#020 - Alien Nation 1.14 "Generation to Generation"
Uncle Moodri is back, Matt becomes a big brother, and we explore the "Heart of Tencton" in this week's review of "Alien Nation" episode "Generation to Generation."
- How good is it to have Uncle Moodri back?
- What do the co-hosts think of the name Vessna for the upcoming Francisco baby?
- How strange is it to see the depiction of an auction where the main items for sale are related to forms of slavery?
- What do the co-hosts think about Matt becoming a big brother and the kid he mentors? Why is the kid so nice & thankful? Are there suspicions that there's something wrong with grandma (the kid's guardian)?
- The kid mentions wanting to go camping with Matt. What creative (and derogatory) name does one co-host have for camping.?
- Which co-host was pleasantly surprised & relieved that the kid wasn't a psychopath?
- What did the co-hosts think about the Tenctonese culture this week, including a certain kind of memorial service?
- What did the co-hosts have to say this week about plot points, pacing, and structure?
- Which co-host was surprised to find out he's had the "Alien Nation" DVD box sets this whole time and feels stupid for not being able to find his DVD player remote control?
- Speaking of boxes, what did the co-hosts think about "The Box," also known as the Heart of Tencton, in this week's episode?
- Which of Matt's traits were featured in this week's "Yikes, Sikes!" segment?
- And, what did Todd come up with from the "Unofficial Companion" book and for the "Wheel of Press Kit" segment?
Listen now for the answers to these and other out-of-the-box questions, as we look back at..."Generation to Generation."
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Royalty-free music in this episode comes from Pixabay.com (plus one from the now defunct 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 opinions. I hate that thing.
Why don't we call it something pretty like we'll?
I remember when Uncle Muji told me bedtime stories of tank time.
I. Remember when Uncle Muji came?
To the sea. And.
He gave me hope. Why does Daddy have to leave?
Be out of the house 'cause grandma smells weird because I
have my own terminology for camping, I call it simulated
homelessness. I told you it was dangerous.
He has sleep indoors because we pay for.
This Gee whiz, I'm sorry the dry cleaner couldn't get that wine
stain out of your shirt. Maybe we can start over.
Get it right this time, Todd. Oh my gosh, I see crap positive.
But I'm dumb. This is old nose quail.
'Cause I'm an idiot. We already knew that.
Really. I'm a dumb ass.
I've. Been telling you that for years.
Holy crap, Todd listeners, he is not so stupid that he tears down
again, Fires, fire, fire, fire. What's in the box?
George Francesco is one of my all time favorite.
Characters. This show is going to go to
places that I really enjoy. Sour milk is a good thing to the
tanked knees. Stay tuned.
Listeners. Of press kit.
Yikes, Yikes. Both things 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 exploit the hearts of their planet.
I am one of your hosts, Todd. I've never been a Big Brother
and not sure I would be a good one, but even I would have
enough sense to take a kid somewhere more interesting and
cleaner than a hardware store. And joining me, as always, is a
guy who may or may not have instructed his own son on the
differences between the many types of nails.
It's Nick. Nick, how's it going?
It's going really well. I'm happy to be here.
I have been a Big Brother, and I sucked at it.
And it gave me a jaded perspective on what to expect
from the Big Brothers themselves and what to expect from the
little brothers. And that might have helped me
enjoy this episode because it didn't go the way I thought it
might. But yeah, with my own kid.
Oh, my gosh, He's lucky to get to go to the hardware store with
me. I'm not sure.
I'm like, you know what? You're not invited.
And he's like, hey, So yeah, yeah.
I guess it's all perspective. But have I taken him camping?
No. What does that say about me?
Matt's a better dad than me. That hurts.
See, you took me there right at the beginning, Todd.
I didn't expect to question my fatherhood in comparison.
Matt Sykes right at the beginning.
OK, let's get into it. Alienation Season 1 episode 14
Generation to Generation originally aired Monday, January
29th, 1990. It turns out that five years ago
when the newcomer spaceship crashed and blew up, a body was
thrown miles away. The local backwoods paint
huffing hippie found this skeleton holding an ornate box
and did what any of us would do. He pried it from the cold dead
hands and sold it for 200 bucks weed money.
It turns out this box is very special artifact and desperately
sought after by newcomer elders like Uncle Moodri and mysterious
dudes in suits that turn out to be from the energy company.
The elders want it because it's sacred and important for the
future, but they won't say why or how.
And the company stooges want it because one of them is a
newcomer who thinks it might have a tank Deniz sort of Arc
reactor inside that you can duplicate.
While this is going on, we have Matt coerced into joining the
Big Brothers of America because of things.
This episode was written by Andrew Schneider and Diane
Froloff. This couple wrote the first
Cigar and Three to Tango as well as three more episodes after
this one and three of the five TV movies.
I think they advise on the other episodes as well as producers.
So I think of them as the 1990 version of a showrunner, which
wasn't as common back then, along with Kenneth Johnson, who
isn't writing or directing any of these, but he is producing
them all and directing anything that's an A movie, an alienation
movie. This is directed by John
McPherson, one of the production team that met on The Incredible
Hulk. There's a bunch of connections
there. He directed 5 episodes including
Fountain of Youth, First Cigar, in Contact.
He also directed a single episode of Babylon 5 And Todd.
I don't know if you remember season 4 Episode 3 The
Summoning, but the description says a mysterious spacecraft
heads toward the station while Marcus and Ivanova search for
more first ones to aid in the war.
Oh yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
All right. So go John McPherson.
I think John McPherson likes working with Schneider and Fro
Loft because they'll collaborate again on episode 17 Real Men.
So I tried to summarize it because we're going to talk
about details. What was your first reaction to
this episode, Todd? Very similar to the last few
episodes where it's very even keel.
Overall, I definitely like it, but at the same time in the
middle of the road kind of way where there's nothing so
frustrating that makes it bad or disappointing, but at the same
time nothing so impressive that I'm I'm blown away by it either.
And I, I apologize that I've said that for the last few
episodes, but that we're in that stretch of what I call stable
episodes. In fact, that's kind of the way
I've often described Stargate SG-1.
To me, that show didn't have very huge highs, but hardly
ever, if ever, had any low lows. It was always just very stable.
It was always somewhere between good to above average and I feel
like we're in a like a little miniature stretch of that with
this show. And in fact, I'm not sure what
next week's episode is going to be like, but I do know that the
two episodes after that are going to be higher peaks.
But right now we're in that even keel middle range for me.
How about you? Well, this episode bugged me in
a couple of ways, and I think part of that is my fault because
my process for watching these is different than yours.
I think you can kind of go through them a couple of times,
maybe in the background as well. And I try and absolutely devour
every inch of film as I go through each episode once and
then don't revisit it again. So I may have gotten too
nitpicky and distracted to appreciate the overall spectrum.
I got distracted by the B plot, I got distracted by the C plot,
and I think I might have missed some of those big picture
moments. But this movie did try to go to
an emotional place and I got pulled into that hook, line and
sinker. It worked on me.
So ultimately, it was really sweet and it it got me when it
was supposed to, especially toward the end.
So we are ready for our sour milk notes, our positives.
What's your first positive for this episode, Todd?
All right, my, my first one is that it's great to have Moodri
back. And since that's really broad
and vague, I'll go into my next bullet point, which is about
Tingtonese culture. And especially since several of
these do relate to Moodri, it turns out that oh, and just in
case somebody's joining us in the middle of things, Moodri is
a recurring character. I think this is his fourth time
showing up, and he is, I believe, Susan's biological
uncle, even though it seems like he usually has more scenes with
George. So to George, he's an in law.
But yeah, he's part of the family and I think he's been
staying there, but he's not always on screen.
But Mudri is also one of the elders of the Tanktonese, and
some Tanktonese still go to the elders for guidance.
There's a box at the center of this episode, and I wish it had
a name. It's often just described as the
box, but it's also called the Heart of Tincton and Moodri is
is very connected. This box.
He realizes immediately what it is and what since we're talking
about the episode, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that this
box, if used incorrectly, can basically fry people alive,
whether they're tinctonies or human.
You've got to open it a certain way.
And as an elder, Mudri is one of the people who knows how to open
it. And then again, we're talking
about the episodes. I hope it's not too big a deal
to jump to this spoiler that's near the end of the episode.
But basically the point of the box is that when you do open it
correctly, it can show you what Ting Tong looks like.
And then there's also one of the little bit of culture attached
to Mudri. There's something called Semyon
chains, which are kind of handmade necklaces that are
passed down from man to man, and each man adds a link to the
chain. And Mudri gives the chain that
he's working on to Buck for him to then give to George.
And he tells him you'll know when it's time to give to
George. And it's a little weird that he
gives it to Buck, who is then supposed to give it to George,
knowing that George being the older generation, will probably
end up giving it right back to Buck.
But I think the point is that Moodri knows that that that
George kind of looks at him with an odd eye and that he has more
of a connection to Buck. So I think he's giving it to
Buck for safekeeping and knowing that George will be the and that
that's all that Buck needs to do.
But that once it goes to George, then George will need to add his
link and then he can give it back to Buck, with Buck, of
course, someday adding his own link and passing it down to
somebody else. So yeah, it's always neat when
the show explore explores culture.
And sometimes I put that in a different category.
But since I don't have a ton of stuff in my good or bad stuff
categories, I've moved it to good stuff.
And, and those are the more detailed ways of saying how
great it is to have Moodri back. Yeah, I watched this show as a
kid and I think I was irritated with Uncle Moodri because George
was irritated with Uncle Moodri and he is a cryptic hippie
character, sort of barefoot and bringing in farm animals and
disrupting the household. And I'm a the kind of person
who's frustrated by disruption. So I don't know, I read that
frustration and and adopted it. But the other thing is that
Moodri is a good example of this thing we all have where we
experience the older generation trying to speak to us and share
what they think are Nuggets of wisdom.
And for whatever reason, generation generationally, it
doesn't translate. So we end up rolling our eyes or
being frustrated and we see George go through this.
He doesn't hate Moodri. It's not quite 80s sitcom, but
he is trying and he just does not get where this guy's coming
from. So yeah, you're Semia Chain is
my third positive, so I'll jump to that and just say that he
gives this necklace to we see him fashioning his last link,
which I guess implies he's had it this whole time and it never
even he didn't get to the place where he was making the link.
Maybe you wait until you feel like you're near the end of your
time with the chain to make the link and then you pass it on.
But he when he gives it to Buck, it is, it's like Moodri
understands that if he hands it to George, George will be like,
thank you so much for your bizarre trinket that I do not
want. And he's going to put it in a
box or something as nicely as he can, but Buck will care about
it. And I thought the same thing.
I'm like, just give it to Buck. George doesn't care.
But Moodri senses, and we've covered previously that the man
does seem to have some sort of extra sensory thing going on.
He sort of predicts that a time or moment will come when George
will care and Till's buck to wait for that moment and then
give it to him. And this is what I meant earlier
with emotional resonance. There are movies that I like
that try for an emotional scene and don't do as well as this one
episode. So that says something.
You try and make the audience get a little misty, and I think
they did a good job with it. So when George does get the neck
chain, the semia, eventually, it is because I mean, we're kind of
giving everything away and I think that'll help us carry on.
But Mudri seems to know that he is not going to make it through
this episode when he gives it to Buck, Buck is like, don't you
need it? And he's like, no, you know, I,
I think I've got everything I need.
He implied right then I don't think that he was going to make
it through the episode. So when he does end up dying in
the course of the episode and George is struck with it, I
think we'll come back to that in a little bit.
But they have this emotional moment where Buck is outside and
George comes out and talks to him.
Moodri wanted them to name the baby that's on the way in a
traditional way after the mother's mother's name.
And the Francisco parents look at each other, and Susan's
mother was apparently named Vesna.
And they both don't like that name.
They think of it like Verna, like a just traditional name.
They're like, uh, George wants to name the baby Heidi, going
along with his continued theme of assimilation and fitting in.
You should be practicing it every day.
Why? What do I need?
We've got to assemble this pod swing.
I am sick of looking at that box line.
Yes, all right. But Uncle Moody's in the guest
room where we're going to put it, can we?
Talk about this later. What are we going to name our
new baby sister? Well, there's several
possibilities. I like Heidi.
Yeah, Uncle Moody says we should name a girl after the mother's
mother. Make that name.
Why don't we call her something pretty like Wilma?
Or Heidi, I agree with uncle. You should name her Vesna AM.
How do you say window in tech to me?
Oh, leave me alone. But after Mudri passes away and
it's really struck George hard, he comes out and he's talking to
Buck. He's just standing there looking
at the stars and and he says, you know, we've decided to name
the baby Vesna. Buck knows that that means that
he started to care about his Uncle Mudri.
And he's like, he wanted you to have this.
So he gives him the necklace. George gets emotional.
Buck touches George's temple affectionately, which is one of
the things they do. They embrace and Buck cries,
which is also pretty cool because it's, you know, men.
And it's a teen, clearly troubled teen.
So that was like, a nice scene. It really got me.
What's your next one? Well mine is similar.
I love that they decided to name the baby Vesna.
So you already described the previous scenes where they're
trying to figure out the name and there's nothing wrong with
Heidi, but one of the other names that they were thinking
about wasn't that great. And so and they're also kind of
human names. And I think because they're, you
know, on Earth now and part of the reason they had the baby was
kind of connect themselves to their new world.
They were of course thinking about a human name.
But even though they don't originate on Earth, they already
have adopted human names. And so I think it's nice
symmetry that the baby born on Earth gets an alien name.
And I think Vesna is just a really cool name.
And if you'll remember, way back in one of our first episodes, I
kind of implied that I can't remember exactly what it was I
was talking about, but I said something about how in a future
episode, things will get better or will get at least that one
really good episode. It'll have something to do with
a character whose name starts with AV.
And you didn't know what I was talking about.
Well, this is the V name, it's Vest, and the episode that I'm
talking about is still coming up, but at least now we know the
name of that character when that character gets here.
Well, since it was a character with a letter that I didn't know
who that was. I guessed you were talking about
the baby. But I have very fuzzy memories.
This is as good a time as they need to mention that I have no
recollection of this episode at all.
I'm not a reliable resource for what actually happened, but
there's a chance that I know some of these episodes I will
have missed because of not taping them when they first came
on. But yeah, very surprised by a
lot of this. So yes, we'll see what happens
with that. I'm still in the dark.
My next one. OK, so after they find out that
this box even exists and is missing at the beginning,
apparently there's a scene we don't see where George goes home
shares about the box. Moodri knows what the box is.
Moodri insists on going that like to an auction where they're
going to auction off the box. This all goes down off camera.
So we rejoined George and Buck and Uncle Moodri at an auction.
And Matt is not there because it's not really a police
function. They're just there.
And this resonated with me because I've seen a lot of shows
do auction scenes. And in a lot of shows, there
will be a character who is bidding inappropriately, bidding
money they don't have, bidding, putting their family in debt.
The guy who's middle income saying 120,000, you know, And as
the viewer, I'm like going out of my skin.
So I really like in this episode that when Moodri just starts
frantically yelling out bids more and more and more, he just
keeps trying to raise every bid from everybody else.
But he says George finally tells the auctioneer he does not have
money to pay it. And the auctioneer kind of
questions him a second and then literally just starts
disregarding Moodri, which, oh, it gave me such peace in my
heart because it's like, yes, you can say this guy at the
auction, he's a crazy person. In most TV, if you raise your
little paper fan, they're going to come after you like mob
enforcers. There's no take backs.
If you scratch your nose wrong, you're on the hook for $20,000.
So that was, that was very cathartic for me because I've
seen Bill wrong so many times. It is also worth mentioning in
the auction scene that George, not with bitterness or anger or
anything, just notes how weird it is that people buy artifacts
of slavery and buck comments on people collecting Nazi helmets
and stuff. But to drive the point home, the
Riders have them first auction off a sleeping pallet with
shackles intact from the newcomer ship that crashed, and
he mentions that the shackles are only slightly seared from
the explosion, so it's exactly as creepy as I think they were
going for. Yeah, yeah, That's cool.
Yeah. Let me see my next one.
In fact, kind of my last one is that it's nice to see Matt
getting to be a Big Brother. Now, of course, he's terrible at
it because he's a caveman, doesn't know how to do anything
like usual. But luck, He he lucked up
because he got a kid who doesn't mind.
This kid is easy to please. Now, Grant, he might be a little
bit too easy to please. I mean, it doesn't matter what
Matt does. This kid acts like he's glad to
just be out of the house. He's like, I'm just glad to be
out of the house because Grandma smells weird or something like
that. I don't know what's going on
there. It makes me wonder, is there
something majorly wrong with Grandma where he's like, I just
got to get out of here? But Matt at least does kind of
figure out that he sucks at it. You know, they get back from
spending one day together and apparently Matt has taken him to
the hardware store, which is where that reference comes from
in my weird little intro. And he's also.
Also apparently taken him to the cleaners to try to pick up his
dry cleaning. And I think he takes him to one
other mundane place and the kids just thank him for taking all
these weird places. And Matt says maybe next time
we'll go to the movies. And I'm thinking, why don't you
go this time? And then you are making
reference to the final scene where they go camping.
And I think you said something like maybe you're bad for not
taking your son camping. No, I think you're teaching your
son the importance of a mortgage because if you're paying 100,
you know, several $100 a month for your house.
Why would you go out and sleep out in the woods?
Because I have my own terminology for camping.
I call it simulated homelessness.
The way I feel about it, if you're paying a mortgage, why
would you want to go somewhere where you got to sleep on the
ground, possibly wake up in the rain, possibly be attacked by a
bear or eaten by, you know, mosquitoes or chipmunks or or
whatever, you know, poop out in the woods?
Why? Why would you want all this?
You pay hundreds of dollars a month for walls, roof, indoor
plumbing, shelter, warmth. Why would you want to go out and
sleep on the ground? So no, you're, you're teaching
your kid good values sleep indoors because we pay for this.
So you're, you're sending a good message, but for some weird
reason, this kid wants to be outside for some reason and Matt
is humoring him. So he's a better person than.
I am. I will try not to just repeat
everything you said listeners. I have had positive camping
experiences, Todd, if you don't get to eat for a big chunk of
the day because you're preparing the fire and the food, you're so
hungry by the time you eat that it's like one of the best
experiences of your life. And there are other fun things.
But you know, we all light up when we have like fire, fire,
fire, fire, fire. But anyway, I won't get into the
joys of camping, but there this bee plot with the Big Brothers
of America. As far as I can tell there's no
point to it. The episode is generation to
generation. Matt has a kid and they decided
not to bring her back so we contrive a kid for him to have a
generational impact on. George is connecting with his
uncle and his child. I guess it's not really stated
or clear to me that way at all. It's just more like Matt has
this side adventure for no reason except that when they go
see the hippie in the woods who stole the box at least twice and
is clearly on drugs in the chase we find out that Matt is afraid
of the woods. And rightly so.
He's afraid of spiders, he's afraid of Poison Ivy, He's just
squeamish. And we kind of go on a journey
with him in this where eventually he's telling this
little boy he's his Big Brother and he's telling him about how
dangerous the woods are. It's very dangerous.
And it culminates with them going camping, which instead of
the emotional end that I was talking about, this is the end
of the episode with him and Sydney, the little kid in the
woods having this great time together.
And Matt is still twitching and looking over his shoulder
because he's scared. I.
Told you it was dangerous here. My positive is what you already
said. TV has trained me that foster
kids, adopted kids, little brothers are all conniving,
mischievous rascals, desperate, clinging, grasping and Sydney is
so nice that you're sure he is about to do something terrible.
He's going to steal the car and go for a drive or something.
And no, he is just a really nice kid and he's just thrilled for
anything he can get. And he's like, I left you alone
for three hours in the police station.
Gee whiz, a real police station. A guy puked over there.
He's just happy with anything. Loves the hardware store, loves
it. I thought it was sarcasm.
It's not. He's just a nice kid.
Look, Sydney, sorry I'm so late. Just two hours.
I told my grandma. You want a real important kiss?
Wow, wasn't that pretty? What?
The flowers, the trees? Looks like the woods.
It does. Yeah, I've never been to the
woods, but I've seen lots of pictures.
I was born in Detroit, but I've been to the woods.
Maybe sometime you and me, we'll go camping.
That's what I really like to do. Bears, big rocks, waterfalls,
the. Woods can be a very dangerous
place that Poison Ivy, poison oak, spiders fall off those big
rocks. You've been camping.
No, no, not personally. But I knew this guy who broke
his leg in the Angeles forest. I had to spend the whole night
there alone. No food or water.
Could have died if the Cub Scouts hadn't come by.
Found him the next day. Look, Sydney, I I I got to do
some errands. Let's go.
Well, your grandmother should be here any minute.
Matt, I had a great day. That hardware store had lots of
neat stuff. Yeah, and thanks for letting me
stay in the car when I went through the car wash.
And I like the man to clean your clothes.
Too bad they can't get that one stain out of your shirt.
Well, maybe next time we'll go to the movies or something.
So I like the non twist that Sydney really is what he appears
to be and he just appreciates stuff.
And once again, you and I kind of match up.
It still makes me wonder what's going on with Grandma.
Grandma must must be a horror. She just, well, she works, so
she's not only a grandmother who doesn't take him to do anything
ever. He doesn't get to go out to
hardware stores with grandma, and she's gone a lot.
So yeah, maybe he's with Miss Fig down the street.
I have two small additional ones and one kind of Moody additional
1. So are you done with good
things? Well, the only other thing I'll
I'll say to elaborate on my last point is that, you know, we've
often complained about Matt being a caveman and in a way he
still hit is here too. He's often the frustration in a
show that is bigger and better than he is.
And no offense to the actor, he's playing it the way he's
written, but it's all it's, it's like a lot of times Matt is a
thing that gets in a way of an episode being better.
And even though he still shows a little bit of that here where he
is kind of annoying by not doing the right thing with a kid, at
least not at 1st and having to take a while to learn in this
episode and the last few, he's getting better and getting
better faster. And so he doesn't come anywhere
close to ruining this episode. So we still get that little
element of him being a little bit stupid, but it's not, it's
not such a bad stupid that it that it tears down the episode.
That is a that is a crap positive.
He's not listeners. He is not so stupid that he
tears down the episodes. I think it's funny to me because
I think we are represented by Matt Sykes.
He is the John Cusack, every man in this show, and he represents
us. We are not George Francisco.
He's an Angel on earth. We wish we could be George
Francisco. We are.
We are the lousy, jaded, burned out cop who screws up everything
with his family and he's the hero.
He's the hero. But yes, that's great.
An easy one I have is that when he is dropping the kid off with
his grandma and they get out of the car, did you see the kind of
car it is when they walk around to the back of it?
Yes, yeah. And I think.
We mentioned in the back in the episode 15 with Wanda that
Matt's daughter Kirby had wrecked his Corallo.
He loved. I don't think there's a real car
called a Corallo. And you had mentioned, I think
some of these cars are just normal cars with spoilers glued
on the back and it follows through.
It's very pretty red car, but they've put Corallo very clearly
on the back, so I guess he got it fixed.
And that's really, really nice. Yeah, he another tiny 1 is just
that. As we mentioned, when you open
the box right, you see this vision of Tankton, and it's
lovely. I mean, for 1990s special
effects, they did a pretty great job.
That's like maybe one of the first things that I'd kind of
like to go back and look at again.
But yes, Buck hasn't seen it yet.
So I hope the elders do succeed in building their little church
so Buck can come out and look at it.
I think he needs to see it a lot more than Matt and George do.
But my other thing is just that I consistently love rituals.
And after Uncle Mudri dies, the Franciscos do this little
memorial service. And I thought it was really
cool. So the four of them, we've seen
a funeral before, and this is not that.
So maybe this is just immediate family or this is based on what
Mudri would have wanted because he has kind of hippy, dippy
beliefs compared to them. But the service was cool.
They take turns dumping a blue flame reactant into a little
middle fire that they're sitting around crisscross applesauce on
the living room floor, and you dump your little cup of stuff
into the fire. It bursts in blue flame for a
second and then you share a memory.
Emily. I remember when Uncle Muji told
me bedtime stories of Tank Tom. I'll just tell you a family.
Now let's time Emily look. I remember when Uncle Muji took.
Me to the sea. And he gave me hope.
Now this time. I really miss him, George.
I remember Moodri's love for his people and tradition, and his
hope for our future. Nala's tired memory.
Nala's tired memory. Yes, hello, George, I'm.
Sorry to bother. You.
Oh, Matt, it's all right. We're in the middle of our
coruna from Audrey. So now you guys know a memorial
service where you sit around and say what you remember.
The blue flames is a corona. I like that.
I like the rituals. Yeah, and George also said that
they were in the middle of it, so I can't help but wonder what
more there is to that little ceremony, assuming that there
was more after George got off the phone.
So I guess we'll get to see it, but.
They felt like they were almost done.
You're right. So yeah.
Yeah, But I, Yeah, I just can't help but wonder if there's more
to it. And it seemed like we do get
those little snippets way back in one of our earliest episodes,
there was something where they were memorializing a cop that
got killed. And it seemed like that ceremony
was really quick, too. It seemed like we get little
snippets. And sometimes I wouldn't mind
getting maybe just a little bit more because it, I, I think
we've kind of established that culture, the exploration of this
alien culture is one of our favorite things about the show,
if not the best thing about the show.
And so sometimes I wish we'd get a little bit more of that.
Are you ready for salt water? Yeah, Yeah, I think so.
My first Salt Water is that the plot has me very frustrated and
it might just be like I said, that I was too busy taking notes
to appreciate it. But it's kind of like this.
OK kids find the body. Then police say the body was
holding something which leads us to the hippie and the hippie
says he sold it, which leads us to the auction, which leads us
to the guy who buys it and he opens it and melts his face.
But then the box is stolen back. We find out by the hippie
because he feels he was gypped because he only got 200 bucks
and they auctioned it for 20,000.
So we think we go out to see the hippie, and while they're
chasing the hippie, green yellow station wagon peels away,
stealing the box. Again, we think it's the power
guys, but it turns out it's the elders that could be Mudri
driving that yellow station wagon.
So the power guys are pretty sure Mudri and the elders have
it. So they go to steal it from
Mudri. They hit him so hard he
essentially dies. And then George and Matt go and
get it back from the power guys to take it back to the elders.
And all of this is happening while Matt is being a Big
Brother. So it just, it just it, it
frustrated me a bit. I think it's the nature of it.
So I, I guess story writing wise, following a box on its
journey kind of makes sense. But the fact that the power guys
never actually have it until the end, I don't know.
There's other things too, but what's your first saltwater?
Well, now I don't have this in my notes, but just follow up on
what you're saying. I think you're right, and that's
one of the things that is making these last few episodes good.
But not that good, is there? It does seem to be distracted by
a bunch of mundane logistics and police work and stuff like that
that gets in the way of, like I just said, alien culture, which
is what we really want more of. And so we get it sprinkled in,
and sometimes it's even the point of the episode, but
there's still this layer of mundaneness, this earthbound
stuff on top of it. And sometimes I wish that could
get peeled away. I wouldn't like this show had
lasted beyond Season 1. I wouldn't mind having whole
episodes in future seasons where it's just like, for, for
whatever reason, Matt is on vacation.
There's not a a police story going on.
And so we just get to focus on the Francisco family.
And because there are no other humans around, they just get to
be as alien as they need to be. And we get to see nothing but
alienness going on for like a, a very special episode.
I wish we could get that, but that's not the show that this is
now. I mentioned that there are two
episodes coming up. There's still not quite what I
described, but there may be a little bit closer.
So, but yeah, this one's not close to that.
But anyway, you were talking a lot about structure, and you
really did kind of, like I said, a very general problem.
I picked out 1 little nitpick in that this episode opens up with
two girls playing hide and seek, and the whole point of them
playing hide and seek is to find this body that starts that chain
of reaction that you just described.
The thing is we're watching them play hide and seek for I clocked
it, it was a minute and 20 seconds.
We need, we did not need a minute and 20 seconds of
watching 2 girls playing hide and seek.
So I I think they could have stepped on the gas a little bit
in the beginning of the episode. The girls finding the body is
the only reason the cops go and talk to the hippie and find out
about the missing trunk that was stolen that goes to auction.
So if they hadn't found the body right then in the woods, even
though it's been there for five years, the police wouldn't have
even known about the auction. Oh yeah, I'm not saying don't
show. No, no, no, I'm.
No, I'm. I'm saying it's, it's really far
fetched, like, oh, OK, the, the guy, the hippie did not, you
know, who knows when he found the box, but the police come in
after it's already gone. It just happens to be that
everybody found it at the same time, which is just a huge
coincidence. But yes, I don't know that I
think there are other episodes where the plot doesn't hold a
lot of water or bare scrutiny, but I've mostly just ignore
those bits. But this one, it was convoluted
enough that I tried to untangle it.
And when you poke at it, you're like, wait a second.
But yes, there's more was. So there's a character named
Ballard. I pay a lot of attention to
character names because I'm trying to figure out who these
actors are. Richard Ballard One of the most
notable things about him is that I really, he doesn't need to be
in this episode. He doesn't do anything really.
But he also stands out to me because he's not credited.
He's nowhere in the credits, but they say his name out loud and
he's standing right over there. So I think this is multiple
repeat extra Bob Harks again, who's played a detective in the
background a few times. Just random white guy.
Ballard We barely see him on screen.
He has no lines. He may be one of the toughs,
yelling to give them a box through Mudri's door, banging on
the door. You don't come out.
We're coming in there and getting it.
We don't really see them in that scene.
So the character is weird. He's more important than he
should be and also so unimportant that he doesn't
really deserve the name and screen time he gets.
But the energy guys, they need a stooge.
It doesn't really fit the plot for them to be, I don't know,
beating people up so that bring in this character.
But anyway, his license plate number and his rap sheet are
what and his connection to the energy guy we haven't mentioned
yet, Heinrich Glass, who's a newcomer, is what leads them
back to the energy people who they thought had the box.
And this time they actually do toward the end.
So following the enforcer dude, Richard Ballard is what Matt
calls George out of his memorial service about so they can go
wrap this case up. But it's it's so strange, like
when they do bust in, the guy is like in the middle of say
they're trying to cut the box open with a laser.
Ballard, you better stand behind that protective glass over
there. And he walks over behind the
protective glass. But the other two guys don't.
They like walk somewhere else. I'm pretty sure.
I really thought Ballard was going to get fried.
But no, no, it's just so when Matt and George run in, Ballard
can, like, be wrestling with Matt to distract him, I guess.
But it's just it was a strange side character that you're like,
wait, who is this guy? And I don't know.
I don't know. I don't think they give extras
enough attention. But he solved a writing problem.
I think if George had finished his ceremony and called Matt
because he's just sure the energy guys have it and Matt has
been like, let's go, it would have accomplished the exact same
thing. But it's.
They needed a character. Yeah, what else do you got?
I've got one other, but I might save it because I wouldn't be
surprised if you're going to mention it.
So I'll skip to one thing that might not even be a fault of the
show itself. I don't know if it's a problem
with the production of the episode or a problem with the
Fox network that originally broadcast this, or if it's a
problem with Apple TV, which is where I I purchased these
episodes. But the quality of the picture
and sound seem even worse in this episode than the first 13
episodes because the picture and sound have never been great.
The, the quality of the picture that I've been watching all
along, it's never been great, but it it somehow seems even
darker and grainier this time around.
And I'm like, wow, I paid money for this.
And I just wish it were clear. And if I remember correctly,
you're watching this on DVDs. And so I can't help but wonder
if they have better quality or if they're not great either.
But yeah, for some reason, it seems like a step down.
I don't have this in my notes, but we've talked about this
before how this is the first episode where the opening
credits. Does not have three actors that
it did before. And my guess is this is back in
the days of the classic structure where a show is picked
up for 13 episodes and then if it's good enough, it gets picked
up for the back 9. And that's how some seasons
equal 13 episodes and other seasons equal 22 episodes.
It matters whether it got picked up for those additional nine.
Well, this is the first episode in that back 9 and I'm guessing
that's why 3 actors are gone. The opening credits are are
different different and I can't help but wonder if the budget
got cut on the production quality.
There again, this might have something to do with
transferring the episode to other mediums, and it might be
more of either a Fox network problem or an Apple TV problem.
My DVD's are crystal clear and this is an old pack of DVD's.
They're a cardboard box with three slim packs in it, 2 discs
each. I do recommend it.
They haven't re released this really pretty and they've only
released the TV movies once. So those are really expensive
online. They're currently available on
YouTube listeners so that when Todd and I get to those, the
picture quality might be truly awful, but we'll get through.
But yes, I'm not a good source of information about picture
quality because maybe it's just I like my TVI think it's good,
but unless something is truly awful, I haven't really
experienced the staggering difference with 4K or Blu-ray or
DVD yet. I just I'm pretty easy to please
most of the time. But yeah, I think they're pretty
good so. And I have another salt water,
but not about the show, but about me.
Because I'm an idiot. We already knew that.
But yeah, I just now realized, I remember, wait a minute, didn't
I at one time buy the DVD's for both the series and the TV
movies? So I just went over to the
drawer at the bottom of my entertainment center and yeah, I
own them and I grew up. Yeah, I know.
And I'm really, I'm a dumbass for years, but I also have a DVD
player, but I have lost the remote for it.
So now I have and I've been thinking I really need to find
the remote so I can use a DVD player.
So maybe I could finally buy Babylon 5 on the Blu rays that
have come out because I think it's actually a Blu-ray player,
so just a DVD player. But I keep forgetting to look
for the remote. And I don't know why I can't
find the remote because I'm usually better at keeping stuff
that I need. But I also forgot I think at one
time that I even had the Blu-ray player.
So I found it. I'm like, oh, that's great,
where's the remote? And I don't know what I've done
the remote. I'm worried that I might have
thrown it away, but I don't know why I would have done that
either. So if I could find the remote, I
could use a Blu-ray player to play the DVDs that I've owned
for a long time. And then I would have a crystal
crystal clear picture and I would never have had to buy this
on Apple TV. But but I'm dumb.
This is old nose quail. Honestly.
So we are on episode 19 of the Alienating Ourselves podcast and
there are twists and turns. Listeners, Paul Todd has
discovered that he owns the series.
Did you? You didn't say you owned the TV
movies too, did you? Yeah.
Todd, Oh my gosh, you've gone from having less than me to
having more than me. Are they a nice set?
Are they in a box that says what they are?
Let me see. I am fascinated.
I'm sorry y'all but this is like if you don't know people are
scalping the TV movies online. I mean, some people are selling
it for less and I don't know if that's reputable, but some
people are trying to get a ton of cash for them.
All right, so the movie collection has a big yellow
tinted alien head on it. It doesn't look like George, it
just looks like a generic tank knees person, mostly yellow
skin, but you can detect a little bit of, you know, spot
pattern up at the top. And then on the inside it has 2
slim cases. Disc one is dark horizon and in
the other case disc 2 is body and soul and Millennium and disc
3 is the enemy within and the Udara legacy.
And then for the series, that's three slim cases.
Yeah, that's the one I have. Yeah, Yeah, that's, Oh, shoot.
Yeah. So you're going to have, you're
going to have an op. Well, you said you got to get
your DVD player situation figured out, but yeah, yeah,
you're you're going to have better subtitles, man.
You're going to have better picture.
It's going to be a whole awakening.
Maybe we can start over. Get it right this time.
I'm excited for you. No, you know the the only thing
worse than like, oh, I messed up is not realizing that you had
something all along. So yeah, you're there and we
still have, gosh, several episodes and the movies.
I mean, you're ready to go. Yeah, gotta find that stupid
remote. Either that or get a universal
remote that will work with a Blu-ray player.
Oh, that, yeah, I promise it'll be cheaper than the the TV
movies, but yes, interesting. We've got twists and turns, man.
I'm, I'm kind of stoked for you. You'll have to send me a picture
of that set because that's cool. None of the pictures online are
really reputable. My next negative is that it
bothers me a little bit plot wise, that the energy guys are
right. They are on the right track.
Everything they're doing makes perfect sense.
They're not nice people, but they have a theory based on the
myths that Heinrich Glass, the newcomer, heard on the ship,
that the box has something powerful in it, that it might
have an energy source that they can use replicate, duplicate to
generate, maybe clean power, maybe pollution free, safe
energy. And that would be great for
their industry. And when you listen to Moodri,
he doesn't actually explain it clearly, but the box has not one
but two devices in it. Device A is what Todd was
talking about. I don't know if you'd call it a
mental interface. So they all go get thrown into
the Matrix wirelessly and Wi-Fi and you get to see Tankton with
all this high def imagery. Or if it's like a hologram
projector, I lean toward A, but you could argue for B.
But it's powerful and it has AB device and it's separate because
Mudri tells us it's separate. He says this other device is to
keep people who aren't supposed to open it from opening it.
This device fries you like a flamethrower at close range
without destroying the room around you.
They talk about it a bit. So those are two devices that do
not seem to need power cords, cables or battery changes, both
very powerful devices inside this box.
So yes, if the kids did not find the dead body and the energy
guys, yeah, sure, maybe they kill a few flunkies trying to
open it and stuff and they eventually find 2 machines in
there. They reverse engineer them like
Terminators and yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm, I, I, I like the
newcomers having the heart of Tankton, but I'm just saying
like, wow, there's a lot of energy in there.
And who knows, maybe they'd save on a hard drive.
You know what Tankton looks like and stuff.
Yeah. And in addition to all the stuff
you mentioned, like its main purpose and its defense system,
in addition to all that, if you look at the box after it's been
open and it's already fried somebody and so it's kind of
inert at the moment, it looks like an empty box, which means
it's either cloaking itself or all the previously mentioned
technology that you talked about is somehow stored in the edges
of the box and allowing it to have just empty space in the
middle. So yeah, there's a lot going on
there. At the same time, I don't have
this in my nose, but it's another thing I thought of while
you were talking. 1 little nitpick I would have is how are
they they making all these assumptions about about the box
when they have not opened it? They do not know what's inside.
I mean, I guess since there is a tanked on person a tanked in
these person who is also seeking this box, I guess maybe they
have a hint at what the box does.
But for the most part, they're just guessing what the box could
do. And I can't help but wonder what
are they doing with this laser? What are they doing shooting it
and, and thinking that's going to open it.
It's obviously not doing anything.
So what is this laser? I mean, obviously in real light,
in real life, it's just a light beam that they're projecting it
at the box and it's not a real laser.
But if even if it were a real laser, wouldn't they be afraid
that it's going to damage the box?
It's so everything about what they were suing about the box
and how they were trying to open it and how they were thinking
that would open it and not damage it is all just really
convoluted. Yeah, yeah, there are some
highly questionable things there.
Maybe there could have been a scene where a little boy
Heinrich Glass, newcomer on the ship, sees Elders opening the
box in a bright light inside. And that would have been enough
for us to go on for him to go through all this.
But no, we didn't see that. And yes, it is if if you can
open the box wrong and it looks empty, you really don't even
need the person frying device. Well, that's and that's the
other thing. If they literally detached the
person frying device and if you open it wrong, it's just empty,
they could give the person frying device to the energy
company. They'd probably be happy as
clams. Yeah.
But anyway, I only break it down because I care.
My next negative is just that Kathy's not in this episode.
Boo, Terry Trees. We miss you.
There could have been some fun interactions with her and Sykes
taking a little kid around with him.
You know, I, but I really, I want to mention that in the
episode that I probably liked the least, where we saw Matt
arguing with his ex-wife and really failing as a father.
And to be fair, George was failing as a father in that
episode too. I really wanted to be on Matt's
side. OK.
She argues that he was never around.
He's married to his job. He cared more about his job than
being a father. He argued that she made it
impossible for him to be with the kid, that he she got to
where she would shut him out when he did have time off and
stuff. Like I said, Matt represents us
and 80s women who were powerful were all depicted as terrible
people, so the show gives us enough reason to not like her.
But this episode, here we have him with a kid.
And beyond just being uncomfortable around a kid, we
see some significant anecdotal evidence that she was right and
he was wrong and he was a frequently absent crap dad.
It may still not be true, but this episode did not help his
side. And again when we had
flashbacks, audio flashbacks of him and his daughter Kirby at
the end of 15 with Wanda. They're only like 4 memories of
him being a father and one of them was in that episode and 1
is a baby and one is her saying why does daddy have to leave?
So it's like, I want to back you up, Matt Sykes.
Good Lord. Which the rest of my negatives
are the segment that I like to bring up.
Yikes, Sykes, Yikes, Yikes, Yikes bad Sykes.
I hate these know it all muffin heads who come from outer space.
Frenchman, 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? You are emotionally involved.
It makes for bad police work. Josh, what's that guy doing over
there? Quick guy.
What was that name again? Makes for bad police work.
It's bad police work. Yikes.
Yikes, Yikes. I'm Kathy Frankel.
Matt Sykes. Oh yeah, I know.
In your language, Sykes means excrement and cranium.
Yikes, Yikes. Yikes.
Big Yikes. Bad Sykes.
Yikes, Yikes. Sykes, Sykes, Sykes.
When we talk about the terrible choices Matt makes as a cop,
possibly how often he almost accidentally shoots someone.
Other things we've already mentioned taking the kid to to
the hardware store and the and Sydney, the boy is like, Gee
whiz, I'm sorry the dry cleaner couldn't get that wine stain out
of your shirt. So the writers are telling us
that Matt is not great. But in addition to that, when he
finds the kid sitting at his desk at the police station and
he decides he has to leave him there alone in the police
station, there are punks being dragged in, newcomer with a
bruise on his face and a guy with a foot tall blue Mohawk
that had clearly been fighting. He's like, yeah, OK, I'll leave
you alone in the police station at my desk for a couple of
hours. And he goes into his desk drawer
and he pulls out, Here's a motorcycle magazine for you,
kid. And here's a car magazine for
you kid. And here's a oh, you don't want
that? And we can all see it's a
Playboy he puts back in his desk.
So he just leaves the kid at his police desk.
But then, and I mean if any of you've seen the movie Copycat,
tragedy happens because a cop does not lock his desk with his
gun in his desk. Well, Sydney's been sitting at
this desk for a while before Matt shows up.
Before leaving, Matt reaches into that desk drawer past the
Playboy and pulls out his handgun, slips it into the back
of his jeans, pointing down at his butt.
Another classic cop move for Sykes.
It's just like, no, please. So yes, he does.
He tries to say positive things like, hey, get yourself some
snacks. He gives them some change for
the vending machine. Get something help me like some
corn chips. And when they're out at a food
truck, I think they're trying to show us that he took him to the
easiest place possible. He says, hey, you need some
vegetables and he squirts ketchup on his little food tray.
So yes, Matt is kind of, he's hitting some all time lows in
this one. Yeah, How is he alive and how is
he employed? He pays his taxes, we found that
out, and he's irresistible to women in his building.
So. Kathy could do better.
This Is Us, man. He is the everyman.
He represents you and me. Are we ready for connecting the
spots? Yeah, because funny enough, my
last remaining bullet point was the one I said I was going to
reserve because you might take it, and I had a feeling you
would. And it was that there's no
Kathy. Dang it, no copy.
Yeah. So yeah, I'm I'm ready to move
on to connecting the spot all. Right.
Well, the box, when you open it, it glows warm on the person's
face no matter how you open it, at least at 1st.
And this may remind viewers of Pulp Fiction, which did not come
out for three years after this. So you could imagine that
Tarantino had watched Alien Nation.
Although my a college cinema class teacher said that it was
an homage to a 1955 noir called Kiss Me Deadly.
He showed us a clip of where a person opens the box and there's
a soft blow on them so curses the box also I think has a
pretty obvious similarity. The Ark of the Covenant, both
biblically and in the way it's talked about by the elders and
in the plot as you open it and it literally melts your face.
This episode does come out, it's almost 10 years after Raiders of
the Lost Ark. So yes, I think definitely Ark
of the Covenant vibes. And since you bring up the box 1
of mine is that this box will show up again in one of the TV
movies. What?
I I think it's the one called Millennium, OK, I think that's.
Cool. Yeah, I don't think it's the is
is definitely not the first one and I don't think it's second
one either. I think it's the third or fourth
one that it shows up in. Wow.
Yeah, and it's actually kind of like a major thing in the plot
of that episode, and we see more of it and more of what it can
do. OK, well that's cool.
I like it when anybody follows up on anything.
It occurred to me while watching this, while we're talking about
Matt taking Sydney around, that if they had had real gutsy
decision making in the writers room, I would have kept bringing
Sydney back. I don't approve the attic kid in
a lot of shows, but, you know, give Matt something that gives
him a little bit more personality and character.
George has a whole family. Sydney could at least have a
little brother around all the time.
We don't have to see him going and coming and pay the
grandmother actress every time. But Nope.
Nope. So I love it when they continue
anything I can start listing actors.
OK, Yeah. Because I just have one of
those. All right, we have.
I mean, you mentioned that we've got Moodry back.
Captain Grazer, Brian Grazer's in this one again, so thankful
for that. He has a small part.
He's just stoked for Matt to be a Big Brother because it could
be good PR for the force. So the Hippie in the Woods is
played by a guy named Lowell Bradigan.
And well, I'm sorry. The Hippie in the Woods is
played by Timothy Scott. His name is Lowell, and he's a
frequent cowboy. He's in some big things, from
fried green tomatoes to Footloose in the heat of the
night, Butch and Sundance, Guess who's coming to dinner?
He's been a busy guy. But his greatest accomplishment
was in the second season of the 1966 Batman series, which I
don't bring up just because none of these people are in it.
But there was a famous cowboy movie named Shane that some of
you know about. S 1966 Adam West Batman had a
evil cowboy adversary on the old show who was named Shame with an
M like Mark or madness. And this guy Timothy Scott
played his sidekick Messi James. That's great.
So anyway, he was also in the greenhorn at the same year.
Timothy Scott actually died just a few years after making this
episode at the young age of 58. So this was one of his last big
hurrahs. But this is a he's playing a
ridiculous character in this, But he's he goes in and finds a
dead body fried to a crisp and glistening, holding this box
that's burning hot, and he grabs it and runs.
It's great. Heinrich Glass stood out to me.
I always say I can't recognize these people with their newcomer
makeup on, but Scott, Jack, Jack, I can.
JAECK Scott was in the pilot for Star Trek Voyager uncredited,
and he was in what some people say is the best episode of Star
Trek The Next Generation. Or, you know, one of the best
episodes. It's called The Inner Light in
Season 5. And he plays an administrator
who just, I don't know, Scott has an interesting face.
It kind of stands out to you. Big bright eyes so you can see
him through makeup. But I did.
I recognize that guy right away. Yeah, the kids.
OK, Yeah, I reckon. You know from where?
I'm sorry. Yeah, the kid, Sydney, that is
Michael Faustino. If you don't know a lot of
Faustino's, there's one other one.
This is David Faustino's little brother from Married With
Children. And Michael Faustino has another
big credit. He plays the younger boy, the
littler boy, Eugene in the Monster Squad, which I only know
about because my wife brought it into the marriage.
But so I've seen Eugene in that a lot, but he's kind of hard to
recognize. He looks a little bit different
in this episode. But yes, that's Michael
Faustino. He doesn't have a lot of other
credits. Now there is a evil energy guy
that's not that evil. He seems to have a conflicted
nature, which was. I don't know, they just wrote
that in but. The character's name is Howard
Thayer and it really got in the way.
I think I just wrote them both down in notes as evil energy
guy, newcomer and human. But Howard Thayer is played by a
guy named Francis Guinan who he was Master Pacu in the terrible
Airbender movie that came out years ago.
He was in the practice three times as three different
characters. So there's that David E Kelley
connection. We keep seeing Star Trek
Enterprise Season 2 episode two different episodes of Star Trek
Voyager, but if you ever watched a show called Erie, Indiana,
this is the dad of the main character Marshall, played by
Omri Katz, the boy from Hocus Pocus.
If you haven't seen Erie, Indiana, I'm not saying you'll
like it necessarily, but Erie and Erie, Indiana is kind of
like if you tried to make a show where Fox Mulder was a little
kid solving mysteries around his own hometown, that would kind of
be Erie, Indiana. And the human energy guy who has
conflicted emotions and doesn't mean for anybody to get hurt is
the dad from 19 episodes of that, which I think is the whole
run. Aubrey Morris is the auctioneer,
and Aubrey is a British guy who has a weird face.
And I recognize him immediately because my family, my wife and I
just rewatched Clockwork Orange and he kind of stands out to
you. This British guy, he was also
driving a cab and looking insane in the unappreciated Sherlock
Holmes, Smarter Brother Not by Mel Brooks.
It just feels like it. He's in the Wicker Man.
He's in Sledgehammer Bordello of Blood, Life Force.
You and I could watch Life Force and talk about it on this
podcast, Todd. It's Space Vampires by the guy
who did Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, but he was also
in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the original 1981
British show, and one episode of Babylon Five in season 3 called
Exogenesis, but I did not write down a description so who knows.
Weird little British guy who played the auctioneer Peggy
Doyle was Sydney's grandma who's dropping him off at the police
station and picking him up at the police station and doesn't
seem to have a problem with that.
I don't know her from anything except earlier in this show.
Early in the show, we had a coroner named Howard who was
vaguely Asian and talked with a New Jersey accent because that
actor was from New Jersey. But he was in a movie called
Kentucky Fried Movie, which is wonderful and inappropriate, and
his sequence of Fistful of yen ends the same as Wizard of Oz,
where it's like I'm in bed and Auntie Ms. there and you were
there and you were there. Sydney's grandma is Auntie M
from that sequence of the end of Kentucky Fried Movie, which
matters if you've ever seen it. But that's her only her only
credit. I cared about the elder woman
who's just listed as Krisava. She was in 61 episodes of Young
and the Restless as Millie Johnston.
If any of y'all are Young and the Restless people, we've got
another Babylon 5 alum, Philip Dunaway, who played the first
crispy villain. He's the man on the phone who
was told to buy the box at any price at the auction.
He played CIA director Raleigh in six episodes of West Wing.
He was in Boston Legal. He was in The Practice, He was
in X-Files, and he was in. Yeah, just one episode of
Babylon Five in the second season as Sergeant major.
Plug, I think the episode is called Gropos.
Oh, you remember? Awesome.
Yeah. Kind of AI.
Don't know, odd looking dude, but yeah, he looks kind of oily
in this, but I don't know if he always does.
He's in Briscoe County, junior picket fences, last Boy Scout
Hotshots. There are a few people who
haven't done anything, but my last one is Michelle Lamar
Richards, who is Doctor Lois Allen.
We already mentioned Michelle as the coroner a couple of episodes
ago in the Red Room, but apparently she will stick around
for several more episodes. I mentioned last time that I
love her in the Bodyguard and an important side part, but she'll
be back in a month for four of the last five episodes and the
first Alien Nation movie. She has multiple scenes in this
episode, so I like that they're making good use of her.
She's in episodes 1214182021 and 22, and she was in one episode
of the short lived 1990 Flash series.
So go Michelle Lamar Richards. That is it for me for connecting
the spots. OK, so I only had one there.
It was Aubrey Morris. And you already mentioned that
he was in the season 3 Babylon 5 episode Exogenesis, and that
when he played Duncan, who was a lurker and down below who he was
kind of sort of a merchant, but kind of a low level merchant.
He sold just minor trinkets, trinkets to get like a meager
living. And he was also kind of a friend
of Marcus Cole. And I think he might have been a
little bit of a maybe an informant for Marcus maybe, but
it's the very least a friend. And Marcus Cole was a Ranger, so
that was the connection with them.
So yeah, I did recognize him immediately from that.
Then of course, there is Dobbs Watch, Sort of.
So as I already mentioned, this is the first episode with three
people missing from the opening credits.
It's the actors that played Dobbs, Jill and Burns.
Of course, Dobbs and Burns were in a few episodes, but they
never had that many episodes or their own subplot or anything.
Jill was in barely anything like her.
Her the most number of scenes she had was in the very first
episode. So she for a little girl, she
got lucky to be in the opening credits for 13 episodes of TV
show where she was probably only in two or three episodes.
And I think in one of those she didn't have any speaking parts,
but they're no longer there. The weird thing is there is an
episode coming up where Burns does come back as a guest star
this time, and it's an episode where I think he's in it enough
where you could say the plot almost centers around him.
Oddly enough, you already mentioned that Kathy is missing,
so is Albert. We do get Captain Grazer in a
few scenes. So really oddly enough, this
episode just has Matt, the Franciscos, and Moodri.
Moodri of course, being a recurring character.
And out of the Franciscos, I think Emily is in only one scene
I think, if not maybe 2 at the most.
And I think Buck is in only two or three scenes.
Yeah, Emily is in the first one where they talk about naming the
baby and the memorial scene at least.
But yeah, Buck got to at least go to the he got to go to the
auction. Oh, that's right.
Yeah. All right.
So anything else for connecting spots?
No, no, I think we're ready for the Albert Einstein Award.
Yeah, yeah, not a great award this week.
Yeah, OK. I think our only contestant is
Heinrich Glass, the main bad guy, unless you consider toxic
capitalism is the ultimate bad guy.
This took research and I'm still not sure.
One Heinrich Glass 1896 to 8/19/84 was a famous Polish
scout master. The other 1911 to 2003 is the
likely candidate, an architect after the Anschloss.
That's the German annexation of Austria in 38.
He was sent to Dashaw. Dashaw, one of the longest
running concentration camps. Then to another one called
Buchenwald. His wife got him freed in 39 and
during World War Two he actually helped the US by drawing a map
of the concentration camp from his memory.
There's a lot more if you're interested.
I recommend you look up Heinrich Glass, the architect at your
local library if this is the intended implication.
I think the writers were being a little too clever, but I guess
he wins by default. Or we can just say nobody wins
and y'all should be nicer next time.
What? Do you think, yeah, I'm OK with
him being the winner? I wasn't sure this was a
reference to any real purse or anything, but it sounds like
from your research he is. So that's, I mean, it's not a
goofy name this week, but at the same time it is a reference to
something. So yeah, I'm OK with him
getting, I mean, granted he's the only candidate too, but
yeah, I'm OK with him getting it rather than just saying no
award. OK, our winner is Heinrich
Glass. But listeners, you guys be sure
to write in, e-mail us and let us know because Todd has a
policy of not looking these people up.
If it's not obvious enough to tell us, then that's on them,
not us. And I have a policy of digging
as deeply and desperately as I can to try not to miss things.
And one of us might be the smarter person.
I think it might be Todd. Nope.
Not likely. I don't think so.
Negatory good buddy. Never.
Not in a million years. Absolutely not.
No way, Jose. No chance, Lance.
And yet negatory. And of course, my own personal
favorite of all time, man falling off of a Cliff.
No. So if you guys want us to just,
you know, maybe don't try so hard on the old Albert Einstein
award. You might have a point there
because Heinrich Glass, there could be people, but writers,
really, if this was intentional, maybe your history class was
better than mine. Shoot.
So that takes us to I have to talk about this.
OK so I've got 1 minor thing and this might be another product of
this being, you know, a separate 9 episodes from the 1st 13
episodes, but they're doing something a little bit different
with George. He is almost always in a suit
and tie and this time around he's in a polo shirt and a
casual jacket even while on the job in at least one scene.
Now, granted, they do make a point to say that this is a
Saturday, so I don't know if maybe he's got like weekday
outfits for work and weekend outfits for work, but they are
making Gorge a little bit more casual.
And sometimes while we're talking, I play the episode in
the background. And this episode that we're
reviewing is already done. It has moved on to the next
episode. And there's a scene in that one
where he's wearing a suit, but it's an Obama esque tan suit
rather than the usual blue or Gray.
And let me see, is he on the screen now?
No, he's not on the screen at the moment.
But I think there was one other scene in this episode where he
might have been wearing something casual.
So I think, I think George is easing up a little bit.
I had not noticed but you're totally right with the polos and
they had always depicted them like that.
I was noticing what Matt was wearing because he can be such a
midlife crisis schlub in some episodes so when he looks like
he's kind of presentable and dressing semi appropriately it
actually surprised me. But yes the costumer seems to be
nicer to Matt in this episode and trying to let George be.
Maybe business casual, I don't know.
Yeah. And Speaking of.
Yeah, And Speaking of next episode in jackets, when we
review next week's episode, pay attention to Matt's jacket in
one second. Oh.
No. What's going on there?
It can't be as bad as Lori Petty's and that one, but yes.
OK. My first one is that when they
find the alien skeleton at the beginning of the episode to kick
off everything, it has a distinctly newcomer skull.
And I feel like we've seen a lot of dead newcomers, but they've
usually been in some varying state of decomposition, not a
lot of just like clean skulls. So they went out of their way to
make a nice differently shaped skull, which was interesting.
It stood out right away. All right.
And one other thing I noticed was in that scene I talked about
earlier where they're using some kind of weird laser to try to
get into the box, I noticed there once in a while there was
a weird sound effect. I thought, that sounds familiar.
I'm not positive that they lifted it because this was Fox
and so maybe they could have had access to 20th Century Fox sound
effects at the time, but it sounded a lot like a Star Wars
lightsaber being ignited. I'm.
Going to take it apart. Do the police know you have?
It no, and they never will. As soon as we analyze it, I'm
going to destroy it. Was there some kind of trouble
you? Realize what we have here, how
valuable this could be the. Power.
You should never have brought it.
Here I need the. Equipment.
Let me do my work and I'll get rid of it.
I wouldn't stand here, Howard. You have it and I never will.
As soon as we analyze it, I'm. I wouldn't stand here, Howard.
Dang it, that's worth Nick checking out again.
I'm going to let you all know next week because you've picked
my curiosity at the beginning. George is taking care of the
family because Susan is further along in pregnancy, although
they don't say that's what's going on.
But I'm guessing that's what's going on because he's normally
got his act together and he's running around telling the kids
that the house is all messed up and they need to be better.
Oh, maybe it's that generational theme again.
I don't know. The writers don't really land
those very clearly. But one of the things he does is
Buck is drinking milk from the carton.
But newcomers don't drink milk. They drink sour milk.
And it didn't occur to me before, but of course, the kids
don't drink sour milk because that's like liquor.
So Buck is drinking something else from a carton because
George says Buck don't drink bile from the carton.
So apparently newcomers drink bile.
What's bile, you say, besides like, having a bad taste in your
mouth because you're angry? Well apparently the dictionary
says it's a bitter greenish brown alkaline fluid that aids
digestion and is secreted by the liver and stored in the
gallbladder. So the more you know.
Apparently they have cartoons of bile in the fridge.
Yeah, I noticed the reference of the carton, but I must have
missed it. It wasn't milk for some reason.
I don't know if I wasn't paying enough attention, but I missed
the bile reference. So that's good.
Because I thought it was a type of thing where because it's an
alien society and he is in his teens that maybe they allow
teens to drink their version of alcohol sooner.
I thought that's what it was about, but yeah, so I I must
have missed that. When he is going off, when
George is railing at the kids and he starts harping at Emily,
who is the sweetest child in the world?
Buck. I like it because Buck says in
Tanktonese, he tells his dad to calm down.
It's a rake, Rake out rake. No.
Yeah. Rakeba.
Rakeba. Which and it says for lower like
subtitles calm down. So is your teenage son seeing
you go off on his little sister and he's like, dad calm down
George. George tells Emily that she left
her parabolic ear in the bathroom.
Yeah, I still don't. I still don't get that.
Yeah, we'll just have to guess. I have no idea.
I know what a parabola is. It's kind of shaped like an ear,
but something going on there, I think.
She tells her dad to chill out. Matt is wearing his baseball cap
again in this episode for baseball fans.
He's had it at least two times before, maybe 3.
It's white with AB on it. I believe this is a Boston Red
Sox hat. But we do find out in this
episode that Matt grew up in. I mean, he's not from the West
Coast where the action takes place.
And he seems like a New York cop, but he's a Boston Red Sox
fan. And he tells us in this episode
that he's he grew up in Jersey. So yeah, the man is a
contradiction, but what are you going to do?
Wait, was it Jersey or Detroit? Maybe you're right.
Maybe you're right. Maybe he said Detroit and I just
somehow heard Jersey. Yeah, you're right.
I think you're right. You might be right too, but I
for some reason Detroit is in my head and I thought I even
remember reading that somewhere, but I, I could be wrong.
Yeah. I've never been to the woods,
but I've seen lots of pictures. You ever been to the woods?
Wow. I was born in Detroit, but I've
been to the woods. The shots we see of the tanked
knees slave ship, The Grusa. This is IMDb trivia.
I remember to look this time that we see in the opening
credits for the first time. You mentioned that the shots are
taken from Buck's nightmare and the episode Little Lost Lamb,
which wasn't one of our favorites.
And well, I'm OK. It was, I mean, there was good
stuff in there. That was the Moodri Ocean
episode, but that was my first you can skip it episode.
Matt is talking to George on the phone, and Buck across the room
responds to what Matt is saying, like.
And Matt's talking to George, and he's like, wait, how does
Buck know that? And Buck across the room is
like, because I can hear you because apparent they have
really good ears. Matt jokes about it like, oh,
OK, bionic ears. So he's talking in George's ear.
But Buck across the room knows everything he's saying, unlike
the headset on the phone. Yeah, there.
The inscription from the box burned into the desk.
George says it's archaic tanktonese, but he thinks it
says there is only one way between the clear eye and the
pure hearts. All other ways are deaf, which
is talking about how to open the box correctly.
But I didn't get that until I was writing out notes and I
realized if you look at the box, there is a lighter colored jewel
in the middle of the top of the front and there are these bright
red rubyish jewels on the side. So the one in the top middle
that we see later, I think Moodri or the elder woman,
caress or turn gently to open the box.
Right is the clear eye that the inscription references and the
pure hearts, because the tank knees have two hearts, are the
two rubies on the sides that you touch afterward and rotate or
caress or something in order to open it?
So didn't get that until later. But yes, there was thinking
behind all of that. He points out that Mudri
threatened the victim and now he looks like a suspect.
But Mudri and the other elders don't care.
They don't care if anybody goes to jail or anything.
They just keep yelling. You've got to get the box back.
So the elders, Matt exasperatedly says, what is it?
And the elders like look at each other and they nod before Moodri
says it is the heart of our planet, the heart of Tankton.
And as soon as he said it, listeners, as soon as he said
that out loud, I knew in my heart, I just knew that we were
going to find out the box was empty.
I knew we were going to have a shot.
As soon as he said it's the heart of Tankton, at least one
person was going to look in the box and there's going to be
nothing in there that turns out there is a bunch of stuff in the
box. Not even metaphorically, like
really, but I knew there would be a shot.
When they are getting chased through the woods, they're
chasing the hippie through the woods and Matt rolls down a hill
and he's still afraid of nature, as I mentioned.
I like that he's yelling at the hippie for making him chase him
and rolling. And he's like, you know, for all
I know, you know, you could have been that could have been Poison
Ivy. And George says, well, it could
be poison oak. Poison Ivy is indigenous to the
East Coast. I didn't know that.
That's good stuff, man. Go, George.
So yes, obviously it's not Poison Ivy.
They're talking to the energy guys for the second or third
time about the box. And Matt says he's talking to
Fair, the human energy guy, and he's talking about how that
guy's saying, you know, we would never have stolen it, blah,
blah, blah. And Matt's like, well, you were
willing to pay the guy who stole it.
And he said Thayer says that's the extent of my situational
ethics. And like that he didn't approve
of it. I like that they're using the
phrase situational ethics. And he's, he's clearly ticked
off that the company's doing things it's not supposed to do.
So he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm not saying it makes sense.
That's not my idea. And it's totally.
I'll do a little bit of the wrong thing if it's from over
here. Similar to my knowing the box
would be empty. They ask the energy guys about
their plans. I.
Heard rumors of this box on the ship that it had tremendous
power. Then always Death indicates
those rumors might be true. Box could contain an unknown
alternative source of energy, something cheap, environmentally
safe we could duplicate on Earth.
When we get it, we're going to analyze that box piece by piece
and find out the source of its power.
Take it apart. Which will destroy the box?
What about its cultural significance to our people?
Cultural significance? The elders believe it's the
heart of Tincton, that it must be preserved.
The elders are a bunch of old fools.
The elders preserved our identity.
They kept us together on the ship.
They're an embarrassment with their slave mentality.
Voodoo, the heart of Tincton in a box.
Do you believe that, detective? Is that the kind of cultural
heritage you really want to preserve?
And I immediately knew that Heinrich Glass was going to be
fried by the box as soon as he said that with their voodoo.
Yes, that was it. I, I would like to just tell the
listeners my last I have to mention this is about when you
crispy fry a guy with the magic box.
She's not really paying attention to these, but she
consumes a lot of true crime and horror movies and she's jaded.
She's seen it all a few times. But they did some excellent work
on the 1st crispy body and even my wife was impressed.
She like looked up for what she was doing and said something
similar to whoa. So that is a it was somehow
super crispy but also shiny and look kind of gooey.
And yeah, yeah, some real special effects went work, went
into frying that first guy and that is it for me, for
everything else I have to mention.
All right. Well, if you're done with that,
then I will move on to the new segment that I introduced 2
episodes ago and then totally forgot about last week, and that
is Wheel of Press Kit. And in case you need a reminder,
this is where I got for Christmas a gift from one of my
best friends, a press kit from back in the day.
I don't know if they still do this kind of thing nowadays, and
if they do, I wouldn't be surprised if it's electronic
instead of on paper. But apparently back in the day
they would send out these press kits to various outlets to let
them know about a show that is coming.
You know what time slot it's AM, what it's all about.
And they did this really creative thing where they made
this one page newspaper that is kind of like part real life
telling you about the show, but part in universe kind of giving
you information about the the Tanktonese and it's almost like
a newspaper. So anyway, I'm going to randomly
spin the wheels, so to speak, to find out which little nugget of
information from this press kit I'll give you.
Let me see. Number 20, actually.
OK, This is from an article in something called the Daily
Breeze from Friday, July 28th, 1989, and since it's a full
article, I've already summarized it in my spreadsheet.
According to the first full paragraph, Alienation would
premiere 18th of September at 8:00 PM.
That contradicts a different page from this press kit that
said 9:00 PM. But to me that would make more
sense because it was a 2 hour premiere and Fox is a 2 hour
primetime network. I think even now it still is,
but it definitely was at the time.
So it makes sense that's a 2 hour block would premiere at 8
instead of nine rather than, you know, at night.
It means it would have to go past this normal 10:00 PM limit.
It says it would be joining 21 Jump St. on Mondays, ushering in
Fox's third night of programming.
So apparently up until this point, Fox only had two nights.
So this was very early in the Fox run.
I did look up separately that Fox started in 1986, so this is
only three years in. Let me see.
Lower down another paragraph, it says that Kenneth Johnson almost
did not take the project because he didn't want to be typecast
after helming the 1983 V miniseries.
And he also created the Bionic Woman and wrote the original
pilot for The Incredible Hulk. And let me spin again.
Okay, number six. Okay, so this is from the very
first page of the press kit. It's the Alien Times, which is
that thing I just described a minute ago where it's kind of
like partly in universe. Okay, so this is about a
proposition that would lead to the National right of newcomers
to vote. And it's not that long article,
so I'll just read the whole thing.
And oddly enough, this is written by DC Washington
because, you know, the Tingtonese have interesting
names. So this reporter is named DC
Washington. According to the latest Gallup
poll, 54% of U.S. citizens are in favor of passing Proposition
16, giving newcomers the right to vote.
This positive swing supporting newcomer voting rights came
after the surprise discovery Wednesday that the insect like
creature attacking innocent victims in Los Angeles was
merely A hoax concocted by radical purists.
So I'm stopping reading the article now for a second.
This is of course referring to the pilot episode where there
was a monster and people were starting to think that the tank
Deniz turned into these monsters.
OK, so going back to the article speculated by police to be a
malicious plot against newcomers, the incident led to
the arrest of two Caucasian males aged 35 and 42.
While dressed in a Velcro insect like costume, the two suspects
allegedly terrorized and sprayed acid on several newcomers as
well as photojournalist Bill Burns, whose column appears in a
local tabloid. Detective Matthew Sykes, who
assisted in apprehending the suspect, said I knew do
something was suspicious, do something suspicious was up when
I grabbed for the creature and got back a fistful of Velcro.
No charges have been filed as of yet, and police are withholding
the suspects names until a complete investigation is made.
So that's another neat little nugget where, you know, they
could have just said this show is premiering so and so, and
it's starring so and so. But to actually be creative
enough to do these little articles in universe, I thought
was kind of neat, yeah. And I mean it.
It's with the bug creature like making that real.
I I love in universe. I think that's awesome.
And something I also forgot about last time was that as a
second Christmas present from the same friend, I also got the
Unofficial Companion to Alien Nation, which is one of those
books that people used to write, you know, unofficial companions
to, to various TV shows. And there is one for this show
and for this episode, I have a few bullet points.
Story editor Stephen Mitchell said the one thing he would
change about the episode is exploring further what happens
when the box falls in the wrong hands.
And you know, that was a little bit vague In this one, like you
said, it's eventually shown. It's kind of demonstrated that
you have to rub 1 jewel a certain way and then the other
two jewels a certain way. But I think they wanted to
explore further what would happen to somebody.
I just got it and just randomly opened up.
Yes, we see them fried, but I guess they would have explored
how and why. Let me see.
Mitchell also hit it at a bit of self censorship that went on
regarding science fiction concepts.
And I'm guessing from that, that explains what we've talked
about, how a lot of these episodes tend to have police
work as a framing device and that tends to kind of bury the
science fiction elements a little bit more.
He said that despite self censorship, Mitchell admitted
that the network never rejected any scripts.
Gary Graham said he enjoyed this episode because he got to work
with a sweet kid, and the exact quote in his paragraph described
the kid as a sweetie. And then Eric Pierpoint said
that the theme of the episode was preserving culture versus
exploiting culture. And then this is a quote from
him for the character George's going to Tink Don was both
uplifting and devastating at the same time.
With the peace he's found on Earth, he's moving.
He's moving forward and taking his family with him.
End Quote. Pierrepoint also talked about
the challenge of acting during the tink ton scene since it was
done with blue screen and he couldn't see what George was
seeing. So that's a little bit from the
Unofficial Companion. That's awesome.
Yeah. Blue screen in 1990.
I mean, I guess Star Trek The Next Generation was doing a
bunch of it with the holodeck for in between shots and things
disappearing, but still, yeah, it was pretty cool.
I'm easily impressed too. But yeah, I think that scene by
itself, I mean, I don't want people to give it away because
even 30-40 years later, I think it's really a cool surprise sort
of thing to come across at the end of the episode is a payoff,
but that was done really well. That's nice.
All right, let me see anything else before we move on to
scores. I think we're ready for score.
My score is probably not a huge surprise because I've described
this episode as good but not that good, and there was nothing
terrible but nothing super impressive either.
So it gets a respective kind of middle of the road B.
Yeah, yeah, I can understand that.
I I always give an STA score for how many Star Trek alumni are in
this and we had a base score of five because in addition to
Matt, George and Susan, we had Captain Grazer and Uncle Moodri.
We also had Heinrich Glass, Scott Jayek I mentioned and the
dad from Erie, Indiana, Francis doing so, both the energy guys
essentially, which gives us a Star Trek alumni score of seven.
I think the highest we've ever gotten is 9, so 7 is pretty
great. I also rate these episodes on a
watch skip basis because not everybody has to see everything
in order, at least the first time or the first time they
revisit it like I do. So if you are just hitting the
highlights and I really, really think you need to watch this
episode. I think it's really important
for the ritual, the arc that goes through, not just Moodri's,
but I feel like this is sort of the end of Moodri's and Buck's
arc in a way, because they've been together since they like
first glanced at each other in that first episode where Moodri
showed up. And like I mentioned before,
they pulled this emotional depth out between Moodri, Buck and
George. It was really heavy and it was
really well done, I think. So I'll tell you to watch any
episodes with cool rituals. And this has this memorial
service, which was right up there for me with weddings.
It's healthy to see how other people celebrate big stuff and
how they mourn. And you need to see the payoff
with the box you you need to see what tanked on looks like.
So apparently that's going to come up later.
So yes, I think this is definitely a watch it episode,
so. Yep, I would agree.
I think that that's about it for today listeners coming up next
time on alienating ourselves, Nick and Todd Explorer episode
15 Eyewitness News. The IMDb summary says that the
line between reality and fantasy blurs when a crossed video phone
line, let's say boardroom of executives see a sex actress
attacked. And this sounds like it must
have been sweeps week. Meanwhile, George becomes swept
up in celebrity when a news crew does a week long special on him.
Gosh, I hope his ego doesn't get out of hand, forcing him to
ultimately learn a lesson about humility and video calls.
It's like the future. Find out what happens with this
board meeting and how far producers are going to take this
episode when you tune in with us next week on alienating
ourselves. I continue to be Nick.
I'm Todd. Thank you for joining us.
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And the next time you do have to open a box, be sure to open it
the right way. It probably won't fry you to a
crisp like the box in this this episode, but you could get a
splinter or a bad paper cut. Have a great week.
Good night everybody.
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