More Rich and Mike's Top Ten TNG Episodes - re:View

well rich we said we'd be back and we're back we're back baby talking about star trek the next generation a 30 year old outdated television program so let's get into it rich and mike's second top five top ten well it's a sequel to our top five which was really kind of a top ten so right now what we're doing rich during the commercial break we flipped a coin the quarterbacks from each team selected heads or tails i won the toss uh but i defer it to you oh my god so i could start off on the second half that sounds that sounds fine uh i have uh booby trap as my number 10. booby trap there's no coincidence the word boob is in booby trap because it's an episode about jordy laforge being perverted it's it's an episode about a horny jordy laforge who in the middle of a crisis finds love with a woman who doesn't exist maybe we can do it again sometime uh i i i like jordy i heard you once say that jordy was boring and i i i completely disagree with you this is the b and end all of jordy laforge episodes it is the only jordy leforge episode uh with the exception of the terrible episode where his mother is a ghost and he flies in a fire pit to find his mother's ghost uh which is terrible jordy is an underrated every man what everyone says about tng is like i want to live there i want to be in that universe i want to be friends with these people and i think jordy is probably the only person who might actually bother to be my friend because levar burton is just so naturally friendly which is why he hosted reading rainbow for 30 years well it looks like a great party do you mind if we join you also the other thing i like about jordy from a writing perspective they never used his blindness as like a crutch outside of outside of the first season i think that's one or two episodes but it's never like jordy episodes aren't i'm blind and i really wish i could see jordy we have the surgery but you can only see for one day with your reel they never [ __ ] did that and i i i love that they just kind of sidestepped his disability he's like yeah he's he's got the visor but he's just like everyone else this episode starts out with him on a date on the holodeck and he's just he's just striking out with this with this woman and um he's trying too hard he's he's trying the standard you know whine and dying here's the romantic evening and he's he's not just being himself which is his problem which is why when the the i guess i'm getting ahead of myself well no i think that's that's a what the the track you're going down is perfect yeah because i'll i'll i'll help you out here a little because i was like booby trap okay that's that's that episode you know where they're they're stuck in the the booby trap that sucks the energy when they try to move it shoots radiation at them there's trapped that's the episode where jordy makes the holographic lady right and they kind of sit there and you know and then i rewatched it and i discovered a wonderful little subtext lair you know i've always thought that technology could solve almost any problem but sometimes you just have to turn it all off and the whole episode is is is basically about relying too much on technology or just letting go and being yourself taking a step back and that's that's jordy's problem in the beginning and it's it's painted out so clearly and that's what's so great about a lot of these episodes where i'm noticing which i'm going to talk about timescape later it's on my list where there is a wonderful opening segment that that basically sets up the theme of what this episode is about and that carries through to the end jordy is on the holodeck there's a lady he likes there you know he says you want another coco no no he's trying to get her drunk uh he's oh she's it's a little cold he's like i could turn down the breeze you know and they have a beautiful ocean setting and then he then he makes the guy with the violin come out i pro i programmed the holodeck perfect and she's just like no you know and then mid-episode he talks to gainen and he's like gaining what am i doing wrong you know and she's like you're doing just fine with me you're just being yourself she always knows what's what and and and that ends up being the arc of the entire episode when we get to the booby trap part yes because because the the enterprise discovers uh an absolutely ancient distress signal coming coming from this this little asteroid uh belt and and they go there and they find this ship that's like 1 000 [Music] the other the other half of this episode the picard bit is uh you know card is very much into uh archaeology and picard is geeking the [ __ ] out about this 1 000 year old ship usually picard's pretty reserved and he's very visibly giddy in this episode he gets to go on his ship in a bottle something they reference is like a scene where picard is all it's like building a ship in a bottle you ever do that and nobody nobody [ __ ] else it's like what the [ __ ] what the [ __ ] is this crazy old man talking about ships and bottles it is exactly as they left it number one in the bottle the ship in the oh good lord didn't anybody here build ships in bottles when they were boys except except for o'brien who who decides to suck up i did sir thank you mr o'brien in that particular moment i build ships and bottles sir i love how he asks it to wharf and david we're like i didn't play with toys dave's like i was never a boy and and he does he connects on a certain level with his counterpart aboard the ship and that counterpart was in charge of the lives of all the people on the ship which is the arc for picard at the end so so we we you know picard geeks out they explore the ancient ship and they they all go back to the enterprise it's okay it's time to go home oh no we fall into the same snare that killed them a thousand-year-old booby trap because the enterprise can't leave because apparently what happened to the ancient ship is it got caught in a booby trap and when they try to leave these like devices hidden in the asteroids that just suck off all of the enterprise's power as it's trying to leave it's like a it's like a figure trap yeah you know the more the more power they use to get out the more the trap keeps them in in place picard needs jordy to figure out how to get them out of this trap we need we need we need to out think this trap and so then jordy gets sucked down this rabbit hole where he he finds the notes of uh leia brahm who helped design the enterprise and he just bit by bit he kind of ends up on the holodeck with a holographic representation of of leia brahms so in in the holodeck without the without trying to to a lady just just being himself as an engineer falls in love with the hologram of dr leia brahms because he's he's not trying he's not trying to war he's not trying to get out here's the roses here's the wines like well you know i'm engineering problem let's figure out this engineering problem and that's that's jordy's things being himself he's an engineer and he gets to be an engineer with this other engineer don't go away i mean a computer safe program yeah and to be fair uh she is a little overly warm and receptive which we discover several episodes later which in real life she's not but that's a whole nother story that's the sequel episode which is also good which is also good the fort so you're the one who's fouled up my engine designs but yeah like when you when you watch this episode uh which which for in my memory was was sort of just like okay episode but when you watch it and you say it's an episode about how the enterprise gets caught in a booby trap that radiates the ship when they try to leave and everyone will die what happened before that is the surface level the real story is jordy learning to cut loose the ties of technology and to be himself and to be more more uh confident in in his natural persona not to over overthink or overtry with everything yeah and and that is the problem when cut trying to come up with a solution to escape the booby trap uh he learns his lesson and they they parallel each other his his love life and the escape from the booby trap end up being similar because the solution to escaping the booby trap is to not overly rely on technology he's like we got to do this we got to rewire this and we get six percent more power if we we wire this to that section and then and then he's like wait a minute the solution is don't do anything turn it all off turn it all off but not if we shut everything off one blast of everything we've got left for a microsecond to beat the inertia and then we shut it all down except for minimal life support and two thrusters no impulse engines no computer and so that's where you know picard's arc comes in is picard the best pilot on the ship no arguably riker is but that's not the point the point is picard says this is my job i'm the captain the my counterpart i have respect for him but he didn't get his crew out of the situation it's up to me looks picard's also talking about like you know his ship in a bottle his back in the old days they didn't have the instruments to rely on they just had themselves in their navigational equipment yeah did it on their own right and then picard steers the ship like that he wants to be he wants to be the old he says something about uh imagine having one propeller to keep up the aeroplanes manning the earliest spacecraft flying an aeroplane with only one propeller to keep you in the sky can you imagine that now the machines are flying us and so essentially that's what they do um i thought it could have been a little a little more exciting at the very end when they shut all the power off i was i was just picturing in my head where it's like you have this action music and all the all those all the terminals go off you show all the parts of the ship everything goes dark you know people have flashlights and is a little more exciting but that's fine they spent a little too much time in the middle where jordy's like you know chit-chatting with the holographic leia brahms and i was like okay okay and then they get out of the i don't think it's an asteroid field i think it's the remnants of like a planet was that what it was okay neither side expected aurelius nine to be the decisive conflict there's not much left is there the destruction is remarkable considering the primitive weapons of the period they referenced the fact that the battle was so like crazy and violent like blew up a whole planet and it's just like floating debris from a uh battle that occurred i think yeah so the solution is cut everything but minimal life support and just use like one thruster one little burst from the impulse engine just to push the ship and then just a little bit of thruster almost like like you're coasting your car you know you turn off the engine you you keep the heat on maybe and that's it and your car just kind of coasts down a hill we're out of gas put it in neutral we'll take the gravity down the hill so the layman equivalent to that and picard picard i think does a little trick he he he does picard has the the human intuition he does the thing the computer never would have thought to do when we don't we don't have enough juice to make it picard uses the gravity of the giant asteroid to kind of swing the ship the rest of the way out data's impressed yeah you have used the asteroid's gravitational pull as a slingshot excellent yeah data's improv a sophisticated computer in the 24th century and would never have thought of that but that's okay picard did it's a theme you'd probably never see nowadays it's a very like 1980s attitude towards technology yeah we're so [ __ ] reliant on computers now like shutting it off would would never be the solution i i like that episode it's number 10 in my top 20. number 10 in your top 20. yeah there's one one one little bit one little bit i liked brent spiner is good at acting like he's faking emotion it's just just just a tiny little thing once once jordy strikes out on his uh hollow deck date the beginning wesley sees jordy walk into 10-4 and goes uh-oh and then data is confused at first once data realized the date failed completely emulates the uh oh that wesley just did uh-oh commander dated to the bridge immediately yeah and it's so obvious that he's faking it it's perfect there's another moment like that in an episode that i'm going to talk about called the game when wesley comes back and they surprise him in the room and wesley tells a joke everybody laughs and data kind of goes for a second there i thought i was on the wrong ship [Laughter] so wesley and it's like he never really did that too often but um it is it is pretty obvious and funny when he does it it's always clear when he was faking yeah yeah yeah so a a good episode i love the little uh uh jordi it's a good jordy episode and i think this is one of the earlier ones where i remember thinking they really upped the game on the special effects because a lot of those shots where the enterprise is like moving through the asteroid belt or the debris field or whatever yeah look really good and um i think this is like right at that time when it started to look really good and it used to it used to be kind of a dull episode but i appreciate what it is now how do you feel about the very ending when picard's command is let's make sure that no one gets caught by this booby trap ever again and record goes mr wolfe 45 photon torpedoes fire make sure that booby trap doesn't bother anyone again mr wharf ready photon torpedoes set to detonate on impact with the promelian vessel and then they just blow up this ancient ship you're at the point where you have to wrap up the episode even though that would have that should have broken picard's heart yeah and he he probably could have said why don't we put out a little warning beacon because they've done warning beacons that's for let's get a team of highly specialized starfleet engineers to think about this and then a fleet can come in later and try and disable it from a distance and maybe we can rescue this this very valuable piece of ancient history that i love so much yeah yeah but there was no clarification on his command it's like riker riker's got a little bit of intuition in him i get that you know but mike the episode's gotta be 46 minutes we got 12 seconds we're at 45 uh 52. we gotta end i just wanted picard to go no no no i meant a warning buoy and then riker riker is in the brig that's how it ends no that's a nitpick it's just a fun little gag picard gets kicked out of his archaeology club yeah you destroyed a promethean battle cruiser so it's like blowing up the [ __ ] egyptian pyramids somebody got bit by a snake let's make sure no one gets bit by this snake again fire a nuclear missile destroy the priceless artifact blow it to smithereens yeah yeah yeah like indy firing a bazooka at the ark he couldn't do it yeah right right okay even though it would have stopped the nazis you didn't want to blow up the ark of the covenant you're right rich yeah it would have been a nice ending uh but it had explosion at the end made made people happy but great pick rich booby trap thank you don't go away okay mike so what is your next pick my next pick which i'll just go right into it the order doesn't really matter there's no particular order um but i referenced it in our booby trap review it's the game the only good wesley crusher episode now let me go on the record with a very unpopular opinion i don't dislike wesley crusher really he's better in later seasons i think a lot of the wesley crusher hate comes from season one i've never really got i never got that vibe of of i hate wesley crusher watch this it i'm i'm i'm with starfleet we don't lie i'm not like fully on the bandwagon where i have pitchforks and i want to see the character beat it up but he's kind of obnoxious in that first season when he's so much smarter than everyone else and half the episodes revolve around him i i get why he's disliked it's wesley i wanted to speak to you about the boy and such musical genius as i saw on one of your ship's libraries one called mozart who is a small child wrote astonishing symphonies a genius who made music not only to be heard but seen and felt beyond the understanding the ability of others wesley is such a person he's rottenberry's insert character i think brown bears what his self runberry's like self-insert almost see i always i always thought it was more cynical than that i thought it was like well you know this show is has a bunch of old people on it stuffy old people let's throw a kid in there maybe young young people 13 14 15 young boys will be like cool you know like i want to be like wesley i want to go on adventures in space with you know forward view screen is controlled from the ops position there which uses high-resolution multi-spectral imaging sensors hell do you know that boy perimeter alert captain leslie i'm sorry get off the bridge more of a marketing thing like like a relatability we need something for the kids yeah a red light ability that could be kind of like how riker is the william t reicher is the james t kirk you know it's through he's he's the suave handsome guy who sleeps with ladies and good you know we don't want a stuffy bald diplomat you know what how young kids are they gonna like this and that's kind of how i got wesley but um i i never like the i guess what would be the worst wesley episode is when he falls on a bunch of flowers and they want to execute them right [Music] that's the planet where any ever literally every crime carries the death penalty yeah yeah yeah and so they have this perfect society and then they're it's really like like a good legal episode you know like he didn't know but we got to respect their laws [Music] the game is like uh invasion of the body snatchers kind of episode i'm trying to decide if it's a wesley episode it's more the female uh crew member who never shows up again oh episode ashley judd ashley does show up again does she show when she show up again she does come back again lefleur what's the resonance frequency point three four over standard i don't know if it's just one time or a couple times but she just has a couple lines here and there jordy's like lefleur you know what are you reading on your screen over there and she's doing something in the background it's in one of the episodes that i watched i can't remember which one exactly i guess it's similar to barkley once you have them on for that season's guest star episode you film a couple other little bits that you can throw in here and there during the season just to remind people that that character exists ashley judd was the famous daughter of a country singer she wants to act everybody you put her in the show and you know oh she can get two or three episodes that sort of thing so um she does come back but um wesley comes back from from starfleet academy he's taken a break from being at the academy and he has a lot of venture aboard the enterprise thank goodness he comes back or else the flagship would have fallen into the hands of the butt heads an alien race with butts on their foreheads but really this the whole thing is riker's fault riker riker is a sex pervert he goes to raisa to sleep with a butt headed he gets no uh retribution or punishment for what he did almost you know he should be in jail he was told it was a game yeah okay okay i guess i guess he should at least be demoted in rank to ensign you wear the the game on your head and scoring points in the game is like getting hit with a straight shot of heroin yeah it messes with the endorphins yeah it's a pleasure we get to see riker's o face which is unfortunate we get to see a lot of people's old faces we see dr crusher's old face uh we see wesley faking an old face uh i don't know incredibly uncomfortable scene with a girl he's he's interested in let's land the bed in my quarters and pretend we're [ __ ] our own brains um but anyway the premise of the episode my favorite bit though with this with this game is that who's wesley i think is in the turbolift with the nurse uh ogawa ogawa and she's like wearing it she's clearly just tripping out the secret is just not to play the game it plays itself that's great there's some peer pressure there's some drug use themes but it is it is a a brainwashing device it is a uh invasion of the body snatchers kind of premise where everybody uh is bad and uh what so the but it starts off with riker on rhiza and riker hooks up with a floozy right off the bat they're they're playing around right they're goofing around and they're running around and this is these are the little touches that i'm talking about when i watch the show right they're not just like she's not just like ooh come and get me come get me any chases around what does she do i know they're just playing around in the bedroom i remember what specifically she has taken his combadge and she's teasing him with it and he's like i need that that's important and then she throws it out the window right there riker you know she's up to no good and it's a nice little it's a nice little way to set the stage she's up to no good and she usurps his authority she takes away the one thing that's that's ties him to the enterprise there's something wrong also something he could use to call for help if it goes bad and he he's on to her so it's it's it while subtle and it looks like just general horseplay it's a it's a nice little little like because you you look at the episode from a writer's perspective and you're like what do you have them do they have them just smooching right they just they're just smooching and and she goes hey why don't you try this game no she steals his combat that's some subtle clever [ __ ] it's very telling of of her character and her future motivations because i think she's the one at the very end her hair is in a bun and he's all in military uniform and riker should have blasted her i knew i shouldn't have ever trusted you but yeah so it's like little things like that so you think it's a riker episode and and this is what i'm talking about where you have that opening scene and at the end riker and troy should have been sitting in ten forward and he's like you know troy i should vet these i sleep with you know like i've learned my lesson i've learned my lesson i shouldn't go to raisa and sleep with any butt-headed female alien who just walks up to the bar next to me right i've learned my lesson but instead it's a wesley episode which is fine wesley comes home he gets the cold shoulder the senior staff is in a meeting you're supposed to go to your mother's quarters oh the fake cold shoulder which is great because he's like the chief of brian's like everybody's in the in the conference room do you mind if i stop in he calls wharf i suppose that would be okay we're so mad um wesley crusher has arrived monson over he can stop by the observation lounge to say hi i suppose that is acceptable that's his setup is he's he's he's feeling like alone he's feeling he he's not with the enterprise anymore he's an outsider technically and there's a new brainiac uh wunderkind who has taken his place robin leffler she's the young young uh girl who's on the upstart and right so keep it up lefler keep it up lester you're gonna go places remember she's majority singing her praises she's the new and her and um uh wesley kind of spat a little why aren't these registering you might try calibrating them manually excuse me the detectors they tend to get temperamental you can try calibrating them by hand you know she's like i heard you did this and i do i do this here and he's like we changed this around and wesley's out of his element he's an outsider and that plays into the theme of the plot which is uh everybody starts [ __ ] turning on him and something's really something really bad is going on pound cake tarvokian pound cake another thing i'd like to talk about which we we really didn't bring up in our first episode or two of this whatever it is we're doing talking about our favorite tng episodes tng love fest tng love fest um it's kind of looking at these episodes more from a structure perspective like we're talking about openings setting the stage who's the what character is the show going to focus on what's the overall theme because you have a little plot right but you always have an overall theme and then also um x because i kind of like i was like documenting why do i like this episode right what what makes it work and a lot of times it's you have your your introduction the these shows are done in five acts right you have your first actor your intro um before the credits start and that tells you what the story is and then you have four more acts basically commercial breaks at the end of each act there's something changes and you know it either intensifies the drama or you learn something new and the story changes directions things get worse and worse um and and and a lot of times i'd be like why did they end this act that way which i'll talk about timescape but i think the the structure of this one solid introduction riker on rhiza hooked up with a lady who shows them a game discs and cones and i like the fact that when they remastered the blu-rays they didn't update any of the special effects they recreated them to look as terrible as they did back in the day but intro is riker on ryza with the lady uh and she shows him the game he discovers uh that it's a very pleasurable game cut to credits first act riker comes back from riza he he initially tries to get geordi interested in the game right and he's like jordy you know hey brought this thing back from ryza it's pretty pretty cool you know and i think that's that's also a way for the story to let you know that it does work on jordy because that that was another question too it clearly wouldn't work on data but would it work on jordy and riker goes right to jordy we get that out of the way right out of the bat jordy you wanna try this game i'm busy i gotta we're doing a survey of the phoenix cluster a bunch of stars or something uh i gotta i gotta work on all this stuff okay fine he leaves you know some other things happen wesley comes back he's chit chats with picard about his days at the academy yada yada who does he go to next it's a crusher wasn't it was it who's next counselor troy oh yeah and a wonderful little little touch in the writing what's troy doing oh god i've watched this recently and i don't remember is she sitting in her office with a patient she just got done with a patient counseling a patient nope what she doing i don't remember she's sitting in 10 forward all by herself gorging on chocolate ice cream her addiction she is a secret glutton for chocolate ice cream and she's talking about the the ritual of how she she does her ice cream boom perfect target right that's a wonderful thing to have the character doing wonderful wonderful action that lets lets riker know she's a good target to to be interested in something pleasurable because she's she's eating ice cream right didn't think about this [ __ ] when i was 11 years old right what a genius little thing to you don't she's not just walking down the hallway and riker says hi troy i brought this thing back from risa would you like to try it oh sure no it's it's subtlety she's she's she's she's indulging herself in ice cream and but that's the end of act one is troy's like tell me more about this game music swell commercial break what is it just a game [Music] the game spreads around the ship what do they have to do dr crusher to data data here do you have a minute to join me in sickbay i need your help with something yes doctor on my way data is going to be immune they got to take out you need to take care of the data problem and that is when the stakes are raised yet again because he's not just he's not just spreading it at that point now they are actively doing harm now their subconscious is there there's a plan it's not just a game that everybody enjoys playing that's that's you know like drugs or something that's more sinister it's more sinister than that and that's when we discover that it's more sinister uh is is crusher presses data's off button and then riker and troy come in they're like seal the doors you know let's get to work on cutting his servos so that he doesn't wake up then we're like oh my god something really bad's going on [Music] meanwhile wesley and robin leffler are kind of flirting and and they're both kind of nerds so they're not interested in the game i think they go on a date crusher is really pushing wesley hard she's like try it come and try it try i'm going on a date i'm trying to get ready bring her back here we'll play the game together and he's like no no so they go there and they turn forward and everybody's like like hooked on this game and and wesley in true nerd fashion says i think i'd like to learn a little bit more about the game before i try it because that's what that's what people you know when someone offers you like cocaine or heroine or you know i think i'd like to read up a little bit more about this cocaine before i try it hey that should save the enterprise that's right i wonder how it works why don't you try it and find out i'd like to know a little bit more about it before i try it abstaining nerds uh uh who who don't give in to peer pressure save the enterprise thank god wesley is a wet blanket [Laughter] so they go back to um they go to the science lab and they're looking into it and blah blah and oh this thing's psychotropically addictive it's a real problem he goes to picard and of the third act really raise the stakes is sad we find out picard is secretly infected when crusher goes to him he's like i found this thing it's sinister we should look into it the car's like yes i'll look right into it and then the second wesley leaves the card just waits and waits it's like a beat he's puts on the thing yeah he's doing something in the foreground he's like out of focus and and come you know and then turns around and and he clearly put the game in right in wesley's uh sight line but it's it's a four by three television show no one noticed that it's on their tiny little tv screens but yeah and then wesley then you know final acts is uh wisely realizing that robin has been probably forcibly made to watch the game play the game and then it becomes a wonderful little chase where they try to get wesley he's the last one you know as it's a secret alien plan to take over the enterprise the enterprise has been secured we'll wait for further instructions [Music] by evil aliens and i have another episode that's virtually identical to it it's a better episode it's a better episode but i i i enjoy this one a lot because is it is it a weakness that that data saves the day in the in the wesley episode no because um they uh intentionally kept that from us uh we don't see wesley repairing data we don't know that data has been repaired so there's still that that tension and excitement at the end it's kind of lame how data saves the day by flashing a flashlight at everybody but you know hey it worked but had they had a scene where wesley sneaks into sickbay and fixes data and says data there's this bad [ __ ] that's going down i will work on a solution wesley just keep them occupied we didn't know wesley was keeping them occupied we thought he was down to his last and they push him into picard's chair and they hold his eyes open and everything and we think oh gosh all is lost there comes data saves the day is he so often dead it's a fine episode and i'll get into my it is my uh it falls into my ramping up a problem episodes i've discovered there are two types of episodes and i'm discrediting all the schlock wharf soap opera crap there are two types of episodes the escalating problem episode right where something starts off small and it gets worse and what i call the pick up the pieces episode where in the very beginning something big happens and then the rest of the time we're picking up the pieces this is an escalating problem episode i'm sorry internet i don't mind wesley crusher i don't hate him i don't love him he never bothered me as much as he seems to have bothered other people i really don't care like like many things with star trek the next generation he improved significantly after the first season right tractor beams are my specialty skipper i'll contact you when that's done wesley out wesley wesley that's this pick um for for my ninth ranked episode i am going with first contact for me the reason i like this it's kind of similar to who watches the watchers in that it's a a a first contact prime directive-ish episode that's told from the the aliens point of view what are you like the main characters in this really really isn't like card it's it's the the alien scientist and the the the alien presidents we're we're basically we we have this world that is kind of kind of similar to earth today and they're right on the verge their scientists are right on the verge of developing warp technology they're they're about to go out of their solar system for the first time at 12.4 after launch the warp field generator will be activated that's when it would break the light barrier yes chancellor if we're successful the craft will leave our star system and in a matter of minutes we'll be on its way to the garth system and and the federation who are just just kind of keeping a track on all these aliens in in you know the area they they they know that this area that the federation knows this planet's on the verge of going out in space and so they're preparing to make first contact with these people for the first time about to beam down and and say hello and before starfleet does this they they actually have people on the planet in disguise we're just kind of like just scoping out the the culture like how are we going to be received so they have little observational teams running around unfortunately commander riker who is in disguise on the planet he he he gets injured during a riot that's going on on the planet and so then he is in medical custody and the doctors on the alien planet discover that riker is an alien i had cosmetic surgery to correct a genetic birth defect and these another birth defect and it's it's kind of this diplomatic situation where uh you know cards he's got to make first contact but he's he's also kind of got to get riker out of there and this alien culture they're they're uh pretty paranoid in general what if there's more of them they could be everywhere gordon off the wing i want security on his door 29 hours a day and i want this kept quiet well from i haven't i haven't rewatched this one from what i recall there was sort of like a a clash of um ideologies there was there's like what would be considered like religious conservatism that were like we're the only people in the galaxy like the doctrine says and then the then the more like liberal-minded kind of like we gotta go out in space there's alien planets there's other life out there kind of that sort of like conflict was happening there's there's it's it's not specifically said like the religious and this is our religious doctrine but there's clearly the conservative faction right the people were willing to accept your social reforms because they believe in you chancellor but there are many who say we have gone far enough that likes things the way they are they're very kind of resistance to change a little bit paranoid and then there's clearly a more progressive faction on this planet who their scientific progress and we need to we need to grow and we need to change and then in the in the middle of all of this this political right and left wing on that planet there is the the chancellor who is a character i really like because he's just like a a very classical concept of what a president should be what a leader should be he's not dogmatic for one side or the other he's constantly like weighing the options of what is best for his people it's like well i under i see the value of progress and what progress can get our people but i also understand the needs of the conservative faction and and i have to balance this what's he doing this november that's that's that's the thing that watching this is very uncomfortable i'm trying to imagine this this chancellor getting into a debate with president trump and it's so it's so [ __ ] depressing well i'll get rid of the individual i'm gonna give you excuse me i got rid of the individual mandate which was a big chunk of opinion that is absolutely a big thing i think we shall find we have much in common and much that is not in common an opportunity to learn from one another socialize medicine look why don't you observe what your campaign agreed to as a ground rule okay picard makes first contact with with the counselor and they like it's like picard has kind of like met his diplomatic equal and they they have these these these conversations with each other we're not yelling at each other calling each other shut up shut up here's what i got to say what is it what was the word to use con converse conversation conversation that's where two people exchange ideas okay okay and they communicate with one another oh interesting and somebody somebody actually like finishes a thought without being interrupted oh my god what what kind of show is this what this is truly is science fiction it's this it's this version of politics that's that's very just fictionalized okay you know it's like it's it's science fiction basically he's got this line on this where like you know he knows that he's not the center of the universe anymore it's like uh he's got this line where it says uh this morning i will have to say this morning i was the leader of the universe as i know it i was leader of the universe as i knew it sell it rich this afternoon this afternoon i'm only a voice and a chorus i am only a voice in a chorus but but i think it was a good day i think it was a good day it's just it's depressing i love this episode but it's depressing to watch okay and this day and age i understand i understand yeah what what ends up riker is just sort of like the catalyst for this like it's just sort of the catalyst of everything breaking down it's as opposed to this just being a pleasant episode about uh this alien race learning that alien life exists for the first time you gotta you gotta have some some drama in there does he like fall in love with an alien or well that's that's that's that's why this is like my my ninth favorite episode and not one of my top three yeah there's this this needless kind of cringe moment in there where um riker's trying to find a way to quietly escape so he could get back to the enterprise but he's in the hospital and there's like security all around because they know he's some kind of weird alien one of the one of the doctors i don't know if she's a nurse or a doctor one of the [ __ ] alien rights she offers she offers to help get him off uh she offers help get him out of the hospital but only if riker will have sex with her i believe you now will you help me if you make love to me it's actually lilith from cheers what i've always wanted to make love with an alien yeah okay kind of similar to your uh kelsey grammer cameo because i guess i guess they filmed cheers like right next to the [ __ ] star trek dng set so it's like lola's like can you put me in an episode and it's this cringe comedy moment in an episode that's otherwise just kind of a happy [Music] drama fiction yeah i really have to get going all the other aliens are waiting for me oh it's not so much to ask and then i'll help you escape it's not that easy there are differences in the way that my people make love i can't wait to learn this could be like um like a classy 1950s sci-fi if you just make it the humans like the mr president the aliens have landed i could see this working as like a day the earth said still just just uh style roll reverse you roll reverse everything okay okay i suppose grown-up me adult me would appreciate it more i never i didn't get around to re-watching this one so i don't have much input i remember it i remember all the you know the beats and stuff but um and to me it never stuck out as one of my all-time favorite it's a favorite for me because i i watch this it makes me think what if what if what if the aliens landed tomorrow now for me for me it's this is the big picture fantasy of what have this happened i've always wanted to make love with an alien okay mike what do you got next [Music] you do realize that we have a large number of fans who who don't watch star trek and have no idea what the [ __ ] is going on right now they just know that a goofy mask has suddenly materialized upon your head why rich i didn't hear a single thing you said [Laughter] but what i can tell you is dharmak and gillard at tanagra dharmak and zhilad at tanagra well rich this is the head of the el adrel creature from the dharmak episode of star trek the next generation we purchased this it is the actual head of the creature that that appeared it's like an interdimensional monster that lived on a planet it's like a it's like a dumb predator yeah it's just a creature that lives on a planet that uh uh picard and the captain of the alien ship have to team up to fight um so this is i think they slap this mask together and probably a costume as well um it it's not super there's some veins going on um but really it was meant to be sort of like uh two-dimensional glowing really kind of hard to see so they they just put this together but as far as i know this is the only one that exists and it's the actual head from the monster oh my god it's fine it's fine you [ __ ] spend money on a unique prop and then just throw it away like garbage like that [ __ ] it it's fun it's one of a kind [ __ ] it it's a piece of television it's from one of my favorite episodes star trek the next generation uh the episode is dharmak and it's it's made famous by dharmak and jalad atsunagra which is only famous because they say it 58 times in the episode i really uh i really like this episode despite the fact that you could nitpick the logic of the alien's language to death it's really just an episode about communication you're still assuming this is some kind of challenge ritual we can't be certain of that we're only making educated guesses about their motivations no more than that the the reason this has never made any of my top lists it's a quality episode almost almost every episode of tng is quality but the reason the only reason this i i dock points just because their language is so utterly stupid [Laughter] in winter it's similar to like an alien species that can only communicate in like internet memes well see i i think there are there are ways it's like you got the like the person that tactical just just suddenly says uh neil degrasse tyson hands in air and then the captain says jackie chan makes the face we do communicate crying woman screams that cat picard hand in face then the guy next to him picard and riker hands in face rich evan's superimposed sits on couch so you have the universal translator right which which uh it's it is it's the it's the ultimate hand wave without the universal translator is complete [ __ ] it's this device that's never really explained at all like where it is it's sort of explained in deep space nine where it's like a device that's implanted inside of their ears welcome to earth sorry we have to success references did you understand a word of that our universal translators must be malfunctioning where's that reset button ouch that looks like it hurts my name is quark chief financial officer of the ferengi alliance and i've got a business proposition for you but it it doesn't it doesn't make sense where like everyone should be looking like an over dubbed foreign film right where their mouths don't match their lips yada yada you know you know what i mean yeah but it is a hand wave where it's like just don't worry about it because without the universal translator dharmak would be every episode of star trek where nobody ever knows what the [ __ ] anybody is saying you show up and then you'd have to you have 25 minutes of like oh god can we figure out their language you know they just appear on the screen and they start speaking english and their lips match their their words for english they don't it would be too weird if they're like you know in english was coming out everyone would be like what's going on like your tv audience fine um and the dharmak episode i see more metaphorical kind of like here's what the story is as opposed to the logic because with language you know you have words like uh super technical words to describe like the intricacies of building machines you know and you can't communicate that in metaphor do you know what i mean yeah so so language is super complicated and it works on like a casual conversation level timber his arms open give me more about dharma from the ocean on the ocean but it basically it's just an episode about meeting an alien race and and not being able to communicate with them and there's al there's many layers of of that theme in the episode it's about overcoming a communication barrier yes and and clearly the main part of that is picard and the captain his name is not darmok it's uh captain oh [ __ ] he has he his name's mentioned like once uh it's paul winfield the actor who um who plays the alien captain he was in star trek two the rather khan yeah and so it kind of also reminds me of that enemy mine movie with dennis quaid and uh lewis guys guys they have they have an entirely different culture the their idea is to beam down both captains and have them work together to stab at this creature which is something from their mythos maybe something that happened a long time ago dharmak and jalad on an island called tanagra and they fought a monster and and they want to recreate that that mythical event with the new captain so that they could you know form a bond well what's what's going on is though because nobody for like a hundred years nobody has been able to understand this alien race their language is just impenetrable and now this alien race they want they i forget how they signal the enterprise but they want to try again to communicate federation vessels have encountered tamarind ships seven times over the past 100 years each meeting went without incident however formal relations were not established because communication was not possible why and out of desperation uh the the dharma i'm just gonna call them the darmox they kidnap a card and take them down to this dangerous planet and the enterprise because they can't communicate communicate because they can't communicate communicate communicate because they can't communicate doesn't know what the [ __ ] is going on they don't know if this is a hostile act right so there's there's a lot of tension where they the you know riker doesn't know if this is a act of war yeah riker riker does what he thinks is best he's trying to get captain picard off the planet you're holding our captain i want him released your action could be interpreted as an act of war until his eyes closed and so they try sending a shuttle down the aliens just nick the shuttle and the engine so it doesn't kill them but it makes them come back [Music] their riker isn't communicating with them riker is having trouble communicating with picard it's this whole cycle of no one knowing what anybody else is doing but picard figures it out that's how you communicate isn't it by by citing example metaphor and i think a lot with the language it's it's nice because they take a lot of time for him to figure out he figures it out but the people on the enterprise also do too rather quickly data and troy are going through the data banks and they're like what's you know tanagra and they find you know it's it's 12 different things who's dharmak uh darmok is a beverage on blah blah blah then they find two things that connect and they realize oh they're speaking in metaphor they seem to communicate through narrative imagery a reference to the individuals and places which appear in their mytho-historical accounts it's as if i were to say to you juliet on her balcony this is a meaning of love they we understand that uh someone else might not yeah but the thing is if the if the universal translator is down the darmox also have english words thrown in there shaco when the walls fell his eyes open and it's like those are english words uh mixed in with your weird mis mythical characters but it was all gobbledygook like if you said dharma globa gelad wagga chanagra they'd be like temba his arms wide when you gave me the knife and the fire timber his arms wide so the point is is that this this this alien race that we don't understand they do things very differently and and picard takes the time to try to understand as this the diplomat as he is you know if it were kirk it'd be a whole different story if it were kirk spock would have done all the work kirkwood said look mister i don't understand you i'm going this way and i'll see you in hell spock would just be exasperated obviously they're talking in metaphors [Laughter] the sparks kirk be like what i'm going to read them the constitution maybe that will work i'll teach them our values timber his arm's wide tempura is a person his arm's wide because he's he's holding them apart in in generosity in giving in taking but i i like the way they kind of they kind of take you through their language and they make the audience realize how they communicate bit by bit the thing i loved re-watching this it actually brought this episode up a lot in my opinion the episode opens up and they're they're saying they're gibberish dharmakat jalal and you the enterprise crew and you the audience watching it are like what the [ __ ] this is this is gibberish i don't understand it and then you get to the very end of the episode where picard gets onto the bridge just in time to stop a battle from breaking out and they're saying the same the exact same gibberish but me the audience i follow along with what they're saying perfectly because the entire episode taught us bit by bit what this means and this this metaphor means giving and this metaphor means failure and oh yeah accepting you know his arms closed you know picard is telling them that their captain died when he said chakra when the walls fell i understand what they're saying shakma won the wall [Laughter] that's that's and and you know what's kind of fun too like i was thinking about star trek discovery that that giant dumpster fire and and and you know all your badass characters and everything exploding and torpedoes hitting the enterprise blowing up and if people flying you can have sword fights and picard they finally get picard up and he just waltzes onto the bridge with this just like this attitude of like i get the [ __ ] out of my way i know what i'm doing on screen he doesn't even like say hi to anybody like any and he just starts talking to him right and they're like uh yeah fists his arms closed guacamole when the walls fell and they're like okay okay and then he said all the bridge lights go back on and he's just like that's the ultimate badass moment like he comes back from the planet and he unders he learned the goddamn language himself and he comes back and he just talks to them on screen and and calls the whole situation as as the expert diplomat that he is and and he's just like i'm i'm a [ __ ] badass and i did it with language and communication by learning you know not by punching that was one of the greatest picard moments when he just tells the the aliens in their own language what happened and and saves the day heroically told them what happened heroically told them what happened he learned their language and uh and yeah so yes you could argue about the the alien language and does it really make sense but really in in short it's just it's another first contact dish kind of episode that i i like that i like this episode a lot more re-watching it now when i'm older [Music] when i was younger the less exciting things were happening when you're 12 you don't really care about the subtleties and the the i care less that their language is silly now that i do about the story they told about learning to communicate with somebody well said that's exactly my point is yes the language is silly it doesn't quite make sense in in reality you know there's so many things in star trek that don't make sense i i can't imagine an emergency on their bridge where somebody has to explain that there's a warp core breach and they need to transfer power from an auxiliary system to stop it efficiently i can't imagine how they do that but that's another thing though it translates into our own lives where you can look at other like human cultures on the planet and go how can they communicate like that how did how do these people like do that like it's things that are foreign to us that that are completely normal maybe they can really effectively communicate a situation or or an emergency by using metaphor that that because they just know every metaphor in their entire culture in their brains and it's it's a concept that would be totally bizarre and foreign to us and impractical but to them that's their entire culture and and and existence and they're really good at it right yeah and so and that's that's i think was the point is that you can look at a different culture and go how the [ __ ] do you people communicate with each other like that or how do you do that and um until you learn it and understand it uh it's classic star trek classic classic star trek and that creature is no longer a threat to anybody because i own its [ __ ] head my my my next episode i i know you're number one you called a guilty pleasure your your uh was the nth degree yeah last time around this is my guilty pleasure coming right up uh this is uh the next phase which has no high-minded ideals whatsoever this is just straight up a fun episode fair enough uh the the enterprise gets a distress signal from a a romulan vessel and so the enterprise shows up and beams like riker wharf row and jordy over to help out jordy eunice says we need to fix this device we need to go back to the enterprise and replicate it so he and roe beam back over to the enterprise with this weird romulan device and they they vanish they never re-materialize and uh the enterprise thinks they are dead they think they got lost in transport but as we find out after the stinger when when picard just walks right by an unconscious role aaron on the floor row and jordy are both very much alive but they are invisible and intangible dr crusher i'm right here damn it [Music] and and ro thinks she's the ghost story-wise there is there is a good choice of the two characters we're dead jordy is that some kind of a joke because you've got jordy laforge the engineer science-minded but my uniform my visor are you saying i'm some blind ghost with clothes straight up technical guy and then roll aaron the bajorans religious in the bajorans they have their culture yes you don't have geordi and data or jordy and dr crusher where they're both science scientists and science-minded you got opposite ends of the spectrum and then they're both dealing with are we in a are we in a technological snafu or are we ghosts [Laughter] well it's star trek so we know they're at a technological snafu yeah yeah through row we we toy with the idea that they are ghosts she's she has a character who was kind of at odds with her own culture you know she's she's from a very spiritual people but she row herself isn't always that spiritual but but now now that she's a ghost she's like well geez maybe maybe the old stories were right well i i was thinking about what makes an episode of guilty pleasure and what makes it a quality episode and i was i was thinking about what some of my guilty pleasures are and i want to say it's when the science is schlock because one of my uh guilty pleasures and or favorite episodes which i didn't include on this list because it's a super guilty pleasure um is called remember me with dr crusher when wesley crusher is [ __ ] around in engineering and creates some kind of warp bubble that dr crusher ends up inside and that episode starts off with her and there's like an old man doctor that she's friends with and he's i'm so old and then he's the one who's the first one who disappears and then people start disappearing i'd like lieutenant wharf to program onboard sensors to monitor all personnel if we can catch the moment or whom did you say wharf chief of security [Music] the big guy who never smiles and then i don't know what happens how what universe she's in it's not a delusion it is not a dream there is a physical measurable phenomenon at work here pick up remember at the end everyone's gone and it's just mccartney's like we never needed a crew we just needed me there are 114 people on the enterprise that is the exact number there should be there are now over 900 missing she's like how do you explain all the [ __ ] rooms on this ship and and who are these people who wh where are they in her head are they ghosts what uni is she in an alternate universe why are these people interacting with her and why are they like covering this up what is the primary mission of the starship enterprise to explore the galaxy do i have the necessary skills to complete that mission alone negative then why am i the only crew member makes no [ __ ] sense at all but it's a fun episode it's collapsing all integrity now compromised on decks three through 15. i think i think because everyone keeps disappearing and she doesn't she thinks she's crazy and then a they keep trying to rescue her by this this vortex that opens they keep trying to suck her out of the bubble and she's holding onto furniture and stuff but but scientifically it makes no sense and that's the next phase as well it's a little better you could you could you could nitpick the hell out of the next phase there's there's no reason they should even be able to breathe let alone how the [ __ ] do they stand on the floor right i mean okay say say because they can walk through walls we establish they can walk straight through walls what is keeping them from falling to the floor how does artificial gravity work in star trek that they should have had a throwaway line where rose says well how why don't we fall through the floors if we walk through the walls well the gravity plating must be must be pushing up on our anti-gravity fields on our molecule semi-transparent molecules right it's fine because it's all in good fun it's an episode about what would happen when you die and how do the people you work with and care about remember you i guess i guess there is a little bit to that because uh data is tasked with planning their funeral right and uh data's data's going around like ask ask a few people like what would be an appropriate way to handle a food roll and i just wanted to say thank you for trusting in me when no one else would the bigger part is roe and her character because she this takes place after um one of my episodes conundrum where her and riker have sex and so there's always this like kind of thing with them and he's gonna do her eulogy and and you know she's kind of like listening and what is he going to say you know what is he going to say my eulogy and she kind of like cares what she you realize she cares what other people think of her even though she's this like i don't give a [ __ ] about any of you people she's she's like your stubborn teenager commander ryker and i have expectations captain i know the routine you don't have to worry about me we're stuck with each other so let's just get this over with as quickly as possible and go our own separate ways okay like a like a brat almost a rebellious rebellious teenager who says i don't care i don't [ __ ] you i'm gonna do it my way my way is better because it's my way this is not a bright idea i beg your pardon ensign i didn't quite catch that nothing sir and then when she's dead she really cares about what picard thought of her what riker thought of her people that she thought she was at odds with majority there's not much going on there yeah but it's more so about roe cause i think they're well jordy is there more than the counterpoint to the spiritual journey that roe is going on where he's like we're gonna i'm no we're not dead i'm gonna find out what happened to us we're gonna reverse him yeah he's the anchor to reality it's more of a row episode and i think there's a scene on the shuttle craft where um there is data and warfare flying around the shuttle craft and they're taking the shuttle craft back and forth yeah because they're terrified of the transporters right now until they can really do a diagnostic because they think the transporter just killed two people right and and data's asking about like the bajoran death ritual or something and we're like oh god it's 15 hours long and she says that well that's where was like look i'm a [ __ ] klingon i'm the wrong person to ask about planning a funeral i'm very happy for them right because they died with honor right right yeah and so it's it's a little bit about death life how you're perceived by other people they have the funeral which is like a party kind of thing that's why that's why i say this is more this episode is more for fun because data's funeral involves a ragtime band yeah like it's it's i'm not gonna say it's played for comedy but it's played for fun yeah because they're walking around they have to spread around like neutrino particles or something like that well they figure out that when they face through things that that that creates the the the chronotonic field or whatever kind of ghosting particles that might lead data to the solution that they are not dead because there is a there is a ticking clock element there's here's the thing because the romulans well one of the you know the twist is the romulan ship is been been playing around with this experimental phased cloak which that comes up again later in season seven but they're they're working on this new tech that will let you be cloaked invisible and intangible which that's some that's some that's some dangerous [ __ ] the romulans are worried that the federation is going to find out they're working on this so they sabotage the enterprise's engines is that the philadelphia experiment oh yeah a little bit yeah uh and if the enterprise goes into warp the enterprise will blow up and because row and uh jordy are face cloaked they overhear this and the ticking clock is oh [ __ ] we need to find a way to warn the enterprise before they go into warp yeah yeah not to turn on their warp engine and and there is also unbeknownst to them a romulan who is fazed cloak and you have my favorite scene in this where there's a a chase scene where this romulan is like hunting down row [Music] and they're just running through like crew members quarters and they're having this dramatic life or death struggle while like like people are just like getting ready to go to bed dudes dudes working out and like roe runs through him yeah and um they're having having this crazy fight while date is just like having a conversation with somebody and if you're seeing any fields play slow conversation while there's a struggle going on excuse me lieutenant row i'm detecting a chromatin field it's uh it's played out at the end too when they have to they realize that shooting like the romulan phasers around that that increases the the field that that data can scan because they're trying to get data's attention through these fields they can create but you have the shot where everyone's partying and they're just casually walking around shooting faces [Music] well this is unusual yeah well row is frustrated because she's never gonna she knows now that she's never gonna hear what riker has to say about her at her funeral and so in just frustration she shoots him in the head with the romulan disrupter i i do have one moment i want to point out early on in this episode uh somebody says yes to wharf for probably the first time ever uh worf is always used to make like negative suggestions like this tr wharf is like like mistrustful like we have to shoot first then why do we wait if we attack the ship now they will not be able to maintain their scattering field we we run into these aliens we don't know much about them and wharf is always the one who suggests we should load up the photon photon torpedoes and blow them out of the sky and he does that so that captain picard could say no i'm really diplomatic and look how good i am he makes captain picard look better when captain picard always shoots down warf's violence recommend we go to yellow alert sir why and in this episode wharf makes a suggestion that look the romulans need our computers i don't think we should give them our computers the romulans want a computer we cannot give them access to federation technology that is an unacceptable security risk and riker is like oh yeah that's a good idea yeah now let's let's just give them something old what about a computer core from 30 or 40 years ago one the romulans are already familiar with that would be satisfactory and wharf is so used to people just shutting him down that he actually he actually thanks ryker for listening to him hi sir thank you and that moment made me smile it's interesting this uh next phase episode is very similar to another episode which is my next episode it's called [Music] you

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,680,271

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, star trek, next generation

Id: Zs13fJuP0F4

Length: 79min 51sec (4791 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Granito_Rey]

Holy shit we get Josh & Jay talking about horror movies and Mike & Rich talking about Star Trek both in one week? 2020 starting to look up!

[u/Julian_Staples]

You had me at "Mike owns the head of the Darmok Predator alien".

[u/Jedi112]

An hour and 19....? Oh. My. Godddddddddd.

[u/thatcrazydiamond]

rich acknowledged the sofa image

​

WE'VE BROKE NEW GROUND

[u/Grievous_1982]

I have yet to watch the entire video...but can I just say the RLM crew are absolutely killing it with their content lately.

Edit: Shakma Reference!

SHAKMA!

Shakes fist at sky...

[u/Supermunch2000]

Happy Rich before Mike makes him watch Discovery Season 3

[u/terrymcginnisbeyond]

Mike continues his plan to slowly turn RLM into a Star Trek channel.

[u/KirkStarTrek]

Part of me wishes this was a regular series and they'd discuss every TNG episode in depth.

[u/J0HN__L0CKE]

Today no longer sucks so bad