Shuttlepod Haram (ENT S2E13)

Here's to the finest crew in starving.

When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.

Welcome to the greatest generation.

It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.

I'm Adam Peranica.

I'm Ben Harrison.

I have a treeby update.

Tree bee update.

I had a tree removal guy out to the house to take a look at it, give me an estimate on getting rid of it.

Much higher than I had hoped

was the estimate.

Did you get a wit bee and

without bees?

Estimate?

Like, how much more are you paying for the bees?

That is a different line item because we don't know if they're honey bees or not.

And every effort will be made to save them if they are honeybees.

And that will involve a separate person who specializes in honey bee rehoming.

Is there any way that they could be rehomed to your enormous backyard, like in a corner, like where you got little boxes and shelves and honeycombs and so forth?

Wouldn't that be nice?

I've had friends in the honey beekeeping lifestyle, and it seems like such a pleasant hobby to me.

Ben's bees?

You could see the logo, right?

It would just be, it would be me with a great bushy beard,

and I would be getting exploited by the company that owns the brand, right?

Because that's how it usually works for you.

No, I see you at the farmer's markets and stuff

selling little glass jars of your bees' honey.

Yeah, that sounds delightful.

That sounds fun.

That's a whole thing, though.

Well, the fun thing, I mean, we've been famously having very high winds here in Los Angeles.

And the guy was like, yeah, if there's a hive at this part of the trunk, this tree is

not very sturdy.

If they're living where they're living, what we're probably looking at is a trunk that is not really up to the job of holding up this very, very tall tree that is already destroying my neighbor's house.

But if it came down, it could easily destroy my house too.

Yeah, don't need that.

Yeah, it's like,

I thought that the bees were the thing that sucked about this tree.

So do you have a date on the calendar circled in thick red pen?

I don't because I don't have enough money to pay this company.

So I'm going to get a couple more estimates and see.

I mean, it's all the good news for me, the entire tree is on my neighbor's side of the line.

Bad news for me, my neighbor has already made it very clear he has little interest in helping pay for this.

But I think the added urgency of it could fall over on your house and crush you in your sleep, hopefully a motivator.

for some people

I mean for some people that would be attractive that yeah it could be could be a nice you know easy way to go out is there any way that I could be in bed and simultaneously stung by 10,000 bees and crushed by a falling tree

you want him to both be my girled and and squished by a tree hey just a little punch up to my girl if that's possible I know this is an older film maybe in the remastered version we could kind of up the stakes of the death.

Right.

George Lucas could get his hands on the original negatives.

Like, could you make it a little bit more final destination in the kill?

Here's what happens in the new My Girl.

My Girl Remastered.

My Girl, colon, a final destination story.

Jabba's got legs.

Jabba pushes over the tree, kills Macaulay as the bees are stinging him.

Yeah.

Like, Macaulay Culkin begs for death.

Like, he wants the tree.

That's what's so messed up about the remastered version.

And there's kind of like a parallel tragedy because that little that little guy that's always like, you know, up in the rafters going,

he's up in the tree as it's falling.

So he's going to die, but he's like a hyena.

He thinks it's hysterical.

He can't stop laughing.

It's like he's the tree is falling and he's like,

Smack.

Here's the sequence, man.

I think we've got our arms around this.

Okay.

Jabba walks in, side frame, sees Macaulay.

But he's got, he's like leggy.

He has sexy legs.

They go all the way up.

Macaulay Culkin's being stung by bees, begging for death.

Jabba with legs pushes the tree full of bees over.

Splat goes Macaulay Culkin.

Long dissolve.

Fade up to...

Wait, wait, wait.

Long dissolve on his broken glasses frames and Anna Klumski yelling about how he can't see without his glasses.

Okay, just want to make sure that that's in there.

Fade up.

Los Feliz farmers market.

Behind a table selling honey.

Uh-huh.

Jabba with legs.

Java with legs.

Camera pushes in to the label

on the honey.

Those same glasses.

Okay, I like it.

Freeze frame.

Is it Jabba's jars?

Freeze frame and the first guitar sting from Life as a Highway starts playing.

And then the credits roll.

Oh, yeah.

Can the freeze frame be on Dan Ackeroid saying, one, please?

I think we fixed that movie.

I think we fixed a very broken movie and made it better.

A deeply broken movie.

What people have been saying for years is, you know, that's when everything started going downhill.

If you're squished by a tree as your form of death, do you get a flatter coffin?

Like kind of a pizza box height coffin?

Yeah, but it's like very broad.

They have to dig a much bigger hole.

You could probably still go open casket with like the pizza box lid, right?

Uh-huh.

And then what you do is you have the plastic tree like probably on your forehead so that the box doesn't cave in and get cheese all over the underside, right?

You think the corpse could do the thing where they put their thumb in their mouth and they blow and reinflate themselves?

See, okay, so the so life is a highway plays.

The credits have already gone through.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

lights up queue is about to happen in the theater and then post-credit sequence

pizza box coffin opens macaulay culkin

blows on his thumb his body reinflates yeah we play life as a highway again

I love this movie.

Why don't movies do fun, cool shit anymore?

Has any movie done the two Life as a Highway moments?

Yeah, man.

That would be great.

You've already paid for it.

Yeah.

The first time I heard

Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z

was on Hot97, and the DJ was so hyped about playing Empire State of Mind that he just played it again.

And then he would cut into it.

It was very clear that he was like, He was performing that he was hearing it for the first time.

And then he started like rubbing records and playing it again but like he would like cut into the beginning of the song again at the middle of the song and there was like a solid just 25 minutes of

song

it changed everything i think we could do that with life as a highway at the end of my girl in the in in the you know the redux version let's call it did you hear uh hactua girl's take on the lyrics to Empire State of Mind.

Tell me you saw this

in in your scrolling of TikTok.

You must have encountered this, right?

I haven't.

I don't think much about Hocktua Girl aside from the fact that repeatedly in the last few weeks driving my son to preschool in the morning, I found myself behind the same car with the same bumper sticker that says, it just says Hocktua spit on that thing.

Wow.

Wow.

And I'm like, what a thing.

That's all you need.

The one bumper sticker this car has on it is Hocktua Spit on That Thang.

That's a lifestyle choice that that person has made to adorn their Subaru Forester Thusley.

Her interpretation of the lyrics is, you know, after the New York song, New York,

she goes, Concrete Jungle Wet Dream Tomato.

And once you hear concrete jungle wet dream tomato,

you're never not hearing that in Empire State of Mind.

It's stuck in there forever.

That's it.

That's the bumper sticker I would put on my Subaru Forester.

Yeah.

Concrete Jungle Wet Dream Tomato.

It's very Dada-ish, you know?

Like, it doesn't mean anything, but yet it means so much.

It does.

Yeah.

Let's try to interpret what this episode of Star Trek Enterprise means, Ben.

Kind of a lot of ground to cover in season two, episode 13.

It's called

Down.

Trip is testing autopilot upgrades, and he is on a solo mission to do this in orbit of a gas giant, and it's dozens of moons.

He's out on a shuttle pod testing this, and

he gets a very staticky radio call from Archer warning him that a small vessel is inbound on his paws.

But it's one of those, like, can't quite make out what you're saying, Cap, kind of moments.

Like, every time I called my father and his Bluetooth hearing aids didn't connect perfectly to his phone, and we were, you know, working on resolving that before we could get to the business of the call, and then I got like fucking run up on like this, you know, I might have less patience for the.

You know, what's been living rent-free in my mind ever since you told me?

It's you relaying the things you wanted packed for evacuation during the fires.

And that's an added detail, the whole like connectivity to the

hearing aids part.

That wasn't part of the original story.

If I'm on the phone with my dad and he's like, oh, your mom's here.

Let me put you on speakerphone.

That is a guaranteed hang up the phone because disconnecting from the hearing aids is seemingly impossible from a technological standpoint.

You know what you did to that story, the original story.

You've remastered it.

All it needs is a little life as a highway.

And then the tree crushes the hearing aid.

Yeah.

Bolt of lightning shoots out,

blows Macaulay Culkin's head off.

His glasses shatter into a billion pieces.

He can't see without his glasses.

These guys are shooting.

This ship that comes in.

They don't declare themselves.

They don't blow in a hail.

They just start shooting.

And Trip is going down into the atmosphere of one of these moons.

And he blows in his May Day.

And that is our cold open.

This is sort of like

if Sully

had the bird strike on his plane and there were like two dozen Hudson Rivers to ditch in.

Like this is actually not a bad situation if you got to ditch the shuttle, if you're Trip Tucker, right?

It is a great situation and one that is maybe the only plausible crash landing in sci-fi history because

every other time we've had a shuttle malfunction, you know, in Star Trek, but also, you know, in space balls, in anything where it's like, fuck, the engines are fucked.

We're going down.

There's magically a planet with atmosphere under you every single time that happens.

This is the only time I've ever believed it.

Oh, shit.

There goes the planet.

When after the theme Enterprise arrives on scene, it feels like the rescue should be

fairly speedy at this point.

Like they get there what seems like right away, except they're not getting any responses to their hails.

And the thing about all these moons is that they're made up of a thing that makes their sensors get all scrambly.

It's very difficult to figure out what's happened here.

Reed has found evidence of weapons fire, but like there's no sign of Trips shuttle or any other ships.

So, like, what are they going to do?

I guess they've got 62 moons

that they need to search to see which one he crashed landed on.

Certain members of the crew believe that if you die a martyr, you get 62 moons when you reach heaven.

That's why every time I go on a shuttle mission by myself, I make sure there's a pig in the cargo area.

No one's going to hijack my shuttle.

We renamed it from Shuttle Pod 1 to Shuttle Pod Haram.

Archer is optimistic that Trip is a good pilot.

He would have figured out how to safely land on one of these moons, but it's going to be a little bit of a needle in a haystack scenario.

And they get the search started and we cut to, sure enough, Trip safe and sound, an intact shuttle on the surface of this planet.

i couldn't help but chuckle like at how at the rapidity of like i'm positive he's okay next scene he's okay

uh

if you thought this show was gonna go with some sad irony you're wrong it's fine like uh like the the brass instrument player like starts warming up the valves like maybe like blow out the spit valve getting ready to play the single brass instrument of like maybe trip tucker is dead.

No.

No.

No?

No.

Don't need to blow the horn?

No.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah, he's like,

you know, it's dark.

Things seem okay.

We get a little bit of a log where, like, he's.

I thought it was very funny that he was administering Q-tip-based first aid to himself.

Like, you're fine.

If, if you're using a Q-tip to clean your...

your wound that you sustained on an uncontrolled re-entry, you're going to be okay.

Like, this is recoverable.

Let me ask you a question.

Is recording a log after an emergency the most optimistic thing to do or the most pessimistic thing to do?

Every log contains two

bolts.

Two bolts.

That's really it, isn't it?

Because

I was trying to figure out through Tripp's attitude, like whether or not he was like, sometime somebody's going to find this and they're going to have a record of me.

Or it's going to be like, this is going to be the story of my heroics getting myself out of this shit, and and people are gonna read about it and love me.

Yeah, you know, people will stop talking about the nipples so much, and it'll be more about that time by Swiss family Robinson and myself on that planet.

Finally, my arm nipples will go below the fold.

You're never gonna let that go, are you?

Tiff Ducker, who had arm nipples,

died in a warp core breach.

He was survived by his sister who lives in Florida.

I got to get some more shit done in my life before I die.

So is this like a regional paper then?

I think that's what we're making clear.

Like, this is not national news.

This is

Aria Man with Arm Nipples.

Like, I had a friend who used to write OBITs for the New York Times.

Like, like, they have like a file of pre-written obits, and they just, there's some TKTK that they put in there to fill in the details.

I mean, friend of the podcast, Ben Fritz, used to have a folder full of those

when he worked in entertainment journalism.

I mean, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but he's admitted to me that he has one for you.

Oh, that makes me so happy.

And the reason is you won't have to write it.

Yeah.

You know, I might,

you know, well, now that he's dead, dead, I can say some things that I might never have in life.

So there's no way for him to fly out because there's something in the atmosphere of this moon that gums up Federation shuttle craft engines.

And so

his next best bet is to try and fix the radio that he had on board that seems to have gone out.

And so he's sitting by the campfire.

He is,

you know, doing his best to fix this thing up.

But

something's moving out there.

And it ain't us!

I thought that the sounds in the dark sounded a little slimy.

Did you get that at all?

No, and I think something visual happened to make the case to me, which was like there's some dry, scrubby

brush

that when I saw it, I definitely attached it to the rustling

that I heard in this scene.

He arms himself with a pipe, which I thought was surprising.

Like, he did not come on this mission with anything in the shuttle pod to defend himself.

You could call me a hard, pipe-hitting tucker.

I mean,

you probably shouldn't say tucker, especially with the hard R at the end, but I can because I am a tucker.

Wouldn't you know it?

It's this Arconian pilot, the one who was flying that other ship that attacked him.

Yeah, still licking shots.

And just like before, he fires first.

He cannot stop firing first in every situation.

So what Trip does is like he retreats back to the shuttle and slams the door behind him.

And oh no, what he's done is he's left that communications transceiver

outside to get stolen.

So in orbit of the gas giant, not specifically this moon, The Arconian military has pulled up on the entrepreneur to talk to them.

And Tepaul explains that these guys are pretty legendary for their confrontationality, which was, uh, you know, I shuddered to think, what if I ran into a confrontational alien?

I don't think I could handle that.

The Vulcans seem not to care for it very much.

Captain Benjamin R.

Harrison of the Starship Enterprise, like this Arconian guy's like, get the fuck out of the solar system.

This shit right here, this is ours.

Yeah.

Ben's like,

okay

you know I kept accidentally saying my chief engineer's last name with the with you know emphasizing the R at the end and it's probably better for all of us if I just leave him here

how about Archer making the case that like, hey, if you want us to scram,

you should probably think about helping us find our downed pilot.

Like, because that's the only reason we're here.

We don't give a shit about your 56 planets or whatever.

Like, we want to find our guy, and then we'll get the hell out.

How about you help us?

This is good logic.

Like, they are also missing a guy, which I was surprised that the other captain admitted, but he admitted it.

Oh, my God.

He admitted it.

He is grumpily forced to agree, you know, two ships are going to be better than one when it comes to scanning all of these moons, and that begins a process.

And down on the moon in question, Trip creeps over to find the other crash shuttle and is about to slide down some scree to go confront the guy that stole his radio when a little puff of dust reveals a laser tripwire.

Did you get the sense that this was the sort of tripwire that would have exploded had it been tripped, or was this the sort of tripwire that would just sound an alarm?

Well, it does sound an alarm later, so it's not like a claymore or something.

Yeah.

But

yeah, like I think if you find laser tripwire, you've got to assume that there is potentially a lethal consequence to breaking it, right?

Great moment.

Great effect.

Yeah.

I like this shot.

So

he absconds back to his shuttle and he's like doing another trips log while trying to fix something.

Trying to stay optimistic.

Dawn is coming.

Speaking of optimistic, I could never record a log while doing something technical.

This reads to me like someone listening to a podcast while like doing maintenance or whatever.

Like I don't have the sort of mind that

can like do task-based shit and also process someone telling me something at the same time.

And yet Trip is full on recording a log while doing fix-it shit.

Yeah, I remember in high school it being like a real revelation when somebody told me like, oh, yeah, I like to write papers while listening to like instrumental music.

And I was like, oh, like, yeah, because I like, I don't have any of that in my collection.

So like, I just can't listen to music when I'm working on a paper.

It's all raps and stuff for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is all words.

Like it's word dense.

if anything.

The big problem here is that there's no universal translator.

He didn't bring that on this trip because he wasn't expecting to run into anyone.

So we cut back over to the alien's camp and he and he can hear Trip talking,

but it's very quiet.

He gets up from his

campfire and goes, takes his gun and goes down some canyon looking for Trip Tucker.

And the second he leaves, Trip sneaks in and gets to work on the radio gear.

And when the alien realizes that this was all a ruse, that it was just playing off of an iPad that Trip Tucker set up on a rock, he runs back to camp, accidentally sets off his own laser.

Very good thing that he didn't rig a claymore to it because he would have just taken himself out right then and there.

And that's the end of the episode.

There's a Star Trek fight that's like,

it seems like it's over real quick.

I like the reality,

the seeming reality of the Star Trek fight.

It lasts as long as many real-life fights last, which is to say, not very long at all.

It's like Trips got the gun, and then this guy trips him and gets the gun.

Now Alien is in charge, and they can't communicate, so we just get a lot of teeth from this alien, and boy, are those teeth yucky.

Yeah.

Really good teeth design on this alien loaf.

Great alien design in general.

I thought they did a great job with the Arconians.

I know.

In some ways, they are a very boring Star Trek alien.

It's like, okay, they're like lizardy and gray, and they wear gray, and everything is gray, but like, the details of the teeth and like the scales are so detailed in the loaf.

And I wonder if that's the this is going out in HD some places, so they have to get the loaf detail that good.

If you haven't seen Enemy Mine, you probably think this is great, right?

But as it is, like, this does read as a like fairly close to enemy mine without like biting that that rhyme completely.

Totally.

You ugly hit it

up on Enterprise.

Tapal has been in charge of the moon scanning operation and reports no progress.

It seems like the Arconians are also kind of dragging their feet.

They're not like calling in other ships to help with the search.

And she speculates that this is because the captain of the other ship saw her on the Enterprise's bridge.

And and the Arconians just don't like Vulcans.

They've been in contact for 100 years.

They don't trust them.

And

seems like maybe they are slow rolling the rescue operation because they don't want this to turn into some Vulcan shit that they didn't bargain for.

I really love the Vulcans being used as a proxy for easy to get along with in this context because I feel like every friend group has the one friend that is like pretty agreeable and like doesn't have very many enemies or something until that one moment in conversation they're like they mention someone that they absolutely hate and you're like whoa

whoa really

you

oh

damn huh must have done something bad yeah like i i like that that's the energy that grounds this scene and that really like shocks Archer in a way that he should be shocked.

It puts him on alert for the rest of the episode.

Yeah.

So back on the surface, Trip works on some of the gear that the Arconian has, and they managed to do that thing where they introduce themselves to each other using like pats on their own chests.

Yeah, you know, the drill, it's tricky though, right?

Because, like, some of the like natural gestures that Zokan has are

kind of like the reverse of what Trip has.

Like, he keeps shaking his head for yes, and

there's some other things that aren't totally compatible.

For example, water is not water, water is prune juice.

What the hell is that?

Warriors drink.

The detail that Zokan

does not need water for survival.

Instead, he needs rumchada

that is the color of thick antifreeze in order to survive.

Was big, big fun.

Like,

to me, there's only one bottle that looks like this.

Hmm.

Yeah.

You ever have rumchata?

Never, I've never tasted.

I mean, you'd think, given my love of rum and my love of horchata,

this would be a product that's right in the numbers for me.

But I also hate synthetic bullshit.

I mean, this was a

college party beverage, if there ever was one.

Like, you just take rum chata to the dome if you're the sort of drinker that doesn't have the taste for alcohol.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's sweet.

Yeah.

Trip gets cut working on on something, and he is proposing going back to his ship so he can get his first aid kit.

But Zokan has healing venom in his saliva.

And he just, he hawked and spits on that thing, and it heals right up.

Zokon is

that dinosaur that kills Nedri in Jurassic Park.

And so what this does from this point forward to me is like, I can't take my eyes off of him.

When is he going to spit again?

Right, right.

Does he have different chambers with different juices?

Like, is he

like a purple zebra slushy drink bar?

Like, where there's like glands that have different flavors for different purposes?

I like that.

I wanted to know more about what makes this guy tick.

Does he have a hurricane and a margarita and purple stuff?

Yeah.

So after getting his arm fixed up, Trip gets Zokan to look at some of the work that he's done with these tubes and so forth.

But it's just a trick to shoot him in the face with some of this hydraulic fluid.

Oh!

And then Trip's able to take Zohan's weapon, but...

Is it Zohan?

You don't mess with the Zokon?

Oh, you don't mess with the Zokon.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, like that, that name and movie really stuck with me.

Long after I watched it.

Just indelibly in my memory.

Couldn't Couldn't tell you one thing about it.

Anyways, Tipol

gives Archer some bad news up on the ship, which is that these moons are quite chilly when it's nighttime on them, but they kind of turn to infernos in the daytime.

And that sort of sets the clock ticking on the survivability of this away mission for Trip Tucker.

Because when we cut back, it's getting a little bit brighter.

It's that

light before dawn on the planet's surface.

It's an ominous sunrise.

Yeah.

I guess you don't see too many of those unless you're a Dracula or something, right?

Sure, sure.

We could have done the math on this, but Trips Food also doesn't work for Zocon.

You do not mess with Zocon's food, and vice versa.

So his plan is he can get them to escape by...

by putting together parts from the two ships radios.

Like

there's enough stuff that isn't broken on both ships that he can get working together to send out a distress signal.

He turns this thing on.

Initially, it kind of sparks and Zohan laughs at him.

But then he gets it broadcasting.

However, no response from the entrepreneur due to something, something geologic formation, meaning they need to get to higher ground.

You can tell Zokan likes jackass style comedy.

Because when this thing zaps Trip Tucker, he just fucking loves it.

It was great.

I'm Trip Tucker, and this is Distress Call.

He gets up and like straddles the tip of the communications array.

He puts all 18 nipples from both arms along the communications array, and somebody turns it on.

Faith of the fart.

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Ben would rather die.

So through a series of hand gestures, Tripp is able to convey that they got to work together to move this thing to higher ground.

But, I mean, Zokan, obviously doesn't trust him after the last time Tripp tried to get him to do a thing together.

And wouldn't you know it?

As soon as he's untied, Zocan starts tussling with Trip once again.

And he makes for the phaser.

This was like the Keith-David fight in They Live.

Like, for as brief and realistic as the previous fight was, this one went so long and was so over the top.

I love how many haymakers Tripp swings at this guy, hitting.

Like, his cop you box numbers for this fight are just through the roof.

I was waiting for the like skin close-up effect because Zokon spits in Trip's eyes.

And I was going to be like, how are you going to fight when you don't have eyes, Mr.

Tucker?

Like, I really wanted that to work a second time.

It does not.

Your they live comparison is the most evident toward the end of the fight when these two are just too tired to fight anymore by the end

i mean fighting is very tiring just too old at the senior center like like just barely able to scuffle anymore yeah this is why you want to fight before dinner what when you're when you're able to after dinner you're just too tired and full

They fight to a draw, and that convinces them that they can work together.

So they hike up a great big styrofoam mountain with their broadcasting equipment, and they get up to a high enough spot.

It works.

They like get out a signal, but not really.

Like, I guess the signal is going out, but they're not hearing anything back.

There's a perspective change.

Like, we cut over to Hoshi picking up the signal, and they're just kind of not sure that it's Trip at this point.

Yeah.

Two hours transpire, and it is now hot, and now Trip is fully final logging.

Like, you know, they're going to find my crispy, slow-roasted corpse on the surface of this planet.

I mean,

it's taken this long for Trip to turn into Reed, which, I mean, is honorable.

He's lasted this long.

Saying goodbye to all the babes he's bagged over the years.

Ben, I know you've encountered this moment before when it's just too hot for a particular beverage to enjoy.

It is too hot for rum chata

in this scene.

So sad.

Zokon really struggling with the sun coming up hey guys why don't you find some

shade the the idea that they're just laying against a rock that is like radiating heat one of the first things they teach you in like survival which we learned from archer previously is like take your rests in the in the shadow of the dune It's not how to drink your own piss.

That's not the first thing they teach you.

Well, it wouldn't work for Zokon.

Yeah, what do you think's coming out of that?

I don't know.

Pretty gnarly stuff.

Yeah.

So finally, Hoshi comes through on the radio and they're like, hey, bad news, your shuttle won't work in the atmosphere, but we can just beam you up.

Unfortunately, we learned that the transporter will not work.

on Zokon and Trip is like, you do not abandon the Zokon.

Trip is like, all right, so how about you beam down some water in Romchata?

I mean, the transporter can also go the other way, right?

This idea is not suggested at all.

So Trip and this guy are just made to stay down there even longer without any more resources.

He has some ideas about an Arconian shuttle maybe making it through this atmosphere with some modifications, but like, we've been told that it gets like very, very hot on the surface of this planet.

I was like, how much time do they have?

Like, these modifications sound like they would take a little while to do.

This seems like a

show with writers that are having a little bit of a fixation about cooking their characters.

Because between the last episode and this one, it's all about like, it's about to get too hot to live.

How sweaty can we make Trip Tucker?

This is an extremely sweaty Trip Tucker in this episode.

Oh, man.

I don't know how it's possible to be more sweaty than he is.

Could he be any more sweaty?

This episode asks.

It's kind of a wet set, isn't it?

Because of Trip Tucker.

Because of Trip Tucker.

I mean, also him using the last of his water to wake Zokan by like pouring the water on Zokan's eyes.

You don't know what that's going to do to his eyes.

That could blind him.

Are you...

That is such a Benjamin R.

Harrison opinion.

Zocon spit in Trip Tucker's eyes, not knowing if his spit was going to blind Trip Tucker.

But he also spit in Trip Tucker's wound, healing his wound.

And the eye spit thing was before they teamed up to hike the radio up the mountain.

I love the theory that Zokan spit only helps, it never hurts.

Like he spits in Trip's eyes and he's like, oh, oh, I got 20-20 vision now.

I can throw my readers away.

This is incredible.

Thank you, Zokan.

Zokan, I'm a man of a certain age.

Do you think you might huck to

on that thing?

Maybe get me going?

If you spit on my balls, would they sang a little bit less low?

Trip logs about his many adventures.

It's been a hell of a ride.

He goes through some of the many things he's been through on this show.

I like this moment.

It's a fun list.

I even got pregnant ones.

Yeah, this is the log version of watching Star Trek on Star Trek.

This recap here.

This is nice.

And then, kind of, as we give up hope for these two,

out of the bright spot of the sun comes an Arconian shuttle to pick them up.

And back on the Entrepreneur, Archer is talking to the Arconian captain.

And it turns out that that Arconian ship grabbed them and brought them up to the Entrepreneur to receive medical treatment from Phlox.

So presumably it was determined that Phlox had the higher degree of capability when it came to treating either of these sick soldiers.

Yeah, unspoken but evident.

Good news.

The pilot is going to be okay.

And the captain of the Arconian ship is like, yeah, like if I find out that guy, you know, shot without warning your shuttle off first, like, he's going to be in a lot of...

I mean, he was in a hot atmosphere he's gonna be in hot water now

or as we do it on our planet hot rum chata

like he he breaks the fourth wall after after saying that

but it's okay like like such a great moment yeah archer hoping that their peoples can avoid misunderstandings like this in the future and is like kind of apologetic about going into their space unannounced.

We get a little scene with Chipaul and Archer where she gives him a little atta boy for achieving a better relationship with the Arconians than the Vulcans have been able to achieve in a hundred years of being in contact with this species.

Yeah, I mean hearing that's got to put some pep in the step, wouldn't you say?

Yeah.

What a nice thing to hear.

Good moment for a captain that really hasn't had a lot of good moments so far.

Yeah.

And I feel like it's like authentic to his character.

Like in the way that the things that Archer does that are bad are authentic to his character i feel like this is a win that he got honestly you know like he didn't inspect or gadget his way into this one this was archer being archer and it working this time nor did he

saving private ryan the moment with topal at the end and was like i did i do good to paul like he didn't solicit the compliment she just She did this of her own.

And that's what made the moment better, I thought.

So finally in Six Bay, Trips got a gotta visit the Zokan before he leaves.

And with the Universal Translator working, they can understand each other a lot better.

And all Zokan wants is more rum chata.

Not chicken marsala rum chata.

Yeah.

And then Zokan looks into the camera, holds up a bottle of rum chata,

freeze frame,

life is a highway.

And then it turns out this was a Cerveza Crystal commercial.

Like,

why all the head-fainting toward Ramchata the whole time?

I didn't tell you this because we were having our holiday/slash paternity break.

But I recently had a Cerveza Crystal

at a restaurant.

I had two, actually.

Delicious.

Yeah?

Yeah.

It was very porchy in all the right ways.

I mean, all those developing country beers are extremely crushable.

They've developed an excellent beer, Ben.

But was this an excellent episode of Star Trek Enterprise?

I really enjoyed it.

I thought the relationship between these two guys was very funny to me.

Like, of course, they can't trust each other.

And, like, I mean, we've seen this trope before.

Like, this is Galorndon Kor all over again.

But I kind of liked it with an alien that we had less to go on.

And i liked that it was a a less capable officer like like i feel like jordy with uh the romulan on galornan core picard with daithon darmaking around like they both have like institutional knowledge to draw on to like deal with situations like that and trip is like a boy scout that is in way over his head in this episode in a really fun way and i think does a creditable job you know finding his way out of it.

I also just like that they like really build the entire crashed shuttle on this show.

Like, they never used to do that on Old Trek.

Like, that was that was never a set, it was only ever like a set inside a studio.

They never took him out and like threw him in some dirt somewhere.

I guess this is all probably studio stuff, right?

Seems like it.

Good build, if so, yeah, but a really good build, yeah.

If Jordy were in a cave with the lizard aliens, would he call it a Gornornden core?

You think?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And if they were making that hole themselves, that would be a Gornornden bore.

And if what you did was stick your erect penis through that hole, would it be a

Glor

Gorndengor

hole?

Yeah.

Ben, I think the thing that hangs over this episode for me, like, and it's unfortunate, is that we're putting Trip Tucker in danger over and over again, and he just is

great every time in a re in a way that Reed is not.

And I just, like, the specter of Reed hung over this story like

a very depressing phantom limb.

Like, how early would Reid have killed himself on this mission was a question

that I thought a lot about.

And that's because Reid isn't built for this shit in the way Trip Tucker is.

So, yeah, a fun episode, and I'm glad it was Trip instead of maybe any other character.

Totally.

And good direction by Roxanne Dawson, also.

Yet another episode given to

the pipeline of actors who become Star Trek directors.

You want to to see if there's anything awesome in the Priority One inbox, Adam?

We too have a pipeline, Ben, of Priority One messages.

Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channels.

Need a supplemental income.

Supplement.

Supplemental.

Supplemental.

Yeah, it's extra.

But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.

Beginning with this one of a promotional nature, that message goes like this.

Do you want to work in medicine but find human interaction uncomfortable?

Have you thought about becoming a tricorder?

Then medical lab science is for you.

Medical lab scientists are living tricorders.

We analyze blood, urine, spinal fluid, even semen.

We give blood to cancer patients.

And we find out what's causing your diarrhea.

It's a four-year degree.

If you already have a degree, there's one-year programs available.

Whoa.

Google NAA CLS accredited programs near you and become the best tricorder

you can be.

This message sent by Sandra, who is encouraging us to leave the Star Trek podcasting behind and become a medical laboratory scientist by finding an NAA CLS accredited program near you today.

So your take is that this P1 is directed at us specifically.

Yeah, I think it is.

Clean up your axe and do something a little bit more positive for the world.

She can tell we like the idea of playing with blood and semen for work.

What I would tell Sandra is that who do you think is creating all the blood and urine and semen that you're using professionally?

Star Trek podcasters like us.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Our next P1 here is from Taylor Kay.

It is to Ben and Adam.

Goes like this.

While my wife and I watched our annual Gilmore Girls Christmas Marathon, I excitedly jumped off the couch and screamed and pointed at the TV, yelling, a natural Jaeger.

For what was on TV was Biff Jaeger himself.

Luckily, she, who is my wife, understood, saying, let me guess, from your favorite podcast?

What, are you going to buy a P1 now to tell them?

So, here we are.

Wow.

Correct.

My wife has been watching Gilmore Girls lately without me and was one of those like, oh, okay, I might have liked to watch that if it floated that that was going to be something you started.

Okay.

I can't do that, Joe.

The dialogue is just too cute by half for me.

It just, it just, it doesn't work for me.

I understand how it works for a lot of people, but.

But wouldn't it be worth enduring dialogue that isn't to your taste?

To get a natural Jaga?

I could use more of those in my life.

Just as I could use more priority one messages where we'll get the word out about something important or make fun of a significant other for you.

MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron is how you can get those messages here for us to read, and they go a long way in supporting the production of our shows at Uxbridge Shimoda.

Hey Adam.

Tap in.

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Drunk Shimoda!

I think the one detail I really enjoyed from this app

is like

how do you make a set like this feel real and not like a bunch of styrofoam?

I think when Trip and Rokan are fighting and Trip, you know, they both run out of energy fighting, but then Trip picks up the phaser and has the strength somehow to like throw it out of frame.

Yeah.

Like, what is effectively like onto the neighbor's roof, so

it can't be used against him.

Like, it lands next to a pizza?

That detail of throwing it out of frame just makes the world feel bigger.

I don't want to see it land.

That makes the world feel smaller.

Like, throw it completely out

is like a production detail, like a choice that seems like a nothing, but is actually, it actually carries a lot of weight.

You were observing on the previous episode that having, like, you can make the invading force seem way bigger with the same number of extras by having them go on patrol rather than creep around with their rifles.

Precisely, yeah.

And this is like that kind of like television production technique you're talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If he just like threw it on the next rock over or something and it was still in frame, you would feel confined to what's in the frame.

Yeah.

They probably didn't want to destroy that prop by having him throw it against a wall or something.

It makes me wonder if there was like a like a baseball backstop net that they rigged up in the in the studio so that he could really wing it.

I love the idea of what might be happening out of frame.

Give him the throw.

That's good stuff.

What about you, Ben?

I think I'll give it to Trip.

The thing that made me just go like, Trip, what are you doing in this episode was when he tries Zokan's drink and spits it out and then throws it on the ground.

Like, it's very clear that that's like what this guy needs to survive.

And he is like desperate to stop it pouring out of his jug when he goes and picks it up.

And I was like, okay, like, we've all...

you know, like accidentally taken a sip of some milk that's turned.

You don't also fucking wing the jug of milk across the room.

That was really fun.

Like that is not actually a reflex that anyone has.

Yeah, a lot of physical acting happening here.

Yeah.

So yeah, good stuff.

Faith of the fart.

Adam, why don't you head over to goch.biz slash game

while I tell you about season two, episode 14 of Star Trek Enterprise that we will be covering next week.

It's called Stigma.

Enterprise visits a planet where an interspecies medical exchange conference is being held.

Dr.

Flox tries to obtain research on a terminal disease from the Vulcan contingency without revealing that Tepaul has been infected by it.

Oh,

oh no.

Well,

RSVP TePaul.

Wow.

Gonna be a very special episode of Star Trek Enterprise, but will it be a special episode of The Greatest Generation?

For that, we will find out by consulting the game of buttholes,

The Will of the Riker Quantum Leap, where presently our runabout is on square 63, and a roll of the 100-sided die could send us anywhere.

You're required to learn as you play.

Roll, roll that bone, Adam.

Ben, I have rolled, and what has happened is we have ended up back at the very beginning of the game.

Square one.

Tula!

Did I win?

Hardly.

How?

Back to square one.

Square one is where we are.

I can't remember this ever happening in any version of the game.

Square one is where we are.

A regular old episode is what it will be.

Okay, I like it.

The death of Tepal.

There you have it.

Well,

I can't wait.

The faster we wrap this show up, the sooner we can be there in that one.

Let's thank all the friends at Soto who support this show on a monthly basis at maximumfun.org slash join.

Let's thank our intrepid producer, Wendy Pritty, who edits all of this crap and makes it fun and interesting to listen to, cutting the hours and hours of rambling out to make it really sound pithy and entertaining.

Yeah, we should really put all the extra stuff, the stuff that hit the cutting room floor.

We could do three more podcasts out of that.

Easy.

Easy.

We've got to thank our temporal Cold Wartime consigliary, Bill Tilley, Card Daddy, and Rob Adler, who team up to run the Greatest Trek social media accounts.

Sign up for our mailing list, gosh.biz slash mail to get on the mailing list.

We keep doing a mailing list every month, and they're a lot of fun.

This music by Dark Materia.

Thanks, Dark Materia.

The theme in interstitial music?

Adam Ragusia.

Thanks, Adam Ragusia.

He's also the third co-host of a show called Wholesome.

That's a Patreon show that we do together.

It comes out every Wednesday.

You should check it out.

It's good.

With that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise

and an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise that sort of wonders where this show is going to go from here if it's not just setting up different scenarios to cook Trip Tucker.

I like this sub-genre of Star Trek.

What's cooking Trip Tucker?

It's like the slick back trilogy with nipples.

Oh boy.

Make it so.

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