First Man & Lower Decks

First Man

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dad's Film Review, and if you're anything like me, you will be dismayed to learn that somewhere between 6 and 25 percent of Americans, Brits, and other nationalities surveyed recently believe that the moon landings were faked. That's right, one of the greatest achievements in human history, an awe inspiring and humbling venture into the vast and hostile cosmos, defying the odds and pushing the boundaries of science, innovation, and and humanity to do so was a hoax, an elaborate ruse on a secret sound stage complete with a cardboard cutout astronaut and a boom mic accidentally dipping into frame.

Well one, one man who can refute that is Neil Armstrong and our review this week is Damien Chazelle's biopic of the first man to walk on the moon in First Man, in which we'll learn that those first footsteps were powered by grief as well as almost superhuman levels of skill, intelligence, bravery and determination.

Continuing the space theme, we'll take a look at the first episode of Star Trek Lower Decks, an animated series made to appeal so blatantly to Rick and Morty fans, they might as well just have had Justin Roiland come by your house and threaten you into watching it with domestic violence and sexual assault, unless he hasn't already done that, like he has to so many of our listeners.

And before all of that, we'll be having our usual top five chat as we discuss the top five statues or sculptures. All that's left to do is introduce this week's three stooges, which starts with movie buff, or should that be buffoon, Dan. He's seen more movies the most people except for this week's. But then again, he's also seen more wars, plagues and natural disasters than them too.

We also have sidey and listeners. I've had a sneak peek of his new show which will only be available on beta max. And it's. Brilliant. You synergize the worlds of jazz and motoring enthusiasm in your new podcast, Scat Chat and the Rim Job Hour. So I'm really looking forward to hearing

Dan: exciting venture.

Sidey: out for that one.

Reegs: And then there's me, Riggs. Did you know in the UK, all crisps go out of date on a Saturday? Did you know that? You did know that? Yeah.

Dan: it's

Sidey: I did not know that.

Dan: you're

Sidey: Why is that?

Reegs: Cause they're all produced on a Sunday. I think

Dan: It's just that that 24 hour thing

Reegs: that production

Dan: Saturday

Sidey: the Sabbath?

Reegs: I read. Yeah. I read somewhere. Yeah.

Dan: Everybody knows that

Reegs: you look genuinely shocked by that. Yeah.

Dan: No, no, well you're safe on a Friday with a bag of crisps generally

Reegs: That's the thing to know.

Sidey: I ate loads of crisps yesterday. I wonder if they're out of date. Do you remember two days ago when we discussed Norman Wisden's film? The Bulldog Breed? Well Darren Leafley has hit me up with some facts.

Do you want to hear it?

Reegs: I do.

Dan: The Leafinator. Go for it.

Sidey: apparently he had a chart hit in Albania.

Reegs: Right.

Dan: believe

that. Because he was big in

Sidey: With comedian Tony Hawks, who years after the stutter

Dan: stutter rap, yes.

Reegs: that them? Was it

as

Sidey: Morris Minor and the Majors was bet by Arthur Smith that he couldn't have another hit anywhere in the world.

And apparently it's all documented in the book One Hit

Reegs: Yeah,

Yeah.

Dan: it's all documented in the book One Hit Wonderland.

Sidey: Very good. Did you watch anything? You didn't watch anything,

Dan: I didn't know. No, I was getting,

Reegs: You told us you've been drunk since last

Dan: Yeah, pretty much. Well, the boy turned 18 and he doesn't really drink. So I thought I'd better do it for him.

Sidey: Is that what the kids are like these days, they don't drink so much?

Yeah,

Dan: They, they just, it's an old man's game, you know?

They, he looked at me and just laughed as I was getting more and more drunk. Um, Yeah. Yeah. . So just ridicule people until they realize how old they are. But it was, it was a fun week. Anyway,

Sidey: Good. What about you Reece, did you watch anything?

Reegs: are you ready to watch anything?

Sidey: I've I re watched The Untouchables.

I managed to injure myself on Saturday, so I was kind of like convalescing

lying

Reegs: was kind of

Sidey: My leg. I went, I did, I've been doing parkrun every week and I did parkrun without Chris who abandoned me to go to Thailand.

And so I got there a good hour and I fucking stretched and did things properly. Although apparently I was told to say, you don't stretch anymore, you have to do like active movement or something. I didn't understand what that meant. Anyway I got about half the way around the course and my legs suddenly got quite tight and then my calf just went twang and I had to kind of limp back to the car and I wasn't sure if I was actually going to drive but I

was

Dan: end I was able to.

Sidey: It was painful, very irritating

Dan: okay,

Reegs: Spare a little thought for Christian

Sidey: Keira, who's having a problem.

Reegs: yeah, in Thailand and Peter and it

Dan: Pete, have they

Reegs: moment,

Dan: Yeah, I was unsure if if Pete had joined them in Thailand. But I think that's not the case, is it?

Sidey: No, I don't think so. But it

Reegs: get a little bit too heated. Yeah,

Dan: Triviaverse started to get a little bit too heated last

week.

Sidey: it did, yeah. But Chris is doing that thing that you were doing, which is sharing your holiday snaps on the group, which is very

Dan: the group.

It's very irritating. Yeah, we do

Sidey: looks like he's having a gay old time.

Dan: nice, nice sunshine and everything. And yeah, hopefully by the time he gets back, Peter's managed to, you know, bring himself into the Triviaverse and

answer a few questions.

Sidey: everyone, but we're going to finish that tonight. Anyhow, we had a top five last week. I think we had an additional contribution from Mel all the way over there.

Dan: was Top 5

Sidey: exotic or not so exotic locales and we had

we had talked at length about quite a few Australian movies and she had mentioned another one and I think you made some disparaging remarks about Australia, yeah

Reegs: It wouldn't be the first time on this podcast, would it?

Sidey: Which is very remiss of you. Mel says another shout out for bad shit going down in Australia is Wake in Fright.

Have you seen that one?

Reegs: No, I haven't. No.

Sidey: Rabbit through fence is brilliant. Highly recommended. Although it doesn't paint Brits in the best. Oh, I sound a

Reegs: here we go. Yeah,

Sidey: I see what's going on but all a true part of our shocking history. There you go.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Should we crack on with this week's top five?

Inspired by the great man, Norman Wisdom. This is

Reegs: his own statue in Albania, we think.

Sidey: Confirmed by Darren Lethley's fact there. This is top five statues and or sculptures if you like. Do you want me to go first? I think the first one I thought of crops up in a movie and then in The Simpsons as frequently happens.

This is the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.

Dan: there's

Reegs: Well, loads of the statues. We could just do a whole section on the Statue of Liberty, yeah.

Sidey: Escape

Dan: There's one in Cloverfield, I think they've got no head.

Reegs: Men is the end

Sidey: the, it's the like thing. It's the, the aerial type thing, isn't it? Obviously in Planet of the Apes, it was here.

He goes to Heston's going crazy wishing he had a shotgun or something. And then Homer. Like

Reegs: one of the big reveals of all time,

Sidey: great. Yeah,

Reegs: of Liberty, isn't it? I mean, it's like,

Sidey: you think it's not

Reegs: And then it is! It was earth all along! Amazing. Amazing. And the Statue of Liberty was there on, like, right by the beach there as

Sidey: So,

what are we led to believe there that the tectonic plates had shifted or that it is risen?

Reegs: Yeah?

but, and moved a coastline towards the statue as well, I don't know. I'm not sure. But yeah, a lot of Statue of Liberty stuff. Should we continue with it? There's Men in Black 2 turned the Statue of Liberty into a giant, you know, Neuralizer, forget me thing.

Dan: Ah, right,

Reegs: it was in the finale of the 1995 Judge Dredd movie when he fights with, oh, I forget, when Stallone fights with

Sidey: The Angel Brothers?

Reegs: Could be, yeah, that's, oh no, it's Rico, that's right, but I can't remember the actor's name, I can see his face, dark, anyway, he was at his

Sidey: Samuel L. Jackson,

Reegs: lab, no, it's located in the head of the Statue of Liberty, Superman 4, The Quest for Peace,

Sidey: two weeks in a row,

Reegs: about it, it was in that Spider Man No Way Home, and Deep Impact, you see the top of the Statue of Liberty, just as the waters are rolling,

Dan: Yeah, nice. Well, I, I've got a smaller statue. It's the Maltese Falcon. We actually did the, the pod

Sidey: Statuette?

Dan: and maybe a statuette, but it was sold, you know, for two and a half million.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: In real life? In real life. IRL?

Dan: And You know, it was this 12 inch black lead statue from the, from the film, the 1940s Humphrey Bogart film which I really loved.

I think we really enjoyed that. We talked a little bit about old time entertainment with Norman Wisdom. Well, this is older than that, and this film stands up still today. It's, yeah, the 41 Maltese Falcon, and it's still up. fantastic story and, and film. And yeah, it's it's a statue which is heavily featured in plot.

Sidey: Statuesque. Yeah.

Nice. Fantasy stuff has statues quite a lot

Reegs: enormous ones. Usually.

Sidey: I've got uh uh this is visual for you. This is

Reegs: the ones that are doing a Nazi salute.

Is

Sidey: Yeah, they're the Argonath. It's in Lord of the Rings when they're in the little canoes and they're going towards is it?

Reegs: it

Sidey: Rivendell? No, because these are the kings. These are kings from this human. Is it Gondor they're going to?

Reegs: it Gondor going to?

Sidey: absolutely fucking vast. So they're like big as a

Reegs: vast. So they're like as big as a

Sidey: bigger. You're right, they are bigger than the cliffs.

So that was one that I thought of. And then there's one that is incomplete, but it's in Lost. Which is just

Reegs: and if

Sidey: if I'm doing it to scale, it looks like if there was a complete statue,

would be about the same and I think that might be one of those things in Lost that was never actually ever explained.

Reegs: it's another

Sidey: Yeah, it's just another thing that was there to confuse, because they didn't really know what the fuck they

Reegs: the fuck they were doing. Well, it's nothing. It's sort of like

Sidey: well you, nothing, it's sort of like Game of Thrones where there's a million plot threads that don't get resolved.

Reegs: Lovely.

I, you talked about the Simpsons, I would have to go, I've got two, sorry, it's iconic, from Jebediah Springfield, yeah, exactly, a noble spirit in Biggins, the smallest

Sidey: a real word?

Reegs: It didn't even exist before Lisa the Iconoclast was the episode, and the gummy Venus de

Sidey: The rarest gummy of them

Reegs: the rarest gummy of them all, carved by gummy artisans who work exclusively in the medium of

Sidey: saying gummy!

Reegs: So yeah, that was the first one I thought of, and the second one I thought of was in Batman, the original 1989 one, when they go through the art gallery, there's a

Sidey: Hang on, that's not, that's not the original one.

Reegs: Oh, okay. The

1989 Batman. Not the original. The 1989 Batman. Tim Burton's Batman. When he goes into the art galleries, graffiti, I think he, there's some Goya, I think, and

he says, leave that one. I like it.

Dan: for cartoons, one that comes into mind is Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, when in a future cartoon world Shredder has a, a giant statue of him instead of the statue of liberty it's it's shredded with a gun is it's like in a future world in the cartoon

Sidey: that's kind of a subset because I'm thinking of the series Low key, the series one, when they eventually find.

He who remains and all around the fucking forget the name of it. Now, the time fucking whatever they're called. There's statues of these people who are the time authorities and the guys and he says, if you fucking kill me, I'm the one who's holding this all together and it'll all go Pete Tong and she does kill him and then when we go to this new reality, all those statues have now been replaced by Kang,

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: the TVA.

Reegs: TVA,

Sidey: That's

Reegs: Kang the Conqueror, it's all been, yeah.

Sidey: yeah.

Reegs: Nice, that's a good one. Are we having Lionel Richie's head in the hello video?

Sidey: That's the number one sculpture choice, surely.

Reegs: it's gotta be in there, isn't it?

Sidey: This is how I see you, and it's a fucking ginormous, like, massive

Reegs: yeah.

yeah, yeah.

Sidey: hello, it's a fucking banger of a tune. Absolute

Reegs: number one pick,

Sidey: It so rarely happens where you get a brilliant tune and a brilliant video, but it did

with that

Reegs: all came together, didn't it? Yeah. What else

Dan: was the one we were looking for, yeah.

Reegs: Ghostbusters one and two. They've got another Statue of Liberty where they use the positively charged mood slime

Sidey: ward off a

Reegs: giant meccano up the street.

So,

Sidey: With a Nintendo controller.

Reegs: Yeah.

And the art deco gar oils that Vince Clotho and the other one turned into.

Sidey: There's also gargoyles that come to life in

Gremlins 2, a new batch.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Well, picture where I am now. I'm just on a boat going onto a beach. I'm dressed in a Bedcloth and there's a massive, massive statue there,

Sidey: In a

Dan: Jason

Argonauts, before you get there.

So, you remember Talos, the huge kind of figure that they they around with. Like, there's a cyclops, I think, in a little cave. There's gold and all kinds of things and they've just pulled up there, not knowing where the hell they are. And suddenly Talos starts coming to life. And he crushes everything.

He kills everything. He's just a, a, a massive beast with a a sword and a helmet and all that. As you can see, it's a

Sidey: it's a good situation for the

pod.

Dan: and I

believe

Reegs: Yes, yeah, yeah,

Dan: same one. Yeah, on the same

Sidey: people

Reegs: into

living statues. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Nicely linked.

Reegs: side. That's good

Sidey: sexy statues?

Reegs: Yeah, go on tell me more

Sidey: I think Clockwork Orange in the Carover Milk Bar has some very erotically charged

marionette

kind of statue things going on and also more visuals for you blade

Reegs: by a giant penis statue as well in

Sidey: He is yeah that woman that you terrorize yes

Dan: Some people pay for that.

Sidey: Blade runner 2049.

Do you remember when it goes all orange like that? I think it's supposed to be vegas. Is it?

Reegs: Yeah,

Sidey: I think or some sort of some sort of resorty type place anyway is where Deckard is found and there's all these very sexy kind of looking well, they once might have they're now in disrepair, but sort of women and erotic imagery in gigantic statue form.

Reegs: Oh, lovely, that's right on my street,

Sidey: Hmm.

Reegs: The Weeping Angels in Doctor Who. Ah, you got them, they are absolutely terrifying. Genuinely,

Sidey: They're one of the best villains. One

Reegs: of the best villains of Doctor Who. Genuinely terrifying. And a good game to frighten your children with when you're out and the statues are there.

Sidey: Of

Reegs: Christ of the Redeemer.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: He's perched atop Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro, 30 meters tall, 28 meters across his arm span.

He has featured in 2012, the Roland Emmerich Destroy the Earth a thon, Fast and Furious 5 Moonraker, City of God. Romeo

Sidey: is old

Reegs: Juliet, and of course everyone's favourite film about a blue, gay, virgin, OCD, suffering, anxiety parrot Rio,

Sidey: Oh, okay.

Dan: Oh yeah, I have seen that. Game of Thrones, everybody's seen it, got season 5 you had Anya Stark, Arya Stark going to Braavos and they had that huge statue of,

Reegs: Well, you got a statue of Joffey

Sidey: Brave King Joffrey. Brave King

Reegs: Brave King Joffey with his

Sidey: he's

Dan: got like his foot on a, on a fox or something, isn't he?

Or a wolf. But yeah, this the titan of Braavos was a shielded

Like warrior

with a head mask and holding a sword up. And as he came in, it was just like. Dwarfs everything even the highest buildings in the and the mountain you think how the hell do they build that like, you know Um, but there was a lot of money.

Yeah slaves slaves should have done it

Sidey: Statues as memorials. The Marcus Brody memorial statue in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The second worst Indiana Jones film. And there's a Superman memorial statue in Dawn of Justice. Like that?

Dan: Yeah

Sidey: And then what about statues that are secret like openings to

Reegs: military bases or,

Sidey: because that's back to Indiana Jones.

I think Temple of Doom with Kate Capshaw puts her hands on the boobs of the statue which opens a secret door.

Reegs: Yeah.

nice.

What about the monolith from 2001? Is that you've got it on your list there. I don't know if that is a sculpture or not.

It was really a

Sidey: It's statuesque, I would say.

Dan: I think it, I think it counts. I mean, Mount Rushmore's another one that always seems

Sidey: gets destroyed in Team America.

Reegs: more a landmark than a statue. I wouldn't

Dan: Sculpted? I mean, it's not natural.

Reegs: no, that's true. Yeah, okay. Maria? From The Machine Mench from Fritz Lang's classic

Sidey: Oh, of course, yeah.

Reegs: I mean, she's more a robot, but there is a big statue of her, isn't there? Or there is at least a real one at the studio where they made it as well.

Sidey: I've got one that's probably not allowed, but it's sexy, and it's the pottery sessions from

Reegs: Definitely, yeah.

Sculpting together. Yeah. It's sculpting as a metaphor for sex,

Sidey: Was it

Dan: Does, does the Hollywood sign count as a sculpture in any way, shape or form? That

Sidey: sounds a

Dan: more

But it is, it is kind of sculpted into the letters Hollywood. Oh,

Reegs: but you are sculpted out of atoms, but does that

Dan: That's true.

Yeah. Nice one. We could, we could count that one as well. Yeah.

Reegs: what about mannequins though

Dan: Well, they're

Sidey: say they're more dummy

Reegs: but that's statue Eve Manic, no.

Sidey: well put it out there, we'll see.

Reegs: We've got House of Wax. And in Blade Runner when she hides among the mannequins as well.

So.

Sidey: as well. send us in for next

Reegs: us in for next week.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Breachy breaks the golden rule of mentioning Rocky Horror Picture Show.

They all get turned into statues, but her actual shout would be the statue of Matthew McFadyen or McFaden. Yeah. From as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. She just puts four reasons. I don't know what those reasons are.

Reegs: Yeah, he is a dreamboat.

Sidey: And then Darren Lethe wants to shout out Crucible of Terror. It's not a snooker thing.

It's a very odd British horror shown late at night on BBC One in the early 90s about a mad sculptor.

Dan: No!

Reegs: that is ringing some weird kind of bell, so I'd have

Sidey: the tagline from the picture. Hang on. A mind so evil it could lock its terrible secrets inside a beautiful body. There you go. It looks

Dan: Wow. Yeah, it does,

Sidey: And then we've also got Obligatory Bond mentioned the statue decapitated by Oddjob's bowler hat and gold finger.

It's a hell of a shout.

Reegs: good,

Dan: good. That's nice, yeah. God, I loved Oddjob when I was a kid.

He was

the brilliant like the best Yeah, he was the best villain, wasn't he? He was just

Reegs: I don't know, Jaws, Jaws was pretty scary as well

Dan: Yeah, but the

Sidey: fucked him

Dan: the hat was just perfect

Sidey: Right. What were we gonna put in, Dan?

Reegs: Oh, but wait, wait, wait,

Sidey: Oh, sorry. We,

Reegs: there are just two more, two or three

Dan: Well, then don't leave us waiting

Sidey: Oh, yeah. Oh, you

Reegs: not have the statue of Rocky and the real

Sidey: did you see, did, did you Seely tribute to

Dan: Carl Weathers,

Sidey: Carl Weatherspoon. yeah. Yeah. I thought we was gonna actually cry. It was quite

Dan: He was,

Reegs: Oh, it was very sad though, innit? He's only 76,

Dan: know, he really didn't seem to

Sidey: really didn't seem to be there's Colombo doing the Just One More Thing here's a statue

Reegs: There's Colombo doing just one more thing.

Here's a statue in Budapest. Nice. There. 'cause they think he's distantly related to a Hungarian public figure there. So , they've got a statue of image. Brilliant, isn't it?

Sidey: Yeah, okay, cool.

Any more? That's it, that's your two. Okay, right, what are we going to do, Dan?

Dan: I'm putting in the Maltese

Sidey: Okay. I'm going to put in the Jebediah Springfield statue.

Reegs: Rocky. Rocky.

Sidey: think I've dropped a decapitated thing going for Dan Leafy, and there'll be one a. n. other for next week.

Dan: let's

Sidey: Bevis, J Mo, any of you lot, come on.

Dan: Let's do

Reegs: as, it's gotta be as good as

Dan: Otherwise, it's going to be the rocky horror picture show.

Sidey: No it isn't, it fucking would never be.

Well, I supplied us with some sweets. Yeah. I doubled up on the munchies and we've got a bag of oh, mini eggs which I just ate on my own and there's also some refresher fizzies that aren't fizzy at all but then

Reegs: that fizzy has

Sidey: treated us to some homemade goodies.

Reegs: Yeah, there's some gingerbread there's some minced pies because Of course.

Yeah. Homemade as

Dan: a month ago.

Sidey: February so of course. Yeah. Well done.

Dan: Very nice. There's some Madagascan chocolate just behind you as well. So

Reegs: It's a bounty.

Dan: got, we've got plenty going on.

No cheese

Sidey: of no cheese, no cheese. Although, I was today thinking, I could actually fancy a bit of cheese. I haven't had any for a little while because we cancelled the subscription.

I don't know if that's clear to everyone listening but we have cancelled the

Dan: I've got a feeling it will be back.

Sidey: I think we'll just buy a bit every now and then but we exhausted their selection which Do you think

Dan: it.

Reegs: you think cheese has ever been taken into space?

Sidey: the moon made out

Reegs: Yes, it is!

Dan: very

Reegs: Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: I was dead excited about this, I have to say, because Whiplash we'd seen for the pod reviewed loved. Same with La La Land as well,

Sidey: Was this, this is the follow up to, or his next film after La La Land. And I remember this having a fairly lukewarm reception, but I don't know if I'm remembering that correctly.

Dan: Yeah, I think it, it did, it was a lot of hype around it and I watched it probably, A year or so after it came out.

Maybe less than that.

around that,

you know, it might have been nine months. We don't know. We're not going to get into it all now. But I was really sort of keen to hear the story of, of Neil Armstrong and the first man on the moon.

Sidey: Well, it's, it's takes place over the period from 1961 to

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. And it starts off with him

Dan: in the 60s,

Reegs: in the he's, yeah, he's in the X 15. He's testing this high altitude supersonic jet. And

Dan: He's a kick ass pilot, isn't he?

Reegs: you get like a really distinctive style straight away. That's all about accuracy and realism. Like you don't get wide angle views of the spacecraft or anything. You just get interior shots of him, like looking out and yeah, you get the, like the, all the roaring and vibe.

Brating and the smashing and clattering and sound of it all it's really intense.

Ah! If you're watching

Sidey: You're gonna love this.

And

Reegs: looks so low tech, like, it looks unbelievably low tech. It looks like somebody made it in its garage, and even by the standards of the day, it looks very unsafe as well.

Sidey: Yeah and it looks like it might go Pete Tong right from the get go here because he goes out and he manages to like bounce off the atmosphere.

Yeah. And there's a panicky moment where his altimeter altimeter

Dan: One of the dials

Sidey: it just. starts, he looks

Reegs: he gets

Sidey: see the curvature.

Reegs: wrong. And so he bounces, he skips off the atmosphere and bounces back off

Sidey: And then the dial more dial action but this time it's going up. He's just he's like losing gravity's getting a bit of a challenge.

And he's able to kind of pivot his way around

Reegs: He uses some thrusters to kind of maneuver himself back. So you see him under pressure. He's an

Dan: an amazing piece of, of Piloting because

Reegs: But it's also engineering as well, because you see him like calculating stuff on the fly

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it just gives you a hard sense of how amazingly versatile he is and that he can Manage these really high intent because his demeanor afterwards is is just cool as a cucumber

Sidey: but he gets a bit of heat, doesn't he, from the higher ups, because he's, they.

Reegs: They perceive him as a risk

Sidey: He he might be distracted because what's going on at home is that he has a daughter who has a brain tumor and we see him very Looking into it and researching it and we see treatment going on and him spending time obviously with his family and there's one bit where she has treatment and it looks like the fucking goldfinger like death laser that goes between bond's legs She has this enormous Thing like pointed at her head while she's having this treatment.

It's absolutely fucking horrific

Reegs: And we see the aftermath of the treatment, her being sick and him holding her and him singing to her and it's very powerful stuff really.

And you see him also keeping like a detailed log of what's going on with her and you know, tracking her progress or decline you know, in, in his, in a detailed way, as he's also doing his own like physics homework as well, because he's an engineer. He's not, he's not, he's a civilian. He works as a, you know, test pilot.

He's not in the military.

Dan: military, So,

Yeah.

Reegs: Anyway, she is going to. Yeah. Die, and we're gonna see him kind of not grieve at all at the funeral or at the wake and then retreat to his office and, you know, sort of fall apart amongst his books and a bracelet that he will pocket.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, pretty powerful stuff.

Reegs: man. How are you feeling at this point?

Sidey: Fine, yeah.

Reegs: don't know, I thought I was pretty touched.

Sidey: Well, I mean, it was very sad, you know. It wasn't, like, loving or anything.

Reegs: So, he ends up applying for the Gemini program, which has Kyle Chandler popping up, a character actor I really like. He plays Deke Slayton, obviously, these are all

Dan: Astronauts. Yeah. Well, pilots, this, yeah.

Reegs: guys, the real guys. And he is invited to join this project Gemini, the NASA astronaut training program.

And he draws that scale model, doesn't he? Where he brings in the two blackboards and draws right across it to show corrects where it is.

Dan: big it is.

Sidey: and how big it is.

Dan: gone off the chart.

and

Reegs: yeah. I guess

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. And that's, I I guess everyone has a, an idea of what Neil Armstrong was like in real life because he fucking never said shit after all this.

But then say, you know, his private person and stoicism, I think, you know, high up in his personality traits.

Dan: person and stoicism, I think, you know, high up in his personality traits It's pretty funny for people to just have done that and then

Sidey: just to have done that and then just be like, I'll keep it on lockdown actually.

Dan: yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. I don't need to talk to everyone about it. But yeah, we see what's gonna happen. You know, they they moved into this kind of what they do and they they have all the astronauts on base on on site. Yeah. Moved in to you know, live there so that they can do it and they have training

Reegs: the training, they have this like, this gyroscopic contraption that he has to pilot round and yeah.

Sidey: It looks like it would make you a little bit dizzy.

Reegs: Well it does, it makes him chunder, when he passes out and then tries again, and then he pukes afterwards, there's a long line of guys, and then in the next one They go straight from this gyroscope thing into a physics lesson.

And they're all there with like puke down their overalls. And he says to him,

Sidey: the guy comes

Reegs: Oh, it's don't worry. It's only the first chapter tonight. And he looks at it.

Sidey: 600

Reegs: 604 pages. The

Sidey: first chapter,

Dan: chapter. Yeah.

Sidey: Of

hardcore physics and

Dan: and and you, you think like, we talked about the low techness, but also how hard they had to drive themselves because it was

Reegs: they are unbelievable, but

Dan: and, and, you know, so little there to protect them.

They've got to be able to under pressure, do calculations that you and I would be sat around all day thinking about.

Reegs: a lot of good foreshadowing in those scenes for stuff, skills that are going to become apparent or be useful later and just demonstrating how cool he is under pressure.

Basically he's an engineer as much as he is an ace pilot, and that's really important. That's why he will end up being picked this as part of the training as the training program goes on, we see them all grow. Quite close together. Gus Grissom, who's played by way Shea Wiggum and Ed White and a load of these other astronauts and test pilots and that sort of thing.

And they're all motivated to this thing that Kennedy has promised.

Sidey: Space Race

Reegs: Yeah. The space race.

Dan: space race. Well, this is it, because you've got the Cold War effectively going on and the space race. The Russians have already got a march on on America and putting people into space

Sidey: Well, they have hit every milestone.

Dan: every milestone.

Sidey: Before the Yanks, yeah. And there's that famous speech they show at the end where Kennedy says, we choose to do this not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

And, you know, all this stuff. And there's all sorts of things that are discovered and developed. off the back of this kind of because they do a lot of stuff in this about well, it's expensive, you know, there's billions and billions of dollars and they show a lot of the protests.

Reegs: as they're unveiling that will

Sidey: going to the moon.

Reegs: got Gil Scott Heron doing white, he's got the moon, yeah.

Sidey: And

the people are starving. And yeah, that's in the Prince song as well. We're sending people to the moon while people starve, you know, so they, they, they're upfront about that sort of stuff as

Reegs: Yeah. So they grow friendly with a, a, a bunch of guys, you know, and this is a real story. So when some of them are killed off in tragic accidents, there's A-A-A-A-T 38 that crashes and you know,

Sidey: it's the, the test thing that they do where it catches fire and

Reegs: that they do where it catches fire. You know,

Dan: Military wives, aren't they all, you know, effectively, you know, in that band together, a community of them. And yeah, having that kind of bad news as well in a high risk environment, they will stick together, don't they?

Reegs: together, don't they? Yeah, he can't really fly this one. So he's trying to controls

Sidey: by this one. So he's trying to because the controls are slightly different.

It's sort of like A joystick

in the You know, it's not like

Dan: like

Sidey: a computer game. It's it's yeah, it's a little bit and he's trying to get it right and he's get the radio and it's like the way it's filmed. Like you said earlier, it's it's all I know it's quite disorientating when you're watching it and he you know, you don't know which way is up and which way is down and he's flying all over the place and he ejects and you get that's very kind of visceral when you're watching it because it's a big bang explosion and he flies up in the air stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: he

Sidey: he Kind of, I think he lands on his face and he gets dragged then by the parachute, drags him as he's in the sort of scrub and when he goes home his face is in the fucking right state. And obviously having just lost a load of

Reegs: well, and his superiors, exactly, his superiors are saying to him, you know, he's like, we need to fail down here so we don't fail up there, and, you know, they're saying, well, careful, you know, you, you look a bit shit, like, you've just been through this big crash, what about the cost, and he's like, well, What about, it's a bit late

Sidey: Yeah, it's a bit late to ask about the cost. Yeah, it's

Reegs: We've already lost two or three men to this

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: So,

He gets, like, increasingly, you know, he's clearly processing the grief of his daughter's death by sort of avoiding it and throwing himself into his work and being almost, it's not quite self destructive because he's way too cool and calm under pressure, but

Sidey: She understands the reality that her friend's husband has just died, other people, you know, other people in the voice

Dan: going up next.

Sidey: This guy, we're actually talking about sending him to the fucking moon. Never, it's never been done, right? And I sort of naively had never really thought about the actual risk that they were putting themselves up for when you read the letters and things that they had to pre write about people who might end up getting stranded on the moon.

And he's obviously I think, you know, he's processing that grief. He's lost friends. And he's also realizing that he might be leaving his family behind And he doesn't really address that until his wife has a fucking proper meltdown with him

Reegs: done the proper meltdown with him.

He's got a bit more personality, he kind

Sidey: has kind of got a bit more personality. He kind of goes a bit off script and says, well, I might take this and I'll take this for my wife and then, you know, she'll get the bragging rights of having the first jewellery that's been to the moon and blah, blah, blah.

And Neil's just sat there like,

Dan: Yeah, more fuel.

Reegs: take some more fuel. Yeah. And then when he is, when Janet, his wife, forces him to, she's like finally addressing it like, No, this time you're gonna talk to the children and say, I'm going to the moon and I might not come back.

And she's like, I'm tired of having that conversation with the kid. Every time you go out on these missions, you know, I know there's a chance you're not coming back. You tell him this time and he sits him down and it's like a press conference, basically answers the mi the questions from the kids. He's like, well, we believe in the mission and, but there are risks, but it's our intention to come home.

And that sort of, it's talking to his kid, like, so you can see the damage that's done to him really by A lot of this stuff.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, psychologically, getting your head in that space, particularly having had friends fail on it on a similar mission. And then going to, you know, he's just pushed it to the back, isn't he? He's just, as you say, focused on his work.

Sidey: I think he's already in his personality. He's kind of like that and it's just like emphasizes it and makes it more,

Dan: think he understands the, the importance of the time as well.

You know, he will know that it's a political thing. He will know that it's not just,

Reegs: he's, there's, although the movie shows it, I feel that he is fairly isolated from that.

He goes to the, you know, he's more interested in this as a challenge, I

Dan: Yeah, no, but I mean, you, you couldn't help but it being that time, the space race, who's going to get to the moon first was a thing like, you know, so him giving it.

Everything for that was obviously more important to him at that time. Even his thoughts go there before telling the kids. Yeah.

Reegs: We've skipped a terrific scene, which a bit 2001 esque, especially the score with the Gemini craft, but it doesn't matter, but it just shows again how,

Sidey: Oh, it goes out of control and he uses some Piloting skills. It's

Reegs: It's the skills that he was demonstrating earlier in training in this mission become, yeah, so it's really

Sidey: 200

Reegs: He says, Neil, we're in a bank, and they're just spinning,

Dan: Yeah, he's got a

Sidey: Everyone else has passed out and apart from him who's on the cusp of it, but he manages to bring it around here and so he's as cool as he can be under that kind of pressure

Reegs: And it's really, they're very visceral scenes as anyway so we go to the Apollo 11 launch again, done really nicely from the perspective of Armstrong as he walks down the final

Sidey: front of the

Reegs: And gets into the craft and then as they come into land, I guess this is really cool because they combined the actual archival footage with You know, additional footage.

So it looks for, it's exactly the same as what you've seen on TV a thousand times, but done in HD and really

Sidey: I guess they use the same soundstage that Kubrick

Reegs: exactly, yeah, it's too, it's easy to do it. And you know, as they come in infamously, they had underestimated the terrain and as they come in, they're right on a big crater. I can't remember the name of at the

Dan: Tranquility, or something like that, is it?

Reegs: think that we're the sea

Dan: In the cn tranquility that the area wasn't

Sidey: Base Hotel and Casino. Yeah.

Reegs: And so anyway, he does some cool fucking pilotism and gets them right in Safely lands

Sidey: They they the tension's good because they're running out of fuel and they'd have to have 5 percent fuel and the clock is ticking to get

Reegs: It's literally down to zero he just glides it in and he's there it's cool and then we get the

Sidey: Well, he does the announcement on the radio. We see the camera sort of arm of the the lunar module goes down and

Reegs: Oh, as soon as it comes down, all of the noise in the movie stops,

Sidey: You get the burst of the vacuum as the door opens and then I would love to have been in the cinema for that because it was really cool just watching at home and we get obviously just before that we have the iconic line, you know, tranquility base, the eagle has landed and then the archival footage of the guy saying.

You know, basically thank fuck. We've got some people down here telling Blue, you know, congratulations or whatever, and you're like, okay, cool.

Reegs: And then we get some POV shots. You get

Buzz Aldrin and Neil sharing a little moment as they open the hatch.

And then a POV shot

Sidey: Imagine what that must

Reegs: I know, man! And they make it feel very significant as well. Like, you know, he descends but he's not actually on the

Sidey: We've also got

Reegs: the lunar landing module's

Sidey: got the guy that I can't fucking and this is like the famous thing like what was the third guy that's on the the you know, he didn't come down in the module and he says to them, please fucking come back.

Reegs: back.

Otherwise

spinning

Sidey: standing around

Dan: Campbell.

Reegs: that was

Dan: Campbell

Reegs: thing is just, I mean they show you, but you know, there's still a thing just spinning round the earth that they're gonna just leap back up on. I mean it's crazy what they

Dan: Well that, that was the possibility that he might have had to face. That loneliest man of all time. Right there and if they up there, he's gotta go back alone.

You know, all that way back. What was his name? Was it Mike Campbell or

Reegs: it wasn't Collins, was it? Mike

Dan: Collins. I think it was

Reegs: Anyway, so we don't deviate from this moment, because it is great. He descends the ladder, he stands on the step, he says the, And then he does put his foot down.

You see the footprint go on human on another thing other than the Earth. Really quite remarkable and it feels it and he makes a second

Dan: people on the pitch, they think it's all over. I mean, those

Reegs: says those famous words. Exactly.

Sidey: And then, yeah, he just kind of stood there and they show, they keep showing like a just a right in front of his face shot of his visor and stuff and at one bit, he kind of looks and buzzes just like bouncing around jumping and he has this moment where he goes to this big crater.

And it, it's like a protective layer of, on the vibe, isn't it? And he puts that up just so he, just so he can see him. And he has this bracelet from his daughter, which, and he has this moment to himself on the fucking moon. And he chucks the bracelet down into this thing. And I think it sheds a little tear and then goes back to doing like science y stuff.

Reegs: stuff.

Well, he, yeah, they do get back home and

Dan: Which is just incre it's an incredible,

Reegs: Just that

Dan: journey, you know, but to head get back as well.

Sidey: Yeah, so they, they boom.

Reegs: I was, I was like a bit gone at this point. I was like,

Sidey: They, they do a thing and the module like fucking zooms up and they dock that and everything seems to go like pretty smoothly like fucking hell.

It's quite

Dan: moon on basically the, the computing power of like a, it's less than a smartphone,

Sidey: No, it was less than it's in a scientific calculator.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: I mean, it's all dials and switches and buttons

Sidey: So the two, the 2012 or the two There's two error codes that they read out that are lighting up. They're basically that the, it's processing too much information that they literally have to turn it on and off.

It's what it, to clear it is to turn it on and off. What the fuck? It's mental. But

Reegs: the fuck? Yeah. But yeah, also this great, powerful moment of like, the movie strongly making a case that the final footprint of, you know, man on the moon is powered by that man processing his grief and his desire to be alone to do it is like, really, oh man, fucking hell.

And then also, you know. He goes back home, there's, we can skip through it quickly, it speaks to the other theme that's in it, which is he goes back home, he quarantines with Buzz, and,

Dan: Yeah, there's a long quarantine, isn't there?

Reegs: three weeks, they didn't know what he was going to come back

Sidey: come back with?

If only they'd applied that kind of rigorous protocol in Lower Decks that we'll get to later on.

Reegs: And then he shares a moment, you know, the relationship, which we haven't really talked about, but, you know, between him and Janet has been so tense at the end here, and they share a moment where between the glass, they, you know, press hands together,

And

Sidey: you know, press hands together.

that much between him and his wife. And he kind of like does a kiss on his hand and puts that to the glass and she puts her hand on it.

and it

Dan: it must be, so

Reegs: it, yeah.

Sidey: So I think I didn't know everything about the Neil Armstrong that's in this movie and his kids have come out and said that this is the most like accurate portrayal or story that they've ever heard anyone say. The bit with the bracelet might might be artistic but but the rest of it is that's pretty much what his father, the father was like.

So I guess the success of the movie is whether they're gonna be able to extract any drama from the fact that you know he does get to the moon and he does get back so you know that he's gonna be safe and is the movie successful in extracting any drama out of that. I would say fucking categorically, yes, I fucking love this.

It was absolutely amazing. And I was surprised because I thought it might be a bit so, so, because he's obviously it's fucking fascinating, but he, is he going to be interesting? You know what I mean? And yes, he was. And yes, it is. It fucking brilliant. Really, really

Dan: See I I Watch this not for the pod this week.

I watched it when it first came out and I wasn't in love with it I thought I'm glad I've seen it. I'm you know, I Watched it all happily I was really interested in the in the story in the performance in in all the kind of message that the the director would have tried to get through and and his performance as well, which I thought was was brilliant like It's not a particularly, you know,

Reegs: offy

Dan: no, it's, it's not, there's not a, you know, it's, as you say, he's quite, you know, withdrawn a little emotion and things being shown a lot of the time.

So through that, he's still got to try and get the emotions across of, wow, going to the moon and back in and juggling family and everything here. So,

Reegs: and the movie does such a good job of showing you just what a ridiculous idea it was for them to do it with the technology that they had and what crazy proposition it all was and that it came off with something

Sidey: with

Dan: Well that's it we're gonna do it at some point this decade and, and that was it. There was

Sidey: You know, whole load of that went on and you know, diverting funds from other things that would have been useful back home.

But also there were incredible scientific discoveries off the back of I think x rays work came out off the back of this and all the rest of it. So, was it worthwhile? Uh well, listeners can decide themselves. I would say yes, it

Dan: it

Reegs: Score was good as well.

Dan: decide themselves? I would say yes

Sidey: Oh, it's a huge recommend.

Yeah. Love this.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: well Yeah, and

Sidey: Lower dicks.

Reegs: I didn't, I didn't see it. So it's a season one episode two, and I

Sidey: Me too. Same.

Reegs: watched season

Dan: Well, I didn't.

Sidey: it went straight to season one, episode two. And I was like, Oh, and I'd watched season one, episode one. You mentioned in the intro a long time ago that Rick and Morty is one of the producers is same.

And yeah, it does have that

Reegs: have that. Is

Sidey: Lower decks is

Dan: kind of humor?

Reegs: a bit

Sidey: In Star Trek II world. And this was

Dan: I know where we

Sidey: this was an episode of the the title is taken from an episode of Next Gen Star

Reegs: would you like to know which one?

No. No.

Dan: Season 3 Episode 17.

Season Episode

Reegs: 7 episode 15,

Sidey: Alright, okay. So right near the end. decks. Yeah, that's where they got it from.

And so yeah, this is the, I think it opens up with some, all the higher ups and and that's quickly like, you know, fuck that, we're gonna go to the ensigns and their people.

Reegs: I like the concept as well. Bit like Red Dwarf in that vibe, where you're following, like, the people who are changing the chicken soup, you know, they're the chicken soup repair man or

Sidey: her and that sort of

Reegs: So yeah, you're following Ensign

Boimlers, Jack Quaid, you might know him from the boys.

And he's a kind of rule following cadet thing in Starfleet with delusions of grandeur doing his kind of captain's log.

But in the toilet or the closet or wherever it was.

doomed to be the straight man, I think of the series.

Dan: And is this kind of Simpsons or animation style, or?

Sidey: It's a well made

Dan: kind of, is it that, that kind of animation? It's,

Reegs: I mean, it's, it's, it is computer, you know, shaded colorful, bright I still think it kind of, a little bit reminiscent

Dan: Rick and Morty,

Sidey: Morty. Yeah, it does,

Reegs: So, I, in fact, I think this is really shamelessly derivative of it, that is my, yeah, so.

Sidey: I haven't really watched any Rick and Morty, so I couldn't comment

Dan: comment on it. Have

Sidey: but it is, it's doing that story of what everyone else on the ship is doing whilst there's all these adventures going on.

Reegs: Yeah, they're there to make second contact. So they're doing like the bureaucratic shit after everybody's like, wow, isn't it amazing?

We've met another species now. It's like, Oh, how do you, how do you do taxation?

Dan: Right? Okay. They've got all the

Sidey: That was the title of the episode, wasn't it? Second Contact?

Reegs: I think

Sidey: so. there's an away crew that goes down to a planet.

Reegs: Well, we get introduced to everyone cause it's the origin episode.

Sidey: Someone's a newly enhanced cyborg and they go to this planet and as they're about to leave You can hear kind of buzzing sound and the captain like wax, you know, like he's got a mosquito kind of like wax the skin and whatever and they're beamed back up to the surface and wouldn't you know it?

Like in, they did it in fucking 1969

Reegs: mmm

Sidey: um, Apollo mission, you're quarantined for three weeks when you come back from a planet, right? They don't do that. And here they go straight from the transporter bay into it. And wouldn't you know, that becomes

Reegs: did that. That's

Sidey: yeah,

Dan: Ah, that's what they were scared of, wasn't it, in First

Sidey: Yeah, Starfleet, who I always thought was sticklers for protocol and, you know, procedural stuff, but they've just fucked it. They're completely fucked it. So there's like just a zombie outbreak. Yeah.

Dan: yeah

Sidey: And there's some comedy stuff of, you know, two people meeting in 10 forward or the, you know, the officer's mess or whatever, like having a drink and having a chat and there's like all hell breaking loose and they're continuing

Reegs: sort of having a date, as the, as all of the hell unfolds and the killing.

Dan: Right oblivious to everything going on.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: There's a subplot that his mate, that I didn't catch her name, Mariner, maybe? She is, is going to be revealed at the end of the episode, though it's not much of a reveal because it was obvious straight away, that she's the daughter of the captain. And she's obviously very proficient, but is a bit rebellious, or something.

Dan: Okay.

Sidey: About stuff.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Can't get into too much trouble.

Reegs: she's been trafficking

farm equipment,

slash

Sidey: there's a kind of what's the police people are meant to look into other police.

Reegs: Internal affairs? Yeah.

Sidey: So the dude has been tasked with watching her because they're suspicious about what she's been up to. And it turns out that she has been stealing and misappropriating rather and dishing out this equipment to people on other planets to help them. Not, not only nefarious purposes, but that really goes against the prime

Dan: right

Sidey: So it's a no, no. But he covers, he covers for her in the end.

Reegs: Yeah. And when he comes back, which

he's

been sucked off by the giant spider and that's given him the, isn't that right?

And that's given him the antidote or something. I was kind of, yeah. That is sort of what happened, isn't

Sidey: of what happened, I mean, you get the feeling that Reegs might not be a huge fan of this, I kind of enjoyed this, but I think on the whole, in terms of the whole Star Trek landscape, this is quite a well received addition to the Star Trek world, or universe, I

Dan: has its fans.

Reegs: Well I didn't mind it. I thought it suffered from first episode. You know, problems. 'cause there's so many characters to introduce and it's like really difficult. I wouldn't, I will go back and watch a few more

Dan: There is sometimes like that, isn't it? When you've just got do these origin episodes, you have to put in the hard

Sidey: I wouldn't write it off just

Reegs: I wouldn't write it off just after the

Dan: Well, I'll check it out is you've intrigued me

Sidey: You've intrigued me enough. Well, I was going

Reegs: Well, I was gonna say,

Dan: I'm gonna

Reegs: wise, and you fucking nerds care about this shit, but it's, like, very next generation y, isn't it?

So,

Dan: I'm gonna need a little bit more than that. What's the writing like in the jokes in there? Is it would you say it

Reegs: I found Mariner really annoying.

Sidey: it was I found Mariner really annoying.

I did quite like the

Reegs: I did quite like the little pokes of fun at itself. And that sort of thing, like about Spocks. Did you hear that Spocks died and came back and all this sort of, there was a few, there was a few gags and a couple of good visual things.

Sidey: a few, there was a few gags there. Even more than the probably the first, the original series one and then Will Riker who was number one.

He appears at the in the finale of season one along with Deanna Troy who Marina said that she's a Spurs fan FYI. And then he reappears in the first two episodes of season two, but she does not, so it's heavily implied that she's she's off on maternity

Reegs: didn't get

Sidey: he didn't get any paternity leave, so like, in the future, paternity leave's been scrubbed off.

Yeah.

Dan: Wow. I heard it here first.

Sidey: so there you go. It's a strong recommend from me, I'm just gonna go out there.

Dan: Well, let's watch another one.

Sidey: Okay, right now.

Dan: I'm hearing rumors of people being here and some people not being here next week. Yeah. I,

Sidey: Well I will be here, it's up in the air where the

Reegs: Ok,

Dan: What's new?

Sidey: I think you're going to nominate Dan for

Dan: Yeah, well, I haven't got anything ready this moment, but I will get that to you.

And pee on the Discord, won't it?

Sidey: Yeah, and what we're thinking Is that we want to do something at some point in the future, maybe a little bit differently. So anyone out there got any ideas? Do hit us up I believe

Reegs: a bit desperate though, don't it?

Sidey: No, I don't think so.

I think it's I think it's

Reegs: got ideas as well.

Sidey: Yeah, okay, but it's

Dan: got any good ideas, though, you

Reegs: It's collaborative.

Sidey: And there is a channel on our server called ideas. So just chuck it there I

Dan: any on there?

Sidey: I have yeah

Dan: there it is, see? That's where it is, a hub, up there.

Sidey: Yeah, but all that remains is to say, Sidey signing out.

Reegs: Yeah, so long suckers.

Dan: Dan's gone.