Washing Feet | With Dr. Mohamed Noor |TNG 2.18, "Up the Long Ladder" | T7R #250 - The 7th Rule -- A Star Trek Podcast with DS9's Cirroc Lofton

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Lieutenant Jordie Laforge's advisor shows in whenpeople are lying, Klingons do not faint,
and doctor Pulaski and Commander Riker aremissing epithelial sills. Hello everybody,
and welcome to the Seventh Rule,starring Sir Rock Lockton. Hello, Hello,
also starring amazing producer Ryan T.Husk. Well, Hi there everybody.

(00:24):
Today we're talking about the next Generationepisode up the long Ladder. My
name is Mohammed Nor. I'm aprofessor of biology at Duke University and an
occasional science consultant for the Star TrekUniverse. Fantastic, that is doctor Mohammad
Nor. Everybody all right? Also, this was written by Melinda M.

(00:44):
Snodgrass, directed by Weinrich Colby,and this was May twentieth, nineteen eighty
nine. Where were you? Allright, let's get into this episode.
There's a ton of science in theback half of this episode. Your thoughts,
doctor Nor, right, let's getright into Oh, by the way,

(01:11):
can we just say you are anevolutionary biologist as well. You know
all about chromosomes and DNA. Youhave what are you up up to five
or six clones right now in yourshed? So you know we're up seven
now, fantastic. Well, youknow, mom and some of the things.
As I was watching, I wasthinking about the science and of this

(01:33):
episode, and you know, becauseI'm not familiar with all of the concepts
and whether these things are accurate ortrue. My first question to you is,
is the basis of what they're sayingtrue? Yes, that's the short
answer is yes. Actually it's quitegood on the science front for that aspect
to it. So there's a termthat they use in there, which is

(01:57):
a made up term. This isnot a real scientific term, but honestly
it's better me real scientific term,which is replicative fading. And the idea
from that is, I mean youcould think of it almost like a copy
of bewe, like an old,old xerox or whatever bran copier. That
if you take a copy of somethingand they take a copy of a copy
and a copy of a copy ofa copy, eventually it starts it starts
looking like like that You've lost alot of information there that is actually true.

(02:21):
This is one of the problems witha sexual reproduction, like if we
just you know, just produced another, if I just produced another Muhammad as
right, I was saying the onesI have in the shed if I produced
another Muhammad and that Mohamed produced anotherMohammad. There are always mutations introduced,
right, and every generation there's newmutations. Nothing is fixing them, nothing
is replacing them. So when youreplicate after that, you're replicating not just

(02:43):
me, but me with a mutation, and then me with two mutations,
and then me with three mute youknow, things like that. So essentially
it would get worse and worse andworse every generation because nothing is going in
there to fix it. You're notgetting this infusion from what you would get
from sexual reproduction from the other gender. Right, So you know, let's
say, for example, I somemutations that say let's say I got a
mutation from my dad. I maynot have gotten that from my mom.

(03:05):
So when I pass on to mykids, I can give my mom's copy
and then that mutation for my dadis gone and I hit a quick pause.
There. Mutations, we understand thatThat is almost it feels like it's
almost the basic building blocks of evolutionthe way I understand, and mutations,
mutations are the creation of evolution.That's that's how we evolve, right as

(03:29):
far as we know. So thequestion is both arm are bad okay?
And our mutations genetic mutations generally dominantor submissive, Like when you said if
you get a mutation from your dad, but your mom can kind of counterbalance
that. Is that a general thingor is it case by case? Let

(03:51):
me answer two parts to that.For the first part, when you think
about mutations, they tend to bebad because when you think about it over
time, we are the product oflong term natural selection or evolution. Right,
So you can think of us kindof like a car, and you
can think of a mutation like takinga hammer and throwing it at the car.
What are the odds that's going tomake it better? It's not zero,

(04:12):
but it's pretty close to zero.So that's one aspect to it.
Right now, you're a question aboutdominated recesses, and so that's just basically
like w it manifest because I mean, again, we have two copies of
all rg's and two bupis of allour chromosomes. So let's say, as
I mentioned, I got one frommy dad. I did not get one
from my mom. I'm making thisup. You know, nothing is my
dad. Generally speaking, most badmutations tend to be loss of function.

(04:34):
So let's say, for example,this is something that's supposed to help your
arm brow, and like you geta broken part, a broken copy.
Generally speaking, those tend to berecessive. So if you have the other
copy is good, You're all right. And this is one of the reasons
actually that inbreeding is bad. Likeif you have kids with your sister,
right or a brother, you know, depending on which gender you are.

(04:55):
If you have kids with your sibling, what you're doing is you're pulling together
these two recess bad mutations because letyour sibling likely got the same one that
you did from your parent, andyou're putting them both together. And that's
one of the reasons that you tendto have was referred to as inbreeding depression.
As you have inbreeding, you startmanifesting these bad mutations which are already
present. Whereas if I, youknow, like I did, I have
kids with somebody completely unrelated to me, she probably has some bad mutations,

(05:18):
but they're completely different from mine.So my kids are uber healthy, nice.
Yeah, And so that basically means, if I remember correctly my whatever
seventh grade biology or something, thatit actually strengthens the species to do a
breeding completely outside of your group,you know, your family, Okay,

(05:43):
because of that exact reason that youmentioned, and this is kind of what
they're talking about in this episode.They don't want to just you know,
even just obviously they can't keep breedingbetween the five of them over and over
again. But even if there weretwenty or even if there are twenty orth
thresty of them, they would allstill be in that same family. But
if you've got a completely distant andseparate group, and even then it was

(06:08):
only what they say, thirty couples. Well, so that was interesting that
the comment was made there is theywanted a breeding group of thirty, but
they also said but that it wasinteresting how the guy interpreted versus which what
they what doctor Plaski actually said.She said, we need each woman to
have three kids from at least threedifferent men. And he's like, oh,
I get three wives. Like shedidn't say that. She said woman

(06:32):
three kids from three different men.So it's possible there are three men total
and they're having all the kids fromall the women, right, I mean
she didn't. That obviously would bebad because then you would have in reading
right, basically, the closer youare to an even sex ratio the better
in terms of maintaining a large amountof variation in your population, right,

(06:55):
And that's actually one of the Oh, go ahead, please no. I
was just going to say, asfar as the cloning thing, I had
heard that in different a different setof biology, in plants, for example,
and people that I know or thatI've read about that grow certain kinds
of plants. What are we talkingabout? I got I got tomato plants

(07:23):
out there, and I know exactlyyes, yes, certain kinds of plants.
But there are these certain kinds ofplants where they do clone from these
plants and try to make a nextbatch of those plants. But there I've
heard of the problem that you canonly clone so much because of the same

(07:47):
problem. You would lose you wouldlose potency, you would you would just
not have the same outcome as faras the product. So I've heard this
concept used in plants before, asfar as you know how much how much
you can clone from a plant,but not really in the sense of people.

(08:09):
But it does work the same way, absolutely exactly the same problem.
It doesn't really matter what the organismis. Essentially, if you have a
sexual reproduction, if you're just makingclone off a clone off a clone.
Eventually you're just introducing more and moremutations that there's nothing to get rid of
them. And that's where that thatreplicative fading comes from. What's interesting,
you have the actual technical term forit is called Muller's ratchet. I think
about a ratchet, remember, Iknow, well, it's named after a

(08:31):
guy, Muller, Hermann Muller,who actually won the Nobel Prize for discovering
that X rays cause mutations. Thisis back in like nineteen forties. But
the reason they call Muller's ratchet isbecause he was using the snalge of a
ratchet. How ratchet only goes oneway, that it only turns the screw
on way. So that's basically whathe was saying is happening when you have
you know, this accumulation of badmutation is just worse, worse, worse,
worse, worse, worse, worse, like a ratchet, the population

(08:54):
worse and worse over time. Interesting, you know, I just realized something.
This episode is called up the LongLadder, and that just makes me
think of a DNA strand right,it just looks like it just looks like
a spiraling ladder, right, Imean or I don't know what what what
double helix? Yeah, yeah,the double helix with the ladder. Yeah,

(09:15):
that's a good call. I did'teven think about that. So replicative
fading is not a word. Thatis just something that was completely Uh,
it's just actually because it makes moresense to me than Muller's ratchet, which
I've got totally exactly. I don'tknow who made it up. I've never
heard it in any biology class,but I mean it makes perfect sense.

(09:37):
That's exactly right. My classes sometimessaying like, well, you could think
of it, like, let's callit, for example, replicative fading.
Yeah, it happens to be fromStar Trek another science question that kind of
popped up to me. And theymade a reference about where they would take
cells from in order to get optimalreproductive of kind of cellular growth or whatever

(10:03):
it is. And and they talkedabout the lining of the stomach, right,
and I think that's what doctor Pulaskitalked about. Is there any truth
to where you would gather yourselves fromif you were to take a sample from
a person. So I have togive credit to our mutual friend doctor Anne
Marie Siegel, because we actually didwe actually did recording once about this particular

(10:24):
episode for something else real. Shesaid, yes, she said, those
stomach e pathelias, those basically actkind of like stem cells in that sense.
They can they can differentiate into awhole bunch of different things. So
she's credit to her for that.I didn't actually know that, but yeah,
shout out to doctor Anne Marie Siegealaka Trek e md that Mohammad gave
that name to her. Trek eMd our social producer and does research and

(10:46):
development for us for that very reason. Anyway, you were saying, doctor
norm love, I love how dramaticit was when they had the syringes coming
down from really high, so youdo it. It was great though for
that the high. It was like, you know the torture scene in the

(11:09):
movies when they're like about to getyou. It's always like far away,
like year it comes, there,it goes. But yeah, so that
was my other question too, is, uh, you know, they didn't
explain the memory loss that occurred betweenFreaks and Pulaski, Right, so we're

(11:35):
assuming that some process occurred in whichthey were able to erase their memory,
right, that what we're assuming.Yeah, it's interesting because very It wasn't
just they lost all their short termmemories, but it was very specifically from
that. Yeah, right, sothat was like, well, okay,
but I mean but Startrek does thatall the time. They're always tampering with
memories. There's no I don't know, biological basis for that aspect. Right,

(11:58):
it was super specific, like weremember up into this exact second,
and well, how were they ableto get that done? Well? Yeah,
yeah, if they're that good,then they should be able to get
rid of the anomalies that occur fromthe replica defeating I mean, right,
you know exactly that. Actually,that's a good point too, in the

(12:22):
sense that I mean today we couldprobably identify a lot of these mutations,
and you know, you could usesome sort of engineering things to probably fix
a lot of them too. Idon't think we could do it perfectly,
but imagine, like hundreds of yearsfrom now, it does feel like they
should be able to to kind offix that. They would have them.
They would have essentially like here's thefull genome sequence from one end of the
chromosome to the other crosone for everychromosome, and let's just edit anytime we

(12:45):
see any deviation we'll edit it inyour sperm or eggs or whatever for the
or actually I guess they weren't evenusing sperming eggs. I guess in your
copy, aren't. We're getting kindof close to that already, like where
they're able to identify certain things inthe DNA, Like they can actually see
one thing in the DNA and knowwhat that relates to or correlate. Well,
So this would actually be easier thanthat. This would because today what

(13:07):
we do is we look at somethingwe don't know what it means, and
we try to figure out if thisis what's causing particular disease. With that
one, all they need to dois just we know this is the same
as that first guy. That's allthey need to do. So if they
have a sequence of that first guy, it doesn't matter what, like whether
what this particular ATG or C doesor that one does. You just want
the letters to be identical. Soyou could go through and use some genetic

(13:28):
editing to do that. That seemslike that would be pretty feasible and be
easier than what people try to dotoday. Mm hm okay, So that
that would be the anomaly that wouldoccur in the mutation. It would be
the mutation would be somewhere on thatstrand there's a G instead of an A
or something to that exactly. That'swhat the mutations would be be something like

(13:52):
that. So it could be aletter change. It could also be like
a gene got flipped, or asection of DNA got flipped, or it
could be a section got just deletedcompletely. Those are the kinds of mutations
we tend to see often. It'sjust like you said, it's often just
like used to be in A andnow it's a G. That's a very
common one. So it should berelatively easy to face. One hundred and
fifty or so years, we alreadyknow how to fix those now, we

(14:15):
already now okay, it's just wouldbe tough to do in one single celled
embryo and get it exactly right.That's the only hard part. But we
have the technology to do it.And also, Mohammad, relative to the
time that this episode is being writtenin nineteen eighty nine thereabouts, what was

(14:35):
the the where were we at technologywise as far as this particular subject matter.
That's a wonderful question. It's avery thoughtful thing to be thinking about
with regard to it DNA happens,we had gotten DNA sequences. It was
possible to get some DNA sequences,but when people got a DNA sequence,
it would be so we have inour bodies three point one billion letters,

(14:58):
okay, three point one billion,and you know, and and two copies
one from Mom, one from Dad. Right, you could get a stretch
and amplify it and study it,and that stretch should be something like yeah,
I say nine hundred of those lettersout of the three point one and
it was there was some effort involvedin that too. It wasn't just like
you just do it. It wasa little bit and it was like it

(15:20):
would take a couple of days toget bad. So that's a big and
like we were nowhere near head forI think that. I don't remember actually
when they decided to embark upon theoverall human genome project. That might be
before. I'm not sure exactly whenthat process started. By the mid nineteen
nineties, the human Genome project wasin full swing, but even there,
like we were nowhere near done,like nowhere near done. Yeah, I

(15:41):
remember hearing about that in a physiologyclass in like ninety I don't remember what
early nineties or something right, andthey had just really kind of started in
earnest to map out the entire humangenome. And I remember my professor Key,
You're saying, like it's going tobe We're super excited. He's like,

(16:02):
it's going to be like twenty years, guys, relax, it's gonna
be there. Techno, there wasa technological innovation that happened around ninety six
ninety seven, which it was referredto as shotgun sequencing, which is the
idea of basically just shred all theDNA and and then use the use this
process, just sequence random pieces andthen use computers to put it together and
be like, oh, this onehas an overhang of AGC, and this

(16:23):
one has an overhang of AGC,but it's on the other end. You
put them together and piece it andthen try to figure out what the overall
thing was. So that was athat was a big innovation of doing this
very instead of very you know,going from base number one hundred to one
hundred and ten and then one tento one twenty, like let's just put
the whole thing in, shred itand let the computers put it together.
That was gigantic and the ability toactually sequence a lot more at that time

(16:47):
too helped. Now that's crazy.Now that's great. You can get like
a whole GM sequence for a thousanddollars, like you could just do it,
like we literally have undergrads who willdo this as part of their summer
projects. Where it was before thislike twenty year project by I like the
entire you know, teams of scientists. Fact that it's very slowcasss Now,
doctor nor professor at Duke University.Of course, ume right now, I

(17:11):
want to jump onto Sirok's very thoughtfulquestion and add to it or take it
the next step, which is youare the science consultant for the new Next
Generations show in twenty twenty four,and they are redoing this. They are
redoing this episode considering how much youknow technology has changed in the last thirty

(17:33):
five years, if any in thisparticular field, what would you or what
would they do differently? I'll saythis is pretty good. I don't have
too much to nippick with this oneat all. I mean there's and as
you all know, you've had meon the show many times before. There's
plenty of episodes I on' nipick alot this one. I mean, the
overall basis this idea of the replicativefading, I mean, and the fact

(17:56):
that even came up with the termthat's better than the real scientific Yeah,
it was pretty good. I mean, the few things. Maybe I might
try to come up with some explanationwhy they don't Why don't they don't have
the ability to actually just edit themutations themselves and have a have a genum
sequence to know what the reference wouldbe. I guess, but I mean
it's not crazy, It's just alittle funny, doctor Nora. Is there

(18:22):
a way to get the same resultsinstead of doing it the way they did
through the cell linings and taking thecells out? Is there a way for
example? Uh? Because I thoughtwhen they initially asked they were asking for
something different, like a I thoughtit was like a sperm donation that they
were asking because the look on thelook on for cards face was like serious.

(18:48):
But so is that that could haveworked? Though? Right? Yeah?
Yeah, totally. Actually let meask you guys a question, would
you have I was surprised how whenthey said, like, oh, nobody's
gonn agree to that, Like yougot like a thousand people on your ship.
Nobody's going to agree to this,and thirty of them to say yes.
I was always cars when you meanwhen Picards spoke on behalf of the

(19:10):
ship, he said, nobody willwant to do that. Like, I'm
sure Riker, if Riker were there, you'd be like, uh, you
just don't he doesn't know. Whydon't you go go sit in the chair
the card I got this, Yeah, I was almos surprised. I don't
know what you guys thought about that, were you, Like, would you
accept that idea if somebody said,hey, we might make a clone of

(19:30):
you. I mean, it's notyou, it's just somebody who's genetically it's
kind of like an identical twin ofyou. It's not you. Well,
that's why I was asking about theyou know, like what effort does it
take? And now maybe I wouldn'twant to go under undergo surgery to get
it done, but I would probablysay can I donate a hair follicle or

(19:52):
maybe like a sperm sample, Likethere would be ways in which you could
offer the same kind of help tothat those people. And I don't know
if it would necessarily it would botherme to have a clone of me where
I live and reside but not insome barrow ways exactly exactly if you are
helping it might have to see it. It's yeah, if you're helping to

(20:17):
preserve and save an entire population,it does feel I don't want to say
unethical, but it's certainly uncaring tonot like if if all it takes is
for you to like put aside alittle awkwardness and be like, all right,
so there's gonna be a few youknow, Ryan's or Styros or Mohammed's
out there doing their thing, youknow, making that little planet a better

(20:38):
place and saving that population. Idon't see what the harm is. Oh,
actually, there is one thing Iwould I would change. It was
interesting to me that they were somehowmaking these into full grown adults. That
that was weird to me. Ididn't understand why it wasn't just like an
embryo that then would grow up like. I didn't understand how they were all
just immediately adults. Yeah, thatwas weird. I didn't get why I

(21:00):
didn't. I didn't understand why thatwas true, and I didn't understand how
that would be true. That thatwas just weird to me. There would
be no process to expedite the naturalgrowth right. I mean, you couldn't
just start at an adult. Itneeds all those nutrients and proteins to like
fill. It's almost like they hada shell when they felt like they thought
they could just put this in there, Like, what what is happening here

(21:22):
that I forgot about that these Thatwas weird. It was a goal,
that's why, which which leads meto my next question for both of you,
which is, and we only havea couple of minutes left with you,
doctor nor here. But my questionis I was a little thrown back
by the fact that they're like,oh, there's a clone of me,
let me kill it. And look, I don't know if that's necessarily a

(21:45):
scientific question because we don't have clonesof people. Feels more like an ethical
question. But I mean if ifthat's like basically an adult, yeah,
they're all making yeah, is thatis that ethical? I didn't think so.
I thought I thought it was not. I mean, yes, they're
vegetated, but I mean yeah,but if you see some vegetatis days,

(22:06):
okay, just come take a phaseor two them, like and Pulaski.
He looked at Paski, She's like, yeah, do it. Yeah,
she was bloodthirsty. Yeah, Ithought it was more weird that they didn't
even consult with the captain in orderto get that done. So normally I
would think they would say, captain, where we want to talk with you.
They took a clone of us,we need to go destroy it,

(22:26):
and well, you know, wesome kind of permission or something, were
like, oh, let's go.They did not pass go, No,
no consulting. It was just like, no, we're going to pop up
on the spot right now. Ithought that was weird. But I had

(22:48):
another question for you, mom,and because I know you're going to leave
us soon. But on the sciencetip, another question I had if this
vessel, this USS Mariposa, ifit had dead bodies on it as part
of the wreckage, would they beable to use those bodies as samples to

(23:12):
clone from. That's a great question. So the answer is that kind of
depends on exactly what they're doing.If they just needed to know what the
DNA sequence is, yeah, Imean we do that now, we have
like DNA sequences from the Anderthal.I mean, obviously they weren't alive with
so that's easy. But if theyactually have to take these stem cells and
grow them up, then it dependson how long it's been dead, Like

(23:33):
basically, like, is every celldead? Things like that. If if
they just passed away let's say,you know, an hour ago, yeah,
it'd probably be fine. But ifthey passed away and say, like
a couple of years ago, oddsare the stem cell there are the stem
cells, there are all all ofthem are dead, so that probably wouldn't
work. So it depends on howthey're doing. And it seems like they're
doing it more based on the stemcell idea rather than we know where the

(23:55):
DNA sequence is, we can justinsert this into the nucleus of a cell
and make it go. But whichwas which was the Jurassic Park theory?
Right? They didn't. They didn'tbase it on a stem cell, right.
They just got the DNA sequencing andsomehow built it off like frogs or
something frog, I forget what itwas. It was something like frog eggs.

(24:15):
And then they just edited a coupleof letters there to make it match
dinosaurs, so make it go fromentamphibian to a reptile somehow, or maybe
they started with I don't remember what, I don't know. I think they
I think they started with live salesfrom the the thing that was frozen in
the amber or the molasses. Yeah, it was the blood, the blood
of inside of a mosquito's belly,I think inside of a mosquito exactly.

(24:37):
But I think I think that wasjust how they got the DNA sequence.
I don't think that's actually the Ithink that's how they just knew would happen.
Yeah, yeah, I think thecell was like I don't remember,
it was some sort of reptelor ofamphibian. There's a lot of stuff in
this episode. Yeah, it wasfun. You know, another Melinda Snodgrass
specialty. You know, she's shedefinitely only gives us a lot to chew

(25:00):
on when she writes an episode,And I think this one is just in
line with, you know, thekind of quality she puts into the research
of her principles and her ideas whereshe wants to you know, base her
thoughts off. I thought this wasgood. And wasn't there a big kind
of scare around this time of likethis kind of thing like cloning and body

(25:22):
snatchers and this kind I thought thisthere was a this was the beginning of
that time in which we started tobecome aware of these kinds of concepts a
little bit, or become fearful ofthem. I'm thinking. I'm thinking about
eight years later, like let mehave Dolly the sheep and things like that.
That's why those are the rest ofthe time I'm thinking with that sort
of stuff. I don't remember itfrom nineteen eighty nine, but at the

(25:44):
same time I was in college.I mean I thought, as possible,
I just missed it. I doremember that sheep debate. It was a
big debate. Yeah, yeah,okay, well, doctor Noir, thank
you so much for taking time outof your busy schedule over at university between
meetings and classes. We also appreciateyour cool Seventh Rule poster behind you.

(26:07):
As well as discovery, I seelower decks, strange new worlds, can't
tell what the other one is,but also see a prodigy. I also
see a Terran empire to your right. Very cool. Yeah, there we
go. This Tearann empire went toowell. Thank you very much, and
every thank you for having me.It's always a pleasure to see you guys.
Thank you for having me on theshake and always remember the Seventh Rule.

(26:27):
You can follow Muhammad. Everybody atm af Nor right, that's mouf
Nor thanks very much, Muhammad.Everybody stick around. We will be right
back on the seventh Rule. Hi, everybody, Welcome back to the seventh
Rule with sarrock Lofton. Hello.Hello, We're still smiling because doctor nor

(26:48):
brings smiles wherever he goes. Allright, let's do the trivioids of the
week real quick, shall we.There's a distressed beacon originating from the Ficus
sector. The European hegemony they pronouncedit hegemony. That's the British way.
Hegemony is the American Way is aloose alliance formed in the early part of

(27:11):
the twenty second century. Klingons donot faint. Lieutenant Wharf has a childhood
ailment. Liam Diagan founded the neoTranscendentalists. H for all your Brace's needs.
Lieutenant Wharf performs the Klingon tea ceremonyfor Doctor Pulaski. Danilo O'Dell offers

(27:32):
Chief O'Brien some whiskey. Sometimes youjust have to bow to the absurd.
Jordie's Viizer shows him when people arelying, Doctor Pulaski and Commander Riker are
missing epithelial cells. I forgot that. I put an exclamation point at the
end of that sentence, so Ihad to ramp it up in the second

(27:55):
half of the sentence. Oh.That was another question I had for Muhammad.
Would you be able to know ifyou're missing epithelials? Literally, do
you have an epithelial cell counting?Yeah, we'll say you can kind of
feel sometimes up you're like, amI fuck? Am I missing epithelial cells
again? Right now? It's probablyin the lining of my stomach. I
can tell, like, you know, yeah, I'm done short a few

(28:15):
cells. Man, What the hell'sgoing on that morning five to ten?
How do you notice that? Butdoes the computer count epithelial cells? Come
on? Man? That was Thatwas another stretch for me too, that
you're right. That would have beena good question for Mohammed because Mohammed,
I think his best trait is thathe doesn't say yes or no. Usually

(28:40):
he says, well maybe not blahblah blah, but here's how theoretically they
might be able to someday. Right. He likes to theorize how could it
be possible? And that's always veryinteresting and that's great for the in universe
head canon, for people to explainaway things that we look at and go,

(29:02):
mmm, I don't know if that'sright. Yeah, that epithelial silk
count. I don't know about that. I got to that's a questionable thing.
You know. There were there werea couple things that I found to
be questionable actually, and now thatI'm looking back at them, I feel

(29:23):
like there were two surprisingly unnecessary scenes. One was Wharf and Wharf having the
measles. Fine, it's a bplot, okay, sure, whatever,
but there was no is there arest because it didn't follow up again?

(29:48):
The only I thought, Yeah,I like that it bond They bonded.
That was good for me, alittle bonding moment. But yes, I
can say I didn't understand why theybrought that up. What would the wharf
needsles have to do with this particularstoryline? Now, it would have been
nice, I thought, Actually ifthey didn't give the love interest girl in

(30:15):
this episode, uh you know BrennaOdell by the way, the actress that
played her. I thought she dida phenomenal job. She is said not
not only beautiful, but great actressand held her own I thought, as
good as any guest star I've seenso far of this show. So kudos
to her for just like I wantedmore of her you know got it,

(30:45):
But I think I know where you'regoing with this. Yeah, I would
have liked to see Warf hook upwith her, actually, because Riker always
gets the girl. It's it's tooobvious for Riker to to get the girl.
I would have liked to say Wharfbecause there was a moment where Worf
says something to Deft, like she'svery much like a kling On woman.
You know. But that's a brilliantThat's a brilliant idea because then the Measles

(31:08):
B plot could pay off. Itcould in some way tie in where he
meets whatever, or maybe he getslike lightheaded for a moment again and she
gathers him and catches him. He'slike, I'm sorry, I've got it
whatever, and then they kind ofbond that way, and then the B
plot ties in. Plus, Iyou know, I loved it. I

(31:33):
think it was hysterical. I watchedit a thousand times this one scene,
but I did feel like the sceneof Ryker hooking up with the girl in
this particular case was not necessary tothe story. It was funny. I'm
gonna tell my grandkids about how muchI enjoyed and laughed with it. But

(31:55):
I don't see how it was relevantto the story. I don't see where
paid off. I don't see howit. It didn't even like change Brenna
Odell the Breno Odell character in away that paid off later like sometimes it
just like you know, it lightenedher up and then so she went and
made the deal or they. Youknow, I didn't see what the payoff

(32:19):
was, did you? Only Rikersaw the payoff in that episode. Man,
the rest of us couldn't figure itout. He showed him some ankle
cleavage us. Yeah, yeah,it was it was it was look,
I guess you know, Riker alwaysgets the girl. It was so funny

(32:39):
because when he tells Picard, he'slike, I'll be right back. Actually,
I'll catch up with you guys later. It was like I was expecting
Pericard to be like that's enough,number one, Like you know, seriously,
bro, like we have we havework to do. You can't always

(33:00):
just follow your boner. But yeah, he's running off with her. He's
going over to Pulaska to kill people, like he's just doing whatever he wants.
Meanwhile, you have Picard just speakingfor everybody, saying no, I
don't want to marry your daughter,and nobody here does. No, I
don't want to be a clone,and nobody here does. Calmed everybody calmed

(33:21):
down, everybody just relaxed, talkabout it. What's I felt like.
I was just like, you guysare getting ridiculous right now, very disappointed.
Yeah. Yeah. I also didn'tlike the fact that they send Riiker
down to the planet. They knowthere's two hundred or so people there.
They send a one man away teamand he he, he contacts the station

(33:46):
and says, hey, guys,there's a problem, you know, and
he's trying to tell Picard like something. I guess like these people are hillbillies
or I don't know what he's tryingto say, but he's trying to say
something, and Picard, that's enough. Number one, just just but he
wouldn't even listen to because wouldn't youthink that you've dealt with so many different

(34:07):
situations as a start, you know, a starfleet captain, you've run into
different cultures, some premature, somemore advanced. You kind of have that
experience under your belt, so youwould know, I would think that you
would have to make certain accommodations basedon the people you're about to encounter.

(34:29):
So if I was going to encountera farming more you know, agriculture based
society, I would make certain accommodationsin that in that space, maybe in
a holid deck program, something thatmakes them feel more comfortable and at home.
I just don't see why you wouldn'twant to hear what the information was
so that you can make those necessaryadjustments, right, It just seems like

(34:52):
a logical thing. Yeah, itseems like they're still push the idea of
Picard as the stern, rigid captainthat's kind of closed minded, kind of
hard headed, kind of tough,kind of should probably lean on counselor Troy's

(35:16):
advice a little bit more, youknow what I mean. And it feels
I mean, he does certainly changeover time, which is a great you
know, character arc. You know, he he evolves a bit, but
it's it's definitely clear that in thesecond season he's still like rough around the
edges, He's still stern, he'sstill hard headed. Yeah, I think

(35:42):
that's yeah, you know, butyou know, there were moments that I
liked. I did like the scenewhere Jordi talks about how he's able to
stot lives in humans He's like,I mean it was fun him like that,
and there was just a natural kindof funny is it that Troy's like,
Okay, then what am I?What is my use on this ship

(36:05):
anymore? You got guying him showingup becoming everybody's counselor so I'm like,
okay, well, at least I'mpsychic. I can tell what people are
thinking. And now Jeordie comes along. He's like, oh yeah, my
sunglasses that I'm wearing. Tell mewhat She's like? What's left? What
do I do? No more?All of her all of her skills are

(36:27):
now redundant. They've all become useless. What does she do that someone else
doesn't do? They're gonna make herthe next transporter chief like under O'Brien,
ext it does. It does sucka little bit, but no, you're
right. I thought the same thing. I was like, finding a use

(36:52):
for her is becoming difficult for thewriters because they just giving out all of
her skills set to everyone else.And it was such and it was such
a great creation of a character.The first episode of season one, I
remember when we saw that. Iwas like, this is such a great

(37:12):
character that they have created, andI just I don't know what they're doing
with it. I can only imaginethat Marina Service was frustrated, because she
doesn't seem like the kind of personthat wouldn't share that frustration outwardly. I
also want to ask you a question, Ryan, and that is, to

(37:39):
my knowledge, this is the firsttime we heard a reference to a World
War Three event, which comes uplater in other iterations of Star Trek.
I remember it all obviously, mostrecently in the In and Picard when they

(38:00):
go back to Earth, they talkabout some kind of some type of World
War three scenario or situation, andI don't want to know. Did say
also, yeah, I believe inFirst Contact the movie they say it was
right after World War Three, andI believe they went back to twenty sixty

(38:21):
three. I think that's the yearfor First Contact, twenty three, twenty
sixty three, So that means,yeah, world War Three happened in the
forties or fifties, twenty forties orfifties. But yeah, Malinda, so
is she the first person to kindof introduce that concept? Was it was
there? Does that concept predate thisepisode in which they referred to World War

(38:45):
Three? The neo Transcendental as theEuropean Agemony, all of this movement happening
after this kind of extinction level eventthat happened on Earth that forces whatever humanity
to eventually become the Federation at somepoint. But was this the first mention
of it, because it seems tome to be I don't know if so

(39:09):
it was in the original series.I don't remember it being mentioned before.
It feels like it is to me, but I can't say with one hundred
percent certainty throughout the you know,the seventy or whatever episodes of the original
series, plus the four or fivemovies that were before this, and the

(39:34):
animated series. So that is aquestion for everybody in the comments below,
let us know. Was World Warthree mentioned in Star Trek before this episode
in nineteen eighty nine. I thinkI feel like there may have been a
passing mention in the original series,but I don't remember it specifically. So
please let us know, everybody.For all you Star Trek champs that know

(40:00):
everything, we appreciate you guys.So that's a good question though, because
I'm really thinking hard on it now. I love the music in this episode.
I wanted to ask you Sarak loftonWhat did you think of this guy
of Doctor Doolittle? What was hisname, Willie Wonka? Yeah, he

(40:25):
was Irish will Wonka. No,it was something he knows, Danillo Odell.
Oh, yeah, that's right,Danillo, like Danilo Gallinari, the
Italian basketball player. Yes. Uh, what did you think of him?
I know why they picked the actorto portray this, and that was during
the whiskey drinking scene, when he'smaking all those faces and all that.

(40:51):
I was like, is this likea Doctor Who actor? I don't know,
what did you think? I feltlike he was a little over the
time. It was just a littleover the top for me and a little
bit too stereotype and stylized. Ithink for me too. Like the whole
point, you know, drinking outof the flask, the whole Irish drinking

(41:15):
trope, I thought was just like, you know, it's been done before,
and it seemed like a bit ofa stereotype that they played on that
kind of a trope. I didn'treally care for it that much. I
did like, however, the momentwhen he offers the drink to O'Brien and
O'Brien looks up and at the captainlike yeo my boss is here, he's

(41:39):
he's like I would, but youknow, not what everybody's like, No,
no way put in holiday, leaveit on the transporter path. But
you know, that was a littlehuge over the top to me. And

(42:00):
then it also made me think,like, how the hell did these people
survive? They seemed like complete idiots, not even like basic idiots, Like
come on, like you'd have toknow how to be able to do stuff,
so I mean, farmers are not. They were making it look like

(42:20):
farmers are idiots, and to me, that's kind of the furthest for them.
Truth. They have so much knowledgeabout growing and the minerals and the
land and the cycles of the moonand the sun and all of these things
that like, there's a lot thatgoes into it, not to mention the
hard work and discipline of getting upin the morning and milk and cows and

(42:42):
doing stuff you have to do.So they're not just like lazy. They're
not lazy or unintelligent. They're actuallyquite intelligent and hard working people. So
that didn't make sense. And also, how could you survive as a people
if you don't have if you don'thave a leader that's you know, if
you have a leader like this guy. It just didn't seem like he would

(43:05):
be the leader that would make yoursociety thrive or survive. No, that's
a really good point about farmers isthat they need to be an expert in
a multitude of fields, because farmingis not just one thing like say,
for example, computer programming or teachinggeometry, you know, or or whatever,

(43:28):
or data entry. It's like theyhave to know a ton of different
fields within the agricultural world. That'sa good point. I hadn't thought of
that, but yeah, they've gottenthey know certainly know a lot about a
lot of things that I don't knowanything about about it. I mean,
the first time I heard about cloningand the idea of replicative fating is from

(43:50):
farmers, essentially, you know growth. She Yeah, so it's you know,
they're they're they're highly qualified, highlyintelligent people. I think they could
have downplayed some of the stereotypes alittle bit. They could have still had
them as a little as primitive andbasically using fire to cook and whatever they
were doing, but it didn't haveto be so over the top. I

(44:15):
was thinking of Michael Flatley's Lord ofthe Dance, you know, like you
know, hey, looking at howlike over the top? You know?
Yeah, And I'm gonna say something. We got to do our home run
of the day real quick. ButI feel like I feel like that a
lot of this may have been directingchoices. There are a couple times where

(44:36):
I thought that there were some actorswere given direction that was contrary or close
to contrary to what was on thepage. Like when I would think about
what was written on the page,I don't think it necessarily matched. Like
I don't think what the writer hadintended was what the director turned it in.

(45:00):
In some cases, maybe we'll havetime, especially with the interaction between
Brenna and Wharf when she was sayingwhen they were talking about security, he
Wharf walked away as if she justshut him down or made fun of him.
But the words didn't match that inmy opinion, if I could find

(45:23):
it real quick, I'll say exactlywhat it was. But and so I'm
not really sure. You know,it's always up to the director's interpretation of
what they want to do with it. But go back, everybody and check
out that specific scene with Wharf andBrenna, and it didn't feel like,
oh she said when he offers her. He said, maybe you should have

(45:47):
a job insecurity, and she says, if it's anything like babysitting, I'm
an authority, and then Wharf likesulks away and everybody laughs at him,
and I'm like, I don't thinkthat was written as an insult to him.
I feel like she was just kindof being playful and friendly. But
I don't know anyway, what's thehome run of the day to you?

(46:10):
Oh, the home run, it'sgoing to be Branda O'Dell, the woman
who played brand O'Dell. I thought, I thought she did a great job.
She hit all the beats, allthe notes. She was what she
was supposed to be, which isyou know, how they wrote her.
But I also like her performances.I thought her face was very just she

(46:36):
just ate up the camera for me. And sometimes the camera really loves certain
faces and people give great performances,and I thought she camera really loved her
face. Loved her performance. Shewas a challenge for Riker, she was
a challenge for Warf, she wasa challenge for for card Nobody really could
you know. They didn't want anybeef with her, and rightfully so,

(46:59):
so liked I liked her character,you know, I'm gonna agree with you.
It was definitely her played by Rosalinlandor also shout out to the music.
The composition was amazing. A fewof those scenes just had great music
at it, and especially when theyhad like the needle coming down, I
was like, what am I watching? All of a sudden, I'm scared.

(47:20):
Uh. Great good stuff by bothof them, and uh we also
have great stuff from some friends ofours and their names are as follows.
Homer Frazell, doctor Anne, MarieSiegel, Eve England Out in Wales,
Evett Blackman, Tom t J.Jackson, bay Out Missouri, Bill Victor
Aarukan hu Can, also Titus Moller, Darlena Marie, doctor Mohammed Nor that

(47:45):
you saw earlier, Tierney C.Deekman on a post, anil O Palatte,
Joe Balcearadi, Mike Goo d Q, Doctor Stephanie Baker, Carrie Schwent,
Faith Howel, Edward Foltz, MyLive from Tokyo, The Matt Boardman,
Chris McGee, Justin Weir, JakeBarrett, Jane Jorgenson, Henry Unger,

(48:08):
Allison Leech Hide, Julie Manusfe,Marcia Classic Schreyer, Greg kay Wickstrom
and of course, doctor Susan V. Gruner and Jason Oakin. Please make
sure you like this video, makesure you're subscribe to the channel. If
you are listening in, give usa five star rating and a nice review.
And remember, if you want tohear all of our other goodies on

(48:30):
our second podcast, you can findwherever podcasts are found the Seventh Rule too.
Just type in the Seventh Rule two. It's all the new Star Trek
series. We got them all coveredfor you. That's it. Stick around.
We got the Free for All upnext, we'll be right back on
the Seventh Rule. Hi, everybody, welcome back to the Seventh Rule.

(48:52):
It is the Free for All.It's time to party. We have Melissa
Longo here. We've got uh ohchickens. We've got doctor Stephanie Baker of
course, welcome back doctor Susan V. Gruner as well. We've got Allison's
leech hide. Oh, Sue's gota Prune juice and ChIL shirt. That's

(49:13):
pretty cool. Carrie Schwent is sportingthe Chicago Cubs gear. We've got Gregory
ken Zoe or Kay Wistrom. Wealso have Jason Oaken here with always a
cool background behind him. We've gotmy live in Tokyo who is sporting a
cool background with the legendary Susanne Summers. We've got Christopher Patrick McGee today and

(49:38):
the Matt Boardman. All right,First and foremost, we had a couple
non appearance mentions. Right. Ofcourse, we had Eve England, so
she had a non appearance mentioned inthe episode and in the review because she's
not here. Also question for youguys, Admiral more was mentioned. But

(50:00):
do we ever see or meet Admiralmore More at any point? Oh?
I don't think so. He workedwith us on d S nine Ronald D
Admiral Ronald D. Moore. Soundslike it's a uh no. Then yeah,

(50:24):
I only mentioned in dialogue, Ithink, so right, Okay,
yeah, were there any other nonappearance mentions? Nope, nope, nope.
I also had a Twitter girlfriend backin the day whose last name was
More. Shout out to her,So I say Twitter girlfriend, I met
ex girlfriend. It's a funny joke. All right. Guess is the IMDb

(50:52):
score? Oh that's me. It'syour job god, six point seven.
I'm gonna go with a six pointseven. See Paul Pierce. Anybody else

(51:15):
have any guesses? That doesn't alreadyknow five point nine eight. Hi,
I'm rolling the dice. Eight ohseven point two six eight six eight,
I say six, all right,the closest without going over Sue's gone.

(51:44):
It is you, Sue, youdidn't win, you get it. It's
a six point two today six pointtwo all right, And everybody watching go
back like fifteen seconds and watch Sue'sreaction when we're like the winner issue.
All right, Melissa Longa, enoughscrewing around? Can you please get us

(52:05):
off on the right track? Please? This is yours? So okay,
this episode was no. I findmyself sometimes getting caught in a trap watching
these new episodes, these older episodesnow in today times with today mindsets,

(52:31):
you know, and not thinking aboutthe time it was written and the time
it was you know, produced,And there was a whole different set of
rules cultural rules back in the eighties, late eighties, early nineties. So
and so I find it sometimes reallyeasy to find nitpicks. So I liked

(52:57):
to challenge myself to find the whatI got that was valuable out of and
these episodes. And there are acouple of things. One, I love
the scene scenes, multiple scenes betweenWharf and Pulaski talk about wonderful relationship building

(53:21):
and that ceremony, that cling onceremony, that that was a nice little,
you know, nugget of cling onculture put in there, So I
I really enjoyed that. But Ialso thought that that they approached some topics

(53:44):
and maybe it was not conscious,but but they were kind of forward thinking
in the way that they were.They kind of skimmed the surface with One
was Brenna when she was in Riker'squarters, which made me uncomfortable at first

(54:04):
because I have complex feelings about Rikerand especially with his regards with regards to
his relationship with Troy. But one, she was the one who owned her
sexuality in that moment, and Ithought that was pretty freakin' rad, because

(54:28):
you know, women are allowed toown their sexuality and enjoy the pleasures kernel
pleasures just as much as men areallowed to. And I like that they
explored that. Also, they're kindof exploring the idea of monogamy or lack

(54:49):
thereof, in with the view ofbeing in the twenty fourth century. There's
nothing that says that that relationship inthe twenty fourth century will look anything like
they do now, or even onehundred years ago. So I like that
they explore that too. And thenthe other thing I'll throw out there is

(55:15):
the exploration of consent, which tokind of skim the surface of but taking
somebody's DNA without their consent is notright, But also denying people the choice

(55:36):
to donate their DNA is not necessarilyright either, And I feel like the
crew of the Enterprise denied the entirecrew of the Enterprise that choice by saying
just because Riker and Pulaski and Picarddon't want to donate their DNA to be

(55:57):
clones, that doesn't mean everybody onthe ship, nobody ownmanship would want to
donate their you know, their DNA. So yeah, So I think it
asks questions, or it makes meanswer ask questions that that are far more
deep than it might appear from thisepisode. Excellent points. Thank you very

(56:24):
much, Melissa Longo. We've gotStephanie Baker in Seattle aka missus Mike Goo.
How are you today, Stephanie andwhat did you think of this episode?
Hi? Everybody, I am wearingthis shirt which you didn't notice,
some kind of only you have that'sfrom Garrett. I like this episode.

(56:50):
I would have given it like aseven point two, I think. But
I like it because I think thisis exactly what star Fleet is made for,
mission to find some lost people andthen solve a problem. And I
like how it mixed mixed mixes scienceand mayhem in a way. I especially
enjoyed the tone set by the music. In the very beginning, there was

(57:15):
suspenseful music when Wharf is on thebridge, kind of sweating and growling,
and you're wondering what kind of episodeis this going to be? And then
and then then when they're doing thetea ceremony that Melissa mentioned, they have
some of the Klingon theme in there. The I think it's from Wrath of

(57:36):
Khan, those those notes. Andthen when the colonists arrived with all of
their animals, which is amazing,the live animals on set, then we
get the lighthearted kind of Irish musicthat kind of sets the tone, and
I felt like it kind of carriesyou through as they're going, you know,
dealing with the colonists and what's goingto happen. And then then when

(57:58):
we meet the Mariposans, the suspensemusic comes back and you're like, oh
my gosh, that was, likehow I stopped it, and it was
halfway through the episode that the Mariposainsshow up and then there's a whole nother
thing going to happen, and nowwe do have suspense again, and this
time there's real jeopardy because they're goingto try to steal DNA. And I

(58:20):
love the needles coming, you know, when they are holding the needles,
it's very a voyager borrowed that fromtheir pilot and caretaker. That seem you
know, like going straight down intothe stomach. And yeah, I think
that's the main thing there was.Oh oh, the last thing I wanted

(58:40):
to add in this section was thebody acting as well. That I thought
that especially the character Odell, thecharacter Graham the Prime Minister, and Wharf,
their body acting when they weren't evenwhen they weren't speaking. Odell was
running around and like going in betweenpeople and diving, and then Graham was

(59:01):
very calm and serious to kind ofreflected more like science. And then Wharf,
when he blocked Odell from approaching Picardat the triple lift, he used
his body. There wasn't dialogue,there was just body language or body acting,
and I thought that was done reallywell done in this episode, great

(59:22):
stuff, Thank you very much,missus. Mike Goo. Also, we've
got doctor Susan v. Gruner here. What's up, doctor Sue? What
did you think of this one?Well? I love the first scenes with
Warf and doctor Pulaski. Remember westarted out not liking her. She was

(59:46):
did not treat data will and hercharacter I think thus far has shown the
most growth that stuff with her,with the Klingon ceremony, everything is pretty
amazing. Her keeping the secret fromeverybody else. I thought, what a

(01:00:07):
great character. I love Gates McFaddenas Doctor Crusher, but I really love
doctor Pulaski. What a dilemma.I want them both. There's some things
that I wasn't crazy about with thisepisode, but I'll talk about those and
what's left and said. But andalso I agreed with what Stephanie said,

(01:00:30):
there's some there are some great momentson this episode with people doing things and
not saying a word. It's amazing. It's great called body acting? Is
that literally? What it's called physicalnonverbal communication? The French call it.

(01:00:54):
Thanks very much, doctor Susan V. Gruner. Alison leech Hide is here.
What's up, Alison? What didyou think of this episode. I
like this episode, and for thereasons that we're already mentioned. Pulaski and
Wharf are great buddies. I lovetheir scenes together and I've loved them like

(01:01:16):
four episodes. You know, theywork well together. So yes, watching
the tea ceremony and I love thatPulaski' is like, oh no, no,
I'm going to take the antidote rightnow. I'm going to do the
full thing, like I'm in this. You're doing this for me, I
am doing this for you. AndI think it's a great way of showing
her all right, her growth injust becoming a member of this family.

(01:01:40):
And I really love that. Sothat's that's my favorite part. And I'm
sure they all loved having all thoseanimals on set a ton of fun because
you know, you never want towork with children and animals, and they
had a lot, so that's fun. I loved like all of them on
the transport with all the it alwaysgot me like why did they transport the

(01:02:02):
hey, Like why did that haveto come to you? Yes, I'm
like why. That's just a lotof set dressing that's not necessary, but
you know, it makes it lookfun and ridiculous, which I think they
were kind of leaning into a bitof ridiculousness with what are they called that

(01:02:22):
they're not the Mario Posens, becausethose are the cloners, the Brinloydy thank
you and you know, so theywere really leaning in on that. So
yes, it's fun to, youknow, lean in on the ridiculousness.
They were a little heavy with stereotypes, which is harder now than it was
then. And I do feel likeI didn't even know what Melinda's like original

(01:02:45):
idea for this script was, andit was really about her commentary on immigration
in the United States, so that'skind of been lost over the rewrites.
So that's kind of sad. Butit's a fun episode. Yes, it
has some issues that have not agedwell, and but I don't tend to

(01:03:07):
skip it because I love watching Wharfand Pulaski so well. Thank you very
much, Alison Leech hide. Uh, what's up? Greg K? What
did you think of this one?You you snuck in right before we hit
record that you loved this episode?I do, and I know this relationship

(01:03:31):
does seem real bad, and Iagree with what Melissa said earlier, like
you cannot to view it in thatlens you know, and it was great
up until the very end, wherelike you're never gonna have a really good
repopulation like a small amount of people, like that's where you have to write

(01:03:51):
it. And so everything was goodup until that. You know, Like
I'm gonna paint with the broad strokeshere because I think Ryan and Strack everybody
else that came before me covered everything. It was just lighthearted and fun and
I love those kinds of episodes.And by the way, with Riker and
Troy's relationship, they must have anopen relationship, right like oh yeah,

(01:04:15):
yeah, like at this point,like Riker has done that so many times,
like you can kind of That's whatI'm assuming it was. It was
a charming episode. The Neo Transcendentalistsor the brim Loody, this one just
represented balance to me, kind oflike a balance between technology and what they

(01:04:41):
call neo transcendentalism, which is whatthe BERMLOIDI represent, right, like the
rejection of technology. They kind ofcame together at the end and said,
hey, you know, you haveto have kind of both to have a
complete society. And that's what Imean. I'm in it, so I

(01:05:03):
have to take a break from computersa lot of the time, I guess,
and I live in Hawaii, soI have a great place to go
and do that. Other than that, I think Danilo Odell is his name.
This comedy was on point, likehe had me cracking up. Reminded

(01:05:23):
me of Dick Van Dyke a bit, you know, with a lot of
his in Mary Poppins, I shouldsay, like a lot of his expressions
kind of like the same. Yeah, I'm not gonna deny Riker and Brenda
Odell's relationship is dicey like that.Probably there's a lot of things that wouldn't

(01:05:45):
fly too much. But you know, I thought she was great. I
thought she had a lot of powerand she was really the leader. She
was the boss of her dad,who is the leader right of the rim
lity. Yeah, I think thisepisode could have been its own spin off
series, Like if not in itself, but you can do. This was

(01:06:08):
like quintessential sci fi, you know, like it had twist and turns at
every I was like, oh,this is going to be a Pulaskian wharph
episode. It's like, oh,oh, there's like a whole different group
of people. And then the clonescame in and I was like, where
did they? Where did they comefrom? But oh shoot, sorry,

(01:06:29):
I hope that Uh it's too loud, but uh yeah, to me,
it just represented a balance and Ithink that's what we need in life.
Yeah, there's a lot of otherthings I can say about it, but
I'll save that for sounds good.Thanks very much, Greg way out in
Hawaii, Thanks for hanging out withus. Also, we've got Carrie Schwent

(01:06:53):
here feeling very festive in her greenChicago Cubs sweater. What'd you think of
this one? Did you love it? I do? I'm a sucker for
for anything Irish. I got myBarni Blarney Castle behind me and my Saint
Patti's Day of shirt. Yeah,I'm a sucker for all of it.
And according to ancestor DNA, I'mactually eight percent Irish, so I'm genetically

(01:07:16):
predisposed to like to like the Irish. And the father and daughter they just
they every single scene they absolutely stole. Were the xcents a little bit exaggerated?
Sure, but I didn't mind becausethey both sold it. She has
got some serious moxie and she wasvery much a match for Riker, I

(01:07:42):
think, and their whole thing inRiker's quarters, which chalked it up to
she had had it and she neededto scratch, and we'll leave it at
that. Spurs the clones clones goatYeah, I'm I'm with Riker on that
one. I personally wouldn't want aclone of me. I'm too big of
a clutch. No one needs aclone of me, frankly, but yeah

(01:08:04):
he could. There probably would havebeen a handful of people on the ship
that probably would have been would havebeen okay with it. And doctor Pulaski
finally, you know, completely,Wan won me over with her standing there,
you know, lying up a cars, standing there, crossing, crossing
her fingers in the air, justway too absolutely super super sweet. Couple

(01:08:29):
a couple of things, A coupleof things I noticed, and they're like
a blink and you miss it.When Riker and Pulaski are knocked out in
the Prime Minister's office and they getdragged away their their eyes are both open
to start with. But if youwatch Riker as he go, right before
he gets out of frame, helooks directly at the camera for like a

(01:08:50):
split second, he looks directly atthe camera. I paused a couple of
times to make sure I wasn't goingcomplete completely bonkers. Uh yeah, yeah,
Okay, Now I have the wholething about the wharf and and and

(01:09:12):
Papa Odell sharing there, sharing there, you know, we we drama whiskey.
But I'll save that for for later. But I decided as far as
the limerick for this episode goes,and apparently the limerick has the vague origins
in Ireland, nobody's completely sure,but they the prevailing opinion is it probably

(01:09:34):
start started there, started there.So I decided that Brenna's doing all her
cleaning and cleaning in the in thecargo bay, and he's all irritated with
all the men for not helping outand doing anything like that like they usually
do. She's composing some poetry becauseshe doesn't know what else to do.

(01:09:56):
Well, she's keeping her mind busywhile her hand while her hands are busy.
So here we go. Isn't thatjust like a bloody man helping us
with yours? You're not You're justnot a fan. You'd rather just drink
and flirt with a wink. Whywe don't kill you? I don't understand,
And apologies of I ended up havinga little bit of a hire slip

(01:10:21):
into there. I find that happenssometimes, especially if I'm watching young Sheldon,
I start to talk something like themtoo. It's kind of funy to
catch myself doing it after a while. But yeah, with the with the
whiskey talk, we'll say for afterall right, great, thank you very
much, Carrie. You reminded meof something that our good friend Eve England

(01:10:45):
uh pointed out a couple of daysago. Maybe she was saying that she
wasn't coming in, but she didcatch Riker breaking the fourth wall. I
missed it on the watch, butlet's see if we can't pull it up
here just real quick, because shesent in a little video of it here.
It is, so watch Riker.There's the look. See it's really

(01:11:13):
quick. Yeah, it's very It'sa blink and you miss it kind of
thing. There he is, he'slooking at you. Now watch it totally

(01:11:36):
anyway. All right, good stuff, Thank you very much, Carrie.
Jason the outrageous Oaken is smiling becausehe's like, this is the first time
all year that I've seen something thatI missed before. So great stuff there.
What do you got for us today? Jason's It certainly a thank you
and you know, up the LongLadder is. To me, it's again

(01:11:59):
one of those quintessential second season episodes. There's certainly wonderful moments, and the
Pulaski Wharf moments probably the best ofthem all. There's there are quite a
few actually science fiction ideas here thatthat are really interesting. I mean,
this whole thing about the I guess, the rejection of technology or kind of
going back to the primitive it issomething that was even raised in the original

(01:12:23):
series and in the infamous Way toEden, and we see it again on
Deep Space and Paradise. So thiskind of stuff keeps repeating over and over
again and in a very interesting way. I mean, there are quite a
few things to say about that,and i'll you know, certainly save them
for later as to what you throwout along with technology. But yeah,

(01:12:45):
when it comes to I Guess theclones and the control of your body,
it's basically it's cloning, and it'sthere are a lot of different themes,
and perhaps they're not explored as youwould want them to be explored, but
maybe you know, as Melissa said, its par for the course in terms
of you know, you're looking atsomething that was written in an teen eighties,
so you really have to understand thatthey probably weren't going to go that
way, but there were a lotof themes here and frankly, you know

(01:13:09):
the fact that it ended up inRick Colby's hands. I mean this is
I wouldn't say this is his bestouting, but the episode moves swiftly.
It certainly is fun. Whatever youthink of the stereotypes, and I do
know some people found in the offensiveeven at the time, and they certainly
don't play well now you know somany years later. But yeah, certain

(01:13:30):
things that Rick Colby did in termsof the look there. I think there's
about a one and a half almostyou know, one and a half a
minute one er in seeson where thecard sits at his desk, what walks
around and kind of comes back.You don't often see shots that long.
Yeah, you do from certain directors, but not often. Sometimes it's just
basically, you know, just singlestwo shots that they go with. So
this was interesting and a lot ofscenes, especially on the bridge. It

(01:13:55):
starts with a little bit of acamera move and sort of sweeping camera move
that pans along with the characters andmoves around, so at least it gives
you a little bit of interest,and I think they certainly milked a lot
out of the Mariposa scenes because theyused the same hallway. If you notice,
it's really the same hallway that theywalk down. Did they just moved
the statue to a different log andmoved the statue. One actually had one
hand up and the other had theother hand up, so that two statues

(01:14:19):
very interesting ones, and there wasa very There was also a wonderful use
of uh I guess masking tape withglass walls, and it would looked like
blue construction tape. Uh it reallygives you kind of an interesting look.
So yeah, it did have itdid have some interest to it, and
Matt maybe you know, you canelaborate in that a little bit. I

(01:14:39):
think when the Enterprise was at leastin the remaster shot, when the Enterprise
was uh I guess orbiting Mariposa,there was a reflection in the rings.
I don't know if it was inthe original, but it certainly wasn't the
remastered version, So I don't knowif that was put in. I somehow
I doubt it was in the original, but I don't know. I don't
remember that at all. So that'sthat was kind of an interesting thing.
So again, I mean it wasvision more interesting perhaps than others. It

(01:15:01):
had certain sort of nice moments toit. Overall, again, it's to
me a sort of a quintessential episodeof the second season. And again,
I'll save a lot of this forlater, but I think it may have
been one of the most rewritten episodesof the second season. Really cool,
A lot to stick around for that, it felt like it it felt like
there are some things that may havebeen removed or certainly removed, is what

(01:15:24):
it felt like to me. Butthat's just what I think. What do
you think my live in Tokyo withthe cool purple sweater? She got the
memo or purple team? What doyou think? So many storylines? As
a viewer, I like the convolutedweb that we have to untangle in this
episode. The imagery, it's likegoing to an Irish bar, you know,

(01:15:45):
it's always filled with bric a bracfrom here and there. The way
they decorated them, we were visuallybombarded with a veritable cornucopia of mixed images.
I loved all the different things tolook at, Sue's favorite green crop
top, fisherman's knit sweater, theFrench press, on the on the conference
room in when Piccard's talk from thePM without the plunger taken out, what
were they doing drinking grounds there?It was a lot of imagery going on

(01:16:10):
there. I mean, it washard to keep up with sometimes, but
it matched the various storylines very smoothlythough, so I thought it was a
well blended episode. Interestingly, theyuse the British pronunciation of hegemony. They
use hegemony, which the Brits rationalizedby saying the hard g in the original
Greek. Okay, fine, Butthen later they use the word kojin and

(01:16:30):
they use the soft g, whichis also derived from a Latin hard G
based word called koge. So Idon't know. That was just a small
point about the language that was used. I was curious why an America would
have pronounced hegemony. But the bigmessage that I took away from this episode
was the PM says you would bepreserving yourself and rikers like human beings of

(01:16:54):
other ways of doing that. Wehave children, and this made me cringe
a little bit because I know alot of childless women who get incredibly tired
of feeling the constant need to explaintheir life choices. Some folks just don't
want kids, and that was onething, and then I recalled it earlier
this week. The great innovator infree jazz from the sixties, Carla Bla,

(01:17:17):
passed on. This person to myright the shoulder. She leaves a
body of music spending decades that preservesher. Suzanne Summers, I think is
most well known not just as anentertainer, but for her business acumen over
a long career on and off thescreen and stage. Sure she has kids

(01:17:40):
and grandkids, but that's not thefocus of what preserves her legacy. So
it really is a curious question tome, how do we preserve ourselves?
And I think maybe the writers wantedus to cogitate on that one for a
bit. Very good, Thank youso much, my Live and Tokyo.
However, right now we've got ChristopherPatrick McGee aka McGillicutty. Cool. That's

(01:18:09):
I love, Lucy reference. What'sup? What do you think of this
one? Dark Lord? This hasalways been kind of a favorite of mine.
And yeah, this is will bethe only time I show my full
name. Don't worry. And McGillicutty, that's the nickname my mother uses for
me when she's in a good mood. Of course in trouble, she'd call

(01:18:30):
me Christopher Patrick McGee. I'm sureBen Cisco more than a few times called
for Jacob Isaac Cisco. Yeah,so in this episode, no Wesley Crusher,
by the way, he was absentin this one. Takes place in
the Fika sector. I'm guessing that'sin the Fern cluster. But I always

(01:18:55):
found We'll mention this though it was. I found it interesting. Just a
small little thing that I noticed isthat during the be Men on Mariposa for
the first time, they catch itlike in mid transport. If I'm not
mistaken. Up until now, allthe transports that we've seen have been shown

(01:19:15):
either not from beginning to end afull transport, or you know, occurred
off screen somewhere. So it's kindof a nice choice by the director to
show part of it because you don'tneed to see the whole thing anymore.
We've seen it for almost two fullseasons now. So Also I noticed something
rather interesting watching this episode, andI'm not the only one who noticed this.

(01:19:39):
One of the five clones on Mariposamust have been a clone of Eddie
Murphy. I swear that's what Ithought. I thought the same thing,
you know, because the clone neverlooks quite as good as the originals.
So it's a clone. Eddie Murphytry to get Eddie Murphy, but he

(01:20:00):
couldn't do it. He was orderedon wish he answered the casting call for
Eddie Murphy type. They have tripletsthat are Eddie Murphy type. Quite surprising.

(01:20:23):
As for my memorable quote of theepisode, I could have gone with
replicative fading. I thought it wasan interesting term. But instead I'll go
with one I think even more interesting, and that is every moment of pleasure
in life has to be purchased byan equal moment of paint. Thanks very
much, Chris. Awesome he manshirt. By the way, Sorry I

(01:20:44):
missed that. Look everybody, it'sthe Matt boardman. He's hanging out with
us. Thank goodness for that.What do you think of this episode?
Oh, this one's always fun.I mean, yes, there are things
that people I guess point to theepisode of you know, stereotypes and whatever,
but I always I don't know.There's just so many fun moments in

(01:21:05):
this one. This was a funone to work on. I was as
I was reading through the Memory Alphaentry for this, I noticed that there
was a comment at the end ofit that said that if you remember the
screen in which Picard is looking throughthe manifest of what was on the Mariposa,
and one of the things that wason there was that in the original

(01:21:30):
it was alder On, which isa reference to Star Wars, and it
got changed to Aldeboran, which Iwas the one who changed that, because
yeah, that particular graphic was wasnot it wasn't really recoverable from what they
originally filmed, so I had togo in. I had to recreate that

(01:21:54):
whole graphic. The other thing thatthey were concerned about is that there were
a ton of references to US companiesand they were really worried that once you
were able to read that that mightcause some legal issues. And so,
I mean there was stuff like ATand T was on there. I'm trying

(01:22:15):
to think of. There was somestuff like I think one of the Bell
telecommunication companies on there. Obviously theydon't exist anymore right now, but but
yeah, so, but one ofthe things was the Aldron, and I
remember Mike being like, well,as fun as that is, I think
maybe there might be some issues,so we had to change it to Eldeborn.

(01:22:35):
I love there's so many comedy momentsin this that I that I absolutely
love. One of the things andit's you can see this on the DVD
and Blu Ray extras now, butit's there is a moment that we got
to see when they were going throughall the footage that they found where you
have Gene Roddenberry, Michael Dorn andBarry Ingram and there singing this like Irish

(01:23:02):
drinking song or something like that.It's the three of them, and I
think they might even have it onYouTube right now. But it was just
so much fun to see everybody justkind of and and Wharf who was always
so stoic, you know, andhave Michael Doran just you know, they're
just kind of damming there and andeverything was absolutely fun. And then the
other the other one thing that Ireally enjoyed is is when, uh,

(01:23:29):
when Dano takes the drink, thekling On drink, because he's complaining about
like the Syntha Hall, you know, like this stuff is not this stuff
is swill, right, and sohe drinks that and then and then he
gets in trouble and and the facethat he makes and he does that that,
oh, my dad, you know, as he's trying to recover from
that. And I always had Ijust remember as a teenager having the biggest,

(01:23:55):
biggest crush on rosalind land Or inher role in this this and I
don't know, she's very she presentedherself very well because, and has been
pointed out by other people, I'vebeen very blessed in my life to be
surrounded by strong women, you know, for my mom, my sister,

(01:24:15):
or my sisters. You know,I just I don't know. And so
that's always been a staple of mylife is women who who are strong,
who have a purpose, who knowwhere they're going in life and when.
And it's funny as I look backat this now, I'm you know,
I look at this character in thatsame vein in that you know, I

(01:24:38):
mean, there's kind of that theykind of play it up like, oh,
the you know, the men justwant to goof around and whatever and
the women and the one who arein charge. But but for me growing
up that you know, the factthat she took charge and that she essentially
was the leader of this community inmany ways, that was not out of
the norm for me, because thatis how I was raised, was that,

(01:25:00):
you know, men and women takeequal parts. Now, obviously in
this one, you know, themen were kind of bumbling drunks. But
but for for me to have awoman in a role of authority like this
was not out of the norm forme and I and I always appreciate that
because I you know, that's oneof those things about Star Trek that I

(01:25:23):
that I enjoy most is that,you know, it teaches us that,
you know, everybody has something tocontribute. It doesn't matter what you look
like, where you come from,we all have something to contribute. And
and that's something that's help shaped,you know, my approach to life and
how I interact with people is that, you know, everybody and every one

(01:25:43):
of us were on equal footing.And you know, I don't know,
I don't know if that makes anysense or or if I'm just rambling.
But the other thing I thought wasparticularly interesting about this episode is that Melinda
snodgrass Is initial concept for this episodewas that it was it was going to
be about immigration, because she wasnot a fan of the US's immigration policy.

(01:26:06):
And this is one thing that alwayssurprises me about well not as surprises
me, but I always think isreally neat about Star Trek is how timely
those stories and those principles and thethings that it talks about are especially with
you know, not to get political, but what you know, things that
are going on in the world rightnow, and how interesting it is that

(01:26:28):
that your perspective and how these episodeshave the ability to affect us in different
ways and take on different meanings,but also at the same time means some
of the same things that they didback then based upon where we're at in
our lives. That is great stuff. Thank you very much, the Matt
boardman. All right, Jake's take, uh srock final thoughts. Yeah,

(01:26:57):
My, I'm going to go alittle bit on left field here, and
that's I'm going to talk about alittle bit with mythology and symbolism. So
when they were in the medical ward, there was a moment there in the
background that you could see this particularsymbol which I drew here on my paper.

(01:27:19):
Here. Do you see that symbolright there? Now? You see
that a lot everywhere you go.And the United States Army adapted that symbol
for their medical core in nineteen ohtwo. And that symbol is called the
cadusius And maybe you can pronounce itbetter than I can, but it refers

(01:27:42):
to the symbol of Hermes or Mercuryor thought multiple names for I guess the
same entity or being. But that'swhere the origin of the symbol comes from.
And it's a staff that's wrapped bytwo snakes and it has the wings
on it. There's a similar symbolthat is a staff that's wrapped by one

(01:28:09):
snake, which has more relevancy tothe medical community. That's called the Asclepias
the rod of Asclepias. And Ithink it's interesting to me that it is
something that is being used in Starfleet, that this medical symbolism still exists those

(01:28:34):
many hundreds of years later. Itstill represents the medical profession and imagery and
symbolism. So I thought that wassomething that just stood out to me when
I saw it. It's actually somethingyou see that the one snake one in
Europe when you're traveling at pharmacies,that's pretty much the symbol for you know,

(01:28:56):
a pharmacy is here somewhere, right, So yes, you see this
symbol. It's just something that we'vealways that we always see. I just
thought I would I like that particularthing because it is something that has lasted
throughout the ages of time. It'sthousands of years old, if I'm not

(01:29:17):
mistaken, so it's not something new. And then the other aspect that I
wanted to talk about was and it'skind of relative to mythology, and that
is the reference in this particular episodeto the World War Three and the movements

(01:29:38):
that happen after that with the neoTranscendentalists and what transpires and essentially the entire
Federation storyline hinges upon the aftermath ofthis World War Three storyline. I believe
that they've talked about in several shows. And I guess there's the part of

(01:30:03):
me that you know when you parallelit Today's what's happening in today in the
world today, as far as youknow, the the uprising and the and
the and the conflict that we seein the world. I see a lot
of that originating in in text thatalmost predicts that outcome, and so it

(01:30:31):
becomes almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. And my question is if this too,
is something that we are constantly likehearing and being exposed to in the
subtlety of the backdrop of what wewatch and we love. But they keep
referring to this tragedy of this tragicevent. Are we heading in towards a

(01:30:57):
self fulfilling prophecy in this much ofthe same way that we see conflicts in
the rest of the world kind ofreaching out to those same kinds of fulfillment.
And that's where I'm concerned with.Are there steps that can be taken
to avoid fulfilling these prophecies as thereare things that we can do to not

(01:31:24):
see these kinds of results. Eventhough we do like the idea of the
Federation and the ideals that it standsfor, and this place that we get
to after, it seems like there'sa major, mass kind of destruction that
has to happen before. And sothat's where my concern lies, because it's

(01:31:50):
not something that just affects us inthis world realm of fantasy and fiction,
but it also something that comes verymuch true in our real life experiences of
what we see happening around the world. And you know, I just wonder
what steps can be taken so thatwe can get the good, positive outcomes

(01:32:13):
that we desire without also suffering throughthe trials and tribulations that lead to those
outcomes. I'll just leave it atthat. Awesome. Everybody in the comments
below, let us know. Doyou believe in the possibility of self fulfilling
prophecies? Seems like those happen quitea bit. If so, let us

(01:32:35):
know in the comments below your thoughtson that, And with that, we'd
like to say thank you very muchtoo. Melissa a. Longo, Stephanie
Baker, Gregory Kay Out in Hawaii, Carrie Schwent, Alison Leech High,
doctor Susan B. Kruner, Jasonthe Outrageous Oaken Mike, I'm sorry,
my live in Tokyo, Chris.Sorry, I have this name, Christopher

(01:32:59):
Patrick McGee. You got to shortenit for me. I'm dying over here
aka McGillicuddy. We've got Matt Boardman, the Matt Boardman. Thank you all
very much, mis rocklofton myself,Melissa Longo, Aaron Eisenberg, We'll see
you next time. Until then,always remember the seventh rule.

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Washing Feet | With Dr. Mohamed Noor |TNG 2.18, "Up the Long Ladder" | T7R #250

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