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Transcript
Here's to the finest crew in Starlink.
When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.
This is a parody.
Paramount ones the song.
Welcome to the greatest generation.
It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys, a couple of very horny guys,
who are just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.
I'm one of those horn dogs.
I'm Ben Harrison.
I'm Adam Pranica, and the reason you say that is because at the end of the last episode, we hit a square on the game of buttholes that we have never hit before.
It's true.
I mean, I also said it just because it's generally true.
Ben, we landed on a square called J slash C.
This is where a picture of Shran is on the game board, and the rules state the person who rolled has to read Jeffrey Combs character slash Fic to the other in Next Week's Marin.
And this is Next Week's Marin.
It feels a little bit cruel to me that given how many episodes of Star Trek Jeffrey Combs is in, the first time we hit this is not an episode that he has a guest appearance in.
You know, like it just seems like, what are we doing here?
At the same time, we can't be sure Jeffrey Combs isn't in this episode.
He very well could be.
Well, my loins are kind of feeling like maybe he is here.
Adam, is Jeffrey Combs with us?
I believe so, Ben.
It's too bad we didn't really have enough turnaround time on this to get noted Star Trek novel book on tape reader who will remain nameless.
Right, that guy.
To read one of these because he's done it before.
He's a delight.
We had very little time between last episode and this one in order to do something like that, but I think with a little more, that's something I'd like to continue to do.
I'd like to continue writing more of this stuff.
I really found the exercise
pleasurable.
You know, fanfiction can still get you pregnant.
This fan fiction could get us fired from Star Trek podcasting.
Okay, here we go.
Oh, just to place this in time, this is right after the last Shan episode where Tara is
arrested for
fucking over Shran.
The Susie Plaxon, Admiral Cartwright-type character.
So imagine Susie Plaxon playing Tara and Jeffrey Combs playing Shran in the scene, okay?
Okay.
Okay.
Let's begin the reading of a story I have titled
Two guards lead Tara, clad in chains and a baggy prison-issued uniform, down into the ice caves beneath Andoria's surface.
The room glowed with an ethereal blue light, casting sharp shadows across Commander Shran's face as he confronted his former lieutenant.
Shran wordlessly dismissed the guards, leaving Tara to stand defiantly before him, her face long and tall
and steely,
like the fascia of a large sport
utility vehicle
or a side-by-side front-loading washer-dryer set.
Perspiration had formed around Tara's temples and around the base of her two antennae, from either the walk or the anxiety of the moment.
Both would be acceptable to Shran, who longed to discipline her for both her attempted sabotage of the peace talks, but also because she had the finest blue ass in the quadrant.
You betrayed everything the guard stands for, Shran said, his voice echoing off the crystalline walls.
The cold seemed to deepen with each word.
Tara's antennae twitched forward aggressively.
I stayed true to the guard's primary purpose, protecting Andoria.
These humans, these Vulcans.
They'll be our undoing, Shran.
You know this in your bones, in your blood.
Shran had been seated behind an ice desk, but stood up to emphasize his point.
The guard exists to protect our people, yes.
Shran rounded the front of the ice desk, which is a desk made of ice.
To step closer to Tara, the sound of his footfalls crunching beneath his boots.
But protection isn't always achieved through isolation and violence.
Sometimes it requires courage to extend trust.
Trust?
Tara's laugh was bitter as Andorian ale.
Like the trust Vulcans extended when they placed sensors around our home world?
Tara's eyes darted between Tran's face to the ice desk and back and forth.
How did they make this?
She wondered.
Did they move it down here or was it too big and heavy so they had to build it right here in place?
Does it have working drawers?
Times change.
Enemies can become allies.
I fought the Vulcans for years.
I killed their soldiers.
I hated them with every fiber of my being, but I've seen another path now.
You've grown weak, Tara spat.
The shran I served under would never speak of peace with our ancestral enemies.
If the ice desk had ice drawers, how did they slide open and closed?
Tara wondered.
It probably made a terrible sound.
She amused herself by the notion of being an Andorian and also hating the sound of ice.
Oh, Tara, she thought, you really are full of contradictions.
The Shran you served under has grown wiser, he said, meeting her gaze steadily.
Wisdom isn't weakness, Tara.
For a moment, something flickered in Tara's eyes.
Doubt, perhaps, or recognition?
But maybe also a third thing.
Something she had worked very hard to suppress whenever she was around Shran.
She wondered if Shran noticed, not just now, but always.
How she tried to keep it all business as they worked toward the goals of the Andorian Guard.
How impossible that felt now, in the caves, in front of the ice ice desk.
I believe you can be redeemed.
Shran placed a hand on the ice wall, feeling the pulse of his homeworld beneath his palm.
I've seen the humans' determination to forge connections even across vast differences.
I've seen the Vulcans' ability to move beyond their violent past if they can change.
So can we.
The silence now stretched between them, filled only by the distant sound of water dripping in the caves.
Finally, Tara spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.
I don't know how to be that person, Shran.
I don't know how to trust.
Then let me show you.
Shran leaned over to open a drawer on the front of the ice desk.
So clearly, this was a sort of desk that executives had in the front and behind for access on either side, Tara mentally noted.
When the drawer closed, it glided softly to a stop.
Nice, thought Tara.
Shran extended his arm toward Tara, his hand and a fist, fingers up.
Not as your commander, but as a fellow Andorian who once stood where you are now.
His hand opened.
What is that?
Tara exclaimed.
An old earth contraption, said Shran.
In his palm was a braided tube of leather, open on either end.
Known as a Chinese finger trap.
Can you even say that?
Tara wondered aloud.
Shh!
Shran whispered as he lowered the ends onto both of Tara's antenna.
Just go with it.
For Andorians, Teza is the word for a sexual union outside of the shlereth or marriage.
But as Tara felt her antenna struggle to wiggle and then fail to escape the bonds of the leather sex toy affixed to her most sensitive area, was this Shan's idea of sex?
Or something else?
He backed away from Tara in order to sit on the edge of his ice desk in smug appreciation of his creation on top of her skyscraper-like head.
And also, Tara had surmised, about the ice desk and its ability to bear weight.
But could it support...
two bodies?
She'd soon find out.
when she abruptly shoved Shran hard, his back slamming against the icy desktop.
With a quick tug, her prison-issued jumpsuit broke free like the uniform a stripper would wear while dressed as a police officer or a fireperson.
Still on his back, Shran soon felt the full weight of Tara's body as she crawled on her knees toward his head and sat astride his face.
And like a grizzled bucket loader operator on a construction site, Tara grasped Shran's antenna and pointed them in alternating practiced angles.
Except the excavation she was supervising was of the walls of her blue vagina and this bucket scraping, the dirt was Shran's tongue.
Shran's muffled groans emanated from Tara's loins as she ground her pelvis into his jaw like a child of the 80s riding that green caterpillar toy on the playground.
If Shran was surprised at his circumstances, you wouldn't know it by looking at him.
His third antenna testing the fibers of his thick pants as she rode him.
The sound of the the ice desk creaking, as if a great icy lake were being thawed by the springtime sun.
Tran could barely breathe.
The two pipes on his head were being savaged by Tara's hands now, milking and squeezing, and sticking fingers deeply within their holes.
Yes, their holes at the end of the antenna.
Tara's hands explored, both of them roughly, like a curious Klingon male going through puberty when his parents are out of the house.
It was what Tara had had always wanted, but was it what Tran desired?
Could he ever reciprocate the orgasm that she had just conjured from him, spilling wet blue ropes that slapped against the ice cave's walls out of both antenna, like two buckets of blue paint that a clumsy dad decorating a room to become a nursery had just spilled.
It was a debt that Tran would likely never repay.
As his exhausted jaw continued to work beneath Tara's blue hips, he was sure his sleep deprivation would continue for the rest of his life.
His debt an unending sexual repayment that he would never repay.
He was in debt to her, alright, and for the rest of his life.
But what would we call the business that they were engaged in?
Face Riders Incorporated.
So ends the reading.
Wow.
That was tremendous.
A little wordy, I thought it might have been in parts.
Yeah.
Well,
some spicy maneuvering there by Tara, you know,
not really asking so much as taking, much in the way that the Wisps do on today's episode of Star Trek Enterprise.
Do you want to get into the F we came to talk about?
I sure do, Ben.
Let's get into something a little less sexualized as we recap Star Trek Enterprise Season 2, Episode 18,
The Crossing.
We drop in in media warp, and something big is coming up astern of the entrepreneur.
Real big.
And it's coming up faster than they can run.
It's coming up at Warp 6.
And before we know it, we see this ship.
It's kind of a wide boy.
Yeah, it's like hundreds of yards wide.
It's not very tall.
It's just an absolute chod ship.
Size 54 waist, 10-inch legs, fucking junk.
Yeah, this is an idea from an earlier script, and they did have a scene where Tara tried to walk into it, but she bumped her forehead.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's going to happen.
Just kind of, you know, two kind of opposing shapes there.
But yeah, it's got a big maw that opens up and just scoops them in.
It's a Jonah and the whale story, and that's our cold open.
One thing I noticed during this cold open was the new earpiece that Hoshi's wearing, which looks like it's that circular case for birth control.
She's wearing it right on her ear now.
Just to keep it close.
I mean, definitely an homage to Uhura.
But yeah, like the kind of a crew plastic that they manufacture it out of makes it look like something you get out of like a box of cereal
as a toy.
The ship is a mystery to them because their sensors can't penetrate it.
No engines, no like, you know, the stuff that you typically associate with a ship seems to be absent here in this case.
Yeah, well, and not just that, but it's also turned off everything in their ship.
They have no weaps.
They have no engines.
I mean, like, maybe their sensors can't penetrate the hull, but maybe the sensors just can't do anything right now.
Life support seems to be the only thing that works inside this thing, and that's good, I guess.
Life support finds a way.
They start moving the camera around and looking out the viewer at what's going on inside this ship.
And there are some little glowy lights in the bay that they've been drawn into.
They're curious about that.
So it's not long before Archer orders a shuttle pod prepared so that they can go investigate.
And
all but TePal of the most important characters on the ship make themselves even more vulnerable.
If you were expecting a kind of drive around the interior of this ship that you would get from a Star Trek film, you know, like where you look out the window, you get really close to the interior of the hull for an examination.
If you were expecting any kind of trip at all or tour inside the shuttle pod, brother, you would be disappointed because it basically, like, it blurps out of the bottom of Enterprise and it's like an elevator.
It just goes straight down to the surface of the ship.
I laughed and laughed at this.
I mean, it's like taking a ride chair to a place that's a block away.
Yeah.
But it's also like if you're taking a ride chair to get like a good look at, at something for like a sightseeing purpose and the ride chair you get into has one little window and it's like a little bubble right at the front.
Yeah, yeah.
You're not going to see much, you know?
No, I guess not.
Yeah.
So, so everyone's in EV suits.
And I also love the rapidity of like a second after the shuttle pod lands, the hatch is open and they're out of there.
Let's see what we can find.
Like if we're trying to make time on the episode, I think they clod back 10 seconds here.
Easily, yeah.
It did strike me that like when you're throwing open the side of that shuttle, like, you're potentially throwing it open to hard vacuum.
Like, there's no airlock on the shuttle.
Right.
So, if everybody's suit isn't on just right, that could be a risky maneuver.
You're going to find out pretty fast.
Yeah.
So, the atmosphere inside the bay starts to change almost immediately to be human-breathable.
But
I think wisely, they choose not to take their helmets off just yet.
Yeah, that's smart.
And you see that all the time in TV and movies, though.
How quickly they assume, oh yeah, this is this fine.
This is breathable.
Yeah.
Way to keep them on.
Yeah,
I've respected the choice.
There's some sparkly lights that they can see kind of hovering around,
but they don't show up on the tricorder.
They can't scan them.
And as they are standing here talking about the fact that they can't scan these lights, one of them just kind of goes right through the face mask on Tripp's helmet and into his head.
Let's talk about this effect a little bit because we see it a lot this episode.
You know how sometimes we'll see in like horror movies especially,
there's like a force required to get through the glass of a helmet and like get at a person inside.
Like I can't overstate how little effort is put into the wisp going in.
It just kind of like floats around and like nothing.
Like like there's no resistance that the glass presents at all.
Yeah, they looked really good.
There's like so it goes in blue and it comes out yellow, right?
Yeah.
And then and then the yellow goes back in.
I know that feeling, right?
Comes back.
Am I right?
High five.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so like it like kind of goes in and comes back out a couple of times.
And that part of the effect is also really interesting because it seems to like come away from the face like a cloth, like a shroud being pulled away from the face.
It's a meaningful color change, isn't it?
Yeah.
He seems to have lost the time that it was inside of him, too.
What the hell happened?
That's what I was about to ask you.
He thought he was on the ceiling.
I mean, there's like there's a moment of catatonia that Tripp feels.
It's like he just took a massive bong hit.
Like, you can see his expression, like, he's trying to figure it out before he's able to talk.
Yeah.
It's a really fun acting choice by him.
I thought so, too.
He also describes being on Earth in Florida with a girl.
You know,
this was not a dream, in his opinion.
He was really experiencing it.
The reaction is much like a dream, though, because
everyone who's with him as he describes this is like, all right, let's get you up to Six Bay.
Like,
I'm done hearing about this.
Yeah.
Not that's interested um
but flox gives him a clean bill of health
they leave him in the decon chamber and archer and reed are like i don't know if i want to be near trip right now and flox is like no i mean he seems good i love the composition of this scene we got the the three shot of archer reed and dr flox and then the reflected trip tucker yeah due to the reflection like having them all face in the same direction i thought this is really great and you get it a couple of times in this scene in in the sequence.
It was really nice.
I think that the decon chamber is just such a great set in general for enabling shot compositions like that.
But also
when you frame a character within a window in a shot,
you can do so much with that just thematically.
And like we talked about how like Frakes would always find interesting ways to frame characters within a shot, especially in his early directing.
I feel like that really stood out as a big, strong swing that he would take.
This is a David Livingston-directed episode, and he's one of the
most frequent directors of Star Trek and TV.
I love the choice of like, you know, how if you were going to do this, you might think to like do the three-shot and have the reflection appear perfectly between two of the people.
Yeah, I like how that's not the case.
Like, it's dirty.
Like, Trip's face is
over another face in conversation.
Topal goes into the clarinet closet to talk to Archer about what's going on.
And Archer is,
he's kind of got like trapped animal energy in this scene.
TePaul has not really
decided that this is a hostile act.
And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
They have my ship.
They went inside my beautiful boy.
Like, how could you just interpret this as anything but hostile?
And Tepaul is like, well, you know, like, we just don't know.
Like, this might be how they are, the people that run this ship.
Your description is really interesting to me because I think you give more weight to Trip and Archer's relationship, their personal relationship, than the show does.
And I feel like that was missing.
Like, so much of Archer's gripe is like, I'm stuck in the whale and I don't want to be here and this sucks and I don't like having control.
But like, I don't think there's ever a bit of dialogue concerning Trip or Reed Later or anyone else where where he personalizes what's happened to them outside of like what these people provide him professionally yeah and i wonder if that is something in the writer's room to do with like we want to like string out how hostile these aliens may or may not be until like because that's kind of the crux of the mystery.
So if you feel like somebody's imperiled by being inhabited by one of these, I feel like the like what Archer is riding for in this scene comes a lot earlier, and there's less tension in that.
He seems like his position is weird, especially when you compare it to Tripp's lived-in experience as he describes it.
Yeah, he describes it as very pleasant and cool.
He liked it.
Yeah,
you can't believe how amazing it was.
He wants to go again.
There are you salt day long.
Tepal gives Archer an update in the scene too.
Like, Hoshi's been trying to communicate with these things.
Hasn't really been a response to that.
And just so you know, the rest of the crew is low-key concerned, but not anything too crazy at this point, under the circumstances.
Yeah, we're not stressing.
But Archer's like, no, man, we've got to get the fuck out of here.
And down in engineering, Trip is hanging out at his little warp core station.
He gets another visit from
one of these glowy lights.
Doesn't the warp core station Trip works in remind you of like the carnival station of the guy who hits the button on the rickety ride?
You know?
Yeah.
It does seem like the fact that you have to climb a little ladder to get up there just feels like they did a bad job laying out the warp core when they were they were building it at Utopia Planitia or whatever.
It just seems like we get a lot of moments at this station.
It just seems like Trip's the burnout at the Tilta Whirl, you know?
The way the cigarette dangles off his lip just so as he pulls that one lever.
Yeah.
God, they just let Trip go right back to work, huh?
Like, I know he got a clean bill of health, but man.
I need you to get those engines back online.
I'll see what I can do.
Right back to the warp core.
And yeah, so he gets a light inside him.
He immediately gets clocked as acting weird by a guy named Rostov, who is
just an enlisted guy and is unaccustomed to
being called sir by Commander Tucker.
I love that it's Rostov that clocks Trip as being weird when everything about Rostov makes him seem to be the weird one, you know?
I feel like he responded.
The actor who plays Rostov responded to a casting call that was like, unique face, wanted.
Yeah, like he's in the room and like all of the other actors kind of read as maybe possessed by aliens.
Yeah.
Throwing us off the scent a little bit.
Wispy trip is so fun in this episode with what he does.
Because as soon as he's like afflicted by this thing, he's like, all right, I'm just going to clock out from here.
Yeah.
And I love that he takes like a weird door, like not the door that you normally see him go in and out of.
I mean, you and I have been watching Enterprise pretty steadily for months.
I don't know where this door goes.
It would be great if there was like a, like a, you know, a mop closet in the engineering section that he went into and then like, no, it's not where I thought that was the bathroom.
I'm sorry.
Like the second the door shuts behind him and opens back up again.
Well, Rostoff has seen something, so he says something by blowing in a call to Archer to tell him what just went down.
And Archer goes and radios Trip, but there's no response.
Gotta find him.
We don't seem to have the ability to just like ask the computer where people are on the ship yet in the timeline.
Which is what makes this cut so much fun.
Like we cut from no response to the mess hall where Trip is sitting at a table with way more than a buffet will ever let you take at one time.
Yeah.
He's got some desserts.
He's got some fried chicken.
He's got some spaghet.
It's the three drinks that trip me.
Like anytime you see anyone in a restaurant with three drinks, something terrible has happened.
Unless it's like one of those things where like you're kind of friendly with the staff and like they come by and they're like, someone ordered a Mai Thai and then decided they didn't want it.
And, you know, they drop it on your table.
Ben, what you've described as friendly, I would say, is deeply hostile.
If I'm ever at a bar and the bartender gives me a second and then a third drink and none of them have been finished yet, I'd be like, What is going on here?
This bartender hates me and wants me to get plastered.
Just for the record, if there are any bartenders
listening, I would be fucking delighted.
Please do that to me all right
so yeah he's eating all the things and
tapal and archer kind of confront him and are like uh
what's going on trip hungry
yes it's all very good i love how he doesn't fight it yeah like he isn't like the guy who's been caught yeah
he he keeps introducing himself as charles tucker but you know not that charles tucker basically Right.
And I love the question Archer asks here.
He says, Where is the man who used to be Charles Tucker?
Yeah, weird way of putting it.
Yeah.
Captain.
Fun sentence.
This person explains that that guy, whoever you just asked for in that weird way, Captain Archer, that guy, he's out exploring my realm.
Where I'm from, that's where Tripp is.
We sort of did a
with each other, and he's having a non-corporeal vacation.
vacation.
Yeah, he's become a being of pure energy.
And, I mean, better than a vacation.
It sounds like he's having an absolute fuck fest.
Please trust me.
He's experiencing things he never thought he could.
We learned that these are the wisps.
They agree to be called that
by us.
So it's not problematic.
They live in subspace.
And they are much like us.
They are explorers.
And,
you know, the fact that this corporeal being was compatible is very interesting to them because they used to be corporeal.
And this is like an exploration of their ancient past for them to be inhabiting Trip.
Archer is as aggressive here as we tend to see him.
He's like pushing really hard for Trip to come back.
And the harder he pushes, the softer Wisp Trip gets about
like observing Archer's whole deal.
He's like, you know, man,
you say you're an explorer, but you sure seem a little closed-minded about the types of exploration you're interested in, you know, man.
I really like that tension between them.
Like, the more angry Archer gets, the cooler Trip becomes.
Wisp Trip, I mean.
I mean, it also just makes Archer seem unreasonable
with how backed into a corner he's acting.
Because like when he says to Wisp Trip, you got to let my ship go,
it spits the ship out immediately.
Yeah, and that's good, right?
Archer, you can't be mad at that.
Yeah, got to love that.
We also get Trip back.
The yellow Wisp comes back.
I love that that was never explained, right?
Like that there's a part of the Wisp that never fully joins your birdie.
Yeah.
Blue part goes in.
Yellow part has to come back and pick up blue part to go.
One thing that contradicts your suspicion that Trip goes on a non-corporeal sex vacation was that he describes his time being an eight-year-old kid in whatever this place was he was in.
Yeah, but also so many ribs.
I've never seen so many ribs.
Yeah, Trip is like, you got to hit this Wisp, Captain.
It's fucking good.
And he wants everyone to try it.
He is an enthusiastic proponent of the Wisp.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, he starts peer pressuring everybody.
Kind of turns into like an after-school special kind of thing.
You should try it.
You'll understand what I'm talking about.
Y'all should try it.
Archer does not want to try it.
Archer wants Trip taken to Six Bay, actually.
It's like, what are you running from, Trip?
You know, maybe you should just try and enjoy the company of a good friend.
Hey, Archer.
You came to a Wisp party.
If you didn't want to Wisp down, why are you even here?
standing scolding our asses for getting all wispy why don't you leave yeah you went in that huge bay full of wisps and complained about getting contact wisp yeah yeah
archer uh clearly doesn't like how this whole situation feels and to paul is like look man uh the wisps are cool right you asked them to leave trip alone they did
They've given Trip a hell of a ride as sort of a gift.
Maybe they're cool.
Maybe you should rethink this.
It was a ride that he didn't bother me to paul with, which I appreciate.
Yeah.
So later, Archer's log tells us that it is his top priority to get the hell out of this whale.
But the big problem remains, there's no engines yet to do it.
And
the log continues.
Like, we hear it over the exterior shot, and then we cut into his quarters.
And he goes, I've always hated non-corporeal beings, and I always will.
I'll never forgive them for the death of my boy.
And then Dr.
Flox is at the door, and you're like, how long was that door open?
How long have you been there?
Why is Dr.
Flox being played by Samantha?
Dr.
Flox tells Archer that a wisp tried to get in his face earlier.
It It entered me.
Right here.
But it didn't like it.
Like the way it did with Trip.
Yeah.
But the way he describes this moment was like, boy, oh boy, did this Wisp try.
Over and over again, it tried going into my face, but we just couldn't make it work.
Did you feel the kind of darkness?
About his description?
The way John Billingsley plays it with that like thousand-yard stare.
I mean, he kind of does a thousand-yard stare with Fox a lot.
It feels like an assault he's describing.
Are you sure you're all right?
I'm fine.
But it was disturbing.
The life form was trying very hard to reach me.
It doesn't feel great.
Yeah.
Well, presumably this Wisp doesn't like the Doctor, but it does like Reed,
who is wandering around and gets pursued by one.
And he like, he fully does like a shoulder roll over to the weapons locker and tries shooting the wisp.
Oh, I wanted to see what would happen if a wisp got shot.
What a stupid fucking wisp to roll up on Reed while he's in the armory.
Talk about the worst place to do that.
Like, grab him when he's shitting, you know?
Like,
there are ways to get Reed caught unawares.
This ain't one of them.
The Wisp is faster than Reed and finally goes in.
And
Wisp Reed is profoundly horny in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for other people to be around.
Especially in a turbo lift when he becomes the kid from kindergarten cop.
Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.
Thanks for the tip.
That's not good.
And this lady gets out of there pretty fast.
Yeah.
It made me wistful for the Aerosmith hit HR violation in an elevator.
Going down.
Second floor, hardware, children's wear, ladies' lingerie.
We cut over to Tepaul, who wears OR scrubs to bed when Reed walks in.
Unclear whether Reed knocked or rang the bell or just walked right on in there.
Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't seem like these Wisps really asked to be let in.
So.
You know, whether or not Wisp Reed had to ask to enter her quarters, he does attempt to sell Tepal two things.
Sex with
and the crossing, which is what he calls what the Wisps are doing with folks on the ship.
Hence the title of the episode.
Yeah.
So TePaul calls security to her quarters.
I really love
Jolene Blaylock's performance in this scene that both feels like she is in danger from Wisp Reed, but also at no point do I ever feel like she doesn't have this
figured and dealt with.
Like, I'm not fearful for her in a way that I would presume her to be weak or unable to defend herself here.
Like, I always felt like she was going to be okay.
She is kind of keeping her distance from him in the room and
deferring to him while she arranges for security to come.
But also,
there is like a pent up, like,
if you want to catch those hands read, I'm sure she will beat you kind of feeling to it.
One question for you, Ben, and I still don't have an answer to this question myself.
Do we ever find out whether or not this is Wisp Reed or Reed actual in this scene with how creepy he is?
Because there is some time between the moment the Wisp went in where the Wisp could have left.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It could have left.
I think we have to just, it's sort of
Schrödinger's Wisp Reed
kind of a situation.
Yeah.
You know, once again, it occupies two quantum positions.
Security and Archer arrive at Tupala's quarters.
And as soon as Archer walks in, he turns Tupala's desk chair backwards and explains to Wisp Reed that consent is a great big part of being human, male or female.
Have you encountered this idea in your extensive exploration of the galaxy?
Wisp?
Wisp Reed gets a lesson in non-consensual lockup by being sent to his quarters.
Locked up for
whatever that was, and also probably whatever happened in the elevator.
I wonder if that crew person reported their situation with Reed.
I think it's the sort of thing where a senior crew person makes a report, and then it seems safe for the other crew to come out and say something shitty happened to them.
Yeah, it was that one brave act, and then sort of an outpouring.
It's like, wow, a lot of the details do line up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All completely believable, really,
when you consider them in totality.
Wow, look at this.
He had pineapple on his breath when he got on the elevator and then again when he entered TePaul's room.
Yeah.
In a corridor archer radio's Trip Tucker wondering where the fuck those engines are.
He is so ready to go.
Yeah.
And Trip is
going to try and get the engines back.
But now it seems that Rostov has been gotten.
And on the bridge, we learn that reports are coming in from all over the ship that people are acting strange.
And
Archer orders anyone acting strange to be confined to quarters.
I love Mayweather with just the absolute lightest amount of pushback here and conversation.
He's like, but how do we know security hasn't also been wisped?
Captain?
Archer's like, we will never know that.
We'll just have to do our best.
Okay, cool.
There's another engineer down there with Trip who also seemed kind of sus.
Yeah.
Like, I think that there's like a couple of like extras that got speaking parts in this episode that aren't meant to be taken over, but
because we've never met them and we don't know what they're supposed to act like, we're like oh is this guy one of them or it's a fun effect that they get from just kind of peppering in a couple more speaking lines than they might otherwise i think you're onto something though because like there's a shot reverse shot kind of nature to both rostov and this mystery guy that almost seems like they were shot later like for insert that that just felt a little mismatched to the moment that like draws your attention to like, well, who the fuck is that guy making Rostov face?
yeah so they get the engine up and to paul's like okay like it's time to go right like you're you're super spooked by these aliens and you want to get out of here and suddenly archer's like not without noted creep malcolm reed being returned to us
i think if you're archer you got to be willing to let reed go at this point right yeah that's just the cost of doing business with the wisps yeah i mean they didn't know that going in but they've learned that and next time, they will, you know, like A, they'll bring a different guy than Reed on the big deep space mission, but B, you know.
You know what's very telling?
Just in this episode in totality, when Reed comes back, you never get his experience in the non-corporeal dream world,
which I think would probably be very upsetting to everyone who heard it.
Well, I was in Florida as well, but not that part of Florida.
Oh, no.
Where's this going?
So there's another real creepy moment because Trip calls up to Mayweather and asks him to go do something in the starboard nacelle.
And it's like, oh, is like Tripp possessed and trying to get Mayweather,
you know, alone, isolated, so that he can get body snatched also?
Or like, is he going to like turn on the nacelle and cook him in there?
Like, we've learned is possible.
It's such a short scene that it really sticks out when compared to the rest of the moments we get this episode.
This is one of like a number of scenes that occur in this moment, which is like we cut to Six Bay very briefly, where Dr.
Flox is working on a hand scanner that he's going to turn into a Wisp detector.
We get the scene with Trip asking Mayweather for some engineering shit.
And in the mess hall, we see a payoff of the device that Dr.
Flox makes, which is he and DePaul are sitting enjoying a regular-sized meal for two adults on this ship.
And they can tell by looking at the scanner that two Wisp people are in their midst.
And that's when TePaul gets up from the table, goes into the kitchen, and grabs two security people who are in there just waiting for this opportunity.
Yeah, Flox is a regular Diane Fosse,
realizing that there's Wisps in the midst.
Wisps in the mist.
I love Diane Fashion.
You know, that ship doesn't look unhooshnak in its design.
So Travis gets chased by a wisp, and we've seen a couple of people run from these these things and then go right through the doors that they're closing behind them so it feels like a real waste of time every time Travis stops and turns around and closes a hatch that he goes through yeah that seems silly until it isn't yeah it works the last time and he's like in the nacelle
and he radios up like he's basically discovered that there's something in that specific door that can prevent them com from coming through pretty amazing archer asked trip what the deal is with that door and maybe the catwalk that he retreated to, and osmium alloy is the answer.
But that's not exotic.
That's like a normal type of metal the ship's made of.
That's weird.
Yeah.
It's special enough for Archer to order the entire crew back up into the catwalk like he did several episodes ago.
Yeah.
How happy do you think people are to return to the catwalk?
I think the producers are happy to to return to a set that they already paid to have built.
Yeah, exactly.
We're going to get our money's worth out of the catwalk.
Yeah.
Faith of the fart.
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And you will never take the greatest gin alive.
Ben would rather die.
So they're getting ready to get everyone back up there, and Archer turns to Hoshi for something, and it seems as though she's been the crossinged as well.
It would be best if they stayed where they were.
What?
We're offering them a great opportunity.
Linda Park's performance seems more threatening than the other Wisp people.
And I think...
That is both because
her Wisp is just different and maybe is more of an authority figure Wisp.
Yeah, it seems to be a better salesperson of the Wisp Crossing lifestyle.
I mean, hard sell
is what this Wisp is doing.
Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe if they'd gotten this Wisp first, like, I think the Wisp's fucked up not sending this one earlier.
You know, if you say no to this Wisp early on, you get left alone for the rest of the time you're at this hotel.
Right.
You know?
Right.
But
this Wisp is telling them what a great opportunity is, like, we'll explore corporeal life.
You guys can explore non-corporeal life.
You're going to love it.
And
Archer gets like physically aggressive with Wisp Hoshi.
He's like shaking her shoulders and stuff.
He is, he's very cranky in this episode.
Yeah, I didn't like it when he put his hands on her, mostly because it was like a real, like, the thing that men do to women in TV and movies where they just give them a shaking by their arms is like
I hope they don't do that in real life.
I suspect that they do, but yeah, it's like it came from somewhere, Ben.
Yeah.
Ask your grandparents about that.
Is the logic like I'm gonna shake some damn sense into you, woman?
Yeah, yeah, it seems that way.
Yeah, it it feels bad.
It feels bad to see.
Hoshi is about to feel bad by getting locked into recorders by security.
And over in the nacelle, folks are starting to make themselves at home again in the catwalk.
And once there, Archer and TePaul discuss what the hell to do now.
I mean, being back here feels like it's an even greater retreat than it was before.
Like, ugh.
And it's so aggravating that for this retreat to have happened, TePaul still maintains that, like,
the Wisps can be negotiated with.
They seem to be acting not entirely in bad faith.
Maybe there's just like a miscommunication happening here.
Maybe I should give my mind over to them, my strong steel chat mind, so that we can have an interaction.
Unlike your flimsy human minds that fold up like a wet paper bag,
get this thing on the scene and we'll get this thing figured out.
These things are basically
wet wads of bathroom tissue floating around in the air, and somehow they're penetrating your minds.
Yeah.
Doesn't take that much mental discipline to resist.
No.
But I think I've got enough.
I mean, Archer was like confronted with the idea of what if we just leave and like a third of the crew will be sacrificed to that.
So the idea of letting TePaul risk her one measly mind doesn't seem like that big of an ask relative to the options on the table.
Did you feel like there needed to be another element to this moment to force Archer's hand?
Like, I kept thinking that there should be
the
running out of life support or something, like some sort of external force that created a desperation that wasn't necessarily here.
Like,
what I feel as desperation is Archer getting more and more upset instead of like...
a need to do something immediately because of reasons.
The thing that occurred to me after I watched it was like they're in the nacelle.
They can't go anywhere while they're in there.
So, there's no, there's no escaping right now, anyways.
Like, this is like literally the only option that they have.
They haven't even set up that temporary bridge with the upturned buckets and stuff.
Yeah.
It's like,
we don't know how long we're going to be here, guys.
Like, when are we getting the land party started?
Yeah.
Is a question that needs to be asked.
He's talked into letting TePaul go.
And Flox is
not in the nacelle.
He's still hanging out in Six Bay because
every time a Wisp tries to go in, it just bounces right off the surface.
He's got a hard face.
Yeah.
And he gets a call from third-person Hoshi
who is complaining of having fractured the leg of Hoshi Shato and needing some help.
This is described in a very creepy way, I thought.
This dialogue made my skin crawl.
There's been an accident.
Hoshi?
Hoshi Sada's been injured.
I don't know how to repair the damage to her body.
Yeah, it was a very well-written episode.
Because third-person Hoshi, like that tense being used by Hoshi Wisp
just doesn't work in the same way.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So
Flox goes to her quarters with a phaser in hand, and inside Hoshi's quarters, she's kind of leaned up against your bed as if she's fallen.
But when Flox scans her, there's nothing wrong, and that's when Hoshi starts kicking and kicking and kicking.
Like,
this is the move when I was a little kid wrestling with my brother.
This was my brother's move, like jamming his feet out, like
kicking like that.
Oh, it was aggravating.
This is a spooky fight, man.
It feels so scrappy and desperate in a way that Star Trek fights don't often feel.
Yeah.
It's also interesting because Hoji gets the gun and she's like
trying to interrogate Flox a little bit before the fight is ended.
And it seems like when they went into the nacelle, the wisps stopped being able to find them.
Like the wisps can't penetrate the nacelle and I guess can't see through it or whatever.
Right.
So she wants wants to find the crew.
He hypo sprays some kind of knockout drug into her ankle.
And that settles the matter, as it were.
Did Wisp Hoshi fuck up by telling Dr.
Flox that her leg was broken, thus inspiring Dr.
Flox to bring the knockout hypo spray with him
to give to her, thinking that...
that with a broken leg, she would need to be anesthetized a little bit?
Maybe.
I interpreted that as him just having gone in, not trusting the situation at all.
But
he does like pat himself on the back for remembering to bring that thing.
Yeah, good job by him.
The way Dr.
Flox plays this in the aftermath, though, is also a little weird feeling.
Like out in the corridor, Archer's like, hey, everything cool?
Dr.
Flox is like, yeah,
things are fine.
Nothing to report, Captain.
It's not like I have blood.
dribbling out the side of my mouth or anything.
Yeah.
Wild.
So Tepaul goes looking for smoke.
And like people who go looking for smoke, she finds it.
Archer has let Flox know that this is going on.
So Flox finds her almost the moment after a wisp went into her head.
And it's almost like she's just like paused.
She's just standing there like a like a mannequin, which Flox reports to the captain.
And there's a moment where they're talking about anesthetizing her with the same stuff that they did Hoshi with.
And I was wondering if that was going...
Because what TePaul described was like having the mental discipline to repel the wisp when it gets inside her head.
And I was wondering if knocking her out would drop her defenses.
You know, the most powerful mind on the crew would be sacrificed to the wisps by this action.
I thought Jolene Blalock's...
face from the movie Get Out here was really incredible.
Like that she clearly was sturdy enough mentally to repel it, but also like at great sacrifice and maybe pain and maybe fear.
Yeah.
Wow.
I really felt this moment.
I thought she was great here.
I feel like it's the movie Get Out used face from this episode of Enterprise, you know?
Like clearly.
She was in the sunken place walking so that Daniel Kaluya could be running in it.
She so rarely needs anyone for anything on this show, but when Tepal kind of collapses in Dr.
Flox's arms, that's kind of the punctuation to this whole scene.
They're lying to us, she says.
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
Liguries just a fortune.
So we learn that the Wisps, that great big ship of theirs, is kind of EOL.
It's breaking down.
They haven't been keeping up with the scheduled maintenance and the insurance company is going to total it out pretty soon.
And so they are looking for ships to take over and
some number of them equal to the number of compatible mines.
on the Enterprise crew are going to take this ship and then they're planning on kind of marauding through corporeal space, taking as many ships as they can until they're all saved.
So this has not been on the up and up.
This has not been a good faith exploration trade the way it's been sold to them.
The Wisps are like talking amongst themselves, like, yeah, this is a great plan.
I love it.
We're going to have this new ship.
And maybe you could tell me a little bit about how fast it goes or what its armament is.
Oh, no.
Warp?
Is that what you did?
Just say warp four?
The warp 5 is theoretical?
I'm looking at the computer database here.
What is a grappler?
And why is it listed under weapon?
I need something to do with this ship, Commander.
Fair enough.
I think maybe we should let these people go and maybe find another type of corporeal.
What do you think?
We still got two, three months of good use in this ship.
Maybe we stopped too soon.
This is a classic case of of like going fishing and having to
put the fish back because it's too small.
You know,
catch and release.
So Archer and Fox work on a plan to
kill everyone that's been infected because they feel like the wisps will just leave the bodies if their bodies are no longer useful to them.
And they're talking about this and they're like, we should get Trip involved in this cool plan.
But nobody can find Trip.
He has gone missing in the nacelle.
I love that
when Mayweather reports to Archer and DePaul that he can't find Trip, he is told to just look harder.
You must have missed it.
I'll look again.
That is the only recourse for a ship that doesn't have the technology to scan for people.
Yes, but also everyone is in one place.
This would be like you're on like a 737 and one of the passengers on the manifest isn't on board the plane like that's a fucking problem like you land the plane over that you know yeah so archer is like john hammond and phlox is like ellie sattler and phlox is going around the ship reconfiguring the life support system to to spray knockout gas basically
And Archer is describing
all of the procedures over the radio while the camera kind of sidles over and reveals that Trip is sneakily listening in from a different part of the room that they are all standing in.
That it is a Dolly move, I think is so fun.
And I think it tells you a lot about Livingston as a consumer of media because that's straight out of a horror film.
Totally.
It's really great.
I love this move.
I love how like nonchalantly he's just standing there behind that girder, too.
It's not like, he's not like peering in or anything.
Well, his
because he's dressed in the jumpsuit, like he looks like Michael Myers back there, like kind of unmoving and
like with his posture.
It's great.
Yeah, and he's wearing that Captain Kirk mask, which is like...
Yeah.
We should do Halloween as a bonus episode because of its relationship to Star Trek.
I like that idea.
We'll do that for October.
I watched a scary movie yesterday, Adam.
Maybe I'm into scary movies now.
The whole thing or just the first half?
I watched the whole thing.
Yeah.
Which one was it?
The Gorge.
Oh, yeah.
The Miles Taylor Anya Taylor Joy movie?
Yeah.
How was that?
I thought it was a lot of fun.
I didn't think it quite stuck the landing, but it was a hell of a movie all the way through.
It wasn't a movie about an eating contest?
No.
I wanted there to be more of that, you know.
There is a lot about food in it, actually, but a very cute, like, weird romance movie from, you know, like the first half, and then like a pretty wild action movie in the second half, but very scary.
I'll check it out.
Anya Taylor enjoys making interesting career choices.
Yeah.
I kind of like what she's doing.
I do too.
Not all of one kind of thing.
Yeah.
She seemed to have an interesting taste, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Although, actually, you know what?
There's chess and there's chess in the gorge, so it is kind of all of one thing, actually.
All right.
Maybe I'll skip it.
it i've already seen that movie before
so phlox uh learns that the other wisps are are like looking for him so he's got to get this done before he like gets jumped in the street by a crowd of of ass-kicking wisps but the first one that finds him is wisp trip and we get an access panel fight
because that is the primary thing that they are using to bonk each other.
Doors as improvised weapons.
You can't overdo that to me.
Yeah, it's very fun.
And such a different kind of fight scene than the earlier one with Hoshi.
And the fact that Flox is in this EVA suit, which is like sort of armor, but it also encumbers him.
So it's kind of an interesting, like some of his stats are plussed up and some of his stats are down because of it.
I mean, I really love how he's not impervious to pain when he's wearing it.
Like, he gets knocked down and he looks like he's in pain when he's taken down in the suit.
And I like that detail.
Yeah.
At the center of this fight is this handle release that's going to start gassing the ship.
And if Phlox can overcome Trip for long enough to turn the handle, Trip will fall unconscious because to win this fight, you're going to need an EVA suit.
Oh, you don't have one of these, do you, Trip?
You gotta put a Ritter in this scene.
I love that they're so proximate to the gas, too.
It's not like they're in a part of the ship where handles get turned and then, like, you cut to an angle of a vent or whatever.
Like, Trip is in the gas.
He's a fucking face full of it.
I like that choice a lot.
I also like the choice to just cut around and show the gas acting on a few people.
Like Reed Fully gets a death scene.
That's fun.
Yeah.
So this knocks them all out.
Flox reports when the yellow wisp comes to, you know, pick up Blue Wisp after soccer practice and drive it home.
And now they've got to like vent the gas and wake everybody up.
And also get the fuck out of here.
They've got to get their ship away from the Wisp mothership that gobbled them up earlier in the episode.
And immediately it starts pursuing them and trying to gobble them anew.
But they're ready for this with a couple of missiles that go into the maw and they commit Wisp genocide.
How much of a mistake was it?
by the Wisp ship to leave that mouth open?
Because not even Enterprise could miss
shooting these dumb fucking missiles into it.
Yeah.
I mean, if Susie Plaxon had been at the weapon station, they would have gone vertically and gone, you know, one would have gone over and one would have gone under the ship.
How dare you?
Wouldn't have done anything.
Susie Plaxon's beautiful.
I was talking about Tara, the Andorian, played by Susie Plaxon.
Ben.
I feel bad for these Wisps.
Like, they didn't do anything that the Binars didn't.
You would.
If they just asked for help, Enterprise might have said no.
The Wisps were bad.
They're bad, and they took them over.
I know, but now they're all dead.
Did they deserve to all be dead?
Yeah, I think they deserve to be dead.
This is a shipjacking.
Wow.
You get what you get.
Yeah, and they're in a stand-your-ground sector.
Yeah.
Great effect on the ship exploding, though.
I loved seeing it kind of dissolve
from the inside.
Yeah.
I mean, you could really tell that the maintenance had been pretty lacking on that ship when it dissolves the way it does.
Yeah.
Some reward for Trip Tucker, though.
Kind of a weird tone the episode ends on, right?
Like, Trip Tucker's back, baby.
Yeah.
Are you ready to go back to work doing a bunch of unlocking of crew from their quarters with Dr.
Flox?
You better better be because that's what you get to do.
I had a deeply intimate experience with an alien, and I'm not even pregnant.
I don't understand it.
I was eight years old, at one time pre- and post-pubescent.
Did you like this episode?
I love an episode where the actors act against the characters that we know.
That was fun.
Every time we got it, it was fun.
Except with Reed,
because
Reed went full creep.
He was just too creepy with DePaul.
It made me want to leave him behind.
Because here's the thing.
We aren't exactly sure how much puppeteering is happening of the Wisps and the bodies they possess.
So I'm still, even in this scene, not super sure that this isn't something that isn't a deeply held feeling inside of Reed or Trip or Hoshi or anyone else.
It feels like there's a little bit of them in there.
And in that scene in particular, that Reed's is a little gross to me.
I also just feel like, I mean, I don't know.
It seems to me, and, you know, maybe
I'm wrong on this, but whenever Rick Berman has a writing credit on an episode where T'Paul is is in her sleepy time outfit.
She is in peril of assault.
And it just seems like a pattern that I could really use this show not repeating over and over again.
I would agree, but also she is so fucking strong and badass in that scene.
I never felt like she was in danger because I think...
I just believe too much in her ability to kick Reed's ass.
Yeah.
Let's just say, like the internet meme that goes around the barely concealed fetish of the writer, I felt a little bit like DePaul was wondering what a drawer going in and out of an ice desk might sound like in that scene.
You want to know more about that ice desk.
I want to know what's going on in the Priority 1 inbox, Adam.
Should we check in there?
Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel.
Need a supplemental income.
Supplemental income?
Supplemental.
Supplemental.
Yeah, it's extra.
But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.
Adam, we've got a promotional message here.
It's like this.
It's been a minute, so I wanted to throw some extra scarves your way.
Love hanging with Ben while he's blowing up scary monsters on Twitch.
Hope to see you both in Seattle again soon.
And the call to action here is just subscribe at maximumfun.org slash join.
And that's from YourFrog Prince.
Love your Frog Prince.
Yeah,
we've not just
performed in Your Frog Prince's City, we've talked to Your Frog Prince at some of our meet and greets.
I've been back on the Greatest Trek Twitch channel semi-regularly doing XCOM 2, which is a video game.
that has a pretty substantial number of TNG
alumni in the voice cast so uh yeah
trying to trying to get on there on on fridays specifically and sometimes mondays as well time permitting thanks your frog prince and uh a great uh reminder to join we got the pledge drive coming up right around the corner next week's show i believe it will be the first week of uh of the greatest gen drive as we're calling it so i hope folks do what your frog prince is uh demanding that they do yeah if you don't believe believe us, believe your frog prince.
Ben, we got a personal priority one message here.
It's from Matt,
the one doing P1s for every season.
Oh, wow.
And it's to Ben and Adam, forever.
Here's that message.
Just finished season five of TNG with you two, and I'm trying to figure out if I'm supposed to be Team Raz or Team Plavim.
Wow.
They both seem great,
but you gotta stop vetoing the vetoes.
Love your show and love that you got more than dozens of followers despite your initial intentions.
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah.
Hey, how about Matt back in the stacks?
Matt, you'll eventually get to this recording
as you make your way through the archive.
And just know that in, you know, late February, early March of 2025, Jerry's still out on which team we should be on, Raz or Plavim.
I don't know.
One of them's going to fuck up eventually, right?
Yeah.
I mean, my money's on Plevim being the one that fucks up, but I'm not sure I don't want to back team Plevim
until that time, you know?
Yeah, that makes sense.
I have a lot of complicated feelings about it.
Yeah.
Nothing complicated about supporting Greatest Generation.
One of the best ways to do it is to go to maximumfund.org slash Jumbotron, write a brief priority one message, and we'll do the rest like we've done right here.
It's a great way to support the production of shows.
Hey, Adam.
Zap Ben.
Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?
Incredible.
Drunk Shimoda.
Mine's going to be to Paul, but for not the scene where Reed gets weird with her.
It's for the scene where I feel like she's trying to captain from behind a little bit as the XO.
And I think she finally reaches the end of her rope when she's like, all right, you know, I'm going to go out into a corridor and just present my face.
Because this Vulcan face is sturdy enough to take it.
Like,
she runs out of ways to encourage Archer to do a thing.
She can only be so persuasive
with him
before she's going to take the reins of this story and put herself in danger.
And I thought that was a very drunk Shimoda moment for her.
Like, fine, I'll do it myself with my face.
What about you, Ben?
I got to go to Mayweather this episode because he had one job and that was find Trip.
Blew it the first time.
When he does find Trip the second time, he's like, hey, Trip, the captain needs you.
Trip, everything okay, Trip?
You seem to be acting weird.
And then Trip, like, pushes past him and races toward the other end of the catwalk and then is like...
poised at a hatch and Mayweather's like, Trip, what I'm trying to get you to understand is that the captain needs to talk to you.
Mayweather, where have you you been all day?
Like, people are getting body snatched.
Clearly, that is what's going on with Trip.
You should have assumed that from the second he acted a tiny bit strange around you.
I'll tell you what Mayweather was doing.
A bunch of crunches.
A bunch of abdominal exercises.
Could not be bothered to really seriously look for Trip.
Maybe this all stems back to him pushing back when the captain says that they have to lock up anyone acting strange.
Like, Mayweather's like, I don't know what it means to act strange.
Literally, I do not understand what you're talking about.
I mean, if you suspect that me, Mayweather, is acting strange, I do crunches all the time.
I'm doing isometrics right here in my seat, right now.
You should see my fucking pelvic floor.
It is ripped and exploded in the good way.
You just follow my cum gutters gutters down to my pelvic floor?
You're going to be a happy camper.
Faith of the fart.
In what gutter are we going to recap the next episode of Star Trek Enterprise, Ben?
Oh, boy, I thought you'd never ask.
The episode is
called Judgment.
It's season two, episode 19 of Star Trek Enterprise.
And
it's a Klingon trial episode.
Archer is put on trial for crimes against the Klingon Empire.
Oh, you think we're going to see the ball gavel that does the lightning when you crack it?
The ball gavel is in the thumbnail that I'm looking at here.
And J.G.
Hertzler also in the episode I'm seeing here.
Wow.
Pretty exciting.
To find out how we are going to be doing this episode, I'm going to goch.biz/slash game, where we keep the game of buttholes, the Will of the Riker, Quantum Leap.
Our runabout is currently on square four, that J slash C square.
And we roll this hundred-sided die to find out where we will land next.
You're required to learn as you play.
Roll.
Could land anywhere, Adam.
Got any predictions?
I'm going to predict that it lands on this square again, because I want to hear your J slash C story.
Okay.
That would be a lot of fun.
Well, let's see what happens.
Well, you didn't get your wish, Adam, but I got my wish.
I rolled a 71, landing us on square 75 regular episode next week.
Did I win?
Hardly.
Hey, that's nice.
It'll be a fun one.
And yeah, I think that's it, right?
We just gotta sit.
Thank some people and get the hell out of here.
Yeah, just gotta thank the FODs who support our show.
There's a number of ways to do it.
There's the monthly way at maximumfund.org/slash join.
There's the merchy way at podshop.biz.
There's the P1 way, maximumfund.org slash jumbotron.
There's all kinds of ways.
There's the foot fist way where you defend us from an attacker using your martial arts skills.
Yeah.
You know.
All of these are appreciated.
Yeah.
Our faces are not, do not have the fortitude of Tefal's.
No.
Soft faces.
That's what we've got.
But we also really appreciate the the efforts of Wendy Pretty, our producer and editor.
Gotta thank the card daddy Bill Tilly, who makes trading cards about every episode.
I think the easiest place to find those these days is the Greatest Trek Instagram.
Follow at Greatest Trek on all social media.
Those accounts run by our social media director, Rob Adler, who makes him a really fun follow.
I hope people will follow, you know, in advance of the drive, especially.
That guy just told us that he just reached his one-year anniversary at Uxbridge Shimoda.
Rob Adler.
He made it.
He made it.
Rob Adler.
We got to do like an employee review, I guess.
I guess.
He knows how he's done.
Oh, yeah.
Also, follow the subscribe to the mailing list, goch.biz slash mail.
Rob works real hard on that every month.
Another Rob Adler joint.
Adam and I submit articles to him to go into it.
I feel like maybe next mailing list should have the text of your story in it if you're if you're into that, Adam.
Oh man.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Give it some thought.
All right.
I mean, I think once people see how often the words ice desk appear.
I think most people have an ice desk blocker on their email.
Like, I think it would just go to junk.
I don't want that to happen.
You know, we have a friend who writes real spicy novels, Adam, Lauren, the wife of the goose, with whom we do the Wholesome Podcast, but he also made our original theme song on this show.
That's right.
Our original theme song, by which I mean to say, our parody theme song of Diane Warren's original, Faith of the Heart.
Correct.
Gotta thank Dark Materia for the card song, which you hear right now.
And with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of Grace Generation Enterprise.
Where,
man,
can you imagine?
Like, could
we find out if there was a stockade at
that space prison, like in an earlier era, and they took it out?
Fall gavel
of the dead
ice desk
of the horny.
Captain John Luke Picard of the UPSF.
Make it so.
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