The Best Captain (Road Trip)

hello and welcome to the popcorn isn't real i'm leif eric i'm here with my brother torvald hi there welcome back uh i'm also here with special guest my sister brita hello and brita and i are in a car right now on a 10-hour road trip so our microphones are a very special road trip episode today yeah very special road trip episode if only we had a road trip movie to talk yeah if only we had yeah we also don't have any topics yeah if only we knew what we were doing but we're gonna have a nice fun conversation all right so uh have you guys seen any movies or anything this week no we've been moving yeah which if you want to hear about that it's quite a story well what happened so we flew out on the 5th and they were supposed to get there on the 8th now i told my apartment complex that our last day would be the 9th to give us a little bit of extra time right literally the day we get there after two hour plane ride one hour car ride we get there

and then we get a call from mom saying oh hey i just got a call from the moving company and they say they can either be there tomorrow or on the 10th what neither of those this is when okay so i had been told that they were coming on the 8th now on the way to the airport mom told us that their range which i didn't even know there was a range their range was the seventh to the ninth which again okay that's okay that's still yeah even if it's the seventh we still have at least a full day right so we get there at like 6 p.m and we're told that they're coming tomorrow and at this point so mom calls me then the moving company calls me and the lady is like yeah so they'll be there tomorrow and the window of time is from 10 to 2 as soon as i hang up with her i get a call from the guy who's actually going to come do it with the movie and he's like yeah we'll be there tomorrow uh we'll be there between eight and ten so like the time kept moving up yeah right

they were just itching to help you move they couldn't wait so brita and i are like wow we have hours to clean and organize this whole house and so we're like well we gotta get rid of lots of stuff we gotta sort and organize and we were doing it until like so late at night we went to bed at like two yeah we need to be up before yeah we got up at five we got like three hours of sleep and but there were just so many things on our to-do list of things we need to sort and move and blah blah blah blah so they just come come in and they're like you're here to move and they were packing too right because because we knew we had to do this move quick and it's just brita and me but they were just packing everything you know and like so we're trying to be like well maybe you know not that but eventually we just kind of stepped aside because it was like it was like a wrecking ball or you know avalanche train wreck hold on i don't understand why why didn't you want

certain things packed well just because we hadn't had a chance to really look at everything right and there were things that we weren't gonna pack well listen there was just lots of different things and we had discovered a pile of dirty towels that had been there for who knows how long and we put them in the laundry camper because we're like we will do this laundry because you can't do laundry after a certain hour in this apartment building so we'll do this laundry in the morning but then in the morning we had so much to do and like we completely forgot about literally after they had left we were like yeah dang we we were sweaty we need showers do we have any towels left and I was like oh no the towels they packed our stinky dirty towels they're not here anymore they're gone and yet they left random things that like like we did want packed like the printer yeah but there were four guys and like clearly one of them was really

smart and knew what to pack but a lot of them weren't and we're just like this goes i don't know what this is we'll just leave it and so like and then they like we ended up getting we ended up getting charged more because we hadn't had time to like get rid of stuff so they're just packing up all our junk right yeah would you say it's it's the you've got your money's worth like well was it worth it so like i think they were good at what they did but i also do question the whole moving it up like five times i think if you are paying someone to pack you up they come when you are moving and not when they find it convenient right they come on the date you say that's what you're paying them for so that's one thing i did wonder if they had moved up the date several times to give us less time to sort so that we would have more boxes so they could charge i mean i don't know that's a conspiracy theory yeah i mean what evidence do you have to

back up this theory i think i've already i mean there's like nothing we can really do at this point so or at least not without a huge headache so gosh and i just can't get over those dirty towels that are gonna be sitting in storage for two months they already smelled so bad i cannot imagine how they will smell after being in storage and maybe it'll get so bad it'll loop back around of being good like how you ferment wine okay so everything went storage what we were trying to do yesterday was we were trying to get here get rid of everything we don't need in storage and then set aside everything we need with us so that everything else could get packed but you ended up putting everything in storage and instead we ended up putting a bunch of trash in storage and taking a bunch of things we don't need back with us like the printer right well we thought we were gonna have three days to organize you know and we had like 12 hours if that it sounds to me like

eric has some valid evidence for his conspiracy theory so mom gave us a hundred dollar bill which i realized when she gave it to me i had never seen a hundred dollar bill in real life before i i used to work in loans so yes i have yeah brito was a loan shark i was you can't see her but she's like this big buff bodyguard you know like multiple rows of teeth never sleeps skeleton made of cartilage she stops swimming she dies all those things uh eric was talking right right so uh she had given us a hundred dollar bill to tip them with but like these guys were out of there as soon as it was over he was like bye and they just left and i was like i had the tip but they just i just they didn't get it right because they were just out of there so they had taken our trash bags what there was there was a baby bouncer that was sitting near a box of trash bags the main mover and i were on opposite sides so i could see the baby bouncer and i think maybe

he could see the trash bags from my perspective he pointed to the baby bouncer and said should we pack that and i said yes and then later when they left the baby bouncer was still there and the trash bags were gone but interestingly those trash bags were in a cardboard box and they left they left the box they took the bags out of the box packed elsewhere a lot of the baby bouncer wow and so i was running after them being like wait we need those trash bags we're still cleaning they were gone and they were just out of there man they were gone the confused moving company There was no possible way I was ever going to be able to tip them. Yeah, well, luckily they can take some trash bags for their trouble. Probably they were sitting there like, dude, this guy is so weird. He had us unpack his trash and then repack it. Let's get out of here. I'm done. I don't want to shake his hand. He had us pack his dirty towels.

And yet he didn't want us to take his printer. You were just as weird as they were. They left at least 10 extra rolls of tape in our apartment. We just kept finding them. we just kept finding warmer rolls they weren't even done wait so they brought tape with them which they've been hid around your apartment like an easter egg hunt but with moving they were like you know moving's pretty hard i found a way to make it a little happier i like it you know it's movers i could see their faces when they found that tape who doesn't love finding tape we're movers we love it I love the tape. The tape is great. All right, so how many thumbs up to give my theory? I'll give it a half a thumb. Oh, that's... Is that how you guys rent? Great. And also, how many thumbs is this out of? Two? Two. Okay, I'll have two. I mean, unless something's really good. Yeah, I only have six. No, we invited you, Brita, so we could have some extra thumbs, right?

Oh, yeah, so we can have six thumbs. We should have invited someone with opposable thumbs. yeah that's true dang it congrats i'm glad you got everything out of there and uh you know have a safe trip home i guess all right that has this has been the popcorn isn't real wow what a great theory so who do you guys think was the best captain in star trek so are we concluding reboots like Chris Pine yeah of course all all every single Star Trek uh iteration is okay here but um for me like of course Picard you know he's he's a master negotiator he is he's very level-headed keeps his cool under like you know the most stress but then you got Janeway I mean Janeway's nuts she's a she's an utter psycho like she'll send you out the airlock and that makes her a better captain doesn't have the facilities to keep you in the brig for the rest of the trips you know sometimes decisiveness makes someone a good captain um i will say with only intimate

knowledge of perhaps three which would be william shatner's kirk chris pines kirk and captain picard i mean i think that picard i would of course vote for him because he's awesome But I think that you make a good point that he's a master negotiator and very calm under stress. But but he's especially good for what Starfleet is, which is a peaceful organization that is their their job is to, you know, meet other nations and get them to join their federation and such and to not cause wars. But during a time of war, I don't know if he would be as effective as a captain. Well, and you bring up a good point, which is should the Federation be a peaceful organization? Like, their galaxy is really, really dangerous and full of, like, war and stuff, right? Like, I think they're kind of kidding themselves by pretending to be a peaceful organization because they are not. Like, they're clearly militaristic, right?

Like, everything they do turns into a military engagement. considering the size of their galaxy though i think it's amazing they do have as much peace as they do you know like true there's so many different species and and so many of them have warp capability too right even with the romulans and at one point with the klingons like they've established neutral zones and treaties and stuff like that like so it's not like they're in constant war they've got a pretty good track record um i will also say as an anthropologist i think i'm a pretty big proponent of a an organization whose job is to meet other cultures and not try to be militaristic toward them and to meet them on their terms sorry do we need to take a pause gonna be on brita's talking just then yeah sorry about that i should have been quieter i choked on my drink probably because you're drinking urine i joke is that all they left you yes

i mean it's the pandemic we can't go to the store yeah come on torval oh no where else are we gonna get water we've been drinking our shirt for months you are in a desert i guess yeah no eric's drinking a rock star but so that it didn't spill it's a monster a monster sorry he's drinking a monster but so that it didn't spill he put it in an empty water bottle and then we noticed how much it looks like stale dehydrated the can of monster energy drink is green and black and so i assumed that it would also be green in color like mountain dew but it's yellow i guess maybe mountain dew is yellow too i don't i think mountain dew is yellow it's just through a green bottle well but why would they dye it when no one sees it that's about how i feel about myself why diet yeah no one sees me that's right Oh, dude, I just came up with a great catchphrase for obesity. At least for shut-ins. But back to my point from before Eric started choking, I was saying that as an anthropologist, I feel that an organization whose job is to explore and meet new people on their terms and in their culture, in their way, is actually very important.

And I think it's actually a really useful thing that, for example, the Federation will meet a new culture and maybe see something that they consider like oppressive or bad about them. And yet they still have this prime directive that says, no, you can't get involved with that because it's not fair to assert our mores and moral and ethical beliefs on another species, on another culture and group that we don't know. So I think that from those terms, I think it's better that the Federation is a peaceful organization. Like, the standpoint that you're taking, it relies on the assumption that the Federation is better than everyone. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't at all. Yes, that's the only way they can take that standpoint. I mean, they actually portray this very well in the show when the Federation comes across species like, for example, the Borg, who are just going to come in and steamroll them because they have a completely different culture and are far more advanced than the Federation.

there's literally nothing they can do. Like the only reason they didn't get absolutely assimilated by the Borg was because Clue clued them into it, right? And yeah, I guess Whoopi Goldberg helped. And then Dreamwey helped. I don't understand how them not getting destroyed by the Borg because of luck or whatever you're saying means that they are better than everyone. Well, I'm saying that for them to take a standpoint of we are peaceful, we don't interfere, means they're also assuming we're better than anything that we're ever going to meet, right? Like they're saying, we're the top of the top, so we need to kind of take care of every other society, right? Whereas there might be other societies, other species that are more advanced than them and are going to kill them, right? And if they approach a society that is more advanced and also going to kill them from the standpoint of, we won't interfere with you, it's not going

to end well for the federation right i just i don't think that your logic quite follows like i think that again like i am an anthropologist and so i can say like i could go and want to learn about a culture that you know doesn't have the same technology that our culture does or i could go and learn about a culture that is very advanced and maybe even has better technology than we do and i don't think me wanting to learn about either one of them is me saying like well you can't kill me so i'm gonna come learn about you right but you're kind of equating an entire and an entire civilization to a profession right like you're saying the entire federation represents anthropologists no i'm not saying that the federation represents anthropologists what i'm saying is that from an anthropological standpoint i think it's very important for an organization to take this this non-interference standpoint like i think that that's a good thing

right but then what do they do if they come up against a civilization that just wants to kill anthropologists well right and that's why i would say that like the federation like you were saying well should they be militaristic like that's why that's why they walk this middle ground it's exactly that it's that that right so does that mean that they tend to be a better captain like they didn't hunt down the borg yeah exactly because i think they still they still fall on that more non-interference line but like it torvald's saying they may run into something that is powerful and wants to kill them and so they do have defensive capabilities in fact Kirk even says that at one point. Right, and that's what I'm saying is that they didn't need to kill the Borg, but they did need to be able to withstand the Borg to continue their non-interference policy, right? Yeah, but you started this off by saying

maybe they should be more militaristic, and I'm still saying I think the amount of militarism they have is good and perhaps could stand to be toned down. Well, it's because the Borg were on their way, and if Clue hadn't let them know, then they would not have been advanced enough to withstand the Borg. They would have died. Isn't it Q? It is Q. Q, I'm calling him Q. Clue is from Tron. I called him Clue because I said clue him in. Yeah. It took us way too long to notice that. Yeah, Q let them know that the Borg were coming, and I'm just saying if he hadn't, they would have died. They would have been assimilated. There was nothing they could have done to stop the Borg. So maybe a standpoint of we need to be prepared for other civilizations to come and attack us would have been more beneficial to them. Then Q wouldn't have had to come and help them, right? Yeah, but I think at the same time, the problem then, though, is that if you're like,

okay, well, we're going to be more advanced so that we can defend ourselves better, so that we can even maybe protect other civilizations from the Borg or whatever it is, that can also be seen by other civilizations as military stockpiling and getting you into an arms race, right? no definitely yeah and so then so then that just invites further do you rely on a benevolent god named q to save you well i mean no but do you also like get into an armed race and have a cold war but now in space like that's what they did though they had a big cold war in space for the entire show i mean they did do that i don't know right and and under i think under kirk's rule sorry his rule under kirk's captainship um i think that i i don't know i mean he might have been better equipped to deal with a situation like that because he he was more like you said militaristic like he was thinking more along the lines of a military man than picard was right

right yeah and i think that is uh to get back to your original question which of these captains was the best i think that is the best argument for perhaps anyone in favor over picard is that that he's not as well equipped to deal with military situations and kirk definitely i think is uh it sounds like janeway perhaps is as well my vote is for captain pike okay what's what's he just turned into a into a wheelchair because pike is just kirk light and we just made an argument that maybe kirk would be better but he's a little bit of a loose cannon so go with pike okay so you are doing tv show pike not movie yeah because you know he's like kirk but just not as extreme but i don't know that you have enough evidence to support that because we only have one episode i've got some evidence okay go go go for it go all right so in that episode the only episode with pike um i guess we're going with uh what were they called the menagerie

yeah is that the one that ended up airing yes that is the original was the cage i think but In the menagerie, Pike is the captain, and number one is number one, who is actually Luwaxana Troy. Yes. But anyway. And then, what's his name? I don't know his name. Leonard Nimoy. Spock. He is the science officer, right? So Spock is the only one still on the Enterprise from Pike to Kirk. He's the only one who actually stayed with the crew. now in that episode that is one of the few if not only times where we see spock openly smiling and like having an enjoyable time without being like mind controlled right like he smiles he smells the flowers he looks at pike with like a jovial expression like spock is enjoying himself and he's allowing himself to enjoy himself i remember i was pretty freaked out when i saw episode and spock was smiling yeah it's really weird right well that might be because pike is

just such an awesome guy he's just so freaking cool he makes even spock feel great you're right so this is a favor of him yes right if he can make even even a vulcan feel just jovial and and happy-go-lucky then you know he's he is the person to bring peace to our galaxy okay but counterpoint what if the reason spock was jovial and happy was not because he was uh so enamored of pike that he was just letting himself feel um but was instead because this is when he was a younger vulcan this was perhaps like right after he left the vulcan science academy decided to still got a little human left exactly he's still kind of experimenting and maybe even rebelling like i want to live out my human roots and this wasn't until he decided later he decides like actually no i want to be full vulcan i want to not live that part of my life right so i've actually heard two theories about this um the one theory is kind of along the lines of what

you said which was this is right when spike spike when spock decided to go and join the federation and basically become a human right like he left the vulcans to join the humans and he had made a conscious decision to embrace his human emotions at that time yes just because that's that was what he wanted to do and then later kind of rescinded on that decision um i've heard that theory i've also heard the theory that pike was just that much more of a serious hard-ass captain than kirk was that it forced spock to kind of open up and be a little happier just to keep the crew morale up but um i don't know if that doesn't make sense it would be the logical thing for kirk to for spock to do right exactly like against my point and we do see him do things like that like uh sacrifice his own pride to help out, you know, for the good of his crew. So I thought, you know, there's maybe some truth to that, but...

Yeah, and there is the line from the movie, although said sarcastically and again from the movie, not the series, but where McCoy tells him, like, you just threw a stranded cock... Spock... Oh, Captain Cock.

Captain Cock is objectively the worst captain. i don't know i think he might be the best i think captain spike is the best he's pretty cocky okay sorry so he says you've just mccoy says you've just stranded captain kirk well he wasn't the captain first mate kirk on this ice planet and you're not showing any emotion like what's wrong with you and spock responds if it will help the crew morale for me to be weeping and moaning and like going about the ship that way, then I will gladly defer to your medical opinion. So I would say that makes precedent for the fact that, yes, he can show emotions for the good of the crew, even though he doesn't necessarily agree with them or wouldn't do it normally. Yeah, definitely. All right. There you go. But that's an argument that Pike was actually a bad captain because you're saying that Pike was so bad that other crew members needed to compensate for his badness.

I would say the argument that Spock is the best captain could be made because, you know, he is very logical. He makes very good decisions. The problem is they specifically have one episode where they kind of try to counterpoint that. It's the one where he goes with a shuttlecraft and gets stranded on a planet. It does. It's terrible. And I thought that it was poorly done and that the moral was bad. But I would say that that is evidence. Oh, you don't have a heart. You need a heart. Yeah, exactly. You act like a machine. It was really bad. Well, but Spock was right with every decision he made. He just happened to be with an idiot. No, exactly. He was right with every decision he made. And, like, he could have made other decisions, but they wouldn't have necessarily been better. Like, for example, he could have, like, said, okay, yeah, let's go do a show of force to scare off this native tribe of giants.

And that could have actually caused the tribe to, like, just destroy their ship and kill them all right there. But we'll never know because we didn't get to see that. We got to see him being a logical and more anthropological person and saying, no, we're not going to just destroy the civilization or terrify them or anything like that. But I would say that is evidence, perhaps, that he's not as good as a captain. The other evidence I would say is that we know that he never seeks for command. Like when he's under Kirk, he's never trying to be in command. And even in alternate reality, where they're like the most militaristic federation and everyone's like evil or whatever, and Kirk has a beard, that they go over into that reality. And he would have every reason in this reality. Like they tell us that it's very common for first officers to murder the captain so that they can take command. And I think McCoy even accuses him of trying to do this.

But instead, that Spock in this alternate militaristic reality decides to help Kirk and McCoy and whoever else they're with get back to their original reality so he can get his captain back because he does not want command. And so I would say that, like, it's possible that these are evidences that he... But do you remember his reasoning behind it? Why didn't he want command? I mean, I thought he... He said he didn't want to get killed, right? Like, the person in charge is the one who gets murdered. Right. It was because he saw more gain for himself in his current position. Like he thought he would do better, like personally, like he would get more from not being the captain. He kind of wanted a fall guy. Right. And I think that kind of shows that he's good at leading. Right. Like he knows how to game the system. But it's good. He's good at leading from not a leadership position. Like I think that he could be the best like leader, but he doesn't want to be heard, not seen is what you're saying.

Sure. Yeah. And so I think that that that would be an argument against him being the best captain is that he doesn't want. that position and like he that's not where he does his best leading from yeah also you know who's really good captain sulu because he says this is the uss excelsior we are here to assist you dude he'll always assist you he's also really good as captain and then in the trailer kirk says fire did that makes kirk a good captain or a bad captain what do you think i don't know it makes sulu a great captain uh no he's also a good captain in the new movie uh in well in uh star trek into darkness kirk leaves him in command so that he can go get capture khan and he is the one to send a message down to the planet to say uh we are prepared to unleash the entire payload uh and he says if you test me you will fail and he's just so hardcore so maybe he's a really good captain it is pretty good oh no oh no oh you're cutting out we're getting snatches now hey i can hear you

yay you can hear us yeah we can hear you what the heck is that yeah the moth man just flew seriously did you see it i don't know we just saw like the weirdest massive fast moving shadow just passed over the road like some giant jet plot but it was huge like it must have been a big jet but we couldn't see it in the sky oh we lost him it was going so fast torvald are you there yeah i'm here can you hear me yeah i think seem okay now um we've left that terrifying shadow behind us so let's keep going you mean like the the horrible conversation we were having yeah the specter of bad audio going in sulu territory was a bad moment for me you know who i do like brita hasn't seen this in neither of you so but i like captain lorca from uh star trek discovery uh he's actually an awesome captain right up until you realize the writers were didn't write him very well he was just a good actor and the writers had a terrible plan for him we don't have to talk about captain

lorca though because no one else has seen it yeah one comment that i wanted to make just talking about the militaristic side of things so in the alternate military star trek universe yes picard is still a captain and i would argue is a very good captain still even as a very militaristic man um that's the one where he refuses to ever surrender right right the episode where they just were like they shove it in the face of the writers of the pilot and everyone on his ship dies one by one around him as they're just being bombarded by like six Romulan warbirds and then the Romulan comes on screen and he's like Captain Picard your crew is dead surrender now and Picard goes that'll be the day and leaps over the console and runs over to the gun controls and starts firing torpedoes at them he's so freaking cool but no beyond that he was also I mean yeah they were going to die but they fixed the alternate universe thing

oh yeah that doesn't necessarily make him a good captain no so that's where i was gonna get to this so in that episode um i don't remember exactly what happens who is it is it gynan who goes over to the alternate universe or i don't remember i haven't seen all anyway as far as i remember in that episode somebody kind of went from the real universe into the uh into the military universe seems like and that's usually basically had to convince picard to kind of work with them to get them back into the real universe and oh yeah this was it was i don't know if it was her didn't have to do with tasha well i think it was i think it was the universe where they no it was it was a ship it was a ship full of people that they didn't even know who had come no it was the enterprise sea um that had gotten destroyed by romulans yep and uh they like jumped through a hole that brought them back there but i'm not sure if this is a different episode or not like

this is where i'm getting confused okay maybe you maybe it is that i thought it was that one anyway in one episode they they are in the alternate universe and they are on their own ship and it's picard who's in command and all i know is that despite taking a very militaristic approach to things he also was logical and tried other options and angles like he considered the scientific approach and considered like other ways about it which eventually resulted in a good outcome which brought them back you know to the normal universe even though it did end up with his own ship being exploded in the uh in the military universe but you know it kind of shows he's a good guy yeah even when he's a bad guy specifically what happened in that episode i wish we should have done some research yeah my bad it's almost as if none of us knew we were going to be doing this another point to make about kirk specifically an important aspect of him as a captain and as a

person is that he takes a viewpoint which is that there is never a no-win situation yep like his viewpoint is that you can always find a way to win even if you know you even in the most dire straits and even if you maybe have to sacrifice yourself you can always find a way to win right this is evidenced by his editing of the kobayashi maru program which he altered to reflect his worldview which is that there is always a win but also more importantly going deeper it stems from his childhood where he grew up on a colony planet and that planet was facing like a huge famine and drought and basically the guy in charge decided we're going to kill half the population and that guy's name was thanos no it wasn't thanos but he did decide to kill half of the people because he was like well we only have enough rations and water for half of us so half of us have to die and kirk was very very adamantly against that and he believed that even though they didn't have

enough resources for all the people they could have still found a way out um and i mean i i think this makes him if not a good captain at least a very altruistic captain even though he's more militaristic than picard like it shows that he does look for that peaceful option right like it's not like he thinks okay there's only enough rations for half of us well then half of us have to die right like he's not centered around death and destruction right just because he's a little more willing to fight right yeah i mean i think i think it's hard to make an uh an argument for kirk is the best captain but at the same time he was written before a lot of the other captains and i think that uh i mean it's just i think that the main argument you'd have to make for him is that his kind of like more rash and just decisive nature is what makes an excellent captain and they do make that argument in the show right because there's the episode where kirk gets split into two

and he has one side of him that is decisive but insane evil and lustful and stuff and then he has the other half of him that is very nice and a great actor and a great actor so good he has the other half of him that's very nice and like a good person uh but can't make decisions yeah and starts just like crying when they ask him to make a decision he doesn't quite do that um but yeah and so the idea that they're making there is that even if that that decisive part of you is tied to some very negative emotions and some very bad things it is so necessary to be a captain that kirk literally couldn't do it without it and that he was he was dying without it if you make that argument that that decisiveness is what makes a captain then perhaps you could make the argument that kirk is the best although i think it's clear from the way i said it that i still wouldn't make that argument okay well then i have another question because it seems like we're kind of

going back and forth debating kirk versus picard um in that case i'm going to present to you a situation if they each had an equal ship and an equal crew and they were going to fight each other who would win kirk or picard what would happen i mean despite my belief that picard is freaking amazing i actually think kirk would win like well okay and you said yeah because picard is like a nice guy yeah and kirk's like you know right but they're gonna kill each other like he's like this is a battle to death and they each know they're gonna kill each other so now we're doing battles on this podcast yeah this is a bit of a departure our normal theme but um i mean yeah i think that's kind of a hard one to a hard scenario to take especially given that like in both of those shows even though it's more highlighted with with picard like they usually try to find a diplomatic solution and they usually do right like you have the gorn episode where they were put in exactly

this situation where he was like you're on this planet you have equal resources try to kill each other and it still ended with him being like no and like killing is not yeah but then but then wait then you have picard's version of the goran episode where he was on a planet with a guy who said darmok when the walls fell and i think this evidence is that kirk is the better captain because he got the cooler more badass episodes i mean the gorn is like the best episode it is as a kid i loved that gorn so much dude the gorn's amazing great his costume was great and he was so good at like hissing and fighting so quickly yeah but i think brita has a good point that uh kirk did not kill the gorn and he was in a death battle he also did not kill spock when he was in a death battle uh he said he pretended to die himself pretend in a way he surrendered right yeah and i think that makes the point that like our generation because we watched the next generation a lot

we tend to compare picard versus kirk and that's where kirk gets his reckless right well like he being infamous for being more like the chris pine kirk right the one who is just really rash and reckless and and all that stuff because compared to picard he is but really he was actually a very professional guy who could be extremely diplomatic and was only occasionally super reckless you know definitely i fully agree so you're saying that picard that kirk is the better captain is what you're saying i don't think that's what i'm saying that's what i'm hearing you could say that but okay i don't know they were still at war with the klingons during kirk's time right yes they were Yeah, and during Picard's time, not saying it was his doing, but, you know. And Picard single-handedly ended this. He had a wharf on his crew, man. Yeah, he had a Klingon officer. Well, it was pretty much single-handedly Picard's doing.

Picard acted as the Klingon arbiter who chose the next Klingon prime minister. And then he had to come back and defend that prime minister from an internal coup. Like, it was entirely Picard who saved the Klingon civilization. And Picard, that's one thing about Picard that we know is that he is very active in, I don't know if you would call it politics. He was instrumental in trying to save all of the Romulans before their star went supernova and killed them all, which also created that. Why does that always happen? Well, that's where the alternate universe was created. So, like, he was working with Spock to save the Romulans. Spock ended up going to an alternate universe also back in time. But Picard was like, we know that he has evidence of being very politically involved for really altruistic reasons, even when he's not being a captain necessarily. Whereas we don't really have that much evidence for Kirk.

Maybe we do. I don't know. Yeah, in some of the movies, we know he becomes like an admiral and is in charge of training some people at Starfleet because he's over the Kobayashi protest. We also know that when Kirk is an admiral, if he is on a ship and he's not captain, he just freaks out when that captain sits down in the chair. He's like, like, staring at Scott. He's like, is something wrong with your chair, sir? Because he's not sitting in the captain's chair. Oh, poor Kirk. Yeah, I think that's good evidence that he's not the best captain. No, he is the best captain. That's all he can do. I think this is honestly going to be a very polarizing opinion. but we think that Picard's the better captain? I would, of course I'm going to go with Picard. I mean, yeah. Also, he's an amazing actor. And William Shatner is less than amazing. Dude, hey, I love William Shatner as an actor. He's fine, yeah.

He's amazing as an actor. Patrick Stewart, you know. I know, Patrick Stewart's got the chops, but William Shatner is William freaking Shatner. So we have crowned Picard as the greatest captain. But, hey, so against Picard, he keeps a dangerous piece of living equipment on his ship that has the ability to take over the ship and self-destruct it on a whim. That is true. I mean, it is dangerous to keep Data around. Even if he's a nice guy, he also saves them, like, every single episode. All the time. Not just them, he saves, like, the universe all the time. Yeah, he's very powerful. I would say, though, that this is interesting evidence. I would say it speaks to a larger facet of Picard's personality, which is that he is, I don't know if this is quite the right term, but, like, too forgiving or gives too many chances. He is very ready to, like, give people chance, like Data. So, for example, there are people in Starfleet

who don't think Data should be an officer. And there is very good reason. And there's very good reason that he shouldn't be. But Picard is very willing to say, like, well, let's give him a chance and let's let him try. And to say, like, yeah, actually, he's doing very well. How could the Federation ever have justified... counterpoint to that what about when picard said shut up wesley until wesley what a horrible so i was going to say this earlier that one of the evidences against picard as a good captain is that he's terrible with children he's so bad like he literally couldn't even understand why wesley blamed him when he was in command when wesley's father died and he was like baffled well he takes wesley to starfleet academy and wesley's like all excited to spend some time with picard and they literally spent like four hours in silence yeah but who wouldn't spend four hours of silence with

wesley freaking wesley i like wesley like i counted against picard that he humored wesley so much over the course of wesley's awful career and back to my original point though he like that does show a supreme lack of understanding of like human emotions and other people that when wesley tells him like i blamed you for the death of my father picard is shocked like he had literally never thought that was even a thing and he almost seems like he doesn't understand it when it seems pretty obvious that a child might blame the person in command also if you are the captain yeah it is like it is on your shoulders so yeah i think that that that is actually some decent evidence against i just have to say i can't take anything wesley ever does or says seriously because he went to the academy and then participated in his own stupid little frat party performing an awful maneuver which he got someone killed or almost got someone killed and basically should have been

court-martialed but weaseled his way out of it and he lied about it to picard and to everyone else and that was enough that single maneuver was enough to get freaking paris who's the son of a general in jail like paris did the same exact thing not the same maneuver but it was his stupid idea to do a risky maneuver that put him in freaking jail for the rest of his life i mean paris's dad general paris i think made appearances in uh in next generation the paris family is surprisingly successful in the star trek universe they go all the way back i think to the first generation to the fall of troy yeah diana troy no not diana troy oh yeah that one all the way back to when she fell down the stairs because a ferris forced her oh ferris how good you yeah they call that the fall of troy dude that's it the star trek lore is so rich i don't take anything wesley says or does as good he's bad okay but that's irrelevant whether or not you care about wesley

like the problem there is that that like picard didn't understand that a child would blame him for being in command with during the when his father died and that's a situation in which it seems pretty obvious that a child might bear some resentment and also as eric said obvious that as the captain it is your responsibility if someone dies under your command and so like taking up not even paying attention to the fact that it was wesley who did this like that's a problem yeah well all i know is that picard is also very stubborn he will not admit that there are five lights it's true clearly four lights what are you talking about this is a weird episode where was it the romulans so this actually shows a very strong side of picard which is that he did not submit under torture and gaslighting he refused to basically break and give in we gotta we gotta set this up for brita yeah so he gets kidnapped and he's basically kept in this dark

groomed and be tortured for a while and this guy keeps coming in and asking him how many lights are there and there's four but he wants Picard to say there are five and he also makes Picard eat like an egg that has a weird wriggly living thing in it um that's all they give him to eat I haven't seen this episode in a long time so I can't really talk about it I just always thought it was cool that like there are four lights because there were four lights but then he said at the end he admits something well at the end back on the enterprise he says something like but i think at the corner of my vision i forget what he says there actually were five lights oh no that makes the whole thing pointless but the problem no it's there weren't five lights he's saying they broke him oh i see so i think we have to talk about another captain who i know nothing about oh what i never got to say my piece about data yeah let's say go for it what about i just think it's ridiculous that the

federation could even be convinced to make a creature that has a positronic brain like an artificial creature that was programmed and made by someone else with a brain they don't even understand into an officer not only officer but a commander in the federation like i feel like that's irresponsible as is evidenced by many different episodes where he takes over and almost self-destructs the enterprise do they understand the human brain do they understand the vulcan brain i mean they don't understand fully any brain of any officer so what makes data any different i think the problem here is the intentionality behind creating his brain like the person who did this did understand the person who did this literally created an evil robot they're only I mean, he created a robot that chose to be evil. I mean, lots of parents have created people that choose to be evil. Perhaps he just programmed it wrong.

Or programmed it right. Maybe he wanted to create a evil robot. Well, then you're getting into a case of how you raise your kids, right? I mean, you can program your kid by raising them badly. No, I'm saying this is a robot. This is an android, not a kid. What evidence do you have that it's different? Well, but, okay, so even if we do say that it's the same then, then, like, if... Well, I'm saying from the perspective of Starfleet. Yeah. Right? And I'm saying that I think Starfleet would have at least some serious issues and reservations about, say, taking the child of a known serial killer who was raised by them to believe good is evil and evil is good and making them into a commanding officer. So even by Torvalds watching. Right. So you're saying Data's brother's actions should have, you know, the sins of his brother were needed to be paid for by him? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that like the intentionality behind raising or behind raising a child to believe a certain thing or behind programming a robot to believe a certain thing should be considered in a way that I think Eric is saying that the Starfleet did not.

That they just made it into an officer without really considering what was programmed into his positronic brain that they can't understand. Sure. But then if they say, hey, you can't be in the Federation because we don't understand your brain. What's to stop them from saying that to any other species? Right. I think that's a slippery slope. is like okay so you're saying we don't understand the human brain and the human brain was made by parents intentionally right but at the same time like the human like humans don't understand their own brain the guy who programmed data does understand the positronic brain right and that makes it different that he intentionally created a brain put uh put things into it that he understands that we do not like i think that's different now i think that noonie and sung does not fully understand data's positronic brain i think he really doesn't fully understand

That is, yeah, that is true. I think he understands the components of data's brain, but I think that it's like machine learning, right? And, I mean, of course, whatever data is would not be the exact same as machine learning, but this is the best comparison I have. No, I understand. If you're writing a machine learning program, then once you write the program to train it, like, you have it train on data. And I don't mean data the robot. I mean data the concept of information. And you have it train itself on data, and you don't control it during this point. I mean, there are different kinds of training where you can exercise more or less control over the machine learning algorithm. But either way, it trains itself, and it builds its own. It's almost like a geometric shape of how it will choose an action when it reaches a decision point. So I'm saying that Data's positronic brain was like this, but so much more complex that I'm sure Dr. Noonien-Sung did not sit there and wire every synapse to every other synapse.

Like there must have been some amount of self-training involved there, just like in humans. No, I think you're right. So maybe Data was the best captain. Maybe. I actually think that might be possible. And I actually don't necessarily agree with Eric's fundamental point being that it's genuinely irresponsible of Starfleet to have him as a commanding officer. But I would say that once he has proven that he can just take over unilaterally and do those things, that they didn't put any safeguards in place. I kind of do agree with Eric's point. Even though I'm arguing against it, I think that the Federation gave Data free reign over that ship. basically he could do whatever he wanted and they could i mean i feel like maybe he could be peacefully studied and they could let him be a citizen and a normal person maybe they could even let him work as a you know as but not as a commanding officer who has charge over humans

right like other species that are you know other robots yeah anyway right just a little weird well i mean but then you get down to the question of did he pass all the tests to become an officer And if so, limiting him would be discrimination. Well, but also, like, he would have passed those tests, like, just so much easier than any normal being, right? Doesn't that make him more qualified? His abilities surpassed anything. I think there is a pretty good argument for Data being the best captain, but I don't know that I have. I can't remember. I know he's been captain in some episodes, but I just can't. I haven't rewatched. I haven't seen them soon enough to really make the argument, so. Well, wait, here is another evidence for maybe Data shouldn't be a commanding officer over normal creatures. In the first episode, he's trying to learn how to sneeze. Yeah. He doesn't understand the concept of sneezing.

How can he be an officer over people who sneeze and do many other things? He doesn't understand emotions. Okay, is sneezing a qualification for being an officer? Like I said, he passed all the tests for becoming an officer. Now he wants to learn to sneeze. that's like saying he's trying to learn a magic trick should he become an officer if he learns a magic trick i think what eric is saying is that sneezing is not a magic trick not a magic trick but i think it's representative of a broader spectrum of like understanding human emotion and physiology and in a meaningful way to engage with other humans right sure but then from data's perspective humans do a lot of things for no reason right like sometimes i'll go well i'm talking doesn't mean anything i just do it every once in a while well he just did it doesn't it doesn't communicate stuff sometimes i yawn right like from data's perspective who is not a biological

organism he sees these things as things people do and he wants to emulate them right just like you might see someone do a cool magic trick and you want to learn it like he is fascinated by humans in that episode he wanted to learn about sneezing what it's not a bad thing like what if klingons could just make like a a weird roar sound that no one else can make if another human was like mimicking that would that be racist so you're saying data is racist i mean humans by trying would it come off that way whether it was intentionally racist or not no i will say also that in terms of things that data doesn't understand about humans though as torvald has pointed out like he is a very complex learning machine and i think he shows that he can learn to empathize and to understand these things pretty well as evidenced by the episode where uh diana troy gives birth something that he's never seen at all and doesn't really understand but has read

about and he is the one who stands by her side and helps her through it and does a very good job that's true and then when he's dating my girl and they're having a nice evening and then he gets up and says you're not my mother what oh yeah he tries to i remember now and he tries to have a fights he read that like he's just trying to have a rom-com moment with her perhaps the problem is with you and then when she breaks up with him he's like so is our relationship terminated and she's like yes he's like oh okay then i'll delete the uh the appropriate he says i'll delete the subroutine i made for our relationship yeah no but that's the most romantic thing he could have done which is programming a subroutine just for how to interact with his beloved one right like he doesn't do that for anyone else in the enterprise he was being a good a good boyfriend and also even though he hooked up with tasha yar not based on any emotions he recognized that that

is can be an emotional thing for humans and he keeps a picture of her right even after she's whether he actually feels for that picture or not he does it out of duty or something and out of an understanding of humans right yeah he doesn't necessarily have emotions but he does appreciate things like things are important to him not like emotionally like he doesn't love them but they are meaningful to him like these things have value to him as evidenced by one time when uh jordy was uh sick and becoming a freaky veiny monster was trying to add an action figure up we did that was such a good action figure but data was trying to solve this problem by doing the almost impossible task of like comparing a partial footprint that they found in a blurry video to every footprint ever cataloged ever in the database and I think Crusher was like why are you doing this data it's not going to be worth it and he was like well I might not be able to feel

for Jordy but you might say that I'm highly motivated to help him right so he's he values certain things and although not driven by emotion he is driven by how much he cares for things and people and for not being able to feel for Geordi like that probably is the strongest relationship in Star Trek is Data and Geordi yeah yep besides Geordi and the ship who programmed into a holographic girl Geordi and any mechanical thing yeah Data is the best captain that's what we're saying every time he performed as captain he did things no other captain could that's true that is true i mean he can command the whole ship on his own yeah there's one more captain we need to discuss though captain reicher oh dude yeah but isn't reicher just kirk does that get in command similar to your argument of pike being kirk light wouldn't reicher be yeah i was actually gonna say that then i was like i already said that yeah so i mean reicher does a pretty good job i mean that

woman says she he's not capable of making the big decisions and then he fires on captain picard as a borg so i mean he does a lot of cool things which ship would win in a race like the uss enterprise you know kirk's enterprise or the excelsior what oh oh well i mean the excelsior yeah because it's an excelsior like it had the infinity engine or something right and it's got like racing stripes like it had strike like it had long blue marks on you know it just looked faster no that was it was that was the excelsior special thing which was it had the new engine and it could accelerate better or something that's why yeah accelerate it's the accelerate cr so yeah i think conclusively picard is the best captain and excelsior is the fastest ship yes so brita how many thumbs ups does that theory get uh i mean it gets one fin up yeah all right one fin up also brita was was wounded when she was a long shark

she only has one that's right so that's a pretty good rating i mean i i think i need to know more about your rating scale to figure out how well you don't need to know anymore we might phase it out okay it's leaving we're even gonna use it we used to do thumbs up but we're not sure we're gonna keep doing that i give you do bags of popcorn but then not like it's not a very good scale either because the popcorn isn't real right then we'd have to say is it is the popcorn real or not but then we'd have to define what not being real is i think if it's real you believe the theory so frita is this popcorn no i think if it's real you believe the original if it's not real you believe the theory you say is this popcorn real and then if the answer is yes then you do a crunch sound of eating the popcorn it was a good question thank you for sparking that discussion all right well thanks for listening to our awesome discussion of star trek uh we hope that you

enjoyed hearing about all the various captains and how they compare to each other uh this has been Leif Eric, and my brother Torvald, and my road movie buddy, sister Frida, and we will see you guys later. Thank you so much for listening. Opening music for this episode was provided by Christine. If you want to see how our theory holds up, we provide links in the episode description where you can enjoy the media we discuss. And if you like our podcast, don't forget to rate, review, subscribe on whatever platform you get your podcasts. And remember, the popcorn isn't real.