiful mussy legs that that guy had to wear a skirt.
Oh, yeah. I wish I could get one. Oh, yeah.
Because there's a one piece to it was a one. It was a whole for the whole all the uniform.
Even looking back at the TOS era, the uniform design that they've gone forward with.
And I don't think there's been any uniform of absolutely.
Absolutely hated. I have my favorites, obviously, everyone does.
I think my favorite is going to be kind of the film era of Star Trek with either kind of film three and four of the original series films where they've got kind of that red velvety with the the white piped bit coming down, holding like the chef's apron bit at the front.
Or then we're going to like the next generation when they've got the gray and black Star Trek uniform.
I'm nodding away here. And that's really sexy stuff.
So I will say, looking back at it, obviously, we all like what Seven of Nine looks like.
But you clearly know she's in that one piece for a reason. Oh, absolutely.
But really, I think that she probably shouldn't have been it.
And I'm glad when they did the Picard series, Picard, they took that away. They put her in normal clothes.
Yeah, she's beautiful without the one piece. She doesn't need that. She could be naked.
Right. Anyway, I started I keep changing what I call the Dalmok people pig men I start off nice style and I they eventually evolve into dinosaur pigs.
Right. OK. As we get closer up. Look, but they look like pigs to me at first when you see them.
And yeah, he was talking smack. I'm pretty sure that he was talking smack and wharf is pretty fucked off.
Yeah. My notes here says I want to say Shaka is fuck.
Yeah. Fucks like Shaka when the war fucking hell they can't understand still. Yeah.
What have I got here? So, yeah, I've said what we've already talked about that.
It is a great looking ship. We've already talked about that. And it's the good old class M planets.
Isn't it lucky that they always choose a planet that we can go down on? Yeah, it's so lucky.
It's just so lucky that we're all the same. Yeah. Good old class M planets. I'm guessing it's actually Canada or rural America.
Yeah, probably. And then as we did say, this was the section where Bacard just starts talking fucking bollocks expecting them to understand.
It's just like you already know it's been a hundred years and no one has understood them.
So why are you going hell to leather with the English there? Yeah. Albeit slightly louder.
And I'm pretty sure I didn't write who it was then. Riker says something and they're like in winter motherfucker.
But yeah, I think like Riker might make a little quip and then they cut the communication, don't they?
And then it's not long before them. They steal Bacard. Yeah, they do just the even write up.
I'd say you actually made me laugh as well. You saying about earlier Bacard raising his voice, saying it like the English people.
Do you think the Enterprise has just got really crap microphones for the view screen? They haven't got beam forming or anything.
Can you speak up a little bit? It's not like tuning in on people. It's just one little little pinprick above the viewer.
Yeah. What I've always thought was odd is that when the captain is like talking to another captain, they show the whole bridge.
That seems not particularly secure from a military standpoint, you know, because now they've got a snapshot of the enterprises bridge where everyone sat.
What can they expect when they get in? Exactly. And it's like the world of the Temerians. Right. Well, we'll take him, him, him and him.
We know where they are. Yeah, well, exactly. Exactly. What to do? Yeah. I've always thought that. And it just come to my head just then.
And then we get our first look at their hands. I love the fact we both did this.
So if you follow us on Discord, go over and subtract or can you see when we watch these episodes, we both make notes as we watch it.
And then neither of us read each other's notes until we get to this point.
And I've got hanging on as he got penis thumbs and I've definitely penis.
I wrote what the fuck is up with his thumb? Looks like one of those holes you get when you have a butterfly living in you.
I've also wrote maybe it's their sex organ. They spunk butterflies out of their thumbs when they have Darmock pig sex.
Fuck me. Just taking that little bit too far. I was going to with the finger of fudge is all you need for a bit of fun.
A finger of Darmock is all you need to be full of cum. Is that what you wrote? No, I'm just coming up with it on the spur now.
Yeah, spunking butterflies out of their thumbs. That's how they shag.
I mean, I'm being childish. But what happens when they walk in on one of their kids learning about themselves, assuming that it is a penis thumb?
Stop sucking your thumb.
When mother walks in room and cried, eyes full of tears, son full of embarrassment in the bed.
And then we get a closer look up the dinosaur pig and its credits, opening credits.
Quite a lot happens before the opening credits on this episode.
Yeah, it's a long opening, isn't it? And I've kind of made a note here. How brilliant are the next generation intro?
Love it.
It looks amazing.
Which is your favourite intro? Really, really hard question, I think.
Because you've got to go by the music, then what you're seeing.
I get such a good feeling from both the next generation and Voyager intros, the music themselves.
But I think, Picard speaking, I think that I think that I think next generation wins.
So TNG, next generation for me, wins. But if we're talking music, it's got to be Deep Space Nine.
Yeah, it has got to be deep space nine. Because I didn't watch it, it doesn't give me those good feelings.
No, that's fair enough. But the music is just beautiful for Deep Space Nine.
And I love the lower dex joke of just do another loop, just do another loop around the station.
Just do it again.
And again.
Yeah.
That's just genius. But, okay, you're right. TNG intro is just a whole nother level of awesomeness.
I can't remember where I watched it. I've wrote on here that most of that isn't even CGI.
It's some, they're like models and then they film different layers and different light.
And that's how they add the...
So it was Industrial Light and... Is it ILM? Industrial Lights and Magic? Or whatever they called.
They did it. And yeah, they did it on a programmable arm and they would program it for whatever pass it would do.
And they'd film in three or four different lighting. And then that would be composited to give you what you see.
And you can actually see people walking around on the top deck. How the fuck did they do that?
Early green screening and...
So clever.
It was really good. I'll send you the YouTube clip and we'll put it up on social media.
There's a couple of YouTube videos that show the filming of TNG and how they did the models and the size of the models as well.
They're not small. They're huge.
But that's why it still looks fantastic. It just looks real.
Well, this has been a long, long running argument and people that know me will probably be sick of hearing this.
But practical effects versus CGI will win for me every time.
The fact is you can look at some of the original series Star Trek films. Now they've been remastered.
You would be hard pushed to say that is not real.
Yeah. The reason it looks like it is because technically it is real.
There is actually a spaceship, albeit a fraction of the size and in a studio somewhere.
So here's a good thing that I... It's not actually good. We're going to move it just... It's still sci-fi.
So the thing, the film, a flipping brilliant film, all practical.
Exactly.
They did a remake.
And they did it CGI.
No, they did it all practical.
Yes, practical. Sorry, you're right.
And then they went over it all with CGI. And it looks terrible in my opinion.
And you know what? There's something about sci-fi and spaceships.
Sci-fi spaceships that are done in CGI all have to be shiny.
Yeah.
They are never a nice matte. The damage is never properly shown.
The normal wear and tear that you get of a... is so rarely shown.
Yet the models, as they got used and they'd been hand painted and there'd been people that had actually paid attention to them.
Well, it's been through this. So add these effects on.
They... I always say it. Practical effects look real because they are real.
CGI, there is always that uncanny value about it. No matter how good it looks, there's always something that you look at.
So something's not right.
Something's not right.
Do you think as well, if you were going to make a starship that has battle capabilities, you'd paint it black?
Yeah, yeah.
I get why it doesn't work for a show, but my Klingon warbird would be black.
But don't... dark green kind of makes sense, I guess.
But I guess the answer is, is a lot of the time you've got to consider they're not using their eyes, are they? They're using sensors.
But still, you know, looking out the window.
And they get that right, weirdly, in the second modern Star Trek film, Chris Pine, if you've seen it.
They basically butcher the story of Khan and reverse...
I've only seen it once.
It's basically the story of Khan from TOS, but reversed.
So rather than Spock dying in a horribly brutal way, which is still moving to this day, you get Kirk killed.
And then Spock goes off and beats up Khan and blah, blah, blah.
The Admiral, who is basically running the Black Ops and trying to get Khan and kill him and telling Kirk he needs to do what he says and blow on,
and his daughters with him and whatever else for the purely underwear scene that we got in that film, that ship is black.
And it looks good.
It looks out of place because it's too modern for the TOS era, but that's their own timeline.
I don't care.
You're right.
If you're going to build a stealth ship, whether or not you've got cloaking or not, surely you make it to match the background of everything else.
Black. Like my soul.
OK. Don't you think that if Mr. Temerian wanted to fight, he'd be a little bit more progressive?
You've got Picard there going, oh, so you want to fight, do you?
No, he's actually if he wanted to fight, he would have charged at you with the knife and just stabbed you.
Or he would have taken the knife that he was going to give you and thrown it as hard as he could at your feet, embedding it in the ground at your feet.
That is fighting talk, not I've got both my hands up in the air and I'm going to gently toss this knife to you.
Yeah, that's not fighting language.
It's pretty clear.
All body language is not threatening.
Yet you got Picard basically going, hmm, hmm, I think you want to fight me.
No.
Yeah, so you get that little bit of standoff for a little while, don't you?
Yeah. And then a good old alien is able to make a fire quicker than Picard is.
Oh, yeah, I found that quite amusing.
I would have expected Picard to be a proper boy scout and have got a fire going, put up a little hut, maybe a little bar going.
Yeah, he would have already had his vineyard set up.
Yeah, he's found the alien variety of grape that grows quite nicely on these plains.
Yeah, he's already found that beautiful slope in the hills that he did.
He saw it, he'd be like, I can do this, easy fucking peasy.
And did you see there's a very attractive young looking darmok lady on their bridge?
There is. She cries later.
I did notice that she does cry later, yeah, because I wrote, oh, there is a lady pig dying, a lady dinosaur pig.
You're so polite about them.
And then I also wrote, no wonder the girls love Riker, he's such a dish.
He looks good in this episode.
He's a good looking bloke.
He's very cleanly shaven, he's, well, he's like trimmed it all around, do you know what I mean?
Good hair.
It's just how he goes about sitting, like that tic-toc you said.
He always seems to straddle or he's got to stretch his crotch as wide as he can do.
So you all get a few of the package.
Yeah, it was tic-toc, I find the tic-toc I sent you.
It's true. It is absolutely.
Jesse Mercury's one, as he says, his dust.
That's his Riker dust.
His Riker dust on the sea, it's hilarious.
I'm sticking with, at this point I've got noted down, Shaka is definitely fuck, definitely rude.
And then you've got Picard saying, Shaka, indeed.
Yeah.
Fucking dude.
Yeah, Shaka when the walls fall, I think it's a frustration.
Yeah.
Isn't it? It's like a, oh, God's sake.
It's definitely some kind of frustration.
I don't know what I've got here.
So when they're about to go to sleep, you've got him looking at this, the Temerian,
look at these metal things in his hand.
I've got Space Jacks now being played.
He's not very good at it.
I just went, dude's about to play Knuckle Bones.
And then I'm quite waiting for it.
Oh wait, they're crosses.
Looks like the church have got to them before the Federation.
Yeah. Yeah, we've got all the Christians got here first.
And it was like, that's it, sleepy piggy, sleep.
Daddy Picard's going to come have bacon for supper.
Nice. Whereas I've got, turns out the coat is shit.
Way to go Federation. You think it would have an integral heating element, wouldn't you?
Yeah, just a little button he presses and it warms up.
Exactly. We've got him back to the future.
Self-drying coat, for example.
You'd think in the Federation it'd be like zip it up, press this button.
Oh, it's a nice, balmy 19 degrees.
My wife has a coat now that I brought her that she presses a button and it warms up.
Exactly.
Oh yeah. And then I've got stop speaking in sentences to him, Picard, for God's sake.
Yeah. Timber his arms wide.
Even I knew at that point, he's giving you the fucking word.
Yeah. He gives him the words, oh nice, a smile, but you still stay where the fuck you are.
Yeah. I was like, yeah, look, even I can speak Darmok pig Latin.
Yeah. And I wrote this and then they start talking about the upper D region, which I found amusing.
Yes.
Because that's the little section of the planet.
So now we're back on the ship.
Yeah.
We've got George the Forge is finally here.
He's getting to tech the tech.
Yeah. Tech talk.
Trek the tech.
Trek talk with tech talk. He's finally here and he's talking about, oh no, no, sorry, I've gone too far ahead.
This is there on the shuttle.
Yeah. Well, so yeah. So they've just-
That sexy lady on the shuttle.
They've stuck Worf into the shuttle with someone.
With the most attractive woman on the ship by the look of it.
Yeah. Absolutely. No, which one did they say? No, there's a couple of Beth. Okay. I'm going to shut up.
In this episode.
In this episode. Yeah. So they say, right, go and see if you can get down and get through and see if they notice you basically, isn't it?
It's like, see if they notice you and do what it is. I love the fact that Ryker's like, Worf, evasive pattern delta, which takes them straight into the firing line.
It's like, great. Thanks Ryker.
Why is he telling Worf what evasive pattern to do? Just do it. Worf will know. Worf's already done it. Worf's way ahead of fucking Ryker.
Worf has already loaded three photon torpedoes onto that shuttlecraft and is ready to die by flying it into the ship.
He has an automation on his alarm clock arming photon torpedoes. He's not getting involved in any of this nonsense.
He seriously does have a death wish. You look at the number of times he's like, we should do this. And it's like, you're looking to cause war or get yourself killed.
Can I also say as well, what's their obsession? All of these ships, I know it's a TV program, but they send their first officers on away missions.
They send their, the main tactical guy, the best tactician on the ship, other than Data, into a shuttle.
But maybe there's a reason.
Well, because everyone else is useless.
Get him off the ship, then we don't have to worry about that big red fire button being touched.
It's like the kid that you say, can you take this message to this teacher, please, and find out what they say about it.
And the envelope basically has a letter in it that says, please entertain the student for five minutes. I need a break from it.
And then they say to it, I got annoyed. Someone says to him, nice shooting, like he had any involvement in it.
Yeah. Right. It's open AI five million doing the shooting.
You're right. Absolutely.
He's had no involvement.
The computer does the targeting.
Yeah.
You just basically choose what on the screen on the little touch screen, that beep.
Okay. Now I'm tracking it and it does it all for you.
And I wrote, at last, Geordie is going to science us out of this mess, which he does his best to do.
My favourite bit I've got on this. Imagine this race, trying to explain something in an emergency situation.
You'd be dead before they'd finished the first paragraph of what's going on.
There's a bomb on board your ship. You need to board it off.
There's like five seconds done.
It's gone.
Yeah. Shaka, when the walls fell.
I don't know. We haven't got a story for this. Oh, you're gone.
Yeah. Now they've got the story. Now everyone else will know.
When the Enterprise exploded, many lives lost.
Yeah.
Tamarians were slow.
Yeah. And Ryker gets really grumpy again.
He's a bit bossy. He gets really bossy. He's very grumpy.
Tells everyone to go do stuff. He's a bit mean.
He's a bit bad. He didn't get on the wrong side of the bed.
What, Deanna? The fact they were angry and shouting each other with the word Darmok, it must be negative.
We'd never have figured that one out.
Deanna, you are indeed the neelix of TNG.
Exactly.
And then we're back down on the planet.
And we have this super advanced alien race and their captain's log is a paper book.
Can I say as well, I found this cut really jarring because the last time we saw him, he had a coat on.
Suddenly he hasn't got his coat on.
And I was actually a bit...
He needed something to wipe with.
Oh, that's really thrown me off. I was expecting if I was to see Picard, he'd be in red and now he's suddenly in blue.
He hasn't got his coat on. I did something, just a little simple thing like that.
I was like, oh, that's really...
Yeah. You could have jumped or had him just take it off in the first couple of seconds.
It's a close up too.
Yeah.
And now we've got some weird monster making noises.
Have we?
Oh, God.
I watched this when I was half asleep.
I reckon Mr. Penis Thumb just shoved something up an animal's arse to make this more interesting.
Shaka equals twat maybe.
Why, because of the noise?
Oh, God. Yeah.
So you're right. We've got a monster noise.
Now, I don't know if you've seen an episode and I can't remember what it's called.
I don't think it's called Evolution, but there's an episode basically where Picard and...
It might be Data.
A couple of them are on the Shustlecraft coming back and they're hailing the Enterprise and no one answers.
And everyone is devolving.
So Deanna's become this kind of frog creature who's got to be in the water.
Lieutenant Barclay's turned into something like he always bloody well does.
Again, someone that shouldn't be on board any Starship is on the flagship.
Can I just say, Barclay, isn't he the guy who saves...
The A-Team.
No, isn't he the guy who saves Voyager?
Pretty sure it's the same actor.
Reg D. Dwight or something. His name is Reg Barclay.
I'm pretty sure he's the guy who figures out some wormhole thing that gets Voyager back.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I'm sure it is. Someone's citation needed from anybody who knows that better than I do.
We'll have to look that one up.
But yeah, I'm just trying to think of the actor's name now so I don't get it wrong.
Dwight Short. There you go.
He plays Murdock in the A-Team.
And somehow he ended up...
It's a character that should not have been on the Enterprise with all the trouble he causes.
But yeah, they're all devolving.
And one of the ones that devolve is Worf.
And he devolves and it's really good.
Basically this tank of a creature covered in external armor plates,
which absolutely makes sense for where they kind of came from.
And you never get to see it.
You just see this really dark outline of it.
And I'm sure they've used the same costume in this and then blurred it out in their transparent thing.
Yeah, it's some kind of humanoid, it's got some weird cloaking thing.
It does not explain it at any point in time.
No, we just get the terrible stories from Shukka the bumhole felled bloke.
And every time they stab it they get electrocuted.
Yeah, which again...
They know about this beast, this other cunt.
Oh, it's called Genesis apparently.
I'm just seeing if I can find a picture of it while we're talking.
But yeah, it's just stupid.
Because if he knew about this invisible beast, which is why they're going to the planet,
surely he knows he's going to get electrocuted when he stabs it.
So you wouldn't take a knife.
So at this point Picard has kind of started to understand the metaphoricness of the language.
And understands what the pig man is trying to say is lure him out.
Yeah.
We're going to attack him.
But at a pivotal moment, Enterprise tries to beam Picard away and he gets locked.
Oh, we get to see O'Brien.
Oh, that's like a really happy man.
They got to see O'Brien, he's in charge of the transporter.
And they're trying to transport Picard away.
So now this is the second time this episode Picard has died.
I like the fact they just keep holding him on for ages and ages while the other captain's getting obliterated by this monster.
The pig men essentially killed Picard when they teleported him down to the planet.
And now he's been killed again by the Enterprise by putting him into their own buffer.
So now he's in two different buffers, dead.
We're on Picard version three already on this episode.
And yeah, he gets locked, doesn't he?
And all the time he's locked, the pig man's getting railed on by the monster.
It's just.
It's really just stupid.
It's frustrating, I think, actually.
I was a bit frustrated that that happened.
I felt sorry because I kind of didn't want the pig man to be getting beaten up.
No.
And I just thought these are bad decision makings on Riker's part.
I understand he's trying to get the captain out and doesn't know what's happening on the ground.
But.
So it's quite late.
It has got quite late.
But I know what you're saying.
But you're just skipping really far ahead.
He never gets fucking reprimanded for any of the decisions he makes.
No.
And I kind of think he makes bad decisions all the way through this episode, Riker does.
Absolutely.
I mean, that is a really risky beam out they try to do.
Yeah.
And there's no questions asked about it.
There's nothing brought up afterwards.
It's just accepted that he tried.
It went wrong.
It does matter because Picard is safe.
He does everything but diplomacy, Riker.
And then says at some point, well, we need to try diplomacy first, doesn't he?
He says it to some.
But if it doesn't work, then we can shoot them with our lasers.
Yeah.
And I just think, mate, you could have fucking done that ages ago.
If you weren't going to do that, you should have listened to Wharf at the beginning.
He already had torpedoes ready.
He's probably got some in his pocket.
Just blow the fucking, shoot the shit out of them.
Yep.
Also, going back to this point then, so we've gone back to the bridge for the moment.
Well, not the bridge, the ready room, haven't we?
I've kind of got, and this pisses me off so much.
So often it happens in all the Star Trek's.
I've got, Geordie, stop giving an answer when you fully well know you have a better answer queued up.
So Geordie's like, well, we could try this.
Riker's been just, no, that's useless.
Give me another idea.
Oh, well, let's just do this.
Oh, well, that's much better.
Well, let's just do that then.
Why didn't you say that first?
And also, is he doing what you said?
Is he doing the saying it'll take more time when he knows it won't?
Well, who knows?
Is he doing that?
I have got Jesus, Riker, accept Geordie's answer for once.
As it's always, they never accept the first answer on the Enterprise.
Imagine if that is the only answer.
Maybe that's what's drilled into you at the Academy.
When you have to come up with an answer or a question, make sure you have two answers.
Yeah, give them the shit one first because they'll always ask the next one and you'll look great when you've got more answers.
Okay.
So I don't know why I've put this.
I've got, so, Doctor, you're saying Juliet deep throating Romeo would mean nothing to the alien race.
Damn.
I think that's because they're talking about, they've finally worked out that it's all metaphorical and to do with stories.
And she brings up something about Shakespeare.
But then I do like this.
Who draws an ocean as a circle?
So we're back down on the planet.
Yeah, back on the planet after Picard is as his atoms completely annihilated.
But who draws the ocean as a circle?
Surely you would draw it as waves of water.
I was expecting waves.
I thought he was going to do waves and put a boat on it.
That's what I thought he was going to do.
Instead he just put something in the middle of the circle and it goes.
And the circle round it.
That's a boat in the sea.
He's just going to be going egg.
It's like an egg.
But what I really wanted, part of me wished that once the alien realised Picard had worked out the puzzle of their language and worked out they needed to talk in metaphors, that he just basically comes out with this like brummy accent.
Oh, well done.
You passed the test.
You can be part of our team now.
That would have been fucking brilliant, wouldn't it?
I was kind of expecting pig man to just start talking English.
Not like Brummy Ascent, but he's going like fuck, I can't teach them this shit.
I'm just going to learn their language.
Yeah, exactly.
Instead. That's what I was expecting.
So yeah, yeah, they sat down by the fire.
And does he look all right Picard for fuck's sake?
The dude's got milk coming out of his head.
He's rubbed his thumb on his head by mistake.
Is he all right?
The dude is bleeding milk.
Yeah, he's dying Picard.
Just talk to him.
Yeah.
Tell him about Moby Dick.
Moby Dick.
No, we're going with Gilgamesh and the Smurfs.
Wait, that's Gargamel.
You know what?
When he said it, I thought the Smurfs as well.
I thought what the fuck's the Smurfs got to do with this?
And he started doing his story.
It was like, okay, it's not the Smurfs.
Who wanted to capture the little people and their magic.
Yeah, Smurfs when the walls fell.
Yeah.
I love it.
He's dying laying there and he's laughing and he's smiling.
I've got Gilgamesh.
That's a funny name.
That's all that's going through his head right now.
He's dying brain that's rapidly losing blood and whatever.
And then bored to death.
Bugger.
Yeah, I like how he's shouting at him to make him understand classic Picard.
Yeah, just yeah.
And I felt really sad actually that he died.
Yeah.
Oh, no, he's dead.
Jackers walls have definitely fallen, get that piggy in a blanket.
I felt I was a bit gutted by that.
I felt really sad by that guy dying.
Also, don't you think the other race is so advanced they'd be scanning.
They've probably got like a live feed video of what's going on on the planet.
Yeah.
They see their captain dead.
Surely you would go, well, it's over, isn't it?
Send him back to the ship and it's over.
No, it takes the episode takes us in the route of the only way this is going to end
because obviously they've not picked up that their captain's dead on all the senses and ability they've got.
Yeah.
That we're going to have to blow the shit out of them a little bit so we can beam them off the planet and get them back.
Yeah.
I think that's really crap.
Yeah.
Even the Enterprise says, well, I think the captain, their captain's dead or their life signs are like they're gone.
And can I say as well, this goes back to what we said a long time ago on the main line
when I was talking about Discovery and where they just beam everywhere now.
They just watch you walk through a door and suddenly they're beaming to another partnership.
Why do they all teleport onto the pads in the teleportation room?
Is that the only place?
Is that because that's where the shield has a little area where they can get through their own shields?
No, they can't get through their own shields.
If the shields are up, you can't beam.
Why is he not just beaming onto the bridge?
And they do.
Look at the number of times in Voyager when there's an accident in the holodeck
or there's an accident somewhere.
Pick an episode, any episode.
And they beam them.
So why is Picard then teleporting himself to the transportation room?
I think they do the transporter because it's able to do...
More powerful?
Yeah. Maybe it's like a giant satellite dish sort of thing.
It can do further distances.
It can receive from further distances.
It can send more equipment down.
I accept that.
I think that's the only reason why.
But then when he's on the ship, why can he then not do a local teleport to the bridge?
What he does is he must get into a hollow lift and storm his way.
And he storms his way to the bridge.
He's fucking annoyed.
He looks like he's seething.
Don't tell anyone off.
No, no, no, no.
As Noel, don't ignore Riker's failure at diplomacy, like you said.
Just accept that he's blown a hole in their ship and then tell them their captain's dead.
See you later.
I've got here as well.
I bet Picard drew a penis in the log book.
Yeah.
I'll just write my name in there.
Quickly draw something.
So then he does his...
He knows how to speak the language perfectly.
All of a sudden.
So he does it bang on.
Perfectly rehearsed.
100 years of...
And they know exactly what he said.
100 years of failure.
He gets it in a weekend.
And then it cuts a bit later on and he's sat there reading a book, which he puts down.
And Riker is a nosy fucker.
He's just looking at the dude's book.
It's like if it's Picard's diary on there and he's just like...
I noticed it straight away.
He's like looking over at what book Picard was reading.
I thought, you're so rude.
Yeah.
And he didn't even knock.
I did like that you witnessed the Tamarians do their little thing with their knife.
Yeah.
And that you see Picard doing it as a sign of...
Oh, what's the word?
It's kind of his respect to what had happened.
Yeah.
So no one's around.
It's like camaraderie.
It would have been quite nice of him to do it on the bridge in front of everyone so they could have seen.
But there you go.
Maybe he was embarrassed by it.
I do like this as well.
I think I got this off Twitter.
My language isn't so difficult.
Shackle when the fools fell is an analogy for failure.
In your culture, an equivalent would be Twitter when Musk bought it.
Yeah.
Twitter when the Musk bought.
Yeah.
What did you think?
Ultimately, what did you think of the episode?
Really enjoyed it.
As I said, a little bit of a slow start.
And there are points where if we're going to start poking at it, you can poke at it.
Easily.
Just like you could with Threshold.
Plenty of places you could if you really wanted to.
If you wanted to just not just enjoy an episode of Star Trek and wanted to be an arsehole and start poking at it, you can do it.
Absolutely.
It's not one I would open up someone's start of their journey into Star Trek with.
I'd say maybe after you've watched three or four episodes, watch that one.
But it's one that's good, but it's not for the starter of Star Trek.
It's a great one for the situation I was in who wanted to know what that character was.
Yes.
To then get sent to that and be like, OK, yeah, wicked.
Have you ever watched the Orville?
I've never watched Orville.
So Orville is brilliant.
It's up until they released Lower Decks, what I considered the most available Trek at that point that was modern, because as you know, I wasn't fond of Discovery.
It's really good.
It's Seth MacFarlane.
Don't expect to be Family Guy humour.
There is humour in it, but it's actually got so much good sci-fi in it, you'd be surprised.
I think that's why I haven't really watched it.
My friend Stiddy, who I've spoken about here before, he's constantly telling me to watch it because he thinks I'll like it.
But because it is Seth MacFarlane, I think it's going to be Family Guy in space.
It's not.
Honestly, there are funny parts of it, but there are some really moving parts.
The first season has a whole point about the character I'm about to show you is an all-male civilisation.
They have a baby, and it turns out it's a female.
And when that happens, they do a gender change.
And one of the parents basically says, actually, I don't want that.
And it's an entire storyline about forced gender alignment.
It's a brilliant episode.
It really is an eye-opening one.
But the character is Bortus.
He's the security officer.
Do you wonder where they got the idea for the character design?
Yeah, he looks like a Darmot character.
He looks like a Temerian.
So obviously, they do borrow quite a bit from Star Trek idea-wise in it.
But it just made me laugh when I saw Bortus.
It looks just like that character I saw in that episode that one time on TNG.
So I'm supposed to rate it, aren't I? Because I'm the person who didn't choose the episode, so I'm supposed to rate it.
Did we say it was out of five or out of ten?
Do you remember what we did?
Did we rate it?
I asked you to rate threshold.
Oh, right. OK.
Didn't I? I don't remember if it was out of five or out of ten.
We'll do both. Out of five.
I think four.
So that would translate to eight out of ten then.
Yeah, that's what I said.
Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Good. I'm glad you did.
It is one of my more favourite episodes of TNG.
You're heading into that season three and kind of seasons three, four and five, to me are probably my favourite seasons of TNG.
It got really into a good position.
The characters were fairly well developed at this point and the storylines got to be really good.
I mean, we'd started to get the Borg up here.
We got a really big Borg storyline at this point as well.
We got the best of both worlds where Picard, it's a cross between two seasons, end of one season, beginning of the next season.
So, yeah, it's...
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
I would go with the same rating on that.
And I'm glad you said season three, four and five are your favourites because I'm going to make you watch season one.
No, I love all of them.
And, Gohan, what episode are we watching?
So, I haven't seen this episode, but it looks really cool.
So, it's season one, episode 25 of The Next Generation and it's called Conspiracy.
And I honestly think what we need to do, as you've never seen this episode, and I have,
I would like us to try something out new, which is either we do it at yours or you come over here,
we sit on the sofa and we do the episode live on recording.
So, we talk about it and we'll pause every now and then and talk about it as we go.
Yeah, I'm up for that.
Or even you watch the episode and then we do what I just said.
So, you've had one clean run of it so you don't get any kind of stopping and whatever.
And then we'll go through it with it on in the background.
I think that's what we should do and to talk over it as we go.
The microphones, we'll make sure it doesn't get cut in and so on.
Or even if we do, we'll run it in so it's all nicely done.
But yeah, I'd like to do that for that episode because it's, when you watch it, you'll see why.
It is a good episode, but it's also something you will not see again in TNG to that extent.
Yeah.
Cool.
Awesome.
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Shaka when the walls fell, Tom and Rob on the ocean with sails unfurled.
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