A Matter of Honor

"I've got my chair, now fuck off before I assassinate you!"	Let's hope they don't kiss.	Glue-sniffing annoying alien.	Chris Collins as Kargan. Was also the voice of Starscream in Transformers and Cobra Commander in GI Joe. RIP.
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Overview: Commander Riker is assigned to a Klingon vessel during an officer exchange program.
Writer: Burton Armus
Director: Rob Bowman

Bowdy: Yeah.

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: Pretty common decision all around then.

Olav: Yeah, Pulaski didn't appear once!

Bowdy: She did.

Anon: She made a brief appearance, yeah. She talked to Riker about Klingon cuisine in Ten Forward.

Olav: Right, okay.

Anon: But Guinan wasn't in it. No Whoopi Cushion.

Olav: When did she start in the show?

Anon: She was in The Child, the first episode of season 2.

Olav: Ah, okay.

Anon: Pulaski basically debuted in Ten Forward. She got on the ship and went straight to the pub. Good girl.

Anon²: The only good thing she ever did.

Anon: Okay, let's kick off with the card-count and take it from there.

Anon²: Okay, card-count... a bit obscure... there was one card, the Captain of the IKC Pagh... which I did a very nice diagram of, don't you agree, guys?...

Bowdy: Yeah, nice.

Anon: Feel free to scan it for us.

Anon²: Okay, I'll scan it some time. My Borg Cube on the previous page might have to go in too. It's very highly detailed but from very far away, so it's difficult to tell. Right, card-count: there was lots of arguing about a particular card and the person that brought this card up first was actually Olav. Brilliant - it was a Microbiotic Colony!

Olav: Macrobiotic Colony.

Anon²: Ah, Macrobiotic Colony, sorry. Basically, he predicted it, which I was amazed about, and then he managed to get it wrong until it actually did appear. And with our new negative card-scoring strategy, it means he's actually scored zero points. Sorry dude! Anyway, Bowdy got 2, Pie got at least 1, then there was 2 for my co-regular host and 1 for me.

Pie: I think I had more than 1, but I'm happy to go along with 1 just to point out Olav's failure!

Anon²: At the end of the day... Macrobiotic Colony was a great call but a little bit premature. Not even foreplay standards! So, what shall we say about this episode? After 2 seasons of Next Gen, we're now on episode 34 and it's probably the best so far.

Anon: I'll agree. The best so far.

Bowdy: The best of the 4 I've seen recently, or the 2 I slept through.

Anon²: Yeah, Captain Z.

Bowdy: Oh, when reading the commentaries after they'd been written up, I see you thought I was listening to you guys do the commentary for The Neutral Zone but I wasn't. I was fucked.

Anon²: Right, basically the gist of this episode is there was a kind of Foreign Exchange Students Program going on between the Federation and the Klingons... and the Benzites and the Federation too. Was that the lot, or was there anyone else we spotted?

Anon: That was it.

Anon²: Anyway, the Benzites... we'll deal with them first. There's this Benzite called Mendon who appears on the Enterprise and is sniffing drugs again like Mendak or whatever the previous one was called.

Pie: Mordok.

Anon²: Ah, Mordok. Yeah. There was dry ice there.

Anon: Like at a foam party.

Bowdy: A what?

Anon: Like a foam party as a university's Student Union. I wrecked a jacket at one of those parties.

Anon²: So, what do we think of Mendon?

Olav: For me, the B-plot does not make this one of the best episodes. Simply because Mendon pissed me off. I'm sorry but Benzites are a race of assholes.

Anon²: They're anal. I think "anal" is the word. They won't do anything until they're totally sure that everything is correct.

Olav: Yeah, but he's a dick about it.

Anon: Then again, Mordok in Coming of Age was a comparatively friendly Benzite.

Olav: Really?

Anon: Yeah. Mordok was like, "Oh Wesley, I may have won this competition to get into Starfleet Academy but it was only because you helped me. So you should be the one going through." So Mordok was actually a pretty chilled-out geezer.

Olav: Ah okay.

Anon: But Mendon's a cunt.

Pie: Whilst the B-plot in that episode wasn't fantastic, at least it tied in with the A-plot, which Next Gen doesn't always do. That made it a lot more palatable, watching it.

Anon²: Because it's a Foreign Exchange Program with Klingons and Benzites.

Pie: Yeah, but also that he was trying to fix the problem that was present on the Klingon ship.

Bowdy: How did the Macrobiotic Colony problem actually start?

Anon²: That's not explained.

Bowdy: Normally in Star Trek - and particularly in Next Gen - they find out where the problem came from.

Olav: Maybe the front of the Klingon ship had got stuck somewhere it shouldn't have been.

Bowdy: (laughs)

Olav: Come on - you're trying to tell me that the front of a Klingon ship isn't...

Anon²: It's an STD thing, yeah? Explain, Olav!

Bowdy: You're trying to say that the ship has piles?

Pie: It must have docked at the wrong space station.

Anon²: Yeah. STD - Space Transmitted Disease.

Anon: It must have gone through the Doncaster Galaxy. That'll be it. Anyway, this episode got be thinking about the method of progression through the ranks in the Klingon Empire, which is apparently through assassinating their senior officers. Now, I quite like my boss but it got me thinking what it would be like if that were the rule of thumb in the UK, or the US... or even Canada, let's not forget our colleagues over there. How would that work, 'eh? Say there was someone here who worked for a newspaper...

Olav: Not any more!

Anon: Okay, or someone who worked in journalism.

Olav: (pause) You know, I was a bit afraid of my editor at that newsletter. He once javelined a Christmas Tree into someone that disobeyed him.

All: (laughs)

Olav: That's why there's no longer a Christmas Tree at that particular newspaper and that's why there's no longer a vending machine there either.

Bowdy: He threw a javelin at someone?

Olav: No, it was a Christmas Tree used as a javelin.

Anon²: I've got to say, at my previous job we had a bar at work. We have free beer at our parties, but no one's ever tried to spear anyone with a fucking tree! I thought Canadian people were quite chilled out and didn't try to impale people with trees.

Olav: He wasn't Canadian. He was a Sunderland fan.

Anon²: Village of the Damned! Oh my God! Do you realise that I'm a Newcastle fan and we all think that they're fucking Neanderthals anyway?

Olav: I wore a Newcastle jersey there before.

Anon²: I'm surprised they recognised it. The two teams are never in the same division! This year's been quite tragic. Oh, and Roy Keane wanked his dog.

Anon: Anyway, if you could kill your boss and then say, "Hey dude - that's just what we do in our culture," that would be a crazy way to get a payrise.

Pie: I think a lot of people would be self-employed under those sorts of working conditions.

Anon: Yeah, it could bite you in the arse, couldn't it?

Anon²: Oh, also during this bit, Riker appears on the bridge of the Pagh and he has a fight with the officer who's below him. He beats the shit out of him and throws him into a console and there's a big explosion. And then the Captain... what was the Captain's name?

Anon: Kargan.

Anon²: Yeah, Captain Cardigan, that's it. Why wasn't the first thing he said, "Fix that motherfucking console, you cunt! You threw one of my guys into it!"

Pie: Why do they explode anyway?

Anon²: Yeah. Have you ever seen a broken computer monitor? They just go blank. They don't explode! Maybe they're CRT screens on Klingon ships. Maybe they thought "We like retro" and went back in their design strategy in the same way that it still takes them 9 months to sequence a genome when today we can do it in 9 days.

Anon: Was it retro in the same way as Lieutenant Worf's head is still retro?

Anon²: Like how if Worf squeezes his head, loads of puss is going to come out and it'll get smaller.

Olav: Also, all of the other Klingons had better foreheads than Worf.

Anon²: Yeah, but Worf's half-human... ah, hang on... no he's not. He was raised by humans and his son's half-human.

Anon: His son's quarter-human actually

Anon²: Quarter-human?

Bowdy: Yeah, K'Ehleyr was half-Klingon; half-human.

Olav: You know... there's no equivalent of British Klingons or Canadian Klingons. All Klingons are the same.

Anon: Like British cuisine or Klingon cuisine.

Olav: All Klingon cooking seems to be the same.

Bowdy: You're right. There's no nationalities amongst Klingons, or Romulans, or any of the other alien races.

Anon: In theory, there should be with the Romulans because they're from the twin planets of Romulus and Remus.

Bowdy: Yeah, but the Remans are completely moot.

Anon: A bit like Australia and New Zealand.

Anon²: I think there is a thing with Romulans because in that episode... I can't remember it's name... the one where Picard and Data go to Romulus to find Spock...

Pie: Unification.

Anon²: Yeah, Unification... there's a part in that where they say they're from a different region and that's why they speak differently. So, there are regions mentioned at least once. (adopting Cockney accent) "Ere, you fucking Romulan cunt!" Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Bowdy: Yeah, like "You Rommies are a right bunch of bastards! Ya fuckers!"

Anon: When Unification came along, they made a big fuss out of how Spock was going to be in the episode. And Unification Part I drew one of the highest ratings in Trek history but Spock was hardly in it and it was a fairly shit episode.

Bowdy: He wasn't in it till the end, was he?

Anon: He turned up at the very end, yeah.

Anon²: I thought that was a good episode.

Anon: Well, you're wrong, sorry! They had a whole episode where they built up to Spock's appearance and didn't really deliver. The result was that Unification Part II, which had a lot of Spock in it had a lower rating than Part I because the first episode was time-wasting.

Anon²: Well, we'll comment on that episode when we get to it, I guess.

Olav: Have you seen that Spock turns up in this new TV show called Fringe? He turns up for one sentence at the end of an episode.

Anon: Yeah, I knew he was in that. I gave up on Fringe though after about 7 or 8 episodes.

Anon²: I've never heard of it.

Olav: I think it got way better after those first 7.

Anon: Did it? Did you watch Dollhouse too?

Olav: I did. It was miserable.

Anon: I somehow managed to struggle my way through the entire first season of Dollhouse, but only because Eliza Dushku is just pure wank material. Beautiful.

Anon²: (burps loudly)

Anon: Anyway, someone can feel free to bring something else up, otherwise I'm going to go on about Eliza.

Bowdy: Oh, let's talk about the Klingon job system.

Olav: Oh yeah. They have no scientists; no barbers; no engineers; no bridge-builders. They're just all warriors.

Anon: There is no Klingon version of Brunel.

Olav: Exactly. There is no Klingon X-Factor - how are they going to get anything done.

Bowdy: There was a very famous Klingon musician in Deep Space 9.

Pie: I'm sure in Next Gen there were some Klingon scientists and doctors.

Anon: Oh, in the Scientific Method episode?

Olav: All these Klingons are saying, "My father has no honour. He's still alive because he's a scientist." You know what? If you don't respect anyone but warriors, aren't the best and the brightest going to go into accounting? Their society will collapse!

Bowdy: Exactly. They'll have to get a bunch of Ferengi in who'll strip them bare.

Anon: What do you reckon to that Klingon bird in this episode - the one that's trying to pull Riker a bit? Riker'll take anything with a pulse.

Pie: Fit body; crap face.

Anon: Yeah, she had these jagged teeth. I remember this bird at uni who had a jagged tooth. She had a nice face but a dangerous-looking tooth. If she sucked your cock it could be terrifying.

Anon²: By the way, we haven't mentioned how fucking mincing Wesley is in this episode. He's walking around with his hands behind his back and he goes up to Mendon, poncing around. Oh, who wants a beer by the way?

Anon: Yeah, bring me beer.

Bowdy: Oh, we were talking earlier about this Klingon thing. If you were going to beat the shit out of someone on your ship...

Anon: My ship? Cool!

Bowdy: Yeah, your ship. If you were busting someone about and throwing them into a console, it's basically like a super-charged game of The Great Dalmuti where you shit on the peons.

Anon: Yeah, on board the USS Essex-Boy that would definitely happen.

Pie: I think their already is a USS Essex.

Olav: Yeah, there is.

Anon: Yeah, it's my ship, bitches!

Anon²: By the way, random story from the other night. We mentioned Doncaster earlier about the STD thing but this is a corker.

Anon: Oh, you on the bus?

Anon²: Yeah, last Friday I'd been over and we watched Watchmen: Director's Cut on Blu-Ray and had a few beers. I'd already had a few beers but I came over and had a few more. Yeah, we watched the Watchmen, that's who watches the Watchmen! I was making my way home on a bus to the mainline train station to go home. Now, there was this guy that got on the bus and sat next to me and asked me how far it was to that mainline station. So I said, "5 to 10 minutes, something like that." And he chatted to his mate for a second and then turned back round and says, "So whereabouts in Poland are you from?"

Bowdy: (laughs)

Anon²: So, I'm like "What the fuck?" I said to him, "I'm from fucking Doncaster, mate!" He obviously didn't clock that at all - he obviously didn't have a fucking clue where Doncaster is. Then he goes to me, "Oh, there's loads of good-looking birds there, aren't there?" And I'm like, "Yeah, there is but they're fucking rare!" He obviously then clocked that I'm not from Poland after all. I laughed until I got in my door at home and told my housemate Donal. I went to bed with a big fucking grin on my face!

Pie: What's even more impressive is you managed to fit that story into a text message.

Anon²: I did! I fit it into a text message because when I got on the train I got my Crackberry out and wrote it down in a memo and texted it to people! I didn't have a paper plate to write it on. Paper plates I reserve for jokes at barbecues. This is very obscure!

Anon: Thanks for that interlude, dude. We appreciate it.

Bowdy: Oh, I wrote something down about Benzites. We were discussing about how they could never manage to get anything done because they were over-analysing anything before bringing all the information to the Captain. I think someone made a comment about...

Anon²: (interrupting) Speaking of not being able to get anything done, how to the Dutch manage to get anything done when they're always high as a kite? How does anything get done - these Benzites are always sniffing drugs!

Bowdy: The point I'm trying to make is, what if a Benzite doesn't know how to flush the toilet?

Anon²: Oh dear!

Bowdy: What's the Benzite going to do? Leave it there? A big dirty floater for people to walk in and discover.

Pie: The crux of the matter is that if you never report a problem until you've found a solution, how do you ever get anything done? Was that what you're trying to say?

Bowdy: No, I just wanted to make a joke about the toilet actually! (laughs)

Olav: Do you know how many nostril-shots there were in this episode? The camera kept on shooting straight-up from below and you could count the nostril hairs. Particularly Picard - you could count the nose hairs on Picard.

Bowdy: Yeah, you could count them.

Anon²: Okay, how many did he have? In fact, how many molecules are there on Leonard Nimoy's butt?

Anon: I don't know, but I was off by 3. Anyway, the next episode is The Measure of a Man. We'll see when we get around to it - I don't know if anyone's staying for another one.

Anon²: I'll stay!

Anon: I think Pie's hitting the road.

Pie: Yeah, I'm off.

Bowdy: I'll do another one.

Olav: I'll stay.

Anon²: Okay, so we're just losing the Pieman. Thanks for coming!

Anon: Yeah, thanks for coming along. Sorry we started late. Work's a cunt sometimes. Anyway, The Measure of a Man is up next, which in my opinion may take over the mantle of the best episode so far. I think 2 of the best episodes of this season happen back-to-back.

Anon²: Do I need a tape measure to check it?

Anon: What, are you going to measure your cock?

Anon²: No, it's The Measure of a Man. How do we measure him? Weight or height?

Anon: I think it's meant more sociologically than that.

Anon²: Ah, okay. Are there any Ferengi in it?

Anon: We're not going to start that again. Press the stop button.

Anon²: Okay.

Addendum:

Received by email from Olav:
While at the supermarket the other day, I noticed that various brands of yogurt were advertising themselves as "microbiotic." Although I suppose this is correct, it got me to thinking if the entire plot of that Star Trek episode with Will Riker aboard the Klingon warbird was just about someone spilling their yogurt in outer space.

- Anon, Anon², Pie, Bowdy & Olav, 10-Oct-2009