Spa Day Waterboard (ENT S2E9)

Here's to the finest crew in starving.

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

This is a parody.

Paramount owns the sun.

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 Pranica.

I'm Ben Harrison.

I got chocolate mouth.

The mouth that you get after eating chocolate.

Does that mean like little chocolatey tidbits between your teeth and you look like you've been eating something else?

It just feels like it's coated everything, you know?

Oh, because of the cocoa butter.

I'm hoping you don't hear it in

my...

dulcet podcast tones.

What is your favorite candy if not chocolate?

What's the craziest answer to that question?

Like

salt water taffy.

Like one of those apples dipped in caramel that you get at the fair?

That's my favorite candy.

Would that count as a candy?

It has to be a candy.

It's nature's candy wrapped in not nature's candy.

I guess so.

I actually do have an answer.

Okay, let's see.

I just thought of it.

Okay.

It's the take-five candy.

That's got chocolate, Adam.

I know.

That was the house candy during Halloween.

We're still working our way through the bag that we got and then didn't give to anyone on Halloween night because no one came.

And that's great because it's got the pretzel in it.

The pretzel is really great about that.

Maybe I should just cut out all the rest of the shit and get chocolate-covered pretzels if that's what I like.

Is the Take Five candy bar

a Rhesus imprint?

And did it used to be a Hershey?

Because I feel like when that came out, I was like wandering around in Greenwich Village and there was like a street team handing out like, this is the hot new candy bar from Hershey's.

And they gave me a free one.

And I was like, holy shit, they've done it.

And I really liked that candy bar and I've liked it ever since.

But I feel like it has

like it's under new ownership or something.

This is such a great moment

because

this is so emblematic of of like the trivial knowledge that that one of us will have about something that doesn't matter at all

for some reason ben here's how spot on you are okay reese's take five is a candy bar that was released by the hershey company in december 2004 yes the original name of the candy bar was take five but common usage among consumers added a space so in June of 2019, when the candy bar became part of Reese's, the name was officially changed to Reese's Take 5.

Okay.

Like Take Space 5.

Which is also a message too.

Like,

hey, take some space.

Motivational is what this candy is.

Yeah, it's like they took the whole marketing idea behind Snickers

bar advertising and made their candy bar have that name.

I know.

Yeah.

What's yours?

How does a candy bar change which company it belongs to like that?

That there's such a thing as candy bar custody, and it was so

easy.

Yeah.

Like, they just gave it on over to them?

There must have been, I mean, they must have gotten paid or something, right?

It's just described as the candy bar becoming part of the Reese's family.

See, that sounds...

Sounds like something was going on there.

It really does, yeah.

You don't just become a part of the family.

This really feels a lot to me like that thing where

overseas, Duracell has a pink bunny, but here in the United States, Energizer has a pink bunny.

It is like,

how the fuck,

how on planet Earth did pink bunny become the brand of the other battery company outside the United States?

On January 31st, 2020, the Hershey Company made a gigantic Take-Five chocolate bar that weighed 5,943 pounds.

This bar holds the Guinness World Record for longest chocolate nut bar.

With the size measurements being 9 by 5.5 by 2 feet.

That is monolithic.

Ben, you couldn't even measure the edges on this thing.

It was mathematically perfect.

Oh, man.

It feels like something wonderful is going to happen.

Hershey's, how could you get rid of a candy like this?

In 2020?

This is what Hershey's was up to?

Yeah.

Wild.

To answer your question, I feel torn because I really do

like that take five.

I've also had a little renaissance lately with

nerd clusters, you know, the like gummy candy with that's encrusted with nerds.

Really like those.

But I think for like mass-produced candy product,

I think my top one is the dark chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's.

Just a very specific angle you've taken there.

We were recently backstage at one of the great LA venues, the Dynasty Typewriter, which is a backstage area outfitted with free candy.

Just a delight.

For so many reasons, not just the candy.

I availed myself of their Sour Patch Kids, a candy I hadn't had in many years.

And I decided to try before our show

for the first time in a long time.

I think that's my favorite candy candy that's

not chocolate or peanut butter.

You want to know how much I like that candy, Adam?

You left half that bag of Sour Patch Kids in the green room.

I grabbed it, put it in my backpack, took it home, ate them later.

Wow.

That's where they went.

Yeah.

How dare you?

You said you didn't didn't want them.

Incredible.

So, yeah, I don't know.

I think there's a constellation of candies.

There was a guy in college who told us that there is a distinction between caramels and tutti fruities.

And caramels is the entire category of candies that includes chocolate, nut bars, and caramel.

And then toottie fruities is everything that is at all fruit flavored and never the twain shall meet.

Do you have a preference between caramels and tuttie-frutties?

Is neither

an option?

I'm not eating caramels, probably from my time wearing braces.

Like, I just stopped eating caramels at that point and never got back on the caramel train.

Wow.

You're just like third option, tequila.

That is like the thing that a friend's wife has embroidered on a sweatshirt that, like, my favorite candy is wine

you know

oh wow you chose to wear that to brunch huh you see like a vinyl stencil on an entryway or like a kitchen like yeah yeah that's the vibe here the the shit on walls aesthetic yeah

you know i uh i've been working on a bunch of new merch this week and one of the items that i have templates for are three sizes of pillow

and you and i not that long ago had some really great portraits taken, portraits that we could use for marketing and so forth.

And I was thinking, like,

the Adam and Ben pillow collection.

How do you think that would do in the store?

I am dying to find out.

Please make that happen.

All right, let's find out.

By the time this episode drops, I would expect to see Adam and Ben pillows at podshop.biz.

Podshop.biz?

Well, Adam,

a lot of people flopping out, much like a pillow being tossed on a couch in today's episode of Star Trek Enterprise.

Do you want to get into it?

Sure do, Ben.

It is Enterprise Season 2, Episode 9, and it's called

Singularity.

That's how Picard would say it, right?

Roll Allen's favorite episode of Enterprise's Singularity.

So we get a little brief shot of the entrepreneur headed toward a very swirly

space system.

Nice effect.

Objects swirling around each other.

And we cut to the interior, and it kind of looks like the aftermath of an especially sick frat party.

Everybody is passed out on the floor, pyramids of half-drinking beer cans piled up everywhere.

And we get to Tepal's log.

She is telling us that we are in dire straits.

The entrepreneur is nine days from rescue, and she is desperately trying to figure out what happened to the crew and how she can save all of their lives.

So the upside is TePaul is finally free from the crew's bullshit.

And the downside, unfortunately, is that the ship may be destroyed with all hands due to its proximity to a black hole.

So that's how this episode's going to go.

Yeah, we're going through a trinary star system, and we will see if the ship can survive this.

This medical emergency has affected the entire crew except for Tepal,

and it's in the recording of this log that we're getting the bullet points of what's happened here.

I love that she describes the chances as being pretty slim that the ship doesn't just get wrecked by the black hole.

But she's recording the log anyway, just in case like that small bit of flight data recorder manages to make it through the crash.

If the flight data recorder can survive the gravitational shear of the black hole, why didn't they build the whole ship out of it?

I know.

I also really like that she referred to the crew as stricken.

It's kind of how I feel, generally.

We don't use that word enough.

Yeah.

You know, like if you call in to work and say, like, you're not supposed to be specific when you call into to work.

I hope FODs out there know that.

You don't have to say you've got the flu or the cold or a headache or some shit.

Don't be specific.

Just call in and say you're stricken.

But if you say you're stricken,

imagine how that feels to hear.

Oh my God.

Is it serious?

Oh, I don't know.

I hope not.

It kind of feels like a term that you could use pretty effectively in

your status in a chat app.

Like, you know, like you can have it be available or unavailable, but like you can also customize it.

Complicatedly stricken, and then the face is just

partially green, partially yellow.

What's weird is like the yellow part is barfing, but the green side has a smiley face on it.

Yeah.

What?

So stricken.

Yeah.

So we flashback, Ben.

It's a flashback to a McLaughlin group.

If you want.

And this is the McLaughlin group where TePaul is actually the one pitching the idea of going and checking out this trinary star system.

And

Archer and Tripp like the idea.

Like, oh, like, yeah, that seems pretty cool.

You know, go take some pictures.

Like, we don't want to get so close that it's dangerous, but

could see this being interesting.

And that's really the important point, right?

It's like, yeah, we can totally do this.

We can take pictures of it, and it's not even that dangerous.

Yeah, like five million kilometers or something, she says, is the safe distance?

Sure.

I'm pretty sure you and I live five million kilometers apart.

I have no idea what that distance is, but it sounds safe.

It sounds pretty safe, yeah.

As safe as I feel being that far from you.

Right.

Close enough to get some nice pictures.

So when TePaul leaves the conversation, Archer requests something of Trip Tucker in kind of a hushed tone.

He's like, you know, my captain's chair, I find it very uncomfortable.

Is there anything as the ship's engineer you could do about this?

And Tripp's like, well, yeah, I mean, I've got stuff to do with the engines.

Are you suggesting that, like, I put this at the top of the list?

Archer says yes.

Chair first, if you don't mind.

Reprioritize.

All right, sir.

This is going to be what you do instead of working on engines.

This is it.

And so that's his priority.

And Archer's priority is heading over to the clarinet closet where TePaul pays him a visit and alerts him to

a pretty upsetting fact, Adam.

The ship's chef, that legend, has fallen ill and needs some time away from the kitchen.

And Hoshi Sato is going to be taking over in the galley.

How differently do you think this scene would have played out if TePaul reported to Archer that the ship's chef was stricken.

Like if she just kept working that word in throughout the episode?

Give me a Day Da's Day style episode for DePaul where that's the kind of fun she likes to have.

That is the only thing she does the entire episode to like give herself a little bit of joy.

There's an old Letterman bit that I love to watch called Quit Calling Me chief where he'll send the camera down to the hello deli

and they'll just grab some some patron of the deli and Letterman sits at the desk talking to this person and keeps calling the person chief and the entire point of the game is to see if this person will say hey quit calling me chief

that's one of the best types of Letterman bits right there.

Yeah.

Just awesome.

You get through it.

This person winds up stricken, but they never say, quit calling me chief.

So

Starfleet is full of the type of personality that goes like, Hoshi has a job, a real job, with hours and everything, except when the chef is stricken with something, she is field-demoted into being substitute chef for...

the sole reason that she at one time expressed an interest in cooking.

Is Cruman Cunningham not capable of stepping up into this role?

Because we meet the guy that

seems to be like the sous chef or something.

How would you like to be Crewman Cunningham?

Fucking slap in the face that the translator is coming down from the bridge.

And then with the way Hoshi shits in his mouth the entire time, like, oh, give me a break.

I'd blow myself out of the airlock.

I'd be 100% stricken if I was Cunningham.

So, subject change.

Archer has been given a pre-publication issue of the biography of his father.

Oh, speaking of galleys, he's been given a galley of the biography of his father.

Amazing.

Do we want to go back and get that more smooth or just leave it the greatest genway?

I'm going to guess that Wendy's going to make that sound perfect.

How about new?

Like the mess-up never happened.

So he's got to write a preface for this thing.

One page.

How do you know it was named Galley?

That's what a pre-publication book is called.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

That's neat.

Like when it's like not, you know, like, when it's not all gussied up like the print edition, it's just like in a, you know, cardboard cover or whatever.

I've never gotten one of those.

You're on a list to get these?

Yeah, you know.

I've flown in circles with journalists long enough that,

you know, review copies of things have been in my presence before.

If you were given one page only

to write about your father in his biography, could you do it?

This is the challenge that Archer is facing here.

Yes, but he's like, how can I sum up his life in one page?

And that's not the job, Archer.

That's what the book is doing, Archer, you fucking idiot.

He wants to write a biography before the biography?

Just tell an interesting anecdote about what it was like to have that guy as your dad, you know?

Yeah.

TePaul knows this.

TePaul's like, yeah,

tell a story that only you would know that's sort of emblematic of the way he is.

Do you think you could do that?

But not like a story that only you would know that you would then use to verify it was him if some like alien presence reanimated his corpse because like, you know, you got to have a couple of those if you're in Star Trek.

Just write one story emblematic of his life and let history make its own judgments.

Like how they do in the Zephyr Cochrane book.

It's rhetorical nonsense.

Down in the cookery, not to use the term galley again.

Hoshi would like to make some Japanese soup from scratch.

She's showing the recipe to Cunningham, and he's like, oh man, we're going to have to find somebody that can translate this and load it into

the replicator.

And she's like, no way, man.

We're doing this old school the way we've done it in my family for generations.

For once, a meal on this ship isn't going to be made of people's shit.

It's pretty good for shit.

In Six Bay, Anton Mayweather comes in complaining of a little bit of a headache,

and all he wants is some Tylenol.

And Flox really really kind of goes into

a mania.

Like he wants to like hold Mayweather for a couple of days.

Like one of the great fears you have going to a medical professional, right?

Like the, it hurts when I do this.

And they're like, we need to run a battery of tests.

This could be incredibly serious.

I love the callback to the time where Mayweather was strung up and attached to a brain-sucking tube

a couple episodes ago.

Like, yeah, I would expect there to be some

long-term effects from that experience.

Like a headache, maybe.

That has given so much more airspace than Jordy having been like systematically tortured by the Romulans that one episode.

It is sort of a uniquely person on Star Trek thing to be like, I think I have a headache.

And the ship's doctor to be like, well, you're on Star Trek, which could mean

throws a fucking phone book of possible diagnoses that it could be

at Mayweather.

Like, yeah, that makes being ship's doctor really hard, I bet.

Up on the bridge, Trip Tucker is using like a dental drill to mess with the captain's chair.

Commander.

She's pissing TePaul off.

She is trying to scan the Trinary Star system.

Commander.

She's been ordered to get good scans and Trip has been ordered to fix the chair and these two sets of orders are really in conflict with each other.

What is Tripp doing with this particular device?

Because it looks like it's attached to like a compressed air cylinder.

That's what I'm saying.

And he's at the base of the seat where the seat meets the floor.

So, how is the seat attached to the floor?

Is he

grinding out a weld with like a dental drill

or something?

Trip is prone, but is he stricken?

Tipal doesn't like this sound, and it's because it's irritating, and also Vulcans have very sensitive hearing, and so she takes her work back to her quarters because that is a priority that Archer has made for her that actually makes some sense.

I love a bottle episode where we really get to see all over the ship, and this next scene is in the torpedo bay.

Archer comes down to pay Reed a visit and see how just general shit is going.

And Reed has this novel idea, which is that when the ship encounters danger or something bonks into the hull unexpectedly, they should have a thing that they can do to like power up the weapons and polarize the hull plating and get everyone,

you know, on the same page about what kind of shit the ship is dealing with.

And he would like to come up with a protocol for this.

I mean, it seems like there should be a button, right?

You hit a button and a bunch of things happen at once.

Archer's open to this.

Yeah, it just can't be called battle stations because this is not a ship of war.

That's surprising to me, actually.

And I'm not sure what this ship is for.

It's not feebly shooting torpedoes and grapplers at things.

I need something to do with this ship.

Come on.

Fair enough.

Later in the mess hall, Hoshi is circulating the room like a proud chef at a restaurant on opening night.

She's asking how lunch is, and that word blew me away.

She's making lunch?

All this work for lunch?

What is she planning on making for dinner?

This is crazy.

It's wild.

Reed and Tripp are having a hang, and it's like one of those working lunches where they're each kind of working on their own projects.

But Reed is trying to come up with a better name than Battle Stations for this alert that is read.

And Tripp is planning out some great upgrades to the captain's chair.

At no point is there an idea about a place for soup even though in the context of this scene soup is everywhere in the scene.

Yeah.

Trip Tucker's talking about improvements to make to the captain's chair, cup holder being one of them, soup holder not being one of them.

The need is all around you, Trip Tucker.

Just take a look around.

Later captain's chairs would have lots of soup capacity.

Yeah.

They hadn't even come up with the technology for that at this point in history.

Uh-oh.

Reed has not finished his meal and says that he isn't hungry in the way that you tell a person instead of saying you just didn't like the food that they gave you.

Hoshi's fucking pissed about this.

And

yeah, Reed is just like, I mean, he's indifferent to it.

It did not contain pineapple.

He doesn't care.

Reed doesn't even have that gear in him to like politely eat the food and keep your fucking mouth shut.

Like, he just can't even do that basic thing.

He's got to make it a problem for Hoshi.

And you would expect Hoshi to spiral out here, wouldn't you?

She seems pretty hurt by the fact that he, you know, he said it was too salty.

It's not.

It is not.

Speaking of pretty hurt, over in Six Bay, Mayweather's condition seems pretty serious, right?

Or not?

Maybe?

Yeah.

It's all a little confusing.

And maybe it's just Dr.

Flox that is taking this way too seriously because he wants a full biomolecular scan to be done to Mayweather.

And Mayweather is like feeling like he's being held hostage at this point, right?

Like he can't, he's like, I got to be at work.

I need to take a shower.

I haven't slept.

It's past lunchtime.

What time of day is it?

I'm not sure.

Anyways, I got to go.

And Fox is like, no fucking way, you are not medically fit to return to your post, in my estimation as a physician.

The curvature on this episode has not gone dark yet.

I think that's important to note.

Like, this mystery is extruded for a large portion of the ep.

Well, over half of the episode is spent in the mystery of whatever this thing is.

Without anybody saying specifically that a mystery is afoot.

Like, we're just seeing scene after scene of people being frustrated with each other

and frustrated with their work.

And the next scene is no different.

Archer is being a dick to his dog because he's having a hard time writing this intro to the book.

Computer pause.

I'll feed you in a minute.

Don't be mean to Porthos, man.

What the hell?

You're dictating.

Like you could feed Porthos while dictating.

You can do a lot of things while dictating.

But he finally just deletes what he has, quote-unquote written.

Yeah.

And it seems like he's going to have to start all over from the beginning.

I like that

old-time business executive thing of sending a letter that's appended with the phrase dictated but not read.

Yeah, I like that a lot.

How about the intro to the biography of your father ending with dictated but not read?

I love what that conveys.

I mean, for your father.

What's TePaul up to?

Well, she's in her quarters continuing her studies away from the irritations of the crew.

And Trip Tucker enters, ready to irritate.

He's there to deliver a sensor interface that she's requested.

Like, it's as if she's done the whole, my internet is out.

Can you come and fix it?

And the person in the van comes in and then, like, sets down a toolcase and leaves.

Like, that's sort of what Trip is doing here.

She's like, hey, like, thanks for the sensor and everything, but could you fucking install it so that I could use it?

I don't know what to do with this weird orange device that has a screen, but you hold it with like a pistol grip and there's Ethernet ports in it.

Like, what the fuck is this?

This trinary system that they're approaching is emitting some strange radiation.

And speaking of strange, Trip Tucker is acting just a little bit more unhelpful than he usually does in this moment.

So fucking fixated on getting the captain's chair designed and executed that he doesn't have time for Tepal and her bullshit.

This is just another instance of Captain's chair seeming to take priority over everything.

And

so with his complete fixation on Archer's ass and supporting that ass,

he kind of blows up at Tapal and she's like, hey, man, you good?

You feeling okay?

How are you feeling about the captain's chair project?

Might as well be what she says.

It is much the way that

Flox is fixated on what's going on between Mayweather's ears because

he's like, okay, like we need...

We need to start doing more serious investigations because the full body scan and everything hasn't turned up what I had hoped to turn up.

And Mayweather really sticks up for himself in this moment.

He's like, hey, man, I got to get back to work.

You have a strong character need of cracking open my melon this episode, but I have a strong character need too.

And Flox is like, all right, man, well, I'll give you the Tylenol that you came in here asking for, but you got to come back eventually.

And he hypo sprays Mayweather.

And this ain't Tylenol.

Cheers to Mayweather for sticking up.

for himself after eight hours in six bay

enduring whatever this is from Dr.

Flags.

Everyone has a breaking point, Adam.

Mine would take much longer to trigger, but you know, Mayweather, kind of a hair trigger.

Yours would trigger when they closed the lid on your casket.

Excuse me.

I would like to register a complaint.

Faith of the fart.

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Friends of DeSoto, we survived Star Trek Las Vegas 2025.

All seven days of it.

And boy, oh boy, do we have thoughts?

So many thoughts that we just had to record a very special bonus episode about our experiences with me and Ben, but also producer Wendy and our social media concigliary Bill.

You'll get an honest review of things, all the gossip, the stuff that worked, the stuff that didn't, and some big takeaways as we planned for next year.

So if you want to know what STLV was really like, the bonus feed is how you find it.

By the way, this bonus episode, like all of our monthly bonus episodes, are available to everyone who supports the shows at maximumfund.org slash join.

It's easy to do, so go to maximumfund.org slash join to get our special episode about STLV 2025 and all the great episodes that we put out every month.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

And you will never take the greatest gym alive.

Ben would rather die.

Rather die.

This is the pivot point of the episode.

This is when things got really dark for me.

Because it's not just the knockout, but I think those straps do a lot of work.

When the doctor straps Mayweather to the table.

Yeah, and those straps are going like over his arms too.

Like they're like he's strapping him down so that he can't escape.

In engineering, Tripp is working on the captain's chair in there.

And the thing about this scene is that there is a companion scene on the bridge that shows it without the chair.

You never see the bridge without the chair.

Yeah.

Why don't we see that?

I wonder if it's just like built into the set too much that they couldn't unbuild it.

I bet.

I bet that's it.

Reed is the like first draft of the alert sound for when they beat decorators or whatever.

And he's got a couple of different alts.

Oh, this one.

Trip doesn't really care for any of it because Trip is so focused on this fucking chair and building a cup holder into it and stuff.

We cut up to the galley where Hoshi is trying to get this soup dialed in.

And now Crewman Cunningham is like, hey,

people are freaking out out there.

Like everybody is starving.

You got to start serving soup.

Are you going to say hands soon?

Hands, Hoshi?

Like the the one big takeaway I had from the from the bear is like that's what you say when you're done with the dish.

You were talentless, say fucking hands.

Hands?

No hands.

No hands.

And yeah, I mean, it's just everybody's letting their perfectionism, you know, get in the way of anything else.

She fires Cunningham.

I believe I'm in charge of the galley.

I understand.

Man.

Get out!

He's out of here.

We cut to the armory where Tepaul walks in and Reed like challenges her for her clearance code to enter the armory.

She's like, I'm the fucking first officer of the ship.

What are you talking about?

He's like, I sent you the code in an email.

She says, I forgot how the code goes.

This moment is so reed because,

like so many moments with him, he's not wrong in his explanation for the way he is, but he is very wrong about being the way he is.

Like, yeah, it makes sense in a universe full of shapeshifters that you'd want to do some sort of like

security access for the most sensitive parts of the ship, but you don't have to be such a dick about it is a takeaway for me.

And also, Reed, why are you wearing that piece on your hip?

That's weird.

He's strapped and he's like really suspicious of her that she wants to have access to the ship's sensors wired into her quarters.

He's like, what's that for?

That seems shady.

He's one of these fucking return-to-work assholes that thinks that the work can only get done if it's at the office or the bridge.

I love the idea of Tepal being work from home, though.

She's just in sweats, like lounging around her unit.

Wouldn't it be so much better for her if she could just stay away from these fucking assholes?

Get her job done in her quarters.

They got the Conway air filter cranked up to 11.

Yeah.

So the smell isn't too overwhelming.

I prefer to work here.

We cut back to the present briefly where Tepal is still first officers logging about this situation.

And

we come back to the past where Archer is getting scanned for a bespoke chair.

At this point, Tripp is like...

We're throwing out the old chair.

We're not redesigning that.

We're designing a new one from the ground up based on the

microcellular scan of the captain's body.

And he's got like a 3D scanner for the captain.

This is an interesting concept, right?

Because if the chair is just made for the captain, that would make it very uncomfortable for anyone else to sit in it.

Yeah.

As kind of a reminder to everyone who's ever given the con that, like, yeah, don't get comfortable.

This is not really for you.

Yeah.

There's some like design anecdote about like the Air Force for one of their jets saying, okay, we're not going to like,

it's too heavy to have adjustments on the seats.

Like we're cutting weight on the seat in this jet.

So we're just going to like measure all of the pilots that we have and like do the average

of everything and build the seat around the average pilot.

And it like, it sucked for everyone.

Like the chair was not comfortable for any pilot to sit in.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

This is kind of the opposite of that.

Have you ever been fitted for like an orthotic or anything in your feet?

Yeah,

I've gotten like the commodity orthotics, though.

My dad has those special ones that they like make custom out of like resin or whatever.

I got one of those a long time ago, and like its comfort was uncomfortable.

You know, like there's an uncanny

perfection to it in a way that I kind of rejected.

In a way, that I wonder, like, if you had your editing chair made just for you,

I think it would be weirdly wrong in that way.

Yeah.

Archer doesn't give a shit about this because he's so focused on this intro that he's writing.

He's expanded it to 19 pages.

Probably tells his father's entire goddamn life story.

Are you writing the preface or the book?

I've got a lot to say.

No kidding.

Yeah,

I think that's all you'd need to read.

You wouldn't even need to read the rest of it after that.

It's It's kind of like having a captain's chair, but only sitting on the edge of it, you know?

Hmm.

Yeah.

Tripp thought it was only supposed to be a page, just like everyone else.

And in pointing this out, in the way that he does, it starts to harden some ice between them

in a way that seems unproductive.

Indeed.

Speaking of unproductive, what's going on in the kitchen?

It's getting spicy in there.

Hoshi is really trying to nail this recipe, and she is totally obsessed with it to the exclusion of the job of being a chef in getting the food out for people to eat.

Like, people are hungry.

Yeah.

What are they going to eat?

TePaul's in there just very lightly, just going, like, hey, a bowl of broth would be great.

Like, if I could just ladle some broth in here, that'd be cool.

No.

Archer's hungry too.

He gets told to make a sandwich for himself.

Everyone seems hangry.

Hoshi especially.

There are 25 carrots.

This is when a tactical alert goes off, unannounced, and everybody freaks out and runs up to the bridge.

And they're like, what's going on?

What's like, who's attacking us?

And Reed's like, aha.

It took you a minute and 17 seconds.

It should only take you 17 seconds to get from somewhere on the ship to the bridge.

And you you added an entire 60 to that.

And it turns out this was just a test, a readiness drill.

It's obnoxious, but it's also an example of Reed sort of assuming a form of command that feels wrong and bad and aggressive at Archer, especially when Reed's like, yeah, speaking of late.

The captain of the ship, not making it to

what may or may not be a chair just out of frame.

Like, I don't know what's going on with that.

But yeah,

you're late also.

Yeah.

And this kicks off, like between the chair issue and the lateness issue and Reed and Trip and Archer all being involved, the shoving starts and then threats about taking folks out and shooting them are thrown around between all three.

I really liked that Tripp was treating like, I've got a new schematic for this chair I'm designing as just as big an emergency as Reed is treating the tactical or alert drill didn't go well.

That part was very fun.

So, fortunately, it doesn't come entirely to blows.

Like, it stops at shoving.

Is a shove not a blow?

I feel like it's less of a blow than a punch, you know.

I think they're all blowing each other, man.

Yeah, there's plenty of blowing to go around.

The captain slinks off to his quarters and over his objections, TePaul enters and she's like, this is crazy.

Like everybody is acting nuts.

I think that we do in fact have an emergency on board the ship and it's affecting you.

It's affecting the doctor.

Like this is a crisis.

You guys are all acting totally fucking nuts.

She finds Flocks about to skish him Mayweather.

These two scenes back to back made me wonder just what kind of authority TePaul had and why we don't know what that authority is.

Because it seems as though she could be like, Relieve you, relieve you, relieve you, like just going station to station, compartment to compartment, because like

she does neck pinch Dr.

Flox out of self-defense, even.

Like the way he's holding that scalpel seems pretty threatening, not just to Mayweather, but to her.

But also, like, with the way Archer's acting,

it seems like he is a ripe candidate for relieving.

Really does.

And she doesn't do it.

Okay, I have a question for you, Adam.

Okay.

She neck pinches flocks, and we've already seen the after effects of this situation in the, you know, like in the scenes where she's logging from the future that everybody is eventually passed out on the ship.

And in...

the way you were just suggesting that you go around and say, I relieve you to everyone,

did TePaul go around and neck pinch every single person on the crew?

I love that read.

See, I love that read.

I don't love Malcolm Reed.

This is a great read.

Yeah.

The fucking the arrangement of the crew members is hilarious to me.

Like the guy slumped in the corridor, like using the curvature of the hull as a pillow or whatever.

So comfortable comfortable looking.

Yeah.

Way to put yourself down like that.

That's a great day as an extra, right?

You're just going to like lie there today.

It's got to be a lot like eating on camera where you better choose the right bite that you don't mind repeating for half of the day, just like the configuration of your body up against a bulkhead better be comfortable enough to hold for hours because that's where you're going to be.

Okay, so in the theory where

Tupal went around and neck pinched every single person on board, she did make some pretty key errors because the next scene is in the galley and the soup is just on a rolling boil.

I feel like if

you're neck pinching everybody, maybe turn the burners off in the kitchen on your way through there.

You can't just neck pinch people

and leave the burner on high.

A Vulcan neck pinch is a use case for the telepathic abilities that seem to occupy Vulcan fingers, wherein they can overload someone's nervous system by pinching their neck.

We got our friends at Quality Ranges coming in to install our eight-burner situation here, and the great thing about this range is that it's off or all the way on.

Those are the two settings.

Vulcan neck pinch can be used to turn off a person, but not a stove.

It has not yet been tested on a revenge and POS system.

Tapal has figured out, finally, probably

last,

even after the viewer, that the trinary star radiation is the thing affecting the crew, and reversing course isn't going to solve the problem.

It's too slow to go back.

The only way out is through.

They got to pick a different course through this thing to make it out to the other side in the fastest way possible.

But she can't pilot the ship alone.

She's going to need Captain Archer's help.

And so she over-the-shoulder captain holders him to the shower so that he can wake the fuck up under the spigots and get with the program.

It's the old Spade waterboard

going on in there as the jets are shooting at him from the top and the sides.

And all the while Tepal is trying to get him to recognize what's going on.

I think it's amazing that this show chose to get the captain's shirt soaking wet in this episode and not TePaul or Hoshi's shirt soaking wet.

I wonder if this isn't the hero uniform for this.

Yeah.

Like, I bet they stuck him in something dumpier.

You have to.

Yeah, you got to.

Can Archer pilot the Enterprise in the state, Ben, while Tepal calls out the course corrections and so forth?

We're going to find out.

She's got a course plotted that will have us clear in 17 minutes, and she needs a pilot for the fine-tuning adjustments as they go through.

No autopilot on Enterprise.

Yeah.

Isn't that amazing?

I mean, it's the first edition of the ship.

Guess so.

So we cut to the transit in progress, and they're getting bangers from all over the place, and Archer is absolutely lennying out at the controls while TePaul calls out the orders.

And I bet she wishes she had like

a pole or a reacher grabber or something so that she could do the steering and the sciencing.

Yeah, or like a spray bottle with some water, like you use to correct a cat that's clawing up the furniture.

Like, yeah, just re-wet him periodically.

I mean, unlike a cat, Archer is a fucking baby at the controls.

And the way TePaul coddles him into

doing anything is what's happening here.

So predictably, they're flying through like an asteroid field, and the little ones aren't that big of a problem, but there's going to be a big rock eventually.

Yeah.

And Archer's like, we got to shoot that rock.

And TePaul's like, there's no way we can get the phase cannons online fast enough.

But...

Reed's little security protocol has taken care of that for them.

And they find that the phase cannons will work.

And they punch a hole through the rocks and eventually make it out the other side.

And they're in the clear.

Just like that, everyone starts to wake up all over the ship.

I like the efficiency of this moment because the moment they clear the field, the question remains, did it work?

And Trip waking up tells us that it did.

Automatically.

He, uh, yeah, he wants to know if we got any good pictures.

It's a very Timmy from Jurassic Park wake up by Trip.

Great description.

Yeah.

Mayweather is okay.

He didn't get his egg scrambled by Dr.

Flox.

What'd you do?

Very little, fortunately.

Dr.

Flox is really like snapped back and is helping people from all over the ship recover from their ordeal.

You better be fucking sure that Dr.

Flox is okay, given given the amount of patients that are streaming through those doors.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would trust him immediately after.

A lot of lobotomy candidates in the room at this point.

It sort of seems like Reed is going to get called on the carpet by Captain Archer, but it's actually a pat on the back.

A, hey, your little Reed alert really did the right thing.

You know, like we probably wouldn't have made it out of this one if the phase cannons hadn't been online when they were.

Everything's great except for the sound.

Got to do something about the sound, says Archer.

Sound is bad.

And I guess presumably they still haven't named it yet.

No.

But we go out onto the bridge, and Archer is encouraged to try out his new chair.

It feels great, but it looks the same, and nobody can figure out why until Tripp explains that he just lowered it a little bit.

Yeah.

Five million centimeters is

how much it was lowered.

A distance that I can't possibly understand.

Neither does anyone else.

That's all it took?

That's all it took.

It seems like every office chair has the handle.

You pull the handle, the air thing goes shh.

You drop the chair.

You can drop it a couple of inches or whatever.

Why isn't the captain's chair...

Why doesn't it have those little paddles at the bottom so you can

straighten it out for yourself?

It seems like it should, but they were trying to cut weight, so no adjustments available on the captain's chair.

Crazy.

He's pretty happy with this, and he goes over to TePaul with his iPad and announces that he's about to start reading the intro that he wrote for his father's biography.

And she just neck pinches him, and he plants face first into the control panel and falls on the floor.

The ship is set for for auto-destruct, given the buttons that were hit by his face.

We cut to the exterior, it explodes,

and then the credits.

Did you like Star Trek Enterprise, the series?

More and more, I

am on the side of TePaul being the O'Brien of the show, and by that I mean just her constant torture

by her situation week in and week out.

TePaul's patience, extreme.

Tepal should be doling out neck pinches every week, and more and more of them.

Yeah.

I'm surprised it took her so long this episode.

And this season, really.

And this series, really.

How many, what's the count on TePaul neck pinches?

Is it like three?

Yeah, weren't we like wondering whether she even knew about that because the mind meld was kind of a new one on her?

We've seen her duck-duck roll way more often than neck pinch.

Well, if I don't remember what the crew compliment of the NX01 is, but it seems like she got a lot of neck pinching in this episode.

One interesting...

effect that this story had for me on its characters was like it's made to make you feel like oh everyone's getting so aggro and angry at each other and and difficult to be with and oh this is terrible except for reed my feelings for reed go unchanged in this episode like yeah

still impossible to deal with

still the worst I like him my guy So yeah, that's where I'm at with that.

I just thought that was funny.

Like, everyone else seems to be changed for the negative except for him.

TePal Saves the Day once again.

That's got to be a type of episode now that we could call this.

This is definitely that.

What about you, Ben?

Yeah, I thought this one was really fun.

Whole crew being stricken is also a type of episode in Star Trek, and nice to see that they are not out of ideas for what that could be and what the solution could be.

This one was written by a friend of the show, Chris Black.

How about that?

Yeah.

Chris Black knows what we like in Star Trek.

A bunch of crew people laying down.

Just a classic sort of Star Trek episode.

Indeed.

Do you want to see if there's any classic sort of Priority One messages in our inbox, Adam?

Oh yeah, I'm going to check those out.

Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel.

Need a supplemental income.

Supplemental income?

Supplemental.

Supplemental Yeah, it's extra.

By the interest alone, could be enough to buy this ship.

Alright, Ben, here's a promotional message.

It's from Todd in Chicago.

And their message goes like this.

These 200 scarves are to promote a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast.

What the fuck?

That's ours.

That's our tagline.

Yeah, you can't take that.

That's worth way more than $200.

Living in what is now fully the mirror universe, we need beautiful humans like Adam and Ben now more than

more than ever.

Oh boy.

I haven't always had the scarves to support.

Besides seeing your first show in Chicago, I have the scarves now, but I might not again down the road.

So here they are.

Shout out.

to she who is my wife for laughing along when she catches some gg pod on our road trip so really nice message of support from Todd.

Almost too kind,

hence my difficulty doing the read there.

Really, really cool of Todd to support the show and say nice things about it.

Here's a question that Todd asks in the call to action.

Ready for this?

Why wasn't Beta Riker called biker?

Hmm.

Could have been.

This is Thomas Riker we're talking about.

Biker.

Yeah, I think that's who we're talking about, yeah.

I mean, I like it.

It's probably because Riker is such a fucking great name.

Hell yeah.

Like, you can't change the Riker part.

Right, right.

No way.

I mean, and if we're using B for beta, like, Bill is a name that Troy called Will Riker in, like, the pilot episode of this show.

Yeah.

Man.

So I think I'm riding for Bill Riker

as at the transporter clown.

How come Troy and Picard couldn't get on the same page with that?

Because he always called him Will.

Yeah, but Bill is her name for him.

He doesn't get to call him that.

That's hers.

He's like

heading off to her quarters and he's like, I got to pay some bills.

Yeah.

Our next priority one message is from Pick

to Bridge.

Goes like this.

In the Duraflame Money episode, there was a Jumbotron from Nick in California to Bridge.

I am also Nick and also in California and also think Bridge rules.

And hope she comes to Blue Sky.

Maggie O'Halloran drop, if you please.

Would you like to hold my hand?

Would you like to kiss me?

Well, good morning, boys.

The spirits have turned her into a cow.

I'm not quite myself today.

What kind of a girl do you think I am?

Bitch, I'm a cowgo.

moon?

I was walking around town with nothing but a bell around my neck.

Everyone was staring at me.

How many nicks

are there?

I mean, there's millions of people in California.

So many people in California that LA County is bigger than like 38 states population-wise.

So I'm guessing there's like at least a handful of Nicks.

Everyone knows and likes Bridge.

Yeah.

Bridge, come to Blue Sky.

It's nice.

Bridge has got a lot of nicks.

His friends.

Got a lot of nicks.

Well, you know, like when your razor blade gets dull, it can happen.

Ben, we got a priority one message here from Chris.

It's to you and me.

Here's the message.

Hi, um,

longtime listener.

We don't see JL Pipes at all during the entire Dominion War.

Why didn't Ben Sisko, with his key role in the war and hard feelings for Picard and Lakutis, intentionally put Enterprise deep in the shit?

Oh,

do you think Sisko and Picard ever made up?

Love the show.

I'll take my answers from the bar.

I love this premise.

I'm sure there's like novel...

There's like Star Trek novels that have gotta be about what the D was up to during the Dominion War, right?

Yeah, but also like, I don't think...

Oh, no, it would have been the E, right?

Because.

Yeah.

It would be E-era.

You'd love to see a sovereign class going up against some of those fucking Cardassian ships, right?

Some ticks?

I mean,

I rarely like to see a sovereign class anywhere.

I just don't think that's a handsome ship in my mind.

I think it comes down to rank, Chris.

I mean, Sisko can call a bunch of shots with that little L-shaped stick, moving the ships ships around the map on the giant table and so forth.

Like, he can do certain deployments, but like you don't have the rank to order flagships around.

I think that...

That falls to Admiral Beltbuckle, I think.

Yeah, I think that exceeds your ability, and I think that's the reason why.

Would he, if he could?

Yeah, probably.

I think the people who have axes to grind against Picard and Lacutis tend to not let that shit go.

That's true.

That's very much the case.

Yeah.

Interesting premise, though.

You never see those guys pushing their little ships around the big board with that L-shaped stick then like do the thing that a croupier does when gambling play is over and like gather them all up and pull them back to the dealer's location.

You never see that.

You know, like push little piles of winnings at the various admirals that actually hit.

here's an idea ben uh-huh i'm gonna pitch you okay

i'm gonna pitch you for a panel at a star trek convention okay hear the pitch yeah let's let's hear it ask ben and adam from the greatest generation questions

because that's what's happened here yeah Chris did it.

He did it.

This is TM Chris.

Good idea, Chris.

Yeah.

Just imagine how much food they sell for an hour-long panel where a bunch of FODs ask questions and then go get hot dogs during the answer part of those questions.

Oh, man.

Are you allergic to money,

convention people?

Do I have to think of everything?

I know people from the con are listening to this and hearing the genius of it.

Take it.

It's yours.

This is your idea now.

Well, we're not allergic to money.

We need it to keep this show going.

And if you'd like to give us some, head to maximumfun.org slash jumbotron and set up a jumbotron today.

Hey, Ben.

What's that, Adam?

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda this episode?

Incredible.

Drunk Shimoda!

I don't actually think that TePaul went around and Vulcan neck pinched everyone.

I know people think I'm an idiot and I'm not, but I like to live in a world in which she went around and Vulcan fucking neck pinched everyone on the ship.

And for that reason, Tepal is my drunk Shimota today.

She went and neck pinched everyone?

What the hell, TePaul?

I want to believe that Enterprise is a world where TePaul did that.

Not only did she do it, no one knows that she did it because they didn't see it coming.

What if the scene at the end in Six Bay, TePaul had been like, I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, Doc, but I have carpal tunnel from some pinching actions that I was doing repetitively earlier.

Yeah, fitter with a fucking bowling glove with

the shield over the top.

Do you think there are Vulcans that like Tuvac mind-melded often enough that he'd probably get a repetitive stress injury from it?

They should make a Vulcan glove that just keeps your hand in the mind-meld position.

You don't strain yourself.

Ben, do you think that there are some shapes your hand makes that auto-melds in such a way that go with me here.

But like Vulcans can't bowl because if they tried to bowl,

a part of their mind would try to meld with the ball.

And it's not like they can meld with the ball.

They can't because it's a bowling ball.

But like part of their energy

mentally is spent trying to shoot.

through their fingers into a bowling ball because that's the shape that their fingers are making.

Imagine the accidental melds that happen the first time it's bowling night

when the lucky strike opens on Vulcan.

Oh, this is a bad business idea.

And he's like, oh, wait, I thought this was my ball, but the holes do feel

a little bit smaller on this one, but they all look the same.

Yeah.

I want to drill down more into this concept, Ben.

I think we got something here.

Great episode for ideas.

Yeah.

Big idea episode.

Adam, did you have a drunk Shimoda?

I think I'm going to make mine Cunningham.

I think of all of the characters on the show, his is the one I understand the least.

Because

if everyone is subject to the irrationality of the radiation coming from the trinary stars,

where's Cunningham's weirdness?

Why don't we see it?

Hoshi is fucking out of her mind screaming at him and everyone else.

Is Cunningham not subject to this?

Or is his reaction very different from everyone else's?

Yeah.

Is his like fixated character need get the 85 people fed?

Maybe it is.

That's fun.

You know,

everyone in the right place.

Cunningham, good for you.

That's what makes you my drunk Shimoda.

I like it.

Faith of the fart.

Well, Adam,

let's learn a little bit about what we'll be reviewing next week as you head to gach.biz slash game.

This is going to be season two, episode 10, Vanishing Point.

Hoshi experiences her first Transporter experience, and strange After Effects lead her to believe she wasn't reassembled correctly.

God, wouldn't you be so paranoid about that?

I know I would be.

Yeah.

Like every little tingle.

One little molecule out of place in your melon, and

everything's different.

I know.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be hard to get over.

Well, let's figure out if we'll have something to get over as dictated by the game of buttholes, the Will of the Riker Quantum Leap.

It's where we learn in what way we're going to experience the next episode, Ben.

Currently, our shuttle pod is on square 67.

That's made this a regular old episode, but what I'm about to roll could change everything for for the next one you're required to learn as you play roll

Ben.

I've bopped us up to square 83.

It's a regular old episode.

It could have with one more on the number, given us an nth degree episode, which would have been extensive research.

Really one of the smash-hit types of episodes that we do.

Narrowly avoided.

So regular up for us, regular up for everyone viewing.

Yeah, I'm sure people are disappointed we didn't hit that.

Yeah.

Well, it's been real fun talking about this episode with you, Adam.

We got some thanks to utter before we get out of here.

Thank you to the friends of DeSoto who support this show on a monthly basis by going to maximumfund.org/slash join.

Oh man, so many benefits to that.

You get monthly bonus episodes, you get discounts to streaming shows that we do.

You get our eternal gratitude.

You get the smug satisfaction of knowing that you supported this jalopy as it clickety clacks its way down the road, managing not to run into a ditch.

You get the exciting challenge of trying to explain what this new debit is to your spouse or partner.

Yeah.

Yeah, they should make the line item at maximum fund something like absolutely not porn

dot LLC.

Yeah, something that would provoke fewer questions.

Yeah, I think so.

That'd be a good idea.

Got to thank Wendy Pretty for producing the show and doing all of the phenomenal editing that she does.

Thank you, Wendy.

Got to thank Bill Tilley, our temporal Cold Wartime consigliary,

who is the person you will find in the DMs if you reach out to one of our social accounts to send something in for a future Code 47, or if you have a question or concern.

We got to to thank Rob Adler our social media director who hosts funny videos about the show and

works on our newsletter among other things really appreciate his effort sign up for that newsletter what a great thing

yeah definitely do that hey it's uh it's easy as like the faces of this thing to be the recipient of all of the like love or whatever for the project.

But if you like what's going on, like in the show or on the social media or whatever, give a shout to Rob and Bill and Wendy when you see something you like.

Indeed.

We got to thank Adam Ragusia for our parody theme music and Dark Materia for the original Picard song.

With that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of your Greatest Generation Enterprise where

more than a couple molecules are out of place for Ben and Adam.

I want to say.

I mean, depending on where they are, no one's going to notice.

Hey, Happy New Year, Ben.

Oh, Happy New Year.

Cheers to you.

Hmm, shit.

Gotta make some resolutions.

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