Star Trek: Section 31, with Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica

[0:00] Hey listeners, I won't waste much of your time.

[0:03] I just wanted to let you know that the response to Flop TV Season 2 has been so overwhelming

[0:09] that we're keeping the shows available through mid-March so that folks who got their tickets

[0:14] later in the season have a little extra time to check out the shows before they go away.

[0:19] And if anyone wants to go to theflophouse.simpletext.com at the last minute and squeeze in a binge watch,

[0:25] you can do that too.

[0:27] Just be sure to watch before midnight Eastern Time on Sunday, March 16.

[0:33] Okay, now the show.

[0:36] On this episode we discuss Star Trek Section 31.

[0:40] The least popular Star Trek movie since Star Trek C-Section.

[0:44] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flop House.

[1:12] I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:13] I'm Peter Wellington.

[1:14] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:15] And joining us, we have the hosts of The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Trek, two Trek

[1:23] podcasts.

[1:24] Name yourselves.

[1:25] I'm Ben Harrison.

[1:26] I'm Adam Pranica.

[1:27] That's right.

[1:28] Thank you for taking my challenge.

[1:29] It is a max fun crossover.

[1:33] It's time for one podcast to visit another podcast and act like, it'll be like the time

[1:39] when Urkel turned up on Step by Step and it was like, what?

[1:42] These are happening in the same universe?

[1:43] This is insane.

[1:44] Or it's like Star Trek Generations.

[1:46] Not familiar.

[1:47] Urkel shows up in fucking Star Trek Generations.

[1:51] He changes uniform halfway through the movie and it's never clear why.

[1:56] Because he's cool.

[1:57] Reginald Bell Johnson is also in that movie.

[2:00] Now we're on the subject of Star Trek crossovers.

[2:04] Have you guys covered on your podcast the series of novels where the X-Men meet the characters

[2:09] from Star Trek or no?

[2:11] I didn't know that there were novels of that.

[2:12] I thought it was just comic books.

[2:14] No, there's at least two or three novels of the X-Men characters on the Enterprise.

[2:20] I don't know if they're all on the Enterprise, but I assume so.

[2:22] That's more fun than the Star Trek characters going to a school.

[2:25] Do the bullies even waste their time with the kids who are holding that novel?

[2:29] Like going in between classes?

[2:31] They probably just skip them.

[2:33] Life will grind you down.

[2:34] Yeah, life is doing what we would do.

[2:36] I have always wondered if a phaser or Cyclops' plasma ray is more powerful.

[2:45] Could Cyclops punch through the hull?

[2:48] Could he vaporize a pot that is surrounding a bunch of mashed potatoes without vaporizing the mashed potatoes?

[2:55] Guess what, Ben.

[2:56] There's a series of novels that I think are going to answer those questions for you.

[2:59] But also, similarly, isn't Cyclops able to sort of like –

[3:02] doesn't his visor allow him to be like, I'm going to set it to stun essentially.

[3:07] I thought he just wore that shirt for style.

[3:09] It's just like Total Blastify or no blasting?

[3:13] No, he can't open it wider or less wide to affect the intensity of the beam.

[3:17] That's true.

[3:18] But also he needs the power of the sun to build up his optic blast.

[3:22] So it's possible if he's on the Star Trek Enterprise that he's running out of power.

[3:25] There's no sunlight there that I know of, right?

[3:27] I feel like they've got to get Forge on this.

[3:29] This seems like a perfect project for that guy.

[3:31] No, no, no.

[3:32] He's got some serious work to do on the Blackbird.

[3:36] So this is an X-Men podcast where we talk about X-Men stuff.

[3:39] Will the Blackbird fit in the shuttle bay or do they have to like modify it with like folding wings?

[3:45] Ben, I feel like there's a series of novels that are going to answer those questions.

[3:48] So, OK.

[3:49] To return to what we actually do on this podcast, which is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[3:55] This is a movie in quotes in that it is movie length and it was advertised as a movie on the Paramount Plus streaming service.

[4:06] It doesn't look like a movie.

[4:09] It doesn't have at least one movie star in it.

[4:12] It does have one of the biggest movie stars in the world in it, but it's not structured like a movie.

[4:18] No, it's more like an abandoned series idea perhaps.

[4:24] It does very much feel like when they would create the pilot for a new TV show and then they had no interest in actually picking it up.

[4:33] So they would show it on network TV as a special.

[4:35] And those specials always ended with the promise of more adventures, which would never happen.

[4:40] Yeah, like when's the rest of the adventures of the Mulholland Drive crew going to happen?

[4:45] Mulholland Drive, the new class?

[4:48] Yeah.

[4:50] So, Ben and Adam, you're a Star Trek expert.

[4:54] Some would even say Star Trek Trexpert or Sexpert.

[4:57] Star Trek Section 31, there's so many concepts in this movie and I'll be in the summary today.

[5:02] But there's so many concepts in the movie I was not familiar with as a very amateur Trek knowing abouter.

[5:08] And so for people who know it well, were you watching this in understanding it better or were you watching it in a greater sense of horror than I might because I'm not as engaged in the series?

[5:17] That's such a great question and part of why I was excited to talk about this movie in particular with The Flophouse because as somebody who's watched all of the ancillary material that leads up to the events of this film, it is – it's hard for me to imagine what it is like coming to this with no context.

[5:42] Well, I can tell you that when I saw the ads for it, I was like, huh.

[5:46] So there's sort of a black ops thing within the world of Star Trek and the – like doesn't that break the idea of Star Trek, this utopian federation?

[5:55] And then I learned that it is something that comes out of one of the series although I guess they're sort of not officially part of the federation.

[6:03] The federation just turns a blind eye to them.

[6:05] This is all stuff I learned after the fact by reading stuff online rather than experiencing it.

[6:10] I definitely had to go to Wikipedia for quite a bit of explanation, but I was not aware that Section 31 was a thing that preexisted this movie, but the movie really takes it for granted that you know what it is.

[6:20] I mean anytime you make a movie, that's what you want, right?

[6:23] You want your audience to have to do a bunch of homework in order to get what you're trying to do.

[6:28] I don't know if I've done this much homework for a mainstream piece of popular entertainment since I read Grant Morrison's Death of Bruce Wayne miniseries or whatever it was where he's referencing all these different old Batman stories and I was like I shouldn't have to be looking up unreferenced materials to understand what's going on in a Batman comic book.

[6:46] I kind of felt like that with this too.

[6:48] When are they going to release the annotated Batman comic book?

[6:51] Yeah, I shouldn't need annotations for this.

[6:53] I knew Elliot was running our summary and I texted him because also I feel like you need to do research to have any sympathy for the main character who Elliot explained to me through his research has a longer redemption arc on the series.

[7:08] So maybe it's easier to –

[7:12] I might argue the more you know about the main character, the less sympathy you could ever have.

[7:18] I feel like the most sympathetic thing that they did, which was smart, is they cast Michelle Yeoh, an amazing movie star.

[7:25] One of the greatest movie stars in the world.

[7:27] She killed a bunch of people.

[7:29] I'm still right at eye for her.

[7:31] Looking at the making of this, it feels like this movie probably would not have happened if she had not won an Academy Award between the beginning of the development and the production of this movie basically.

[7:39] I think they probably would have – it was supposed to be a spinoff series starring her.

[7:44] I think they were in the midst of dropping it when she won an Academy Award and they were like, oh, now we need to make it.

[7:50] Is that what happened?

[7:51] I assumed that it was like, oh, we were going to make this series.

[7:54] Oh, now we can't afford Michelle Yeoh.

[7:56] I mean maybe there's a little bit of that too.

[7:58] It can't be a series.

[7:59] It can be a movie.

[8:00] Well, let's talk about it.

[8:01] So Michelle Yeoh, she's playing a character named Philippa Giorgio, which is – I don't know why, but I find it to be hilarious.

[8:07] Hey!

[8:08] Yeah.

[8:09] It's a deadly, snazzy genocide.

[8:12] Amari Hardwick puts a lot of emphasis – he puts a lot of juice on that last syllable, Giorgio.

[8:18] He's like Giorgio!

[8:20] Every time.

[8:21] And so let's – I think – but rather than explain that character right off the bat, let's replicate the experience of me and Dan Stewart watching this movie but not knowing what's going on.

[8:30] And you guys, Adam and Ben, please chime in when it feels like something needs explaining, which is all the time.

[8:35] So we open with – so this – I will say this was basically like a tease.

[8:40] Are we going to be the Adam Conover of this episode?

[8:42] They're like, well, actually.

[8:44] Yes, very much so.

[8:45] Thank you.

[8:46] And I'll be like, I don't know why I have an issue with what he's doing.

[8:49] The things he's saying are true.

[8:51] So this movie, it started out as a – I believe as development for a television series, much like Moana 2 started out as a Moana television series and then became a movie instead.

[9:02] Also a perfect film.

[9:04] Did Moana also genocide a bunch of people?

[9:08] Yeah, there's a genocide sequence in it.

[9:10] Yeah.

[9:11] Moana murdered her parents also.

[9:13] They had it coming.

[9:15] Exactly.

[9:16] So the movie starts with text on screen.

[9:18] I love it.

[9:19] It says, fate who makes the sword … does the forging in advance, Aeschylus.

[9:24] And I kind of get why this quote has to do with the rest of the movie, but I don't really fully understand it.

[9:30] But it's okay.

[9:31] It doesn't matter.

[9:32] I like the soundtrack being the classy of the two space opera shows because Star Wars is not going to start with an Aeschylus quote.

[9:37] Instead it's going to be like, fear not, Yoda.

[9:40] And it will be like, okay, well, that's a character from the movie.

[9:42] Well, I mean they do start with words on the screen.

[9:44] Is this an episode with a fucking wire?

[9:46] Why are they putting one of the characters from the show's quotes?

[9:49] One of the things that I always found weird about the wire is to start it with a quote from a character in that episode.

[9:54] But we start where it's the Terran Empire, which again was a thing I did not know what.

[10:00] it is, but I guess it's some kind of alternate dimension where instead of the Federation

[10:04] there's like a mean, bad empire that defeats things.

[10:08] I kept imagining it in my head being like the Imperial Ratch from Anne Lackey's Ancillary

[10:13] Novels which are a great series of novels.

[10:15] It made me so want to read those instead.

[10:17] So the Terran Empire-

[10:18] The Terran Empire in TOS terms are Spock with goatee.

[10:23] So if you've ever seen Spock with goatee-

[10:24] So by TOS you mean the original series.

[10:26] Right.

[10:27] So looking it up, I guess that's the mirror universe, for the Mirror Mirror episode.

[10:32] Everyone in it has the same job, but they're really bad.

[10:36] Awesome.

[10:37] Awesome.

[10:38] I'm in.

[10:39] Everyone's the same except they're evil and sexier too, right?

[10:41] Yeah, they're sexy.

[10:42] And I'm not saying they're bad at their job.

[10:43] They're good at their job, which is being bad.

[10:45] Yeah.

[10:46] I don't-

[10:47] Yes.

[10:48] I don't believe that a universe full of people being bad is going to be a functioning universe.

[10:52] I assume that means the bad people in our universe are good in that universe.

[10:55] That's my guess.

[10:57] But since all the Star Trek characters are always good, I guess we never see-

[11:00] Right.

[11:01] We only see the bad versions of the alternate universe.

[11:02] So we're in a rural village-

[11:03] So Jeffrey Combs would have to play good guys all the time in the Mirror Universe.

[11:07] Exactly.

[11:08] And he'd never wear makeup.

[11:09] Yeah.

[11:10] Yeah.

[11:11] So-

[11:12] Makeup wears him.

[11:13] We're in a rural village.

[11:14] There's a blacksmith, a woman picking crops, all the stuff that tells us this is a rural

[11:18] place.

[11:19] A woman shows up.

[11:20] She's a young woman.

[11:21] She's been away for two years as part of a sort of battle royale.

[11:23] It's a Hunger Games.

[11:26] Except if the winner of the Hunger Games goes on to become the emperor, basically.

[11:29] Which is a remarkably organized succession plan for a universe as evil as the Mirror

[11:37] Universe.

[11:38] Except it's also a terrible idea because the same skills that allow you to kill other people

[11:43] and survive, I assume, the wilderness or something, are not the same skills that are great for

[11:47] managing galactic bureaucracy, understanding-

[11:50] Oh, sure.

[11:52] Elliot prefers his leaders to be TV hosts and billionaires.

[11:56] Exactly.

[11:57] Someone who's run a business, Stuart.

[11:58] Someone who understands how a business works.

[12:00] Yeah, exactly.

[12:01] I mean, none of the partners in law firms have gotten management degrees either, Elliot.

[12:06] Yeah, Elliot.

[12:07] That's a terrible point.

[12:08] Let's steer away from that and let me ask.

[12:09] This just happens when there's a power vacuum, right?

[12:12] Though they're not like every year we have a big battle royale.

[12:15] I assume every time an emperor died, they did this.

[12:17] I know.

[12:18] That's what I'm saying.

[12:19] When there's a vacuum.

[12:21] It's not patrilineal or anything.

[12:23] There's like a proctor that has enough power to run this two-year-long competition and

[12:27] then find the person.

[12:28] Is this what the Conclave is about?

[12:30] It's like Conclave.

[12:31] I haven't seen the Conclave.

[12:32] Yeah, it is like Conclave, except there's more vaping in Conclave.

[12:34] Yeah, a lot less killing.

[12:35] I'd love to see that movie if I saw this one, it sounds like.

[12:38] Yeah.

[12:39] So she's come back.

[12:41] She's won the battle royale, this woman, Philippa.

[12:43] Philippa Giorgio.

[12:45] And only her and another combatant, a guy named San, they survived because they worked

[12:50] together.

[12:51] Or San, as I would say of being from New Jersey.

[12:53] They survived because they worked together.

[12:55] One of them will become the new emperor.

[12:57] There's just one final test and Giorgio passes it by poisoning her family because she can

[13:03] have no ties if she's the emperor.

[13:05] And this is shot with what I would call a lot of unnecessary style, a lot of like golden

[13:09] light, slow-mo.

[13:10] Describes the movie, Elliot.

[13:11] Yeah, Dutch angles.

[13:13] There's a lot of like spin-around shots.

[13:14] Yes, a lot of spin-around shots.

[13:16] Like is this a drone or is this a digital drone?

[13:19] Like what's going on here?

[13:20] Yeah.

[13:21] And as soon as she does that, a ton of troops beam down and they're like, you succeeded

[13:24] where San failed.

[13:25] And now he has to serve you as a slave forever.

[13:27] And she's the emperor now and she renounces their friendship.

[13:30] And she takes a sword and puts it in the coals of a hot brazier and then slaps it against

[13:35] his face to burn his scarred face.

[13:38] Then the movie does something a little jarring, which is that as if this was a video game

[13:43] you were playing, it suddenly turns into a priority message addressed to you explaining

[13:48] what happened to this character between that scene and this movie.

[13:52] And they're like, priority message, section 31, Emperor Giorgio is from a parallel dimension.

[13:56] She was brought to our dimension and joined section 31.

[13:59] Then she disappeared.

[14:00] She's been seen in Federation space.

[14:01] And I'm like, this is a lot.

[14:03] This is a lot to suddenly tell me.

[14:04] Did this clear anything up for you guys as newbies to the franchise?

[14:09] Not really.

[14:11] So they're basically like, I guess they're telling us, is this her arc basically on the

[14:16] television show?

[14:17] Is like she comes over, she was a genocidal madwoman.

[14:20] She's Hitler on a galactic scale.

[14:22] But she comes over and kind of like does her time as a spy and that is redemption.

[14:26] Like what happens basically?

[14:27] Yeah.

[14:29] So there are, I think, three seasons of the series Star Trek Discovery where she is a

[14:36] character.

[14:37] And when we first meet her, we meet the prime universe version of her.

[14:42] And she is the captain of the ship that Sonequa Martin-Green's character, Michael Burnham,

[14:47] is the first officer on.

[14:49] And Michael Burnham has a whole redemption arc surrounding committing mutiny against

[14:55] Philippa Georgiou, her beloved captain.

[14:58] And then they go on a bunch of adventures that land them on the wrong side of the divide

[15:05] between the two universes.

[15:07] And they discover the horrifying truth that her beloved captain's doppelganger in the

[15:13] mirror universe is space Hitler.

[15:16] Spitler.

[15:17] Yeah.

[15:18] Right.

[15:20] Spitler's the main character from the porn version section 31.

[15:28] This ain't Star Trek, colon.

[15:31] You get it.

[15:33] You get it.

[15:34] And then she like joins them?

[15:36] Like she goes on adventures with them?

[15:38] Or they're trying to stop her or what?

[15:41] They have to stop this other captain who is a mirror universe person that's been imitating.

[15:49] He's like, he's an identity thief, essentially.

[15:52] He's taken the identity of his prime universe counterpart.

[15:56] And so Philippa Georgiou is instrumental in finishing the Federation's war with the Klingon

[16:04] Empire and resolving it in a way that makes the Klingons right to be made into allies

[16:10] eventually.

[16:13] But yeah, like it's it's a lot to go through.

[16:17] Like it's a series that has like 13 episodes a season.

[16:21] It is like so fucking convoluted.

[16:24] To jump back a little bit when you said and now the movie does something jarring.

[16:27] I thought you were going to say it.

[16:30] It indicates that this is going to be your hero.

[16:32] This woman who kills her family and then goes on to be a genocidal maniac ruler.

[16:38] I mean, you see her do horrible things in the show.

[16:40] And then like somehow the show wants you to feel bad for her when they also do time travel.

[16:46] And they're like, you know, you can't jump to a universe and then travel in time.

[16:50] That's really bad for you.

[16:52] So you're going to have to travel back to your own time period at the very minimum.

[16:57] That's the least that's the slap of the wrist for sure.

[16:59] That's the least we can do.

[17:00] It does feel like but they keep trying to get the movie about how you killed billions like you were a monster.

[17:06] And it does. But then by the end, she's just part of the gang.

[17:08] Spoiler alert. And it does feel like if in the new Mission Impossible movie, they're like, you got a new recruit, Pol Pot.

[17:15] And he's like, well, Pol Pot, I don't like you.

[17:18] But by the end of it, Pol Pot is so cool and such a great fighter and so suave that there's even like sexual tension between Pol Pot and Ethan Hunt.

[17:25] Like that's that's what this movie feels like.

[17:28] Pol Pot's a brunette apparently.

[17:29] Or would be spelled P-O-L-E in that version.

[17:35] I don't know if you're going to stab me in the back or bed me down.

[17:38] But that's kind of what I like about you, Pol Pot.

[17:41] Exactly. Yeah.

[17:42] So Section 31, I guess, is that the kind of black ops team we're talking about.

[17:47] And they have to find her and also stop a terrorist.

[17:50] And they have 24 hours to complete this mission.

[17:52] And it was this moment it felt like I was either watching either it had turned into a video game that I was supposed to play or I was I had stepped into a sequel that I didn't.

[17:59] I was like, was there Star Trek section through Star Trek Section 30?

[18:02] Like, is it like it? I've I've heard of info dumps.

[18:06] But usually they are like either this kind of thing is at the very beginning of the movie or it is a character like saying.

[18:13] Admittedly, you just wanted it to be scrolling at a weird angle away.

[18:16] I would have loved it more scrolling at a weird angle across a field of stars.

[18:20] I would have been like, this is how you tell a movie like this is a space opera.

[18:24] I watch I watch a lot of television.

[18:26] My wife watches basically tries out every single new drama series, every comedy series.

[18:31] She tries it like she loves it.

[18:33] And so I end up watching a lot of pilots of things.

[18:36] And this felt very much like a pilot in that it's like there's so much information, so much backstory that's either implied or directly said.

[18:44] And they're just like they're like, don't worry about all this.

[18:47] We're just going to keep talking and throw throw you right into the action.

[18:50] Yeah. So like, yeah, there is a feeling like I don't know what the fuck is going on.

[18:54] But maybe my brain has been like messed over by all watching all these all this bad television writing.

[19:01] Yeah. I mean, the action that they throw you into is is largely theoretical is the problem.

[19:07] Well, let's talk about the action that they throw you into, because this is a real twisty turny plot, guys.

[19:11] There's a lot of ins and outs and betrayals.

[19:13] So we go to a space club that a space nightclub that Giorgio runs on the edge of Federation Space.

[19:17] She there. I do like the outfits.

[19:19] I do like the outfits and the design of this space bar.

[19:22] I think the design of the bar is cool.

[19:24] And it's based on my laptop.

[19:26] Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

[19:27] It's rectangular.

[19:29] How do you have to get that custom? I did.

[19:31] I did this fitted my machine.

[19:33] Yeah, it looks wider than normal.

[19:35] Because if you're you have a thumb issue or do you just like a nice wide bar?

[19:39] I like I like a girthy space bar.

[19:41] Let's get out of here.

[19:42] Dan likes Dan likes his space bars.

[19:44] You brought the attention, Dan.

[19:46] He got embarrassed.

[19:48] I've never seen one ribbed like that, Dan.

[19:50] That's for my pleasure.

[19:52] Dan likes to tiptoe to the edge of kink.

[19:54] And then Stuart likes to push him over.

[20:00] So Georgia is there under the name Madame Veronique Dufranc, and it's like, it's a cool

[20:07] looking space bar. And I have to assume because they implied at the end this would be their home

[20:13] base if this was a series, that they would be at this space bar. And someone wants to talk to her,

[20:20] a mystery man who appears to be a drug supplier named Alok Sahar, but she identifies him right

[20:26] away as a Section 31 agent. She's already ID'd all the agents he has with him at the bar.

[20:30] She does not want to help them, but he threatens to arrest her if she doesn't.

[20:34] And she's like, I could kill you right now, but I'll do it. Okay. Like there's, there's very,

[20:39] it's going for a game of like, we're forced to work together, cat and mouse. You don't want to

[20:43] do this and I don't want to do it. But everyone is so easygoing. They're so laid back throughout

[20:47] the entirety of the movie. Well, they're very high at this point. And we don't know how long

[20:51] this drug takes to wear off. So it could be that they remain profoundly high for the rest

[20:56] of the experience that they have together. Yeah. I want to say about these characters that we meet,

[21:00] right? Like, and I'm about, I'm about to run, run down them, but Dan say what you're going to say.

[21:04] Yeah. Uh, well, you know, they're all sort of like in disguise because they're in the bar,

[21:10] but all of all, but one of them mostly look how they normally look, except like one of the women

[21:16] has a, a, a very different wig and makeup. And I found it extremely confusing because when you're

[21:24] first introducing a character, you usually don't introduce them looking vastly different.

[21:28] And then like later on in a different scene, I'm like, wait, that's the same lady. And then at the

[21:32] end of the movie, when they're back in the bar, she's back in the wig and makeup. I'm like,

[21:38] why did that happen? If you are going to introduce a character in disguise,

[21:41] you should show them removing the disguise so that your brain.

[21:46] I will say to defend that character, that's Lieutenant Rachel Garrett. Who's an uptight

[21:49] Starfleet officer when we meet her. And I do like the idea that she's the only one who's like,

[21:53] I have to go all out with my disguise. That's that's section 31, you know, by the book,

[21:58] you know, she's a, she's played by, uh, the actress who played, uh, Abigail Hobbs,

[22:02] Abigail Hobbs from Hannibal. Yeah. Yeah. That was awesome. Oh yeah. Okay. So let's

[22:06] meet Hannibal. That's a good show. What a great show. Oh man. I love that show. And you know what

[22:11] they didn't do? They didn't do like then a spinoff movie about like Gillian Anderson's, uh, like

[22:17] therapist or something. I would have watched it, but it wouldn't have been very good. They were

[22:21] like, that's that series reached the perfect ending beat. And then it was just done. They said,

[22:25] we told our story anyway, let's meet the team. Let's meet a locks team. A lock does not have

[22:30] much personality. He's just kind of like that. Very handsome. He's very hard. Wick is very

[22:34] handsome. He is, but he's just the tough leader of the team. Let's meet his team. There's Mel,

[22:37] a sexy Delton with seduction powers. Uh, don't get attached to Mel. She's not going to be in a

[22:43] lot of roasted. Yeah. There's Zeph who has body armor all over him and he's kind of dumb. And

[22:48] he's like, he's, he's, I forget. Is he in the bar in his body armor? Like he doesn't have a disguise.

[22:54] Some of it off sometimes, I mean, not to leap too far ahead, but when Zeph died, I was very,

[23:00] I was sad when Mel died, very excited when Zeph died. I'm like, you had nothing going on. You're

[23:04] just a guy with a robo suit. I'm saying this from somebody who has played in a lot of role-playing

[23:11] games. There are too many accents in this movie, including a, a microbe that is inside a Vulcan

[23:20] robot with an Irish accent. And I'm like, what is going on? He's just Irish. So there's that you're

[23:29] talking about fuzz. He's a tiny alien, which is what a Nanoken or something like that. He's a,

[23:34] he's an almost microscopic alien who is in a tiny little spaceship inside of a robot Vulcan body.

[23:41] So he presents as Vulcan for most of the movie, but every now and then they'll zoom in real close

[23:45] to his face inside his little micro spaceship. And he'll be just like, Oh, faith in Bagora.

[23:50] Oh, like, like a Vulcan body. And it's like, and whenever you're up close to him, it always feels

[23:56] weird. And it's always dark. And I do appreciate that they got a rubber suit together for the guy

[24:01] inside the thing though. It's not just like a bad CG thing. It's a physical object. Yeah. And then

[24:08] there's quasi played by the great Sam Richardson, who is a shape shifter, who is also the guy.

[24:13] He's also the really smart guy who can't make decisions. You know, he gets overwhelmed by

[24:17] choices. And of course, and I mentioned Lieutenant Rachel Garrett, uptight Starfleet officer who

[24:21] wants you everything by the book. How did she even end up with this group? Well, maybe that's

[24:25] something we would dig into in future episodes. I've been watching a lot of episodes of slow

[24:30] horses lately. Cause you know, I'm getting older. It's a great show and I'm getting older,

[24:34] you know, I'm becoming, I'm morphing into a dad. I'm listening to a lot of Steely Dan.

[24:40] I'm an actual dad. I've been reading the books.

[24:45] So what I'm saying is that my brain is very wired into the idea of like,

[24:50] like a ragtag team doing espionage shit. And so I was obviously a little bit disappointed

[24:56] by what ensues, but there's not a lot of espionage setting the stage.

[25:01] So they, they want to stop a biological arms dealer with the hilarious name of data. No,

[25:07] which is our daughter. No, no, no. Which every time they said it, I was like,

[25:11] they can't be the character's name. You can't have a third name. No,

[25:14] it's Charlene has repeated the name multiple times.

[25:18] Like you might as well just give him a name from the movie cats and just be like silly name. Yep.

[25:25] We're after McCavity. We're after Bumble arena.

[25:28] Fun thing I found in my research was the, the writer in an interview with one of the like

[25:33] Trek news outlets was like, yeah, we love, we just loved the character data. No. So what,

[25:38] you know, we had all the episodes written for the series and we just were like,

[25:41] we got to get that guy into the movie. And he's, he's, he's, there's almost a

[25:46] character there. Like he said, it's so incredibly like I wonder in the writer's room,

[25:49] they must've had some bit about data. No, that was really hilarious. That does not translate to the,

[25:53] to the, to the show. Um, so they want to stop data. No, he's got, he's gonna,

[25:57] he's trying to pass off to a buyer, some bylaw, some what they think is

[26:00] some kind of terrorist weapon. Uh, and a lock goes over their plan in detail and we see them

[26:05] acting it out. And then Phillip goes, nah, I don't like that plan. We're going to do something else.

[26:08] And I was like, Oh, okay. So that was filler. Well, I mean, it does a very specific thing.

[26:14] It is, it is that classic thing of anytime you fully explain a plan, that is not what's

[26:18] going to happen. Yes. It's going to fall apart. It also highlights what everybody's unique

[26:23] abilities are and why they all have to use them. And it shows her like cutting the knot,

[26:28] being like, no, the reason you want me on the team is I have a much easier way of doing this.

[26:32] I'm smarter than you guys. Uh, but it's like the Walter Sobchak plan. It's like,

[26:37] I'm going to grab him and beat it out of him. Yeah. Her plan is not intricate. It's,

[26:41] I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I own this place to beat him up.

[26:44] Well, and I own this magic device, which, and that device I actually thought was kind of one of

[26:49] the few cool ideas on the show. Let's talk about that device. So instead she, she goes up to data

[26:56] now and she's as a hostess and then she uses her phase pods to, she throws one of the weapon case

[27:00] and one herself. And now she has, she is out of phase. She's vibrating at a different wavelength

[27:05] or speed than the rest of reality. I like that a lot. That's very Lovecraft. Let's go find the,

[27:09] let's go find the goof section. So if you make a little box thing, uh, out of phase with reality,

[27:15] is it just going to phase through the floor? Nope. It lands on the floor is normal. It does

[27:19] land on the floor. Like normal. The thing inside it is also affected by the phase field. So it

[27:23] doesn't fall out of that, but it doesn't just say she owns the bar. So much like the bar you own,

[27:27] you've, you've fitted the floor out with a special thing. Is it affected by the artificial gravity?

[27:36] In which case I guess it falls to the floor, but wouldn't fall to the center of wherever the

[27:41] gravity is. I mean, it should, it should just hang in the air because it shouldn't be affected by

[27:46] that. Yeah, we fixed it. We fixed it. Did they explain this in star Trek world guys?

[27:54] I think after this episode, we're probably going to stop talking about star Trek in general.

[28:01] I found this moment very hurtful personally, because, uh, I had an ex-girlfriend tell me

[28:05] that we just didn't vibrate at the same frequency before breaking up. So,

[28:12] so they, uh, then a phased masked, a masked assassin who is phased at the right wavelength

[28:18] to steal that, that, uh, the pod or that the thing, the box comes in, they have an action

[28:23] fight and I didn't enjoy this, but I did think it was funny of them to do the classic eighties

[28:29] tango and cash thing of the action fight caused them to break burst through the wall of a room

[28:34] where two aliens are having sex with each other, which is in tango and cash, every action scene,

[28:38] just about, they bump into somebody who's having sex in another part of the room.

[28:45] No, I'm not. So fight, fight, fight in the fight. Unfortunately, Mel gets vaporized. Sorry,

[28:49] Mel, we hardly, hardly knew ye. There goes the character who was, who was all about seduction.

[28:54] Um, I also like that they like fight for a while on the stage and everybody in the bar

[28:59] interprets it as like part of the show. And they're like, yeah, this is like Ninja Turtles

[29:02] too. This is great. Space vanilla ice comes out, phasing, phasing, rap, phasing, phasing.

[29:09] That's what they should have done. Um, and, uh, she's called Georgia when she's in control.

[29:16] The mass fighter gets away with the case and a Georgia was like,

[29:20] I thought I destroyed this thing next to a vanilla sherbet over here and he's cooking up

[29:24] some rhymes. They'll be dropped. That's a reference to our secret of the ooze flop TV show.

[29:30] We've been on the full story of vanilla sherbet TV episode, season two, episode six,

[29:34] I'm sprinkling out a Easter eggs for the true freaks out there. Yeah. So, uh, the true flop

[29:40] freaks. So flashback freaks like Georgia, like Phillipa Georgia. Speaking of let's go to when

[29:45] she was in a castle. I bet she has ripped off plenty of ding dongs in her day. Oh yeah, for

[29:49] sure. There's a scene in the TV show where she eats a guy's, uh, threat ganglia, which are like

[29:55] a intimate body part that only get exposed when they experienced fear.

[30:00] So, yeah, I totally believe it.

[30:02] See, I, yeah, man, I gotta watch this show.

[30:05] Oh, yeah, it sounds amazing.

[30:08] Based on this movie.

[30:10] So they flashback to when she was in her own castle,

[30:12] when she was empress, and San gives her this object,

[30:15] and he's like, we made that weapon you asked for,

[30:17] then all your engineers killed themselves

[30:19] because they were so ashamed, and it's like,

[30:21] so they couldn't kill themselves before they made the superweapon?

[30:24] But, okay, and he goes, you've become a monster.

[30:27] And he gives himself the same poison and seems to die at her feet.

[30:31] I mean, the argument, most likely.

[30:33] I don't want to jump ahead, but I would imagine San

[30:36] gave them the poison and killed them.

[30:39] Oh, that's possible, too.

[30:40] But, again, he couldn't do that before they made the weapon?

[30:43] No, he wants the weapon, though.

[30:45] But then why does he take it then?

[30:47] He, like, takes his own death as a spoiler.

[30:49] Why does he bother faking it and bringing it to her?

[30:51] You're playing three-dimensional chess, guys.

[30:52] I can't explain it.

[30:53] Yeah, but sometimes you just need to play tic-tac-toe.

[30:55] Tic-tac-toe?

[30:56] Yeah, tic-tac-toe is the new game that young people love.

[30:58] So we got to ban it.

[31:00] It's been banned, and then, like, the Supreme Court upheld the ban,

[31:03] but it's still there for some reason?

[31:05] We live in a world without law right now.

[31:07] This is not a country of laws.

[31:08] So this president was like, eh, I'll allow it.

[31:10] And, of course, he's king now, as he stated in a truth social post.

[31:14] So there's nothing we can do about it.

[31:16] Look, every time you bring it up, it just depresses me.

[31:18] So I think we're here to provide a respite for people.

[31:20] Oh, right, right, right, provide a respite.

[31:23] So Georgia wakes up handcuffed in a safe house with a lock.

[31:27] Don't quite know why she's handcuffed, but okay.

[31:30] She already agreed to work with them a little bit.

[31:32] That's a lock.

[31:33] Let's throw away the key, all right?

[31:35] Tell me about it.

[31:36] And she's like, you need to trust me, but she needs to know what you're not telling me about yourself.

[31:44] And a lock is like, I'm from the 20th century.

[31:46] I was involved in the eugenics wars.

[31:47] I was turned into a super soldier.

[31:49] But I was turned into an augmenter or whatever or augmented, and now I'm here now.

[31:54] And I guess he was frozen or something.

[31:56] Yeah, I mean I can piece it.

[31:58] Like Khan.

[31:59] Like Khan.

[32:00] But it's like you never see him do anything particularly.

[32:03] I've read enough fucking Chris Claremont comics to know that I'm like, yeah, I'll just figure it out.

[32:07] It's fine.

[32:08] Yes, exactly.

[32:09] But he never does anything particularly augmented as far as I know.

[32:12] He punches really hard once or twice.

[32:13] He plays Pokemon Go.

[32:14] Everyone punches hard.

[32:15] He's really good at Pokemon Go.

[32:16] He is really good at Pokemon Go.

[32:18] That's true.

[32:19] We see that throughout the movie.

[32:20] He's like we've got to catch that Dada No, but first I've got to catch them all.

[32:25] So they leave their hidden bunker.

[32:28] They're on a hidden bunker safe house on the butt end of the universe.

[32:31] And she explains that in her universe she built a weapon called the God's End, which can incinerate an entire quadrant worth of planets.

[32:38] And it's convenient enough to fit in a box.

[32:40] And again, this is more evidence that she is bad and maybe is beyond redemption, that she's like we've got to get that weapon I built.

[32:46] I said to destroy it, but it was still your idea to have this quadrant burning weapon.

[32:51] It's like a doomsday device.

[32:53] It was intended less as a weapon per se, as more like, hey, if you come kill me, then this whole quadrant is raised.

[33:04] Everything is blown up.

[33:06] You're a ruler of nothing.

[33:07] It's a one-quarter doomsday device.

[33:11] Yes, because it's just a quadrant.

[33:14] Usually the threat is to the whole galaxy in these movies.

[33:17] So it's nice to see us just confined to one quarter of one galaxy.

[33:21] Made for Paramount Plus budget, you can't incinerate the whole galaxy.

[33:24] You can only incinerate one-fourth of the galaxy.

[33:26] I don't know.

[33:27] Every single season of Star Trek Discovery would beg to differ.

[33:30] I mean, Paramount Plus sure incinerated those old daily show reruns.

[33:39] They need to save that room for new seasons of Ink Master.

[33:42] And Ink Master All-Stars.

[33:44] You've got to put Tracker on there.

[33:46] Dan, I have to understand.

[33:47] Dan, that's not even his name.

[33:48] That's what's so fucking crazy.

[33:50] He should be Jack Tracker.

[33:51] As Comedy Central sheds its husk and goes from being a cable network to being a free-floating spirit.

[33:57] A wisp. A will-o'-the-wisp.

[33:59] Yeah, a will-o'-the-wisp.

[34:00] It can't hold on to a website anymore.

[34:01] That would be bonkers.

[34:02] I'm never going to get a box full of three-cent checks anymore from people clicking on those videos.

[34:08] You know, I did really love going back and reliving the Bush administration via The Daily Show.

[34:15] Yeah.

[34:16] So I have a book coming out later this year that's about joke writing.

[34:20] It's called Joke Farming.

[34:21] It's coming from University of Chicago Press.

[34:23] And for it, I was re-watching stuff that I had written for The Daily Show so I could use it as examples.

[34:28] And then I was like, well, glad I finished the book before they pulled everything I worked on off the internet and made it inaccessible to me.

[34:34] Thanks for that.

[34:35] And it exists question mark, question mark, question mark.

[34:38] Who knows?

[34:39] It exists on beta tapes that are slowly being demagnetized by the process of entropy over time at the MTV Video Library, which now exists in a dumpster.

[34:50] That's comforting.

[34:51] Yeah.

[34:52] It's a real data no.

[34:54] It's gone the way of old BBC programs.

[34:57] Yeah.

[34:58] Well, Dan, think of it this way.

[34:59] Eventually the sun will explode and everything humanity has created will go away.

[35:02] What you worked on on The Daily Show, just that happened a little early.

[35:05] So actually that's a good question.

[35:06] At this point, did they drag Data No along with them like he's Joe Pesci from The Lethal Weapons?

[35:12] They did exactly that.

[35:13] The Lethal Weapons Joe Pesci'd him.

[35:15] And we learned that he's an augmenter and so forth.

[35:18] They have the God's End.

[35:19] There's a conversation between our crew about is it God's End or God's Send?

[35:25] And it's the kind of off-brand Suicide Squad-esque, like Guardians of the Galaxy-esque banter that the movie every now and then jolts into like a car being driven by a teenager who doesn't yet know how to use a stick shift.

[35:39] Oh, yes.

[35:40] And is drastically switching gears at the wrong time.

[35:43] I'm glad you brought this up because I feel like every review I read of this was talking about how much it wants to be a Suicide Squad-style team.

[35:53] And the thing is I don't want to lay blame at any particular person's feet who's behind this Section 31 movie.

[36:01] But like what it is missing is like James Gunn leavens that with emotions.

[36:10] I mean if anything, he like ladles on the emotions extra thick to sort of make it – make up for the fact that everything else is quippy.

[36:19] Yeah, he like kills a bunch of baby animals and stuff.

[36:23] Not my favorite but one of those.

[36:25] And what's quippy though, it is also quippy in a way that is specific to the characters whereas everyone here just sort of generally is like, well, we're in the middle of a quadrant-killing situation but I'm going to make a joke at any point that I can.

[36:40] Like there's no – they don't have a dumb guy.

[36:44] Just have it like they should have made the fucking robot suit guy like just a dumb guy who says like one word thing.

[36:50] He's pretty dumb but he's not super – he's not hilariously dumb.

[36:55] He doesn't get enough screen time to do anything dumb enough to like crystallize what his character even is I think.

[37:03] Australian?

[37:04] No, he's Irish.

[37:06] The – no, he's – wait, the guy – wait, which guy in this movie?

[37:11] The one with the mech suit.

[37:13] I thought you were talking about the wispy guy.

[37:15] No, not the little guy.

[37:16] His thing – he's like a wisecracker but then they're all wisecrackers.

[37:19] Yeah.

[37:20] I think that's – yeah, but if they had made that character really dumb, then I would be like why is he in the super-secret covert spy organization?

[37:28] Well, he's got a suit.

[37:30] Can't we take the suit away from him?

[37:32] Just kill him and take the – if you're going to lock up him.

[37:34] Put it on a smart guy?

[37:35] No, the idea is that he bonded with this suit that's more powerful than he is and so he's valuable because they need him because he's in the suit.

[37:42] Oh, I wish they had done something with that.

[37:44] I think that's like – I just made that up.

[37:46] Oh, okay.

[37:47] I feel like I've read that story a million times.

[37:49] I buy that.

[37:50] I buy that.

[37:51] So they –

[37:52] Basically like bio-booster armor guy right there.

[37:55] So they realize they're like, oh, Dada No must be from the mirror universe and they're like, should we trust her?

[38:00] I don't know if we should trust her.

[38:01] This goes on throughout the movie.

[38:02] They're constantly like, I don't know if I would – at any moment, you might slit our throats.

[38:05] I don't know if we should trust you and she's like, yeah, or maybe I will do that.

[38:08] But it never – it doesn't lead to anything.

[38:12] They interrogate Dada No.

[38:14] He suddenly – before, he was not a wisecracker.

[38:16] Now he's a wisecracker too.

[38:18] She's like, I'm Empress Giorgio, the da-da-da of this, the president of this, the count of this.

[38:23] And he goes, do you get fries with that?

[38:25] And it's like I guess that is like sounds like a joke but it doesn't.

[38:29] It's like if you picked up like a piece of wax fruit and took a bite out of it and you'd be like, oh, well, this is not real food.

[38:35] It's such a weird response but it also means that in the Star Trek universe, they have restaurants that serve fries with things.

[38:40] So much of the fucking quips in this shit, I'm like, OK, wait, what?

[38:44] Wait, is this – like do they live in the 20th century?

[38:47] Are they all on social – are they all on Twitter?

[38:49] Like what's going on?

[38:50] If there's one thing I know about Star Trek is that it's constantly referencing 20th-century pop culture.

[38:56] Oh, OK.

[38:57] They're like, oh, it's like that book that – you know, or that –

[39:00] Yeah, yeah.

[39:01] I guess that's true.

[39:02] I mean they'll just – they'll just toss in one extra book and be like –

[39:07] And that was, of course, from Gratholme the Destroyer, his famous book of wisdom.

[39:11] I'm like, OK, well, they added one science fiction-y one in there.

[39:14] Yeah, yeah.

[39:15] Zen in the art of, I don't know, bat left creation.

[39:17] Yeah, well, they're always chasing that – they're always chasing that moment when – about Hamlet in the original Klingon, which is like – which is a genuinely funny joke.

[39:24] It's so funny.

[39:25] But so – but Adam, can you tell us, are French fries canon in the universe of Star Trek?

[39:29] I mean a replicator could probably make them, right?

[39:31] Not that I've ever seen.

[39:33] I mean I – it's so weird to have someone as funny as Sam Richardson in a movie deliver dialogue like this.

[39:40] Like I'm glad he's wearing contacts because if he weren't, I think you'd just see his soul die.

[39:45] Yeah.

[39:46] Standing on this sound stage.

[39:47] It just doesn't seem right.

[39:49] That being said, I feel like he comes out of it the best.

[39:53] Like he's able to modulate it.

[39:55] Oh, yeah.

[39:56] For sure.

[39:57] He does what he can with it.

[39:58] He's a pro.

[39:59] Yeah.

[40:00] Absolutely.

[40:00] We're bringing our good feelings towards him from his other work.

[40:03] So like, there's definitely, if someone I had never known before was playing that part,

[40:08] I would not have the same affection.

[40:09] I mean, that's why you hire a star with a particular attachment, you know,

[40:12] is a particular field.

[40:14] But this is why Ben could never get on Fuzz's level

[40:16] because of his great hatred of Sven Neugrak.

[40:21] Exactly.

[40:21] Thank you.

[40:23] Thank you for mentioning that.

[40:24] Now I'm gonna have to get into it.

[40:25] Anyways, all of his work, his many credits,

[40:28] we're all familiar with them.

[40:33] So A-Lock and Filippa Giorgio, they both take turns.

[40:37] And also, so his name is A-Lock.

[40:39] He's from the 20th century.

[40:40] Is A-Lock, is that a real name?

[40:43] Because it sounds like a Star Trek thing.

[40:44] A real name?

[40:46] Is that a real name is a question you could ask every episode you're watching Star Trek.

[40:52] Or of any object or person.

[40:55] You'd be like, what do words mean, man?

[40:57] When you have a character named Quasi,

[40:59] and it's like, oh, that character's a shapeshifter.

[41:01] So I get it, he's Quasi.

[41:03] And there's a character named Fuzz because he's tiny.

[41:04] And then you have a character named Rachel Garrett.

[41:06] Like, Rachel Garrett is clearly a modern human name as opposed to Fuzz or Quasi.

[41:11] Also, it's not like a thing she does.

[41:13] She doesn't Rachel Garrett.

[41:14] You don't know that.

[41:15] Maybe she lives in a Garrett.

[41:16] Oh, man.

[41:18] Maybe in the series, she's always got concertina wire around guys' necks.

[41:22] Yeah, yeah.

[41:23] And she can cut hair, but only in one style.

[41:25] Only one particular haircut.

[41:26] But that style will sweep the galaxy.

[41:29] Yes, of course.

[41:30] What I'm sure you guys don't realize is that Rachel Garrett is a character

[41:34] from Star Trek The Next Generation.

[41:36] She was the captain of the Enterprise-C,

[41:39] which they encountered coming through an accidental rift in time.

[41:44] And they had to send back to their certain doom.

[41:47] So she has like a very tragic end after this.

[41:53] But like, I guess like...

[41:54] This is pretty tragic.

[41:56] Maybe like two decades in the future of this character.

[41:58] Oh, I didn't know that.

[41:59] So it's a little bit like anytime a Spider-Man movie introduces Gwen Stacy,

[42:03] and you're like,

[42:05] like, where are you going with this character?

[42:07] Yeah, this is gonna end well.

[42:08] I'm assuming that future Rachel Garrett, who's now the captain,

[42:11] has like every once in a while, will stare longingly at the mannequin head in her quarters

[42:16] that has that wig on it and makeup and shit.

[42:20] Yeah.

[42:21] Her character, they try for an arc with her, and it feels...

[42:24] We'll get to it.

[42:25] But it feels so incredibly unearned and strange.

[42:28] But so they're taking turns beating up Dada No to get information.

[42:32] He goes, I found that there's a passageway.

[42:34] When there's an ion storm in this part of the galaxy,

[42:37] it creates a passageway between our universe and the Terran Empire universe.

[42:40] And he implies that their group has a mole.

[42:42] Then there's an explosion on the ship.

[42:44] It knocks them out.

[42:45] The ship crashes on the surface of the planet.

[42:47] Dada No dies.

[42:48] Everyone else is fine.

[42:49] They're totally okay.

[42:50] I don't know how they got out of the ship, but not a scratch on them.

[42:53] They teleported.

[42:54] Did they teleport?

[42:55] Is that what happened?

[42:56] Okay.

[42:56] It's called beaming down, guys.

[42:57] Oh, they beamed down?

[42:58] Okay.

[42:59] Sorry, they beamed down, yeah.

[43:01] And they're like, which one of us is the mole?

[43:03] One of us is a mole.

[43:04] And they've got only four hours to get the godsent

[43:06] before the Terran Empire shows up through that ion storm passageway.

[43:10] Oh, no.

[43:11] Time to split up into mission teams.

[43:13] One team, we're going to get a derelict garbage ship.

[43:15] That's our new ship.

[43:16] The other team, we're going to repair the transmitting antenna

[43:19] so we can let the Federation know.

[43:20] But both of these things are missing one piece that makes them work.

[43:25] Oh, no.

[43:25] It's not the hit television show, One Piece, that makes them work.

[43:28] But they're each missing a piece of technology.

[43:29] It was originally a popular manga, but yeah.

[43:33] That's a very good point.

[43:34] And it starts to seem at first that Zef is the mole, the guy in the armor suit.

[43:39] Maybe he sabotaged them.

[43:40] He disappears.

[43:41] They go searching for him.

[43:42] And along the way, Alok and Georgio have a talk about their motives

[43:45] and their need for redemption.

[43:47] So that's good that they got that out.

[43:48] They find Zef dead.

[43:50] Oh, no.

[43:51] He's dead on the ground.

[43:51] And all the evidence points to Lieutenant Garrett.

[43:54] So they handcuff her.

[43:56] But she says, I didn't do it.

[43:57] I didn't do it.

[43:57] Until they tap into the video footage from his armor suit.

[44:01] And it shows him angrily using his own suit to kill himself.

[44:04] Yeah.

[44:04] Was there any moment where you guys didn't assume

[44:08] it was the little guy piloting his next?

[44:11] No, of course not.

[44:11] Of course not.

[44:12] There was no moment at which I thought it was this character,

[44:16] the woman, Abigail Hobbs, who did it.

[44:19] And then once they...

[44:20] Which is what Hannibal used to great effect.

[44:23] It's true, it's true.

[44:24] But then once the video shows him beating himself up in the mech suit,

[44:29] I was so mad at the characters in the movie,

[44:32] taking so long to be like, how is this possible?

[44:34] What could have gotten inside the suit?

[44:37] Who on our team lives in a robot suit and pilots a robot suit?

[44:43] Earlier about being able to go into people's bodies

[44:46] and control their mechanical parts.

[44:49] There's even a lingering shot of fuzz that's like four seconds too long

[44:53] before this incident that should tip you right off, right?

[44:57] I mean, that's another way this feels like a TV show instead of a movie,

[45:00] where I feel like in a movie, there's not always,

[45:02] but there's generally a greater assumption

[45:04] or a slightly greater assumption of intelligence on the part of the audience.

[45:07] Whereas a TV show, they constantly are telling you everything.

[45:10] Yeah, they know you're folding laundry at the same time.

[45:13] Exactly, exactly.

[45:14] You're looking at TikTok toe and you're not really paying attention.

[45:18] Foot kink TikTok.

[45:19] Yeah, it's super different than normal TikTok.

[45:23] Yeah, it's just like OnlyFoots, which is not that different from OnlyFans.

[45:29] So they find the footage and Giorgio then, like a brilliant detective,

[45:33] it would take the cunning, devious mind of Philippa Giorgio to understand this,

[45:37] goes through things that we heard said and saw done in the episode,

[45:41] flashback montage style, and realizes it was fuzz.

[45:45] He set his Vulcan robo body on autopilot so he could go into Zef's suit

[45:49] and control it and pull off mole stuff using Zef's body.

[45:53] And he takes control of Zef's exoskeleton and attacks them

[45:57] so he can escape on a rocket sled going through a tunnel.

[46:00] They follow in another rocket sled.

[46:01] By the way, this is amazing.

[46:03] To be honest, this is my favorite part of the whole movie

[46:05] is when they're on the rocket sleds,

[46:06] just because it's like everything's moving at least.

[46:09] It's not characters standing around talking about what they're going to do,

[46:11] which I know is a big Star Trek thing.

[46:13] I'm sorry, Ben, Adam, I know the main thing with Star Trek is

[46:15] characters having kind of conferences and ad hoc little meetings.

[46:18] If an episode doesn't have four or five meetings in it,

[46:21] I am completely disappointed.

[46:24] No criticism you have of this film will hurt my feelings.

[46:28] The thing is, all of those episodes centered around meetings

[46:32] are more interesting than this film.

[46:35] I mean, again, like Conclave is a movie that's like all meetings

[46:38] and it's super awesome.

[46:40] My dinner with LeDre is a movie about one meeting.

[46:43] Fucking great.

[46:44] So exciting.

[46:45] Yes.

[46:46] Have you guys ever seen the movie?

[46:47] Have you ever seen the movie Hunger?

[46:48] The McQueen movie about the hunger strikes in Ireland.

[46:52] And there's one scene where two characters are sitting at a table

[46:54] talking to each other just in one shot in the dark for like 20 minutes.

[47:00] And it's amazing.

[47:01] It's such a tense, great dramatic scene

[47:03] because the acting and the writing.

[47:04] And this movie is full of action, but it's all, you know,

[47:07] sound of fury signifying nothing.

[47:09] It's very boring.

[47:10] So rocket sled fight, laser fight.

[47:13] Garrett, freeze yourself.

[47:14] Fight, fight, fight, fight.

[47:15] Anyway, Alok gets knocked off the shed.

[47:17] Quasi saves him by transforming into a big goopy web,

[47:21] which maybe is his real form.

[47:22] I kind of like that.

[47:22] I kind of like that bit.

[47:24] And Philippa and Fuzz, they end up on a sled hovering high above the planet.

[47:28] Philippa stabs his robot body and he staggers forward as if he's going to die,

[47:31] which I thought was very funny because it's like a robotic body.

[47:33] Like it's not stab it all you want.

[47:35] He's a little guy who's right inside of it.

[47:38] Stabbed the wrong part.

[47:39] There's a part of me that would have loved if it was if like she was like,

[47:43] yeah, I can.

[47:44] You might be really small, but I know how to stab you.

[47:48] And Fuzz reveals that San is alive.

[47:51] He faked his death and he's going to take the godsend to the Terran Empire.

[47:54] And Fuzz beams out in his full robo body.

[47:58] The second non thrilling reveal of the film.

[48:02] Oh, that character that otherwise would have no reason that we keep talking about him.

[48:07] Yes, he's still alive.

[48:09] Great.

[48:10] The character only exists in flashbacks,

[48:12] but we're supposed to have invested real emotion into their relationship at this point.

[48:16] On San's ship.

[48:17] Now he has Fuzz and the godsend.

[48:19] He's counting down to when the ion storm will allow the Terrans to come through

[48:23] and use the godsend to invade Federation space.

[48:26] Oh, no, this isn't just one quadrant that's in trouble.

[48:29] It's the entire Federation.

[48:30] And it's only up to our ragtag team of not spies.

[48:34] Exactly like ragtag team of ruffians, I guess.

[48:37] Getting smaller all the time.

[48:39] It's getting raggier and taggier.

[48:40] This team.

[48:43] I gotta say, like, is this around?

[48:44] This is around 20 minutes from the end, right?

[48:46] We're at.

[48:47] Yes, I remember very specifically.

[48:49] Like this movie is 90 minutes.

[48:51] It doesn't doesn't doesn't feel short in the sense that like, oh, that time flew by.

[48:56] But it felt short to me in terms of like story structure.

[49:00] Because right about this time, I'm like, OK, well, things are finally just like gearing up.

[49:05] Like things are kicking into it.

[49:06] And I paused and I'm like, there's 20 minutes left.

[49:09] So they're right before the climax.

[49:11] And then it's going to be out.

[49:12] But again, it feels like we are watching the pilot of a TV show, you know, in which case,

[49:17] OK, let's rush to an inconclusive ending and then we'll continue the adventures.

[49:21] But it's not a pilot of a TV show.

[49:22] It's a movie.

[49:22] So they've got to wrap it all up.

[49:24] And it's there's they really are.

[49:26] Leave it pretty open.

[49:28] They do.

[49:28] But the sand story, like I could see a version of this where at the end of the pilot,

[49:32] they have not gotten the end.

[49:33] The pilot ends with the reveal that this guy, San, is still alive.

[49:36] And then the next episode is reinvesting us in that character.

[49:40] And they're on.

[49:41] They're chasing after him or whatever.

[49:42] You know, I don't know how to serialize this.

[49:44] And then there's like a bottle episode where San is like, I don't know, in school or like

[49:48] working in a diner.

[49:49] And that's the whole episode.

[49:50] And you're like, this is a matter.

[49:52] And you're like, this is inside a bottle.

[49:54] And this is the start of an actual bottle episode.

[49:56] And the start of season two is just a montage of things.

[50:00] that happened in the previous season and at the end you're like, well I guess that was

[50:03] beautiful but like, what the fuck did I just watch?

[50:04] It was a good episode, dude.

[50:05] It is a good, that is a good video installation piece, it is not a good episode of television.

[50:10] It's a good episode of television, dude.

[50:11] Maybe it's just a different type of television than you're used to, Elliot.

[50:15] Yeah, one that's not about story.

[50:17] Yeah.

[50:18] Well, I mean, it takes, no, there's something very impressive about taking the previously

[50:21] on that usually runs before a TV show and stretching it out for the entirety of the

[50:26] episode.

[50:27] And it actually, it works pretty well when you consider that we're talking about a restaurant

[50:31] that went from like a local hole in the wall greasy spoon and turned it into this like

[50:38] fine dining spot.

[50:39] So they're just taking all that and repackaging it into something that you don't quite want.

[50:43] But isn't that the job of the recap podcasts of the world?

[50:48] Like why is the TV show itself taking that from us?

[50:51] That's a good point.

[50:52] That's again, big Hollywood moving in and taking away the podcaster's whole raison d'etre.

[50:57] But you can see why an episode like that isn't quite outstanding comedy of the year the same

[51:03] way the previous season was funnier.

[51:09] The comedy category.

[51:11] That's a whole nother conversation.

[51:12] It is a half hour long day for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

[51:15] We're talking about Le Bear, the television show about about a chef who it's it started

[51:21] out seeming that the show was going to be about a chef who realizes he needs to leave

[51:25] the world of fine dining in order to recapture his soul.

[51:27] But by season two decided actually we love hanging out with famous chefs.

[51:31] So it is about fine dining and how great it is.

[51:33] And that's where the soul of food is not in your hole in the wall places run by families.

[51:37] No, no, no, no.

[51:38] In fine dining anyway.

[51:39] So a lot reveals to the others that he was the one who took the pieces of the old derelict

[51:45] ship and the transmitter antenna because he didn't want the mole to escape or transmit

[51:50] or whatever.

[51:51] So they take their place, the parts they take off after saying in a garbage ship, it's only

[51:55] weapon is a tractor beam.

[51:57] What are they going to do?

[51:58] Oh, no.

[51:59] Stan.

[52:00] Stan starts shooting protons, torpedoes at them.

[52:02] Their shields are down.

[52:03] Every Star Trek thing I've ever seen, the shields are always at critical percentages

[52:07] at a certain point.

[52:08] And I can't wait till they finally make those better shields.

[52:10] I really need them.

[52:11] That's how the ships come off the lot.

[52:13] Just tell me, look, I'd love to give you the better ion, better, better shield.

[52:18] But that's just how they make up.

[52:19] We've got to get Forge on that.

[52:21] I think I think the thing is, you think Forge is a Star Trek character?

[52:25] I think they met each other because there's a Geordi LaForge, who is the Star Trek character,

[52:29] but he's not like an important Geordi LaForge to get together.

[52:34] It should turn out that Geordi LaForge is a descendant of Forge of the X-Men, a Forge

[52:38] and Philippa Giorgio, Forge, Giorgio, LaForge, I mean, the team that we want to fill up a

[52:44] Giorgio and Geordi LaForge is Fudge.

[52:47] That's the.

[52:48] And we shop together.

[52:49] That sounds delicious.

[52:50] That sounds great.

[52:51] So I am storms attacking them.

[52:52] It's hurting the ships.

[52:53] Lots of ships bumping around, explosions, explosions, people pretending that they're

[52:54] being rocked as the camera shakes.

[52:55] Philippa talks to Garrett and she goes, You need to stay calm.

[52:56] You love chaos.

[52:57] Chaos is your favorite thing.

[52:58] I can see inside.

[52:59] You're really a chaos, dirty girl.

[53:00] You love it.

[53:01] And that unlocks something inside of you.

[53:02] And I think that's what we're trying to do.

[53:03] I think that's what we're trying to do.

[53:07] to stay calm.

[53:08] You love chaos.

[53:09] Chaos is your favorite thing.

[53:10] I can see inside.

[53:11] You're really a chaos, dirty girl.

[53:13] You love it.

[53:14] And that unlocks something in, in Garrett or for the rest of the movie.

[53:16] She's just going chaos.

[53:17] I love it.

[53:18] Chaos, chaos, chaos.

[53:19] And it's like, I wanted to believe that she had somehow used some sort of genocidal mind

[53:23] trick persuasion to break her Garret's mind and make her this way.

[53:27] But I think it is supposed to be that they've like uncovered the bad girl underneath her

[53:32] book, you know, her by the book facade.

[53:34] She's dedicated herself to the ruinous powers of chaos.

[53:37] She's just bonking around yelling chaos and this kind of sub, like the worst version of

[53:41] Harley Quinn, you know, way of doing it.

[53:42] She is the kind of character that just like says what her, her, her characteristics are

[53:48] out loud.

[53:49] Like when you first meet her, she's like, I like being orderly and nice.

[53:52] And then they're like, that's all going to change because characters change in this kind

[53:56] of thing.

[53:57] Like, yeah, you need an arc.

[53:59] So speaking of arcs, it doesn't make sense that there's like a part of the ship where

[54:03] they keep garbage because they explain that the ship just drags the garbage around outside

[54:08] of itself in space.

[54:09] So why would you also have a hold full of garbage?

[54:12] Yeah, maybe that's maybe the founder who owned it.

[54:14] You found just one wrong part of this movie should be on the goof section.

[54:19] Yeah.

[54:20] Let's why don't we beam over to the goof section?

[54:22] Yeah, this is a flawless movie other than that, that misunderstanding of how a tractor

[54:26] beam garbage scout.

[54:29] So there's a Philip and Philippa and a lock.

[54:33] They beam onto Sandship.

[54:34] Everybody's fucking Beeman.

[54:35] They're like Willie Beeman from Any given Sunday.

[54:38] Yeah.

[54:39] And yes, you will.

[54:43] And Willie Loman, unfortunately, he is a low man.

[54:46] Yeah.

[54:47] It's true.

[54:48] See?

[54:49] It always works.

[54:50] We're seeing the hidden rules of the galaxy right now.

[54:52] Yeah.

[54:53] Willie Shakespeare.

[54:54] There is some spear shaking in some of those plays.

[54:56] Yeah.

[54:57] The history ones mostly.

[54:58] Yeah.

[54:59] And so not as much in the romances or as futuristic stories.

[55:06] The Shakespeare story is set in the Star Trek universe.

[55:08] They don't actually have spheres in Section 31.

[55:11] I mean, in that in that respect, Willie Wheaton, I don't know, you know, like that, like some

[55:17] kind of cultivation situation.

[55:22] Is he grinding it to make bread?

[55:24] We don't know what else you're going to do with it.

[55:28] So so there's fighting the affiliate.

[55:31] They trade off.

[55:32] They pair off to fight.

[55:33] The godsend gets triggered.

[55:34] Oh, no.

[55:35] Fuzz flies out of his Vulcan body in his tiny little ship to kill the others.

[55:39] And I guess he like cuts off the tractor beam or something.

[55:42] I don't I to be honest, I was not really I didn't care that much about the machinations

[55:46] here.

[55:47] Fight.

[55:48] Fight.

[55:49] Fight.

[55:50] Lots of fighting and fill up as like sand.

[55:51] You can be good.

[55:52] You can do it.

[55:53] But that doesn't hold any weight with him.

[55:54] Meanwhile, in the garbage.

[55:55] And this is why they need garbage on this scow.

[55:56] This is a flying doll toy that runs on terrenium, a very dangerous fuel source.

[56:00] It's explosive.

[56:01] And now she can turn it into a bomb that very ironically is talking about.

[56:05] Let's be friends and all that stuff, which, again, is kind of some kind of suicide squad

[56:10] type type of galaxy suicide squad.

[56:13] So, yeah, I didn't see Megan.

[56:15] Is this a Megan?

[56:16] This little thing?

[56:17] Yeah, it's a little it's a Megan.

[56:19] Yeah.

[56:20] It's kind of Megan.

[56:21] Yeah.

[56:22] It is kind of Megan.

[56:23] A terrenium.

[56:24] Is that a thing that comes up in other Star Trek stuff?

[56:26] I've never heard of it.

[56:27] Yeah.

[56:28] OK.

[56:29] Well, it's outlawed in the galaxy for in the Federation for a reason.

[56:31] I never heard of it, I guess.

[56:32] Yeah.

[56:33] No terrenium.

[56:34] No Megan's.

[56:35] Both.

[56:36] I mean, data is kind of a big Megan, right?

[56:38] Kind of is.

[56:39] He is a Megan.

[56:40] Yeah.

[56:41] Have you seen him dance?

[56:42] Terrible.

[56:43] I've seen Brent Spiner dance, but I've never seen Data dance.

[56:47] There's a whole episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where the doctor character teaches

[56:52] data to dance and it's terrifying.

[56:56] The way Megan's dancing is also terrifying, but terrifying because you're like, that looks

[56:59] awesome.

[57:00] I wish I could dance like that.

[57:01] Yeah.

[57:02] Yeah.

[57:03] So they're all fighting.

[57:04] Quasi.

[57:05] He has trouble making decisions.

[57:06] We know that he has to choose between two buttons.

[57:07] One of them will open the cargo bay and one of them will self-destruct the garbage.

[57:10] Might self-destruct the garbage.

[57:13] And Garrett helps him just make a choice.

[57:15] Thankfully, he picks the right button.

[57:17] A-Lock defeats the autopilot Fuzzbot.

[57:19] But then he gets, and Fuzzbot escapes, Fuzz has escaped, but he gets blown up in his ship

[57:25] by this toy weapon doll that flies into him.

[57:29] Sam is about to kill Philippa and she kills him instead, but she feels bad about it.

[57:33] And they reconcile a little and they declare their love for each other.

[57:36] And it's, you guys were really moved by this moment when you were watching it, right?

[57:39] I found it baffling that the show slash movie thought that we would be invested in this

[57:46] romance between two murderers who have not shared the screen together in this form until this moment.

[57:54] I do kind of like that he dies because she like kicks his sword and it accidentally cuts his throat.

[58:00] I think that's kind of funny.

[58:01] I mean, it's, it's the closest thing I feel like to the kind of thing you would have seen

[58:05] in an old fashioned Michelle Yeoh movie, like a Yes Madam or something like that, where

[58:08] like there's lots of clever fight choreography and stuff like that.

[58:12] The, uh, the, and so, uh, the bad guy is, the bad guys are all dead.

[58:16] Wonderful.

[58:17] Uh, and the, uh, I'm amazed.

[58:19] I'm always amazed.

[58:20] I should say there are other movies that in the same general runtime can really make you

[58:25] feel for the characters and feel their relationships and feel what they feel for each other.

[58:29] But this one just doesn't, it just can't pull it off in the same way.

[58:32] And that's the magic of the movies.

[58:33] I guess some movies can pull off and some can't.

[58:35] Anyway, long story short, uh, they fly Sam's ship into the ion gateway and then set off

[58:41] the gods and take that Terran empire.

[58:44] You're the ones whose quadrant got vaporized.

[58:46] What a bunch of heroes.

[58:47] They beamed to the garbage ship.

[58:48] The last moment, the passageway collapses.

[58:51] The Federation space is safe.

[58:53] And uh, three weeks later, Philippa is back at her club and she has accepted the offer

[58:58] to join them in section 31.

[59:00] And they've got a new, different, cool outfit, which I'm happy about.

[59:03] Yeah.

[59:04] And, uh, Fuzz's wife, Wisp joins them.

[59:08] They have a new person inside the Vulcan robot body, uh, cause they had a duplicate,

[59:12] I guess.

[59:13] And they got a call from their boss, uh, control, uh, who has another mission for them and their

[59:18] boss is Jamie Lee Curtis speaking of the bear and cameos.

[59:22] It's Jamie Curtis.

[59:23] Yeah.

[59:24] Yeah.

[59:25] Yeah.

[59:26] Speaking of movies that Michelle Yeoh, uh, won Oscars for and, and, uh, movies that she

[59:30] is about to win Oscars for, oh no, I guess this probably isn't eligible cause it didn't

[59:34] screen in theaters.

[59:35] No, this is not eligible for an Oscar also for quality reasons.

[59:38] So wait a minute.

[59:39] Jamie Lee Curtis was in Yes, Madam and won a, uh, Academy Award for fight choreography.

[59:44] Yeah, exactly.

[59:45] She was in, she was in, uh, uh, the, uh, the, uh, uh, which trio, what's the trio?

[59:49] Why am I forgetting the name?

[59:50] Heroic Trio.

[59:51] The Heroic Trio.

[59:52] Thank you.

[59:53] Yeah.

[59:54] She's in the Heroic Trio.

[59:55] She's in Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars.

[59:56] And so the, uh, and so they're off on their next mission and the entire.

[1:00:00] Your space nightclub flies off, which I thought was pretty cool.

[1:00:04] But I love the idea of it's like, look, we're spies, remember?

[1:00:07] So let's take our huge nightclub with us as we go on this espionage mission.

[1:00:11] And I do. I also love the idea, though, that they're like, I'm going to go out.

[1:00:14] I'm going to go out for a drink or two after work to this cool space nightclub.

[1:00:18] And then after a couple of drinks, you're like, where the fuck am I?

[1:00:22] We're in a completely different sector of space.

[1:00:25] But that's and so it's set up.

[1:00:26] It's it's now future adventures for Section 31 in the Star Trek universe.

[1:00:30] So, Ben, Adam, what else can we expect to see from from these characters

[1:00:33] in their Section 31 adventures and misadventures?

[1:00:37] The the next planet that they're going to is a horrible place.

[1:00:41] Like it has a reputation in the Star Trek universe that is not good.

[1:00:46] It's not and it's not fun or funny.

[1:00:48] So it's you know, it's just more of the same.

[1:00:51] Like, hey, like these genocidal maniacs are just going to go have a romp

[1:00:54] in another nightmare place and and we're all going to love it.

[1:00:58] I think the thing that that doesn't quite come through in the summary

[1:01:02] is just how often they remind you that Michelle Yeoh's character

[1:01:06] is a genocidal monster.

[1:01:07] And they seem to think it makes her seem like a badass,

[1:01:10] like that she's a tough, badass wild card you can't trust.

[1:01:13] But it just makes her seem like a villain.

[1:01:15] And so it's very it's very it's it's just a very it's like if

[1:01:18] even her genocides aren't by the rules.

[1:01:21] It's like if in every Superman movie after Man of Steel, they kept going.

[1:01:25] Remember all those people you killed when you were fighting Zod?

[1:01:27] Like to build up Superman and make him more heroic.

[1:01:30] Yeah, I guess they kind of do in some ways because they kill people.

[1:01:33] You know, Superman kills people in those movies, right?

[1:01:34] Just just there's that there's that scene in Batman versus Superman

[1:01:38] where Superman is waiting behind a guy at the bank in line and he just reaches

[1:01:41] over and snaps his neck so that he doesn't have to wait anymore and walks up to the teller.

[1:01:44] Yeah, it's a really weird one.

[1:01:47] They brought him in for a long time.

[1:01:49] They brought him in for one day.

[1:01:50] Mm hmm. Yeah, do some punch up.

[1:01:55] So let's let's do our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie,

[1:02:00] a bad, bad movie or a movie you kind of liked.

[1:02:04] I'm just going to quickly start by saying when I saw the promos for this,

[1:02:08] I was like, oh, man, like, you know, it's a Michelle Yeoh

[1:02:13] centric Star Trek thing with Sam Richardson in it.

[1:02:18] I like all of those things.

[1:02:19] I'm going to you know, I can't imagine I won't have at least a baseline

[1:02:24] of fun watching this.

[1:02:25] And and the movie showed me the error of my ways

[1:02:32] because I this is bad, bad.

[1:02:35] I had a really good time talking about it with you guys.

[1:02:38] He didn't have that good a time talking about it.

[1:02:41] It feels like I said this on Letterboxd, actually.

[1:02:44] It feels like it's made up of spare parts from other science fiction things.

[1:02:47] But weirdly, none of those things are Star Trek.

[1:02:50] Like it both is just sort of generic

[1:02:54] and it doesn't feel like part of the universe it's in,

[1:02:57] even if it makes reference to various Star Trek things throughout.

[1:03:01] So as as as kind of an as a Star Trek outsider,

[1:03:04] I feel like that's been one of the one of the criticisms

[1:03:07] that's been levied at Star Trek for the last few years,

[1:03:10] with obviously some exceptions.

[1:03:12] But is that that that there's like an identity problem

[1:03:15] and that they are trying to be something that they're not.

[1:03:18] They're trying to be Star Wars or trying to be something else.

[1:03:22] And or in this case, like Guardians of the Galaxy.

[1:03:25] And yeah, it doesn't quite work.

[1:03:27] And the camera movements are really disorienting.

[1:03:31] And I do not care for them.

[1:03:33] And yeah, it's all the dialogue is the most like written by a

[1:03:39] quippy bullshit, like the sort of thing that it felt like somebody was like

[1:03:43] they fed in a bunch of episodes of fucking Buffy to like a chat GPT.

[1:03:48] And they're like, OK, give us some why you had to insult Buffy.

[1:03:51] I'm just saying that if like, I feel like Joss Whedon

[1:03:53] is the like grandfather of this type of way.

[1:03:56] Yes. And he him specifically.

[1:03:57] I'm not going to defend this as a person.

[1:04:00] I don't know. And because when we went out for a drink the other day,

[1:04:02] you were saying about him.

[1:04:03] But that's that series was Buffy is responsible

[1:04:07] for a vampire genocide, right?

[1:04:10] Yeah. Yeah.

[1:04:13] I think that you start to wade into that.

[1:04:15] I'm saying that.

[1:04:16] Yeah, you start to wade into difficult waters

[1:04:18] anytime you take a fantasy or science fiction thing

[1:04:20] that is against an entire race of creature.

[1:04:23] And you start to really think about what that means

[1:04:25] when you give personalities to characters and things like that.

[1:04:28] But I'm also going to say, unsurprisingly, bad, bad.

[1:04:31] It's just a really boring movie.

[1:04:32] It's just very boring.

[1:04:33] And I'm not super well versed in a lot of Star Trek stuff.

[1:04:37] It's a franchise that I've always wanted to be into more

[1:04:39] than I'm actually into it for its own reasons.

[1:04:42] But I would have loved for this to have been for me to have trouble

[1:04:46] with it for those reasons rather than the trouble I did have with it,

[1:04:49] which was for it being kind of boring and kind of uninspired.

[1:04:53] And I like some of the costumes.

[1:04:55] I mean, I will say, like whoever did like the production work on it.

[1:04:59] It looks really good, especially for what's essentially a TV movie.

[1:05:02] It does look like money was put into it.

[1:05:04] The costumes are really cool.

[1:05:05] I don't think I don't feel like any of the performances are like

[1:05:08] necessarily bad performances.

[1:05:09] They're just kind of like not given much to do, you know.

[1:05:13] But it's it does feel wrongheaded in some way.

[1:05:16] If it's going to fail, it should fail on Star Trek's terms rather than on.

[1:05:20] I mean, while watching it, if you had said, oh, actually, that's a that's

[1:05:23] I kind of like that's like a Star Wars Disney Plus movie

[1:05:26] that they accidentally put Star Trek words into.

[1:05:28] I'd be like, yeah, I still don't like it, but it feels more like that.

[1:05:30] Yeah. Yeah.

[1:05:32] But what do you guys think now?

[1:05:34] I'm ready for your full throated defense of Star Trek section.

[1:05:37] So we came here to do I.

[1:05:40] Well, Ben and I reviewed this film on our hit new Star Trek show,

[1:05:45] Greatest Trek, about about a month ago.

[1:05:48] And I typically like when I know I'm going to guest on another show,

[1:05:53] I will like do the work of watching the thing once or twice

[1:05:57] because I watch the thing once or twice when I do my own show.

[1:06:01] And it's so bad, bad.

[1:06:04] I couldn't watch the movie again before doing Clubhouse with you guys.

[1:06:08] You know, my body rejected it.

[1:06:11] So I did. Wow.

[1:06:13] And like like Dan read his letterboxd review.

[1:06:16] Here's mine. Paramount CBS.

[1:06:19] I have this amazing ingredient that everyone loves,

[1:06:22] but I need to use it before it expires

[1:06:24] and then marinates it in battery acid and cooks it for five years.

[1:06:28] Why aren't you eating?

[1:06:30] Why doesn't anyone like it?

[1:06:32] This is how they've wasted Michelle Yeoh.

[1:06:35] Yeah. Yeah.

[1:06:35] So my review is in script form.

[1:06:39] And now, Ben, having heard all three of us rag on it,

[1:06:42] I'm ready again for your full throated defense of Star Trek section 31.

[1:06:45] This movie is solid as Sears, gentlemen.

[1:06:48] And let me tell you why.

[1:06:51] No, I mean, I think that I think that what everyone has said

[1:06:55] summarizes it really well.

[1:06:56] Like, I think that like from a production standpoint,

[1:07:00] it looks like great for a TV movie.

[1:07:06] The like the costumes,

[1:07:07] Gersha Phillips is the costume designer on Star Trek Discovery as well

[1:07:10] and is just like an incredible talent who's done.

[1:07:14] I mean, like her other thing this year so far is the new Captain America movie.

[1:07:18] Like she's like a a megawatt talent that Star Trek is incredibly lucky to have.

[1:07:23] As I remember that, Dan, I haven't seen that yet.

[1:07:26] I can't say that I really noticed them, but they didn't.

[1:07:30] They didn't look bad.

[1:07:32] I heard the Red Hulk costume looks good.

[1:07:33] Is that is that mostly just pants?

[1:07:36] Cool. Oh, pretty good pants in section 31.

[1:07:39] Look healthy and nourished.

[1:07:41] So catering probably did a great job.

[1:07:43] Yeah, I mean, they're happy to have the catering company crafty.

[1:07:48] Everyone's in the movie.

[1:07:49] They didn't get lost.

[1:07:49] So all the kids that were walking around the parking lot to the set,

[1:07:53] they did great.

[1:07:53] They depended on great company.

[1:07:56] Oh, they didn't have go for this one.

[1:07:57] Maybe for Michelle, you know, nobody else got go karts.

[1:07:59] Yeah, I did rewatch the movie today to prepare.

[1:08:03] Cool. Somebody's got time.

[1:08:04] It's the third time I've seen section 31.

[1:08:06] I think I may have seen section 31 more than anyone on planet Earth.

[1:08:10] He's going to get an email

[1:08:13] from Paramount Plus.

[1:08:14] They're like, sir, are you sick?

[1:08:16] Are you sharing your account?

[1:08:19] Is there something wrong with your app?

[1:08:22] You know, you can watch other things.

[1:08:24] Section 31 swag.

[1:08:26] The only technical services support department that will reach out to you

[1:08:31] proactively.

[1:08:32] The watching of Star Trek section 31 multiple times.

[1:08:35] It triggers our is jigsaw keeping you prisoner protocol.

[1:08:41] Please just blink three times.

[1:08:43] We'll see you through the TV camera.

[1:08:46] If you guys saw the recent M Night Shyamalan film Trap,

[1:08:48] I'm the guy in the basement that he keeps looking at.

[1:08:52] Video stream on his phone.

[1:08:53] Oh, the butcher. Yeah.

[1:08:56] One thing I thought about this time that hadn't occurred to me yet

[1:09:00] was the fleeting nature of life.

[1:09:03] The lady that played young Georgiou

[1:09:06] did an amazing job doing Michelle Yeoh's accent.

[1:09:11] And I was like, wow, like she like is doing a really like

[1:09:15] a really solid Michelle Yeoh without it being like an impression of Michelle Yeoh.

[1:09:20] Like, I believe that this person is doing a really good job.

[1:09:24] I believe that this person grew up to be that person.

[1:09:28] And like that is such a small little thing for me to like have my finger on.

[1:09:32] And like I was like, that's a good thing about this.

[1:09:35] But I love this kindness, Ben, because I feel like we normally don't

[1:09:39] want to be too mean here, even as we're laughing about bad movies.

[1:09:43] And I like that you're highlighting, you know, the sweet inside the ocean of sour.

[1:09:49] Ben is the hang in there poster.

[1:09:51] Yeah. A bad movie watching.

[1:09:54] I wish this was good, bad, you know, like if. Yeah.

[1:09:57] I think that that's the thing that.

[1:10:00] Star Trek and all other franchises fuck up is like if you

[1:10:04] Have all of the ingredients, but you don't have a great idea go for good bad

[1:10:09] Don't go for don't go for good with no idea

[1:10:12] You know like like make it corny and and silly and fun like Star Trek being corny is

[1:10:20] The fucking briar patch. We love that. That's like that's part of the brand embrace it, you know, yeah

[1:10:27] Like hire actual comedy writers to come in and and and write bits for Sam Richardson to do like don't

[1:10:34] leave it to a

[1:10:37] writer that does like kind of

[1:10:40] overcooked

[1:10:41] Dramatic sci-fi series and and has never written a movie before

[1:10:45] Yeah, you know like and that's not that like dick on the writers specifically

[1:10:49] I don't I think that like the writer is one of the many places

[1:10:53] where

[1:10:54] this movie fails, but yeah, it's it's like

[1:10:57] It's it's so heartbreaking to see so many great ingredients get cooked in battery acid. Yeah, it is. It's always too bad when

[1:11:06] Something that is that has it has it has lasted for a very long time for a specific reason

[1:11:11] They're like this has to be cool now

[1:11:14] and I feel like one of the

[1:11:16] One of the really great decisions in the Marvel movies for instance was not being like Captain America has to be cool now

[1:11:22] Instead being like let's have him be the character that he is and we'll just find the things about that that are impressive

[1:11:27] Rather than okay. Well, guess what?

[1:11:30] He's kind of a badass, you know, like it's not really about America. He's about partying

[1:11:36] the last

[1:11:37] Audible line in this movie as we like fade away and watch all the ships go to warp is a yo-mama joke

[1:11:42] And it's just like it's right

[1:11:44] But it's so like that that like is the crux of what is wrong with this movie. I think

[1:11:49] That's in the in the utopian world of Star Trek people respect their mothers and respect other mothers

[1:11:56] Never have stood for this going words under the Star Trek

[1:12:06] Walking about is the podcast about walking

[1:12:10] It's a walk you met tree series where I Alan MacLeod and a fun friendly guest

[1:12:16] Go for a walkabout

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[1:12:49] The following is a promo for Beef and Dairy Network podcast

[1:12:53] Hello. Hello, please. You have to help me. I was kidnapped and bundled into the back of a van

[1:13:00] I was taken to the docks and beaten with chains and tied up inside a shipping container

[1:13:05] and then I was forced to listen to episode after episode of a podcast called Beef and Dairy Network and

[1:13:12] I absolutely loved every second of it, please. You have to tell me where I can listen to more episodes

[1:13:20] The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is a multi award-winning comedy podcast and you can find it at maximum fun org

[1:13:26] Or wherever you get your podcasts

[1:13:29] Hey, this is Dan recording a little after-the-fact recording alone, so, you know this ad read might get a little weird

[1:13:36] That's the way it happens. Sometimes

[1:13:38] I'm warning. Yeah, I'm warning. Yeah

[1:13:40] Also, this episode is supported in part by Squarespace. Well, what is Squarespace?

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[1:16:56] rocket money

[1:16:58] Comm slash flop and before I return you to the belly of our Star Trek show. I

[1:17:06] Do have a jumbo trom

[1:17:09] jumbo trom Jesus

[1:17:11] jumbo

[1:17:12] Tron

[1:17:13] j-j-j-jumbo

[1:17:15] Tron

[1:17:16] This message is for Joe Mello last name not withheld. It's from Katie and it says

[1:17:25] And for this I will change my weirdly aggressive tone of voice

[1:17:29] Something more appropriate for this very sweet message

[1:17:32] Katie says to Joe

[1:17:34] Happy birthday to a wonderful husband and father

[1:17:38] Thank you for working so hard for us

[1:17:40] Thanks for helping us all through this rough patch and thanks for introducing me to the flophouse and your loving wife

[1:17:48] Katie

[1:17:49] that is

[1:17:51] Very very sweet

[1:17:54] Thank you to both of you for listening thank you for doing this message

[1:18:00] Keep on keep it on even though this ad break will stop keep it on right now

[1:18:08] Hey, let's uh, let's move on to letters from listeners

[1:18:12] Why not this first letters from Patrick last name withheld who write Patrick Dempsey step-by-step Patrick. No, that's not. No, that's Patrick

[1:18:19] What's the Patrick from step-by-step? I do not know

[1:18:22] Yeah, let's spend time on it

[1:18:30] Wouldn't remember him from the sitcom he was on for years you remember from man from Atlantis

[1:18:34] Well, the sitcom was sort of like the most bland fuzz of a sitcom where's man from Atlantis is a weird

[1:18:43] Anyway a man a plan a drowned society

[1:18:53] Don't check out the don't check it out. Um Patrick last name withheld, right?

[1:18:59] You may have seen wonderful quotes from Michael Rooker about the poor state of

[1:19:03] audiences attention spans after the underperformance of Kevin Costner's magnum opus

[1:19:09] Horizon part 1 chapter 1 based on the novel pushed by Sapphire or whatever

[1:19:12] It's called his old man yells at cloud approaches silly

[1:19:16] But I kind of admire his defense of the project even if that defense is the same

[1:19:20] Short attention span argument. I've been hearing since MTV or since DW Griffith called widescreen only good for funerals and snakes

[1:19:28] but

[1:19:30] If you're making a movie called snake funeral though, oh boy

[1:19:34] We've got to get these motherfucking snakes out this motherfucking grave

[1:19:39] Yeah, you need a really wide screen, but it needs to be kind of short, too

[1:19:43] Do you listen to the snake funeral album? Did you know funerals my fucking fate? Yeah

[1:19:50] Imagining a Samuel Jackson's giving the eulogy and he goes I'm tired of not having these

[1:19:58] Yeah

[1:20:00] You go to a snake mortuary, it's just a bunch of tube mailers of different construction.

[1:20:07] P.B. Herman is there holding them at arm's length.

[1:20:11] Put them in a pneumatic tube to send them over to the graveyard, yeah.

[1:20:16] Anyway, Patrick writes, but as all of us head into our mid or late 40s, I'm sure we all

[1:20:21] find ourselves trending towards the grumpy old man when it comes to modern media digestion.

[1:20:27] So my question is this, when was the first time you remember having a grumpy old man

[1:20:32] opinion about a movie?

[1:20:33] And I was thinking that I, I really jumped on the grumpy old man early because, uh, it

[1:20:38] was about the movie Grumpy Old Man, right?

[1:20:41] Yeah.

[1:20:42] Uh, it was a similar year, it was the sequel and he was like, they're not grumpier.

[1:20:46] They're the same amount of the first time you promised an increased amount of grumpiness

[1:20:51] with inflation.

[1:20:52] I paid more to see less grumpiness.

[1:20:56] Well, my grumpy dollar is giving me, is bringing me less now.

[1:21:00] Um, no, he needs to be so fucking cool, right?

[1:21:06] He said to the teenage ticket taker at the theater, let me explain basic economics to

[1:21:12] you young man.

[1:21:13] Um, no, I, Space Jam, when Space Jam came out, I was like, these are not the loony tunes

[1:21:20] I know and love.

[1:21:21] This is a cynical way to, you know, put basketball star Michael Jordan with some cartoon characters

[1:21:29] and have them act totally off model, you know, again, so, uh, what happened to the pure,

[1:21:33] the pure bugs, loony tunes movies of yesteryear, like Quack Busters and Fantastic Island.

[1:21:38] I wonder how similar, I wonder how similar all of our answers are going to be to something

[1:21:45] like that.

[1:21:46] Like the thing I grew up with is no longer the thing that I'm seeing because my, my example

[1:21:50] was going to be the transformers movie, Michael Bay's movie from 2007.

[1:21:54] I came away from that feeling very grandpa.

[1:21:56] Yeah.

[1:21:57] You're like, yeah, the real ones masturbated to the, the hot cartoon robot transformer

[1:22:03] guys.

[1:22:04] Exactly.

[1:22:05] They didn't need a Megan Fox.

[1:22:06] No.

[1:22:07] Yeah.

[1:22:08] Yeah.

[1:22:09] Uh, yeah, no.

[1:22:10] I mean, I felt like, uh, when they cast girls as ghostbusters, I have, I have a slightly

[1:22:18] different one, which is, I'm sure I've had that same reaction before.

[1:22:22] And I've tried to let go of it of like, this isn't the way I did things.

[1:22:25] But I think the one where I felt it the most strong was when I went to see guardians of

[1:22:30] the galaxy.

[1:22:31] Speaking of movies that really want to be guardians of the galaxy, when I went to see

[1:22:33] the first guardians of the galaxy movie, which is trying so hard.

[1:22:38] And my reaction to so much of it was like, why all the swearing?

[1:22:43] Why do they have to keep swearing?

[1:22:44] That's actually pretty old man.

[1:22:48] I found myself legitimately offended in a way I didn't expect.

[1:22:52] When at the end, star Lord goes, we're the guardians of the galaxy, bitch.

[1:22:54] I was like, I don't like it.

[1:22:56] Like I kind of shivered and shuddered and I was like, I don't like that.

[1:22:59] I don't like it.

[1:23:00] So I think that was a moment for me.

[1:23:01] You seem like such a nice boy.

[1:23:02] And I think it's because by that point, you know, it's just like, to show some respect

[1:23:06] to other people, you know, I think it was by that point that I was a dad.

[1:23:09] And so I was like, Oh, at some point I know kids are seeing this movie and at some point

[1:23:13] kids are going to see it.

[1:23:14] And whereas in the past I might've been like, yeah, who cares if kids are going to see it?

[1:23:16] Like they need to grow up.

[1:23:18] It's fine.

[1:23:19] I was like, I don't know.

[1:23:20] And then I remember not long after that, walking by a toy store in the window, they had the

[1:23:24] guardians toys and all the guardians of the galaxy are here, bitch.

[1:23:28] It was a talking doll that just says, bitch, bitch, bitch.

[1:23:31] But seeing that all the accessories that they came with were just guns.

[1:23:35] And it was another one of those moments where I'm like, Ooh, I don't like this.

[1:23:37] I don't like that.

[1:23:38] When I was a kid, I loved toy guns, but like the idea that, Oh, I don't want my kids playing

[1:23:42] with something that it's just guns.

[1:23:44] So I think that was, I think that's when I felt like an old man.

[1:23:47] To talk about what you said though, before, like I, I've gotten to a point I think mostly

[1:23:52] where I'm not like, Oh, this isn't the way that I liked it because you know, why are

[1:23:57] you going to do something if you don't have like a spin on it?

[1:24:00] We already have the old thing, but I do find it easier to feel that way when we've had

[1:24:06] like a good movie version of something like we didn't have like a good movie version of

[1:24:11] a legion.

[1:24:12] So I'm like, what the fuck is this?

[1:24:13] Whereas like with my beloved Sherlock Holmes, like there's been so many Sherlock Holmes

[1:24:17] things.

[1:24:18] I'm like, yeah.

[1:24:19] Do whatever the fuck you want with that property.

[1:24:20] Like I get crazy.

[1:24:21] Like how I can't, I can't be offended by like a, a wrong headed Shakespeare production.

[1:24:25] Cause it's like, don't worry.

[1:24:27] You're going to see thousands more of this play, you know, whereas if there's a bet,

[1:24:32] if there's a bad production of like a Stephen Sondheim specific overtures, I'm like, I may

[1:24:36] never see this again.

[1:24:37] When are they going to revive this show?

[1:24:39] That's sort of, I mean like in the, in, in our Star Trek corner of the mediascape, like

[1:24:44] that's kind of, that's kind of how it feels like now where, you know, there are specific

[1:24:50] versions of Star Trek that are very close to my heart.

[1:24:54] And I think over the years I have learned to like not get that, that bent out of shape

[1:24:59] about it when they do one that doesn't quite fit what I love about the thing I love because

[1:25:04] it's like, I mean like there are 17 different TV shows that are called Star Trek now and,

[1:25:10] and you know, 25 movies and it's like, okay, some of them are going to be like perfect

[1:25:15] for me and others aren't.

[1:25:16] And who gives a shit when they aren't, uh, you know, I don't, I don't like own the Paramount

[1:25:22] corporation.

[1:25:23] I don't get to call the shots.

[1:25:24] But if you did, yeah, but if, yeah, then you'd probably, you'd probably put something other

[1:25:30] than section 31 on the app to watch over and over again.

[1:25:34] Okay.

[1:25:35] Well, let's, uh, let's move on to the next letter.

[1:25:36] So, uh, we can, there's another letter.

[1:25:39] This is from Teresa last name withheld who writes subject live action cartoon characters.

[1:25:44] Hi floppers.

[1:25:45] I wait a minute.

[1:25:46] Hold on.

[1:25:47] Okay.

[1:25:48] Read the letter, Dan.

[1:25:49] Cause what that phrase doesn't make any sense to me.

[1:25:51] Hi floppers.

[1:25:52] I mean, Jim Carrey's kind of a live action cartoon.

[1:25:54] Yeah.

[1:25:55] Good point.

[1:25:56] He totally is.

[1:25:57] Stuart.

[1:25:58] You know, some people don't have the bravery to say shit like that.

[1:26:03] Uh, I had a strange dream that involves Elliot disclosing that he had been cast to voice

[1:26:10] the character of Tweety bird in a Looney Tunes live action movie.

[1:26:13] I'll do it.

[1:26:14] Miss casting, but I'll do it.

[1:26:15] Yeah.

[1:26:16] Chris Pratt was not part of this ensemble for once.

[1:26:18] It made me, it made me wonder two things.

[1:26:24] So Garfield's not one of the fucking Looney Tunes apparently, uh, Stuart, I hate to break

[1:26:29] it to you.

[1:26:30] Mario isn't one of the Looney Tunes now, it made me wonder two things.

[1:26:39] One would Elliot even make a good Tweety bird?

[1:26:41] I say yes.

[1:26:42] And two, two, what cartoon characters would Dan Stewart and Elliot appropriately voice

[1:26:48] in their live action adaptations, Teresa, the last name withheld.

[1:26:51] And I, you know, I have to say that, you know, not originally a cartoon, but probably best

[1:26:55] known as a cartoon.

[1:26:56] Of course.

[1:26:57] For me, Eeyore would be what I would choose.

[1:27:00] Yeah.

[1:27:01] You're totally, you're totally an Eeyore.

[1:27:02] Yeah.

[1:27:03] I can see that.

[1:27:04] Yeah.

[1:27:05] Um, wait, are we doing like any cartoon character forever all of the time?

[1:27:08] It was that Looney Tunes was the, the door into a beautiful.

[1:27:12] I'm captain caveman.

[1:27:13] Then guys, I'm a little hairy guy with a club surrounded by babes.

[1:27:17] Yep.

[1:27:18] That's me.

[1:27:19] Yep.

[1:27:20] That's you.

[1:27:21] All right.

[1:27:22] And the club is technological.

[1:27:23] Like you can open it up and there's high tech stuff inside of it.

[1:27:24] I don't understand that shit.

[1:27:25] I'm just a caveman dude.

[1:27:27] Good point.

[1:27:28] I am a captain though.

[1:27:29] So respect my rank, please.

[1:27:30] I guess.

[1:27:31] Thank you for your service on the seas.

[1:27:32] You can perform weddings, I guess, when we're on your boat or ship.

[1:27:33] I'm sorry, sir.

[1:27:34] You've never seen that in the show, but it was a deleted episode.

[1:27:35] Most of the episodes are about Captain Caveman performing wedding ceremonies.

[1:27:36] It's the happy privilege of cavemen everywhere.

[1:27:37] And so I think, I think I'm going to pick one that might be a little, uh, out of the

[1:27:38] ordinary.

[1:27:39] Cause I feel like I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I

[1:27:40] don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't

[1:27:41] have a, I don't have a, I don't have a voice in my head for it already, but for preexisting,

[1:27:59] but I'm gonna say Felix, the cat.

[1:28:01] I think I could do a real good Felix, the cat.

[1:28:03] If he was like, like he was in the old, old cartoons where he's just, he's just a, you

[1:28:06] know, he's just stirring up shit, just doing wacky stuff.

[1:28:08] He's a real annoying.

[1:28:09] I thought he was talking about Fritz, the cat.

[1:28:11] I'm like, I don't think that's appropriate for Elliot.

[1:28:14] So I'll see.

[1:28:15] I'll be Fritz, the cat.

[1:28:17] Cause you know me, I'm all about that.

[1:28:19] Like that kind of like the scummier side of the alternative 60s, 70s lifestyle.

[1:28:23] Does Felix talk though?

[1:28:25] Like I feel like in word balloons in the really old cartoons, maybe, I think they did some

[1:28:30] later ones.

[1:28:31] Okay.

[1:28:32] But yeah.

[1:28:33] Uh, and this of course, our guests are welcome to jump in if you guys have, I'm going to

[1:28:36] do one more.

[1:28:37] Also Popeye's nephews or children.

[1:28:39] I don't remember how they were related, but those three, those three Popeye kids from

[1:28:42] the like kind of fifties Popeye cartoons, I could, I could do that.

[1:28:45] That'd be amazing.

[1:28:46] Yeah.

[1:28:47] So yeah.

[1:28:48] What do you guys think?

[1:28:49] What cartoon characters should be Ben and Adam?

[1:28:50] Oh man, we get to choose too.

[1:28:52] Um, join the fun, jump in the pool.

[1:28:56] I was just sitting here, enjoying, listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Flop House,

[1:29:00] not thinking about what my answer would be, maybe I'm going to participate in the show

[1:29:06] we're guesting on and say, uh, my favorite cartoon growing up was the real Ghostbusters.

[1:29:12] I think I would want to be one of the voices to, uh, to like Bankman or something.

[1:29:17] I could, I could pull that off.

[1:29:19] Right.

[1:29:20] Do we have to be animal cartoons?

[1:29:21] Is that, is that, they just have two characters, right?

[1:29:24] Caveman.

[1:29:25] Well, I guess he's, he's the link between man and animal.

[1:29:28] Yeah.

[1:29:29] Yeah.

[1:29:30] Metaphorically.

[1:29:31] Yeah.

[1:29:32] That's going to be my answer.

[1:29:33] Okay.

[1:29:34] Do you remember the television cartoon XO squad?

[1:29:35] Did anybody catch this?

[1:29:36] This cartoon?

[1:29:37] I remember the name, but I can't say I've ever watched it.

[1:29:41] I really liked the toys because they were like, it was like little robot suits that

[1:29:45] you, you get like little GI Joe and you stick them in his robot suit and then he's, you

[1:29:49] know, can shoot, you know, spring loaded missiles and things.

[1:29:53] And uh, I, I think the show was about how they had to build these robot suits to defend

[1:29:58] them against their.

[1:30:00] genetically-engineered slave race that had risen up to, uh...

[1:30:03] I think you're right.

[1:30:04] Oh, wow.

[1:30:05] Love this.

[1:30:06] Okay.

[1:30:07] It really ages well.

[1:30:08] Yeah.

[1:30:09] Yeah.

[1:30:10] Concepts that wasn't interrogated that much.

[1:30:11] Yeah.

[1:30:12] Did every episode conclude with, like, a diary entry being read, and, like, XOXO, squad?

[1:30:20] Yeah.

[1:30:22] These were squad goals to me back in the day, but mostly because I wanted a cool robot suit.

[1:30:27] So maybe we'll do kind of like a, you know, a re-examination of the concept through reboot.

[1:30:35] So it'll be an XO squad where it's like, man, like, are we the baddies?

[1:30:38] Is kind of the premise.

[1:30:39] Yeah.

[1:30:40] Yeah.

[1:30:41] Yeah.

[1:30:42] Yeah.

[1:30:43] And I get to have a robot suit.

[1:30:45] Yeah.

[1:30:46] You'll be the one who doesn't care when he realizes he may be a baddie because, you know,

[1:30:50] the price of eggs is lower for him if he kills all the slave race.

[1:30:54] Or higher.

[1:30:55] I don't really give a shit.

[1:30:56] Yeah.

[1:30:57] As long as I got this suit.

[1:31:00] Yeah.

[1:31:01] Let's tie everything up with our final segment, recommendations of movies you might have a

[1:31:08] better time watching than Section 31.

[1:31:10] Impossible.

[1:31:11] I'm going to pull an Elliot.

[1:31:13] I'm going to recommend a movie from the 30s.

[1:31:15] Dan, hey, hands off.

[1:31:16] I'm married.

[1:31:17] He could do it.

[1:31:19] He's pretty charming.

[1:31:20] Yeah, that's true.

[1:31:21] He could pull me.

[1:31:22] I could do it.

[1:31:23] Dan, you can pull me anytime.

[1:31:24] No, thanks.

[1:31:25] Wow.

[1:31:26] What a turnaround.

[1:31:29] It really didn't seem like you needed much convincing.

[1:31:33] This is a movie that's on.

[1:31:35] It's a woman's prerogative to change your mind, Daniel.

[1:31:37] This is on Criterion right now.

[1:31:39] I've enjoyed a few movies in the Claudette Colbert collection.

[1:31:45] There's one directed by Ernst Lubitsch called Bluebeard's Eighth Wife.

[1:31:49] And what struck me about this is how many old comedies are at heart very kinky.

[1:31:59] It's barely under the surface.

[1:32:02] The main sort of plot of this is that Claudette Colbert marries this very wealthy man and

[1:32:12] learns that she's to be his eighth wife.

[1:32:14] And she doesn't want to be divorced like all of the other wives.

[1:32:18] And she goes about sort of insinuating herself deeper into his heart by, I mean, it is heavily

[1:32:27] implied essentially by like not fucking him at all and then making him feel like he's

[1:32:33] being cuckolded.

[1:32:34] And so she's bratting her way into his heart and loins.

[1:32:41] And it's very funny though and light as 30s comedies are.

[1:32:47] And it's in 85 minutes, a wonderful length for a film to be perfect.

[1:32:52] Less than a section 31.

[1:32:54] So I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[1:32:57] Stuart.

[1:32:58] OK, I'm going to recommend and I'm also going to dip deep into the archives of old timey

[1:33:03] movies.

[1:33:04] I'm going to recommend a movie from 1989.

[1:33:07] I know.

[1:33:08] Careful.

[1:33:10] Get on your readers, grandpas.

[1:33:14] I'm recommending Troop Beverly Hills, Shelley Long, a movie that I remember seeing the theater

[1:33:21] and being like, I love this movie when I was a child and I had not seen it since.

[1:33:25] And then I watched it recently.

[1:33:26] And you know what, guys?

[1:33:27] I still love this movie.

[1:33:28] It is probably one of the only comedies out there that is a snobs versus slobs comedy.

[1:33:34] And you are rooting for the snobs.

[1:33:37] It's about a group of effectively Girl Scouts in Beverly Hills who are mistreated because

[1:33:42] they are rich and like kooky, whereas the the other, you know, the other Girl Scouts

[1:33:48] who are from other parts of L.A., you know, actually like know how to do wilderness stuff.

[1:33:54] Shelley Long plays the Shelley Long plays a woman who is going through the process of

[1:33:58] divorcing Craig T. Nelson, which has got to be a challenge because, I mean, he was coach

[1:34:03] and Shelley Long is so fucking funny and hot.

[1:34:07] And her like outfits are great.

[1:34:09] The costumes in this movie are incredible.

[1:34:12] And the way that like they use the costumes to like tell the story is so funny.

[1:34:17] And it has so many like like famous L.A. people from the time like you got your Robin Leach

[1:34:25] and whatnot.

[1:34:26] Yeah, it's great.

[1:34:28] Two thumbs up.

[1:34:29] Troop Beverly Hills.

[1:34:30] Just as good as it was back then.

[1:34:31] Yeah.

[1:34:32] Check it out.

[1:34:33] I think you'll find, Stuart, that it's a Carla Gugino movie.

[1:34:37] It is.

[1:34:38] It has a very young Carla Gugino in it, which is pretty fun.

[1:34:41] All right.

[1:34:42] Elliot.

[1:34:43] Sure.

[1:34:44] I'll go next.

[1:34:45] I would like to recommend a movie that it's kind of like it's kind of like Beverly Hills.

[1:34:48] It's called Chilly Scenes of Winter.

[1:34:50] Anyway, it's from 1979.

[1:34:53] This is a it's listed as romantic comedy, but it's more of a more of a romantic drama

[1:34:58] with funny moments.

[1:35:00] It's written and directed by Joan Micklin Silver, who also made like Crossing Delancey

[1:35:03] and Hester Street.

[1:35:05] And I've just been on a tear of hers lately and stars John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt.

[1:35:09] And it's about John Heard is a guy who has just ended or had an affair end on him.

[1:35:14] He was having an affair with a married woman.

[1:35:15] He fell in love with her and she ended it and he cannot shake her from his head.

[1:35:20] And it starts out seeming like it's going to be like a kind of wry romantic comedy about

[1:35:25] this guy who like maybe has to find someone new to get over her.

[1:35:28] Maybe he's going to win her back.

[1:35:30] As the movie pretty fairly early on, but especially as it keeps going, the movie makes it clear

[1:35:35] he has an a not fully sane or stable obsession with her.

[1:35:40] And I would describe the character as like high functioning Travis Bickle, like he's

[1:35:45] going into madness, but nobody is noticing as opposed to Travis Bickle, where it's obvious

[1:35:48] to everybody.

[1:35:50] And I really like to like it felt like one of these movies that was kind of not going

[1:35:56] as far as it could potentially, but was diving into emotional territory that I'm not used

[1:35:59] to seeing in a movie.

[1:36:01] And I thought it was really, really good.

[1:36:03] And I just like Joan Micklin Silver's movies a lot.

[1:36:06] So I would recommend it.

[1:36:07] I would say find there's the version that I also saw on Criterion Collection.

[1:36:10] It's called Chilly Scenes of Winter.

[1:36:12] It was originally released with a happy ending as Head Over Heels.

[1:36:16] And so if you find a version of it that's called Head Over Heels, that is not exactly

[1:36:19] the same movie.

[1:36:21] Find the one that's called Chilly Scenes of Winter.

[1:36:24] And also I'll point out there's a John Hurt's character's mother who is a kind of aging

[1:36:29] woman who's kind of losing her grip on reality is played by Hollywood noir, a great Gloria

[1:36:35] Graham.

[1:36:36] And there's something exciting about seeing Gloria Graham at this kind of different stage

[1:36:38] in her career, but still playing a character who is like an intensely wounded woman who's

[1:36:43] trying for a glamour that she can't quite attain because of that wounding.

[1:36:47] So it's nice the way that this movie played into the rest of her filmography.

[1:36:50] So that's Chilly Scenes of Winter, Dan.

[1:36:53] I'm just going to go around the Zoom as I see it and say, Adam, do you have something

[1:36:58] to recommend?

[1:36:59] I do.

[1:37:00] I've been on kind of a Damien Chazelle kick lately.

[1:37:03] And one of the films that I missed was Babylon.

[1:37:06] And I watched that for the first time very recently.

[1:37:10] And let me just say that if you watch, I may have to interrupt this recommendation, I'm

[1:37:14] not sure.

[1:37:15] Anyway, continue talking.

[1:37:16] That's fine.

[1:37:17] That's fine.

[1:37:18] If you watch one film that begins with 500 gallons of elephant shit dumping on to a

[1:37:22] character in the first two minutes of the film, make it Babylon.

[1:37:27] I was...

[1:37:28] Oh, that's weird.

[1:37:29] LA didn't like that movie?

[1:37:30] I was surprised by this film throughout.

[1:37:33] And I thought the chances of being truly surprised by a modern film were like, that wasn't going

[1:37:38] to happen.

[1:37:39] But I love the movie.

[1:37:41] I loved the experience watching it.

[1:37:44] At three hours and 10 minutes, it felt shorter than Section 31 to me.

[1:37:48] Wow.

[1:37:49] It just absolutely zoomed.

[1:37:52] I thought it was a delight.

[1:37:53] I know it's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[1:37:57] Ben, jump in so Elliot doesn't.

[1:38:00] So I'm going to start jumping in and talking about how one of those not for everyone's

[1:38:02] is me.

[1:38:03] Yeah, I don't know if my recommendation is for everyone, but I just was on the Criterion

[1:38:09] app last weekend and randomly watched a movie called Down With Love, which is a 2003 rom-com

[1:38:17] starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.

[1:38:20] And that makes it sound incredibly basic in a way that it just isn't.

[1:38:25] It's like a weird pastiche of a much older kind of film, like a Rock Hudson, Doris Day,

[1:38:35] Tony Randall film specifically, and has a lot of fun celebrating the aesthetics of that

[1:38:43] while kind of roasting it at the same time.

[1:38:47] The thing I love about the rom-coms of that era are that the characters are on such even

[1:38:57] footing in terms of their power on the screen.

[1:39:01] The women are just as capable and fast-talking and interesting as the men, and this definitely

[1:39:09] has that, but it kind of fucks with your expectations of what they're going to want

[1:39:17] and when and for what reasons all the way through.

[1:39:20] And so it's like a little bit of a mess, but I popped like a two and a half milligram jazz

[1:39:27] gummy and ate my dinner and drank a glass of wine and just enjoyed the hell out of it.

[1:39:34] It's so fun and it's candy-colored and Peyton Reed, he made that and he may bring it on

[1:39:39] back in the day.

[1:39:40] I'm like, this guy's going places.

[1:39:42] And then, you know, Marvel snapped him up years later for the Ant-Man series.

[1:39:48] Wow.

[1:39:49] Yeah.

[1:39:50] Yeah.

[1:39:51] So, yeah, strong recommendation.

[1:39:53] It's on the Criterion Channel app right now.

[1:39:57] That's five very classy recommendations.

[1:40:00] Yeah. Equally classy. Adam and Ben, before we let you go, what would you like to plug?

[1:40:07] Oh, you know, if you like hearing people talk about good Star Trek things, we do it all the

[1:40:13] time on our two podcasts right here on the Maximum Fun Network, The Greatest Generation

[1:40:18] and Greatest Trek. And yeah, that's I think that's all we've got to plug, really.

[1:40:25] Nice and easy. Speaking of the Maximum Fun Network, go over to MaximumFun.org. Check out

[1:40:31] all the great podcasts over there. As this drops, we're gearing up for the Max Fun Drive. We got,

[1:40:39] you know, a bunch of stuff in store for that and some fun surprises and pitches to make to you.

[1:40:46] I know we're not going to make surprises to you. That doesn't make sense. But anyway,

[1:40:49] you know what I'm trying to say. Not really. Say a look at the Max Fun Network.

[1:40:58] Good podcasts. Stuart, we've got to talk about putting Dan in a home.

[1:41:03] Thank you to producer Alex Smith, who we're going to be sending five different audio tracks to to

[1:41:10] slam together. And who knows how many surprises that we can make. Yeah, I'm going to be like

[1:41:17] Jared Leto during the Joker movie. He was playing the Joker. Again, Stuart, all the signs are here.

[1:41:26] We've got to take the keys away from Dan. OK, well, before I drive us further authorized,

[1:41:30] drive off the rails. Is that going to happen? Oh, boy. I mean, I mean, they drive off the

[1:41:35] train rails in Groundhog Day. And so I'll pretend you're talking about that. But I'll know that

[1:41:40] really it's time to to, you know, again, to move you out. The other day he was calling me his

[1:41:44] brother, John. Thanks to you to correct him. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I've been Dan

[1:41:50] McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm a very concerned Elliot Kalin. And we've been joined by

[1:41:57] Adam Veronica. Thank you for being here. Bye.

[1:42:13] On this episode, we discuss Star Trek Section 31.

[1:42:21] Could be the key to straight face of the movie. The idea that exists. You want to try one more

[1:42:26] time? I have a dumb joke. That's the obvious. Sure. But. On this episode, we discuss Star

[1:42:32] Trek Section 31. Dan, I haven't seen Star Trek Section, Star Trek Section two or any of the

[1:42:38] movies through Star Trek Section 30. Sorry. My mouth was so horrified at the hacky joke I was

[1:42:45] doing that it tried to stop it from happening. OK, I mean, it'll be great for the end of the

[1:42:50] episode. Yep. Maximum fun. A worker owned network of artists owned shows supported directly by you.

Star Trek: Section 31, with Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica

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