#018 - Alien Nation 1.12 "The Red Room"

0:01 Humans and aliens working together I. Really want to dig more into their culture. It's a mirror up to humanity. Social commentary through allegorical storytelling. Wild. Angry. Old man of pain there's. Nothing in the rules about paying debts with garbage. Removal don't have a hearts attack on mortgage Reading railroad. The pod needs lots of glucose where it will fill with mucus. I know that because the kids say that. Wheel of pressure. Dart 4 has an ethical imprint we can't override. Got a shrink at work who wants to talk.

0:29 I don't need one at home. It just used your brain for a minute. He had a traumatic experience with disco fecal matter. Just a monkey print and no monkey. I like it, I like literature. Jam all the keys as fast as you can. Question mark, question mark, question mark. We're all just rats in the maze and somebody else decides who gets the cheese. If you're a stalker like me, y'all should know that. I was worried that their house was bugged. We won't stop bugging you until you turn in your psychological profile.

0:58 Jordy Francesco is one of my all time favorite characters. The show is going to go to places that I really enjoy. Sour milk is a good thing to the tanked and knees. Soft with a subtle finish. This is a packed episode. Stay tuned listeners. We're both fans of Star Trek. Watching Alien Nation and we enjoy. It I am one of your hosts, Todd, this is Nick. This is the Alienating Ourselves podcast. Greetings humans and newcomers, and welcome back to Alienating Ourselves, the podcast where we examine sci-fi entertainment with a focus on aliens and the humans that try to brainwash them.

1:27 I am one of your hosts, Todd. I can definitely relate to Matt Sykes hesitations at attending parties and following through on certain metaphorical doors of opportunity, as demonstrated in the episode we're reviewing tonight. And joining me is always a guy who might be far less of a party pooper than I am, and also someone to whom I might owe an apology. He might. I have to carry this episode a little more than usual because I have an uncharacteristically low amount of notes on this episode. It's Nick.

1:54 Nick, how's it going? And I'm sorry. It's going really well, all things considered, Todd. I have stood outside many a door questioning going in or not, so I could really relate to that. But I am ready to get into this episode. There's a bit to go over so we will jump right in. Alien Nation Season 1 episode 12. The Red Room originally aired Monday, December 18th, 1989. This is the last episode of 1989 and for some reason they took a two week break. For the first time in the series run, we've explored human and newcomer love, courtship, sex, aging, and the power of myth.

2:35 So now it's time to explore psychology and behaviorism. Fun. While Matt Sykes dodges the mandatory police psych evals and the appointed psychologist, the behavior lab connected to Kathy's job is broken into by apparent protesters, and a string of murders are tied to yet another deep, dark secret from George Francisco's past. Is there a secret conspiracy again? Well, Matt and George find their separate lines of investigation once again, leading to the same suspect. Today, Todd and I will explore the answers to both of these questions, but spoiler alert, it's going to be a yes.

3:10 This is the only episode directed by Chuck Bauman, who I'm guessing met a lot of the production crew on The Incredible Hulk. There's some big crossovers there. This episode was written by Stephen Long Mitchell and Craig W Van Sickel, who wrote 5 episodes of Alien Nation together, including the Mixed Review episode 15 with Wanda and the excellent episode The Game. So they do two more after this one and we'll we'll see how they go. There are some interesting choices here. So what was your first reaction to this episode, Todd?

3:40 OK, well I've already. Hinted that I had a very low amount of notes for this, so I'll watch it again today. Hoping to scround for another bullet point. And I didn't find one. So the weird thing is, this is a good episode, but I just don't have a lot to say about it. It's almost like there's not that much to nitpick over, which in a way is a good thing, but it's also like there's nothing so stellar about the episode that I'm like, oh, that's a part I have to talk about. It's very even keel. It's like it's right down the middle but without feeling mediocre.

4:15 And I'm even questioning my own grade at the end because my grade that I did have from my first viewing last week before we had to reschedule and do something else makes it feel like this is the fifth best episode of the series. But then tonight, when I thought that I hadn't graded it, I was getting ready to give it a much more mediocre grade. But then when I realized I grade higher last week, I was like, well, should I change it? And. It's it's weird. It's like. Neither grade feels right. It feels like in overall quality it's high, but in oomph it's low.

4:51 I don't know of any of that makes sense. And I, I will say we come at this from very different perspectives. And I think that helps the podcast because Todd is looking at them in order together, kind of he'll go ahead a few episodes, he'll see them in context. He'll have a few different events in his head at the same time that he's going back and he'll watch it repeatedly. Whereas I'm watching each of them in order. And I, I had time this time. I considered looking ahead, but I'm like, no, I have nothing else in my head except the Red Room and what's come before.

5:24 That's the more distant past. I can't watch two things at once. And, and I, I don't do well like having him going on in the background like he can. So we have kind of a different take. I, I would guess by the end of us discussing it and you giving your grade at the end, you'll have maybe new insights or you'll be like, I totally get where I was coming from. For me this episode, Well, behavior is my profession. So I'm not sure about how behavior labs are depicted in this, but this was this one. This behavior lab was run by a terrible person, so I guess it's obviously not a good representation.

5:59 No hate to Eric Pierpoint, who's become the hero of the show and possibly the unexpected hero of this podcast, but George Francisco has struggled with his suppressed past that's related to a trail of dead bodies in this episode and the game and the Night of Screams. If we have any more plot centered on a newcomer with suppressed memories of trauma that's part of a murder investigation, they probably need to bring in a new cop character so it isn't George every time. Other than that, I really like the episode so we can move into our sour milk positives if you'd like.

6:32 And if you don't have as many as me, that is fine, I can go. Yeah, the weird thing is I only have two. Well, let me let me start then, OK? Yeah, go first and then you space them out. My first thing is an easy one. Mom is eating wood chips while the Francisco family plays Monopoly. Apparently the pod, they keep saying that needs lots of glucose or it will fill with mucus. I know that because the kids say that. I feel like Buck is thriving now. He's participating in family ceremonies. He's studying for school on camera.

7:06 In a previous episode, he's making affectionate gestures toward his parents, and he cares about his mother's nutrition during her pregnancy. So now they're all participating in family game night. Somebody get these wood chips away from me? How much cellulose the pie needs? Don't want it to fill up with mucus? Sweet those wood chips, mom. Could we please get back to the game? Tennessee Ave. I think with the house the rent is $60.00. 70 I only have 30 give the rest when I pass go if. You take the garbage out before you go to bed.

7:36 We'll call the Deep. Deal. Wait, wait, wait. I'm afraid there's nothing in the rules about paying debts with garbage removal, says right here. If any player at any time there's unable what? Taking the garbage out is worth more to me than $40.00 of play money. But I am the banker and as such that it's my responsibility to enforce the rules. Don't have a hearts attack on mortgage Reading Railroad. Yay Buck, that's my first positive. How about you? Yeah, that's a good one. And one of the things that I feel like is lacking in my notes is that I don't have any Tanktonese facts this time, but that is clearly one that I missed.

8:13 And it's not so much that I missed it, I recognized it, but for some reason it didn't trigger in my head to write it down. So you're right that that's interesting about the the whole wood chips thing. And I think we might get a little bit more of wood chips in another episode. I can't remember if it's already been mentioned or if it will be mentioned later, but yeah, I think that's an ongoing thing with the pregnancy. But the one of the main things that I focused on was that it's interesting to see yet another thing that makes George unique.

8:42 We already saw in a previous episode that he was very unique in that he was playing that game that was kind of like Russian roulette, and it probably would have killed him had the ship not crashed. It was literally the action of the ship crashing that interrupted things that disrupted the game, or else he he would have died. And so not only was he traumatized by the game itself, but it made him unique that the only reason he's here is because the ship crashed. And so the ship had the ship crashing had even more meaning to him, which is why that particular holiday that they made for it was something that got to him for a while.

9:22 Well here we see he's also one of a small group of tinctonies that were set aside by humans after the crash to try to be trained to be assassins. And luckily George has an instinct for good morals and so he was not a good candidate. I I can't remember if they were talking about him or another person, but they were talking about like great strength and stuff like that. They might have been right about his strength physically, but technically that would count for all the tank deniz. But George was able to overcome the programming.

9:54 You are dart for say it Dart 4 come over to the target. Dart 4 Can you see the target? Yes. Fire Fire Start 4 has an ethical imprint we can't override. So thank goodness he he was. And so even though George has an attachment to the subplot in this episode, I'm kind of glad that he's not that deep into it. But maybe the fact that he's not that deep into it is part of what made me not totally connect with the episode as much as some of the other episodes. It's like he was some minor connective tissue to the subplot and yet there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the bone there.

10:37 But yeah, I still find it interesting that George is unique among these for a second reason. Well, and there are other shows like we'll talk about Deep Space Nine and Seven of Nine where they figure out an actor or actress has some chops and they give them really fun stuff to do. Or I know my wife is a fan of Little House on the Prairie and Oh my goodness, Mary's blind again. Oh, she's going to struggle. So it's like we will give actors maybe more generous, interesting storylines when we find out they're amazing and he's certainly given them plenty of that.

11:11 This is our 4th coroner in this episode, counting the pilot movie. We started out with the intolerant guy who didn't even seem to look George in the face and definitely didn't respond to him except maybe to roll his eyes. Then we got the red headed lady eating ribs while she was like going through bodies and doing autopsies. I really liked her. We got Roscoe for a few episodes. He was fine. I'm not sure why he left and there might have been one in there, I forgot. But now we have Michelle Lamar Richards as Doctor Lois Allen, and I like her a lot.

11:46 She's got a lot of personality. She's not exactly flirty so much as rocking this coroner gig to pay for her beach dreams. And we get to see her for five more episodes. Not in order and the first TV movie, so yay for Doctor Lois Allen. You may know her as the part she plays in The Bodyguard, where she's my favorite part. She plays Whitney Houston's sister, and I won't say more about that in case you haven't seen The Bodyguard yet, but it is surprising. What else do you got? So I've already hinted at this in the intro as well, but I I did find it interesting the the part about the metaphorical door that Matt won't open.

12:26 And it's hinted pretty heavily. Not that it's any huge surprise because it's already been hinted through other episodes too that Matt is at least considering the possibility of a relationship with Kathy. Yet at the same time, something's holding him back. And that is interesting because we're just barely into the second-half of this season and it's all and we're already getting those hints. It makes me wonder sometimes what we would have gotten had this show lasted something like four or five seasons rather than just one.

13:02 Because, you know, there, there are some shows that would wait until the 2nd, 3rd, 4th season to have this relationship blossom or for like, the Francisco to start having another kid. And they're already doing all this stuff in season 1. And it just makes me wonder, what mind blowing stuff would we continue to get had this lasted other seasons? So yeah, I do like that that is explored and that we get yet another hint at it. And through the psychological profile is it's kind of a different take on those hints.

13:34 So that leads well into my last positive that I'll bring up. And this is really the first scene with Kathy because it serves a bunch of purposes and the narrative. And I don't know if this is fruitful to do in discussion over an episode, but I'll start thinking about the writing choices that they're making. And this first scene with Kathy, Matt sort of barges in on her. She's trying to do work. We've never seen her frustrated with him before, just existing. She's usually just ridiculously accommodating.

14:08 But in this case, it's kind of an annoyance to her that he's bothering her right now because she's busy. He kind of pushes his way in and it seems like a pretty flat scene where they just talk and stuff and then he goes, but they go. But it really sets up several things. So it was written for a reason. So Matt tells us in this conversation with the viewer that they're doing psych evals at work and they're mandatory. So he's got a paper form he's supposed to fill out as a sort of information sheet for the psychologist before he sits down with her.

14:43 And he's telling Kathy as a medical professional, he wants her to essentially tell him the right answer so he can get on with his crime fighting life. And that's his attitude toward it, is that it's all silly mumbo jumbo which he thinks about everything. So through this little scene, we find out the whole situation at work without having to introduce the psychologist or the psych evals. That's kind of nice. We find out that Kathy can access newcomer genetic typing databases through her home computer because that's what she's working on at home, which will come into the plot later.

15:16 And she drops into conversation that she's stronger than Matt to remind the audience that all newcomers have superior, superior strength, which comes up later. And he happens to be there when she gets the call about the break in at her work, which is a big part of the plot. So that's why he comes along with her and gets involved in this process. He happens to leave his write out form that serves a follow up scene. I mean, he doesn't like the thing and he doesn't want to do it. And he spends a large part of the episode telling the doctor that he doesn't have it right now because he's essentially ditched it at Kathy's place.

15:54 But that is going to serve the scene later where she's read it, the part that he has filled out and she's asking him. She's like, I didn't find it interesting that you would rather be at home alone than at a party with your friends, you know? And she's saying it in passing and he's really sensitive about it. She sort of brings it up playfully again later and then we see that keep coming up. So it's actually a very serious thing where she's just telling him, you know what? Answer it seriously, answer it honestly.

16:23 It's not that big a deal. There's no right answers, but maybe it hints at something much bigger. So yeah, that's that scene was a silly little scene that accomplished like 8 things. That's it for positives for me. I have other stuff but I think I can bring it up later. So do you have any salt water negatives? Yeah, my first salt water is oh, OK. Yeah, this was a big one, this one kind of driving bananas. So Sid is a common police acronym that usually stands for either Special Investigations Division or Scientific Investigation Division.

17:00 And regardless the specific meaning, you know, might depend on the exact Police Department agency. But basically it's the the science guys that come in to investigate a scene. And our guest cop character in this, who turns out to not exactly be a cop, says that Sid is on the way. And that is in the scene where there's been a break in at Kathy's lab and Matt goes with her and the other cop is there, the cop who's not a cop, and he says the Sid is on the way, but they are just messing up the scene like crazy.

17:32 The professor and Kathy are cleaning up. Matt is picking up stuff off the floor with his bare hands. The other cop is just smearing something onto tissues instead of putting it, putting the liquid samples in like a tube or a canister or something. And it just drunk bananas because I'm like, aren't there supposed to be like some kind of containment or things you should be putting things into? Or maybe just not even entering the room yet and letting Sid come and like take photographs first. Or you know, have special containers for stuff.

18:01 It's like they are just completely messing up the scene. Or at least I assume so. I mean, I don't claim to be any kind of expert on police work, but it just, it felt like one of those things that would probably drive a real life Sid person bananas. And if I'm wrong then then I'm wrong. But I just, I don't know. I get the hunch that that was not a well done scene. Well, and there are episodes of shows where you'll see the police officer. We'll usually have, like, 1 detective who will stroll into Murder She Wrote and speak for uniformed guys and be like, whoa, what are you doing?

18:33 Quit tampering with the scene. Put that down. Or something like that. And if it serves the narrative, they'll say a lot more of it. But in this one, spoiler listeners, we find out the cop on the scene is completely full of crap and nobody's been there and no one is coming. Yeah, it's like it. He's sort of like, oh, yeah. Yeah, everybody, these guys have already been through here and these guys are totally on their way. Yeah, for real. So I guess Matt doesn't think much about it, but you're right.

19:02 You could also put that under. Yikes, Sykes, I guess he doesn't seem to care about crime scene integrity. In fact, I think he's picking up stuff too. He's like, hey, check this out. And also, since you brought up the people coming, that acronym, what is it? Scientific Investigations Division, Sid is the West Coast, especially LA, but these are the CSI's, their version and they do have, if you look it up like a crazy person like Nick Wood in the I have to mention this section. I think there are different names for the groups all across the country.

19:37 A lot of them really do like going by CSI. I think a few more started putting CSI on their vans after the show came out because it makes them feel cooler. But yes, Sid in LA My first salt water is kind of related to the scene you're talking about George Francisco who is just an amazing cop. He does not seem to care about this fake cop at the behavior lab. Like at all. I guess since Matt is ugly with Kathy and irresponsible with the psychologist and disrespectful with the Chief. They let him do some good police work, but this time it feels like George is the one dragging his feet where Matt is like, no, no, wait, there's a guy there who's like, impersonating a cop.

20:21 He doesn't exist. And George is like, what does that got to do with us? Let some guy be a fake.

20:28 He really seems disinteresting. Focus on our case, Matt. Come on and. And maybe what that's why this episode felt so different is yeah, I am so used to Matt being the bad cop that with roles reversed this time it it felt weird and threw me off so. That could be it. What's another salt water you've got? Let me see, Matt is annoyingly hard on Kathy for working on his site profile questions, even though it's his own fault for asking for help and then leaving the test behind. Now granted that was an accident, but still, it's like what kind of help would he expect and what kind of help could he get?

21:08 If he doesn't, you don't get to read the questions of the profile. I was a little short of time, but I tried to be thorough. Question number six was quite enlightening. That you'd rather be at home alone than at a party with your friends. That says a lot. You read this? Well, of course you. What terrific next you're going to be coming over reading my mail. If you didn't want me to read it, then why did you leave? It I didn't leave it, I forgot. I thought you wanted me to read it. I wanted your advice, not for you to invade my privacy.

21:37 Matt, if you're concerned about your privacy being invaded, then I think we should talk about it. Got a shrink at work who wants to talk. I don't need one at home. And so, you know, just because she answered, I don't know, it's just that was one of those things that did feel kind of typical for Matt. It's like, oh, you just just use your brain for a minute. These writers are up and down, as I said before in the intro. So what happens right after that? So like, maybe the reason you felt the way you did, part of it is because of George not exactly acting like George, Matt not exactly acting like Matt.

22:14 So after he leaves, this is another example. In that scene when she shuts the door, Kathy, she rolls her eyes at him all the time. But this time she does something different. When he leaves in a huff, she closes the door and she says. Humans. Humans like in this shrugged way it doesn't seem like a big deal. But up until now she seemed to be very interested in Matt as an individual, and he was the one who would. He was the one who would write off newcomers as crazy because of their race. But in this episode she seems fond of him.

22:48 But it felt more like I was misunderstanding her sultry sideways glances and that she's looking at him less like an emotional potential love interest and more like an adorable puppy. This episode is the least she's been interested in him. Oh, humans. So yes, I think maybe all the characters were written just a little bit different this time. All right, do you have another? 1 Sure. So fake Jeffries, this is kind of related to what you were saying before with the Sid, the guy who presents himself as a cop.

23:19 When they arrive at the lab and introduces himself as Jeffries, he tells Matt the boys in blue just left, which was a good misleading thing to say, except that he said it in front of the lab staff and any one of them could be like, wait, no they didn't. Or they were like fake boys in blue, which is unlikely. So I'm guessing he just thinks on his feet and says crap to try and get rid of suspicion. But he's saying, oh, yeah, we already had a bunch of uniforms in here, you know, making sure the place is secure and stuff.

23:54 So maybe he's hoping he said it in a tone of voice where Matt and Kathy heard him or Matt did and the people walking around the lab who are like, what are you talking about? Nobody's been here, man. They were just out of earshot or something. But yes, that was bizarre to me. You can't. If you're going to make up lies, it needs to not be like what just happened. So yeah, it works for us, the viewer, because we weren't there to see whether the boys in blue were just there. But there are people at the lab who would be like, no, no, that's not right, unless they just keep their heads down.

24:26 I totally missed that. Yeah. So that, so yeah, that that's a good point. And I, my next one is 1 that I didn't have in my notes until just a few minutes ago. And that is that it seemed like a big coincidence that George was a subject of the Red Room program and Kathy works with someone who led the Red Room program. So they're not just one character, but two that have a connection either directly or indirectly to the Red Room program. And so it's a little bit of coincidence, but again, I guess our characters have to be the gateway into this, into these things.

25:01 But I also realized that there was one thing that I should have put in sour milk because I actually, I did think of it before. I just apparently failed to write it down. And that is that one of the things that I did like was when George goes under hypnosis and he's actually at home, which I guess might make sense that he needs to be comfortable in or in order to go under hypnosis. So he's at home. And so Matt and Susan are both on the sofa kind of concerned. And you know, it's, it's cool to see that obviously his wife would be there.

25:34 And because of other things that they've gone gone through in the past, George is not hiding this from her. And so it's good that she's there to support him. And even though he's at home and his wife is there, his partner on the forest is also there. And Matt, they've come far enough to where their partners and friends. And so Matt is concerned too. And so that whole thing was just pretty cool in several ways. I was worried that their house was bugged because because they just said the feds are like watching them.

26:05 They they take this psychologist that wants to she says she's up for hypnotizing George to access blocked memories and so they take her to his house instead of the station. I guess to keep it low profile. But but yes the the scene was cool. I also, I think it's noted further down in my I have to mention this section, but she has clearly been trained in not just hypnosis, but hypnotizing tanked and knees. I have it written down further and I can't remember what she says, but you know, picture you're in a calm this, you're soothing this, you're relaxed that.

26:41 But I think she said, Oh yeah, she says 1 is like from the tips of your spots to the tips of your toes, something like that. So she has tanked and knees training, which is interesting. This is a human psychologist. I will say one of mine is that because of budget, they made some choices in this. So we have real animals in this episode in the behavior lab. Matt isn't sure what a behavior lab is. And Kathy leans over to him and Mumbles mice and mazes and he's like, OK, got it. Because he's kind of CRO magnon man sometimes.

27:15 But we have animals in the animal testing behavior lab, at least a primate and a ferret that we see like shown only in cages. So I think for budget reasons they got the animals and they got the permission and everything the the control to show them in cages. And that's all we see. So we know in the script they are let loose, the cages are empty and we find out that most of them are found in the building later, but we never see the animals again because they only got them for one day of filming. Oh yeah, true, yeah.

27:51 I really, I really wasn't sure what happened to the animals. In order to emphasize the folder for Project Dart, we have a bloody primate print extremely clear on it. Why was it bloody or was it just dirt, fecal matter? It seems important. So that was that was a startling image that didn't really get explained. And again, there are no, there's not like a we could do it now, but back then if you wanted the corpse of a monkey, we would see it. But it's like expensive in the 80s. So yes, just a monkey print and no monkey.

28:31 They're conspicuously absent for the rest of the episode, but we keep being told where they are. Do you have any other negatives? Nope. Nope, that's it. Let me see. So sometimes you'll be more nitpicky than I am. So I've got a really nice nitpicky one I think you'll enjoy. I think you have more pet peeves that have come up so far at least than I do. So here's one. We have raved about the acting of Air Fairpoint and he's done some very good work. But in this episode, he uses 80s hacker keyboarding.

29:02 And this is where you jam all the keys as fast as you can. And I in the first scene at the station when Matt says he's having trouble looking something up, George sits down and he just starts jamming the keys before even asking Matt what he's looking for. Oh, you're having trouble clicking? What are you looking for Matt? And he tells him he's just wailing on them. I guess he could be logging into the system, but he's already typed like 4 paragraphs of information by the time Matt tells him anything specific about what he's looking for.

29:37 So that's just one of those things like the the shaving cream we've mentioned earlier that every once in a while I'll see it where someone is like, OK, you're, you're fast on the keyboard, do that actor and the actor is like. Yeah, it does seem like hackers are always using the keyboard and just the keyboard and using it furiously. And I can't help what I mean. I know nothing about hacking so I honestly don't know, but I've always wondered, do they ever use a mouse in real life? To bring up hacking software probably, and to make adjustments.

30:09 But yes, just typing a paragraph. I'm confident hacking isn't typing a paragraph. Typing a paragraph. But yes. You know if someone is pretending to play piano. We cut out the sound that the keys they're hitting make, but since it's a keyboard, we kind of assume that all clicking is the same, so shows will leave in the sound. Just wailing on a keyboard. I apologize if I ruin it for the rest of you If you didn't notice or you wouldn't notice, but maybe it's one of those cannot be unseen things that now you'll see every once in a while someone sits down at a keyboard and just absolutely beats the crap out of it.

30:41 But that the only thing I have left in my salt water is Yikes Sykes, Yikes Yikes Yikes mad Sykes. I hate these know it all muffin heads who come from outer space. A Russian and a sponge head. They're a boat in the middle of the ocean. Why stop with running them back to Slag Town? Why don't we just kill them? Emotionally involved, it makes for bad police work. George, what's that guy doing over there? Quick guy. What was that name again? Makes for bad police work.

31:12 Bad police work. Yikes. Yikes, Yikes. I'm Kathy Frankel. Matt Sykes. Yeah, I know. In your language, Sykes means excrement and cranium.

31:24 Yikes. Yikes, Yikes, Yikes. Where we look at how often Sykes almost shoots an innocent person or perhaps any questionable choices he makes. And we already mentioned that he's, you know, kind of doing some good police work in this episode. He's not good at cooperating with directives about psychology. But I will say one thing that he did that was bothering me. He is relentlessly teasing George about his attitude toward the psychologist when Matt is clearly shaking in his boots about the psychologist.

32:00 So I just feel like it's it's hard to. I mean, if you're going to make fun of somebody, you don't make fun of them for the one thing. I mean, OK, maybe some people do. And they're just like, he's very sensitive about it. But yeah, he teases George a lot. The head shrink could go. He's just on him. That's the main thing I have. I can, I think I can skip everything else. Most of the rest is the things he's actually doing right. I like that Matt was, he has a very nasty negative attitude toward government Spooks and cover ups in general, which I thought was awesome.

32:37 I can't tell if I don't like Jeffrey's because he's written badly or because he's written accurately and I dislike that kind of real person in our society. So Matt and by extension the writers, they have an opinion of the government and such men as that guy and that's aces for me. So other than him teasing his friend for something that he clearly has a problem with, he did a few things I liked. But we can move on to connecting the spots. OK, All right. Sounds good. Let me see. I don't have a ton here.

33:11 You've already mentioned the writing team of Stephen Long Mitchell and Craig W Van Sickel, and you mentioned the two episodes that they wrote before. And one of those is my least favorite episode of the season. The other one is my favorite episode of the season. And then this one is right in between. And I can't make up my mind between two grades for it. So they're writing can be good and has been good, but at the same time is inconsistent. It's kind of all over the place where there's one other writing person and then also she's part of a writing team, Diane Frolov.

33:47 She early on, she had two episodes by herself, and then later on she teamed with somebody who either was or eventually became her husband. And their episodes are much more stable. They don't go up or down quite as much. But yeah, these two were just all over the place, both good and bad. So that that's a little interesting. I wonder if as the season progresses, not that we've got that much more season left, will things kind of settle down to more of a even, you know, middle ground? I don't know.

34:19 Well, and while you're bringing up the creative team, I will say like, since Chuck Bowman did this one episode as a director and there are choices in this episode, so maybe it's our two writers you're talking about. Maybe the director changed some stuff around. But there are choices that are just bizarre for an episode of Alien Nation. Every time someone is attacked in their car or in a parking lot or an alley, the attack happens in like slow motion first person perspective like, which isn't what the show has done so far.

34:55 It's just a different take. That's the director I think. And there's even a first person perspective of a cart that's like slid into a glass door, which I've never seen first person perspective from an inanimate object before. But someone pushes the cart into the door, but we see it from the carts perspective. I don't know. That was a bold choice by the director, but yes, so we will see this director will be gone since he only did the one. But we'll see how the the writers do in subsequent times turns at bat and see if they like improve or if they're just always way up and down.

35:31 I don't know. 15 with Wanda had some good stuff in it. It just had some not good stuff in it. But yes, my first connecting the spots I think is Silas Marner. Silas Marner is one of the characters in this, and he turns out to be the conditioned killer, and he's a newcomer, and that's why he has that name. I don't know if you caught the name Todd, but I knew it because of high school. It's a book that they sometimes make us read. Yeah, well, it's written by George Eliot and I just thought it was interesting that it's not a fun read, but I consider it kind of an archetype or inspiration for all the stories we've seen about a person who struggled with their place in society changing when a kid comes into their life.

36:23 So I mean, that's that's kind of what happens in Silas Marner. And that's what we sci-fi fans and movie fans see and a lot of different movies. It's the Mandalorian central plot. It's Leon the professional. It's a three men and a baby. But they made ATV movie for Silas Marner with Ben Kingsley and the gorgeous Jenny Agador who was on the Security Council in The Avengers movies and Steve Martin doing that thing comedians do where they decide they want to be a serious dramatic actor. He made did a remake called A Simple Twist of Fate in 1994, which since it's a funny person doing a serious movie and of course got almost immediately forgotten.

37:03 But it was who knows? I mean, the ones I've seen him do are very good. The other thing about this episode is it features this brainwashing of an innocent civilian to turn them into an assassin. And this I think is an obvious reference to the Manchurian Candidate, which has been done a couple of times. I recommend the 1962 original movie, not the 2004 remake. Denzel's great, but the original is pretty shocking, especially for seeing a much younger Angela Lansbury. Do you want to jump in or should I keep talking?

37:39 Yeah, let me see. I've got another one. So the old munitions dump that Matt and George go to near the end of this episode looks a lot like the place that Buck had his confrontation with the gang in a previous episode. Also 15 with Wanda. But I did go back to 15 one and look again. And even though it's similar, I think they might be different. Now, granted, they could have like dressed up the I mean, it's basically just like a a little bit of a drive in section and a wall of a factory. So they could address a little bit differently.

38:13 But I think like the space is also a little bit wider in either this episode or or 15 and 1. So anyway, I don't think it's the same shooting location, but they just seem similar. And even if they were the same, who who cares? Because it's kind of a boring location anyway and they're not even at it very long. I just thought, wow, that looks kind of familiar, so I did no. Well, so, and I mean, I'm, I'm a bigger fan of the original Star Trek than you are. So I like getting you into that. And if you're a fan, you kind of delight in seeing them reuse props and sets.

38:47 So in today's episode, Return of the Archon, they're in a dungeon set that's clearly the same dungeon set as Cat's Paw from a previous season. So yes, I the idea if you love alien nation and you start to see some things that they're reusing that could be fun. That's clearly the same alleyway or that's the same drug store. I like that they they built Matt's apartment and then they just leave it for the entire run of the show we've seen so far in three dimensions. So like that model train set someone put in is still there.

39:20 He plays with it at least once. Yeah. I don't know how many sets the police station and Matt's apartment. I guess we're seeing the Francisco home more. But these others, I know it's easier if they reuse, but it seems like they spent a lot of budget going to different places. So I think you're right. I mean, you have a good chance of it. We would be remiss not to mention the obvious similarities in this plot to the Marvel Universe, both with Captain America's super soldier program and the fact that we've seen Natasha Roman off the Black Widow trained to be an assassin in a facility also called the Red Room.

39:54 That's a on the news. That's right, yeah. Now I don't know if that's comic accurate, but boy is it a reference. So yes, if not. Alien nation did it first job. Yeah, one of the MC You stole it from Alien? Exactly. Exactly. The rest of my connections are casting and I don't think I have a lot of stuff. Well, so the only thing I have is Dobbs Watch and sadly, however, there is no Dobbs in this episode. There's also no Albert, no Jill, no Burns, and Buck and Emily are only in it for that one scene where the family's playing Monopoly.

40:36 But what a scene. Yeah. Do you know if Laurence Hilton Jacobs is gone? I don't know for sure if he has another episode, I think it might be only one and I was almost tempted to look but I'm going to wait because regardless of what the answer is, I want there to be at least one more Dobbs watch so I don't want to know yet. Two or three I support multiple additional Dobbs watches. We're going to hold out hope more as Elton Jacobs makes up one more visit. But yes, the supporting cast, I mean, just I don't love the the captain, but you know, I like him being around.

41:14 So Jeffrey's our fake cop who turns out to be, well, honestly, they never tell us officially he is question mark, question mark, question mark. They do mention the NSA verbally once, very, very briefly, almost as if they're trying not to say it. And it is on a screen once or twice. So I think they're hinting that he's NSA, but they say, what are you, CIAFBINSA? John Connolly, He was in True Q Season 6 episode 6 of Star Trek The Next Generation, and he was in The West Wing. Tom Dugan, The guy who plays Silas Marner, our victim who is essentially turned into a killer and is going around murdering the people who made him that way, which is the plot of a bunch of stories.

42:09 He's been in the Practice, Naked Gun, Ghostbusters 2, Kindergarten Cop, Max Headroom and Bill and Ted all in bit parts. And I cannot, I don't know if I've seen this guy. So I would need to go back and like see a few of these like white guy, drug dealer over to the side and Naked Gun, which I love watching and see. Oh my gosh, that's him, That's Silas Marner. But it's always hard for me to place people with that makeup on. Bob Harks is an uncredited detective and he was in the last episode also as an uncredited detective.

42:43 I list his extensive presents there if you want to go back and listen to all that. But we will see Bob again in three of the TV movies. He's just a really cool extra they like throwing in. And finally, I think the big name surprise for this one. I don't know if you noticed Herman, but Patricia Heaton is in this. She plays the wife from Everybody Loves Raymond. And I thought that Everybody Loves Raymond is the biggest thing Patricia Heaton had done. But, you know, I did my research and I'm aware that she was in the middle, the sitcom, but it turns out she did 210 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond and 215 episodes of the Middle.

43:22 So if you are a fan of the middle, you were right and I was wrong. She's, that's a big part of who she is. Oh. And did she play the the person in the Red Room who was kind of like she was the one in glasses? Yes. OK, I, I thought she looked familiar, but I couldn't I couldn't pin it. And and the weird thing is everybody else in this episode looks familiar too. Like like you mentioned the the guy that was in true Qi, like that episode of next Gen. I think even more than most people do, but I can't remember his role in.

43:52 So yeah, all the guest stars look familiar, but I, I couldn't I couldn't play some even after you saying where they are. I'm like, OK, but which character are they and those other things? He had extensive makeup on in that episode, and I'll bring him up again when I'm rating and bringing up references to Star Trek. But yeah, it's a lot of them are like that. And you've watched a lot more West Wing than me, so you might know that. No John Connelly Jeffries from that, or I'm sure he doesn't have ridiculous makeup on, but I don't.

44:20 I didn't write down how many episodes he was in, so he might have just been in one. I don't know. But but yes, Patricia Heaton, I recognize. Well, you don't see her, to be honest. It's like she's attacked in a parking lot in, like I said, blurry slow motion. And then she's in these flashback sequences and she's kind of in the shadows for a lot of it with a hair that covers her face and glasses. So she's kind of over to the side. But if you're looking for her, yeah, that's that's clearly Patricia Eaton from everybody.

44:59 But yes, that does it for me for connecting the spots. And I'm afraid, man, this week we have Slim Pickens for the Albert Einstein Award. I think Silas Marner might win it by default. He had no competition. Yeah, he's the only one I had so. So we can move on to, I have to talk about this if you have anything left that we haven't brought up on, I think. No, but actually I have a brand new weekly segment and and I think hopefully if you like it enough, it can be a weekly segment. But at least for tonight, hopefully it'll make up for the fact that I have such low notes and that is wheel of press kit.

45:43 So this takes a little bit of explanation. So my my friends and I, we usually get together after Christmas for Christmas. And a lot of times it's time somewhere between Christmas and New Year's. Sometimes it kind of double s as my birthday because my birthday is is New Year's Eve. But this year, because of scheduling, it happened a few days after New Year's. And so the gift that I got from Dave Schott, one of my Co host over on discerning geek spoiled like granny. He hasn't joined us for like over a year, but because he's had some weird scheduling conflicts going on in the last few months too.

46:16 But anyway, the thing he gave me for Christmas was something I was that came as a big surprise. I was like, I was opening. I was like, this is weird packaging. What is it? And it's a a folder that on the front says Alienation the series. And when you open it up, it's got in one pocket. Some promotional photos of the cast. And then on the other side, it has promotional information that I don't know if they still do this kind of thing nowadays. They probably don't, at least not in paper form. But I guess back in the day, in order to educate maybe the either the affiliates on stuff or maybe just magazines or something, they would do this press kit where they would, you know, collect some information about the show and the cast and, and have photos and stuff and give to various publication outlets.

47:09 And it's kind of cool because like the very first item in here is kind of a quasi newspaper called Alien Times. And in a way it's kind of like real world information because it's given information on the TV show Alien Nation and when it's going to premiere and stuff like that. But then there are also little like in the world fake articles. Like there's an article about George Francisco becoming the the first newcomer detective. There's there's another article that's written completely in newcomer script.

47:44 There are a few other little snippets that are are like that. And it's just a one page thing, but it's kind of neat. And then there are some other pages that are basically just like photocopies of articles that were in USA TODAY, something called the Daily Breeze and also People magazine. And then after that, there are actor profiles of the entire cast. When I say entire cast, I don't know if like, it also includes the actress that plays Jill, but it does include the actor that plays Dobbs. I think it even has the actor that plays Burns, but it's at least one page, if not two or three pages stapled together per actor.

48:28 And and it also contains like some quotes from them and some little like interview things. So what I thought I could do is go through that and pick out all the interesting snippets and then every week we could roll a random wheel once or twice to, you know, pick out the the snippets for this. And of course I forgot to do it in this past week. That's why I was kind of multitasking when I was re watching this episode. So I was able to scramble together 6 of the little factoids that are in here. So in order to spin the wheel, I say with quota fingers, we really just need a A6 sided die.

49:08 So do you have a six sided die handy or do you want me to roll? I have several within 20 feet. You have one closer than that. OK, and I've got some right in front of me so and I didn't worry about this, so I'll just go ahead and roll this time and let's see what we get. All right, so I rolled a sit or a seat and I spun on the on the wheel. I spun. OK, so the USA TODAY article and let me see. Yeah, so I'm not going to read the whole article there, but this is an article that was in USA TODAY from Tuesday, August 8th, 1989.

49:48 So about a month before the premiere. About a month and 1/2 and the article talks about the challenges of the alien makeup. It already suggests that the sites character might be attracted to an alien neighbor, so they're already hinting about that in press kit stuff before the show even premieres. It says the two hour pilot will premiere at 8:00 PM on set are on the 18th of September, which actually contradicts a different piece of the press kit that says it would premiere at 9. And the neat thing is that the picture in the USA TODAY article shows the actors playing Albert, Emily and Buck in makeup but not in costume, and they're reading their copies of the fake newspaper that is the first page of the press kit.

50:43 So that's one little snippet. So do you want me to roll one more time or save the rest of them? Yeah, yeah, we'll spin the wheel each week and you do another snippet from the press kit. OK, All right, let me see. So do you want me to roll one more this week or just save it for sure? Sure, let's. See. All right, so spun the People Weekly article. Oh, OK, good. I'm glad I rolled this one because this is what I was thinking about doing if I if I didn't throw together the wheel and Tom. So the People Weekly article is even earlier.

51:24 It's from the 31st of May 1989. So that is what, almost five whole month? Wait, No, four whole months. Almost four whole months before the premiere. And Kenneth Johnson said in an interview for that little tiny People Weekly article, he said that it would take two males to get an alien woman pregnant. So the concept for that 10th episode that that I love so much, Three to Tango, that was already known, even if it hadn't been produced yet, it was at least known that they were going to have an episode about that four months before the show premiered.

52:06 And I love that it's thought out ahead of time. I think that's really, really cool. And I mean, it also kind of says something about how excited the creatives are for the show. So that's Kenneth Johnson. I mean, we have showrunners now. When we have a big show that a lot of people talk about, they're kind of the creative director of everything. And I don't know that they had that back then, but Kenneth Johnson definitely got the thing going. Yeah. And I think Galen Hurd is a consultant, but you also, I think our other writing team.

52:40 You mentioned Frolov and her husband. I feel like they consult or they advise on some episodes they don't write, so they might be kind of like creative directors as well. But you definitely feel like there's overarching effort. That's awesome. Yeah, I thought that was a really cool. I didn't know it was out there and I thought, Oh my goodness, how rare is this? And, and how hard is it to, to find and everything? And so he, I think he said he got it off of eBay. And I looked out on eBay and oddly enough, they must not be considered rare treasures because it's not that hard to get and they're not super expensive.

53:13 At least they weren't for alienation. But I did find one for Alien Nation and I sent a message to the person selling it and I said, you know, I already have one and it's got pictures and a few other things. What is your kit like? And he said he was missing the photos. So I might try to keep my eye out for a second complete set. And in fact, Dave did kind of tell me that he kind of had to do the same thing because apparently some of them aren't complete. So yeah, if anybody else wants to look out there for that type of thing for either this or or some other TV show or movie or whatever, just be careful because not all of them are complete.

53:53 And also, in searching, I did find that there are a whole bunch of them out there for the Alienation theatrical movie too. Interesting. Yeah, that's a press kits. I had no idea. And sometimes you'll find vendors at Dragon Con who will find something like that, that those of us who love a property don't even realize are out there, so they don't know to ask for it. But yes, I'd imagine if you find things like that for any of the Star Trek movies or Star Wars movies, they've all been gobbled up long ago.

54:25 But yeah, the Alienation theatrical movie is a largely forgotten thing, so they might just be sitting on shelves waiting for a buyer. But yeah. Or to be sold. I think that's a wonderful segment to keep doing. This does become a weekly segment though. Todd is thinking he forgot it one week, possibly in the very next episode, which was recorded a while back. Also, Todd wanted me to clarify that he doesn't go into the long explanation every week about what the Wheel of Press kit is. He also gets faster at finding the pages and can edit it out when he's wrong, so this segment has a better pace in future weeks.

55:01 Bring that back next week if you want to. We'll take turns with six sided die if you want to find a wheel of fortune spinning the wheel sound effect. Yeah, yeah, I do. I even on even over on discerning E portal. I want to bring back a wheel of some kind because I missed the wheel sound effect. Todd said it's harder finding a good spinning wheel sound effect than you might think, so he's reusing the sound effect for the old Wheel of Insanity from season 2 of the Discerning Geeks Portal podcast, which is still the best wheel sound he could find.

55:36 But also I'm hoping that I will have the time to to fill out this spreadsheet a little better and so next time might need more than D6 if if I do get around to. It all right, See, now I'm just going to have dice ready. How many of you at home have dice within reach right now as you listen to this? What you're in your car no excuses. Do you have dice with you? Because I expect some of you do. I will rattle off some of my I have to talk about this, but most of them are pretty short. And since you mentioned you don't have like as many factoids about newcomers, I think I have a couple in here.

56:13 George says that they were both hospitalized after the crash and that they had Kumla Kula, which he explains to Matt is like pneumonia. I checked to make sure this wasn't the same illness as the one that was mentioned menacingly in the pilot, but that one was compared to smallpox and either they didn't give it a name or more likely I just didn't write it down. I knew early on in the podcast that I wasn't making a nice vocabulary list of Tanktonese words, but I kind of suspected. I regret it. We do find out in passing that Kathy's technical job is she is a biochemist.

56:50 I don't think they've specified before what she does exactly, in addition to just being a doctor and knowing medicine, but she is a biochemist. In LA, a police code 459 is a burglary. They just mentioned a 459. So I like doing that research for you all. When the coroner tells Matt and George that the first dead body was shot multiple times in the chest and they're shown, Matt exclaims and Darko and George looks at it.

57:20 Yeah, yeah, I thought that was that was cool. That was a neat moment. Chuck Bowman makes well, I already mentioned the weird choices the director makes with his of first person perspectives and slow motion attacks. But he also OK, so we have to mention these psychology scenes because there's at least 2 that are weird. And I, I am going to guess I have a prediction. Nothing like this will be repeated ever in the show because the director doesn't come back. So the first one, the psychologist is talking to Captain Grazer, who has nothing to hide.

57:56 And then he kind of repeats nothing to hide. And then we go to a vision. Grazer, Grazer hats. Oh yeah. So he's standing on a desk in the middle of the station with everybody running around doing their jobs in Fast forward, and he's naked on the desk holding a giant police badge in front of his midsection, a bit shyly. And this goes on for maybe 4 seconds before we flashback to him imagining this as he talks to the psychologist. So as we've watched many episodes of Alien Nation already, the fact that we've never had a bizarre flashback vision like that, it was kind of catch you off guard.

58:43 But then he does it again. So the the episode kind of ends. We already mentioned that Matt has this thing he mentioned about one of the questions he answered. He'd rather be at home alone than with his friends at a party. And Kathy teases him about it. So the episode kind of ends with him imagining the party and he's there and he's picturing the door and it's right there and he sees through the window all of his friends. And they're laughing and they're talking. And Kathy's talking to the the captain.

59:19 And there's George. And George is like waving at him. Come on, what are you doing? Come on in. They're all like, in the captain's office or something. And it's weird because he's talking to the psychologist and he's having a flashback. And when she says something like, you know, is there something you're dealing with or something you're afraid of? What are you afraid of when she says afraid of and we see his face and we've we've gone into the vision, we hear music and I don't know that we're about to look over and see this party going on in his vision.

59:52 So for a moment my brain said he had a traumatic experience with disco.

59:59 That's what he it's like. What are you afraid of? And it's like the the party music. And. I'm like, Oh no, Oh no. But then we see that he has this and he does. He walks over and he kind of smiles and like, reaches for the door, but he just just can't open it. And this episode does not try and explain Matt's psychology. It doesn't try and solve anything. It just tells us that he is still struggling with that. So those are interesting creative choices, but they are unique, I think, just to this episode.

1:00:30 And one other thing I just thought of was it's weird that the party is happening in what looks like Captain Grazier's office. So, you know, parties should be in big open spaces, but not only is it a social gathering, but it's crammed into a room. And I know that was necessary because I've got to do the metaphor with the opening the door. But I also can't help but wonder if maybe, on top of everything else you can throw into the psychological meaning of that scene, is Matt also afraid of enclosed spaces?

1:01:00 Honestly, it's as good a guess as any because we don't, they do not explore it further. They just essentially tell us that there's something broken about him and he's becoming aware of whatever it is. But yeah, I guess the idea that the psychologist is coming and most of us get defensive and say we don't have any use for that. He's saying maybe I have some use for that. But yeah. Oh, and then also Speaking of the psychologist, and I apologize if you said this already, but if we go back up to the cast, the psychologist, she looks familiar too.

1:01:35 What did you say she was in if you did say it? Catherine Justice plays Doctor Marcy White. She was crowned Miss Ohio in 1960 at age 17, but she was she was deemed too young. She was a minor still, so at least in that state. So she could not participate as an 18 year old. And I think Miss Universe, not Miss USA or Miss America. But I looked and her other credits, there was nothing that jumped out at me. I don't think she did that much. She did like several small things. She looked familiar to me too, man.

1:02:08 So it's not just you. OK, that's weird. I do also suspect that sometimes late 80s hair can play a trick on Todd and me because I think some of these hairdressers and outfit designers will do this thing where they will do up the women in identical ways. So we may have seen some other actress done as her several times and anything from Family Ties to Perry Mason. But yeah, nothing for her. The psychologist has this weird bit. So George is struggling with his flashbacks and his feelings because he was in this soldier assassin program and he'd blocked it out, couldn't talk.

1:02:46 Well, he hadn't blocked it out. They had brainwashed it out of him and given him drugs to make him not remember it. So he's expressing to her that he's got frustrations and she gets really close and she leans in and she says. Besdevski once said that every man deals with three kinds of truth, the kind he shares with his friends and he shares with himself and the guy in his Shields his innermost soul. There are ways to see behind the shield. It's weird when the psychologist leans across the table and just starts quoting Dostoevsky.

1:03:21 I don't think a lot of them do that. I like it. I like literature, but it's like Nick has to pause the DVD and be like, oh, wait, wait, wait, I've got to think about Dostoevsky now. I've got to write this down. This is good stuff. So yes, that was that was unique. It did occur to me that this director, like I mentioned before, he's done Incredible Hulk. And you know, one thing Incredible Hulk does is a lot of slow motion shots of action, just like the $6 million man or the Bionic Woman. So maybe that's why when people are attacked in parking lots, it's all done in slow motion.

1:03:58 Just a possibility. He was trained that way, man. But those who die in quarantine were interred in empty boil drums. And Matt says it smells sweet. And this is just, I don't know why they put this in there except what Todd and I were talking about before that it enriches the whole universe of alien nation. But George says. Blahib preparation Solution Today they departed on their journey to sleep. It's never mentioned again. It has nothing to do with the plot. And they find out that the person they're looking for, his oil drum, is empty.

1:04:35 It's packed with straw or something, but I guess that implies that only one of all of the drums is empty, and that the Tanktonese do believe in an afterlife, apparently. And they believe that Celine is there even though she's not a deity per SE, so much as a venerated part of this couple. So that's who lived her life really well. So they did have some say in how bodies were interred, and I guess that's something. And George insists on doing this small ritual. Before Matt opens the drum, he crosses his wrists and touches his hearts, and then he uncrosses his wrists and touches his hearts and then his temples and that's it.

1:05:14 And he's like, OK, now you can desecrate the grave, go ahead. But there's nobody in there. So it's Kathy's apartment is apt 2O four. If you're a stalker like me, y'all should know that. George was in Internment Camp 7, which Kathy heard was rough. It is unresolved what happens to Silas Marner after this episode is over. They essentially seem to stop Jeffrey's from maybe just, oh, Jeffrey says he's not even there to kill him. He's just going to take him back to whatever safe house they've had him stashed in all this time that he broke out of.

1:05:48 They just sit on him like The Winter Soldier because they don't know what to do with him. And they stop him from taking him away. Like, fine, I'm not here to get in a shootout. I was just going to take him. So he leaves and I don't know what we do with this brainwashed assassin, but they don't cover it. And, you know, they tell Jeffries we're going to tell the newspapers about this. So Jeffries says, you know, the newspapers, they just because you tell them the story, it doesn't mean they're not going to print it, which I guess is their way of saying it won't be printed.

1:06:20 Just kind of a shortcut as a mystery. There's a lot of government spook mystery in this episode, but not in a way that you can do anything about it. He also says to them in this scene, out of nowhere, we're all just rats in the maze and somebody else decides who gets the cheese, which continues the behavioral theme of this episode. Maybe he only thought about it because he spent 20 minutes at a behavior lab earlier in this episode. But rats in a maze? Let me see. Oh, I wanted to mention discs. So this is a futurism episode of a show that takes place in our, our, our near future.

1:07:05 And they do similar stuff in Star Trek where they will show technology that might exist or is realistic. So this episode features a lot of data on disks. And by disks, I mean, what looks to me, I mean, yeah, they're, they're disks that we've saved computer files on. But at the time we weren't really doing that. We were just breaking away from, Let me see, yeah, 5 and 1/4 floppies starting to move into 3 1/2, and they were like hard plastic discs, as opposed to things that look like CDs, which we did eventually use for cd-roms.

1:07:40 These guys are waving around CDs. They're waving around discs like that, very colorful. And they're using past information. We don't see them put them into a computer. They do not seem to have created ACD drive for it yet. Or a slot where someone inside an empty machine like grabs it out of their hand and takes it. We'll just see them miming it moving toward a computer, passing them around, showing us the disks that are probably just CDs. Grazer gives them a file on disk at the beginning and they pull up what looks like it could have been a fax instead, like a one sheet.

1:08:15 Like that whole disk was a single piece of paper. They do this in Next Generation and Deep Space 9 with data pads, where Star Trek invented the tablet before we had tablets, before the iPad was out and they didn't understand how data would work yet. So Picard or Cisco will have like 20 data pads on his desk as all these people turned in their work. Like he's just going to pick up your tablet and my tablet. Everybody just hands in your entire computer tablet instead of sending files. So it's one of those futurism things where it's like, hey, I got that information for you.

1:08:51 Here's an entire computer disk with three lines of text. You know, it's like, oh, OK, I do want you fans to know the listener. I dug through the multiple computer screens that we are shown with suspect and victim information, looking for anything juicy like a spot pattern like we saw in previous episodes and there was nothing. Just boring made-up data this time like addresses, socials, phone numbers with 555. The readouts could be interesting in their construction. To early computer fans they appear to be real screenshots, sometimes with a flashing classified or inter likely made as one created graphic screen.

1:09:34 They do imply that the NSA has its own proprietary software, which is kind of funny. Like copyright NSA 1990. But I did look through all of them and there is nothing there. So y'all can save your time on slow motion and pause and that is it. Or I have to mention this. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess the only thing left then is great, the scores. This show, well, I give a score based on whether you should watch it or skip it and whether or not it does well with an STA score. A Star Trek alumni number so we had a base 4 here for Star Trek alumni.

1:10:14 Matt, George and Susan always are in every episode, so that's a three. And we did see Captain Grazer in this, as Todd mentioned, no Moodri or Burns. So that's a base 4 of Star Trek alumni. We get an extra point for Bob Harkin Harks, who returns as uncredited detective because he was in Next Generation and Deep Space 9. Like I said, tune into last week's episode or the week before, I should say, to have me go through what those specific credits were because I know I mentioned them. We also had Professor Pettit, the evil behaviorist who you know right away, he's a bad guy, y'all, because he has an eye patch.

1:10:53 He's got a black lens in his glasses. I mean, Oh my goodness. Todd and I have a fellow podcaster we know, Gary Mitchell, who's been wearing an eye patch recently, and Gary knows it makes him look evil. So don't even pretend Professor Pettit was in Voyager. He was in Star Trek Voyager and the truly excellent Next Generation season 1 episode Conspiracy as one of the Admirals, not the one that throws Ryker across the room, one of the others who looks very, very concerned. And Jeffries, that son of a gun was in TNG season 6 episode True Q, like I mentioned, and I believe you guys mentioned it in The Discerning Geeks Oral podcast when you rated Q appearances.

1:11:39 So that's a good listen, everybody. The Discerning Geeks Portal podcast ranked appearances of Q and Star Trek in their fifth episode. It was in the outro of that episode and also the outro of the fourth episode in which Q abducted Todd. Unfortunately, Q returned Todd to the space-time continuum both times. So that gives this episode a STA score of seven, which is highly respectable. We've had a few fives and they've kind of bummed me out, so yay, seven. I think you need to watch this episode to see Sykes do some decent police work.

1:12:14 I also approve of the message about the government only concealing things from everybody when they're up to something shady. I think Sykes has never been more right. And I was frustrated with some stuff, as I said before, but it was a solid episode. So yeah, I think you should watch it. How about you, Todd? Yeah, I think that's a good word for it. I was thinking the same thing. It's solid, It's solid, it's stable. It has fewer things to nitpick over. At least I felt that that way. But again, I there's not anything to be super duper impressed with either.

1:12:49 And it's not that did anything wrong or the things weren't good about it. It's just they were things that other episodes kind of like went the extra mile with, but then those same episodes that went the extra mile also had more nitpicks. So I've already kind of hinted at this. I'm struggling with the great. I'm still doing it right now, but I think I'm just going to leave it alone and I'm going to give this a B plus, which means that this is the fifth best episode in my book. And there's a part of me that doesn't feel like it deserves it since it isn't that spectacular.

1:13:21 But then when I compare it to the two episodes that got AB, I'm like, well, it's, it's better than those. So should I give this one AB and then take the the the 2B's and bring them down to B minus? But then they're but then it doesn't feel right to mix them with the B minus. So overall, yeah, this is supposedly AB Plus in the 5th best episode. I'm also wondering if I was a little bit harsh really early on with the episodes Fountain of Youth and Little Lost Lamb. I feel like those should possibly be higher because I'm not sure I was right with those B minuses.

1:13:55 But anyway, yeah, so for now I'm going to leave this as AB Plus. You know, I can't imagine making a plan to re watch episodes, but you do. You started out your rating system intentionally a little bit strict, and I think that that has borne out. So, yeah, the episodes you mentioned are they have some good stuff in them, but they also make some very weird choices as well. Yeah. I think if you rate things technically, you're going to have some technical successes that you're kind of scratching your head at like, well, I guess it I mean, it hit all the buttons.

1:14:30 So, yeah, good enough. We will look forward toward next week as Todd and Nick explore Episode 13, A Spirit of 95. While purist groups are tied to anti newcomer bombings and kidnappings, Buck and Susan Francisco joined the movement to get the Tank Deniz the right to vote. So while the overseers and purists haven't been the constant villains that I thought they were, they're always in the background. Is this next episode going to be returned to the sporadic racial discrimination analogy style of the first few stories?

1:15:05 And Buck's spending time with his mom. That's awesome. He's really stepping up as a new Big Brother. So join us next week as we find out if this is a good thing or no misogyny intended. If Susan needs to stay safe at home because of the baby. Next week, as Todd and I continue alienating ourselves, I continue to be Nick. I'm Todd, thank you for joining us. We'd love to see some reviews wherever you listen to podcasts. If you love us, like us, or can barely tolerate us, please give us five stars. If you really hate us, please give us four stars.

1:15:35 If you give us three stars or lower, we won't stop bugging you until you turn in your psychological profile. As as always, may all your milk be as fresh or as sour as you prefer it to be. And when you have to fill out your own psychological profile, just go ahead and get it over with, because they're probably going to think you're crazy no matter what. And in 2026, regardless of which reasons you pick, aren't we all going at least a little bit crazy? Anyway, have a great week. Good night everybody.