The Bonding

Annoying kid actor.	Worf sets a scary scene for a lecture on the dangers of butt-plugs.	"Jeremy, your mum's dead. Now you have to do your own laundry."	"Remember me? I squeezed you out of my vag."
(more images below)

Overview: A mysterious entity seeks to comfort a boy who has lost his mother in an accident on its planet.
Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Director: Winrich Kolbe

Anon²: None. No one got fuck all.

Anon: None for everyone.

Bowdy: Unless the butt-plug counts as an artifact.

Anon²: The butt-plug could be an artifact. We'll come to that later.

Bowdy: Not sure which expansion that's from.

Anon: Yeah, I don't know how many copies that expansion sold.

Pie: More than All Good Things...

Anon: Probably, yeah.

Anon²: Right, how do we sum this one up?

Anon: This was actually written by Ronald Moore, who went on to do Battlestar Galactica.

Bowdy: Oh right.

Anon: This was his first episode of Trek.

Anon²: Was he the guy who had the idea of bringing Battlestar back?

Anon: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Bowdy: So, synopsis of the episode then?

Anon: Essentially, there was an Away Team mission that Worf led where some woman called Lt. Marla Aster is killed, leaving a kid called Jeremy orphaned up on the ship. Then the rest of the episode is them dealing with it. Now, she gets killed by this exploding butt-plug. In fact, we've freeze-framed on it here whilst we're recording this commentary. There's a chronic bit of damage that could be caused by this, particularly if it was stuck up your rectum.

Pie: The way they're holding it makes it look like they've just won the World Cup.

Bowdy: (laughs)

Anon²: Actually, in this screenshot the expression on Data's face makes it look like the butt-plug has just come out of him.

Anon: He's certainly got his lips pursed.

Anon²: We need a screenshot of this as evidence.

(I was going to do so, but seeing as I transcribed this in a hotel in Halifax, I didn't have the DVD handy. Essentially the image was nothing like the one below, but equally as funny.)

Anon: Okay. Now, when they beam the Away Team up into Sick Bay, they beam them up with some guy showing his arse to the camera.

Anon²: He's probably just had a butt-plug up it.

Pie: (laughs)

Anon²: We didn't know that then, of course.

Anon: Yeah, we found out later. It all comes down to the butt-plug.

Anon²: (laughs)

Anon: Now, there's a bit where Picard and Troi goes to the Aster's quarters to tell the kid that Mumsy's died and along the way Picard and Troi are alone in the turbolift when Picard goes "Halt!" to get the turbolift to stop. Now, the big question here is, what do the guys who are waiting for the turbolift at the other end do? There only ever seems to be one turbolift on the entire ship except for that really slow one in Engineering.

Anon²: That one doesn't count.

Anon: Yeah, that one's a snail-lift.

Pie: If there is only one turbolift on the entire ship, it's damn quick, because whenever anyone calls one, it's not as if they press the button then stand around waiting and chatting for ages. So, maybe it's a telepathic turbolift.

Bowdy: Maybe it's more of an escalator. There's just different steps.

Pie: Mmmm... possibly.

Anon: Troi's obviously very trusting of Picard when he goes "Halt!" in the turbolift. After all, most women would just reach for their rape alarm.

Pie: (laughs) Or their butt-plug!

Anon²: Yeah. Okay. I don't know what to say now. Oh yeah. Riker has clearly fucked this Aster bird. He looks a bit grumpy when he realises there'll be no fuck from her. He's thinking, "That's one down on this ship!"

Pie: Whilst we're broadly on the subject, I'd like to point out that Troi does look very hot in this episode and I think this is the start of her golden age. It runs from season 3 through to about season 5 and a half.

Anon: Yeah. And in 2 or 3 episodes' time, you see her in spandex as well.

Anon²: Oh get in!

Anon: Yeah. She does some bending and flexing with Beverly. The Price, or something like that.

Anon²: I've got to say, she doesn't have the biggest tits in the world but they're pretty fucking good-looking.

Anon: Yeah, like Brianna in The Schizoid Man.

Bowdy: It was quite a good episode actually. They spend quite a bit of time delving into the plot as opposed to skirting around it going, "Oh, there's some peasants on the ship."

Anon²: Plus Troi actually does her job in this episode rather than spend the whole of it being on the blob.

Bowdy: There's a bit where they say to her, "It must be difficult telling people about death" and she says back "It's okay for me - sometimes people just die." She seems to actually smirk at that point. Maybe she's thinking, "Hey, I can give them a comfort fuck!"

Anon²: That kid Jeremy got well into her bosoms. The lucky bastard!

Anon: He probably sucked on his mama's titties too.

Anon²: One would hope.

Pie: Do people do that when they're like... ten?

Anon: They do it even longer in life if they're that Harvey Pincher character from Little Britain. "Bitty!"

Anon²: Oh dear. That still creeps me out. That and the guy who likes fucking the old nan.

Bowdy: (laughs)

Anon: Oh, in the tower block?

Anon²: Oh man! That creeps me out.

(That character is referred to simply as "Gary's Grandmother." In a deleted sketch included on the series 2 DVD, she actually has a fuck with Gary's mate Jason.)

Anon: Anyway, the kid in this episode, Jeremy... I wasn't fussed about his acting. I thought it actually got worse as it went on. But he certainly did have big Dumbo ears, didn't he?

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: I think he probably turns up in a few episodes' time as a Ferengi.

Anon²: (laughs) I've got to say... I think I've seen him in some other shit as well. I don't know what.

Anon: A TV show called "Annoying Kid Actors" perhaps?

Anon²: Yeah.

(He's actually in Robocop 2. Which sucked. Point proven.)

Bowdy: They had a cat in this episode as well. They had to make it act. Pie even pointed out the number of shots it must have taken to get the cat to do what they wanted to do. Then, at the end of it all, we caught the cat looking at the camera. It broke the Fourth Wall.

Pie: Every time I point the camera at my cat, he does that. He gets his paws in there. I've got so many photos of his paw going at the lens.

Anon: Speaking of strange camera shots, there's this bit on the Bridge where...

Pie: (raptuous laughter)

Anon: Picard's head just suddenly appears out of nowhere.

Anon²: It was like the Sun coming up, wasn't it?

Anon: My favourite Picard moment is still that bit where he walks into the turbolift in Too Short a Season where he pulls this wretched face like he just shat himself as he was walking.

Bowdy: This wasn't a bad episode though, in fairness.

Pie: To me, this was low-budget average filler.

Bowdy: The dialogue at the end... the conclusion at Jeremy's house was fine.

Anon: The episode and the dialogue in themselves were okay for what they were. It just wasn't that interesting a story.

Bowdy: They never really did explain what happened with Marla Aster's death though.

Anon: Yes they did. She got exploded by a butt-plug. Pay attention(!)

Bowdy: Yeah okay. So she died on some Away Team mission. Maybe she went down to the planet to pick up some milk and 10 fags. That's great!

Anon: Well, they're limited in what they can say about the death. It's only a PG-rated episode, so they can't describe the butt-plug in too much detail. Okay. That's this episode then, I guess. Anyone else?

Anon²: I think we can draw a line under this one now. Oh, 1+1=2.

Anon: Yeah.

Anon²: Oh, and 1+2=3. I've been learning.

Anon: That's progressive, man. Pretty soon you'll be a 10-year-old kid doing Calculus like that dipshit in When the Bough Breaks. The next episode is Booby Trap. I could get trapped in some Boobies. I like Boobies. We'll be seeing you soon. Bye.

- Anon, Anon², Pie & Bowdy, 23-Dec-2009