Having met and recruited the Queen, it was kinda inevitable that Latho would meet and recruit the twins next. Mostly because those three are actually the sum total of characters from this alien planet that have shown up in the plot up to now.
I couldn’t resist the gag about a prime minister and a prime’ (or prime and double prime) minister, since it fits so nicely with the mirror-image quality of the twins. Unfortunately that creates a kind of a plot-hole, since earlier on I couldn’t resist a different gag about the Queen partying inappropriately (if work-relatedly) with her prime minister – and that simply can’t have been either of the twins. You might say what you want about the twins’ sexual inclinations, but at least they’re strictly monogamous.*
So, I’ll hereby retcon the prime minister mentioned earlier to having been a visiting foreign prime minister. Let’s say the British one, for example. After unsuccessfully scouring the whole planet Earth for those mythic, super-favourable post-Brexit trade deals, the British government had to expand the search to alien planets, and the prime minister had a little lapse of judgement on one** of those diplomatic missions.
See? That deals with the plot-hole quite elegantly, and the twins remain free to be happily monogamous with each other. And, of course, happen to be at the very moment Latho walks in on them. Because this brand of comic-relief public shamelessness comes with side-effects, one being persistent forgetfulness when it comes to locking doors, plus a knack for wrong timing. I don’t know what other things the twins achieved in the course of their combined triple-prime-ministership, but they certainly got one thing done: Everybody in the palace has evolved a healthy habit of always knocking and waiting before opening any door.
More on Thursday.
* I really haven’t thought too deeply about the ethic implications of the twins’ relationship, given how it’s really only a gag. But somehow, I feel their relationship would be even wronger if it wasn’t exclusive? XD
** OK, he likely had dozens of lapses of judgement in the course of these missions, but only one is of concern here. Nota bene, I’m not referring to any specific British prime minister here – by now, the office has become so much of a joke, you can use it as one irrespective of the holder. XD
I think the less is said about alien twins’ relationship the better.
But we need to keep in mind: they are aliens and their planet has different laws and customs. Including sex laws and customs.
In general I’d assume that this alien planet’s laws and customs are exactly like our own planet’s, where not otherwise noted. Simply because that’s the cheapest solution – a poverty-row studio like this would never pay a scriptwriter for the effort to devise any actually ‘alien’ bits of an alien setting where it wasn’t absolutely necessary. XD So, yeah, my best guess is that the twins’ sex laws and customs aren’t shared by anyone else on their planet, or beyond. XD
It could be a strictly working relationship and, while the queen can’t tell them apart, the twins keep tabs and make sure neither one is conducting, “internal affairs,” more than the other (when the queen doesn’t insist on a full cabinet meeting).
The twins are horny enough to make it believable they get it on multiple times a day; it’s just one of those times is a purely business matter with the queen.
Also I just realized this scene Latho is 3D generated for this flashback (and that his butt has gone back to a flat bump)!
Yeah, you could definitely come up with a way that they could maintain a triangle relationship in addition to the twins’ purely internal matter…I just think it’s funnier if the twins stick to their exclusive deal, rather than being sex-fiends in general. Plus the way that the Queen has been treating the twins before doesn’t really imply any sort of romantic feelings between them. XD
And, yeah, that was an experiment I did – this model of Latho is the first complete and fully-rigged 3D character I’ve created. And I guess for a first try it worked out well enough, but I still switched back to a drawn Latho in most later strips. (The second 3D character I did was a 3D version of Snuka in a ninja outfit that appeared in this episode – that strip was actually produced after this one, despite being published earlier.)