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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to

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Speaker 2: be talking about 1996's Star Trek First Contact as part

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Speaker 2: of our This is the second year that we've done

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Speaker 2: a Star Trek week, lining up with internationally recognized Star

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Speaker 2: Trek Day. And it's a pretty big anniversary for Star Trek,

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Speaker 2: 60 years of Star Trek. That's a lot of myth-making.

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Speaker 2: That's a lot of science fiction. And so this year,

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Speaker 2: we really doubled down on the Borg. We did two

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Speaker 2: core episodes about the idea of the Borg. science behind

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Speaker 2: the Borg, cultural analysis of the Borg, questions like, is

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Speaker 2: the Borg queen a goddess? And if so, what sort

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Speaker 2: of goddess? We were just chatting beforehand on the question,

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Speaker 2: did we go overboard on the Borg or over Borg

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Speaker 2: on the Borg? And I'm arguing on the core Borg lore. No,

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Speaker 2: I would argue you can't do that. Not during Star

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Speaker 2: Trek week. It's a holy time.

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Speaker 3: I don't think we did in our core episodes. I

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Speaker 3: was just concerned that by the time we're here talking

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Speaker 3: about the movie today, like if we said the word

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Speaker 3: Borg too many times this.

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Speaker 2: Week, it begins to lose all meaning.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. It's especially that word. And you know, some words are, uh,

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Speaker 3: you get to semantic satiation faster with some words than others.

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Speaker 3: I don't know why that is, but Borg is, it's

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Speaker 3: like high on that list.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. But this one should be

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Speaker 2: a lot of fun to discuss. We've already discussed it

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Speaker 2: a little bit in those core episodes to the degree

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Speaker 2: that we needed to in order to talk about some

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Speaker 2: of the concepts. But this time we're going to go

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Speaker 2: all in. It's arguably the most horror-leaning of all the

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Speaker 2: Star Trek films. It really has a great time depicting

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Speaker 2: the cybernetic Borg with particularly ghoulish enthusiasm and really leans

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Speaker 2: into horror beats throughout the whole picture. I agree.

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Speaker 3: Uh, this is a strong movie. I saw this, I

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Speaker 3: think before I had ever seen any of the next

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Speaker 3: generation TV series. So, uh, I saw this with friends

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Speaker 3: and I really had to have friends explain to me

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Speaker 3: like what's Picard's deal, you know, who are all these characters,

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Speaker 3: what do they do? Uh, but then again, it's the

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Speaker 3: kind of movie that you can just plop in without

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Speaker 3: really knowing anything about the show and you can still

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Speaker 3: enjoy it because it's a very, uh, it draws a

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Speaker 3: lot on things you already know about the characters, and

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Speaker 3: it does draw on the previous Borg lore, especially the

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Speaker 3: fact that Picard was assimilated once on the show. That

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Speaker 3: comes up a lot in the movie. But it works

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Speaker 3: on its own, too. It's just like a tight space

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Speaker 3: action movie.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point about your own

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Speaker 2: history with it, it being kind of your introduction to

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Speaker 2: Next Generation. Because I imagine that's the case for a

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Speaker 2: lot of people. This may have been the first Star

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Speaker 2: Trek they had seen, like maybe they hadn't seen any

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Speaker 2: of the other films or maybe they were only familiar

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Speaker 2: with the old school Star Trek. Um, and maybe they

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Speaker 2: just hadn't seen any next generation. Uh, and it's of course,

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Speaker 2: for me, it's really hard to sort of put all

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Speaker 2: that other stuff out of my head and try to

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Speaker 2: enjoy the movie on that level. Um, but I was

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Speaker 2: trying to do at least a little of it as

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Speaker 2: I was watching it, like thinking, okay, they're, they're establishing this,

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Speaker 2: they're establishing the previous assimilation. They're letting us know, this

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Speaker 2: is what the board do. This is how they work

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Speaker 2: and so forth.

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Speaker 3: I also take your point about it being the most

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Speaker 3: horror-oriented of the Star Trek movies, though I'll admit this

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Speaker 3: is actually the only next-generation cast movie I have seen.

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Speaker 3: I think I've seen all of the original series cast movies,

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Speaker 3: but only this one for the TNG cast. Maybe this

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Speaker 3: isn't fair, but I've heard that the other TNG cast

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Speaker 3: movies are not so great.

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Speaker 2: That's my understanding as well. I have to admit that

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Speaker 2: this is also the only next-generation film that I've seen. Um,

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Speaker 2: and that some of that has to do with what

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Speaker 2: I'd heard about them. Some of it has to do

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Speaker 2: with like, you know, where my life was when these

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Speaker 2: films came out. But this one I definitely saw in

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Speaker 2: the theater, I think. Um, cause I strongly remember watching

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Speaker 2: it when it was new. I suspect I saw it

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Speaker 2: in the theater, but I can't be 100% certain. Uh, but, um,

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Speaker 2: this was a, you know, it was space horror. So

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Speaker 2: I was excited for it. I was a next generation fan.

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Speaker 2: So I was excited for that as well. And space

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Speaker 2: horror was really firing on all cylinders at the time.

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Speaker 2: So the same year, 1996, two other films also emerged

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Speaker 2: from the black cosmic depths. We got Leprechaun 4 in space.

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Speaker 3: Classic. All-time classic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, not a good movie, but the logical progression of

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Speaker 2: the Leprechaun franchise. And then we also got Hellraiser Bloodline.

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Speaker 2: Share some aesthetics with the Borg-focused movie. Yeah, definitely. And

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Speaker 2: some of that is, like, original to Hellraiser. Hellraiser did

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Speaker 2: come first. But this was the film that took Hellraiser

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Speaker 2: into space and also into, like, what, the Renaissance? It's

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Speaker 2: been a while since I've seen it.

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Speaker 3: Well, funny you should mention both Star Trek First Contact

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Speaker 3: and Hellraiser Bloodline have a young Adam Scott in them.

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Speaker 2: That's right. I was really amused by this. Adam Scott,

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Speaker 2: young Adam Scott, just trying to make a name for himself,

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Speaker 2: scraping by in Hollywood. In the same year, pops up

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Speaker 2: in two films that are rather different in overall quality,

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Speaker 2: but both are known for having a strong space dominatrix character.

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Speaker 2: I know he was just taking what he could get,

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Speaker 2: but I also like to think that his agent was like, Like,

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Speaker 2: don't worry, Adam, I'm trying to get you all the

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Speaker 2: best space dominatrix pictures we can get. I got two

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Speaker 2: lined up. And he's like, yes, make it so.

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Speaker 3: You're climbing that ladder. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, yeah, so that was just. And then the following year, 97, we'd,

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Speaker 2: of course, get Event Horizon and Alien Resurrection. So if you,

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Speaker 2: like me, were a space horror fan, like you were

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Speaker 2: eating pretty well. Some of it was fast. You weren't

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Speaker 2: necessarily eating a healthy diet all the time. But there

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Speaker 2: was a lot to consume. sure so yeah just to

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Speaker 2: refresh where we are in terms of shows coming out

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Speaker 2: by the time first contact hits theaters the next generation

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Speaker 2: had wrapped up it had been ripped it had been

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Speaker 2: wrapped up for a couple of years it had already

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Speaker 2: the cast of the next generation had already factored into

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Speaker 2: the previous trek movie 94's star trek generations that was

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Speaker 2: the one that had um you know kirk and the

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Speaker 2: old crew picard and the new crew and then malcolm

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Speaker 2: mcdowell i believe murdering kirk um That's also one that

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Speaker 2: I have to admit I've never seen. But that was

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Speaker 2: the one before this. Deep Space Nine was going pretty strong,

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Speaker 2: I think, what, like four seasons in? Three or four?

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Speaker 2: And then Voyager was in its second season. So there

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Speaker 2: was a lot of Trek out there. And then here

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Speaker 2: comes this big picture with its focus on the Borg,

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Speaker 2: its horror vibe. This is the eighth Star Trek feature-length

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Speaker 2: motion picture. And if you go by the whole even-odd thing,

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Speaker 2: this would make First Contact one of the good ones.

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Speaker 2: And I think that's largely the way that it was

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Speaker 2: received and is remembered with some key caveats that we've

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Speaker 2: already discussed in our core episodes and we'll rehash here

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Speaker 2: a little bit as well. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I remember really liking it the first time

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Speaker 3: I saw it. I think I was in my late

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Speaker 3: teens at the time. Though there were some things about

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Speaker 3: it I didn't love. And this time I was more

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Speaker 3: forgiving of those things. I don't know, some of the

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Speaker 3: kind of goofier Star Trek elements that seemed overly hokey

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Speaker 3: and not fitting with the dark tone of the boy

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Speaker 3: i think when i was younger i just wanted things

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Speaker 3: to be more consistently dark and serious and when i

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Speaker 3: got older i didn't feel that way anymore and so

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Speaker 3: now like i like the part of this movie where

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Speaker 3: they go in the holodeck and there's a guy with

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Speaker 3: a metal nose.

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Speaker 2: That's great yeah i'd forgotten all about that i'm so

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Speaker 2: glad it's.

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Speaker 3: In here but when i was like 18 or whatever

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Speaker 3: i was like what is this silliness i don't know

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Speaker 3: we don't need.

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Speaker 2: That Yeah, I've gotten to the point where, yeah, the

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Speaker 2: silliness of Star Trek is one of the things I love.

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Speaker 2: I love it, the intellectual flair of it, but I

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Speaker 2: love the silliness. I think it's one of the reasons

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Speaker 2: that I'm enjoying Star Trek Strange New Worlds so much

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Speaker 2: because as some people criticize it, some people criticize it

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Speaker 2: for this, but it's like every episode is the silly

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Speaker 2: episode from a season, or at least that's the way

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Speaker 2: it's felt of late. But yeah, as I've discussed before,

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Speaker 2: I was like 17, I think, when this came out,

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Speaker 2: connected with me as a Star Trek fan. Uh, connected

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Speaker 2: with me as a horror fan. I was a teenager

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Speaker 2: with walls covered with like Cenobites and fallen angels and

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Speaker 2: posters of various like metal and industrial acts. Um, so

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Speaker 2: I remember having some reservations about the introduction of the

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Speaker 2: Borg queen, you know, from collective to some sort of

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Speaker 2: a centralized figure. Uh, but I could not argue with

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Speaker 2: her overall presentation. Like she was super cool, super creepy,

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Speaker 2: super hot. Uh, I was 100% on board. And I

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Speaker 2: remember loving it and, but, but also not loving the

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Speaker 2: sillier moments as much. Uh, now I can say I can,

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Speaker 2: I can pretty much take in all of it.

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Speaker 3: Like another one of the silly aspects that I remember

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Speaker 3: disliking when I was younger, but now I can kind

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Speaker 3: of get down with is James Cromwell's portrayal of Zephyrm Cochran. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 3: I guess I've just become softer on that kind of

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Speaker 3: hamminess over the years. But I do remember thinking the

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Speaker 3: first time that this was like Vanessa Redgrave. I'm going

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Speaker 3: to haul ass to Lollapalooza. It's just the way he's,

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Speaker 3: you know, dancing grandpa. Whiskey and rock and roll.

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Speaker 2: Dad rock and all.

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Speaker 3: Something's changed, though. Like, I can party with this now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, part of it, I think, for me is I'm

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Speaker 2: closer to his age now than I was back then,

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Speaker 2: for sure. And then also, like, just thinking about the music. Like,

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Speaker 2: he's rocking out to, like, Magic Carpet Ride. which at

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Speaker 2: the time this came out, what was that?

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Speaker 3: Not the main studio recording of it.

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Speaker 2: Oh, he didn't have, that was lost in the third

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Speaker 2: world war.

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Speaker 3: Oh, okay.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. To deal with a cover.

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Speaker 3: Like a weird alternate take of Magic Carpet Ride.

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Speaker 2: But that was, what, a 30-year-old song at the time?

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Speaker 2: Am I right on that?

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Speaker 3: I don't have the date in front of me. Oh,

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Speaker 3: that sounds about right.

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Speaker 2: It was, I don't know, mid-60s, yeah. Yeah, like, so

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Speaker 2: it's a 30-year-old song. And, like, nowadays, whatever music I

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Speaker 2: was listening to when this came out, those are all, like,

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Speaker 2: 30-year-old songs as well. Probably more. So it's weird how

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Speaker 2: the passage of time works.

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Speaker 3: All of your industrial Cinnabite music is now, like, that's what...

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Speaker 3: that's what the hippie stuff was in the 90s.

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Speaker 2: I guess I don't know it's similar but it's different

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Speaker 2: we have to send a Borg sphere back to fix

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Speaker 2: it groovy baby alright elevator pitch for this one I

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Speaker 2: didn't really have a fun one I was just thinking

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Speaker 2: Borgpocalypse now oh yeah it's a film about the Borg

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Speaker 2: that features a plot element concerning first contact earth earthlings

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Speaker 2: first contact with the Vulcan civilization and It's an important

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Speaker 2: part of the plot, but it's not like the driving

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Speaker 2: force of the plot. So in some ways, it's kind

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Speaker 2: of a weird title.

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Speaker 3: Well, I kind of like it as a contrast in

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Speaker 3: that the Borg are an incredibly... toxic and unredeemed type

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Speaker 3: of alien civilization. There's nothing good about coming into contact

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Speaker 3: with them. And so if you just think about the Borg,

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Speaker 3: you could start to develop a kind of xenophobic view

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Speaker 3: of the universe. But having the main positive event in

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Speaker 3: the story be the first contact between humans and Vulcans,

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Speaker 3: that kind of puts it in perspective. Overall, the vision

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Speaker 3: of Star Trek is that Uh, the, the bridging of

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Speaker 3: divides between these species across the galaxy is a good

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Speaker 3: thing and they eventually all joined forces and, and mutually

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Speaker 3: benefit from knowing, knowing one another and helping one another

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Speaker 3: and that the board are sort of the exception to

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Speaker 3: the rule.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that star Trek resurrection was one

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Speaker 2: of the working titles, but they had to abandon that

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Speaker 2: because alien resurrection was coming up. Um, I don't think

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Speaker 2: star Trek resurrection particularly works as a title either. So

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure what my perfect headcanon title would be

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Speaker 2: for this. All right. Obviously, we've already talked about some spoilers,

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Speaker 2: and there will be more to come. So just blanket

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Speaker 2: warning there as usual. We're going to spoil the heck

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Speaker 2: out of this movie. But if you're going to stop

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Speaker 2: right now and you're like, you know, I need to

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Speaker 2: see this for the first time. Maybe I should have

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Speaker 2: done it earlier. Or you're thinking, hey, I haven't actually

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Speaker 2: watched this film in decades. I should go do that. Well,

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Speaker 2: you can pretty much watch this everywhere. This is a

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Speaker 2: major release. And as with last Star Trek week, I

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Speaker 2: ended up doing a subscription to Paramount +, so I

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Speaker 2: could just stream all the Star Trek that I would

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Speaker 2: need for my week's research. There are also some very

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Speaker 2: nice Paramount Blu-rays of this film, including a very cool-looking

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Speaker 2: 30th anniversary Blu-ray. I included a picture here for you, Joe.

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Speaker 2: Folks can look this up wherever you get your physical media,

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Speaker 2: but it folds out and you get the Borg Queen

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Speaker 2: caressing Picard's face. It looks really cool.

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Speaker 3: Giving him a little, a little smoochy, a little smoochy finger. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: With that like cold metal and rubber hand.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's, uh, let's jump into it. Um,

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Speaker 2: starting with the director, but also starting with one of

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Speaker 2: the co-stars because this is also the actor who plays

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Speaker 2: Riker in the film. It's Jonathan Frakes born 1952. Um, So, uh,

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Speaker 2: you know, as a director, this was his first feature

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Speaker 2: film following up TV directing work on the next generation,

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Speaker 2: six episodes, I think, uh, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine,

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Speaker 2: three episodes, Voyager, another three episodes. And he'd also done,

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Speaker 2: I think, some one shots on shows like University Hospital

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Speaker 2: and Diagnosis Murder. So he'd been working up to it.

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Speaker 2: And the producers apparently wanted someone who knew Trek and

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Speaker 2: got Trek. And, uh, Frakes has mentioned that the sci-fi

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Speaker 2: of James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Kubrick, Spielberg, all of these

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Speaker 2: served as inspiration for the picture. And you can definitely

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Speaker 2: see those fingerprints in the finished product, I think.

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Speaker 3: I often wonder why it's on Star Trek movies in

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Speaker 3: particular that you get this tradition of a long-serving cast

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Speaker 3: member being the director of one of the movies. Like,

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Speaker 3: you know, you had... Leonard Nimoy and Shatner directing some

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Speaker 3: of the original series movies. And then you have Jonathan

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Speaker 3: Frakes directing this one. It's just interesting that that happens

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Speaker 3: over and over.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, it still continues to a certain extent, right?

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Speaker 2: Because didn't Simon Pegg have something to do behind the scenes,

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Speaker 2: like on the writing end, the story end of things

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Speaker 2: with one.

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Speaker 3: Of the more recent films? I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I seem to remember that's the case. Could be wrong,

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Speaker 2: because I don't have that information in front of me,

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Speaker 2: but But yeah, it is kind of an interesting situation

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Speaker 2: where it's like Trek is kind of a world unto

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Speaker 2: its own. And the people who like there are creative

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Speaker 2: forces within it on the acting side, the directing side

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Speaker 2: and the writing side. And like there's kind of like

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Speaker 2: a trusted in group. And maybe there's this perception, too,

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Speaker 2: that sometimes the missteps come from outside of that in group.

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Speaker 2: But then again, I think also we get some great

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Speaker 2: ideas from outside of that in group as well. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I think Rad of Khan is a great example of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I would say no offense to actors as actors generally,

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Speaker 3: but I'm surprised this doesn't end in disaster more often.

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Speaker 2: All right. Well, luckily it does not end in disaster here.

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Speaker 2: I would say this is a success story for number one. Now,

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Speaker 2: as an actor, Frakes has been active in TV and

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Speaker 2: film since 1977. He pops up in the likes of

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Speaker 2: like the old Fantasy Island series. His first TV movie

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Speaker 2: was 79's Beach Patrol. And then, of course, The Next

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Speaker 2: Generation was his big break on television. And then finally

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Speaker 2: he appeared in his first feature film in 94 in

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Speaker 2: Star Trek Generations. He would continue to play the Riker

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Speaker 2: role in related films and TV projects. But he's also

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Speaker 2: done a lot of voice acting, perhaps most notably on

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Speaker 2: the animated series Gargoyles, along with some other Next Generation alumni.

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Speaker 2: And as a director, he's also remained active directing a

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Speaker 2: great deal of television, including more Trek. as well as

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Speaker 2: the movie Clockstoppers in 2002, Thunderbirds in 2004, Parks Unknown

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Speaker 2: in 2010, Truth Be Told in 2011, and then a

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Speaker 2: couple of sequels to The Librarian.

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Speaker 3: Now, as we go through mentioning the main cast members,

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Speaker 3: obviously here, director and cast member, do we want to

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Speaker 3: have a quick word about each of the characters they

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Speaker 3: play for people who are less familiar with The Next Generation? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

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Speaker 3: So what's Riker's deal? He's the first officer on the

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Speaker 3: ship just under Picard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. He's second in command, um, of the vessel. Anytime

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Speaker 2: something bad.

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Speaker 3: First in burliness. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he's a tall guy. I got that nice beard.

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Speaker 2: He didn't have that beard in like the first season,

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Speaker 2: I think. Uh, but, um, but yeah, he's a, an,

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Speaker 2: an imposing likable figure, you know, a little bit stern,

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Speaker 2: but also at least in the TV series also show

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Speaker 2: his sensitive side. Um, I would say, as is the

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Speaker 2: case with a number of the cast members here, though,

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Speaker 2: Riker gets some very nice plot lines on the TV series. Here,

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Speaker 2: this is not Riker's story. This is primarily a Picard

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Speaker 2: and Data story. So he's very much relegated to the

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Speaker 2: B plot, along with other members of the crew. Solid

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Speaker 2: job here, but solid supporting job.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, he spends most of the movie babysitting

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Speaker 3: James Cromwell. He's trying to make sure as Ephraim Cochran

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Speaker 3: wakes up on time to, to do his, uh, test flight.

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Speaker 3: But you're right that this is very much a Picard

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Speaker 3: and data focused story. In fact, for the elevator pitch

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Speaker 3: I was going to give for the movie was the

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Speaker 3: last temptation of data because there is a frequent, I

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Speaker 3: was going to say almost sexual, but literally sexual temptation

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Speaker 3: of data temptation of the flesh for data.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Uh, throughout the, I don't know, the, the major secondary

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Speaker 3: plot here. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It, it definitely, um, I was going to say it

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Speaker 2: gets hot and heavy, but it doesn't, it's very cold

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Speaker 2: because it's, it's robots and cyborgs. Um, but, um, uh, but,

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Speaker 2: but certainly, yeah, this is definitely more of a data

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Speaker 2: and Picard story. All right. Um, so that's a, that's

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Speaker 2: a director and one of our, our, our stars. But

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Speaker 2: then moving on to the screenplay, this one had a

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Speaker 2: number of names attached to it. Obviously, the late Gene Roddenberry,

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Speaker 2: who lived 1921 through 1991, is credited. Trek producer Rick Berman,

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Speaker 2: born 1945, also has a story credit, as he often

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Speaker 2: does in some of these Trek pictures he was associated with.

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Speaker 2: But the main story screenplay credits go to two other gentlemen.

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Speaker 2: First of all, we have Brandon Braga, born 1965, story

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Speaker 2: screenplay credit. He was a writer on The Next Generation.

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Speaker 2: and had worked on Generations as well. He'd go on

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Speaker 2: to work on 2000's Mission Impossible 2, Voyager, Enterprise, TV's 24,

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Speaker 2: and The Orville.

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Speaker 3: Mission Impossible 2 is the one with a lot of

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Speaker 3: flips in it.

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Speaker 2: I think that's the last Mission Impossible film I saw,

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Speaker 2: and I don't remember much about it. Not Hugh Jackman

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Speaker 2: is the villain in that, as I recall.

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Speaker 3: No, I don't think so.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a guy that kind of had a

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Speaker 2: similar vibe at the time and may have been in

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Speaker 2: the running for Wolverine.

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Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't remember who the villain is

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Speaker 3: in that one. I remember that's the one where Ethan

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Speaker 3: Hunt goes free climbing on these boulders in the middle

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Speaker 3: of the desert. He just climbs up a butte with

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Speaker 3: no ropes. And then he throws his sunglasses. He like

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Speaker 3: gets messages in his sunglasses and throws them into the

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Speaker 3: air and they explode and he does flips all.

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Speaker 2: The time for no that's how he gets the mission

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Speaker 2: like yeah these classes will self-destruct yeah yeah cool all

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Speaker 2: right uh the other individual is ronald d moore born 1964,

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Speaker 2: also a former Next Generation writer who worked on Generations

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Speaker 2: as well as Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He was

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Speaker 2: definitely an inside Trek guy who knew the franchise in

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Speaker 2: and out, a pretty big name in Trek in general.

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Speaker 2: And he'd go on to also work on 2000's Mission

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Speaker 2: Impossible 2 and eventually moved on to work as writer

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Speaker 2: and then at times showrunner on Roswell, Carnival, Battlestar Galactica,

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Speaker 2: the reboot. That was a big one. Um, Outlander, he

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Speaker 2: was showrunner on Outlander, at least for a while, certainly

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Speaker 2: the earlier episodes, uh, maybe some of the later ones too,

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Speaker 2: but the portion of Outlander I watched, he was, he

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Speaker 2: was the showrunner on that. And also for all mankind

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Speaker 2: has been the more recent project that he's been involved

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Speaker 2: in a highly successful guy. Cool. Now getting into the

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Speaker 2: cast here, uh, the rest of the cast, as with

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Speaker 2: all the Trek films, again, we, we have to discuss

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Speaker 2: the crew. Um, not all the crew members get as

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Speaker 2: much to do. They don't have as much of a

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Speaker 2: chance to shine as they would in the long running

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Speaker 2: Trek series and a long running, um, uh, season. Uh,

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Speaker 2: but you know, not everybody can get the spotlight. Uh,

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Speaker 2: still we have a number of crew members to roll through.

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Speaker 2: Want to make sure we mentioned them all though. We

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Speaker 2: may go a little bit briefer with each of these

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Speaker 2: individuals and not, you know, do as much of a

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Speaker 2: career retrospective.

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Speaker 1: Hmm.

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Speaker 2: All right. Uh, let's start with the captain. It is

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Speaker 2: captain Picard, Jean-Luc Picard. played by Patrick Stewart, born 1940.

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Speaker 2: We've talked about Stewart before on Weird House Cinema because

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Speaker 2: we did a two-part episode on David Lynch's Dune from 1984.

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Speaker 3: In which he plays Gurney Halleck. That's right. And famously

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Speaker 3: gets to charge into battle holding a pug in his arms.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yep. That's great. So I thought he was

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Speaker 2: a good Gurney. Obviously, by the time The Next Generation

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Speaker 2: comes out, already a veteran of stage and screen and

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Speaker 2: TV with, Let's see, his first theatrical film role was

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Speaker 2: back in 75. And other prior genre credits included 81's Excalibur,

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Speaker 2: 85's Life Force, 85's The Doctor and The Devils. And then,

429
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:08,930
Speaker 2: of course, he had been in Generations previously. And of note,

430
00:22:08,970 --> 00:22:12,250
Speaker 2: he'd go on to play Ahab, Captain Ahab, in the

431
00:22:12,250 --> 00:22:16,740
Speaker 2: 1998 Moby Dick TV miniseries. And then he would play J.

432
00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:20,300
Speaker 2: Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise beginning in the

433
00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:23,260
Speaker 2: year 2000. And of course, he'd continue to play Picard

434
00:22:23,780 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 2: in TV and film.

435
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:28,110
Speaker 3: It's funny that he would go on to play Ahab

436
00:22:28,190 --> 00:22:31,970
Speaker 3: because as we will discuss, this movie makes a direct

437
00:22:32,070 --> 00:22:36,130
Speaker 3: comparison between Picard and Ahab, which is strange because that

438
00:22:36,850 --> 00:22:40,149
Speaker 3: had that literary illusion had already been used once in

439
00:22:40,210 --> 00:22:42,889
Speaker 3: star Trek movies. It was used for the villain in

440
00:22:42,930 --> 00:22:45,500
Speaker 3: star Trek to the wrath of con, which.

441
00:22:45,260 --> 00:22:48,240
Speaker 2: We watched last year. And I think we just replayed

442
00:22:48,340 --> 00:22:49,240
Speaker 2: in the podcast feed.

443
00:22:49,619 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 3: Yeah. So con becomes a hab and Kirk is his

444
00:22:52,300 --> 00:22:55,620
Speaker 3: white whale, but now the roles are reversed. Now Picard

445
00:22:55,770 --> 00:22:58,169
Speaker 3: is a hab and the Borg is his white whale.

446
00:22:58,430 --> 00:22:58,670
Speaker 2: Yep.

447
00:22:58,930 --> 00:22:59,170
Speaker 3: Yep.

448
00:22:59,430 --> 00:23:03,030
Speaker 2: And, uh, there's a, there's some, some fun dialogue discussing this.

449
00:23:04,250 --> 00:23:07,220
Speaker 2: All right. And then of course, data, uh, played by

450
00:23:07,340 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 2: Brent Spiner, born 1949. Old yellow eyes himself. And I'd

451
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,060
Speaker 2: say this is his most beloved role. You know, certainly

452
00:23:15,100 --> 00:23:19,720
Speaker 2: this is what people love him for. Star Trek's positronic man.

453
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:24,030
Speaker 2: His acting credits, though, go back to 1970 and included

454
00:23:24,050 --> 00:23:27,510
Speaker 2: 1980's Stardust Memories. He was in an episode of Tales

455
00:23:27,530 --> 00:23:29,310
Speaker 2: from the Dark Side. He was in Cheers. He had

456
00:23:29,350 --> 00:23:32,109
Speaker 2: a recurring role on Night Court. in which he played

457
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:34,850
Speaker 2: Bob Wheeler, who I do not remember at all from

458
00:23:34,890 --> 00:23:36,950
Speaker 2: Night Court, but I think was like a hayseed character.

459
00:23:38,470 --> 00:23:41,330
Speaker 2: So he has a lot of range. Like people think

460
00:23:41,350 --> 00:23:44,169
Speaker 2: of Data, they maybe think of that role in 96's

461
00:23:44,210 --> 00:23:48,100
Speaker 2: Independence Day where he plays a brainy scientist. But he

462
00:23:48,119 --> 00:23:50,379
Speaker 2: could play menacing as well. I remember we watched an

463
00:23:50,420 --> 00:23:54,020
Speaker 2: episode of the 90s Outer Limits for a past Halloween

464
00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:56,580
Speaker 2: episode and stuff to blow your mind. It was called

465
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:59,699
Speaker 2: The Deprogrammers. And he played like a really vicious human

466
00:23:59,740 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 2: character in that.

467
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:02,379
Speaker 3: That was the one with Joram.

468
00:24:02,859 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. So yeah, he had a lot of range,

469
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:10,770
Speaker 2: could play other things, but undeniably pretty brilliant as Data. Okay,

470
00:24:10,790 --> 00:24:12,550
Speaker 2: so those are going to be really the most important

471
00:24:12,670 --> 00:24:15,890
Speaker 2: to members of the crew for our story purpose here.

472
00:24:15,970 --> 00:24:17,930
Speaker 2: But the rest of the team is here as well.

473
00:24:18,650 --> 00:24:23,170
Speaker 2: We have, of course, LeVar Burton playing Geordi LaForge, born 1957.

474
00:24:23,170 --> 00:24:25,950
Speaker 2: Burton always brings heart to anything he's in, no matter

475
00:24:26,250 --> 00:24:28,750
Speaker 2: how big or small the role is. You really can't

476
00:24:28,830 --> 00:24:33,330
Speaker 2: overstate the importance of 77's Roots or the long-running Reading Rainbow.

477
00:24:34,490 --> 00:24:38,020
Speaker 2: As much as Star Trek is a memorable part of

478
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 2: certainly my junior high years, Reading Rainbow is such an

479
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:44,889
Speaker 2: important part of my childhood. And looking back on it,

480
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:46,359
Speaker 2: I don't think I really thought about this much at

481
00:24:46,380 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 2: the time. I was probably like, oh yeah, he was

482
00:24:48,340 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 2: also in Reading Rainbow. But it's kind of like the

483
00:24:50,580 --> 00:24:54,100
Speaker 2: baton was passed from my early childhood to my junior

484
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 2: high years. going from Reading Rainbow to Star Trek, and,

485
00:24:57,100 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 2: you know, both have an important place in my memories.

486
00:24:59,940 --> 00:25:04,370
Speaker 3: Weirdly, even though I didn't watch The Next Generation when

487
00:25:04,410 --> 00:25:06,990
Speaker 3: it was on TV, I was a young child at

488
00:25:07,030 --> 00:25:12,910
Speaker 3: the time, I know somehow I had awareness of LeVar Burton,

489
00:25:12,970 --> 00:25:15,780
Speaker 3: the guy from Reading Rainbow, as being on Star Trek.

490
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 3: I just knew that culturally somehow.

491
00:25:18,580 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there was, it's been a while, but

492
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure there's like a crossover episode where it's

493
00:25:23,740 --> 00:25:25,910
Speaker 2: like Reading Rainbow, where he gets to tell you about

494
00:25:25,970 --> 00:25:27,690
Speaker 2: Star Trek and show you behind the scenes stuff. So

495
00:25:27,710 --> 00:25:29,930
Speaker 2: that's pretty cool. Now, one of the things about Geordi

496
00:25:29,970 --> 00:25:32,590
Speaker 2: La Forge, of course, is that he is vision impaired.

497
00:25:33,130 --> 00:25:36,790
Speaker 2: And in the series, he has this kind of visor

498
00:25:36,850 --> 00:25:39,629
Speaker 2: that he wears over his eyes so that he can see,

499
00:25:39,710 --> 00:25:42,750
Speaker 2: that gives him some level of sight and.

500
00:25:44,150 --> 00:25:44,619
Speaker 3: So forth.

501
00:25:45,020 --> 00:25:47,300
Speaker 2: In this movie, I think this is the first time

502
00:25:47,380 --> 00:25:53,690
Speaker 2: where he has essentially implants. He has like artificial eyes. And,

503
00:25:53,850 --> 00:25:56,010
Speaker 2: you know, he's wearing some sort of contacts that give

504
00:25:56,050 --> 00:25:59,609
Speaker 2: his eyes this kind of mechanical appearance, which I'm to

505
00:25:59,630 --> 00:26:03,300
Speaker 2: understand this was something that LeVar Burton, you know, wanted

506
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:05,899
Speaker 2: for a while, you know, thinking like he got in

507
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:06,090
Speaker 2: the way.

508
00:26:06,100 --> 00:26:07,580
Speaker 3: He's tired of putting the prosthetic on.

509
00:26:08,300 --> 00:26:10,020
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I don't know that the prosthetic really,

510
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was that difficult to film with,

511
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 2: but I think the idea was like he got in

512
00:26:14,220 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 2: the way of his acting. Like if you have eyes

513
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:19,030
Speaker 2: and you can't act with your eyes, that's, you know,

514
00:26:19,050 --> 00:26:21,170
Speaker 2: you have one less tool on the table. And he's like,

515
00:26:21,190 --> 00:26:24,140
Speaker 2: you know, this is, the future. Why can't he just

516
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 2: have some sort of implant? I guess you could also say, like,

517
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,179
Speaker 2: why can't they just, like, implant new eyes, grow him

518
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 2: some new eyes? But, you know, that's not the direction

519
00:26:33,460 --> 00:26:33,859
Speaker 2: they went in.

520
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:38,060
Speaker 3: It's always curious what problems they can and cannot solve

521
00:26:38,140 --> 00:26:40,220
Speaker 3: on Star Trek. Yeah, sure.

522
00:26:41,140 --> 00:26:43,899
Speaker 2: All right, we also have Michael Dorn playing Worf, the

523
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:49,389
Speaker 2: Klingon warrior. Born 1952, Dorn does a great job as usual.

524
00:26:49,430 --> 00:26:52,340
Speaker 2: This is another, you know, iconic character from the next

525
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,899
Speaker 2: generation and also from deep space nine. Uh, and you know,

526
00:26:55,940 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 2: even though he's not the primary focus, he gets to

527
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:00,770
Speaker 2: get some, some solid action and he gets to, to

528
00:27:01,140 --> 00:27:03,850
Speaker 2: mess up some Borg. Uh, so this is, this is

529
00:27:03,890 --> 00:27:07,030
Speaker 2: pretty fun. Doran's credits go back to 65 and, uh,

530
00:27:07,470 --> 00:27:08,950
Speaker 2: I don't remember this at all, but he has an

531
00:27:09,010 --> 00:27:11,250
Speaker 2: uncredited role as a bodyguard. I think he's one of

532
00:27:11,310 --> 00:27:14,550
Speaker 2: Apollo Creed's bodyguards in 1976 is Rocky.

533
00:27:15,190 --> 00:27:17,629
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know that. Uh, but yeah, he, he

534
00:27:17,650 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 3: does get some good parts in this movie. He, he,

535
00:27:20,690 --> 00:27:23,620
Speaker 3: A common thing in the Star Trek movies is that

536
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 3: a member of the crew, a former member of the

537
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,139
Speaker 3: Enterprise crew, now has their own command. They have their

538
00:27:29,180 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 3: own ship. And always, somehow, they get reunited. So in

539
00:27:34,660 --> 00:27:37,990
Speaker 3: Wrath of Khan, I think it's Commander Chekov is now

540
00:27:38,050 --> 00:27:41,010
Speaker 3: on a different ship. And then eventually, he gets reunited

541
00:27:41,090 --> 00:27:43,830
Speaker 3: with the Enterprise crew. And so in this movie, Worf

542
00:27:43,869 --> 00:27:47,020
Speaker 3: has his own starship. He's off battling the Borg. With

543
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 3: Adam Scott. With Adam Scott and then reunites with the

544
00:27:50,780 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 3: Enterprise crew.

545
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 2: Yes.

546
00:27:52,180 --> 00:27:53,010
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.

547
00:27:53,030 --> 00:27:55,530
Speaker 2: Got to get the band back together one way or another. Yeah.

548
00:27:56,010 --> 00:27:59,450
Speaker 2: All right. We also have Dr. Beverly Crusher aboard the ship,

549
00:27:59,590 --> 00:28:03,649
Speaker 2: played by Gates McFadden, born 1949. Not only an important

550
00:28:03,690 --> 00:28:05,870
Speaker 2: part of the Next Generation cast, but she also worked

551
00:28:05,970 --> 00:28:08,929
Speaker 2: with the Jim Henson Company and was the director of

552
00:28:09,010 --> 00:28:12,869
Speaker 2: choreography and puppet movement for the films Labyrinth and The

553
00:28:12,910 --> 00:28:13,870
Speaker 2: Muppets Take Manhattan.

554
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:15,100
Speaker 3: Oh, interesting.

555
00:28:15,220 --> 00:28:19,220
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she's, she's got, um, got hands in, in different, um,

556
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,929
Speaker 2: you know, film worlds that are, um, you know, much beloved.

557
00:28:22,630 --> 00:28:26,990
Speaker 3: Now I noticed a difference between the next generation episodes

558
00:28:27,050 --> 00:28:30,189
Speaker 3: I'd seen and the movie, uh, no Wesley Crusher in

559
00:28:30,230 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 3: this movie. Did they explain, does he go off somewhere?

560
00:28:33,060 --> 00:28:35,159
Speaker 2: I don't know where Wesley's at. Like, I don't know

561
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 2: if Wesley was in generations off the top of my head.

562
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure what his current status is.

563
00:28:41,540 --> 00:28:42,380
Speaker 3: Yeah.

564
00:28:43,530 --> 00:28:46,490
Speaker 2: I mean, likewise, there are other, of course, pivotal characters

565
00:28:46,550 --> 00:28:49,890
Speaker 2: from Next Generation that are not here. For instance, Guinan's

566
00:28:49,930 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 2: not aboard the ship, apparently. And she played a major

567
00:28:53,130 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 2: role in the first episode where we encounter the Borg. But,

568
00:28:56,980 --> 00:28:59,340
Speaker 2: you know, again, I guess part of it comes down,

569
00:28:59,380 --> 00:29:02,260
Speaker 2: you can only fit so many characters into the narrative.

570
00:29:02,300 --> 00:29:04,860
Speaker 2: What are you going to do? All right. Let's see.

571
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:08,860
Speaker 2: Counselor Troi is on board, played by Marina Sirtis, born 1955,

572
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:14,630
Speaker 2: a British-American actress who plays... provided an often pivotal moral

573
00:29:14,690 --> 00:29:17,790
Speaker 2: and emotional voice on the next generation. You have a

574
00:29:17,810 --> 00:29:20,740
Speaker 2: lot of scenes where different characters are weighing in on

575
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:24,980
Speaker 2: a difficult problem and providing different viewpoints. I'll say, though,

576
00:29:25,060 --> 00:29:28,660
Speaker 2: this is not a particularly strong outing for Counselor Troi.

577
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:32,070
Speaker 2: I think her most memorable moment is when she gets

578
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:38,390
Speaker 2: really drunk planetside in the B-plot, and it's respectfully maybe

579
00:29:38,450 --> 00:29:41,940
Speaker 2: not her best work as an actress. um but uh

580
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 2: yeah again what are you going to do i guess

581
00:29:43,380 --> 00:29:45,060
Speaker 2: it's just not not the sort of film where we

582
00:29:45,100 --> 00:29:47,510
Speaker 2: get we're going to really focus on this particular character

583
00:29:48,270 --> 00:29:50,450
Speaker 2: um but anyway her acting credits go back to the

584
00:29:50,490 --> 00:29:53,950
Speaker 2: 70s include death wish 3 let's see she was on

585
00:29:53,990 --> 00:29:57,490
Speaker 2: an episode of the granada jeremy brett sherlock holmes uh

586
00:29:57,550 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 2: series i think it was the six napoleons She pops

587
00:30:00,780 --> 00:30:04,740
Speaker 2: up in 92's Waxwork 2, Lost in Time, and 2004's Crash.

588
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:07,940
Speaker 2: I think she was also a voice on Gargoyles, as

589
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,470
Speaker 2: was Dorn at some point. All right, so that's the

590
00:30:11,510 --> 00:30:14,830
Speaker 2: returning Enterprise crew, but we also have some notable red shirts.

591
00:30:14,870 --> 00:30:18,790
Speaker 2: We already mentioned Adam Scott, who plays Defiant Con Officer.

592
00:30:18,810 --> 00:30:24,180
Speaker 2: That's C-O-N-N, not K-H-A-N. Born 1973.

593
00:30:24,180 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 3: And that's, he's on the defiant, not he is defiant.

594
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's, yeah, he's not defiant. He's, you know, he's

595
00:30:30,140 --> 00:30:32,900
Speaker 2: doing a good job. He's, he's putting in the work,

596
00:30:33,020 --> 00:30:35,219
Speaker 2: but then I guess dies. We don't, we never see

597
00:30:35,260 --> 00:30:36,260
Speaker 2: him again. So I'm not sure.

598
00:30:36,300 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 3: Unclear. Yeah.

599
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:41,660
Speaker 2: Um, possibly assimilated by the Borg. We don't know. Um,

600
00:30:42,020 --> 00:30:45,810
Speaker 2: but then we also have Neil McDonough playing Lieutenant Hawk, uh,

601
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 2: born 1966. We talked about McDonough in our episode on

602
00:30:48,820 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 2: the historical horror movie Ravenous, uh, Uh, and, uh, in this,

603
00:30:53,460 --> 00:30:55,940
Speaker 2: he's really good as well. You know, great tough guy actor, uh,

604
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 2: you know, doomed by the color of his uniform in

605
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:01,530
Speaker 2: this movie. Uh, but he does get some moments to shine.

606
00:31:02,670 --> 00:31:05,330
Speaker 3: You just know early on when you see the closeups

607
00:31:05,450 --> 00:31:08,330
Speaker 3: on him, it's like, oh, they're, they're doing those closeups.

608
00:31:08,370 --> 00:31:11,150
Speaker 3: So it matters more later when this guy dies, but

609
00:31:11,190 --> 00:31:13,610
Speaker 3: they won't have to kill any of the main crew. Yeah.

610
00:31:15,490 --> 00:31:18,750
Speaker 2: All right. So. most of these characters, these characters all

611
00:31:18,810 --> 00:31:23,090
Speaker 2: at least originate in the 24th century of Star Trek. Uh,

612
00:31:23,170 --> 00:31:25,270
Speaker 2: but as we've been discussing, or I don't know if

613
00:31:25,290 --> 00:31:27,110
Speaker 2: we've really established this so much, but this is a

614
00:31:27,150 --> 00:31:29,190
Speaker 2: time travel movie. We're going to be doing some time

615
00:31:29,230 --> 00:31:32,540
Speaker 2: traveling and we're actually going to time travel, um, back

616
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 2: to the year 2063, uh, in the aftermath of world

617
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 2: war three here on earth. Uh, terrifying fact in the,

618
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 2: in the, the timeline of Star Trek is that, um,

619
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:46,940
Speaker 2: is that the third world war begins in the year

620
00:31:46,940 --> 00:31:50,640
Speaker 2: 2026 and ends in the year 2053. It seems like

621
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,060
Speaker 2: it goes on for a while. Um, and eugenics war,

622
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 2: this was already over. That went 92 through 96.

623
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,570
Speaker 3: Okay. Glad we got that behind us.

624
00:32:00,690 --> 00:32:01,070
Speaker 2: Yeah.

625
00:32:01,350 --> 00:32:01,550
Speaker 1: Yeah.

626
00:32:02,030 --> 00:32:04,010
Speaker 2: And then, uh, yeah, so this is where we get

627
00:32:04,090 --> 00:32:09,270
Speaker 2: to Zephrym Cochran, uh, played by James Cromwell, born 1940,

628
00:32:09,270 --> 00:32:12,190
Speaker 2: Oscar nominated American actor who, you know, still at it,

629
00:32:12,390 --> 00:32:17,310
Speaker 2: still going strong, often brings either quiet, looming dignity, because

630
00:32:17,330 --> 00:32:21,730
Speaker 2: he's a very tall man, looming menace, maybe looming grumpiness.

631
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,620
Speaker 2: And here he gets to be a bit sillier. But

632
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:30,220
Speaker 2: I tend to enjoy James Cromwell in anything he's in,

633
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,980
Speaker 2: whether he's playing a dad-rocking hippie who turns an intercontinental

634
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 2: ballistic missile into Earth's first warp-enabled spaceship, or if he's

635
00:32:38,620 --> 00:32:42,940
Speaker 2: playing a mad scientist on American Horror Story. He's always good.

636
00:32:43,470 --> 00:32:46,590
Speaker 3: Because he seems so benign, I think he makes a

637
00:32:46,650 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 3: great villain. He's a villain in, uh, LA confidential. That's right. Yeah.

638
00:32:51,100 --> 00:32:52,820
Speaker 2: Really good role there for him.

639
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. Retro detective movie from the nineties. Uh, and he's, uh, yeah. Uh,

640
00:32:58,100 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 3: devious there. Excellent.

641
00:32:59,300 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

642
00:32:59,840 --> 00:32:59,980
Speaker 3: Yeah.

643
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 2: That came at 97. So that was the following year.

644
00:33:03,140 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 3: Um, yeah.

645
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 2: So he, yeah, he's really good. Uh, this I've read

646
00:33:06,510 --> 00:33:09,150
Speaker 2: that he has signaled, singled out this role as being

647
00:33:09,670 --> 00:33:12,250
Speaker 2: one of his roles. That's closest to his own personality.

648
00:33:12,270 --> 00:33:14,060
Speaker 3: Um, What?

649
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's a little bit of a wild card.

650
00:33:18,380 --> 00:33:21,050
Speaker 2: He's been involved in activism over the years. He's the

651
00:33:21,090 --> 00:33:22,870
Speaker 2: kind of guy who will glue his hand to a

652
00:33:22,910 --> 00:33:27,970
Speaker 2: Starbucks counter in protest, that sort of thing. So it

653
00:33:28,250 --> 00:33:30,590
Speaker 2: is interesting to see this character and think, oh, this

654
00:33:30,650 --> 00:33:33,150
Speaker 2: is more James Cromwell than any of these other films.

655
00:33:33,710 --> 00:33:37,810
Speaker 3: Rock and roll grandpa. In this movie, he dances like

656
00:33:37,890 --> 00:33:43,530
Speaker 3: a skeleton from a 1920s cartoon. Multiple times. Yeah. It's

657
00:33:43,570 --> 00:33:44,220
Speaker 3: not just once.

658
00:33:45,750 --> 00:33:49,210
Speaker 2: All right. Cochran also has an assistant named Lily, played

659
00:33:49,270 --> 00:33:54,570
Speaker 2: by Alfre Woodard, born 1952. This is a vital supporting character.

660
00:33:56,170 --> 00:33:57,450
Speaker 3: The soul of the movie.

661
00:33:57,510 --> 00:34:02,490
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Her role is probably not a role that

662
00:34:02,710 --> 00:34:06,070
Speaker 2: everyone's going to really remember all that much. And it's

663
00:34:06,110 --> 00:34:09,069
Speaker 2: not like everyone's favorite character in the film. But if

664
00:34:09,110 --> 00:34:12,609
Speaker 2: you take her out Like, the movie suffers greatly. Like,

665
00:34:12,670 --> 00:34:17,629
Speaker 2: this is an essential character for explanations, for learning. I mean,

666
00:34:18,230 --> 00:34:20,589
Speaker 2: you can't take her out of the film and have

667
00:34:20,630 --> 00:34:21,990
Speaker 2: the same structure maintained.

668
00:34:22,469 --> 00:34:26,439
Speaker 3: This character plays multiple important functions. One is that she

669
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 3: is the fish-out-of-water character. So we can see the situation

670
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 3: on the Enterprise through her eyes because she doesn't know

671
00:34:34,700 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 3: what any of this stuff is.

672
00:34:36,060 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, and going back to what you said earlier, like, yeah,

673
00:34:38,460 --> 00:34:40,670
Speaker 2: a lot of people were coming into this foggy on

674
00:34:40,730 --> 00:34:44,089
Speaker 2: Star Trek or knowing nothing about Star Trek. So even

675
00:34:44,130 --> 00:34:45,950
Speaker 2: though most of us may not feel like we need

676
00:34:45,969 --> 00:34:49,410
Speaker 2: anybody to hold our hand about how any of this works, like,

677
00:34:50,050 --> 00:34:54,210
Speaker 2: the intended moviegoer probably does. Like, you need to factor

678
00:34:54,230 --> 00:34:55,090
Speaker 2: that into the equation.

679
00:34:55,489 --> 00:34:58,450
Speaker 3: Yeah, so totally. She's important in that regard. But then

680
00:34:58,489 --> 00:35:00,710
Speaker 3: I said sort of the soul of the movie because

681
00:35:01,150 --> 00:35:06,230
Speaker 3: she is the character there who provides pivotal moral perspective

682
00:35:06,290 --> 00:35:09,030
Speaker 3: to Picard when he is going on the wrong track.

683
00:35:10,100 --> 00:35:13,460
Speaker 3: And it's even more interesting because it's not any of

684
00:35:13,540 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 3: his close confidants and longtime friends and associates who provide

685
00:35:17,460 --> 00:35:20,379
Speaker 3: that perspective. It's this total outsider, like somebody who's from

686
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,140
Speaker 3: even a different century than the rest of the crew.

687
00:35:23,650 --> 00:35:26,530
Speaker 3: who is just like, you are wrong, you are doing

688
00:35:26,570 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 3: the wrong thing, and she's right.

689
00:35:28,780 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Woodard is good in this role.

690
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 2: She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 84

691
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:41,490
Speaker 2: for Cross Creek, and her other credits include 96's Primal Fear,

692
00:35:41,989 --> 00:35:46,509
Speaker 2: 2013's 12 Years a Slave, and 2016's Captain America Civil War.

693
00:35:47,610 --> 00:35:49,910
Speaker 2: And then finally we have our Borg Queen, played by

694
00:35:50,030 --> 00:35:54,799
Speaker 2: Alice Krieger, born 1954, South African-American, born actress who found

695
00:35:54,820 --> 00:35:57,980
Speaker 2: success on the stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the

696
00:35:58,020 --> 00:36:02,550
Speaker 2: small screen BBC in the UK, before making the transition

697
00:36:02,610 --> 00:36:06,830
Speaker 2: into really an eclectic mix of films, a lot of

698
00:36:07,310 --> 00:36:13,450
Speaker 2: which are very arthouse. There's some stop-motion animation in there,

699
00:36:13,489 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 2: I believe. But in 1981, she appeared in a couple

700
00:36:16,340 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 2: of films of others, Chariots of Fire and then Ghost Story,

701
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:23,010
Speaker 2: based on the novel by Peter Straub. which I've not seen,

702
00:36:23,190 --> 00:36:25,759
Speaker 2: but apparently that performance was one of the things that

703
00:36:25,780 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 2: got her hired for First Contact. I don't know if

704
00:36:30,460 --> 00:36:33,460
Speaker 2: she's a ghost in that or not. Maybe she's just

705
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:36,730
Speaker 2: haunted by ghosts. But at any rate, it was supposedly

706
00:36:36,750 --> 00:36:42,570
Speaker 2: a pretty phenomenal performance. Her other credits include 1985's King David.

707
00:36:42,969 --> 00:36:46,450
Speaker 2: This is the George Eastman Bible epic. No one else

708
00:36:46,489 --> 00:36:48,890
Speaker 2: probably thinks of it as such, but I do. Wait,

709
00:36:48,930 --> 00:36:51,989
Speaker 2: George Eastman, not as King David. No, no, no. He

710
00:36:52,030 --> 00:36:56,370
Speaker 2: plays Goliath, of course. But he's in there somewhere. She

711
00:36:56,390 --> 00:36:59,009
Speaker 2: was in 87's Barfly, and of course she was in

712
00:36:59,190 --> 00:37:03,029
Speaker 2: 92's Stephen King's Sleepwalkers, which we previously covered.

713
00:37:02,810 --> 00:37:05,609
Speaker 3: On Weird House. In which she's really good.

714
00:37:05,650 --> 00:37:11,509
Speaker 2: I want to remind everybody that she gives that role

715
00:37:11,550 --> 00:37:15,550
Speaker 2: her all. No matter what you feel about Stephen King's Sleepwalkers,

716
00:37:15,730 --> 00:37:18,049
Speaker 2: and it has some really goofy moments in it that

717
00:37:18,090 --> 00:37:22,280
Speaker 2: I that I love, Alice Krieger just gives a commanding

718
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:25,260
Speaker 2: performance as this weirdly conceived character.

719
00:37:25,700 --> 00:37:28,540
Speaker 3: She stabs Ron Perlman to death with a corncob.

720
00:37:28,620 --> 00:37:32,790
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then afterwards you're like, you're still saying to yourself, man,

721
00:37:32,810 --> 00:37:33,830
Speaker 2: she was really good in that role.

722
00:37:33,870 --> 00:37:34,690
Speaker 3: Very convincing.

723
00:37:35,690 --> 00:37:39,529
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So she would reprise her role as the

724
00:37:39,550 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 2: Borg Queen on, at least physically on Star Trek Voyager.

725
00:37:43,580 --> 00:37:46,240
Speaker 2: And I think continued to do voice work for the character.

726
00:37:46,690 --> 00:37:51,030
Speaker 2: as it was resurrected on Picard, Lower Decks, the animated series,

727
00:37:51,090 --> 00:37:54,089
Speaker 2: and then, of course, various Star Trek games. Her other

728
00:37:54,140 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 2: genre credits of note include Reign of Fire in 2002,

729
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 2: Silent Hill in 2006, Solomon Cain in 2009, and Thor

730
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:05,140
Speaker 2: The Dark World in 2013.

731
00:38:05,140 --> 00:38:07,420
Speaker 3: So we already did a big discussion on the Borg

732
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 3: Queen and what she means in part two of our

733
00:38:11,820 --> 00:38:14,700
Speaker 3: core series this week. Uh, I guess we'll try not

734
00:38:14,739 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 3: to rehash too much here though. I guess it is

735
00:38:18,460 --> 00:38:23,240
Speaker 3: worth talking once more about to what degree the Borg

736
00:38:23,450 --> 00:38:26,890
Speaker 3: queen as a character makes sense in this movie. It

737
00:38:26,950 --> 00:38:30,290
Speaker 3: is a little strange because the whole idea of the

738
00:38:30,330 --> 00:38:34,630
Speaker 3: Borg is that they are a decentralized collective species and

739
00:38:34,710 --> 00:38:38,450
Speaker 3: that they, um, you know, they're this union of flesh

740
00:38:38,530 --> 00:38:43,589
Speaker 3: and technology really. just mingling to the ultimate extent, and

741
00:38:43,650 --> 00:38:47,170
Speaker 3: there does not seem to be any ruler or any

742
00:38:47,230 --> 00:38:51,550
Speaker 3: top-down command structure. It's just a hive mind that functions

743
00:38:51,630 --> 00:38:56,899
Speaker 3: by consensus. And this movie fundamentally changes that by introducing

744
00:38:56,980 --> 00:39:02,380
Speaker 3: this face character, the Borg Queen, who seems to speak

745
00:39:02,540 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 3: for the Borg. Last time we talked a lot about

746
00:39:06,489 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 3: whether she is supposed to be an authority among the

747
00:39:09,660 --> 00:39:12,660
Speaker 3: Borg or not. Like, does she command the Borg? At

748
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:16,460
Speaker 3: one point, she explicitly denies that. Like, they ask her, like,

749
00:39:16,540 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 3: are you the boss of the Borg? And, well, I

750
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:20,620
Speaker 3: don't know if she denies it. She just kind of, like,

751
00:39:20,620 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 3: doesn't really answer the question. She says, like, I am

752
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:25,299
Speaker 3: the Alpha and Omega, that sort of thing. Yeah.

753
00:39:25,300 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 2: And Data's like, but but seriously though i'm just wondering

754
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 2: uh are you in command here and then like more

755
00:39:30,700 --> 00:39:34,260
Speaker 2: villain so she never the film's intentionally cagey like yeah

756
00:39:34,340 --> 00:39:36,620
Speaker 2: i think the writers here they knew they were shaking

757
00:39:36,660 --> 00:39:39,310
Speaker 2: things up a little bit and trying very hard not

758
00:39:39,350 --> 00:39:41,190
Speaker 2: to break anything in the process.

759
00:39:41,290 --> 00:39:44,110
Speaker 3: But in the last discussion we ended up saying if

760
00:39:44,130 --> 00:39:48,060
Speaker 3: you really are trying to find a consistent interpretation of

761
00:39:48,100 --> 00:39:50,900
Speaker 3: this character, like what makes the most sense of it

762
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,879
Speaker 3: while still seeming to be in line with everything else.

763
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:58,569
Speaker 3: It's maybe that she is a spokesperson character, like that

764
00:39:58,630 --> 00:40:01,930
Speaker 3: the Borg have realized they need a kind of face

765
00:40:02,010 --> 00:40:06,489
Speaker 3: character that can express a relatable human type personality and

766
00:40:06,530 --> 00:40:10,430
Speaker 3: can articulate the messages of the Borg. And so they

767
00:40:10,770 --> 00:40:15,460
Speaker 3: instantiate that in this more uh, in sold seeming and,

768
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:21,020
Speaker 3: and personality possessing speaking character, unlike the rest of their collective.

769
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:24,669
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Now, obviously, uh, this is a very, very

770
00:40:24,750 --> 00:40:28,190
Speaker 2: makeup in effects dependent role. Uh, I think it's, it's

771
00:40:28,290 --> 00:40:31,390
Speaker 2: all the more impressive that Krieger, uh, gives such a

772
00:40:31,430 --> 00:40:34,170
Speaker 2: commanding performance as the board queen, because I've read that

773
00:40:34,210 --> 00:40:37,529
Speaker 2: it was like very physically uncomfortable to perform like the

774
00:40:37,570 --> 00:40:41,989
Speaker 2: costume physically uncomfortable. She's wearing all this makeup. You know,

775
00:40:42,010 --> 00:40:43,930
Speaker 2: some head apparatus to make it look like there are

776
00:40:43,969 --> 00:40:46,830
Speaker 2: tubes coming out of the back of her skull. She's

777
00:40:46,870 --> 00:40:50,270
Speaker 2: wearing like really thick contacts that were apparently so uncomfortable

778
00:40:50,310 --> 00:40:52,390
Speaker 2: that she could only wear them for short periods of time.

779
00:40:52,410 --> 00:40:55,540
Speaker 2: They had to like pop them in and out. And then,

780
00:40:55,600 --> 00:41:00,300
Speaker 2: of course, there's the famous sequence where like her basically

781
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 2: the bust of the Borg Queen with this metal spinal

782
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,620
Speaker 2: column emerging from it is lowered into a presumably robotic

783
00:41:07,700 --> 00:41:12,219
Speaker 2: body of the Borg Queen. Very impressive sequence, but that

784
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 2: too involved like all sorts of like a mix of

785
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 2: practical and digital effects to pull it off.

786
00:41:16,860 --> 00:41:19,839
Speaker 3: Yeah. So like the shoulders and the head just get

787
00:41:20,180 --> 00:41:23,020
Speaker 3: fixed onto the rest of the body.

788
00:41:23,380 --> 00:41:23,700
Speaker 2: Yeah.

789
00:41:23,860 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

790
00:41:24,180 --> 00:41:26,690
Speaker 2: Great sequence. I didn't watch this with the rest of

791
00:41:26,710 --> 00:41:29,529
Speaker 2: my family, but my kiddo was walking through the house

792
00:41:29,570 --> 00:41:30,850
Speaker 2: and I was like, okay, you got to come watch this.

793
00:41:30,870 --> 00:41:32,569
Speaker 2: You're going to love this one scene. And they got

794
00:41:32,610 --> 00:41:35,630
Speaker 2: to see the descent of the Bored Queen and they're like,

795
00:41:35,690 --> 00:41:39,320
Speaker 2: oh yeah, that's really cool. All right. There are a

796
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 2: couple of cameos. We'll come back to those as those occur.

797
00:41:42,500 --> 00:41:44,540
Speaker 2: Quick note on the special effects, since we're already talking

798
00:41:44,580 --> 00:41:47,020
Speaker 2: about them. This was an industrial light and magic picture,

799
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:51,030
Speaker 2: so tons of credits here. John Knoll was, I believe,

800
00:41:51,070 --> 00:41:55,690
Speaker 2: the effects supervisor. Overall, I'd say everything looks really good here.

801
00:41:55,730 --> 00:41:57,969
Speaker 2: There are some digital effects in there, a lot of

802
00:41:58,010 --> 00:42:01,170
Speaker 2: practical effects, I think a little bit of CGI, but

803
00:42:01,190 --> 00:42:03,570
Speaker 2: I think it all integrates nicely. I think the stuff

804
00:42:03,610 --> 00:42:07,620
Speaker 2: where they used computer-generated effects more was the space battle stuff.

805
00:42:08,060 --> 00:42:11,060
Speaker 2: which even at the time period that we're dealing with,

806
00:42:11,100 --> 00:42:14,820
Speaker 2: you know, like mid-90s, that was, if you, certainly if

807
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:17,100
Speaker 2: you had the budget and the expertise, that was a

808
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:20,860
Speaker 2: more forgiving area to roll out your computer-based special effects.

809
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 3: Yeah. And, you know, I think all that stuff looks

810
00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:28,359
Speaker 3: pretty good here. Like I didn't, nothing smelled off to me.

811
00:42:28,390 --> 00:42:30,780
Speaker 3: I just went with it. You know, it blends into

812
00:42:30,820 --> 00:42:33,770
Speaker 3: the narrative and it functions so that you don't really

813
00:42:33,790 --> 00:42:35,669
Speaker 3: think about them as effects. Yeah.

814
00:42:36,500 --> 00:42:39,900
Speaker 2: So a bunch of people worked on this. Practical effects

815
00:42:40,540 --> 00:42:43,910
Speaker 2: guy Todd Masters was one of the people working on this.

816
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:46,690
Speaker 2: I follow him on Instagram. He has a great Instagram account.

817
00:42:47,310 --> 00:42:50,710
Speaker 2: He's always showcasing past and present practical work, a lot

818
00:42:50,750 --> 00:42:54,510
Speaker 2: of behind-the-scenes images from things like Demon Knight or episodes

819
00:42:54,550 --> 00:42:57,930
Speaker 2: of Tales from the Crypt. And he frequently shares behind-the-scenes

820
00:42:57,969 --> 00:43:00,109
Speaker 2: photos of the Borg Queen and how they did some

821
00:43:00,130 --> 00:43:02,290
Speaker 2: of these effects. So go check that out if you

822
00:43:02,310 --> 00:43:05,420
Speaker 2: want to see more of that. And then finally, the music.

823
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:11,220
Speaker 2: This is a Jerry Goldsmith score. He lived 1929 through 2004. Obviously,

824
00:43:11,260 --> 00:43:14,280
Speaker 2: there are some inclusions of the previous Trek, you know,

825
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 2: the Star Trek theme song. But, you know, being a

826
00:43:18,020 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 2: Jerry Goldsmith score, it's going to be rousing. It's going

827
00:43:21,700 --> 00:43:24,900
Speaker 2: to be a classic affair. And, you know, I think

828
00:43:24,940 --> 00:43:28,779
Speaker 2: it's a totally awesome score. You know, no notes, really.

829
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,399
Speaker 2: It's what you'd expect it to be. I believe he

830
00:43:31,460 --> 00:43:35,620
Speaker 2: scored five Trek films, including the first one in 79.

831
00:43:35,620 --> 00:43:37,800
Speaker 3: Does what it should. Really gets the blood pumping.

832
00:43:38,060 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 2: Yeah.

833
00:43:38,900 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

834
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:41,830
Speaker 2: Fills the empty space with brass.

835
00:43:41,690 --> 00:43:53,239
Speaker 3: Like he should. Well, are you ready to talk about

836
00:43:53,260 --> 00:43:53,620
Speaker 3: the plot?

837
00:43:53,739 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 2: Let's do it.

838
00:43:54,860 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 3: So the opening image of the film is that we

839
00:43:57,219 --> 00:44:02,060
Speaker 3: zoom out through an extreme close-up of Captain Picard's eye

840
00:44:02,219 --> 00:44:06,630
Speaker 3: to see Picard on a Borg ship. So he's parked

841
00:44:06,690 --> 00:44:08,870
Speaker 3: in one of those charging stations, you know, like the

842
00:44:08,910 --> 00:44:12,450
Speaker 3: Roomba charging stations, along with thousands of other Borg drones.

843
00:44:13,310 --> 00:44:16,790
Speaker 3: And our perspective keeps flying back farther and farther to

844
00:44:16,870 --> 00:44:22,430
Speaker 3: reveal this vast city-sized interior with metallic black machine parts

845
00:44:22,910 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 3: and ductwork everywhere. and these small emanations of sickly green light.

846
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,969
Speaker 3: So the dominant colors are kind of black and green. Uh,

847
00:44:31,710 --> 00:44:34,590
Speaker 3: I think of that really as, as being the palette

848
00:44:34,730 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 3: of space horror in the nineties. Yeah. Black and green. Yeah. Uh, and,

849
00:44:40,750 --> 00:44:43,650
Speaker 3: This is some kind of flashback, I think, to Picard's

850
00:44:43,770 --> 00:44:49,150
Speaker 3: assimilation in the double episode Best of Both Worlds, though

851
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 3: it looks different here. Do you notice that the scale

852
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,739
Speaker 3: of the Borg ship depicted is much grander and more

853
00:44:56,860 --> 00:45:00,080
Speaker 3: frightening than anything they could realize for the TV episodes?

854
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:01,979
Speaker 3: And I think it's just because they got a bigger

855
00:45:02,020 --> 00:45:02,770
Speaker 3: budget for it.

856
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read that in general, they feel like the

857
00:45:06,500 --> 00:45:09,260
Speaker 2: filmmakers and the people that were involved in the Trek

858
00:45:09,300 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 2: series Felt like this was the first time they really

859
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 2: got to depict the Borg and their technology in a

860
00:45:17,219 --> 00:45:21,760
Speaker 2: way that felt appropriate. There were always budgetary constraints previously.

861
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:25,240
Speaker 3: So we zoom around the catwalks of the ship, weaving

862
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:27,609
Speaker 3: in and out between Borg drones as they go about

863
00:45:27,650 --> 00:45:32,370
Speaker 3: their work. And then we hear a woman's voice saying, Locutus.

864
00:45:33,050 --> 00:45:36,509
Speaker 3: And then Picard all modded up with these cyborg enhancements.

865
00:45:37,150 --> 00:45:40,970
Speaker 3: He shines his laser beam pointer, his laser pointer, directly

866
00:45:41,010 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 3: into the camera lens. And he says, I am Locutus

867
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:48,219
Speaker 3: of Borg. Resistance is futile. And then we see a

868
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:53,100
Speaker 3: drill bit descending straight into Picard's eye. What is this, Fulci?

869
00:45:53,780 --> 00:45:55,890
Speaker 2: I know. Yeah, it feels like we're doing another Fulci

870
00:45:55,930 --> 00:45:57,330
Speaker 2: film here. Oh, yeah.

871
00:45:57,810 --> 00:46:00,690
Speaker 3: And then suddenly Picard seems to wake up. He is

872
00:46:00,810 --> 00:46:03,350
Speaker 3: sitting in a chair in his quarters on the Enterprise.

873
00:46:03,390 --> 00:46:05,610
Speaker 3: So it was all a dream. but it's a double

874
00:46:05,670 --> 00:46:09,090
Speaker 3: dream jump scare. He, he goes to the mirror and

875
00:46:09,150 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 3: looks in it and then something's moving around under his

876
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,420
Speaker 3: cheek and it pops out and it's this weird nano

877
00:46:14,460 --> 00:46:17,880
Speaker 3: machine under his skin. Uh, and he starts to scream,

878
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 3: but Oh, wakes up again. That was just a dream too. Uh,

879
00:46:21,460 --> 00:46:23,980
Speaker 3: so it's like, it's like in, um, what movie was it?

880
00:46:24,010 --> 00:46:26,069
Speaker 3: We did recently. It was a John Carpenter movie that

881
00:46:26,090 --> 00:46:28,650
Speaker 3: had a double dream jump scare. Oh yeah.

882
00:46:28,690 --> 00:46:30,430
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, he, he was the master.

883
00:46:31,050 --> 00:46:32,170
Speaker 3: It was in the mouth of madness.

884
00:46:32,910 --> 00:46:34,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a really good one in In the

885
00:46:34,790 --> 00:46:37,239
Speaker 2: Mouth of Madness, but also Prince of Darkness had one

886
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:39,580
Speaker 2: as well. So this felt like a very Carpenter moment

887
00:46:39,620 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 2: for sure.

888
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:43,739
Speaker 3: So this movie jumps right into the plot. There's not

889
00:46:43,780 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 3: much prologue at all. Picard wakes up and his phone

890
00:46:49,260 --> 00:46:52,489
Speaker 3: is ringing and it's a call from the Admiral of Starfleet.

891
00:46:53,370 --> 00:46:57,490
Speaker 3: Admiral says, Disturbing report from Deep Space Five. The colony

892
00:46:57,570 --> 00:47:01,969
Speaker 3: on Ivor Prime has been totally destroyed. And Picard knows

893
00:47:02,010 --> 00:47:04,990
Speaker 3: what's going on even before he's told. It was the Borg.

894
00:47:05,870 --> 00:47:09,710
Speaker 3: And we get some opening shots here that make space

895
00:47:09,890 --> 00:47:13,070
Speaker 3: very colorful. It's one of those movies where space itself

896
00:47:13,170 --> 00:47:16,210
Speaker 3: is beautiful. So we see the Enterprise in the foreground

897
00:47:16,270 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 3: with a metallic blue sheen, and it's set against a

898
00:47:19,969 --> 00:47:25,969
Speaker 3: green and rusty orange nebula. Very nice colors. So we

899
00:47:26,030 --> 00:47:29,419
Speaker 3: learn via a captain's log that the Borg, their most

900
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:34,020
Speaker 3: lethal foe, have now begun a full-scale invasion of the Federation,

901
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:37,740
Speaker 3: and Picard fears there may be no stopping them this time.

902
00:47:39,219 --> 00:47:41,700
Speaker 3: So our first scene with the rest of the crew...

903
00:47:42,050 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 3: is a conference in the observation lounge. Rob, is this

904
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,580
Speaker 3: the room in the show where they usually retreat from

905
00:47:47,620 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 3: the bridge to discuss options and talk about plans?

906
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:54,339
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. This is where they'll go to have their

907
00:47:54,380 --> 00:47:58,330
Speaker 2: moral or strategic discussions about the problem of the episode. Yeah.

908
00:47:58,870 --> 00:48:02,010
Speaker 3: So everybody's gathered around a table for Picard to explain

909
00:48:02,030 --> 00:48:05,529
Speaker 3: their orders, and it turns out they are not being

910
00:48:05,590 --> 00:48:08,430
Speaker 3: sent to the front to defend the Federation against the

911
00:48:08,469 --> 00:48:11,810
Speaker 3: Borg attack. They are instead being sent to patrol the

912
00:48:11,870 --> 00:48:15,070
Speaker 3: neutral zone in case the Romulans decide to try anything

913
00:48:15,110 --> 00:48:18,850
Speaker 3: while the Federation is distracted dealing with the Borg. The

914
00:48:18,969 --> 00:48:23,129
Speaker 3: crew commanders are obviously not happy with this, but their

915
00:48:23,210 --> 00:48:27,350
Speaker 3: orders stand. And then afterwards, there's a scene of Picard

916
00:48:27,489 --> 00:48:31,710
Speaker 3: alone in his quarters listening to an opera by Berlioz.

917
00:48:32,230 --> 00:48:34,549
Speaker 3: I looked up what piece of music this is, and

918
00:48:34,570 --> 00:48:37,669
Speaker 3: it seems this is from the Berlioz opera, The Trojans,

919
00:48:37,950 --> 00:48:41,790
Speaker 3: and this particular melody. is sung by a Trojan sailor

920
00:48:41,989 --> 00:48:44,710
Speaker 3: out on the sea after the destruction of Troy, and

921
00:48:44,750 --> 00:48:46,930
Speaker 3: he's wondering if he will ever get to go home again.

922
00:48:46,950 --> 00:48:48,510
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a nice inclusion.

923
00:48:49,890 --> 00:48:53,980
Speaker 3: So Picard gets into a conversation with Riker, his first officer,

924
00:48:54,620 --> 00:48:57,720
Speaker 3: and he explains that their assignment to the neutral zone

925
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 3: during the Borg invasion is not because Starfleet has any

926
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,469
Speaker 3: doubts about the Enterprise or about its crew. It's because

927
00:49:04,510 --> 00:49:08,859
Speaker 3: they have doubts about Picard himself as captain. Because again,

928
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,219
Speaker 3: he was once assimilated by the Borg, and though he

929
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:16,210
Speaker 3: now seems to have been cleared of all Borg contamination

930
00:49:16,270 --> 00:49:19,290
Speaker 3: and programming, they're just not going to take any chances

931
00:49:19,350 --> 00:49:21,739
Speaker 3: in the middle of a war. To do so would

932
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,620
Speaker 3: be to introduce an unstable element to a critical situation.

933
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 2: And this, you know, on the whole sounds pretty reasonable.

934
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 2: I mean, we've already seen that Picard is still traumatized

935
00:49:33,700 --> 00:49:38,650
Speaker 2: by the whole incident. And he's having dreams about nanites

936
00:49:38,750 --> 00:49:42,250
Speaker 2: emerging from his face. So even if there is zero

937
00:49:42,310 --> 00:49:44,810
Speaker 2: chance that there are nanites inside him, like he has

938
00:49:45,370 --> 00:49:49,469
Speaker 2: been definitely been impacted by his previous contact with the

939
00:49:49,550 --> 00:49:50,049
Speaker 2: enemy here.

940
00:49:51,030 --> 00:49:54,410
Speaker 3: Riker, however, disagrees. He thinks that Picard's experience with the

941
00:49:54,450 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 3: Borg means he's the perfect commander to resist them. we

942
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:02,259
Speaker 3: will see later that Riker is correct. Uh, but in

943
00:50:02,300 --> 00:50:05,379
Speaker 3: the middle of this conversation, they get interrupted. News comes

944
00:50:05,460 --> 00:50:08,920
Speaker 3: in that the battle has begun. Uh, so Starfleet is

945
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:12,310
Speaker 3: fighting the invading Borg cube. Uh, it seems like the

946
00:50:12,330 --> 00:50:15,630
Speaker 3: Borg are invading with just one ship. I feel like

947
00:50:15,690 --> 00:50:18,029
Speaker 3: I could offer the Borg some tactical advice. Like you

948
00:50:18,050 --> 00:50:19,569
Speaker 3: spread your forces out a little bit.

949
00:50:19,950 --> 00:50:20,169
Speaker 1: Yeah.

950
00:50:20,190 --> 00:50:22,110
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe that's the thing. They're way too spread out.

951
00:50:22,150 --> 00:50:25,900
Speaker 2: They're covering like an entire quadrant of the galaxy. But, um,

952
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:28,830
Speaker 2: But at any rate, yeah, they just send in the

953
00:50:28,930 --> 00:50:30,870
Speaker 2: one ship. But one ship seems to be doing a

954
00:50:30,870 --> 00:50:32,890
Speaker 2: pretty good job. We'll see.

955
00:50:32,910 --> 00:50:36,870
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Borg, so they're always superior. So we're

956
00:50:36,910 --> 00:50:39,049
Speaker 3: on the bridge of the Enterprise now, and Picard and

957
00:50:39,070 --> 00:50:42,450
Speaker 3: the others listen to the audio transmissions coming from the battle.

958
00:50:42,989 --> 00:50:45,509
Speaker 3: At first, it's just all the fleet commanders talking about

959
00:50:45,530 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 3: their maneuvers, but suddenly a grim, hollow, robotic voice cuts

960
00:50:50,460 --> 00:50:54,110
Speaker 3: through everything else. It is the opening and closing of

961
00:50:54,170 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 3: negotiations by the Borg. So the voice or voices, is

962
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 3: it one voice or many? It's actually, it sounds kind

963
00:51:00,260 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 3: of somewhere in between. The Borg would say, yes, you're correct.

964
00:51:03,860 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 3: The one and many voices say, we are the Borg.

965
00:51:07,500 --> 00:51:10,160
Speaker 3: Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add

966
00:51:10,180 --> 00:51:14,330
Speaker 3: your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture

967
00:51:14,370 --> 00:51:18,860
Speaker 3: will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. And that's it.

968
00:51:18,930 --> 00:51:22,879
Speaker 3: That's the Borg line. Unconditional surrender. No terms. In fact,

969
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:25,770
Speaker 3: you already belong to us. It's just a matter of

970
00:51:25,830 --> 00:51:29,830
Speaker 3: hoovering you up. By this point, Starfleet knows better than

971
00:51:29,890 --> 00:51:35,609
Speaker 3: to bother talking back and trying to establish negotiations. They

972
00:51:35,630 --> 00:51:38,779
Speaker 3: just attack at once. But the tide of battle turns

973
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:42,180
Speaker 3: very quickly. We can hear on the transmission that Starfleet

974
00:51:42,260 --> 00:51:46,720
Speaker 3: is being massacred by the Borg Cube's superior technology and adaptability.

975
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:51,310
Speaker 3: And Picard is... can't just sit and listen to this.

976
00:51:51,969 --> 00:51:55,860
Speaker 3: Something is causing him great pain, and he informs the

977
00:51:55,890 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 3: bridge crew that he intends to violate their orders and

978
00:51:59,660 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 3: join in the fight immediately. He gives them the opportunity

979
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 3: to file objections. No one does. We get a close-up on,

980
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:08,900
Speaker 3: I think, Lieutenant Hawk here. It's like, is he going

981
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:11,870
Speaker 3: to say something? And he just clams up, doesn't say anything.

982
00:52:12,950 --> 00:52:17,550
Speaker 3: Data gets a cute robot cussing moment and says something like, Sir,

983
00:52:17,690 --> 00:52:20,390
Speaker 3: if I may be so bold, to hell with our orders.

984
00:52:21,350 --> 00:52:24,990
Speaker 3: And it's reminiscent of the humor that comes from Spock

985
00:52:25,110 --> 00:52:26,529
Speaker 3: cussing in Star Trek IV.

986
00:52:27,590 --> 00:52:28,970
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have liked to have seen a scene

987
00:52:28,989 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 2: where Data later apologizes for his profanity here and maybe

988
00:52:32,719 --> 00:52:35,900
Speaker 2: blames his emotion chip. That'll become important later on. He

989
00:52:35,940 --> 00:52:39,020
Speaker 2: does have the emotion chip installed at this point.

990
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 3: Yeah. There are actually really funny Spock cussing moments in IV.

991
00:52:44,219 --> 00:52:47,770
Speaker 3: I can't remember exactly what he says. It's like, Awkwardly phrased.

992
00:52:47,810 --> 00:52:49,890
Speaker 3: I think at one point Spock said something like, the

993
00:52:49,930 --> 00:52:55,100
Speaker 3: dam it is. So anyway, they plot a course. They

994
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:59,400
Speaker 3: warp to the battlefield. And at this point, the Borg

995
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:02,320
Speaker 3: cube is in orbit around Earth. So they're coming straight

996
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,920
Speaker 3: for planet Earth. They also did this in Best of

997
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:05,980
Speaker 3: Both Worlds, I think.

998
00:53:06,500 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really does demonstrate the potentially hard to

999
00:53:09,020 --> 00:53:11,779
Speaker 2: script power of the Borg. Because if they can just

1000
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 2: make a sudden and largely unstoppable approach to Earth, Anytime

1001
00:53:15,910 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 2: they want to, like, how do you mitigate that? Like,

1002
00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:19,620
Speaker 2: how do you, and then how do you write around

1003
00:53:19,660 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 2: that threat? How do you engage it at all without it? Just,

1004
00:53:23,060 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 2: it has to be the end times right away.

1005
00:53:25,060 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, uh, the battle is not going well for Starfleet.

1006
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 3: The main ships are damaged and exploding. We learned that

1007
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:35,860
Speaker 3: the Admiral's ship has already been destroyed. So there's no

1008
00:53:35,930 --> 00:53:38,790
Speaker 3: one in charge. Uh, we check in on one ship

1009
00:53:38,850 --> 00:53:42,210
Speaker 3: commanded by former Enterprise crew member Worf. He is now

1010
00:53:42,270 --> 00:53:45,660
Speaker 3: captain of his own vessel, the Defiant. And this is

1011
00:53:45,700 --> 00:53:48,240
Speaker 3: the ship that has Adam Scott as a bridge officer.

1012
00:53:48,260 --> 00:53:53,009
Speaker 3: It's actually hilarious to imagine Adam Scott as Worf's first

1013
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 3: officer if we were to see more of this.

1014
00:53:55,840 --> 00:53:57,710
Speaker 2: That would have been great, yeah.

1015
00:53:57,850 --> 00:54:02,610
Speaker 3: Their interactions. But the shields are gone. Weapons are gone.

1016
00:54:02,730 --> 00:54:07,989
Speaker 3: Warp core is failing. And Worf, with great defiance himself, says,

1017
00:54:08,050 --> 00:54:10,670
Speaker 3: perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare for

1018
00:54:10,830 --> 00:54:13,910
Speaker 3: ramming speed. So he's going to ram the Borg cube.

1019
00:54:14,290 --> 00:54:16,390
Speaker 2: I think listeners brought this up when we did our

1020
00:54:16,450 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 2: episodes on ancient triremes and so forth and ramming vessels.

1021
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,430
Speaker 2: I think we were reminded that there are ramming tactics

1022
00:54:26,550 --> 00:54:28,340
Speaker 2: to be seen in the Star Trek franchise.

1023
00:54:29,300 --> 00:54:33,580
Speaker 3: Though that was a standard and survivable attack in the

1024
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:37,040
Speaker 3: ancient Mediterranean. Here, I think this means death for the ship.

1025
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:39,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, this means nothing else to do but destroy your

1026
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:41,259
Speaker 2: ship and hopefully your enemy. Yeah.

1027
00:54:42,590 --> 00:54:45,009
Speaker 3: But anyway, before they can ram the Borg ship, the

1028
00:54:45,070 --> 00:54:50,140
Speaker 3: Enterprise appears and beams the survivors of that ship, including Worf, aboard.

1029
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:54,700
Speaker 3: The tide of battle turns when the Enterprise arrives. Picard

1030
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,940
Speaker 3: says he is assuming command of the fleet, and he

1031
00:54:58,100 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 3: orders all remaining ships to concentrate their fire on a

1032
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 3: particular point on the Borg cube. Why this point? Data

1033
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:09,230
Speaker 3: mentions that he's done analysis, and the coordinates that Picard

1034
00:55:09,290 --> 00:55:13,049
Speaker 3: gives don't correspond to any vital ship function. But Picard

1035
00:55:13,110 --> 00:55:16,700
Speaker 3: just knows. Something about his previous experience with the Borg

1036
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:20,660
Speaker 3: tells him exactly where they should shoot. And so they

1037
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:23,340
Speaker 3: all do. And it works. It's like the Death Star's

1038
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:26,980
Speaker 3: exhaust port. The combined fire of the fleet on this

1039
00:55:27,060 --> 00:55:29,750
Speaker 3: point sets off some kind of chain reaction and it

1040
00:55:29,850 --> 00:55:34,029
Speaker 3: blows the Borg cube to smithereens. But not before the

1041
00:55:34,070 --> 00:55:38,150
Speaker 3: cube ejects a smaller vessel. Is this some kind of

1042
00:55:38,210 --> 00:55:42,390
Speaker 3: escape pod or something? We don't know. It's this spherical...

1043
00:55:42,219 --> 00:55:46,000
Speaker 3: industrial looking object, like a ball of black pipes that

1044
00:55:46,140 --> 00:55:48,720
Speaker 3: shoots out and heads directly for earth.

1045
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 2: Yeah. We've seen the Borg cube. Now we have Borg ball, uh,

1046
00:55:52,550 --> 00:55:54,950
Speaker 2: entirely new vessel. As far as, as far as I remember.

1047
00:55:55,270 --> 00:55:58,770
Speaker 3: Will we ever get to the Borg pyramid? Uh, so

1048
00:55:58,790 --> 00:56:02,270
Speaker 3: the enterprise sees the sphere and goes into pursuit. And

1049
00:56:02,310 --> 00:56:05,850
Speaker 3: throughout all of this, uh, Picard keeps hearing whispers in

1050
00:56:05,890 --> 00:56:09,090
Speaker 3: his head. It's like the distant muttering of many voices, uh,

1051
00:56:09,810 --> 00:56:12,870
Speaker 3: So even though his Borg modifications are gone, for some reason,

1052
00:56:12,910 --> 00:56:16,850
Speaker 3: he can still hear the chatter of the collective. Now,

1053
00:56:16,950 --> 00:56:20,299
Speaker 3: while they're chasing the sphere, Mr. Worf comes onto the bridge.

1054
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:23,680
Speaker 3: He comes from medical, and he is recruited to assist

1055
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 3: at tactical. So he's just back at his old post.

1056
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:29,780
Speaker 3: And there are some funny moments here between Worf and Riker.

1057
00:56:29,900 --> 00:56:34,310
Speaker 3: Riker says about Worf's vessel, the Defiant, he says, like,

1058
00:56:34,410 --> 00:56:36,770
Speaker 3: it's a tough little ship. And Worf is like, little?

1059
00:56:36,790 --> 00:56:42,279
Speaker 3: That's great. Anyway, the chase is on. So what's up

1060
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:45,670
Speaker 3: with this spherical Borg ship? Well, as it goes into

1061
00:56:45,810 --> 00:56:49,190
Speaker 3: lower orbit around Earth, it starts creating a kind of

1062
00:56:49,489 --> 00:56:54,819
Speaker 3: time tunnel. Data says that chronometric particles are coming off

1063
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 3: of it. So they realize the Borg ship is going

1064
00:56:58,580 --> 00:57:03,090
Speaker 3: back in time to Earth's past. And as this happens,

1065
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:07,620
Speaker 3: the Enterprise, also entering the tunnel... sees a vision behind

1066
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:11,560
Speaker 3: them of the Earth of their time already changed. It's

1067
00:57:11,580 --> 00:57:16,620
Speaker 3: an all Borg planet now. So assimilation via time travel.

1068
00:57:17,300 --> 00:57:20,240
Speaker 3: So the Enterprise crew has to follow the Borg back

1069
00:57:20,300 --> 00:57:23,290
Speaker 3: in time to stop this from happening. And they give

1070
00:57:23,350 --> 00:57:24,750
Speaker 3: chase through the time tunnel.

1071
00:57:25,770 --> 00:57:28,410
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a neat idea. And I always

1072
00:57:28,450 --> 00:57:31,169
Speaker 2: wanted to know more about this all Borg planet Earth.

1073
00:57:31,630 --> 00:57:33,840
Speaker 2: We see, you know, just the orbital view of it.

1074
00:57:33,850 --> 00:57:35,990
Speaker 2: And we see like There's all sorts of like weird

1075
00:57:36,090 --> 00:57:39,070
Speaker 2: extensions build out from the continents into the ocean or

1076
00:57:39,090 --> 00:57:41,650
Speaker 2: what's left of the oceans. We'll never get to visit

1077
00:57:41,690 --> 00:57:43,590
Speaker 2: this world. As far as I know, maybe maybe in

1078
00:57:44,310 --> 00:57:47,980
Speaker 2: other episodes of other shows, this is like an alternate

1079
00:57:48,020 --> 00:57:50,860
Speaker 2: timeline that is visited. But here it just it's it's,

1080
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:53,459
Speaker 2: you know, the worst case scenario. The Borg have gone

1081
00:57:53,500 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 2: back in time and colonized the planet in the past,

1082
00:57:57,220 --> 00:58:00,910
Speaker 2: assimilated the planet in the past. And this has to

1083
00:58:00,950 --> 00:58:03,130
Speaker 2: be stopped, you know, by any means necessary.

1084
00:58:03,810 --> 00:58:07,130
Speaker 3: They mentioned that the atmosphere is really polluted. Only the

1085
00:58:07,170 --> 00:58:10,910
Speaker 3: Borg would do that. But it's full of like carbon

1086
00:58:10,930 --> 00:58:13,010
Speaker 3: monoxide and fluorine and stuff.

1087
00:58:13,450 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. Humans would never. And that's why we end up

1088
00:58:16,980 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 2: realizing that the Borg have taken the time tunnel back

1089
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:25,910
Speaker 2: to April 4th, 2063 in the immediate aftermath of the

1090
00:58:25,950 --> 00:58:26,770
Speaker 2: Third World War.

1091
00:58:27,250 --> 00:58:30,270
Speaker 3: Right. So this is hundreds of years in the past

1092
00:58:30,370 --> 00:58:33,100
Speaker 3: for the crew of the Enterprise at this point. And

1093
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:37,810
Speaker 3: on the ground, we meet our Earth characters, Lily Sloan

1094
00:58:38,070 --> 00:58:41,990
Speaker 3: and Zephram Cochran, who are engineers working on a new

1095
00:58:42,070 --> 00:58:45,970
Speaker 3: type of propulsion system. And Cochran's been out at the

1096
00:58:46,030 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 3: saloon getting drunk. So here I think maybe we should

1097
00:58:49,700 --> 00:58:53,240
Speaker 3: just pause to summarize in advance what we're going to

1098
00:58:53,380 --> 00:58:58,750
Speaker 3: learn about the setting and the Borg plan. So in

1099
00:58:58,950 --> 00:59:02,800
Speaker 3: the Star Trek universe, we will learn that Zefram Cochran

1100
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:09,030
Speaker 3: is the historical inventor of Earth's first warp drive. And

1101
00:59:09,090 --> 00:59:11,530
Speaker 3: in just a couple of days, from this date, he

1102
00:59:11,590 --> 00:59:16,090
Speaker 3: is going to perform the first test flight for faster-than-light

1103
00:59:16,140 --> 00:59:21,180
Speaker 3: travel in Earth's history. Again, this takes place while humankind

1104
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,340
Speaker 3: is still kind of operating on low power. They are

1105
00:59:24,380 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 3: recovering from this brutal Third World War and The war

1106
00:59:27,780 --> 00:59:31,220
Speaker 3: is over. There's a fragile peace and the survivors are

1107
00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:37,210
Speaker 3: trying to rebuild amidst the devastation. So accordingly, the setting

1108
00:59:37,710 --> 00:59:40,230
Speaker 3: on Earth where these scenes take place is it's a

1109
00:59:40,350 --> 00:59:45,950
Speaker 3: missile base in Montana. And at this missile base, it

1110
00:59:45,990 --> 00:59:49,660
Speaker 3: does not feel like a gleaming, futuristic Star Trek city.

1111
00:59:50,180 --> 00:59:54,020
Speaker 3: It is more like a post-apocalyptic Deadwood. It's a kind

1112
00:59:54,060 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 3: of zany frontier town with a saloon and a bunch

1113
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 3: of dusty, weirdly dressed, whiskey-guzzling characters about.

1114
01:00:02,820 --> 01:00:06,860
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of drinking on hard liquors

1115
01:00:07,570 --> 01:00:10,730
Speaker 2: and rocking out to old music on whatever. I don't

1116
01:00:10,770 --> 01:00:12,250
Speaker 2: even know what format this is supposed to be. It's

1117
01:00:12,270 --> 01:00:14,870
Speaker 2: like some sort of jukebox. Jukebox, but we also have

1118
01:00:14,890 --> 01:00:17,090
Speaker 2: some sort of tapes, right? But they don't look like

1119
01:00:17,110 --> 01:00:21,660
Speaker 2: cassette tapes. They're like some future tape. Pocket rockers or something.

1120
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:27,260
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Later at one point, Zephyrm Cochran panics because

1121
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:31,610
Speaker 3: they almost start doing the test flight without him knowing

1122
01:00:31,650 --> 01:00:33,250
Speaker 3: where his rock and roll music is.

1123
01:00:33,550 --> 01:00:35,970
Speaker 2: See, if the Borg had only known, like if they

1124
01:00:36,010 --> 01:00:38,930
Speaker 2: wanted to prevent first contact, which is going to be

1125
01:00:40,090 --> 01:00:42,570
Speaker 2: the aim here, they needed to take out his music.

1126
01:00:43,330 --> 01:00:45,010
Speaker 2: But that's not the kind of thing that the Borg

1127
01:00:45,030 --> 01:00:47,630
Speaker 2: would realize. They don't really see things like that.

1128
01:00:47,910 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 3: That's true. They don't understand the importance of music. They

1129
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 3: would never come up with that plan.

1130
01:00:53,540 --> 01:00:55,620
Speaker 2: Who recorded Magic Carpet Ride?

1131
01:00:55,900 --> 01:00:56,540
Speaker 3: Steppenwolf.

1132
01:00:56,580 --> 01:00:59,560
Speaker 2: They needed to take out Steppenwolf. They needed to go

1133
01:00:59,620 --> 01:01:04,900
Speaker 2: back and remove that band from the musical ecology of

1134
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:08,220
Speaker 2: our culture. And that could have prevented first contact.

1135
01:01:09,990 --> 01:01:14,010
Speaker 3: So anyway, according to the lore, it's going to be

1136
01:01:14,170 --> 01:01:18,130
Speaker 3: this band. first faster than light test flight that catches

1137
01:01:18,210 --> 01:01:22,400
Speaker 3: the attention of a Vulcan survey ship and brings the

1138
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:25,600
Speaker 3: Vulcans to earth for the first time. Now, I think

1139
01:01:25,740 --> 01:01:28,640
Speaker 3: the idea is not that the Vulcans didn't know about earth,

1140
01:01:28,880 --> 01:01:33,170
Speaker 3: but that because we don't have faster than light travel

1141
01:01:33,190 --> 01:01:36,630
Speaker 3: at this time, They assume we are a primitive species

1142
01:01:36,850 --> 01:01:39,210
Speaker 3: and they don't believe that they should interact with us

1143
01:01:39,430 --> 01:01:43,820
Speaker 3: at all. It's sort of a proto prime directive. Yeah.

1144
01:01:43,890 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like they have they have not figured out warp travel.

1145
01:01:47,080 --> 01:01:49,340
Speaker 2: They are in the middle or at the very end

1146
01:01:49,420 --> 01:01:53,180
Speaker 2: of destroying themselves with nuclear war. This is, you know,

1147
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:55,100
Speaker 2: we'll keep an eye on them, but there's nothing really

1148
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:57,140
Speaker 2: to do with them right now. They're just going to

1149
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,500
Speaker 2: stay out of their way and hope that they make

1150
01:01:59,540 --> 01:02:01,360
Speaker 2: it through. But we can't help them with that.

1151
01:02:01,860 --> 01:02:07,450
Speaker 3: Right. But the Zefram Cochrane test flight changes the Vulcan calculus,

1152
01:02:07,650 --> 01:02:11,970
Speaker 3: and this triggers first contact, hence the title, between Earth

1153
01:02:12,030 --> 01:02:15,410
Speaker 3: and an alien species, which will over the years develop

1154
01:02:15,530 --> 01:02:19,490
Speaker 3: into the alliance that is the foundation of the United

1155
01:02:19,570 --> 01:02:23,110
Speaker 3: Federation of Planets, the Borg's main enemy at this point

1156
01:02:23,150 --> 01:02:28,250
Speaker 3: in the future. So the Borg intend to prevent first

1157
01:02:28,350 --> 01:02:31,910
Speaker 3: contact and alter the course of history. So they're going

1158
01:02:31,930 --> 01:02:35,990
Speaker 3: to prevent the unification of some of their most powerful enemies,

1159
01:02:36,230 --> 01:02:38,970
Speaker 3: making them easier to pick off individually.

1160
01:02:40,110 --> 01:02:42,910
Speaker 2: And I guess the thing about like a mono culture,

1161
01:02:42,930 --> 01:02:44,730
Speaker 2: if you can even call it that, like the Borg

1162
01:02:44,790 --> 01:02:46,970
Speaker 2: is like, they, I guess they don't have to worry

1163
01:02:47,010 --> 01:02:49,930
Speaker 2: about messing up the time stream because like the, the

1164
01:02:49,970 --> 01:02:53,480
Speaker 2: Borg ideal, um, you know, some technological developments aside is

1165
01:02:53,500 --> 01:02:56,420
Speaker 2: the same as it always was. Um, and, uh, and,

1166
01:02:56,560 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 2: and it's revealed later, like at this point in human history,

1167
01:02:59,810 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 2: the Borg are already out there on the other side

1168
01:03:01,460 --> 01:03:05,660
Speaker 2: of the galaxy. Um, so, um, and, and presumably, you know,

1169
01:03:05,740 --> 01:03:08,900
Speaker 2: less technologically advanced, but still philosophically the same Borg.

1170
01:03:09,260 --> 01:03:09,460
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1171
01:03:09,560 --> 01:03:13,650
Speaker 3: I mean, they probably predate humankind for all we know. Um, yeah.

1172
01:03:13,690 --> 01:03:15,750
Speaker 3: So they've been out there a long time and they're

1173
01:03:15,790 --> 01:03:18,710
Speaker 3: eventually gonna, they think they're eventually gonna catch them all.

1174
01:03:18,950 --> 01:03:19,110
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1175
01:03:19,590 --> 01:03:23,050
Speaker 3: Uh, but, But you're right. It's a different way of

1176
01:03:23,090 --> 01:03:25,450
Speaker 3: thinking about time travel because they don't have to worry

1177
01:03:25,530 --> 01:03:28,940
Speaker 3: about messing up the course of history. No events matter

1178
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 3: to them other than just, you know, assimilating.

1179
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1180
01:03:40,830 --> 01:03:43,810
Speaker 3: So anyway, the Borg, they travel back in time and

1181
01:03:43,830 --> 01:03:47,310
Speaker 3: they launch an orbital attack on the missile test base

1182
01:03:47,370 --> 01:03:50,590
Speaker 3: in Montana where the warp drive research is going on,

1183
01:03:50,670 --> 01:03:54,010
Speaker 3: though the attack fails to kill Cochran and it fails

1184
01:03:54,050 --> 01:03:56,870
Speaker 3: to destroy the prototype ship, which is called the Phoenix.

1185
01:03:58,370 --> 01:04:00,750
Speaker 3: So here I think I want to transition to kind

1186
01:04:00,790 --> 01:04:04,290
Speaker 3: of summarizing at a distance the rest of the plot,

1187
01:04:04,390 --> 01:04:06,930
Speaker 3: and then we can come back and focus on individual

1188
01:04:06,970 --> 01:04:11,070
Speaker 3: elements of interest as they strike us. So the, uh,

1189
01:04:11,110 --> 01:04:15,350
Speaker 3: the enterprise manages to destroy the Borg sphere, but only

1190
01:04:15,650 --> 01:04:20,570
Speaker 3: after it has attacked the Montana base from, from orbit. Uh,

1191
01:04:20,590 --> 01:04:24,390
Speaker 3: so the crew beam down to the surface disguised as locals.

1192
01:04:24,470 --> 01:04:27,590
Speaker 3: I think they say like, give us 21st century clothing.

1193
01:04:27,740 --> 01:04:31,280
Speaker 3: And that clothing is pretty funny. Uh, they beam down

1194
01:04:31,300 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 3: in disguise to try to check out what happened and

1195
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:37,419
Speaker 3: make sure that the warp drive test can still take

1196
01:04:37,500 --> 01:04:41,450
Speaker 3: place on schedule. Otherwise, history is going to be fundamentally altered.

1197
01:04:42,690 --> 01:04:47,670
Speaker 3: Zephram's assistant, Lily Sloan, is exposed to radiation during an

1198
01:04:47,850 --> 01:04:51,400
Speaker 3: incident at the test base. And Dr. Crusher has to

1199
01:04:51,500 --> 01:04:54,760
Speaker 3: beam her back up to the Enterprise for treatment. And

1200
01:04:54,800 --> 01:04:58,340
Speaker 3: at this point, the Enterprise crew split up into kind

1201
01:04:58,360 --> 01:05:00,860
Speaker 3: of the A plot and the B plot of the movie.

1202
01:05:01,420 --> 01:05:05,410
Speaker 3: So Riker, Geordi LaForge, and Deanna Troi stay down on

1203
01:05:05,570 --> 01:05:08,710
Speaker 3: Earth with Zephram Cochran. to make sure that the test

1204
01:05:08,750 --> 01:05:11,370
Speaker 3: flight happens on time, and there is a lot of

1205
01:05:11,630 --> 01:05:14,930
Speaker 3: chaperoning of Cochran. He is not too keen to learn

1206
01:05:14,970 --> 01:05:16,750
Speaker 3: about his own future reputation.

1207
01:05:16,770 --> 01:05:19,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they have some fun with this. He's like,

1208
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,560
Speaker 2: I was in it for the ladies. I wasn't in

1209
01:05:22,600 --> 01:05:25,360
Speaker 2: it for the fame. He literally makes a run for

1210
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:27,760
Speaker 2: it at one point. So it's pretty fun.

1211
01:05:28,420 --> 01:05:30,700
Speaker 3: In fact, maybe we can go ahead and talk about

1212
01:05:30,740 --> 01:05:33,850
Speaker 3: this for a minute. There's a whole... thing here with

1213
01:05:33,910 --> 01:05:37,630
Speaker 3: the crew members that are on earth like fanboying out

1214
01:05:37,650 --> 01:05:41,090
Speaker 3: yeah from cochran they're like this this kind of awkward

1215
01:05:41,140 --> 01:05:44,000
Speaker 3: guy comes up and wants his autograph i think.

1216
01:05:44,520 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 2: Yeah is it is it jordy is like my high

1217
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:48,120
Speaker 2: school was named after.

1218
01:05:47,940 --> 01:05:52,180
Speaker 3: You and cochran just seems disgusted by this and there's

1219
01:05:52,220 --> 01:05:55,970
Speaker 3: a big theme of a gap between the myth of

1220
01:05:56,050 --> 01:06:00,770
Speaker 3: zephyrm cochran and the reality He's remembered by the crew

1221
01:06:00,810 --> 01:06:04,610
Speaker 3: of the Enterprise as a selfless scientist driven by curiosity

1222
01:06:04,690 --> 01:06:10,590
Speaker 3: and goodwill, whose invention ushered in an unprecedented era of peace, discovery,

1223
01:06:10,630 --> 01:06:15,430
Speaker 3: and cooperation. And it did do that. His invention was

1224
01:06:15,530 --> 01:06:18,930
Speaker 3: important in all those positive ways, but it was an accident.

1225
01:06:19,110 --> 01:06:22,300
Speaker 3: The real Zephyrm Cochran, at least as he sees himself,

1226
01:06:22,950 --> 01:06:26,750
Speaker 3: is a greedy, selfish man who hopes to get rich

1227
01:06:26,850 --> 01:06:30,410
Speaker 3: by inventing a new propulsion system. What he wants is

1228
01:06:31,330 --> 01:06:34,010
Speaker 3: earthly pleasures. He wants sex, drugs, and rock and roll,

1229
01:06:34,090 --> 01:06:34,770
Speaker 3: quite literally.

1230
01:06:34,790 --> 01:06:37,810
Speaker 2: And he described like he's afraid all the time and

1231
01:06:37,850 --> 01:06:42,830
Speaker 2: drunk half the time. And so he's not like the brave,

1232
01:06:43,430 --> 01:06:47,930
Speaker 2: selfless explorer that everyone in the future seems to think

1233
01:06:47,970 --> 01:06:49,260
Speaker 2: he is or remember him as.

1234
01:06:49,900 --> 01:06:53,950
Speaker 3: Though it's also funny because there's a part where the

1235
01:06:54,090 --> 01:06:57,750
Speaker 3: crew members quote back some words of wisdom to him,

1236
01:06:58,370 --> 01:07:01,610
Speaker 3: and he discovers they're his own words, but in the future.

1237
01:07:01,630 --> 01:07:06,150
Speaker 3: So there is maybe a suggestion that after first contact

1238
01:07:06,210 --> 01:07:09,860
Speaker 3: happens that Cochran himself kind of matures, even though he's

1239
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:11,760
Speaker 3: not like a young man at this point. He's already

1240
01:07:12,340 --> 01:07:15,320
Speaker 3: an older man, but he still, I guess, has space

1241
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:17,820
Speaker 3: to change and become a different kind of man, maybe

1242
01:07:17,860 --> 01:07:21,950
Speaker 3: because of what he did. So that's what's going on

1243
01:07:22,170 --> 01:07:27,570
Speaker 3: down on Earth. Meanwhile, Picard, Data, Worf, and Crusher return

1244
01:07:27,590 --> 01:07:30,270
Speaker 3: to the Enterprise where a new menace is going to

1245
01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:34,919
Speaker 3: reveal itself. Four, we discover the Borg were not all

1246
01:07:34,980 --> 01:07:40,520
Speaker 3: destroyed on the sphere. They are alive on the Enterprise itself.

1247
01:07:41,700 --> 01:07:44,620
Speaker 3: I like the way they introduce this. They do it slowly,

1248
01:07:44,700 --> 01:07:47,260
Speaker 3: and I think it's very cool. There are just a

1249
01:07:47,500 --> 01:07:50,480
Speaker 3: couple of lines here and there about strange temperature readings

1250
01:07:50,560 --> 01:07:54,680
Speaker 3: in the lower decks, and power fluctuations are noted. At first,

1251
01:07:54,740 --> 01:07:58,910
Speaker 3: this does not attract major attention, but then it becomes clear.

1252
01:07:59,010 --> 01:08:02,910
Speaker 3: We have a Borg infestation on the ship, and they

1253
01:08:03,310 --> 01:08:06,150
Speaker 3: are gradually taking over more and more of the ship,

1254
01:08:06,230 --> 01:08:10,270
Speaker 3: assimilating crew members, turning them into Borg, and commandeering the

1255
01:08:10,310 --> 01:08:14,750
Speaker 3: ship's technology for their own purposes. Now, what are those purposes?

1256
01:08:14,770 --> 01:08:17,450
Speaker 3: It seems they've got a couple of plans. One I

1257
01:08:18,250 --> 01:08:20,510
Speaker 3: think is more implicit is they're just trying to take

1258
01:08:20,590 --> 01:08:23,460
Speaker 3: over the enterprise and there they can use it to

1259
01:08:23,500 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 3: start assimilating the earth. But they've got another plan, which

1260
01:08:27,620 --> 01:08:32,380
Speaker 3: is to override the function of the ship's navigational deflector

1261
01:08:32,420 --> 01:08:35,890
Speaker 3: beam to send a message to Borg space in 2063

1262
01:08:35,890 --> 01:08:42,070
Speaker 3: saying like, Hey, There's a really important currently defenseless planet

1263
01:08:42,110 --> 01:08:45,270
Speaker 3: right here. Come get them before they can technologically mature.

1264
01:08:45,970 --> 01:08:49,510
Speaker 2: Which is, again, a fascinating plot point because like any

1265
01:08:49,610 --> 01:08:53,189
Speaker 2: non-Borg civilization, like that sort of call would be highly

1266
01:08:53,229 --> 01:08:55,920
Speaker 2: suspicious and also would be the kind of thing where

1267
01:08:55,939 --> 01:08:58,920
Speaker 2: it's like, okay like future say future romulans are meeting

1268
01:08:58,960 --> 01:09:03,260
Speaker 2: past romulans um avoiding the pitfalls of time travel and

1269
01:09:03,280 --> 01:09:06,270
Speaker 2: paradox uh like they probably wouldn't see eye to eye

1270
01:09:06,350 --> 01:09:09,769
Speaker 2: on this like the the past romulans would probably view

1271
01:09:09,870 --> 01:09:14,130
Speaker 2: future romulans as an enemy and perhaps rightfully so And perhaps,

1272
01:09:14,150 --> 01:09:16,530
Speaker 2: you know, vice versa as well. But for the Borg, again,

1273
01:09:16,570 --> 01:09:20,070
Speaker 2: this monoculture of the Borg based on this core philosophy of,

1274
01:09:20,310 --> 01:09:24,240
Speaker 2: you know, the ideal blending of machine and flesh, like

1275
01:09:24,300 --> 01:09:26,080
Speaker 2: it's as good in the past as it was in

1276
01:09:26,100 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 2: the future, baby. So like they're just going to heed

1277
01:09:28,540 --> 01:09:32,340
Speaker 2: the call and whatever paradoxes and changes take place, they're

1278
01:09:32,360 --> 01:09:34,200
Speaker 2: just going to roll through those and assume that the

1279
01:09:34,240 --> 01:09:37,640
Speaker 2: philosophy remains solid and stable. Yeah.

1280
01:09:38,760 --> 01:09:42,200
Speaker 3: So after the Borg colony in the Lower Decks is discovered,

1281
01:09:42,340 --> 01:09:45,780
Speaker 3: the movie becomes pretty action-packed. I'm not going to detail

1282
01:09:45,920 --> 01:09:48,500
Speaker 3: all the action scenes beat by beat, but to mention

1283
01:09:48,540 --> 01:09:52,400
Speaker 3: a few things. Much like we've seen before, there's that

1284
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:58,479
Speaker 3: really creepy detail that the Borg usually ignore humans walking

1285
01:09:58,540 --> 01:10:03,080
Speaker 3: past them until the humans initiate violence. So if you're

1286
01:10:03,120 --> 01:10:06,480
Speaker 3: not causing trouble yet, you're not even worth their attention.

1287
01:10:06,560 --> 01:10:10,330
Speaker 3: They don't bother with you. Mm-hmm. Uh, so Picard and

1288
01:10:10,430 --> 01:10:14,450
Speaker 3: data lead an assault on the Borg hive. Uh, and

1289
01:10:14,490 --> 01:10:18,080
Speaker 3: this doesn't go that well. They're eventually overwhelmed and pushed

1290
01:10:18,180 --> 01:10:21,520
Speaker 3: back during this assault. There's a moment where data is

1291
01:10:21,740 --> 01:10:24,880
Speaker 3: expressing fear. And then Picard's like, maybe you should turn

1292
01:10:24,939 --> 01:10:26,040
Speaker 3: off your emotion chip.

1293
01:10:27,520 --> 01:10:28,240
Speaker 2: And he's like done.

1294
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:31,200
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh yeah. And then he's just steely, but can

1295
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:33,120
Speaker 3: you fill us in on the emotion chip? Where does

1296
01:10:33,140 --> 01:10:34,179
Speaker 3: that come from in the show?

1297
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:37,540
Speaker 2: That, um, it's already, we, We touched on this briefly

1298
01:10:37,660 --> 01:10:41,679
Speaker 2: in our Borg episodes, but this is something that Lore

1299
01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:45,440
Speaker 2: gives him, I believe. His evil brother, Lore, is like,

1300
01:10:45,460 --> 01:10:48,260
Speaker 2: I'm going to help you become more human, brother. Here

1301
01:10:48,400 --> 01:10:50,590
Speaker 2: is an emotion chip that will give you human emotions.

1302
01:10:50,660 --> 01:10:55,290
Speaker 2: But I believe Data remains, certainly in those episodes, he

1303
01:10:55,350 --> 01:11:01,410
Speaker 2: was uncertain about the promises and dangers of this technology.

1304
01:11:01,710 --> 01:11:03,330
Speaker 2: Does he really want to become more human? Does he

1305
01:11:03,370 --> 01:11:06,790
Speaker 2: really want to have emotions? And I think he is

1306
01:11:06,850 --> 01:11:10,830
Speaker 2: persuaded and sees the value in human emotions and wants

1307
01:11:10,890 --> 01:11:13,590
Speaker 2: to use them and wants to engage them. But as

1308
01:11:13,630 --> 01:11:15,689
Speaker 2: we see here, can still turn those off when they

1309
01:11:15,710 --> 01:11:18,310
Speaker 2: get in the way. And I think it's Picard that

1310
01:11:18,330 --> 01:11:20,900
Speaker 2: has the line, like, I envy you sometimes that you

1311
01:11:20,920 --> 01:11:22,680
Speaker 2: can do something like this because I can't just turn

1312
01:11:22,720 --> 01:11:23,000
Speaker 2: it off.

1313
01:11:23,400 --> 01:11:27,140
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, I can't. But and it connects also

1314
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:30,059
Speaker 3: to this. thing that becomes a theme in the episode,

1315
01:11:30,100 --> 01:11:33,790
Speaker 3: which is that data does at some level really desire

1316
01:11:33,890 --> 01:11:37,049
Speaker 3: to be human, that that's what he wants more than anything,

1317
01:11:37,110 --> 01:11:39,750
Speaker 3: I guess, especially when the emotion chip is turned on.

1318
01:11:39,830 --> 01:11:45,580
Speaker 3: That's his, that's his gut level desire. Yeah. And so, uh, yeah, the,

1319
01:11:45,620 --> 01:11:48,540
Speaker 3: so there's this assault happens, but the crew are pushed back.

1320
01:11:48,640 --> 01:11:53,470
Speaker 3: Many crew members are assimilated. Data is captured by the Borg.

1321
01:11:54,830 --> 01:11:58,370
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile, he gets separated from Picard and Picard

1322
01:11:58,430 --> 01:12:01,770
Speaker 3: crosses paths with Lily Sloan, the engineer from Earth who

1323
01:12:01,790 --> 01:12:06,200
Speaker 3: was brought up to the Enterprise to cure her radiation poisoning. Again,

1324
01:12:06,400 --> 01:12:08,420
Speaker 3: she is going to be the fish out of water

1325
01:12:08,500 --> 01:12:11,059
Speaker 3: on the ship. And she takes she takes a lot

1326
01:12:11,080 --> 01:12:14,080
Speaker 3: of convincing that what's going on is real. I think

1327
01:12:14,120 --> 01:12:17,200
Speaker 3: initially she thinks it's some kind of elaborate hoax by

1328
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:19,280
Speaker 3: their contemporary enemies on Earth.

1329
01:12:20,729 --> 01:12:22,170
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot to take in. So she is

1330
01:12:22,210 --> 01:12:23,030
Speaker 2: doubtful at first.

1331
01:12:23,330 --> 01:12:26,630
Speaker 3: Yeah. But Picard like shows her, you know, that they're

1332
01:12:26,650 --> 01:12:29,670
Speaker 3: in orbit and demonstrates a force field and all this

1333
01:12:29,710 --> 01:12:33,750
Speaker 3: technology they don't have yet. So eventually she starts accepting

1334
01:12:33,850 --> 01:12:37,599
Speaker 3: the reality of the situation. There's this set piece we

1335
01:12:37,640 --> 01:12:41,500
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier where Picard and Sloane are chased by Borg

1336
01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:45,620
Speaker 3: and they evade them using a holodeck virtual novel as

1337
01:12:45,660 --> 01:12:49,500
Speaker 3: a distraction. So Picard goes in, he's like, turn it on,

1338
01:12:49,620 --> 01:12:52,260
Speaker 3: you know, the name of the novel, chapter 13 or something.

1339
01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:56,760
Speaker 3: And suddenly we're in a swanky nightclub on Earth in

1340
01:12:56,780 --> 01:13:01,830
Speaker 3: the 1930s. And it's a gangster detective story involving some

1341
01:13:01,890 --> 01:13:05,050
Speaker 3: character with a metal nose. He's called Nicky the Nose

1342
01:13:05,110 --> 01:13:08,670
Speaker 3: or something. And Rob, do you know from the show

1343
01:13:08,729 --> 01:13:13,120
Speaker 3: more about, is there consistency in how the visual novels work?

1344
01:13:13,180 --> 01:13:17,100
Speaker 3: Is it like a video game that you play fully embodied?

1345
01:13:17,120 --> 01:13:20,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just an immersive virtual world that may have

1346
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:22,660
Speaker 2: some degree of narrative or might be like kind of

1347
01:13:22,700 --> 01:13:26,900
Speaker 2: a sandbox world. So yeah, this is the kind of thing,

1348
01:13:26,930 --> 01:13:29,330
Speaker 2: you'd have whole episodes that of course would involve the holodeck.

1349
01:13:30,210 --> 01:13:32,630
Speaker 2: So this was fun. I didn't expect this to have

1350
01:13:32,710 --> 01:13:35,070
Speaker 2: any holodeck in it. And I honestly didn't remember this

1351
01:13:35,130 --> 01:13:37,850
Speaker 2: scene from when I saw it the first time. So

1352
01:13:38,370 --> 01:13:41,090
Speaker 2: it's pretty fun. They could have easily been lost in

1353
01:13:41,150 --> 01:13:43,350
Speaker 2: here the whole episode. We get a fun cameo in

1354
01:13:43,370 --> 01:13:46,840
Speaker 2: here because the maitre d' at the holodeck nightclub is

1355
01:13:46,860 --> 01:13:52,269
Speaker 2: played by Ethan Phillips, born 1955. Great American actor, character actor,

1356
01:13:52,290 --> 01:13:56,050
Speaker 2: and comedic actor. But he plays, he played Neelix on

1357
01:13:56,090 --> 01:13:59,470
Speaker 2: Star Trek Voyager. So we get a little cameo from

1358
01:13:59,510 --> 01:14:02,750
Speaker 2: a Star Trek actor here. There's also a scene earlier

1359
01:14:02,810 --> 01:14:05,330
Speaker 2: where they end up, the Borg are chasing their characters

1360
01:14:05,410 --> 01:14:10,670
Speaker 2: through medical. And we get the holographic doctor from Voyager

1361
01:14:10,750 --> 01:14:12,690
Speaker 2: played by Robert Picardo, born 1953.

1362
01:14:12,670 --> 01:14:17,780
Speaker 3: So Neelix, Crusher is trying to buy time to get

1363
01:14:17,960 --> 01:14:20,650
Speaker 3: everybody out of medical. They're escaping into a duct while

1364
01:14:20,670 --> 01:14:23,610
Speaker 3: the Borg are breaking down the door. And she turns

1365
01:14:23,689 --> 01:14:26,170
Speaker 3: on the holographic doctor and is like, you know, buy

1366
01:14:26,250 --> 01:14:28,980
Speaker 3: us time. The hologram doesn't want to do it. But

1367
01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:31,500
Speaker 3: when the Borg come in, we don't even see them.

1368
01:14:31,560 --> 01:14:34,580
Speaker 3: We just hear somebody break through the door and he's like, uh,

1369
01:14:34,640 --> 01:14:38,460
Speaker 3: you appear to be suffering from skin irritation from those implants.

1370
01:14:38,540 --> 01:14:40,390
Speaker 3: What could I prescribe you a cream?

1371
01:14:41,710 --> 01:14:42,390
Speaker 2: It's pretty fun.

1372
01:14:42,450 --> 01:14:42,689
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1373
01:14:42,710 --> 01:14:45,310
Speaker 2: And the nice Voyager cameo here and Picardo is always

1374
01:14:45,330 --> 01:14:47,850
Speaker 2: a lot of fun, whether he's playing a creepy, um,

1375
01:14:47,990 --> 01:14:51,410
Speaker 2: werewolf and Joe Dante's the howling or marrying a lady

1376
01:14:51,450 --> 01:14:54,990
Speaker 2: gremlin in Joe Dante's gremlins too. Uh, so yeah, always

1377
01:14:55,010 --> 01:14:55,530
Speaker 2: fun to see him.

1378
01:14:57,050 --> 01:15:00,630
Speaker 3: So anyway, uh, Yeah. So they're on the holodeck for

1379
01:15:00,689 --> 01:15:04,710
Speaker 3: the scene. Lily Sloan and Picard are, and I think

1380
01:15:04,770 --> 01:15:08,310
Speaker 3: Picard picked this particular chapter because he knows he can

1381
01:15:08,370 --> 01:15:11,870
Speaker 3: get a Tommy gun, a hologram Tommy gun, and he

1382
01:15:12,070 --> 01:15:15,050
Speaker 3: uses it to kill the Borg. And I was like,

1383
01:15:15,350 --> 01:15:20,720
Speaker 3: what holodeck simulations of weapons would be actually lethal? And

1384
01:15:21,240 --> 01:15:24,260
Speaker 3: Sloan has the same question. And Picard says, if you

1385
01:15:24,300 --> 01:15:28,320
Speaker 3: disable the safety protocols, yes, a holographic gun will actually kill.

1386
01:15:29,220 --> 01:15:32,580
Speaker 2: I like to think that Picard being traumatized by the

1387
01:15:32,620 --> 01:15:38,719
Speaker 2: Borg and also being perhaps a bit cagey and paranoid

1388
01:15:38,760 --> 01:15:42,220
Speaker 2: about them just had this written into all of his

1389
01:15:42,260 --> 01:15:47,460
Speaker 2: holodeck scenarios. Like lethal violence is permitted, but only against Borg. Yeah.

1390
01:15:48,150 --> 01:15:50,310
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah. When does he turn off the safety protocols?

1391
01:15:50,350 --> 01:15:52,090
Speaker 3: I guess maybe he does say that I didn't know

1392
01:15:52,130 --> 01:15:56,310
Speaker 3: this earlier. Uh, but also in this sequence, Lily Sloan

1393
01:15:56,729 --> 01:16:03,310
Speaker 3: observes that Picard is acting obsessed with destroying the Borg

1394
01:16:03,990 --> 01:16:07,560
Speaker 3: to the exclusion of other concerns. Uh, and I think

1395
01:16:07,610 --> 01:16:11,519
Speaker 3: familiar audience members will note sort of against his normal

1396
01:16:11,620 --> 01:16:18,009
Speaker 3: humanistic personality. So, for example, she sees Picard coldly digging

1397
01:16:18,110 --> 01:16:22,650
Speaker 3: modules out of dead Borg, really without showing any honor

1398
01:16:22,729 --> 01:16:24,350
Speaker 3: to the fact that this was once one of his

1399
01:16:24,410 --> 01:16:26,590
Speaker 3: crew members. He's just kind of like, ah, this was

1400
01:16:26,610 --> 01:16:28,809
Speaker 3: Ensign Lynch, and just kind of moves on.

1401
01:16:28,939 --> 01:16:33,219
Speaker 2: Is this the one, too, that gets taken by the Borg,

1402
01:16:33,280 --> 01:16:35,680
Speaker 2: infected by the Borg? Because in this movie, I think

1403
01:16:35,700 --> 01:16:38,080
Speaker 2: this movie introduces the idea that the Borg can essentially

1404
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:43,930
Speaker 2: touch you. And inject nanobots into your bloodstream that start, like,

1405
01:16:43,950 --> 01:16:46,380
Speaker 2: assimilating you in real time.

1406
01:16:46,400 --> 01:16:47,339
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1407
01:16:47,780 --> 01:16:49,660
Speaker 2: And so he sees this happening to one of the

1408
01:16:49,680 --> 01:16:51,380
Speaker 2: crew members. And the crew member's like, help me. And

1409
01:16:51,460 --> 01:16:53,860
Speaker 2: Picard's like, there's no helping him. And, like, just phasers

1410
01:16:53,900 --> 01:16:55,120
Speaker 2: him to death. Oh, yeah.

1411
01:16:55,160 --> 01:16:56,500
Speaker 3: That happens also. Yeah.

1412
01:16:56,540 --> 01:17:00,769
Speaker 2: And she corners him on this at some point as well. Like, saying, like,

1413
01:17:00,790 --> 01:17:02,790
Speaker 2: you didn't even try to help that guy. Like, I

1414
01:17:02,810 --> 01:17:04,250
Speaker 2: thought you were, you know, the great captain.

1415
01:17:04,270 --> 01:17:04,350
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1416
01:17:04,740 --> 01:17:08,389
Speaker 2: But you didn't try to help him at all. What

1417
01:17:08,410 --> 01:17:09,550
Speaker 2: does that tell me about you?

1418
01:17:10,270 --> 01:17:12,950
Speaker 3: And this will later come to a head, not quite yet,

1419
01:17:13,020 --> 01:17:15,180
Speaker 3: but in a minute, when Sloane has to be the

1420
01:17:15,220 --> 01:17:18,300
Speaker 3: character to talk some sense into Picard to accuse him

1421
01:17:18,460 --> 01:17:24,490
Speaker 3: of being Captain Ahab. So it's like, who's the con now? Uh, but, uh,

1422
01:17:24,540 --> 01:17:27,360
Speaker 3: there is another action set piece that I thought was

1423
01:17:27,380 --> 01:17:31,340
Speaker 3: pretty cool where Picard, Worf and Lieutenant Hawk have to

1424
01:17:31,400 --> 01:17:34,689
Speaker 3: go out and do a spacewalk. I remember this very

1425
01:17:34,750 --> 01:17:37,310
Speaker 3: much from the first time I saw the movie. So

1426
01:17:37,370 --> 01:17:39,729
Speaker 3: they go out on the surface of the ship and

1427
01:17:39,770 --> 01:17:42,750
Speaker 3: then you see like, because you know, perspective doesn't, uh,

1428
01:17:42,910 --> 01:17:45,400
Speaker 3: up and down matter in space, it inverts and they're

1429
01:17:45,420 --> 01:17:48,910
Speaker 3: walking on the underside of the ship. And, uh, they

1430
01:17:49,110 --> 01:17:52,019
Speaker 3: are going out there to stop some Borg from repurpose

1431
01:17:52,180 --> 01:17:55,420
Speaker 3: repurposing one of the ship's components to send that call

1432
01:17:55,460 --> 01:17:58,180
Speaker 3: for reinforcements. Cause remember they're trying to get in contact

1433
01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:02,040
Speaker 3: with the Borg of this time to come to earth. Uh,

1434
01:18:02,160 --> 01:18:04,900
Speaker 3: and this turns into a great action scene. It involves

1435
01:18:04,939 --> 01:18:09,880
Speaker 3: like it's an unusual action scene because it's in microgravity.

1436
01:18:09,960 --> 01:18:14,920
Speaker 3: So it involves these big lumbering, slow movements with big windups.

1437
01:18:15,810 --> 01:18:18,120
Speaker 3: but it still, I think it works pretty good. The

1438
01:18:18,160 --> 01:18:18,939
Speaker 3: tension is high.

1439
01:18:18,960 --> 01:18:22,780
Speaker 2: Yeah. And of course we get this great scene with

1440
01:18:22,800 --> 01:18:24,980
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Hawk. You know, he's a red shirt. We know

1441
01:18:25,000 --> 01:18:27,559
Speaker 2: he's doomed. One of the Borg like takes him out,

1442
01:18:27,580 --> 01:18:29,980
Speaker 2: like throws him out of view, like sort of over

1443
01:18:30,020 --> 01:18:31,930
Speaker 2: the side. And we think, oh no, he's dead. But

1444
01:18:31,970 --> 01:18:34,430
Speaker 2: then he comes back. But then we get this moment

1445
01:18:34,450 --> 01:18:36,910
Speaker 2: where he turns his head and we see, oh, inside

1446
01:18:36,950 --> 01:18:39,450
Speaker 2: of the space suit, half of his face has already

1447
01:18:39,470 --> 01:18:42,450
Speaker 2: been assimilated by the Borg. He has like, you know,

1448
01:18:42,880 --> 01:18:46,320
Speaker 2: nanites running around underneath his skin and his blood vessels,

1449
01:18:46,920 --> 01:18:49,270
Speaker 2: he has been turned. And it's a nice horror moment

1450
01:18:49,310 --> 01:18:49,670
Speaker 2: for sure.

1451
01:18:50,070 --> 01:18:53,439
Speaker 3: Yeah so he gets assimilated but Worf and Picard succeed

1452
01:18:53,479 --> 01:18:55,820
Speaker 3: in their mission out here and they survive.

1453
01:18:55,520 --> 01:18:58,740
Speaker 2: Yeah Worf has to like repair his suit in real

1454
01:18:58,760 --> 01:19:01,880
Speaker 2: time he's decompressing so he uses like some Borg tubes

1455
01:19:01,939 --> 01:19:05,020
Speaker 2: attached to a hand of a Borg that he sliced

1456
01:19:05,120 --> 01:19:07,780
Speaker 2: off uses that to tie things back together.

1457
01:19:07,860 --> 01:19:13,410
Speaker 3: Nice So when is Picard's moment of reckoning about being

1458
01:19:13,450 --> 01:19:18,940
Speaker 3: an Ahab himself? This happens after Worf suggests a plan.

1459
01:19:18,960 --> 01:19:21,800
Speaker 3: I think it comes from Worf. He says, we can

1460
01:19:21,840 --> 01:19:25,140
Speaker 3: defeat the Borg if we just evacuate the crew and

1461
01:19:25,220 --> 01:19:28,220
Speaker 3: set the ship to self-destruct. Let's just destroy the Enterprise

1462
01:19:28,280 --> 01:19:31,320
Speaker 3: and we can wipe them out that way. And at first,

1463
01:19:31,400 --> 01:19:34,860
Speaker 3: Picard lashes out and says, no, that is running away

1464
01:19:34,900 --> 01:19:37,299
Speaker 3: from battle. We've got to meet them. And he calls

1465
01:19:37,400 --> 01:19:40,680
Speaker 3: Worf a coward. Uh, Worf does not take this well.

1466
01:19:40,689 --> 01:19:42,660
Speaker 3: He says, if you were anyone else, I'd kill you

1467
01:19:42,700 --> 01:19:46,780
Speaker 3: where you stand. Um, but, uh, Picard goes back to

1468
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:50,400
Speaker 3: his quarters and again, it is Lily Sloan, the character

1469
01:19:50,439 --> 01:19:53,720
Speaker 3: from the 21st century who is able to make Picard

1470
01:19:53,760 --> 01:19:56,970
Speaker 3: see reason. She does so by pointing out that he

1471
01:19:57,050 --> 01:19:59,150
Speaker 3: is behaving like Captain Ahab.

1472
01:19:59,610 --> 01:20:01,870
Speaker 2: It is interesting how, yes, she is outside of the

1473
01:20:01,910 --> 01:20:04,610
Speaker 2: chain of command. It's even, it's mentioned like everyone else

1474
01:20:04,670 --> 01:20:07,390
Speaker 2: is used to falling in line with Picard's judgments and

1475
01:20:07,450 --> 01:20:10,710
Speaker 2: even his crazy plans. But she is not part of

1476
01:20:10,729 --> 01:20:13,809
Speaker 2: this command structure. And she's from a culture where command

1477
01:20:13,830 --> 01:20:17,210
Speaker 2: structures have seemingly just they're all gone. Like they're in

1478
01:20:17,229 --> 01:20:21,150
Speaker 2: the aftermath of a devastating global war. And all the

1479
01:20:21,189 --> 01:20:24,110
Speaker 2: connections that are left are based on sort of cooperation

1480
01:20:24,189 --> 01:20:24,760
Speaker 2: and friendship.

1481
01:20:25,439 --> 01:20:27,080
Speaker 3: That's a good thing to point out about the chain

1482
01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:29,380
Speaker 3: of command. I didn't really think about it that way.

1483
01:20:29,900 --> 01:20:32,880
Speaker 3: And how she being an outsider has a kind of

1484
01:20:32,920 --> 01:20:37,300
Speaker 3: authority that like the actual crew are not really free

1485
01:20:37,320 --> 01:20:43,139
Speaker 3: to exercise that. So, yeah, there's definitely that aspect. But

1486
01:20:43,520 --> 01:20:46,340
Speaker 3: I like how it seems like something about the invocation

1487
01:20:46,380 --> 01:20:49,340
Speaker 3: of the literature actually breaks through as well because she

1488
01:20:49,420 --> 01:20:54,250
Speaker 3: gets Picard quoting Moby Dick. He says, I have the

1489
01:20:54,310 --> 01:20:57,370
Speaker 3: line written down. He says, and he piled upon the

1490
01:20:57,430 --> 01:21:00,070
Speaker 3: white whale's hump the sum of all the rage and

1491
01:21:00,110 --> 01:21:03,090
Speaker 3: health felt by his whole race. If his chest had

1492
01:21:03,130 --> 01:21:06,760
Speaker 3: been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it. Uh,

1493
01:21:06,840 --> 01:21:09,240
Speaker 3: so he's, he's quoting, you know, the, the hate and

1494
01:21:09,260 --> 01:21:13,120
Speaker 3: the rage coming from, from Ahab toward this whale. Uh,

1495
01:21:13,200 --> 01:21:15,880
Speaker 3: but of course he remembers the end of the story,

1496
01:21:15,960 --> 01:21:19,540
Speaker 3: which is that that rage destroys everyone. It destroys him.

1497
01:21:19,560 --> 01:21:23,700
Speaker 3: It destroys his crew and his whole ship. Um, and, uh,

1498
01:21:23,729 --> 01:21:25,650
Speaker 3: Sloane says, I guess he didn't know when to quit.

1499
01:21:26,270 --> 01:21:30,450
Speaker 3: So Picard realizes he is being unreasonable and his judgment

1500
01:21:30,590 --> 01:21:34,090
Speaker 3: is not clear. It is clouded by emotion. So he

1501
01:21:34,130 --> 01:21:37,189
Speaker 3: changes his mind. He says, yes, let's go with Worf's plan.

1502
01:21:37,270 --> 01:21:40,290
Speaker 3: Evacuate the crew, destroy the ship. That makes the most sense.

1503
01:21:40,750 --> 01:21:44,530
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like the little moment where, well, I'm

1504
01:21:44,550 --> 01:21:47,290
Speaker 2: probably getting ahead of myself here, but he acts like

1505
01:21:47,410 --> 01:21:50,020
Speaker 2: we're all going to evacuate. But then at the last minute,

1506
01:21:50,060 --> 01:21:52,720
Speaker 2: it becomes clear, actually, he's not going to evacuate. He's

1507
01:21:52,740 --> 01:21:55,880
Speaker 2: going to stay behind to try and save Data and

1508
01:21:56,120 --> 01:21:59,900
Speaker 2: defeat the Borg queen. But he tells the others, he's like,

1509
01:22:00,020 --> 01:22:01,759
Speaker 2: what you need to do is just go down first. I,

1510
01:22:01,770 --> 01:22:03,810
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to try and stop this. I

1511
01:22:03,850 --> 01:22:07,030
Speaker 2: probably can't be prepared to just find a quiet corner

1512
01:22:07,050 --> 01:22:09,910
Speaker 2: of North America and just settle down there and try

1513
01:22:09,950 --> 01:22:13,150
Speaker 2: not to like screw up the timeline in a, uh, which, um,

1514
01:22:13,350 --> 01:22:14,550
Speaker 2: you know, it's, it's, I don't know. It was kind

1515
01:22:14,570 --> 01:22:16,630
Speaker 2: of like a haunting moment where you're imagining this might

1516
01:22:16,729 --> 01:22:18,979
Speaker 2: be the case. Like imagine like the crew of the

1517
01:22:18,990 --> 01:22:24,080
Speaker 2: enterprise just vanishes into, um, into their past and our, um,

1518
01:22:24,200 --> 01:22:25,520
Speaker 2: you know, not too distant.

1519
01:22:25,240 --> 01:22:28,260
Speaker 3: Future hiding out in the 21st century for the rest

1520
01:22:28,300 --> 01:22:28,900
Speaker 3: of their lives.

1521
01:22:28,960 --> 01:22:29,120
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1522
01:22:38,180 --> 01:22:40,820
Speaker 3: So yeah, everybody else gets in the escape pods. Picard

1523
01:22:40,900 --> 01:22:44,570
Speaker 3: personally stays behind to rescue Data. What's been going on

1524
01:22:44,610 --> 01:22:47,450
Speaker 3: with Data this whole time? It's been getting weird. Yeah,

1525
01:22:47,470 --> 01:22:49,950
Speaker 3: it's been getting weird. Just some weird stuff going on

1526
01:22:49,970 --> 01:22:53,270
Speaker 3: with the Borg Queen. So we meet the Borg Queen

1527
01:22:53,510 --> 01:22:55,769
Speaker 3: after Data is captured. I think it's in the first

1528
01:22:55,810 --> 01:22:59,880
Speaker 3: scene where he wakes up after being captured. It lowers

1529
01:22:59,960 --> 01:23:03,059
Speaker 3: her body or her upper body into her lower body.

1530
01:23:04,310 --> 01:23:06,460
Speaker 3: And she starts talking to him. We've already talked about

1531
01:23:06,479 --> 01:23:09,240
Speaker 3: some of the villain monologues she gives. He's trying to

1532
01:23:09,260 --> 01:23:12,400
Speaker 3: understand what she is, what her role is within the Borg.

1533
01:23:13,200 --> 01:23:16,320
Speaker 3: She's cagey about that. She's like, you know, I bring

1534
01:23:16,439 --> 01:23:18,960
Speaker 3: order to chaos. I am the Alpha and the Omega.

1535
01:23:19,460 --> 01:23:23,300
Speaker 3: Not a lot of clear answers. But the Borg Queen

1536
01:23:23,880 --> 01:23:28,280
Speaker 3: has been steadily ratcheting up the tension on Data by

1537
01:23:28,540 --> 01:23:33,550
Speaker 3: offering him temptations. Because again, what Data really wants more

1538
01:23:33,590 --> 01:23:36,010
Speaker 3: than anything is to be human, or at least to

1539
01:23:36,050 --> 01:23:40,090
Speaker 3: be more like a real human. I think this does

1540
01:23:40,150 --> 01:23:42,189
Speaker 3: tie into a bunch of previous plot lines on The

1541
01:23:42,229 --> 01:23:45,870
Speaker 3: Next Generation. But of course, he can never really be

1542
01:23:45,990 --> 01:23:48,670
Speaker 3: human as he is until now.

1543
01:23:49,330 --> 01:23:52,450
Speaker 2: There's a great scene earlier when they find the Phoenix,

1544
01:23:52,689 --> 01:23:59,550
Speaker 2: the historic ICBM-turned-warp spaceship. where he and Picard have a

1545
01:23:59,550 --> 01:24:01,790
Speaker 2: moment where Picard touches it. I think it's Picard in

1546
01:24:01,850 --> 01:24:04,550
Speaker 2: this scene. Touches the spaceship with his bare hand, and

1547
01:24:04,590 --> 01:24:09,430
Speaker 2: Data's like, I don't understand, I'll try it. And Picard explains, like,

1548
01:24:09,850 --> 01:24:11,790
Speaker 2: it's about the sense of touch. Like, I'm touching with

1549
01:24:11,830 --> 01:24:14,740
Speaker 2: my hand, and it makes the interaction feel more memorable.

1550
01:24:15,100 --> 01:24:18,120
Speaker 2: And of course, Data has no flesh. He can't actually

1551
01:24:18,160 --> 01:24:19,720
Speaker 2: have the same experience, apparently.

1552
01:24:20,360 --> 01:24:23,120
Speaker 3: Well, and I think it's also a take on the

1553
01:24:23,160 --> 01:24:27,820
Speaker 3: classic philosophical thought experiment of where... Uh, I don't remember the,

1554
01:24:27,840 --> 01:24:30,720
Speaker 3: I think it was character named Mary who they say,

1555
01:24:30,760 --> 01:24:34,189
Speaker 3: you know, she is a scientist who specializes in the

1556
01:24:34,240 --> 01:24:38,410
Speaker 3: physics of color. And so she understands everything about wavelengths

1557
01:24:38,470 --> 01:24:41,710
Speaker 3: of light and, you know, the science of, uh, of

1558
01:24:41,770 --> 01:24:45,650
Speaker 3: electromagnetic radiation and how color works and the visual processing

1559
01:24:45,670 --> 01:24:48,650
Speaker 3: centers on the brain. But she herself is colorblind and

1560
01:24:48,710 --> 01:24:52,870
Speaker 3: cannot see color. And so one day she suddenly is

1561
01:24:52,950 --> 01:24:56,910
Speaker 3: able to see color. And so the question is, does

1562
01:24:56,990 --> 01:25:00,990
Speaker 3: she learn anything by being able to have the sensory

1563
01:25:01,050 --> 01:25:04,590
Speaker 3: experience of color, even though it doesn't change anything about

1564
01:25:04,610 --> 01:25:08,810
Speaker 3: what she knew about the workings of color? And so

1565
01:25:08,850 --> 01:25:11,090
Speaker 3: I think there's a similar thing going on in this scene.

1566
01:25:11,910 --> 01:25:15,210
Speaker 3: Data is like, do you learn something by touching the ship?

1567
01:25:15,550 --> 01:25:18,729
Speaker 3: And Picard says, yes, I do. And data can't quite

1568
01:25:18,770 --> 01:25:20,970
Speaker 3: figure out what that is, is the thing that's missing

1569
01:25:20,990 --> 01:25:23,510
Speaker 3: for him. It's like, he doesn't really know anything else

1570
01:25:23,610 --> 01:25:27,150
Speaker 3: by touching it that he couldn't figure out otherwise. And

1571
01:25:27,180 --> 01:25:29,380
Speaker 3: that difference is something he wants to rectify. I think

1572
01:25:29,420 --> 01:25:31,980
Speaker 3: he wants to know what it's like to have the

1573
01:25:32,020 --> 01:25:35,900
Speaker 3: sensation that you have a new understanding just by, by contact,

1574
01:25:35,979 --> 01:25:37,380
Speaker 3: by experience.

1575
01:25:37,439 --> 01:25:42,860
Speaker 2: So his great desire is this enhanced human comprehension. The

1576
01:25:42,900 --> 01:25:45,260
Speaker 2: Borg side of this is they just want, they need

1577
01:25:45,280 --> 01:25:47,960
Speaker 2: his encryption data. They need to get to his encryption

1578
01:25:47,979 --> 01:25:51,840
Speaker 2: data in order to break, hack the rest of the ship.

1579
01:25:52,479 --> 01:25:55,090
Speaker 2: But as she says, we're willing to help your dreams

1580
01:25:55,130 --> 01:25:58,150
Speaker 2: come true to make ours come true. And so that's

1581
01:25:58,210 --> 01:26:00,390
Speaker 2: where a lot of this ends up coming. And that's

1582
01:26:00,530 --> 01:26:02,610
Speaker 2: one of the reasons, the plot reason why she's like,

1583
01:26:02,910 --> 01:26:04,430
Speaker 2: let's see what we can do to make you more

1584
01:26:04,729 --> 01:26:07,019
Speaker 2: human data. Let's see how you respond to it.

1585
01:26:07,390 --> 01:26:10,960
Speaker 3: Exactly. So what the Borg queen presents data with is

1586
01:26:11,000 --> 01:26:15,629
Speaker 3: the option of a sort of reverse Borg assimilation. Usually

1587
01:26:15,689 --> 01:26:20,130
Speaker 3: we see organic beings assimilated by getting captured and then

1588
01:26:20,229 --> 01:26:23,850
Speaker 3: modified with a bunch of inorganic technology grafted onto them.

1589
01:26:24,830 --> 01:26:27,600
Speaker 3: What the Borg queen does to Data is she starts

1590
01:26:27,800 --> 01:26:33,479
Speaker 3: grafting skin onto him, gradually replacing his machine parts with

1591
01:26:33,560 --> 01:26:36,519
Speaker 3: organic parts. And there's a great scene where she like

1592
01:26:36,640 --> 01:26:39,340
Speaker 3: blows on his new skin and gives him goosebumps.

1593
01:26:39,580 --> 01:26:39,780
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1594
01:26:40,780 --> 01:26:44,900
Speaker 3: This also turns into explicit sexual appeals. The Borg queen

1595
01:26:45,320 --> 01:26:50,330
Speaker 3: is into Data, and I think she's kissing him, isn't she? Yeah, yeah.

1596
01:26:50,410 --> 01:26:53,309
Speaker 3: But what she really wants, I think, this seems to

1597
01:26:53,350 --> 01:26:56,570
Speaker 3: be a manipulation tactic, because what she really wants is

1598
01:26:56,610 --> 01:26:59,750
Speaker 3: for Data to turn over the encryption codes to the

1599
01:26:59,770 --> 01:27:02,970
Speaker 3: ship's computer and give full control of the Enterprise to

1600
01:27:03,010 --> 01:27:07,470
Speaker 3: the Borg. And she can give him real incarnate humanity

1601
01:27:07,590 --> 01:27:10,310
Speaker 3: in exchange for this. So will he do it? This

1602
01:27:10,380 --> 01:27:12,620
Speaker 3: is the part that's the last temptation of Data.

1603
01:27:13,260 --> 01:27:16,460
Speaker 2: It is also interesting from the Borg perspective because when

1604
01:27:16,960 --> 01:27:20,939
Speaker 2: she first encounters Data, she even mentions that he's essentially

1605
01:27:20,979 --> 01:27:24,600
Speaker 2: an abomination to them. He's not the ultimate. He's just

1606
01:27:24,680 --> 01:27:29,740
Speaker 2: a flawed machine made by un-augmented flesh beings. And as

1607
01:27:29,780 --> 01:27:32,820
Speaker 2: we've been saying, the Borg's ideal is this perfect unity

1608
01:27:32,880 --> 01:27:35,640
Speaker 2: of machine and flesh. And Data is no flesh. He's

1609
01:27:35,680 --> 01:27:37,080
Speaker 2: all machine. Right.

1610
01:27:37,180 --> 01:27:40,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she doesn't like it, which is funny because

1611
01:27:40,400 --> 01:27:43,730
Speaker 3: she's kissing on him and everything. It makes it even

1612
01:27:43,790 --> 01:27:46,270
Speaker 3: clearer that I think she's trying to manipulate him. Yeah.

1613
01:27:46,390 --> 01:27:47,750
Speaker 2: Though at this point, he does have a little bit

1614
01:27:47,790 --> 01:27:50,670
Speaker 2: of flesh on him. So maybe, you know, meeting him halfway.

1615
01:27:52,229 --> 01:27:55,280
Speaker 3: So anyway, this process has really moved on by the

1616
01:27:55,320 --> 01:27:58,700
Speaker 3: time Picard comes to rescue Data at the climax. So

1617
01:27:59,120 --> 01:28:01,680
Speaker 3: he's got like half of a real Brent Spiner face now.

1618
01:28:01,700 --> 01:28:01,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1619
01:28:02,930 --> 01:28:04,930
Speaker 3: Which we're not used to seeing on the show. Like

1620
01:28:04,970 --> 01:28:07,670
Speaker 3: in The Next Generation, he's always got the synthetic flesh.

1621
01:28:07,990 --> 01:28:11,670
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the pale synthetic flesh, the yellow eyes. And yeah,

1622
01:28:11,710 --> 01:28:13,810
Speaker 2: here he's like a patchwork man already. He's got these

1623
01:28:13,870 --> 01:28:17,120
Speaker 2: patches of like living flesh through which he can feel.

1624
01:28:17,460 --> 01:28:19,979
Speaker 2: Like there's that scene where he tries to escape and

1625
01:28:20,680 --> 01:28:22,979
Speaker 2: he gets slashed on the skin and that's when he stops.

1626
01:28:23,020 --> 01:28:25,840
Speaker 2: He's like he's felt physical flesh pain for the first

1627
01:28:25,880 --> 01:28:30,260
Speaker 2: time and it stops his rebellion like in its tracks.

1628
01:28:31,100 --> 01:28:34,320
Speaker 3: Now, in this final showdown, for a while, you think

1629
01:28:34,439 --> 01:28:37,290
Speaker 3: that Data has gone over to the dark side. He

1630
01:28:37,410 --> 01:28:39,930
Speaker 3: seems to unlock the ship's computer for the board.

1631
01:28:40,280 --> 01:28:40,639
Speaker 2: Queen.

1632
01:28:41,500 --> 01:28:45,979
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the Phoenix test flight is happening, and as the

1633
01:28:46,050 --> 01:28:48,670
Speaker 3: craft is launching through space, it's about to activate the

1634
01:28:48,710 --> 01:28:53,210
Speaker 3: warp core. Data sends torpedoes at the craft, or seemingly

1635
01:28:53,270 --> 01:28:56,549
Speaker 3: at the craft. I think Riker and Geordi are on board.

1636
01:28:56,570 --> 01:28:57,099
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

1637
01:28:57,930 --> 01:29:00,790
Speaker 3: And it looks really dark for a second there, but

1638
01:29:00,830 --> 01:29:04,330
Speaker 3: it's a double cross. The torpedoes intentionally miss the ship

1639
01:29:04,770 --> 01:29:08,810
Speaker 3: and then data smashes open this huge vat of coolant

1640
01:29:08,910 --> 01:29:13,139
Speaker 3: gas that we learn earlier in the story dissolves organic material.

1641
01:29:13,160 --> 01:29:16,700
Speaker 3: So Picard is able to climb out of the way

1642
01:29:16,740 --> 01:29:19,740
Speaker 3: to safety. He's like climbing up on some board cables

1643
01:29:19,780 --> 01:29:22,750
Speaker 3: that are hanging from the ceiling. And all the Borg

1644
01:29:22,910 --> 01:29:27,010
Speaker 3: are destroyed because it melts their fleshly components. Only the

1645
01:29:27,070 --> 01:29:28,890
Speaker 3: hollow mechanical parts are left.

1646
01:29:29,110 --> 01:29:31,990
Speaker 2: So we get a monster villain death scene for Borg

1647
01:29:32,090 --> 01:29:35,469
Speaker 2: Queen where all of her fleshy parts just melt away

1648
01:29:35,550 --> 01:29:38,110
Speaker 2: and leaves behind just nothing but twitching mechanisms.

1649
01:29:38,600 --> 01:29:39,910
Speaker 3: And Data's new skin is gone.

1650
01:29:39,939 --> 01:29:41,040
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah.

1651
01:29:41,680 --> 01:29:44,200
Speaker 3: So Data saved the day. We always knew we could

1652
01:29:44,240 --> 01:29:48,280
Speaker 3: count on him. He's so dependable. So history goes off

1653
01:29:48,300 --> 01:29:51,320
Speaker 3: the way it's supposed to. Cochran makes a warp flight.

1654
01:29:51,420 --> 01:29:53,820
Speaker 3: And then later back on earth, we see this dramatic

1655
01:29:53,900 --> 01:29:57,810
Speaker 3: landing of an alien ship where a Vulcan ambassador comes

1656
01:29:57,970 --> 01:30:00,650
Speaker 3: out to greet the earthlings. And he does the, you know,

1657
01:30:00,710 --> 01:30:03,309
Speaker 3: he does the hand symbol of long and prosper. He

1658
01:30:03,350 --> 01:30:06,209
Speaker 3: comes to learn their ways. I think pretty quickly Cochran

1659
01:30:06,229 --> 01:30:09,740
Speaker 3: has the Vulcans in the saloon slamming whiskey and listening

1660
01:30:09,760 --> 01:30:10,540
Speaker 3: to rock and roll. Yeah.

1661
01:30:10,920 --> 01:30:15,330
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, classic dad rock becomes like the first cultural

1662
01:30:15,410 --> 01:30:17,510
Speaker 2: gift that Earthlings give to the Vulcans.

1663
01:30:17,870 --> 01:30:20,380
Speaker 3: Yeah, perfect. And then, of course, the Enterprise crew, they

1664
01:30:20,400 --> 01:30:22,100
Speaker 3: don't have to live out the rest of their days

1665
01:30:22,300 --> 01:30:24,840
Speaker 3: hiding in the 21st century. They can return to their

1666
01:30:24,900 --> 01:30:30,100
Speaker 3: own century, which they do. And so they do, and

1667
01:30:30,220 --> 01:30:31,309
Speaker 3: that's the end of the story.

1668
01:30:31,830 --> 01:30:35,430
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty fun, I have to say. I think

1669
01:30:35,470 --> 01:30:40,080
Speaker 2: it holds up really well. Great action, great intrigue. You know,

1670
01:30:40,160 --> 01:30:42,840
Speaker 2: it doesn't dabble with the thought-provoking concepts in the same

1671
01:30:42,920 --> 01:30:46,880
Speaker 2: way that like a two-part episode of the original Star

1672
01:30:46,900 --> 01:30:50,800
Speaker 2: Trek series would. But I think those elements are still there.

1673
01:30:50,840 --> 01:30:54,240
Speaker 2: You know, these questions about some of the anxieties about

1674
01:30:54,300 --> 01:30:58,880
Speaker 2: technology and also about, you know, certainly the last temptation

1675
01:30:58,900 --> 01:31:02,280
Speaker 2: of data being a prime area for consideration here where

1676
01:31:02,320 --> 01:31:06,320
Speaker 2: he even admits to Picard that like he was tempted. uh,

1677
01:31:06,380 --> 01:31:11,360
Speaker 2: for what is however many seconds, which 0.145 seconds. Yeah.

1678
01:31:11,420 --> 01:31:14,700
Speaker 2: Which he explains that for an Android with his processing speed,

1679
01:31:14,720 --> 01:31:18,280
Speaker 2: that's like an eternity. Like that's a, a long deliberation

1680
01:31:18,380 --> 01:31:20,580
Speaker 2: on his part. But then of course he decides to

1681
01:31:20,840 --> 01:31:23,400
Speaker 2: remain true to his friends and to his crew and

1682
01:31:23,780 --> 01:31:25,050
Speaker 2: ultimately to humanity.

1683
01:31:25,510 --> 01:31:26,750
Speaker 3: Which makes him more human.

1684
01:31:27,170 --> 01:31:29,870
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. He made the most human choice, even

1685
01:31:29,930 --> 01:31:35,889
Speaker 2: if he gave up the chance to become more flesh, uh, So, yeah, fascinating.

1686
01:31:36,100 --> 01:31:39,150
Speaker 2: I wonder if anyone has, surely someone has considered doing

1687
01:31:39,170 --> 01:31:41,390
Speaker 2: some sort of alt timeline where you have, you know,

1688
01:31:41,530 --> 01:31:46,349
Speaker 2: fully integrated Borg data who is now, now has the appropriate,

1689
01:31:46,390 --> 01:31:49,389
Speaker 2: the Borg appropriate proportions of flesh and machine.

1690
01:31:49,990 --> 01:31:52,190
Speaker 3: Some alt Borg lore. Yeah. Yeah.

1691
01:31:52,870 --> 01:31:54,189
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is a really fun one. I thought

1692
01:31:54,229 --> 01:31:56,230
Speaker 2: it held up. I don't know. There's probably a number

1693
01:31:56,250 --> 01:31:58,900
Speaker 2: of other things to discuss here about the way the

1694
01:31:58,939 --> 01:32:02,250
Speaker 2: Borg are presented or about the time paradox aspect of it.

1695
01:32:02,380 --> 01:32:05,510
Speaker 2: I don't know. It kind of, Pays not to go

1696
01:32:05,550 --> 01:32:08,930
Speaker 2: too far down the time paradox avenue with a film

1697
01:32:08,990 --> 01:32:11,610
Speaker 2: like this. But, you know, it ends up being pretty fun.

1698
01:32:11,650 --> 01:32:14,470
Speaker 2: It's a great cyborg movie. It's a great time travel movie.

1699
01:32:15,180 --> 01:32:16,340
Speaker 2: It's a great Star Trek movie.

1700
01:32:16,840 --> 01:32:18,000
Speaker 3: Five out of five centibites.

1701
01:32:18,280 --> 01:32:23,160
Speaker 2: There you go. All right. Well, I guess we're done

1702
01:32:23,200 --> 01:32:25,160
Speaker 2: with this episode, but we'd love to hear from everyone

1703
01:32:25,200 --> 01:32:27,229
Speaker 2: out there. We'd love to hear from other folks who

1704
01:32:27,310 --> 01:32:29,470
Speaker 2: encountered this movie in the wild back in the day.

1705
01:32:30,610 --> 01:32:32,590
Speaker 2: Did you encounter it as a Star Trek fan? Did

1706
01:32:32,610 --> 01:32:34,610
Speaker 2: you encounter it not knowing anything about Star Trek? We'd

1707
01:32:34,630 --> 01:32:37,220
Speaker 2: love to hear more about that. And just in general,

1708
01:32:37,310 --> 01:32:39,960
Speaker 2: your thoughts about the Borg, about some of the concepts

1709
01:32:40,280 --> 01:32:42,760
Speaker 2: that are bound up in this particular movie. All of

1710
01:32:42,840 --> 01:32:44,660
Speaker 2: it is fair game. And if you haven't listened to

1711
01:32:44,700 --> 01:32:47,660
Speaker 2: our core episodes about the Borg, dive into those. You're

1712
01:32:47,680 --> 01:32:50,860
Speaker 2: going to get more into science and culture and even

1713
01:32:50,880 --> 01:32:53,480
Speaker 2: a little mythology in those. So I highly recommend it.

1714
01:32:54,080 --> 01:32:56,000
Speaker 2: Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to

1715
01:32:56,020 --> 01:32:58,379
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast

1716
01:32:58,400 --> 01:33:00,100
Speaker 2: with core episodes in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1717
01:33:00,120 --> 01:33:03,150
Speaker 2: podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we

1718
01:33:03,170 --> 01:33:05,010
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

1719
01:33:05,030 --> 01:33:08,729
Speaker 2: weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you are

1720
01:33:08,770 --> 01:33:12,170
Speaker 2: on Letterboxd.com, look us up. Our username there is Weird House.

1721
01:33:12,570 --> 01:33:14,430
Speaker 2: On other social medias, we're just going to be under

1722
01:33:14,490 --> 01:33:16,660
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Look us up there. Follow

1723
01:33:16,700 --> 01:33:19,180
Speaker 2: us on Instagram. It's another good way to keep up

1724
01:33:19,200 --> 01:33:21,059
Speaker 2: with what we're doing and what sort of topics we're

1725
01:33:21,100 --> 01:33:21,429
Speaker 2: putting out.

1726
01:33:21,870 --> 01:33:25,610
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.

1727
01:33:26,010 --> 01:33:27,490
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1728
01:33:27,550 --> 01:33:29,990
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1729
01:33:30,050 --> 01:33:32,009
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1730
01:33:32,070 --> 01:33:35,850
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

1731
01:33:42,930 --> 01:33:45,390
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

1732
01:33:45,729 --> 01:33:49,070
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple

1733
01:33:49,090 --> 01:33:51,440
Speaker 1: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.