Case 1.25

#025 - Alien Nation 1.19 "Rebirth"

2026.06.19 1:24:15

Alienating Ourselves Podcast

0:00 1:24:15

What happened to Matt? Who or what brought him back? Was it a Tenctonese spiritual healer, a Tenctonese special power, a Human medical anomaly, or just an unexplainable miracle? Were crystals involved, and where did Matt get a crystal? We watched & reviewed this episode of "Alien Nation," and we're still not sure. Listen now and help us figure out, "Rebirth."

- Where would one or both co-hosts rank this episode in the whole season? Which other episode was most compared to this one?

- What moment of alien religion & culture did one co-host point out as interesting & enjoyable?

- What about the opening scene was confusing to one co-host?

- What aspect of the beginning of the episode led one co-host to bring up the movie "The American President" and count the similarity as a small, weird perk of this episode?

- How did the previous weird tangent lead the other co-host to reciting a deep quote about politics?

- What about both Matt *and* George, mostly related to this episode's Little League baseball subplot, annoyed one co-host? If any listeners are baseball fans, what do baseball stats have to do with actually playing the game?

- Did anything about the Little League baseball subplot work at all for either co-host?

- What about this episode led to mentions of "The X-Files" episode "The Unnatural" and the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode "Take Me Out to the Holo-Suite"?

- Was this episode's music montage great or terrible?

- Did the imperfect Little League baseball subplot have a satisfying ending?

- What confusions does one co-host have about the intersection ...if any...of the possible-miracle-worker garbageman subplot and the crystal cult subplot? Are they really connected, or are the similar themes in the same episode just a coincidence?

- What do the co-hosts have for this week's "Yikes, Sikes!" segment?

- How many subplots in this one episode did one co-host count as missed opportunities?

- Which co-host continues to get character actors Brian Thompson and Jeff Kober confused?

- According the "Unofficial Companion" book, did even the producers of the show have issues with the final product of this episode?

- And, which unsuspecting "Alien Nation" actor actually took ballet in college?

Listen now for the answer to these and other home run questions as we resurrect..."Rebirth."

Please rate or review us wherever you listen to podcasts. You can leave comments on individual episodes at certain venues like Spotify and GoodPods. Our e-mail address is [email protected]

Royalty-free music used in this episode comes from Pixabay.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.

Did I burn the flesh enough? Oh yeah, you did fine.

Oh, is your body sore? Would you like for me to rub it?

Can I rub anything? Let me make a list I.

Prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves

up in the constitution over someone who burns the

constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag?

What do you even? Know about baseball?

True. That the closest thing that we

had to the sport on the ship was ejecting trash into space.

You know, it's not like he's singing.

Widen your stance or don't drop your shoulder or something like

that. He's just like, here's another

ball, OK, here's another ball, OK, rod of balls, we're done.

I love a good music montage and it's one of the worst music

montages I think I've ever seen. Sadly, it's a bad weird.

Matt's hat is bad. Put on those tights.

Are you kidding? I don't want to think about what

a code brown or a code yellow is.

He has a rock in his pocket. That's not a metaphor.

Ultimately making it feel like a big ball of nothing.

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 tank the knees.

Stay tuned listeners. Of press kit.

Yikes, Sykes. We're both fans of Star Trek.

Watching Alien Nation and we enjoy.

It I am one of your hosts. 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 human friends who are

mysteriously raised from the dead.

I am one of your hosts, Todd. I can respect the possible use

of fire in religious or spiritual practices, such as the

use of candles or cremating the dead, or even in peaceful

protest, such as burning a flag, at least in concept.

But like Matt in tonight's episode of Alien Nation, I do

have a problem with open flame. And joining me, as always, is a

guy who might want to write me a burning citation for sizzling

and incendiary commentary in tonight's episode of our

podcast. It's Nick.

Nick, how's it going? It's going really well.

As a fan of Return of the Jedi, I think that we should all be

burned in a giant pyre when we pass away, possibly wearing a

Darth Vader outfit. My son knows this.

He's made preparations. So yeah, a lot of spirituality

to talk about in tonight's episode.

And fire hazards. Let's get into it.

Today we're looking at Alien Nations Episode 19 Rebirth,

which originally aired Monday night, March 12th, 1990.

This episode was directed and written by Tom Chihack, who also

directs the last episode of the series Green Eyes.

So we'll see how Tom does with that.

He's produced a lot of the series.

He directed the excellent Night of Screams, The Good Spirit of

95, and The Questionable Takeover.

So his biggest outside credit other than that that I'll

mention is producing and doing some writing for Briscoe County

Junior, which some of y'all may appreciate.

I like his episodes in general, so I feel like he gets the

characters and some of the rhythm of the show.

George. On tonight's episode, George is

going to coach Emily's Little League team and he asks for

Matt's help, but it stirs up some traumatic flashbacks for

Matt. He and George have to question a

religious group giving strong cultist energy after they're

caught either burning a person's remains or burning a person, And

then our heroes have a run in with a serial burglar who

assaults Matt so badly that he flatlines at the hospital.

Shortly thereafter, Matt has a vision of the burglar visiting

him, bringing him cultist crystals and raising him from

the dead, and he does indeed come back to life.

So the rest of the episode is a combination of George coaching

Little League and Matt hunting down a possibly magical cultist

burglar for surprisingly personal reasons.

What was your first response to this interesting episode, Todd?

OK, so you know how I kind of sneaked a peek ahead a few weeks

ago and when I got to this episode, I thought, wow, this is

a weird episode. I I don't even remember this

episode or, or, or if I do very, very vaguely.

So I thought it was going to be interesting when I got around to

actually watching it for the sake of taking notes, I was

like, OK, I know this is a weird episode, but is it a good weird

or a bad weird? And sadly, it's a bad weird.

Unfortunately for me, this is the second worst of the series.

And part of me wonders whether it's better than 15 with Wanda

because I was like, this might even be worse.

But then I actually watched just a few seconds. 15 with Wanda was

like, oh, that's right. This is the episode with that.

Oh, this is also the episode with that.

And I was like, well, maybe 15 with Wanda is worse.

I don't. I don't now, like other things.

Sometimes, you know, like a bad episode of Babylon 5 or Deep

Space 9 or something like that. Sometimes even a bad episode of

a great show is still better than a lot of the crap out

there. But still, comparatively

speaking, yeah, this is the second worst of this series.

Most of the stuff in this episode just feels like it's the

middle of a better idea. Nothing about it has that decent

a setup or that decent a payoff, and it feels like a bunch of

missed opportunities more so than actually achieving

anything, ultimately making it feel like a big ball of nothing.

So how about you? I liked it.

It's funny you bring up 15 with Wanda because I can.

Some of them might run together a little bit, but I'm scarred

from that one just because it has maybe one of my biggest

triggers. On my list of triggers include

things not in that episode like cruelty to animals, human

sustained suffering and in 15 with Wanda, adults arguing,

especially if they're divorcees. It's a big trigger for Nick.

I kind of want to leave the room.

So it's going to be hard for alienation to do worse than that

for me. This one, if you said, well,

Nick, this does have baseball in it, you might, you might, you

might get me to pause. But no, I liked it overall.

I think it was better than last week for me.

I'm not a home run or anything. And that's unintentional.

There were some basic parts to the episode.

I mean, like really basic. And there were some outlandish

creative bits and I guess a few cool moments.

So yeah, that's mostly OK with it.

Just nothing to write home about.

So let's move into our positives.

What's your first sour milk for this episode, Todd?

OK, so the way the eisode begins, we see some humans and

tanktonese taking part together in some kind of ritual.

It involves fire and face paint and not a whole lot of clothing,

and it's a little confusing what's going on.

It's also a little bit confusing what the aftermath of it is.

Might talk about it that a little bit in the saltwater

section. But since we're still in Sour

Mill, I'll just say that regardless of what's going on,

regardless how cryptic it is or weird it is or, or or whatever

the result is, it is interesting and impressive that we see an

activity where humans and Tanktonese are partaking

together. I do like that a lot of this

show has to do with Tanktonese spiritual stuff and Tanktonese

cultural stuff versus human cultural stuff or religious

stuff. And it's kind of nice that we

see at least this tiny snippet of the two things intersecting.

So yeah, I liked it that the two species were doing something

together. I did not notice that there were

humans mixed in into the group. And y'all will have to forgive

me if I keep bouncing back to calling this religious Group A

cult throughout the US. As far as we know on screen they

do not make you leave your family behind and cut you off

from your associations and a bunch of other strong red flags

for cults. I'm totally using prejudice and

bias for these decent spiritual people who are burning a person

at the beginning of the episode. But my first sour milk, I'm

going to circle back to that group.

I think mostly the negatives, but my first sour milk is my

favorite thing about this episode is at the hospital.

So after the burning scene and after they talked to the

cultists, they track this burglar and he grabs Matt and

smacks his head against a wall so hard that Gary Graham crosses

his eyes and he flatlines at the hospital.

We see in the hospital when we get there that he's in intensive

care. The Francisco's are in the

waiting room in a state of existential dread, and Kathy

walks in, presumably because they called her.

For those just joining us, Kathy is Matt's extremely attractive

across the hall, newcomer neighbor.

So she asks if she can pray with the Franciscos, which we know is

a big deal because they're Selenites and Kathy is not.

She practices what she describes as an Eastern religion that we

have some hints might focus on a personal spirituality and

meditation. So asking to pray with them, to

me was akin to a person from a very different faith system just

wanting to join you in a stressful moment out of a sense

of community and desperation. And Kathy seems to genuinely

like, know the ritual. So for whatever reason, she's

familiar with it. I think they seem to suggest

that most newcomers are Selenites.

So it could be just so popular that like everybody knows the

verb in this scene, they have something between a long shawl

and a very small blanket, almost like a table runner embroidered

with tanked and knees. Writing that I'm sorry that I

can't read. And the three of them in the

hospital waiting room drape it across their legs as they sit in

a row. I also noticed that their prayer

hand gestures are different for all three of them, with Kathy's

being the most different. As she makes 2 fists, she hovers

over her two hearts and the Francisco's do something

slightly different. They're all kind of generally

doing the same. Likewise, when they hear that

Matt has died of his injuries and they all embrace.

I thought it was really well done.

And then Susan is like going to drive Kathy home, presumably

because she knows how upset she is.

So that scene just, I felt like it was really powerful and cool

and stuff to see how that family would deal with that.

Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't have that in my notes.

But yeah, technically that is a redeeming quality episode for me

too, and especially for Matt. Because, I mean, we complain

about Matt all the time, sometimes half jokingly,

sometimes half serious about some of his faults and

everything. And it would be easy for these

people to be frustrated with him, but they obviously do like,

like him, if not love him. And they are concerned.

They have included him quite a bit.

And like you said, there's attraction between him and

Kathy. And so it is nice to see these

people, you know, very concerned about him and praying for him.

And so, yeah, that is a nice element, especially since we

don't get a whole lot of sanctities, spiritualism or

culture in this episode that is kind of, you know, a little bit

of a drive by of that. It's it's just a snippet, but at

least at least there's something.

So yeah, I, I agree. I I like that too, Yeah.

Very true. And I mean the the makers of the

show have figured out that we dig on the spiritualism and the

ritual. I'm going to circle back that a

little bit later, but what's your next ceremony?

So my next one is kind of what I alluded to a little bit in the

intro, and that is that I like that Matt gave the spiritualist

a burning citation because they're doing this investigation

of something having been burned in the pool.

And I admit I was a little bit confused and I had to rewatch

that that part again. I wasn't sure if the ritual that

we were seeing at the very beginning the episode was

somebody committing some kind of ritual suicide by burning

themselves to death. And after watching it again, I

kind of get the feeling, OK, no, it was somebody who passed away

in their order and they were just cremating the person.

And so it was more like a funeral.

That's why they didn't make a huge deal about who or what was

in the ashes. But I like the fact that Matt

gives her a burning citation the the leader of this religion

because regardless of what else is going on, she might not have

had any kind of license for an open flame.

And like I said, as I alluded to in the intro, one of my favorite

movies of all time is The American President.

In fact, it was my number one favorite movie until the three

Lord of the Rings movies came out.

And that was done in the 90s and that was back when flag burning

was a little bit more more relevant.

And there's like a little bit of a subplot about flag burning in

in that. And it's one of those things you

hardly ever hear about now. In fact, I think there's even a

line in that movie about how you you barely hear about it even

back then. I guess there's a liberal part

of me that is like, you know, there is such a thing as burning

the flag in FG for free speech. It's not exactly a good idea.

And I can see how it's not patriotic and maybe that's why

people don't do anymore and find other ways of protesting.

But regardless, it's also fire, and fire can sometimes be

dangerous. And so I think if nothing else,

that's a reason to not burn the flag.

Even if you have a political or philosophical or social reason

for burning a flag, don't do it because you can set other things

on fire. So I like the fact that Matt

gave this religious person a birth a an open flame citation,

regardless of what else you might have been guilty of.

So I know that's a weird perk, but I liked it.

No. Well, I mean, we this show isn't

really all cop show. I'm not a it's not really even

half and half. The cop percentage might be

closer to 30 or 25, but they just keep doing it.

But yeah, so I think we're fascinated by any of the police

work that happens in it. I don't know.

I think different people will read that scene differently.

So the idea is these these people, these worshippers, they

are all very doe eyed and sort of Gaga.

They're they act very spaced out and use vague wordage and

verbage and stuff. So they, I think that Matt takes

issue with a lot of the stuff they're doing.

And I think if you're on the West Coast, you're exposed to a

whole assortment of small pocket beliefs based on very

interesting things that we don't even know that much about on the

East Coast. So yes, I don't know if Matt

just sees them all as Moonies or something and it's just like,

yeah, whatever, All right, burn responsibly.

So yes, I agree with you on that.

When I first saw it, I was like, why do you got an attitude with

these nice people, Matt? But yes, it makes a good point.

And I don't think you've mentioned on the podcast that

your favorite movie for a long time was the American President.

I like it because I don't see a lot of movies with president in

the name. And, and I know that one really

well and is it's a really good movie.

But since you went to the political place, I feel like I

have to mention the Molly Ivins quote if y'all don't know it,

she said famously. So I prefer someone who burns

the flag and then wraps themselves up in the

constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then

wraps themselves up in the flag. Wow.

That's really deep. Oh, that's deep.

I like that. Wow, that's deep.

Really deep. Hey, that's deep.

I got to write that down. So.

Wow. The flag is great.

I grew up patriotic, love the country, but Oh, my goodness,

you know, it's, it's not the most important thing and it's

usually seen as the most important thing by people who

don't want you to look at something else.

So, yeah, thank you for taking us there, Todd.

Viewership just went up. Went up by 50 and went down by 4

really angry people. Yeah.

So my next one, my second sour milk is a lot like the first.

So when Matt is discharged from the hospital, we see him back in

his apartment and they summarize for us, in the interest of time

that Kathy has come over and she's made him dinner.

She's shaken by the idea of almost losing him.

And she's dealing with that feeling of powerlessness that

many of us have felt when there's just really nothing we

can do. So she's sort of desperate to do

anything she can. Their relationship is still

fairly undefined. Maybe 4 episodes ago they

admitted to being curious about each other.

I'm doing air quotes curious. And a couple of episodes ago

they essentially admitted that they like liked each other.

But I'd argue they're still not really dating or going steady or

holding hands or anything. So this episode keeps that vague

but strong feeling of affection going with without changing

anything. Kathy also has the newcomer

personality trait of a kind of childlike innocence and a lack

of awareness of connotation and innuendo.

So after dinner, Matt's visibly uncomfortable and she offers to

rub anything on him and he's. Did she really put it that way?

I think I may have missed. That yes, she looks at him.

She leans in and she says, can I rub anything?

And he's like, yeah, I'm OK. So yeah, thank you, everybody.

If you're not sure about watching the episode, you really

need to see that. He's fairly polite in this

scene, even asking her to leave. But being gracious, which is a

big deal for Matt. He does the finger touch to her

temple that the newcomers do in a sort of gentle, familial

affection way, which seemed really warm for him.

And he said thank you in Tank Deniz, which I think sounds like

no Kibot, if you guys want to try that.

This is a weird little random scene, but I thought it was done

really well. Would you like some more tea?

Oh, no. No, thanks.

I'm fine. Thanks for making dinner.

Did I burn the flesh enough? Oh, yeah, you did fine.

Oh. Is your body sore?

Would you like for me to rub it? Oh, no, thanks.

I just kind of want to be alone. Oh, of course.

I'm sorry. Oh.

No, no, thanks for coming over and cooking and everything.

It just spent a hell of a day in a long three days.

I missed you, Matt. I'm really.

Glad you're home. Lucky fucked.

Can I rub anything? Let me make a list so just if.

You guys have that opportunity in your life.

Pace yourself, take a breath before you answer.

Think these things through. So my third bullet point is kind

of related. In fact, I think you just got

through saying it. And that is the moment that Matt

touches her temple and says thank you and take the knees.

And so I like it that we see him giving something on his side of

this sort of relationship, but not quite relationship.

Yeah. But anyway, you can you can tell

that he's giving something too. He actually learned at least

those two words and thank the knees, which for him is a big

thing. So.

So yeah, that that's my third and final sour milk thing.

Oh well. OK, so my last sour milk is it's

about these, it's about the cultists, everybody.

So I wasn't that big a fan, but it is a new religion.

And I like that they've added another religious group and that

George is patiently respectful without even slightly

entertaining anything. Like he doesn't, he doesn't act

like any of it's credible. He just acts respectful when

Matt comes back later without George to see if his vision in

the hospital when he comes back from the dead to see if maybe

this group. Has secret resurrection powers.

He ends up doing ayahuasca with them.

That's my wording, not theirs. But as Todd mentioned, some of

their ceremonies involve less clothing than you might think.

So Matt goes sweaty and shirtless in loincloths with a

whole group of sweaty, shirtless loincloth people.

There's lots of clothes and not a lot of other stuff.

But yeah, there is somebody painting.

There's some visions, there's subtext here about our Western

tendency to mystify the unknown immigrants from the East, from

India, Tibet, China, to imagine them having magical

spirituality. And we like to do that in the

West. And people from the Far East are

not stupid. I mean, if they're, if they have

Westerners trying desperately to hand the money, if this little

stone or this little incense or this thing will do something

amazing for me. And they're like, yeah, sure,

lots of that. So it's become a big thing in

our society to buy proxy, buy magic from the ancient E More

than that, it might be this other religion.

It might just turn out to be the Tanktonese version of a lot of

smaller crystal faith groups or something across the United

States, and I won't say a lot more about that because I don't

want to come across too derogatory or anything.

Matt takes this as a great let down.

So if you are desperate for some sort of greater amount of

spiritual power and healing and miraculous things, so you're

opening yourself up to different stuff, you kind of set yourself

up for a great, great disappointment if it doesn't do

what you want it to right in that moment.

And that's kind of what he goes through.

So I liked, I guess, the analogy.

I liked that these people were not, they didn't turn out evil

or manipulative or anything. They're exactly what we saw at

the beginning when we find out. They're not really burning a

person. They're just burning like

remains or something. Mostly legally, they're not bad

people. But yeah, it just, he was really

disappointed. So he got very negative and

that's it for sour milk for me. So if you want to jump into some

salt water, go for it. All right, so my first bullet

point was about the confusing start, but by accident, I kind

of already talked about that, about how I wasn't sure exactly

what they were doing and were they burning somebody alive?

And it turns out I don't think they were because there's

mention of a death certificate. And when I caught that, I was

like, oh, OK, so somebody died ahead of time and this was just

a normal cremation. So I'll move on to my second

thing, which is that, you know, we often pick about Matt kind of

doing some stupid things sometimes.

But in this episode, Matt and George are both kind of stupid.

So as usual, Matt is just a a little bit annoying when he has

a reaction to George saying that he's going to coach Emily's

baseball team. Matt first lasts at him and and

acts as if George couldn't figure things out.

And I'm like, you know, George is pretty smart.

He should be able to figure it out.

But then he starts quizzing George on historical baseball

games, as if the history of baseball matters when leading

kids in playing the game. If he's going to quiz them, he

ought to be quizzing them on things like rules and

regulations. But then George kind of partakes

of this stupidity because then George starts spouting off all

these statistics because he actually knows a lot of the

things that that Matt is quizzing him on, and he's acting

like they might actually be imported.

It's tell Emily I'm very proud. You too.

Goodbye. What?

I have just been approved to coach Emily's Little League

team. Is that funny?

What do you know about baseball? It's true that the closest thing

that we had to the sport on the ship was ejecting trash into

space, but after reading several books, I digested a great deal

of information. Yeah, like what?

What would you like to know? Don Drysdale's batting average,

1961. .193 Matthew Did you play baseball as a child?

Yeah, sure. Can't grieve the year in 1925.

Well, let's see, He played three games that year.

He was up at bat only once and struck out.

That would be .00. Excuse me, what happened to the

food around here? Sparky Anderson tells a

wonderful little anecdote in his book, he said.

Top of the ninth, tie ball game, bases loaded, winning.

You got your pitcher at the plate.

He's been throwing smoke all day.

What do you? Do Let's see, that would

parallel the 1989 Los Angeles Cincinnati game in which manager

Tom Lasorda had Mr. J Howe. And exactly.

George, George, what would you do?

Oh well, then there was the 52 Dodgers.

Yeah, and the 83 Mets and the 92 Pirates.

A lot of input. What's the answer?

Matthew, you could help me. Suicide squeeze Keep your.

Pitcher live if you can no. No, no, I mean with my team.

Help me, coach. No.

George but Emily would just love I.

Said no, all right. When they do finally get a

chance to practice, George acts like he's just terrible at this.

And it's one thing for him to, you know, have a bad start

because, you know, he's never played baseball before.

But at the same time, he comes from a race that is stronger,

smarter, more adaptable, I assume faster, has better

vision, and therefore you would think that they have better hand

eye coordination. And he is not picking up this

whole batting a ball thing as quick as he ought to and just

being a little bit sillier than than I think he ought to be.

And then Matt is stupid again because he's not giving any

practical advice to George. You know, it's not like he's

saying widen your stance or don't drop your shoulder or

something like that. He's just like, here's another

ball, OK, here's another ball, OK, we're out of balls.

We're done. And so they're both just kind of

wasting time. And also this whole time Matt is

grumpy because they haven't had breakfast.

And I'm thinking, all right, George, I know he's being

annoying, but just compromise. Just go get breakfast first, and

then you can have a more peaceful baseball practice.

And so this whole thing about baseball is just stupid from

beginning to end, unfortunately. Well, you're not going to

believe what my first saltwater is about.

Oh, OK. It's a, you know, there's some

baseball in this episode. Yeah.

So do you have anything against baseball?

Then, well, OK, so like I said in the intro, a chunk of this

episode is cutting over to George trying to be a Little

League coach. And those scenes, just all of

those scenes don't work for me at all.

Like, I don't know, he could be helping his daughter set up a

lemonade stand or teaching her to ride a bike and it just, it

doesn't matter. It's just The thing is what they

were doing, what the scenes were trying to accomplish, it was

just spinning wheels for me. And maybe I'm just prejudice

because it was about the game. So while George knows all the

theory from reading the books that he can and keeps

referencing these great baseball players, like you mentioned,

Emily tries to like nudge him. Like I think we might have heard

enough theory, dad. And so it's always nice when

they find something for Albert to do.

And the two of them are adorable as Albert is trying to kind of

help George and George is trying to be genuine and do his best.

But the scenes are all they just kind of fall flat for me.

There's this summative moment just to jump to the end where

he's gone on this journey sort of with Matt that we'll come

back to about Matt's spirituality and his near death

experience. And at the end, for some reason,

George realizes that Emily can bat her own way instead of

trying to copy a famous player. He was just, you know, he'll say

the name of a player for pitching or the name of a player

for batting. Do this, do this, do this.

I didn't really understand the moment when he changes his

mindset. If it relates to Matt's near

death experience, it relates to Matt finding closure with his

own father and personal situation.

I did not see the connection. It's like, you know what, you

know what, Emily find your own way of hitting the ball.

And it's, I mean, it's a nice lesson, but it came kind of out

of nowhere. It's just like we've got to go

somewhere with the baseball. And I've got a crazy idea.

Maybe you don't have to try and swing exactly like a famous

person was the moral. So yes, all of those scenes I it

wasn't bad enough for me to want to Fast forward and it's not bad

enough for me to avoid this episode in the future.

Star Trek, The Next Generation, I really didn't like the Klingon

centric episodes as a kid and in my mind they went on forever for

the courtroom episodes. But as an adult, the things I

thought lasted forever last like 3 1/2 minutes.

So likewise, these are not bad, they're just none of them seem

to be like pulling me in emotionally.

So yeah, that was a big negative for me.

You seem to know more about baseball than I did.

And I have to tell you, man, having just watched the baseball

episode of X-Files, if you guys don't know, it's called The

Unnatural, which is a play on the movie The Natural with

Redford. Mulder does the same thing that

George does. Well, he doesn't, but he has an

interaction with somebody and when they're asking if you know

about baseball, he like wants to know how many home runs Mickey

Mantle hit. Which suggests to me that if you

don't know that Mickey Mantle hit a 372 home runs left-handed

and 164 is right-handed and a total of 536 home runs and he's

the only player to ever do more than 150 with each hand.

You know that that says you like baseball, but if you don't know

that you don't like baseball. So it's not just this episode.

I think I've got 2 sci-fi shows with writers that are like, you

know, if you really like baseball, it's not that you

understand the game, it's that you're hyper focused on stats

and heroes. Yeah, yeah.

So maybe that's a thing. Yeah, and so since you were

talking about baseball, 2 of my bullet points are about it.

But just a quick little aside, you know, I'm a fan of Deep

Space 9 and Captain Cisco and his son are big fans of baseball

in that even though it in that time period of Star Trek, it's

almost a dead sport. I think I think they're bringing

it back or it's it's just barely alive or whatever.

And there's one episode and I think season 7 where they

actually have a baseball game against the crew of another

Starship or something. And it's funny, but the.

Vulcans. Yeah, yeah.

Jerks, Yeah. Yeah, and Cisco is the coach on

the team on Deep Space 9 and they get Odo to to be the coach.

And it just reminds me of 1 great scene where Cisco

disagrees with a call. He goes over and starts yelling

at Odo as the umpire, and he's like, what were you doing?

Regenerating, Talking about him? Yeah.

Talking about like, not paying attention to the ball going

across the plate or something. The more we talk about baseball,

I am not a sports fan at all of any sport.

Like the closest I come is enjoying watching women's beach

volleyball during beach volleyball during the Summer

Olympics and watching curling during the Winter Olympics.

That that's the closest I come to watching sports.

So I'm not into baseball either. But the more we talk about it,

the more I'm like, oh, it's almost, I think we want to watch

that one baseball episode, Deep Space 9.

It's not a bad episode. Deep Space 9, you know, the

departure episodes. This is a season 7.

Episode 4, Take Me Out to the Hollow Suite.

And yeah, I if you wanted to get a jersey, Todd, I would expect

you to get one that said Niners on it.

I think that would be really cool.

Yeah, and to all the modern Star Trek writers who want to do

something like goofy and almost every episode, look at that

episode. And that's how you do funny and

comical in the Star Trek universe, only you only do it

every once in a while. But anyway, all right, so as far

as this episode goes, I love a good music montage.

I think it's a great way of either showing the passage of

time or people coming together or people training on something

or learning something or just going through some kind of

experience or traveling scenes. I just love a good music

montage. Well, there is a baseball

training montage during this episode and it's one of the

worst music montages I think I've ever seen.

It feels more like a middle school camcorder product project

then it does something that's in a prime time TV show.

Let me see the the sequence just wasn't that funny.

It felt way too silly. It was enhanced by any great

editing or anything and such goofy music that it was set to.

I mean seriously it it felt like a kids project that kids deal

with camcorders and whatever lame music they could find.

Overall it just felt amateurish and I and I hate harping on it.

It's it's not like it ruined the episode or anything, but it's

just come on, we can do music montage is better than.

That Yeah, everything they tried to do with baseball.

If you guys have not seen Field of Dreams, it's not a good

baseball movie. It's a good movie.

It's like, it's ridiculous how good it is.

It's so good that it makes you think baseball is magical and.

If that is the one with the cornfield and the OK, yeah.

And we did review that on discerning each portal.

I don't remember the number, but it was sometime during I think

Season 4, so somewhere between 1:50 and 199 so.

Yeah, and it's just but it's so so Todd and I may be prejudice,

but you can do great stuff. So we've got we've got a couple

of negative examples and we've got some positive examples.

Deep Space 9 episode a movie that's just great.

So yes, Major League is fantastic.

But you know, it's like there are you can do it badly.

And this was just, you know, putting the jerseys on the kids

and having them swinging to miss some and say, do you know, do

your best? It's like, you know what?

Do it your own way, kid. It's like it wasn't.

I don't think it was enough for the baseball fan.

Maybe it isn't because George keeps mentioning greats and

maybe just the statistical reference is like enough.

But if we don't care about them name dropping famous baseball

players, I don't think there was a lot for Todd and me to latch

on to. Like, I know who Mickey Mantle

is, but they deliberately name 20 that Todd and I probably are

not that familiar with. And it's like, OK, yeah, all

right, whatever. And do you have more about

baseball? I'm no, no, no.

I have one salt water left and then that segment.

So yeah, go ahead. OK, so let me finish up with the

baseball thing. And you've already hinted at

this, but the the thing that happens at the very last second

of the episode, I mean, it's the very last scene is when George

teaches Emily to do whatever you want to.

Don't do it like this famous baseball player, that famous

baseball player, just just do whatever you want.

And like you said, kind of a great lesson, but it's

disappointing in a few, few ways as you kind of hit it.

It's a little bit unexpected that it happens at all.

There's not a great transition to it.

And then that's the end of the episode.

And it feels like a weird end. Also.

That ought to be a lesson that he's teaching to all the kids,

not just his daughter. And one of my problems with this

episode overall that I'll, I might talk about in a minute, is

that it feels like it's a lot of missed opportunities.

And this is one of the missed opportunities because if you're

going to introduce this idea that he is coaching the Little

League team, we need to see their game.

We need to see them at a game playing and having fun.

Because they did get over this whole obsession with stats and

famous baseball players. And they decided just have fun.

They learned that lesson and they're playing.

But instead we don't even get there.

It's it's just, it's like, oh, here's this one little lesson.

And and you just have to assume that they played a game leader

and it just, I don't know, it didn't feel like a whole lot.

It didn't feel like a whole lot of closure to me.

So. When one of our critiques of

Starfleet Academy was when they would bring something up and

never do it again. And I'm just going to hazard a

guess that we will not get an additional mention of George

coaching little. But even if even if we're down

on the baseball listeners, I want them to bring it up again

because continuity matters. So if you decide George's

coaching Little League, at least the rest of this season, they

need to bring it up every now that Emily's a player now, let

her keep at it a little bit. You know, I'm in from practice.

I need you guys to keep doing that.

And so if they drop it, just like Starfleet Academy Season 1

did with this random activity, the debate club or laser tag or

the thing of the week, it does. It just feels very, very

limited. You got to commit.

So we'll see how that goes. There is a pattern to these

episodes. And it occurred to me, and I

don't want to ruin things for you guys, but by pointing

something out that you may not have noticed, but I've already

mentioned it previously. So in the last episode, I I

liked it OK, but I decided that the last episode was crossing

the line was kind of formulaic that they had decided that there

are things that viewers like an alien nation and they hit those

marks like they're checking boxes.

Did you get this in there? Did you get this?

For me, it would be having a Kathy show up Terry trees across

the hall. Well, Nick really likes that.

Have heard you have something to do.

Well, the the system that they came out with that I really

noticed last week was that you have a, a serial killer, a

serial criminal BA Tanktonese ritual of some kind and C one of

our two heroes dealing with trauma from their past.

And this was really obvious last week, so I mentioned it in our

last episode. And in this episode I'm like, Oh

my goodness. Instead of a serial killer,

guys, we have some we've never had before.

We have a serial criminal. He's like a burglar.

We've got to catch a a burglar. He's really just breaking in and

stealing stuff. That's that's the big crime that

Sykes and Francisco are on is a guy who's robbing places around

town and he's not doing that fast job of it.

I think he's up to six or seven. But anyway, we have a Tanktonese

ritual. We've got the Moonies and

they're in the pool burning things.

And then they're taking Matt through a whole ritual.

And we've got Matt dealing with trauma from his past where

little boy, Little League Matt playing baseball.

And his dad is drunk in the stands, ambles off to go to a

liquor store to buy more booze. And he tells him, you know, I

wish you were dead. And and as he storms out of the

convenience store, a burglar. I guess there's irony there,

like shoots his dad. So this connects it in his head

to baseball and he has this trauma.

So this is episode 19. Rebirth last week was Crossing

the Line Episode 18 In the game, it was Francisco's trauma.

In Night of Screams episode 7, it was Francisco's trauma.

The game is episode 10. So just off the top of my head,

we have 4 episodes now that meet my criteria for ritual serial

criminal dealing with one of our heroes traumatic past.

And this one felt even more rote than the last one.

Like just yeah, we got something there.

The actors do a fine job with it.

Gary Graham really was traumatized, but it felt very

safe. That's my last basic salt water.

Mine is kind of related, and my notes are maybe a little bit

wordier than they should be, but I'll so I'll try to combine some

things together. But the whole thing about Matt's

father surviving is a little awkward, and it may not

necessarily even be unrealistic. I don't know how long people can

survive in a coma, but it's a little bit weird.

First of all, that greetings humans and aliens.

This is Todd, the editor, cutting in briefly.

I got way too wordy in this part of the recording trying to make

a certain point, and I think I might be able to make that point

a little quicker now. I thought it was kind of odd to

find out that Matt's father was still alive, albeit in a coma.

For one thing, even George thought Matt's father died when

Matt was young, which means Matt has been either outright lying

about his father or so heavily implying that his father was

absent that George made what he thought was a safe assumption

that Matt's father was dead. Second, I don't know if it's

normal for someone to be in a coma for a full five years.

In the unofficial companion book I have, either a producer or an

actor stated that they thought it was strange that Matt's

father was in a coma for five years, and they wondered who's

paying for that? Does someone have power of

attorney and would turning off the machines be more humane?

Lastly, I don't think we ever hear about Matt's dad again, so

it becomes a plot point without any true resolution.

I think I originally rambled out another one or two small points,

but that's enough. So back to the recording.

And then on top of everything else, since this is mixed in

with Matt's near death experience, we never totally get

a concrete explanation for how exactly Matt did come back to

life. And I know it's implied that

this Tynanese garbage man, maybe he did something, but what?

And they don't really explore it as a cultural, biological thing,

you know, like, is he one of those people in Tiffany society

who does have that power or something?

Is it a spiritual thing? Is it a biological thing?

It's it's never totally explained.

It's implied that it has something to do with crystals.

But this garbage man, I don't think has anything to do with

the religion slash cult that's in this episode.

So he doesn't. Yeah.

So why do the crystals have anything to do with him?

Because Matt has this vision of these crystals falling at the

same time that the guy is supposedly over him and touches

his chest to bring him back to life.

But if the garbage man had nothing to do with his crystal

group, then why are crystals involved?

And Matt has a crystal in his pocket that was that.

But did that come from the garbage man or did that get

sneaked in those pocket by the the religious cult type person?

And if it was the cult type person, when?

Because when I watched that episode, I don't remember her

hand coming anywhere near him that she could have snuck that

in his pocket. So it's like all these concepts

sort of are related, but they're not related very well.

There's not a lot of connective tissue there.

And if you and if you approach the episode with a nitpicky

brain like I have you, you, you notice that those connections

are not there. And so in the end, the episode

feels a little bit half baked, like there were ideas, but then

the ideas don't really come together.

Yeah, in order to get us to get the wrong impression and lean

toward the magic explanation, they have to keep things

deliberately vague. And by the end we are supposed

to realize that the non magic explanation is what actually

happened. And then instead of being like,

oh, I see it now. I think we may come across just

like, well, no, that that wasn't clever, you just did it badly.

So, for example, the rock being in Matt's pocket in his vision,

by the end, I think we are supposed to realize that his

brain did the same thing we do a lot of the time when we're

dreaming, where it regurgitates things that he's digested

throughout the day mentally. So he spends time with cultists

and their goo, goo Gaga crystal rocks and stuff.

And he has this guy grab him and it's the last face he sees as

his lights are knocked out. And then he dreams that as

adrenaline is rushing into his heart that the very guy who just

killed him is like standing over him, sprinkling him with

crystals and saying, this was not supposed to happen.

And George is like, this is clearly a hallucination.

And Matt says, oh, yeah, then where did this come from?

And he has a crystal. He has a rock in his pocket.

That's not a metaphor, y'all. And like Todd said, we we don't

know where it came from. So for a second we're like, Oh

my goodness, is something spooky going on?

And that's intentional. To make it even harder, when he

goes and talks to the spiritual people, they patently deny that

they slipped it into his pocket. In fact, that scene is kind of

weird because, well, I'm, I'm getting into mine, so let me go

into 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.

George, 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.

Yeah, I know. In your language, Sykes means

excrement and cranium. Yikes, Yikes, Yikes.

Big Yikes. Bad Sykes.

Yikes, Yikes. Sykes.

The segment where we talk about how often Matthew Sykes almost

shoots an innocent person. We let Todd talk about Sykes

caveman personality traits and all the shoddy police work, and

maybe even criticize some acting choices of Gary Graham.

Nick likes and admires enough for the both of us.

So Matt tracks down his mysterious assailant, whom he

believes has ties to the crystal spiritualists the Lubof, and

it's spelled LUIBOF on subtitles LUBOF and who he hopes turns out

to have resurrection powers. Now we think it's just because

if the guy can bring him back to life, anything is possible.

And I need to know if the newcomers are magical.

But it turns out in the end, it's because his dad has been in

a coma this whole time, and we don't know that.

So there's two twists, listeners.

Once his, this newcomer, who's named Peter Rabbit, by the way,

is handcuffed in Matt's backseat, and he confronts him.

First Peter confesses to trying to be Robin Hood and, like, take

from the rich and give to the poor, and that's why he's doing

the burglaries. And then Matt keeps pressuring

him, threateningly so, to confess that he also has

resurrection powers. And this is where them trying to

be vague, I think comes out as wishy washy instead.

Because I think what's supposed to happen is the criminal says

that he has resurrection powers, Matt believes it and lets him

go, and then figures out later that he's been duped and goes

after him. I think that's what we're

supposed to think. Except they directed the actor

to kind of turn on a dime and say like a Vulcan character,

like what you are Speaking of is a secret and can only be used in

special circum. And he just starts pulling this

out of his butt and he doesn't do it in a looks left, looks

right. Yes, I can do that.

He doesn't know. He just completely switches

tracks and starts saying, I guess what Matt wants to hear,

that sometimes they can resurrect people.

This is not the Police Department.

Why did you bring me here? And all about you, man.

I saw you tell me the truth. What you said to me.

I said it wasn't meant to happen.

I heard. You can do it, can't you?

You can bring people back to life.

You can heal people. Come on.

The Hell's a big secret? You humans cannot deal.

With all that we have within us, I am to take from those who have

more than they need and give it to those without food or

clothing. But you broke laws.

Laws on paper do not mean as much as the laws of existence.

Some of us are chosen to remind the.

World of that. You can save us, you can bring

back the dead, can't you? Good can be raised just as

easily as evil. You see why the gift must be

kept. Within a garbage man's going to

save the world. What did a carpenter's son do?

And then the camera cuts away and Matt reports the guy got

away and the scene is just really sloppy.

So the burglar is way too fluid to suddenly agreeing to have

magic powers. And Peter, for some reason, as

soon as he's free, what does he do?

He goes to commit another crime. Like immediately he's on a

rooftop trying to break into a new place because that's what

you would do when you just got away from a cop.

And Matt has turned on a dime. We don't know when he made a

realization. Maybe he's just sitting in his

car thinking am IA dumb ass right now, really.

So he goes after him and manages to find him, and George manages

to find him on the rooftop at the same time.

And now Matt wants to shoot Peter out of frustration until

George intervenes. So this scene and the transition

between both of them, Matt, what he's doing.

Yeah, I got to take the suspect off and question him about

resurrection cars is very questionable.

And we don't even see how the guy escapes.

I think they filmed it, and it was even worse leaving it in.

So they just cut out a transition there, hoping that we

would all put it together. That's weird.

What do you have for Yikes? Sykes Todd?

OK, yeah, I don't have it in my notes, but you did verbalize

something that I thought was weird that I just forgot to

write down the whole thing about how, yeah, the guy escaped and

we didn't see the escape. But right before that, the thing

that I am going to point out that I thought was also weird is

I'm not sure we've ever seen these two guys as detectives

transport a perp in the backseat of their car.

And their car is, you know, they're in plain clothes as

officers and their car is not really equipped.

And so there is no cage protection between the front and

back seats. And I'm thinking, isn't that

unwise? I mean, the tank, the knees are

already stronger in the 1st place.

Even somebody, you know, thin and wiry like George is

stronger. But this guy Peter Rabbit is is

huge. He could very easily either a

headbutt mat and make him lose control of the car or do some

kind of like weird like acrobatic back seat leg sweep or

something and, you know, whack him in the head.

He could do all kinds of things to make Matt lose control of the

car and escape. And who knows, maybe that's what

he did off camera. And it it, it was just weird to

me. It's like if you're transporting

A perpetrator, you you really need to have either the cage

protection in the car or put him in a car that has it.

And so it was just weird that they put him in Sykes normal

everyday car, not his own personal car but his his

detective car that is not equipped for that type of thing.

Yeah, that was obvious enough that I caught it too.

That was like, we're all jaded now.

We've all seen enough perps thrown in the back of police

cars with the plexiglass or cage.

And now it's very, very conspicuous that you put this

actor who is built like a truck into a back seat.

Just be like, I've got him. So yeah, that was that stood

out. All right.

So do you have anything else? No, that's it for shoddy police

work on my part. OK, you're good.

We can move on. Yeah, so I've got one more salt

water, I think. Yeah.

All right. And it's the missed

opportunities I was talking about, Like I said at the big at

the beginning, we get a sect or a cult, whatever you want to

call it, in which humans intact knees are worshipping together.

That's interesting. I want to see more of that.

And we get nothing. There's an there's an

exploration of resurrection, possibly caused by Tinctoni's

ability or maybe spiritualism in general.

Do we get any solid answers? No, Let me see.

There's growth, you know, whatever you want to call it,

either growth or closure between Matt and his father.

But is it really closure? Like I said, it's not like

Matt's dad is getting out of a coma anytime soon.

And we probably never hear about it again.

And I'm not even sure if Matt did get something out of finally

saying something to his father. So do we have growth?

Do we have closure? It doesn't totally feel like it.

Let me see, we see George being a bad Little League coach, and

as we've already mentioned, we see him finally changing his

mind how to teach Emily. But we don't see that with the

rest of the group. And as I've already said, we

don't get to see an actual game with the kids.

And we also don't get to see an opportunity of Matt actually

helping George coach, which would also be a nice moment

between the two of them. And we, yes, we had that one

scene as you described of Kathy trying to help Matt out and

being very glad that he's OK. But we also don't get to see,

does that actually help their relationship anymore?

Does Matt say like, you know, I've got this huge second chance

I need to either, you know, do something with this relationship

or stop, you know, messing around and stop leading Kathy on

or, you know, from Kathy's point of view, she'd be like, I almost

lost Matt. I'm going to stop around the

issue. You know, let's let's go to the

next level or something. And we don't get to see any of

that. So there are all kinds of things

this episode could have done and maybe it sets it up for the

future, Like maybe there are seeds planted.

And if so, then maybe retroactively I'll be able to

say, oh, never mind. But as far as this episode goes,

it just feels like a lot of things were missed opportunities

that it's like set up and either no payoff or if we get the

payoff, it'll be later on. And so it doesn't feel like

payoff yet. There could have been more done

with that. I agree.

And I think if we didn't mention it before, like when Matt goes

to talk to the cultists, the sorry that the religious group,

and he asked them about the stone and they deny it and

stuff. He does this weird thing where

he's convinced he was brought back from the dead.

We now know he was not. But when he goes to talk to them

and George has said, no, no, no, this is just your brain playing

tricks on you. And the doctor gave us a weird

but interesting explanation. And Matt goes to interrogate

these people and he interrogates them as though he agrees with

George, as though they are manipulating him, as though they

slipped the thing into his pocket that it was all like a

scam or something. And he he comes at it from that

direction kind of like, please prove me wrong.

Say there's more to this. And they're like, I don't know

what you're talking about, man. And he's like, Dang it.

So yeah, it's it was interesting that he took that approach

because he came at them like a skeptic.

But yeah, that's it was kind of inscrutable.

I did want to say previously you were talking about comas and I

don't know what the medical truth is, but TV has taught me

that you can stay in a coma for 30 years.

Oh wow. OK.

You just sit there. That is it.

I think for our salt water, so we can move on to connecting the

spots where we look at notable appearances from actors in other

movies and shows and any kind of real world connection.

I already suggested that having a more Spacey religious group on

the West Coast might connect to something they see out there,

but there are a lot of interesting people in this

episode. I think you should start this

one. OK, All right, so we get a guest

star in this episode that was actually in the theatrical movie

that that inspired the TV show. And if you go all the way back

to episode one of our podcast, when we reviewed the theatrical

movie, I talked about how there were two actors who did all

kinds of guest starring roles in all kinds of science fiction,

fantasy and horror type TV shows in the 80s, nineties and 2000s.

And they might still be doing that kind of thing.

And it's Jeff Koeber and Brian Thompson.

They were both in the theatrical movie and they both also

intersect later in a very short lived TV show Kindred The

Embrace, which was also on Fox. And I talked about how I

sometimes getting confused. So sometimes when I'm saying it,

I'll say like, hey, it's one of those two guys and they when

they're the same thing together, it's like, hey, it's the other

of those two guys. Well, so this time I thought for

sure it was Jeff Kobor. And I was like, oh, it's good to

see Jeff Kobor again. And what a coincidence because

Jeff Kobor currently has a recurring role on Season 2 of

The Pit, which is not science fiction and fantasy at all.

It's that, you know, super realistic medical drama with

Noah Wiley where he plays a motorcycle enthusiast and a

friend of Noah Wiley. And we we've got several

episodes recorded and I still need to catch up on editing.

So by the time this episode goes comes out, Season 2 of the Pit

will be over because right now, at the time we're recording,

there's one more episode of the pit to go in Season 2.

But anyway, Jeff Cobra has been in that.

It's like, oh, what a coincidence.

Well, I was only half right. Yes, it's Jeff Cobra in the pit.

But in this episode it was actually Brian Thompson.

And Brian Thompson, I'm sure you might have more information on

this, but he's been in several episodes of the Star Trek

franchise. I think 3 or 4 of Buffett the

Vampire Slayer, at least one each of Charmed, The Orville,

and probably other science fiction fantasy shows.

As I already mentioned, he was in Kindred The Embrace.

He played Eddie Fiore, the leader of the Bruja clan.

So yeah, I'm still getting those two guys confused.

I thought it was Jeff Cobra would it?

But it was actually Brian Thompson.

Brian Thompson is, he's kind of like Sam Raimi's brother Ted,

where once you get to know his jawline, you're going to just

see him and everything. And I think he must be really

nice in person, like you said, both of these guys, because

they're just fun to put in stuff.

So yeah, I think the the things that you didn't mention that

I'll throw out if you're watching the current series

Fallout, he's in a couple of episodes of that.

He's in the Orville. I know him the most right now

because I re watched all of X-Files recently and he's the

mysterious alien bounty hunter that sometimes shape shifts but

he has a distinctive look and they take all the makeup off of

him. He's in Dragon Heart which is an

interesting movie. 3 amigos, Knight Rider.

And I mean honestly, for me his big break is probably punk #2 in

the original Terminator when the Terminator first shows up and.

Kills some punks and take some clothes.

I'm pretty sure he's the 1 Arnold stole clothes from

because they are built very similarly like down to the job.

But yes, Brian Thompson is a he's a fun one to spot.

So yes, this is cool to have him back in this episode.

And I can't spot people in the makeup very well, but him I can

spot our cult leader. Our spiritual leader was named

Oak. No, and her her actress is Ellen

Wheeler. She's a very successful soap

opera actress, especially on another world a few others she

has done. She's produced, not starred and

produced more than 300 episodes of guiding light.

That's that's an interesting thing.

And she was in deep space 9 episode the quickening with a

dominion plague world sheer. So yes, interesting lady bit of

a Star Wars pedigree. So Star Trek.

So that's good. The other guy there's this

mattered to me, but there is a thin black male officer with a

mustache that isn't really properly identified, but he just

looked really familiar to me. And the actor is named Riff

Hutton. I think he's in the credits just

as officer, but Riff Hutton is, he's had an interesting career.

He was a Klingon in Star Trek The Next Generation and I think

I know him from 17 episodes of Doogie Howser MD as Doctor Ron

Welch. He it's weird because those 17

episodes are not like all in season 1.

They are spread kind of mostly evenly over The Four Seasons of

the show. So Ron doctor Ron Welch is

always around. He just pops up every now and

then. But 17 total episodes.

He's in Babylon 5 as an ISIS and reporter once Seinfeld and the

much maligned Star Trek Section 31.

But Riff has well, it's funny. His name is Riff.

He he's got a big secondary career in ADR, in looping,

dubbing and doing voice work for a lot of stuff.

So people in Hollywood just finally said, you know, they'll

give him acting parts still if he's still in section 31.

But he's he's your go to guy. I'm not going to list all his

voice credits, but yes, Riff Hutton.

Distinctive dude. So if you were like me and at

one point you were watching Doogie Howser, you'd probably

recognize Riff Hutton. That is, believe it or not, it

for me for notable appearances connecting the spots.

OK, I've got one quick one. Matt's hat is bad.

In some of our early episodes, we used to pick on Matt having a

different hat every episode. This one is the one that I

don't. I'm not expert on hats.

I don't know how you describe it, but it's that kind of formal

Gray hat with the rim around it is the kind of hat that you

would wear with either an overcoat or maybe a suit or

something. And of course, he's wearing it

with just jeans and a leather jacket, so it looks out of

place. But he hasn't worn that in a

while. But it is back for at least one

scene in this episode. You know, he has this baseball

cap in other episodes and now we have a baseball episode and he's

not wearing the baseball cap. And I didn't even notice his hat

in this one man. So I'm glad you pointed it out

because I actually, I've gotten to such a weird place with the

show that I care about his hat choices passionately.

But previously I spotted a very full hat rack in his bachelor

apartment and I don't know, I'm no one to talk, I have too many

hats and stuff. But Officer Matthew Sykes has a

lot of hats on his hat rack, so I thought.

I imagine that Gary Graham in his furnished apartment set

decided it would be fun to actually grab hats off of this

prop hat rack and wear. And that's why the character

does such weird things. So yes, that's still my guess.

But I'm glad you caught that. I had no idea.

At least he wasn't wearing a a tank top and a hat.

Again, as a professional police officer.

Are we ready for the Albert Einstein Award?

Yes. So we have one contestant this

week. Once again, listeners, although

I think we've we've yeah, we had like nobody last week or the

week before. So this time it is just down to

Brian Thompson's character. It's Peter Rabbit.

He's the default winner. But you know what?

We love you, Brian. So I'm really glad it's you,

man. Peter Rabbit is our winner.

And he does he he makes a run for it at least twice.

So yes, very apropos. Congratulations man.

And a very interesting name because he doesn't look like a

Peter Rabbit. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. Sometimes they'll do that where

I don't know if the immigration person would give that name, but

it happens to work out to be ironic in some way.

But I mean, you know, at least his name isn't like Robin Hood

or something like that. But yeah, yes.

So we are, I think, ready for, I have to talk about this segment

where we bring up anything we haven't brought up already that

needs to get across. And I've got a lot of stupid

little things in here. You have much for this section.

No, not much. Well, a 211 is in progress and

as you might have guessed, that's a burglary.

Although I was listening to another episode of ours today

and I swear there's another police code for a burglary.

So maybe there are different types of break entry in the

hospital. Matt is a code blue, which

again, is very, you know, they're they're smart in their

coding color coding system because code blue is a little

bit like what it sounds like you are either in cardiac arrest or

you are in respiratory arrest. Like someone might turn blue.

I don't want to think about what a code brown or a code yellow

is. But yeah.

George can see in glaring light. This is just a weird thing.

He's looking almost directly into the sun.

Matt asks if newcomers have built in sunglasses.

What do you guys got built in sunglasses or something?

George says they're adapting well to Earth's sun.

So that's just, it's another gentle superpower, which I'm

very OK with. I'm enjoying all of those.

They can keep it going, but they can't bring people back from the

dead. But light sensitivity, they're

adapting to it really well. the Rose quartz that Matt finds in

his pocket is called a vendor crystal, a vendor crystal.

And Okno, our lead cultist, our lead spiritualist lady says they

give it to each other to help them get through difficult

times. So maybe she was spiritual and

she could tell that he was going through something difficult.

Or you might say, if you anytime you talk to a first responder or

a school teacher or someone in the food service industry,

they're probably going through a difficult time.

Statistically, what do you got? O from the book Alienation, the

unofficial Companion. In the behind the scenes section

for this episode, there are some interviews with some of the

writers and roducers behind the scenes.

And of course Tom Chahack has a big section in here because he

was the both writer and director of this.

And I won't go into all the details, but he does talk a

little bit about how the original intent of this episode,

or at least something they had a concept of it one time that

became this episode had something to do with Christmas.

And so this is supposed to be a Christmas episode where I don't

remember all the details, but it was going to be, you know, kind

of like the the Christmas lesson that you learn about life.

I don't know. Obviously I'm not remembering

the details. I'm not going to read the whole

paragraph. But there's also mention about

how there's some obvious allusions to Jesus Christ,

because there is the the resurrection involved in this.

One part I will read is where Tom Check says it's a show

that's important to me because I made my directorial debut on it

and wrote it. But it's a show that fired on

five of its six cylinders. I thought it was an interesting

show in the kind of vein we should have done more of.

When you're writing science fiction, you like to play with

the medium as much as you can, but the networks don't want you

to do that. And I think there might be

something somewhere else in one of these paragraphs about how

the network was a little bit nervous about this because story

editor Stephen Mitchell goes on to add why the network was

scared of Tom's original idea. I don't know.

It was compromised into something that wasn't as good as

it could have been, which was always my disappointment.

It's one thing when you say we can build the Empire State

Building and you end up with townhouses, but you keep the

Empire State Building in mind. So even if those townhouses are

nice, it's not the same thing. And I thought that was a really

good analogy for, you know, some of my sentiments about this

episode where it's like, there's potential there.

There's some good ideas, but they just aren't followed

through on very well. And it sounds like these two

producers agreed. And then Co story editor Craig

Van Sickle also kind of agreed. He said it tried to do more in

an hour of TV than most people care to think about.

So although not totally successful on every level,

there's a lot of nice things in there.

It's an A plus for effort, that's for sure.

I think Tom's direction, especially for a first episode,

was splendid. So all three of these producers

kind of agree that the episode just didn't quite come off as

well as intended. So I don't feel too bad for

being critical of this episode. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like

what I'm saying about them checking boxes and playing it

safe and the things that were technically OK but maybe didn't

land that that's just, it's not just you and me being nitpicky

jerks that it's like other people can see.

OK, I see what you're trying to do there, Tom.

And you know what? This is OK, It's OK.

It meets all of our requirements.

You know, maybe you can do another one.

But yeah, definitely did not land a lot of that.

So the townhouses thing really clicks with me.

I think that's a really great way to put it.

And I think every production now, things have changed so much

with how expensive everything is to make that I know with

blockbuster movies, they have to make almost a billion dollars

for people to say they're successful or something like

that. Or if they cost 10 million to

make because they're a guy with a video camera and then they're

like 500 million and it's like, OK, fine, that's successful.

Nothing can just be OK. It's like, well, it cost 20

million to make and it made 60 million.

It's not, it's not really great. So this one is just an OK

episode, and that's not bad. Yeah, townhouses.

I'm going to think about that. George tells Matt a little late

that Peter Rabbit has an alibi for being somewhere else at the

moment. Matt thought he visited him in

the hospital and resurrected him.

It's kind of cool that George bothered to check, although they

just caught Peter Rabbit, so I'm really not sure when he could

have found that out where it was like in Atlantic City when Matt

was coming back from the dead or something like that.

But yes, so we we do seal off that and that wraps it up I

think for I have to talk about that for me.

OK, so I've got two things. One thing, I don't have my

notes, but I was thinking about it while the episode was playing

in the background. You know, Matt often comes off

as being very macho and, you know, not totally in touch with

the sensitive side, has a very manly way of thinking about

things. And we've seen that kind of wear

away a little bit as George, you know, he has a feminine side.

And in some ways, I think he's race in general, embraces both

genders well. And we've seen that kind of

breakdown Matt a little bit. So when he talks about the

Tanktonese guy putting his hand on Matt's chest, Matt is only

concerned about how, if at all, it brought him back to life.

And whether it did or not, he doesn't, you know, flinch at the

fact that it was a man touching his chest.

And there is a point later in the episode when we're at the

hospital, it's after we learned the big spoiler that Matt dad is

still alive and George is trying to comfort him and also

encourage him to go in and talk to his dad.

George has his hand on Matt chest.

Now granted, Matt is, you know, clothed, so it's not his bare

chest, but still, the old Matt would have said, hey, that's

weird, stop touching my chest. And instead Matt just stands

there and lets George touch his chest.

And I thought that was an interesting progression of their

friendship. And then the only other thing I

have left is the weekly segment wheel of press kit.

So I'll spin the wheel and let's see what we get.

And I apologize ahead of time. I was talking with Nick ahead of

time about how I kind of feel like I might, I might have

forgotten to mark one of these off and I'm a little bit worried

it's a repeat. So if one of these two is a

repeat, I apologize. So this is from the 1st 4

paragraphs of the Eric Pierpoint profile in the Alienation of the

Series press kit. He's the alien version of the

salt of the Earth. Eric Pierpoint says of his

character George Francisco around the alienation set.

Eric's character is finally nicknamed Gentle George, the

head of the alien household. George Francisco is a

compassionate family man, and in the office he's the calm amidst

the storm. But while Detective George

Francisco is the peacemaker, he's not a doormat, Eric

cautions. He wants the respect of his

peers and hopes to be accepted for who he is, a humble alien

who is square in his own, or, excuse me, secure in his own

identity. He's a well disciplined employee

who is just trying to work his way up the ladder.

George carries himself with an inner confidence while adapting

to his new surroundings. Even though he approaches his

new lifestyle with curiosity, George is comfortable with who

he is and can tolerate virtually all obstacles directed toward

him. It's his self-confidence that's

the key to George's strength, says Eric.

So, yeah, I thought that was an interesting analysis of the

character of George by the guy who plays him.

I think he's he's right, and I think it's some of the reasons

why I love that character so much.

Gentle George. Yeah, and I like the part where

he says he's not a doormat. And while he doesn't go into the

details that I thought he might go into, one of the things I've

always enjoyed is the fact that, yes, George is gentle most of

the time, but he also has a temper.

And we've seen that too. And, you know, he luckily, he

has just enough restraint that he doesn't do anything with that

temper. That was that is truly bad.

But it does show that, yes, he has some trauma and some things

that he's dealing with. And so, you know, there are

different aspects of his personality.

So I'll roll the wheel again. And all, right, so this time

it's from Gary Graham's profile. And this is the part that I

could have sworn that I've said before, but maybe not OK, And

actually maybe very poignant considering the thing I just

talked about a few minutes ago. They said I had to take dance.

And I said, what, put on those tights?

Are you kidding? But I started doing it, and

suddenly I realized, hey, this is art.

This isn't easy at all. Dance was a very hard

discipline, says Graham. His decision to try ballet was

somewhat an aesthetic consider aesthetic.

Yeah, aesthetic consideration as well.

Suddenly I was surrounded by beautiful women, and it was

great. His dancing in in a college

production of Kiss Me Kate led to Grams or, Excuse me, Gary's

first professional dancing job in the chorus of the San Diego

ballets Romeo and Juliet. Wow.

Yeah. So, so yeah, that's the snippet

about Gary Graham doing ballet. And so like I said, it's kind of

interesting. The Mac character is super

macho, but the actor that plays him was OK doing ballet at one

time. I have to tell you guys, high

school variety show, dude came out and danced as his routine

for the variety show by himself. Top hat, very all that and jazz

and all that jazz. And I talked to him afterward

and I told him it was great. And he kind of asked me.

He's like, you don't think people are going to, like, think

that I was to this or to that? And I'm like, dude, honestly,

the ladies in the audience, this is high school, Nick.

Talking with the ladies in the audience were like Gaga.

So yes, I can. Yeah.

But yeah. So I do.

I like hearing that actors try different things.

If you guys don't know, before he was Captain Kirk, William

Shatner was in a much lauded movie version of The Brothers

Karamazov, which I haven't gotten to see yet, but I will

eventually. And you're under no obligation

to watch. But I like hearing that they've

done these other things. It's very fun, especially

classics. So yeah, but that's it for me.

So we score our episodes and every week I give a Star Trek

alumni score or STA for how many Star Trek alums are in the

episode. We've had a rough patch y'all.

Our scores have bottomed out. We've had two fours in a row the

last two episodes and that's especially bad since there are

like 4 people from Star Trek in almost every episode.

So this episode also has a base four with Sykes, Mr. and Misses

Francisco and Captain Grazer. But we get Riff Hutton again,

the unnamed officer. He was in Star Trek Generations

and in Section 31, Brian Thompson, our MVP guy showing

up. The trivia says that since they

recast Francisco and Sykes, technically Brian Thompson is

the only actor who was in the theatrical movie and in the

series, although that's complicated enough.

You kind of want to scratch your head.

But no, I think they're right. He was a Klingon, then another

Klingon, then a Romulan a few times.

So thank you Brian Thompson for your service to Trek and Ellen

Wheeler, our spiritual leader, Oak no was in Deep Space 9.

So finally we are back to a very respectable 7 Star Trek alums in

this episode. Thank you.

I can breathe easy. I also rate episodes on a watch

skip basis in case you're not a completionist like me.

You love hearing Todd and me talk, but you don't have time to

sit down, not on your commute, and like, actually like watch

all of these so you want to know which ones you can skip.

For me, the best part of this episode is probably the few

minutes when the Franciscos and Kathy are concerned for Matt at

the hospital and then reacting to the news of his apparent

death. The rest is OK.

So you wouldn't miss any important developments and plot

by skipping this episode entirely.

Like I said, I don't think baseball is going to be brought

up again. And I don't think Matt's near

death experience or possibly even his father will be brought

up again. I hope they are, but I'd love to

be proven wrong. But I'm guessing you could skip

it without skipping a beat. There are a couple of good Kathy

moments. So I guess that tips the scales

towards me, right? Recommending you do go ahead and

watch this episode. What about you Todd?

How do you rate this? All right, so I give this AC is

one of only two CS that I've given so far, 15 with Wanda.

I did give a lower score and I was like, wow, was I being

overly harsh to to 15 with Wanda and it and maybe so maybe I

could bump 15 from Wanda up from AD plus to AC minus.

But there's also a part of me that wonders, is this episode AC

or is it AC minus? And you know, I was playing

around with the spreadsheet and and I just couldn't get the

numbers low enough. So it does come out to AC, but

in some ways it feels like AC minus.

So in a way this in 13 for one to almost meet in the middle to

a certain respect, but it regardless of the exact grade it

is in the bottom 2 and again, not AI mean with it being AC and

I'm also saying I'm playing around with C minus it is

definitely in the not like it category, but barely.

But by staying out of the DS, it's not terrible and it's it's

not great by this show's standards.

But like I said, sometimes a bad episode of a good TV show is

still better than a lot of the stuff out there.

So yeah, I'm lukewarm on this, but it's not horrible.

And then as far as your Star Trek score, you know, I

mentioned before that I play the episode in the background, but

at some point it gets done and then the next episode plays.

Well, in the next episode you're going to get a major cast member

of one of the Star Trek TV shows, so you'll get at least

another plus one next week. Is it Robert Picardo?

No, no, no. Shoot, OK.

We will look forward to that. So yeah, coming up next time on

alienating ourselves, join us is Todd and I go into Alien nations

episode 19. Actually, I think it's episode

20. Gimme, Gimme.

George investigates the murder of a chief scientist at a

company in which George is heavily invested.

Buck inspired by one of his teachers.

Protests at the workers at the company are being exploited and

Matt sells one of his lottery tickets to Albert only to see

him win. So this is the second time

George's finances seem a little shady and how they're crossed

with his police work in season 2.

He might have gotten investigated for that.

Buck is way too impressionable. He's like a ticking time bomb

pleaser and follower. They're going to have to keep an

eye on that, and I'm sure Matt will handle frustration with

calm rationality and grace. So all that and more next time

on alienating ourselves. I continue to be Nick.

I'm Todd. Thank you for listening to us,

especially if you're distracted from having just been raised

from the dead and still trying to figure out how.

We'd love to see some reviews wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you love us, like us, or find our baseball coaching style

boring and irrelevant, please give us five stars.

If you'd rather listen to famous baseball statistics than listen

to us, please give us four stars.

If you give us three stars or lower, none of your baseball

caps will ever, ever fit again. As always, may all your milk be

as fresh or as sour as you prefer it to be.

And whenever you're itching to practice some baseball, make

sure your partners had breakfast first.

It might just make for a longer and far less annoying practice

session. Have a great week.

Goodbye everybody.