Conspiracy

David McCallum's got a mad neck-thing going on.	That's 'cos he's got a critter in him.	Sometimes you have to pay women to open their mouths this wide.	Censored by the Beeb.
(more images below)

Overview: The strange behavior of high-ranking officers leads Picard to uncover an alien conspiracy within Starfleet.
Writer: Tracy Torme
Director: Cliff Bole

Bowdy: Oh, who's that?

Anon: It's you.

Bowdy: Oh shit! Ah well, I thought this was better than a lot of first season episodes because it had a bit of a threat to it, at least. But I slept through over half an hour of it. It's been at least 10 years since I last saw it, so it's difficult to tell.

Anon²: Yeah, there was beer spillage as well.

Bowdy: Yeah, and you wiped your arse on my T-shirt.

Anon²: (laughs) Yeah, I did warn you.

Bowdy: It's difficult to be objective about this one.

Anon²: (interrupting) Card-count: we got one each. Sorry, go ahead.

Bowdy: What card did you get?

Anon²: Some outpost.

Bowdy: What about you?

Anon: Alien Abduction.

Bowdy: That's the one I went for. I didn't know the name of it though.

Anon²: No, you shouted it out at the same time.

Bowdy: So, it's only half of one.

Anon²: We don't have half points in this game.

Bowdy: Oh my God! We round up to the next whole number? Okay.

Anon²: What fucking sports have half-points? Football? Rugby? Cricket? Name one.

Bowdy: I can't name one at the minute.

Anon²: No, because there aren't any, so you can't award it. You can't say you half-won that point at golf.

Bowdy: You do get half points.

Anon²: No you don't.

Bowdy: You half holes.

Anon²: Yeah, you half holes.

Bowdy: So it's half a point.

Anon²: No, it isn't half a point!

Bowdy: Don't be perdantic, you prick! Are we going to talk about this episode or not?

Anon²: Look, let's put it this way...

Bowdy: Let's talk about the episode, okay?

Anon²: No. The card thing is the way it is because it's the way it is.

Bowdy: I want to talk about the episode. I don't want to talk about cards and perdanticness, okay? I'd rather talk about the episode. Give me your opinion about the episode.

Anon²: It was pretty reasonable. Lots of flaws.

Bowdy: Like what?

Anon²: One of them was that they got from the Outer Rim back to Earth in like, two minutes.

Bowdy: Two minutes? Merciful hour!

Anon²: And Data got told to shut the fuck up three times. First time it was by himself.

Bowdy: And also by Riker.

Anon²: Next, Worf-watch: basically, he doesn't wash.

Bowdy: Oh, Data was cut off by the computer too.

Anon²: Oh, then there's Geordi. What did Geordi do?

Anon: He was in it.

Bowdy: Yeah, he was in it. He was at the helm most of the time.

Anon²: And, as we pointed out in a recent commentary, Wesley isn't in the last two episodes.

Bowdy: Maybe he was having his period.

Anon²: Yeah. Basically, I've got lots of stuff written down. There was this woman called Una Kareyalodopous, something like that.

Anon: I believe it was Onna Karapleedeez.

Bowdy: Onna Karapleedeez, that's right. Una's a name you get in Ireland, funnily enough.

Anon: Like Una Stubbs, but she's from Leicester. Anyway, there were lots of good names in this episode: Captain Rixx, Tryla Scott, Walker Keel and the planet Dytallix B. There's some real sci-fi names there.

Bowdy: Unfortunately, the aforementioned Captain Rixx, he ended up in quite a messy scene at the end.

Anon: You're actually thinking of Dexter Remmick here.

Anon²: Yeah. As we mentioned before, the gruesome bit at the end was actually banned on the BBC over here.

Bowdy: We got it in Ireland earlier than you guys did. It's true, we did.

Anon²: Anyway, I bought this on video and I don't remember if it was in there or not.

Bowdy: It wasn't in.

Anon: Actually, I think it was, dude.

Bowdy: Anyway, this wasn't the BBC version.

Anon²: I don't know. I think this is the first time I've seen that bit.

Bowdy: It definitely wasn't in the BBC version.

Anon²: I think I may have seen it now. I bought those videos 8, maybe 9 years ago. I dunno, I just don't recollect it.

Bowdy: That wasn't what was shown on BBC, or Sky, wherever it was. They didn't transmit it with the messed-up carcass like in Monty Python - what do you call that?

Anon: Mr. Creosote?

Bowdy: No, the one in The Trials of Life, or whatever it was called. Ah, The Meaning of Life, the bit where the guy's carcass explodes.

Anon²: Oh, the "waffer-thin mint."

Anon: What are you guys like? That was Mr. Creosote.

Bowdy: Oh yeah, that was Mr. Creosote. That's what I'm saying.

Anon²: Well, you weren't.

Bowdy: Anyway, that's what this reminded me of. I've definitely seen it before in Ireland.

Anon²: Ah, fuck off about that.

Bowdy: Irish TV used to have it on before BBC2. I presume in the UK, they had to censor parts of it; but in Ireland they just showed it.

Anon²: Okay, so how do we rate this episode, as the season goes?

Bowdy: In comparison to the rest of the season, I know there weren't many good episodes. The Armus episode was good.

Anon: Are you serious?

Bowdy: Yeah, the Armus - Skin of Evil episode was good. I liked that one.

Anon²: That went very poor at the end.

Anon: We can talk about the whole season later, but I think for us, The Big Goodbye was good.

Bowdy: Which one was The Big Goodbye?

Anon: That was the Dixon Hill episode.

Bowdy: Oh, the holodeck one.

Anon: Then there was the Bynars episode and Where No One Has Gone Before.

Bowdy: Ah, Where No One Has Gone Before. That was the first one?

Anon: No, the first one was Encounter at Farpoint. Where No One Has Gone Before is the one with The Traveler, the intergalactic pikey. The Battle was quite good too.

Bowdy: Which one was The Battle?

Anon²: That was the Ferengi Thought Maker one.

Anon: Yeah, Picard got a headache.

Anon²: The Picard Maneuver was in it too.

Bowdy: Ah okay, it's been so long since I've seen the first season.

Anon²: Anyway, Conspiracy wasn't bad. Not great. I'd give it 6 or 7, I guess.

Anon: Another thing this episode had was the first Bolian, Captain Rixx.

Bowdy: Yeah, quite a cool Bolian, actually.

Anon: Captain Rixx in this, I think we referred to him as the "Dirty Harry of Bolians." He's a bit of a hardcore fucker.

Bowdy: He was a bit of a hardcore Bolian, you're not wrong. You wouldn't think that race would have Barbering skills, would you?

Anon²: Well, they don't have any fucking hair, so why would they have a professional hairdresser?

Bowdy: (laughs) That's true, actually.

Anon²: They're all bald, by all accounts. Mot the Barber must have thought, "Well, there's nothing else I can do. What else can I do in life?" Then his mate said to him, "Have you ever held any scissors," and Mot said back, "What are they? Are they for cutting toenails?" I don't know. Anyway, Bolians are severely lacking in hair. Unless they've got really long pubes and the Barbering skills are based around trimming their flange. Maybe they make Bolian combovers. At the end of the day, they've got no hair and Mot is a barber.

Anon: When does Mot turn up, anyway?

(No one answered. I checked and he doesn't appear until Ensign Ro in season 5.)

Anon²: We're totally missing the point. Bolians don't have any hair because they go to see their barber and they get it all cut off. If they all had lots of hair, they'd all be hairy motherfuckers.

Bowdy: Why didn't they call him Mot the Shaver then?

Anon²: Anyway, I've got a conclusion here. Bolians are the hairiest motherfuckers in the universe, but Mot sorts them all out.

Bowdy: That's a bit of a stretch really, if you don't mind me saying.

Anon²: Well, if you've read any of the other commentaries we've done, this is one of the most sensible. What did you reckon to the Ambassador uniforms? Erm, Admiral uniforms, sorry. I'm sure they became different.

Anon: Yeah, they changed again the next season.

Bowdy: They change again by DS9 and Voyager.

Anon²: You know the real reason why they changed the Next Gen uniforms between seasons 2 and 3 was because they wore the uniforms and all the actors were complaining that they were becoming three inches shorter every day, because they were getting squeezed. You can look that up. It's probably on Google. Even if I'm talking shit, you can look it up anyway if you can be arsed. You're probably not. This is going to get transcribed and probably won't make any sense.

Bowdy: What was the highest Warp Speed they got to in this episode?

Anon²: They didn't even mention it.

Bowdy: They did. I remember them mentioning Warp Factor 6. And then they head back from the planet at Warp Factor 7, so that was the highest I remember, but I did sleep through half an hour of it.

Anon²: Well, that's the thing: you missed the bit where they were on the Outer Rim...

Bowdy: No, I knew they were on the Outer Rim.

Anon²: That's because I told you that earlier in this commentary.

Bowdy: No, I remember seeing that, because that's where Picard went down to the planet and was talking to Walker and Scott and Rixx when they asked if he'd noticed any of the unusual patterns and Picard goes, "No, I've been at the Outer Rim for a while."

Anon²: Ah, you're right actually. I beg your pardon.

Anon: Let's step back to the Walker Keel guy at the beginning - he was the fella with the massive eyebrows.

Bowdy: He was scary.

Anon: He was hairier than any Bolian, that's for sure. Anyway, in that scene between the different Captains, Walker Keel tells Picard to say hello to Beverly, which was somewhat ridiculous in the context of trying to keep the meeting secret.

Bowdy: Yeah, it was. The last thing I remember before going to sleep was when they found the remnants of the USS Horatio. It was Ambassador-class and blown up, and then I went zzzzzzzzzz.

Anon²: And then you spilt beer all over me when you woke up.

Bowdy: Yeah, that was a half-hour later when I woke up.

Anon²: And then I wiped my bum on your T-shirt.

Anon: We had the return of the David McCallum guy, Lieutenant Commander Dexter Remmick.

Anon²: Oh yeah. That's the guy that got shot at the end of it.

Bowdy: What's David McCallum got to do with it?

Anon: I think their mannerisms are quite similar.

Anon²: By the way, we're now 11 minutes into this. Is that a record?

Anon: No.

Anon²: Ah okay, one of the ones we did with Pie was longer.

Bowdy: Pie was here doing one, was he?

Anon²: Yeah yeah.

Anon: Three episodes, in fact.

Bowdy: In the same night?

Anon²: Yeah, hardcore.

Bowdy: Kick-ass.

Anon: Another thing that struck me about this episode was the dodgy fight sequence with Admiral Quinn's unbelievable stunt double.

Bowdy: Oh yeah. Admiral Quinn. That was pretty shit in fairness. I was thinking about the bits they used to do in The A-Team where they used to have a stunt double for...

Anon²: Gregory Peck.

Anon: George Peppard, I think you'll find.

Bowdy: Anyway, it was an incredibly badly set-up stunt sequence. The stunt double was about two stone lighter...

(That'a 28lbs if you're not familiar.)

Bowdy: ... and he was about half a foot taller as well. He may as well have had different coloured skin as well.

Anon²: I can't believe I said Gregory Peck when I meant George Peppard.

Anon: That's because they've both got "GP" as initials.

Anon²: GP, yes. I was thinking GP. But if my General Practitioner ever sees me again - she's like a dwarf thing, blondish, sort of silver hair - last time I went round there, she felt my balls.

Bowdy: (talking over Anon²) So, what are your final thoughts on this episode?

Anon: My final thoughts? Let me poise a question instead. Do you think this storyline could've gone any further? Do you think there was any more mileage in this storyline? It seemed like they were trying to set something up for the future.

Anon²: It could've been.

Bowdy: It was a bit like the Ceti Alpha eel, really.

Anon²: The thing is, it would've bogged down a lot of episodes.

Bowdy: They could've done it. They could've had a couple more Conspiracy-like episodes.

Anon²: Well, the thing is, The Next Generation had never really had an ongoing storyline at this point.

Bowdy: You needed Babylon 5 for that.

Anon²: There wasn't anything until The Borg. Until then it was just this Conspiracy storyline.

Anon: Later on you get the Klingon Civil War and the Sisters of Duras.

Bowdy: The whole Sons of Mogh thing.

Anon²: Essentially, the characters didn't really drive what the series was about in Next Gen.

Anon: Geordi only ever got Leah Brahms, that was all he did in 7 seasons.

Anon²: Well yeah, I'd have tapped that.

Bowdy: Did he? Which one was she? She was the skinny bird, was she?

Anon²: She was okay.

Bowdy: That's quite shit for 7 years though.

Anon²: So, after all that, it's time for the next episode.

Anon: Yeah. The next episode is The Neutral Zone.

Bowdy: Hang on, I've got no beer left.

Anon²: Well, get a beer then. Just don't spill it all over me again.

Anon: The next episode's something about cryogenics I think.

Anon²: And since it's called The Neutral Zone, it's a bit of a giveaway for anyone that knows anything about Star Trek, that it involves the Romulans.

Anon: By the way, your eyes are really red.

Anon²: Yes they are. That's because I've been on the beer. I was going to do stuff tomorrow, but I think I'll end up just sleeping instead.

Anon: See you soon boys.

Anon²: Bye.

(To clarify re: censoring of this episode, on its first airing in the UK, the BBC cut several minutes of footage from the episode (most notably the death of Remmick). In addition, Space, Canada's science fiction network, precedes this episode with a viewer discretion warning, the only The Next Generation episode to receive this. All video releases, including the initial rental version in 1988, were uncut.)

- Anon, Anon² & Bowdy, 23-Aug-2009