#018 - Alien Nation 1.12 "The Red Room"
After a brief "Star Trek" detour, we're back to our "Alien Nation" rewatch with 1.12 "The Red Room," an episode that explores another dark secret in George Francisco's past.
- What did Nick like so much about the Monopoly scene?
- What did Todd notice & appreciate so much about the episode?
- What is special about this week's medical examiner character and the actress that plays her?
- In what ways does this episode explore the growing friendship (and possibly more) between Matt & Cathy, and what was illogical about some of Matt's reactions this week?
- What scenes had seemingly bad police procedures?
- What things did both co-hosts like from George's hypnosis scene?
- What nitpicks did Nick have involving animals, keyboards, teasing, and hypocrisy?
- Was there anything notable and the writing, directing, locations, or casting, this week?
- What brand new weekly segment did Todd introduce, based on something he got for Christmas (well, almost weekly; he forgot it one week, possibly the week right after introducing it)?
- And, how well did this week's episode explore psychology, government agencies, and technology?
Listen now for the answers to these and other mind-altering questions, as we investigate..."The Red Room."
Please rate or review us wherever you listen to podcasts. You can leave comments on individual episodes via the Spotify & GoodPods apps. Our e-mail address is [email protected].
Royalty-free songs used in this episode come from Pixabay.com (and one from the former site, FreePD.com).
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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? 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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? 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.
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. 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.
He doesn't exist. And George is like, what does
that got to do with us? Let some guy be a fake.
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? 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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Bad police work. Yikes.
Yikes, Yikes. I'm Kathy Frankel.
Matt Sykes. Yeah, I know.
In your language, Sykes means excrement and cranium.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. So for a moment my brain said he
had a traumatic experience with disco.
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.
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? 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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? 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. 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.
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