Who Watches the Watchers

The multi-talented Ray Wise.	Picard hopes that the villagers' gift of a bong could be operated with just one hand.	Deanna in annoyingly non-hot makeup!	"Please..."
(more images below)

Overview: Deanna and Riker must rectify the damage done when two primitives from Mintaka III catch glimpse of a Federation observation team and eventually conclude that Captain Picard is a god.
Writer: Richard Manning & Hans Beimler
Director: Robert Weiner

Anon: Right. Who Watches the Watchers - episode 52.

Anon²: Not Who Watches the Watchmen though.

Anon: Not the Watchmen, no.

Anon²: We had a discussion about this inbetween the last commentary and this one. Apparently, now it's not official, but I'm informed that Watchmen could be up for a Raspberry.

Anon: A Golden Raspberry Award. There's people who genuinely think that Watchmen will be nominated for a Razzie. Then again, The Shining was up for a Razzie, so potentially anything could be. Titanic somehow wasn't up for a Razzie but somehow won 11 Oscars. It's a strange world.

Anon²: I don't fucking understand it at all. Anyway, card-count: 1 each.

Anon: Yeah, we both got Archer. At the same time.

Anon²: We knew it was coming too.

Anon: You brought a bow with you today.

Anon²: I did! I got one for my Secret Santa. It's got suckers on it... that don't work. I'll forgive them for that.

Anon: It is comedy, that.

Anon²: I'm going to take it outdoors on Sunday. (laughs) Get it out! Brilliant! Nah, I'll take my proper bow with me.

Anon: Don't take it on the tube though, otherwise a copper will shoot you 7 times in the head at close range.

Anon²: Y'know what? I didn't realise this but it's actually illegal for me to have my bow strung up in public.

Anon: Oh really? Okay.

Anon²: The thing is, right, there's a certain style of bow called a compound bow, which is permanently strung, so it's illegal. What they're saying is that compound bows are illegal but quite a few people still shoot them. I don't understand how they do that. Anyway, what was this episode all about then? It's about the Prime Directive getting as fucked up as it possibly can.

Anon: And as with many other episodes, Picard tries to fight valiantly to protect the Prime Directive and then he goes, "Ah, fuck it!"

Anon²: He just rants a bit, doesn't he?

Anon: Yeah.

Anon²: Every time there's something to do with the Prime Directive, he gets a bit "het up." Rant rant rant rant rant. "I can't do that!" Rant rant rant rant rant!

Anon: Then he gets the vinegar strokes.

Anon²: He goes into total Shako mode.

Anon: Shako mode?

Anon²: Yeah, Shakespeare.

Anon: Ah... okay.

Anon²: Whacko Shacko.

Anon: (laughs)

Anon²: So, Riker's a tart still. The first thing he says when he gets down to the planet is when he's talking to Deanna...

Anon: Oh, this was the bit about how women walk in front?

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: Yeah, I know why they walk in front.

Anon²: Why's that then?

Anon: It's because of the landmines.

Anon²: (laughs very loudly) Fuck! Okay. We've been talking about Mad Men a lot tonight too.

Anon: That series does fucking rock, man.

Anon²: It does. Anyway, the Prime Directive gets totally fucked up by one of these covert observation posts going a little bit wrong and a guy falls off a rock so them beam him up to the Enterprise and he wakes up and sees Picard and thinks he's a God. So they have to deal with it.

Anon: Right, so they try and wipe his memory in the same way they managed to wipe Sarjenka's memory in Pen Pals.

Anon²: Yeah, but they didn't leave a singing rock in his hand that he didn't have before like they did with Sarjenka. Anyway, Sarjenka wouldn't have understood that. "What's this then? I've got a fucking rock I didn't have before and it's singing. What?!"

Anon: Yeah. Now, they could have done something to see if that mind-wipe on the Mintakan had worked. Like, they could have reproduced the planet on the holodeck.

Anon²: Now, you've got a point.

Anon: Right, they could reproduce the planet on the holodeck and test what the memory recall was like. They didn't bother with that.

Anon²: I tell you what, mate, you should've fucking wrote some of these.

Anon: (laughs uncertainly) Maybe...

Anon²: Well, we're watching it now. It was made 20 odd years ago. Over 20 years?

Anon: Yeah, over 20 years now.

Anon²: We're still picking bones out of it.

Anon: Well, there are quite a lot of plot-holes in this episode.

Anon²: Oh, quite a few. I did a couple of smelly farts. In fact, I'm about to do one now. (farts) That's good.

Anon: Now, the main guest star, the Archer guy, was Ray Wise who was Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks. He was also in Savannah, plus he was in 24 briefly.

Anon²: Yeah?

Anon: Yeah, he was once the Vice President in 24.

Anon²: Did he kill his daughter?

Anon: Erm, spoiler! No.

Anon²: Yeah, thanks for that. Someone did this to me some time ago. I'd not seen season 2 of Twin Peaks. What's the fucking point in even fucking bothering now? It's just weird up to the point where you find out it's the fucking dad.

Anon: There you go.

Anon²: Not looking forward to that anymore. Ironic!

Anon: Ray Wise also plays The Devil in some crap comedy program that's on now that I really tried to enjoy but got fed up with after a while.

Anon²: Okay, that's fair enough.

(That program's called Reaper, by the way. He's also in Robocop.)

Anon: The Ray Wise character, the Archer, Luigi - whatever his name is.

Anon²: Like Luigi and Mario in Robot Chicken?

Anon: Yeah. We were watching that episode of Robot Chicken earlier where Mario and Luigi go into Vice City. They score some magic mushrooms as opposed to their regular mushrooms that they have in Super Mario World. So, they score some magic mushrooms, get it on with a ho, run over some people in wheelchairs, set off 5 stars on the police sensors, blow up a helicopter and everything!

(Check it out here.)

Anon²: Yeah!

Anon: It's fucking great.

Anon²: I've just got to ask, in the usual emails that don't come in ever, has anyone ever managed to take out the entire police force that chase you? Is it possible? Has anyone done it? Emails on the back of a postcard.

Anon: To which address?

Anon²: To fuckingdontgiveashitaboutsendingfuckingemails@youfuckinglazycunts.com. By the time we've fucking written this one out, months will have passed.

(Less than a month. I'm in catch-up mode.)

Anon²: We'll have forgotten about it! We may as well write emails to outselves after having bought the game, played it thoroughly for about a year and written in the fucking answer.

Anon: We are close to being a season behind at the moment. Anyway, the Ray Wise guy sees the observation post and falls down. Now, Beverly runs after him to save him and everyone else just ignores him. Like they're thinking, "Fuck him!"

Anon²: Right, so Ray Wise and Bev beam up to Sick Bay.

Anon: Yet they didn't bother doing a perimeter scan to see if anyone was watching them. Apparently the secrecy was so important that they had to have a holographically-shielded viewing post, but they didn't bother being aware outside of there. There's a lot of plot-holes in this episode.

Anon²: Yeah, we saw through it. That was the whole point though. If they hadn't done that, there wouldn't have been a fucking story, would there?

Anon: Well, there wasn't much of one.

Anon²: Well, if the guy was on the Enterprise and there was no one about, they'd have let him die. That's what they said. Picard said, "Let him die." Like they give a fuck about this fella! (pause) But they did. Anyway, you make a good point there, but it wouldn't have been much of a tale.

Anon: They could always have just not had this storyline. They could have said "Fuck it" and done another episode instead. It's quite toilet.

Anon²: You didn't like this one then?

Anon: No, I think it's a bit pants. For season 3, particularly. On the other hand, the previous episode, The Survivors, was better tha I remembered it.

Anon²: I'd say that was worse than I remembered it. But at the end of the day, these last 2 episodes, compared to the first 2 seasons, were pretty good. But now we've entered new territory. We've got this expectation. How bad is this in real terms from what we've seen so far? Not that bad.

Anon: It ain't great, mate. For it's time, it's not good.

Anon²: We've already acknowledged that season 3 gets going towards the end, or half-way through. Fuck it! At the end of the day, you've got 26 episodes. They're not all going to be great. It's not like 26 DVD's of Jenna Jameson. That's gotta be great.

Anon: I've got some of that on my new hard disc actually. I've got WTBA Volume 17.

Anon²: Oh wow. Cool.

Anon: So, the other plot-line is the whole "Is Picard a God?" thing.

Anon²: Right. Is he?

Anon: Well, that's the premise. The bird that leads the colony, that somehow has managed to avoid getting blown up by a landmine...

Anon²: (laughs)

Anon: You like that, don't you?

Anon²: I do. That was a good drop-in, that. Continuinty, you see? We try and do continuity where we can. And speaking of comedy genius, there was this bit - actually, this was probably what you were going to talk about - where she beams up?

Anon: Yeah, that's where I was going.

Anon²: Okay, go ahead Sir. Explain. I rudely interrupted!

Anon: Okay, don't build it up too much! Basically, she beams up onto the transporter pad and Picard introduces himself by saying, "I am Jean-Luc... Picard" and she kneels down...

Anon²: She throws herself on the floor and it's all "Oh my God!" And Picard goes to her, "Please..." Then there was a pause and before Picard continued, I completed his sentance with "Suck my cock!" It was sublime timing. It was almost instantaneous! Picard said "Please" and there was a girl on her knees. As soon as he said "Please," I said, "Suck my cock!" It was almost a continuation. Sublime comedy!

Anon: Right. Basically, the rest of the episode is Picard trying to explain to the woman that he isn't all-powerful. Then he tries to explain it to a bunch of other people. So, they have a crap plot then they repeat it for the rest of the episode.

Anon²: Yeah, they do.

Anon: Then Ray Wise shoots Picard with an arrow.

Anon²: He does have a compound bow, actually. I was trying to figure out what he had. So, to be fair, they're actually quite advanced because the compound bow was only made in the 1980's for Americans that want to go and kill animals. They're fucking bored of guns so they thought what they needed was a really fucking powerful bow.

Anon: That's what the American men did. The American women of the 80's stayed inside with their Soda Streams.

Anon²: The Soda Stream? I remember someone that had a Soda Stream. It was shit! It was fucking rubbish.

Anon: They're back again now.

Anon²: Why would you want one though?

Anon: I don't know. I guess the main reason to have one is so you could make an expensive, horrible-tasting drink. It's technological evolution. That hard disc I have over there has the memory capacity of 7 million ZX Spectrums.

Anon²: 7 million?

Anon: Think about that, y'know?

Anon²: Did they even make 7 million ZX Spectrums?

Anon: I don't know, but I had 4.

Anon²: (laughs) You had 4! We had a ZX81, and we had the one with a drive in it too.

Anon: The tape drive or...

Anon²: The floppy drive.

Anon: Oh, the +3.

Anon²: Yeah, the +3. Brilliant. Had that. Played Nomad endlessly. Still never finished that game. I got the emulator. Can't fucking do it. And I've got no chance of finishing Guild Wars any time soon. I've got 2 fucking missions to do and I can't do it. I'm trying to solo the entire game and I can't do it. I've tried fucking everything. Answers on a postcard to nonrelevantemailsanywhereinthisuniversebeforetheendoftime.com.

Anon: @...?

Anon²: whogivesafuck.com. (laughs) Right, I tell you what we should do. Let's give The Survivors and Who Watches the Watchers some kind of rating.

Anon: Alright, I'd give The Survivors a 6.25.

Anon²: I'd probably give it a 4 or a 5.

Anon: Okay. And I'd give this one a 4.

Anon²: Yeah, I'm going to agree with that. I know there's a lot to come. We haven't done the overall ratings yet. Well, you may have done. I haven't.

Anon: You're welcome to if you want.

Anon²: I might sit down and do it inbetween having a wank and another wank. I mean, you can't do it during a wank because you'd have to start then stop then write something then finish yourself off. It's not plausible, is it? (laughs)

Anon: Maybe if you were thinking about Deanna.

Anon²: Tits. Great tits.

Anon: I tell you what. We need to think back to that Brianna bird from season 2. You remember that one in The Schizoid Man, the one with Ira Graves?

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: She had a fucking great rack.

Anon²: Yeah! We've had Salia as well. Plus the hot version of... what's the other bird?

Anon: Anya.

Anon²: Anya!

Anon: Hot Anya, yeah!

Anon²: Why the fuck did they not do Hot Anya as a card? Come on! You've got to think your target audience of the game is a bunch of spotty fucking teenagers!

Anon: Yeah, Hot Anya from Twin Peaks.

Anon²: There may be a lot of Star Trek/ Twin Peaks crossovers. We did wonder what came first.

Anon: Yeah. And there was a character called Palmer in this episode as well.

Anon²: Yeah. I reckon it must have been in production around the same time.

Anon: I guess so. The pilot of Twin Peaks was in 1989. But what they filmed first, I don't know.

Anon²: I think that's a direct reference, acutally - Palmer. They were looking for Palmer.

Anon: Yeah, but they wouldn't have had any idea at the time that Twin Peaks was going to become the phenomenon it did become.

Anon²: Do you reckon Lost and Twin Peaks are the same sort of show? The sort of show that you have to continue watching even though it's fucking with your head?

Anon: Kind of, yeah. Except Lost is actually going to get a conclusion, which Twin Peaks never received.

Anon²: Even though they know that - spoiler alert - her dad killed her. Cunt! Anyway, are we done?

Anon: Yeah, I think so.

Anon²: Actually, 2 episodes running now, Data hasn't been told to shut the fuck up.

Anon: Yeah, and Wesley wasn't in the last episode.

Anon²: That was good. I didn't notice him in The Survivors either.

Anon: He was looking in awe at the Husnock Ship.

Anon²: Was he?

Anon: Yeah.

Anon²: Did he have a boner on, did he? The little fag!

Anon: Yeah, it was coming out of the front of his head. Prick! Right, the next episode is The Bonding. I don't really remember it except there's an annoying 13-year-old kid in it.

Anon²: What, Wesley?

Anon: No, he's an annoying 17-year-old kid. Right, we'll be seeing you soon. Bye.

- Anon & Anon², 17-Dec-2009