I'm watching X-Men '97 and absolutely loving it. It has so many excellent throw backs to the 90's animated series and goes for some pretty wild new story arcs. But every time the theme plays I can't stop thinking about Bashir and his strange crew of mutants! Still can't tell if this enhances or detracts from the experience 🤔

So the first thing I want to say is that this show is guilty of what I call "The Star Trek Effect" which is that the best episodes are so good and the world is so interesting that you want more and more content and are willing to forgive the quality of those episodes that aren't good. The fact is there are more "ungood" episodes than there are good ones. There's probably about 15 excellent ones, mostly the rest are either meh or bad. The show was well into season 7 and still had to give us bad Lwaxana eps like it was a contractual obligation to force us to spend time with a character purposefully written to be maximally annoying. The show should've known better by then, especially after how bad the first two seasons were, but they had to fill the content somehow. But you keep watching because you love the lore and you know that Sub Rosa is going to be followed by Lower Decks.

I think a lot of people like wacky low stakes ham and cheese Trek and thats their happy place and comfort food. I dont like that kind of show at all and there was way more of that than I anticipated. One of my favorite shows of all time is Mad Men because of how character driven and interrelated everyone is on the show. TNG never fully got there. It wasnt until season 4 that we really started to get to know the personal lives of the crew and even then it was bits and pieces. There's an episode where the first 15 minutes of the story are just Data and Geordi talking about Data's cat and I loved that because it made this world feel less wacky and more like an actual place where people live day-to-day and enjoy each others company and adds depth to their character. For that reason Lower Decks really is my favorite episode and probably the deepest the show ever got as a character driven drama and one of the only few episodes that made me cry. I wish we had gotten more of that kind of show. A serialized drama with still crazy sci-fi stuff to make you think but the true driving force was the depth of the characters personality and how they interact with each other in the situations presented to them. We occasionally got glimpses of it, but I think the show would've been better if it pivoted from Twilight Zone in Space to Mad Men in Space with actually good and competent people. I know that may really bother a lot of people to suggest but it's where I fall.

Another thing that will probably piss a lot of people off is my distaste for nearly every design choice the show made. I hate carpet and actually never watched this show as it was airing as a kid because the carpet and beige and purple made everything look disgustingly dated, even in the 90s. I didn't want something to look 90s I wanted it to look like it was from the future and the carpet and paneling was way too much for me to take seriously. The same with the uniforms that were essentially bad fitting pajamas with an ugly designed triangle on the bottom for no reason. To me TOS had peak uniforms and the design choices got much better in the late DS9 and VOY era but the TNG uniforms just looked way too cheesy for me. Same with the ship. Some think the ENT-D looks like a cruiser. To me it looks like a duck face and ridiculous with a fat and gross looking saucer. Again, TOS was peak for me, and if I had to pick a starship that trumps all others I'd say the SNW ENT takes the cake hands down. The design choices were hard for me to get over because I couldn't take things seriously, but once I just accepted it was always going to look ridiculous and take the show at its own terms I started to watch it for the stories.

Despite the complaints, I do really like the show. I wouldn't say it's the best, nor would I say it has the most lovable crew, but it definitely paved the way to create a kind of world that we all know and love that TOS just couldn't. More than anything, despite the ugly design choices, I want to live in this world. As someone who struggles in capitalism, I see in the future, no one ever gets fired. Data nearly destroys the ship numerous times and is a ticking time bomb and probably got plenty of people killed and is easily the most dangerous thing on the ship but after stealing the ship and nearly ending the Federation time and time again, he's still on the ship, in the same role, doing what he does and no one holds their mistakes against them. Whether its Barclay or even Picard as a Borg getting millions killed, everyone recognizes that mistakes dont define you and you still have much to offer the world. Ive been fired from a lot of jobs myself and fought to carve a career out for myself. It makes me pine for a world where humanity has grown up and ones career is based on your core character and not what you can contribute to the bottom line.

Lastly, I'd say the finale was everything it needed to be. Bringing back Tasha Year and unifying the crew on a journey past present and future to still be judged on what we can accomplish was a nice callback. I'm grateful I got through it all with the help of Ben and Adam from Greatest Generation and I look forward to getting DS9 under my belt next. What a great journey!

I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to say hats off to Adam Ragusea and the Mercer Music students for the theme song

I am not trying to start a war here, but I found this to be an interesting listen. Podcast featuring John Roderick (former Friendly Fire co-host) discussing the Bean Dad situation with Amanda Knox.

I know that there is much behind the scenes we don't know about the winding down of FF and the relationship that John Roderick has/had with Ben and Adam. I don't think Ben/Adam/Uxbridge-Shimoda need to justify why FF was ended. And my posting this episode is not a call to bring back FF.

Disclaimer: I am a longtime Friend of DeSoto/MaxFun member and have embarrassingly attended a couple live shows in DC. I also listen to Roderick's other show (Omnibus) as well, but I don't contribute to his patreon.

While enjoying the latest ep of Factory Seconds, girlfriend and I realized we are soon going to have access to a Cheesecake Factory (there isn’t one where we live), and want to do it correctly

Q: Has there been an effort to catalogue the menu items that Ben and Adam have tried so far on Factory Seconds + their ratings? Would be very handy. TIA!

To replace the game of buttholes going into ENT, I suggest a new game I call Temporal Cold War. Here's how it works:

At the end of the episode Ben and Adam play a three card game of War using Star Trek trading cards (like they have in the past). The winner can elect to postpone the next episode of ENT by a week, and time travel to ANY episode of Star Trek from ANY series of their choosing. They will review that episode instead, even though it's probably one they've reviewed before, while drinking cold ones. So cold ones, time travel, and War.

This would be kind of similar to the vetos in the sense that it could be weaponized against the other host, but no episode would ever be skipped. It also would stretch out the run of ENT, meaning more TGG. And in this game the hosts could be more selective about when and if they want to do a drunkisode. Plus it would allow them to periodically revisit some of their favorite episodes, or just ones they feel like giving another watch.

Thoughts?

Couldn't find a master post of everyone's favorite Drops and I really wanted to talk about mine, so I'm making one.

Every time the Harry Kim drop comes on I get NASTY 😂👏 it makes me want to dance like a fool, which is dangerous when I'm listening to the pod in the shower.

Favorite drop per season?

I was looking at the 2024 I'm Hugo Award nominees and saw they have a Best Fancast Category. I say we campaign to win Greatest Gen a Hugo in 2025! I'm uncertain of the details for qualifying.

Im a recurring payment member for 2 years, I cant access the bonus content anymore however! Did the password change? I dont have any emails or anything telling me that it changed or what the new one is.

Anyone know what to do? I tried to use the 'contact us' button but it goes through microsoft edge, which doesnt play well with my computer and locks me into a never ending login loop...

You know, I really do try not to judge. I know that for the most part everyone is doing their best. But I have to say, I was absolutely dismayed to learn from one of Ben’s max fun drive pitches that ninety-eight percent of us FODs don’t even support the show.

I mean, isn’t that just a little bit shocking? They can’t part with $5/month? Like a buck fifty every week for something a hundred times more valuable than the surly counter service they just tipped for? Sure, that would be hard for a few people, but 98% of us??? Common.

I feel sad about that. It feels like I just found out that only like 2-5% of good people are actually good people. I know/hope the stats will be way different for people on the subreddit, so I’m preaching to the choir here. I guess I just needed to share my disappointment and get some reassurance that the show will go on despite this weird grifting crowd behavior. Thanks for listening.

https://youtu.be/XGsFa20GykM?si=T7j7vlvjgqEOnt0y

It's ugly but in a great way lol. I think it's from my childhood obsession with hammerhead sharks but I'm no shrink.

Latest Greatest Gen (VOY S7E19), for reference. What's the song origin?

Ok I am getting a new tattoo From https://www.instagram.com/howietattoos/

I am looking for ideas. So far I have the following.
Jedi Boimler

Ensign Tendi dressed up like Princess Leia

Mariner princess amidala

Storm Trooper helmet that is borgified

Help me out FOD's

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DS9 had Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Prophets. Voyager had Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Caretaker. What's the logical successor once the podcast goes into its Enterprise era?

My first draft thought is Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Suliban. But the Suliban are pawns in the whole Temporal Cold War arc, serving masters who are (at least initially) unknown, unnamed, and mysterious, so I don't know if it quite works in the same way as the Prophets or the Caretaker. Anyone have a better idea?

Welcome FoD's, the AMA starts at 11 PDT/ 2 EDT

I know Greatest Trek/Gen aren't "hey it's that guy!" podcasts, but I had to share my realization this week that *both* Baltars are big in Trek themselves--James Callis, of course, was Picard's abusive flashback dad, and John Colicos (TOS Baltar, who always had the best underlighting) went loafless and loaf-forward as the Klingon captain (and eventual Dahar Master) Kor.

(Okay I guess I didn't *just* realize it, but I still wanted to share because I thought it was cool and couldn't imagine any other group of people that might be slightly interested.)

Werner Herzog's autobiography. Astonishing, and arguably TGG-adjacent. Get the audiobook, read by the inimitable author.

https://www.audible.com/pd/B0BVN824ND?source_code=ASSORAP0511160007

FoD book club, anyone?