Reverse Scotty (ENT S2E8)

Speaker 1 Here's to the finest crew in Starring.

Speaker 3 When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.

Speaker 4 This is a parody.

Speaker 4 Paramount wants the song.

Speaker 5 Welcome to the Greatest Generation.

Speaker 8 It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.

Speaker 9 I'm Ben Harrison.

Speaker 10 I'm Adam Pranica.

Speaker 10 You ever think about what future you might be doing on the 30th of December?

Speaker 11 Hmm.

Speaker 13 Man, this is the 30th of December that this episode comes out?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 We're doing a lot of work right now to give people a peek behind the pod.

Speaker 11 We're trying.

Speaker 10 Lordy, we're trying to give

Speaker 10 us and the folks who we work with a little bit of a holiday break. So

Speaker 10 we're recording extra episodes to try to build that runway, and it's a great amount of work for everyone involved. Not just us, but everyone who helps make these shows.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, there's a pipeline and you pack it with the various gristle and

Speaker 18 leavings that we use to make the sausage.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And you try and pack it in faster so that, you know, you can get some extra sausage out the other end.

Speaker 22 It's not always easy.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we're like that I Love Lucy episode where the episodes keep coming on the conveyor belt and where

Speaker 10 we're stuffing jokes in and stuffing jokes in our mouths. And it's just a mess.

Speaker 24 I was listening to another podcast, and they were mentioning that they were like four months ahead on records.

Speaker 26 And I was just like, holy shit.

Speaker 10 Is that aspirational in your mind? It would be kind of amazing to be that far out.

Speaker 2 I mean, we could just be like, okay, we're going to take the quarter off on recording.

Speaker 28 How about new?

Speaker 10 I don't see what you said ever happening, even if we had the longest runway of episodes in the can. Like, I don't think the work ever stops.

Speaker 30 I mean, that's partly just your disposition, though.

Speaker 6 Like, you don't, you, like, refuse to accept an idea of a world in which the work ever stops.

Speaker 34 So even when there isn't that much to do, you will find a way to white knuckle it and get yourself all worked up.

Speaker 10 You really know me, Ben. You do.
Nothing you say is wrong.

Speaker 26 But also,

Speaker 37 The like recording the show part of this job is the part that I like the most.

Speaker 10 I know, and I would never want to quit that.

Speaker 31 Part of the reason for having a team, as we now do, is that we get to kind of focus on the parts that we're actually good at and leave the parts that we suck at and make us feel bad to much more talented people.

Speaker 10 I've been having a bad day, man. Oh, but I've been looking forward to getting on the mic all day for hours.
It's already working.

Speaker 26 I am so glad that this show can be here for you in a time like this.

Speaker 10 What do you do when you're feeling bad?

Speaker 10 Give me the Benjamin R. Harrison self-soothe tips.

Speaker 6 I thought you were about to say self-suck.

Speaker 35 And that is one thing.

Speaker 10 I mean, that's why you got the rowing machine. You want to get yourself back into foldable shape, right?

Speaker 46 Rowing machine is one of them.

Speaker 14 You know, like a workout is a.

Speaker 10 That's part of my angst, man. I'm more than four weeks without

Speaker 10 as prescribed for my doctor, and I feel all caged up. I feel real bad.

Speaker 48 That'll do it.

Speaker 42 Yeah, I've found that like increasing the amount of protein in my diet is helpful

Speaker 25 for mood stabilization.

Speaker 10 So you're saying a bunch of Halloween candy and

Speaker 10 alcohol and not working out.

Speaker 10 You think these have had a detrimental effect on my mentals?

Speaker 50 Everybody's body is different, and everybody's body reacts to stimuli in their own subjective way.

Speaker 47 So I'm not saying that what works for me will necessarily work for you.

Speaker 10 Yeah, don't take advice of any kind from Star Trek podcasters or podcasters in general.

Speaker 5 That's crazy. That's something that I would accept as axiomatic, Adam.

Speaker 48 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Speaking of your future self, what about your past self?

Speaker 37 What about a pre-nuclear self?

Speaker 29 What do you think that guy is up to?

Speaker 10 Think about that guy all the time. How innocent those days were.
Hmm.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 7 It must have been nice.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 50 Do you want to talk about some past people?

Speaker 38 Spend some time in that rarefied pre-nuclear air?

Speaker 10 You know, thinking about how difficult and how great the struggle must have been for past people is making present me feel a little better by comparison. I'm feeling better already, Ben.

Speaker 10 Let's get in there and talk about Enterprise Season 2, Episode 8:

Speaker 10 The Communicator.

Speaker 19 So a shuttle returns to the Entrepreneur and Hoshi and Archer and Reed get off and they are loaded up with loaf.

Speaker 22 And it's not surgical, like specifically.

Speaker 37 This is peel-off latex loaf.

Speaker 10 They're talking about how tired they are from the mission and that much is obvious. They've developed six pack abs on their foreheads almost as if like

Speaker 10 squinting was the workout. Have you ever seen a fully developed forehead like with musculature? That's what this looks like.

Speaker 56 Yeah, like real pain and gain energy in the forehead area.

Speaker 32 Yeah. That's it.

Speaker 8 Get it.

Speaker 56 I went to ice hockey summer camp one year in the Okanagan in Canada to try and get better at ice hockey.

Speaker 58 And I remember one of my counselors yelling at everybody in my bunk that we needed to be doing more sit-ups and we should have six little raviolis on our bellies.

Speaker 18 And that was the way he described six packs.

Speaker 25 And I've never been able to think of them as anything but raviolis ever since then.

Speaker 45 So these guys have real ravioli head.

Speaker 10 Why was Coach Luigi always talking about

Speaker 10 crunching the raviola?

Speaker 32 Counselor Boyardee was, he was a real hard ass.

Speaker 10 Hey, coach, I understand it's cold out here, but why is the Gatorade bucket filled with a minestrone?

Speaker 10 It's getting clogged in the spigot. You're like hitting the button harder and harder, but nothing's coming out.

Speaker 56 We win the big tournament at the end of camp, and he's scalded when we dump it on his head.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you just stand in a big melted spot in the middle of the ice

Speaker 10 in a in a pool of rapidly cooling minestrone.

Speaker 9 Just getting pelted by those rinds of parmesan that you throw in there.

Speaker 10 Delicious. Oh man.
I made a bean soup last night.

Speaker 10 You can really elevate most soups with a bunch of grated cheese on top.

Speaker 10 Sure. I thought the soup I made was fine, but God, you put you put the grated parmes on there.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, that'll do it.

Speaker 10 You get that umami going. It's all you need.

Speaker 66 Um

Speaker 29 it was real good.

Speaker 39 Do you do the like spent rind of parm in the in the broth as it simmers or or in your in your like pasta sauces as they simmer?

Speaker 10 You know, I do save those, but I save those in a cut bag. I've got a cut bag of vegetable and cheese rind in a gallon size Ziploc in my freezer.
And then I have a cut bag of bones.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's bones in my freezer that I use for making stock and I make stock every couple of months out of both of those bags Yeah, in the biggest pot that I've got and then I reduce all that down into the little

Speaker 10 silicone cocktail ice cube trays and I got those ready to go and that's what I put in my sauces. So I'm not using the

Speaker 10 the raw materials Ben like you're asking right I'm using the

Speaker 10 the constructed demi gloss that I've made out of all that stuff.

Speaker 19 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 40 Well, speaking of demigloss, they do not need to smear themselves when they get to the decon chamber.

Speaker 27 I love a little slide-open window like this. Anytime there's a club that people are trying to get into in a movie or something like that, and a window slides open, I am delighted.

Speaker 1 Welcome home.

Speaker 40 Flox pokes his head in and says, Hey, you guys,

Speaker 29 you're good to go.

Speaker 40 You don't need to decontaminate at all.

Speaker 10 When you're in the decon chamber and you don't do that, it's sort of Chekhov's lube, isn't it?

Speaker 10 Like, I love this part of Star Trek, and I've talked about it with respect to ships, like the maintenance of ships, the busy work of ships, whatever.

Speaker 10 But this is like the post-mission moment where you got to do all the admin work. You got to take off your loaf and your costume and like do the accounting of all the stuff.

Speaker 10 Maybe you lube yourself up with the decontamination gel. I like seeing all this stuff.
This is just a part of living in a Star Trek world.

Speaker 35 It's a ton of fun.

Speaker 56 And yeah, there's uniforms hanging up in there.

Speaker 69 And they're going to get out of their civilian garb.

Speaker 5 And as they're doing this, a moment that is very familiar to me and I'm sure something you've never personally experienced happens to Malcolm Reed where he's like patting all his pockets and he's like, ah, fuck.

Speaker 16 Ah, fuck. Something's missing.

Speaker 10 Why am I made to feel bad when you say something like that? You're the one that should feel bad.

Speaker 61 I i do feel bad

Speaker 27 you should feel worse i lost something adam i lost something okay

Speaker 51 you don't think i feel bad about that

Speaker 10 it's just annoying that it never happens to you re didn't do the idiot check before leaving the planet and uh left a communicator he thinks

Speaker 56 down there during the mission oh man the like twist of the knife of showing the scene where he's looking in like the garbage where he definitely didn't throw his communicator and Hoshi's like crawling around looking under the seats in the shuttle pod and stuff.

Speaker 7 Ugh, you just your your your guts drop.

Speaker 10 There's something about as you describe looking in the place that obviously it isn't whatever the object is that you've lost like digging through the garbage when you know it's not in the garbage is like a form of masochism that like i deserve this i deserve to dig in fucking trash because i'm a trash person who forgets things like you know it's not in the garbage and yet you do it i'm not saying you i'm saying the person who loses stuff like we no one deserves that i was cooking chicken burgers last night and i'd uh i'd put my my panko and my milk in a bowl and that was uh getting ready softening up and then i was like i need an egg as a binder for this ground chicken meat sure you do and my wife had just mentioned that she went out for a fresh doze of eggs because now that we have a toddler, we just go through eggs so fucking fast.

Speaker 25 I can't believe it.

Speaker 10 Darone is just drinking them Rocky Balboa style. Yeah.
I don't know why you mess around with the omelets, Ben. Just crack them into his

Speaker 10 little sippy cup.

Speaker 17 Into the sippy cup full of

Speaker 25 Miller High Life that he drinks every morning.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 20 No, so I look in the fridge, no eggs, don't see them in the place in the fridge where eggs go, and I'm like, shit, well, she definitely, like, took the car and went somewhere.

Speaker 25 So they must have just like gotten left in the car, went to look in the car, looked every conceivable inch of the car over that I could, not in the car.

Speaker 21 And I'm like, damn, maybe she went out for eggs and like did that thing where you like pick up some cheese and a bottle of wine and you forget the thing that you went to the grocery store for.

Speaker 10 Were you thinking at all that she may have your dad with seafood leftovers,

Speaker 10 those eggs? Like, because you don't want to leave eggs in the car for days.

Speaker 66 You do not.

Speaker 40 I couldn't turn them up, came back in.

Speaker 42 I was like, I guess I'm cooking these chicken burgers without eggs as a binder.

Speaker 71 And I was trying to like strategize what else.

Speaker 32 I was like, okay, well, like, I'm, I'm already like, a lot of things are in the mix.

Speaker 20 I'll figure this out.

Speaker 9 And I went to like get my veg ready, like all my bib lettuce and my tomatoes cut up and everything.

Speaker 10 Damn, this sounds really nice as a midweek meal.

Speaker 14 Yeah, and then I went into the fridge for something else.

Speaker 39 Eggs were there, just on a different shelf on the opposite side than they ever are.

Speaker 39 I had done an extensive search and rescue operation for these fucking eggs, and they were right in the fridge the whole time.

Speaker 10 I think your wife's fucking with you.

Speaker 74 This is what gaslighting is originally, right?

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10 You don't deserve that as the primary meal maker in your household?

Speaker 16 There's a place for eggs.

Speaker 10 There is a place for eggs. Eggs always in the same place.
Yeah. Eggs and keys.
Always in the same place. That's the rule.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 25 You just feel terrible for Reed.

Speaker 66 And they get up to the bridge, and Hoch is like...

Speaker 10 I would pull that back a little bit.

Speaker 10 As much suffering as it seems as though Reed is going through, Reed is not a likable character for me to have a greater amount of empathy for during a moment like this.

Speaker 48 I'm just, I identify with the man as a lover of pineapple and of losing shit occasionally. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, but you hit the target in a lot of ways that he just does not.

Speaker 2 They go up to the bridge and Toshi is like, okay, I can probably scan for this thing and figure out where we left it.

Speaker 48 And initially, she's got a two-kilometer box for them to look in, which is a pretty big search radius, not something that they are super excited to try and

Speaker 19 return to the surface and look within.

Speaker 10 I just want to hop in here and say that Hoshi doesn't have a two kilometer box. She has geolocated the possible places where the communicator could be to an area that size.

Speaker 25 Right. And she's not bragging.

Speaker 11 about size.

Speaker 10 Right. I think if you were to read the transcript of this episode, that might be confusing.
I just want to clear that up for the episode readers at home.

Speaker 9 War is brewing on the surface of this planet. It's discussed that they, you know, like saw a political rally and there's a lot of propaganda afoot.

Speaker 13 And it's a bit of a touchy situation to go back into,

Speaker 27 but they are going to have to go back down.

Speaker 65 And eventually they figure out like, okay, it's...

Speaker 31 It's like, here's like a few blocks that is within.

Speaker 9 And Reed recognizes the part of town that they're looking at as a place where they went to a tavern.

Speaker 21 So that seems like a good place to start.

Speaker 10 Trips like a tavern?

Speaker 74 I could go on this mission.

Speaker 10 I describe myself as a bloodhound, mostly for the number of nipples that you'll find on my person.

Speaker 70 Rose and Rose.

Speaker 10 You're never going to let that go, are you? Trips shut down here. He wants to go, but cannot.
So in the shuttle down, it's Archer and Reed.

Speaker 42 Do you think that a Klingon that really enjoys drinking is called a blood wine hound?

Speaker 10 Yes. Yes, I do.

Speaker 13 This is also very familiar to me.

Speaker 35 Reed on the way down and like, dad hasn't said anything yet.

Speaker 18 And Reid is like, come on, just punish me, man.

Speaker 60 Like, tell me what kind of time I'm going to be serving in detention or whatever.

Speaker 10 Adam and Ben riding the elevator back up to their hotel rooms after a show.

Speaker 10 Like, I guess our flight is at 10. And if you can make contact with the venue before we have to go to the airport, like, I guess that's the plan at this point.

Speaker 29 I can't believe I walked out of there without my backpack that has the iPad and the laptop that our show runs off of in it.

Speaker 21 Adam is like, I can't believe that either, Ben.

Speaker 10 In the shuttle down, I mean, it's clear how bad Reed feels, but it's also clear to what extent archer will go to be a cool boss in a moment like this yeah archer is not atoming here archer is doing what he can to make it seem as though there will not be punishment at all for this transgression it's going to be fine we're going to we're going to make this right and uh you know the natural consequences we have to go back down and duck under the cloud cover before these fighter jets shoot us out of the sky yeah and uh that'll be okay but we've done that already.

Speaker 72 Yeah. Successfully.

Speaker 26 This is the briar patch for us.

Speaker 10 Hey, Reed, try not to fucking lose the shuttle while we're off doing our search.

Speaker 10 See, these are balls that I would kick the entire episode if I were Archer.

Speaker 12 You make sure that the lowjack was active before we departed, Reid?

Speaker 26 They go back into this bar, and much like the Cheesecake Factory, their table is ready.

Speaker 10 What did you make of how uncomfortable it was when they walked in? I clocked immediately that it was quiet.

Speaker 30 Quiet in the bar.

Speaker 10 No din and no music, either diegetic or non-diegetic. There's just like nothing going on in there in a way that creeped me out.

Speaker 47 There's a table seated right in the middle of the restaurant full of soldiers, and

Speaker 35 that feels portentious.

Speaker 71 They all kind of get the hairy eyeball from these soldiers and they go sit in the booth and Reed tries to be slick when he like goes under the table in the booth, which is such a hard thing to do.

Speaker 16 I know you've never had to do this, Adam, but when you lose something in a restaurant booth, it's hard because the table is affixed to the floor and the chairs are affixed to the floor.

Speaker 59 So there's no way to like pull stuff away so you can look under.

Speaker 10 If my jacket slides off of the booth seat onto the floor, like I kind of want to leave it forever at that point. The idea of crawling around under this thing the way Reed does kind of nauseated me.

Speaker 5 Because it is so hard to look for something under there, you imagine as you are doing that, how hard it must be to clean under there also.

Speaker 46 And sometimes you see things that you cannot unsee when you're looking for your wallet under the booth.

Speaker 10 There's no way it's not sticky down there.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's bad.

Speaker 13 And the communicator is not there.

Speaker 31 A server comes over and is asking them what they want.

Speaker 40 And they're like, dude, you haven't even dropped menus on the table yet.

Speaker 26 What are you fucking talking about?

Speaker 10 Yeah, the question of still or sparkling is proffered. And yeah, like, yeah, water first.

Speaker 62 Please.

Speaker 72 Please. I'm parched.

Speaker 29 Maybe a breadbasket.

Speaker 59 It's not too much trouble.

Speaker 10 The server isn't... totally suspicious, but he is a little weird.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Even before he goes and signals the uniformed folks sitting around their table, something just feels a little off about this guy's performance. And I thought it was kind of magical for that reason.

Speaker 10 I don't know how you direct whatever this performance is, but he seems to be doing regular server stuff.

Speaker 10 But something's not right about this interaction. And when he goes and flags the uniform officers at that table, nothing is surprising about that interaction at all.

Speaker 11 New.

Speaker 27 So Reed is like sneakily trying to look at his tricorder down by his side, and he locates the communicator, and it's like down a hallway.

Speaker 58 And

Speaker 48 man, such bad OPSEC to send both of them down the hallway to look for it, you know?

Speaker 13 Like Archer's got to hang out at the table while Reed goes down there and like, you know, does the ginger back of the knuckle on the bathroom door.

Speaker 29 Is anybody in there?

Speaker 10 You got to be sure

Speaker 10 when there's a beaded curtain,

Speaker 10 what's going to be on the other side right because beaded curtain can mean a lot of things beaded curtain can mean barrier or beaded curtain can be code for come on in if you're looking for something specific yeah there

Speaker 20 there's an implied sexiness behind a beaded curtain i think

Speaker 10 every time right yeah there is no non-sexual connotation of a beaded curtain is there

Speaker 10 i'm really struggling to think of one uh

Speaker 5 yeah well the lady that bakes the chocolate chip cookies in the matrix she was a fucking freak right

Speaker 62 what a pull

Speaker 23 here

Speaker 63 wow

Speaker 12 take a cookie oh man yeah

Speaker 10 you think she's just uh sitting on those cookies to flatten them out before baking is that what's going on back there yeah i think when i was in high school i thought like having a lava lamp and a beaded curtain would make me more interesting.

Speaker 21 And I went to like urban outfitters and got one of each.

Speaker 25 But my bedroom door was just a normal door.

Speaker 21 So for a while, there was a thing where you would have to open the door and then go through the beaded curtain and then reach back through the beaded curtain to close the door.

Speaker 55 I would say it didn't work, you know?

Speaker 10 Would you occasionally like close the door and the beads would get stuck in the door?

Speaker 55 Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 10 Oh, my god. How long did you live that way?

Speaker 55 Too long.

Speaker 41 Let's just admit it that it was too long.

Speaker 10 I will also admit that I had a lava lamp in my freshman dorm room, as everyone I knew did. Yeah, you had to go down to the Ave and go to the head shop that had the posters and the lava lamps.

Speaker 10 It's a rite of passage.

Speaker 28 It was a law at the time. Yeah.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 9 I bet Zoomers aren't doing that bullshit.

Speaker 10 Right. Never fucked with the beaded curtain, though.
That is

Speaker 10 great detail. That's fun.

Speaker 40 They're down this hallway.

Speaker 25 There's two people in the room, as revealed by Malcolm's scanner.

Speaker 13 You can also just tell because that little occupied... thing is visible on the door lock.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 27 So they like are heading back to their booth and it turns into a great big bar fight with all of these soldiers.

Speaker 10 What do you make of Reed punching first?

Speaker 32 I love that for him.

Speaker 69 I was very embarrassed for him though that he got his ass kicked.

Speaker 17 Like he is he is like KO'd on the floor by the time the three guys subdue Archer.

Speaker 22 And I'm like, come on, Reed, you gotta, you're the fucking tactics guy.

Speaker 16 You gotta, you gotta take at least a couple of dudes out before the fight is over.

Speaker 10 I hung out with folks like this in college once, and then I would stop hanging out with these people.

Speaker 5 Oh, like guys who go to bars looking for trouble to get into?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that is not what I'm going to a bar for.

Speaker 30 I never, I maybe it's just because of my like my height.

Speaker 43 I, I never felt like I was like

Speaker 20 at much risk in those crowds.

Speaker 56 But yeah, they got, you know, like, especially if you're like, hey, like, I'm going to hang out with these new guys.

Speaker 40 You You want to come to like a buddy? And then they, then

Speaker 10 folks in bars see you across the bar and they're like, that guy, that guy's been through enough.

Speaker 46 Yeah, I don't think anybody has ever misread me as guy who can fight.

Speaker 60 That's not what I'm trying to imply.

Speaker 32 I'm just,

Speaker 32 you know, I'm rangy, you know.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I believe it. I think the promise of me in any fight is that it would just be ugly.

Speaker 62 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 And bad.

Speaker 27 I bet you scrap nasty.

Speaker 10 That's, I think that's just it.

Speaker 10 It would be bad for everyone involved. No one would feel good about it.

Speaker 5 They'd be like, Adam, that thing where you grab a guy and drag him along the bar so that his face smashes into every Stein and bottle along the way, that's only for movies.

Speaker 53 You can't do that move in real life. That's an unsanctioned move.

Speaker 10 Yeah, movie moves are not for real fights, that's for sure.

Speaker 41 So at the end of this fight, these military guys drag them into that back room they were trying to get into.

Speaker 18 And this has gone from bad to worse because now the locals don't just have one communicator.

Speaker 32 They have a phase pistol.

Speaker 75 They have a couple of communicators.

Speaker 47 They have a couple of tricorders.

Speaker 44 They have multiplied the scale of this contamination many times.

Speaker 10 And when all of their tech is put on the table like so much dope,

Speaker 10 it's pretty clear that they're lying when they say they don't know anything about this stuff. You know, like the sheer quantity of the tech makes this pretty far-fetched.

Speaker 10 And the assumption in the room seems pretty fair, right? Archer and Reed are spies. How could they not be?

Speaker 27 There's an alliance that these guys are very concerned about.

Speaker 17 And they're like, you know what?

Speaker 67 You're probably from them.

Speaker 27 You've got these weird gadgets that we don't know what they are. This weird gun that we don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 You're going to the complex.

Speaker 61 And an unmistakable music cube drops

Speaker 10 i love it so much it's it's so weird that they just respawn in this specific spot yeah and wait there's a proximity mine here what the fuck

Speaker 10 on enterprise it is clear that something has gone wrong with the mission and Tepal blows in a call to Archer, but no one answers. No one answers in a very specific way.

Speaker 10 A way that conveys that the channel is open and there's like some room tone

Speaker 10 happening. Like you never get room tone in Star Trek depicted in this way.
But here it is. And as soon as they realize that like the channel's open, TePaul's like, nope, kill it.

Speaker 10 And Hoshi has found the signal. for where Reed and Archer are, but it is super far away from where they started.
And actually, Ben, I have no idea how far away this is.

Speaker 10 It's in a unit of measurement I've never been able to figure out, but it seems like a place that would be difficult to walk to.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 71 There has been some discussion of how much walking they've been doing due to, I guess, parking pretty far outside of town when they take their shuttlecraft down.

Speaker 19 And that is underlined with a great big underline in the next scene as we start on a close-up of Reed's foot as he rubs it in pain.

Speaker 10 I love how Reed tin mans the word Epsom salt.

Speaker 18 I wonder if the god would bring us some Epsom salt.

Speaker 10 Tin man.

Speaker 38 He does that a couple of times in this episode.

Speaker 10 You want to put a little hop in your step on any given day? Just tin man something weird like that.

Speaker 22 Is this a British guy thing?

Speaker 10 Great question.

Speaker 10 I really think it's a Star Trek thing. It happens all the time.
Yeah.

Speaker 39 So an idea comes up here because they're now in jail like this this this mission to rescue a communicator could not be going worse and they're like what about

Speaker 13 just saying

Speaker 11 what we really are

Speaker 51 they'll let us go right we could give them a tour of the ship they would love that the truth

Speaker 10 really

Speaker 10 i don't know man No one would believe them is the conclusion they draw. Like, their story is crazy.

Speaker 10 So, finally, as they're discussing this, they're taken to a room to meet Ghosis, and it's clearly an interrogation room because of how that light is hanging over the table, right?

Speaker 61 Indeed.

Speaker 65 General Ghosis is played by a guy named Francis Guinen.

Speaker 75 Can you imagine

Speaker 26 going to work on Star Trek with a last name like that?

Speaker 10 Why didn't they cast him as that alien barkeep?

Speaker 53 I don't know. Yeah, that would have been much more appropriate.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 10 They blew it.

Speaker 14 Like, Dennis Cochran is definitely showing up at the same casting calls as Francis Guynan.

Speaker 5 Like, they're, Dennis Cochran is a Francis Guynan type, and vice versa.

Speaker 10 Dennis Cochran sounds like the first draft of Zephyr Cochran.

Speaker 10 Dennis Cochran? That doesn't...

Speaker 10 That's not going to work.

Speaker 10 I can't see that name in the historical literature for Starfleet.

Speaker 45 We got to punch that up.

Speaker 16 He heard TePaul's hail.

Speaker 17 He was the person on the other end of the line when she risked calling down to the surface.

Speaker 26 And he's like, what is this thing?

Speaker 36 Who is this T-Paul? How far away is she?

Speaker 41 What are the capabilities of this device?

Speaker 40 This is an interrogation that gets punchy pretty quickly.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Because the Alliance. are the enemies of Ghosis and his troops.

Speaker 10 And when Archer and Reed don't answer the questions to their satisfaction, I love how Archer is the only one for the longest time who gets punched in the face.

Speaker 10 It does not seem fair.

Speaker 40 He does get punched in the face an awful lot in general, though, right?

Speaker 60 Like, I would say, like, every third or fourth mission, Archer can rely on

Speaker 27 taking one to the kisser. Yeah.

Speaker 10 These punches to the face continue as they are talked about their possible plans to assassinate Chancellor Culture.

Speaker 10 And as the punches rain down on them, their six-pack foreheads start to split open, revealing that they've got smooth brows underneath.

Speaker 13 This is like when you get filler injections to make it look like you're more muscular than you actually are, and then they start to decay.

Speaker 10 You know, in my advanced age, I'm starting to understand fillers and all that shit.

Speaker 10 Not enough for me to ever get them, but I get it.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 10 Red blood?

Speaker 10 There is a lot about Reed and Archer that just do not make any sense to these troops, but maybe it'll make sense to their doctor. And a doctor is where they're taken for a full examination.

Speaker 10 And Ben, what no one says, but that I know you and I know, is that this exam is going to be nude, right? It's going to be nude and it's going to be probing.

Speaker 10 Because when any doctor has a chance to give an exam to an alien,

Speaker 10 it's going everywhere, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, you're going to want to see everything.

Speaker 10 Faith of the fart.

Speaker 77 We concern ourselves around here with optimistic views of the future.

Speaker 46 And the future of hiring looks much brighter because ZipRecruiter's latest tools and features help speed up finding the right people for your roles. so you save valuable time.

Speaker 78 And now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash scarves.

Speaker 42 Listen, we got over 320,000 new resumes added every month, which means you can reach more potential hires and fill roles sooner with ZipRecruiter.

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Speaker 78 Again, that's ziprecruiter.com scarves.

Speaker 8 ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

Speaker 10 Friends of DeSoto, we survived Star Trek Las Vegas 2025. All seven days of it.
And boy, oh boy, do we have thoughts?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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 plan for next year.

Speaker 10 So if you want to know what STLV was really like, the bonus feed is how you find it.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 80 You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother Me for 15 years. And

Speaker 80 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.

Speaker 28 But no.

Speaker 81 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.

Speaker 81 Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

Speaker 71 the only nfts i'm into are naughty funny things which is what we talk about on my brother my brother and me

Speaker 80 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

Speaker 82 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?

Speaker 10 Yes, episode 59.

Speaker 82 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?

Speaker 61 Episode 64.

Speaker 82 So, how close are we to learning everything? Bad news. We still haven't learned everything yet.

Speaker 4 Oh, we're ruined!

Speaker 82 No, no, no, it's good news as well. There is still a lot to learn.

Speaker 28 Woo!

Speaker 82 I'm Dr. Ella Hubber.

Speaker 2 I'm regular Tom Lum.

Speaker 82 I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

Speaker 82 And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Speaker 10 Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Speaker 4 And you will never take the greatest gym alive.

Speaker 4 Ben would rather die.

Speaker 13 Meanwhile, back up on the ship, Hoshi has located where this nudity is going to be taking place.

Speaker 71 She's got overhead photography of the complex.

Speaker 61 And

Speaker 60 Trip wants to do a raid.

Speaker 41 He's like very excited about getting another raid in.

Speaker 40 And Tepal points out that like every time they send something to the surface, they risk leaving more shit behind.

Speaker 47 And this will contaminate this pre-warp society and potentially really fuck shit up.

Speaker 71 And Trip has a great idea.

Speaker 18 He's like, you know, we have that cell ship from the Sulaban still aboard.

Speaker 40 It has a cloaking device. We can go there invisibly.

Speaker 10 What a reminder to me and everyone else that they still have this thing.

Speaker 69 Yeah, a a set that they never showed before, but they show now.

Speaker 22 And this was really cool, I thought.

Speaker 19 The full-size cell ship he and Mayweather hang out in.

Speaker 69 They're trying to get the cloaking device working.

Speaker 21 Tripp was confident when he pitched this idea to DePaul that he was on the verge of having everything ready to go with this ship.

Speaker 58 And she gave it the okay.

Speaker 44 And turns out he was kind of fibbing on that.

Speaker 10 He's kind of reversed scottied this, right? Which isn't just a sexual position anymore. Right.

Speaker 11 He's overestimated how quickly it will take to fix it up.

Speaker 10 A reverse scotty is when you say, I'm coming, I'm coming, but you actually come a lot faster.

Speaker 32 But you already came.

Speaker 63 Yeah.

Speaker 10 That position will break your dick.

Speaker 17 Wait a second.

Speaker 51 You're claiming that you're coming, but you have pulled out and nothing is burbling out.

Speaker 22 What do you mean?

Speaker 10 And you've also hit your head

Speaker 72 on a low ceiling.

Speaker 37 And also you're carrying your bloody nephew in your arms.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's all part of it.

Speaker 53 Sick shit are you into, man?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's the reverse Scotty.

Speaker 69 Trip is trying to boop some buttons, turn on this cloaking device when he gets blown back and is horrified to see that he cannot see, I can't see the nipples on my arms or my arm.

Speaker 10 This effect was so much better than I expected. You know, sometimes you can do the whole like Lieutenant Dan

Speaker 10 no legs thing and it just seems a little off. I thought this was super on.

Speaker 5 They did a great job with it and I think part of what helps it is that there's like some glowy fuzzy effect around the barrier.

Speaker 25 So they're not trying to sell that there's like a wrap of fabric around this or anything.

Speaker 16 It's like it's disappearing into phased space.

Speaker 10 Mayweather, I'm gonna need to take a break. I gotta go, I gotta go do the super stranger.

Speaker 67 Maybe I'll combine it with going for the record.

Speaker 10 So in Six Bay, Dr. Flox examines Trip Tucker and everything feels okay and normal.
That's the big takeaway here. His right arm is just cloaked and it's going to return to normal eventually.

Speaker 48 It's not the kind of cloak that Jordan Ensign Rowe had where you could accidentally go through a wall, though.

Speaker 10 What's interesting about this moment is Dr. Flox is like, look, I'm going to give you a glove and maybe you could switch uniforms so that you could see yourself.

Speaker 10 But at no point is the case ever made for like the need for proprioception as an engineer or just as a human being. Like,

Speaker 10 how difficult do you think it would be if your arms were just cloaked or your arms and legs were cloaked and still there?

Speaker 20 He can still feel it.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 25 I guess with the glove on, he can, he's got enough information. But yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean, he's definitely entered a no-glove, no love phase of the episode.

Speaker 10 I just wanted, give me a few more scenes. Like, I know this is a serious episode, a dangerous episode, but like, let's go to the mess hall and have Trip do bits on people.

Speaker 10 Like, I want to see, like, a spoon of lime jello, like, being held to his mouth for him to eat. Just floating in air.

Speaker 65 That's great.

Speaker 27 The trick isn't to bend the spoon, it's to realize that there is no spoon.

Speaker 10 How long ago has it been since you've seen The Matrix? It seems very front of mind.

Speaker 29 Years and years.

Speaker 10 God, that scene is so weird.

Speaker 84 Then you'll see this is not the spoon that bends. It is only yourself.

Speaker 10 That little kid is speaking backwards, right? Like, he's phonetically talking backwards, and then they play it so that it sounds like it's forwards.

Speaker 12 Wow.

Speaker 10 I mean, I always thought that.

Speaker 48 I haven't seen it in years and years, but I like that take.

Speaker 14 I wonder if that's true.

Speaker 10 There's something about his pronunciation of all the words that just seems so

Speaker 10 forced and thoughtful

Speaker 10 that it just sounds like someone speaking backwards that's then played forwards.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Down at the base, the soldiers led by General Gosis test out this hand phaser that they've recovered from Archer and Reed.

Speaker 25 And when they see its destructive power, it fucking spooks them.

Speaker 69 They are doing the math on if the guys that we're fighting have guns like this, like how the fuck could we possibly beat them?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 29 And then Dr.

Speaker 27 Temek shows up.

Speaker 27 Dr. Temek played by Brian Reddy.

Speaker 59 A delightful that guy to see.

Speaker 26 Of Seinfeld, of Oh, Brother, where art thou?

Speaker 10 Jag. That's where I know him.

Speaker 12 Oh, sure.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 19 He has got some internal anatomy scans of Archer and Reed that look like they probably got cancer from getting scanned the way

Speaker 59 he did this.

Speaker 10 I love his medical conclusion. These two guys right here are deformed.

Speaker 57 They're even more abnormal on the inside.

Speaker 71 So we get more interrogation, and now General Ghosis is starting to talk about them as though they may, in fact, be little green men.

Speaker 44 Like if your Ufos were kind of onto you as that.

Speaker 27 And Archer is like still trying to be tight-lipped.

Speaker 13 Like he and Reed are really trying as much as they can not to say anything that they don't absolutely have to say to these guys.

Speaker 60 And I loved that the generals like show like you're aliens, but like you're you're here because you're aliens that are friends with the alliance and you care very deeply about the geopolitics of my world and want to like, you know, help the bad guys or whatever.

Speaker 10 Would you ever consider if your ghost is

Speaker 10 punching an alien with what he knows to be superior technology and like a weird body makeup?

Speaker 10 This seems to be asking for trouble in the worst way. Yeah.
Like, this general must want to get the rectal probing of his life once the rest of the aliens come and fire in the sky this guy.

Speaker 9 Maybe that's what he's into, General Ghosis, you know?

Speaker 10 God, I just, I don't know if I would hit them anymore after knowing this.

Speaker 71 He seems like a man uniquely ill-equipped to be making first contact.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Hey, Ghosis, is this your idea of Oobie-Doobie?

Speaker 44 So Archer starts spinning a yarn about how, like, okay, yes, we're with the Alliance, and we're just a surveillance team.

Speaker 13 We have these special planes that are undetectable by your radar.

Speaker 29 And Reed is like, yeah, yeah, and we're genetically enhanced super soldiers.

Speaker 71 And that's why our birdies are so weird and made out of toxic elements.

Speaker 38 And these are all prototypes.

Speaker 33 You got the only ones, so you don't need to worry about this being a mass-produced threat that your regular soldiers are going to meet on the battlefield with the Alliance.

Speaker 10 This description has a terrible consequence, and that is, it makes clear that if Ghosis

Speaker 10 decides to execute these prisoners, that ends the problem there. Right.

Speaker 62 Oh, no.

Speaker 18 I loved Dr.

Speaker 59 Temek being like, this is a plausible explanation. We should believe these guys.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and if they're dead, it makes it easier for the doctor to cut them open and study their guts.

Speaker 14 Gonna get an alien autopsy out of this.

Speaker 7 This is great.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 14 So Hoshi has tapped the phones and picks up a transmission from the general to some politician giving an update on what's going on with these

Speaker 7 surveillance team that they've captured.

Speaker 13 And Tepaul realizes like it is it is getting urgent.

Speaker 19 So she heads down and tells Tripp and Mayweather like Cloak or not, it's go time.

Speaker 17 We don't have much time left before the captain and Reed get hung.

Speaker 65 And like, we would really like to get the captain back.

Speaker 10 Unfortunately, yeah, that's what they're obligated to do.

Speaker 10 Over in the shuttle bay, Trip and Mayweather continue to work, and Mayweather jokes about what Trip could do with that cloaked hand. Some of it innocent.

Speaker 8 Be useful in a poker match.

Speaker 10 Other ideas, he swears, are also innocent.

Speaker 8 It might be helpful in movie night if you bring a date.

Speaker 27 I could poke it up through the bottom of the popcorn bucket.

Speaker 10 Yeah, but what's the status of the ship? It seems like they've been working on it for a while. That's what TePaul wants to know when she walks in.
Big surprise.

Speaker 10 Their deadline is now two hours because of this

Speaker 10 death by hanging. Yeah.
Trip says that they're going to go ahead and launch with or without the cloak functioning.

Speaker 19 We get a pretty long scene in the holding cell where Archer and Reed are kind of talking things over as they await execution.

Speaker 47 This was when we learn that this is not just a pre-warp society, but a pre-nuclear fission society.

Speaker 17 And they're talking about the lie that they have pulled and if it's going to be enough to

Speaker 17 stop contamination from wrecking the natural evolution of these people.

Speaker 13 Like Archer is still pretty sure that opening the kimono and admitting that they're aliens is a bad idea.

Speaker 38 But the upshot is, like, they're hopeless, you know?

Speaker 83 Like, there's not really anything they can do at this point.

Speaker 25 It doesn't really seem to them that there's a plausible way for the ship to rescue them.

Speaker 10 And even if they were to escape, they got these smooth foreheads. Yeah.
How far are they going to get with those?

Speaker 65 I loved the way this scene was lit because

Speaker 38 it's very like

Speaker 65 Cinema Studies 101 to have the character that's in the bad mood in the shadow, but Reed is in such a beautiful fucking shadow.

Speaker 40 He starts the scene in the shadow and then kind of comes out into the light to talk to Archer.

Speaker 65 And by the end of the scene, has receded back into it.

Speaker 36 And it is just so beautifully flat.

Speaker 17 Like, you can barely make him out in it.

Speaker 13 And I just,

Speaker 26 I thought it looked great.

Speaker 10 James Cottner is the director of this episode. He also did Carbon Creek.

Speaker 11 All right.

Speaker 10 Which I think is another notably remote set episode. Totally.
Totally.

Speaker 5 So our cell ship launches and it cloaks.

Speaker 11 The cloak works.

Speaker 10 I was surprised by this. Like, no mention was made of successfully figuring this out, but we see it demonstrated en route.

Speaker 71 Yeah. Seems pretty crowded in there.

Speaker 65 It's kind of a one-man ship that they've loaded three people into.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 71 And as they are descending, the guards come to get the prisoners ready for their execution.

Speaker 25 And this is the scene where we learn that they're not just pre-warped, they're not just pre-nuclear fission, they're also pre-handcuff as a society.

Speaker 59 They just do this with ropes?

Speaker 28 Really?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 25 What have you guys invented? Jesus.

Speaker 10 This compound play set has their hanging area.

Speaker 10 And in one last little jab, Archer's like, hey, try not to lose the rope around your neck.

Speaker 10 Once they get this thing on you, Reed.

Speaker 57 So the cloak fails on the cellship, and we get a brief little moment where they're getting chased by fighter jets, and then they get the cloak back, and

Speaker 14 meanwhile, the nooses are going around Archer and Reed's necks.

Speaker 10 What do you think of this moment? Because we get the single brass instrument of wondering if you'll be one of those people who gets decapitated during a hanging.

Speaker 10 But when these things are like put around the actors, there's got to be something instinctually very bad feeling about that that has got to take

Speaker 10 some effort to control.

Speaker 10 I think that would be very uncomfortable. Totally.

Speaker 62 Like they're on a platform.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Like if you

Speaker 16 and we saw it, that it's actually rigged to drop, you know?

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 10 So like if you... If you fainted or

Speaker 10 took a step backwards in a way you weren't intending, like that could be an onset accident.

Speaker 29 Maybe the rope goes up and then just out of frame, it's only connected by like dental floss.

Speaker 66 You know?

Speaker 10 Hope so.

Speaker 42 There's a little bit of business the lieutenant character that's noosing them up does where he like puts the noose on the back of their neck and then moves the knot over to the side on each one.

Speaker 32 And I was like, what is like, why?

Speaker 50 But like, that's so interesting.

Speaker 26 I bet there's a reason for that, you know?

Speaker 10 I think that's to encourage decapitation. Right.
Because once you hit the bottom of the rope and it's tension, the tension twists the rope. Yeah.

Speaker 68 And it breaks your neck.

Speaker 10 To pop that head right off.

Speaker 27 Like a kling on at a soccer game.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 13 But these guys don't know about that.

Speaker 10 You may not understand that reference, but your kids are going to love it.

Speaker 27 Rescue comes in hot.

Speaker 25 Cloaked ship, kind of like helicopter hovering in the courtyard, and a bunch of Starfleets jump out and start phasering guys and there's a great big firefight.

Speaker 42 They realize like, oh, like, okay, we're rescuing us, but we also have to get all that gear back.

Speaker 27 So Archer has to make a break for the gear and he goes back into the complex to get it.

Speaker 10 I love the coverage of this scene because it's Archer quickly dodging back through the interior of the facility in a number of these rooms where we've already been.

Speaker 10 Like the sequence is just bang bang bang of him going in getting the stuff and getting back out again I thought the the pacing of this was really well done because you can't stay out in the courtyard shooting all of this phaser V firearm stuff forever you got to break it up how did you feel about the phasers in this scene because It looked to me like almost every time someone shot one, the beam was coming out at a weird, incorrect angle.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think that's hard to do. It's hard to make look right.
I think the best in the business is Bill Tilly.

Speaker 10 When he makes a card that has two images, that beam crosses the middle in just the right spot.

Speaker 7 He does.

Speaker 43 Star Trek, get at him.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 13 He should be supervising all of your special effects at post.

Speaker 10 I know there wasn't a lot of time to prep the Sullibon cellship.

Speaker 10 for stealth and for this mission and so forth but i think they could have done the mission with far less bloodshed if they just made an example out of Gosen or one of the others with their future tech.

Speaker 27 Just one of them gets shot on gore on the gore setting.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.
One of them gets the remic treatment

Speaker 10 and then the rest of them have to set their weapons down.

Speaker 45 Because as it is, like everybody but the general basically gets stunned and he gets to watch with his jaw on the floor as the escapees like jump through a window that is hovering in midair and then disappears and they escape.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Pretty fun to see Ghosis left there, you know, as the, as the shuttle whooshes away.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 10 He's just slackjawed, wondering what the fuck.

Speaker 27 This is a nice little bit of turnaround in the next moment where Archer now thinks he has left something behind and it is Reed that finds it.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Delightful.
I bet that makes Reed feel better.

Speaker 10 So finally in the ready room, Tepal tells Archer, after a period of time, that

Speaker 10 there's an uninhabited planet nearby worthy of exploration. And boy, that sounds nice after a couple of missions like the ones that they've had.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And he's grateful to Tepal for fixing up the stealth ship and using it to rescue them.

Speaker 59 At great risk to herself.

Speaker 28 Yeah. You know?

Speaker 25 He's glad that she...

Speaker 13 took that risk and they talk about how even though they got all of the stuff that they went down there to recover, even without leaving examples of their technology behind, they've probably done a lot of damage to this society by giving them the idea that their enemies have an insanely advanced super soldier and weapons program that they need to be concerned about.

Speaker 10 This is how arms races happened.

Speaker 71 Archer's pretty sad about that.

Speaker 13 And TePaul's like, hey, don't feel that bad. At least you are willing to die to try to staunch the bleeding on this screw-up.

Speaker 10 Yeah, so doesn't that make you feel better?

Speaker 10 Amazing, right? That's not where the episode ends, though. The episode ends in Six Bay, because we got to figure out what happened to Trip Tucker's cloaked arm.

Speaker 10 It seems like it's getting back to normal, right?

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Normal, except for the hole in his hand, which he can see right through.

Speaker 59 Is this a cloakca?

Speaker 11 Hmm.

Speaker 10 You know, like sometimes when you just get a paper cut or something, like, like not a real deep or painful wound, but like just something superficial, you just can't stop fidgeting with it.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I feel like if you had a hole in your hand you could see through, you would just never stop touching it or pressing it or rubbing it or whatever.

Speaker 55 You'd be like going around like this with your hands over your eyes, like, ha ha ha, I can see all of you.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah. Yeah, you'd, you'd Guillermo del Toro

Speaker 10 yourself.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Then, like, the next diplomatic encounter they have, Archer's like, that's our chief engineer.

Speaker 20 He's recently discovered object permanence.

Speaker 10 Did you like this episode, Ben?

Speaker 55 I like this episode a lot.

Speaker 5 I thought it was a real interesting little jaunt.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 17 yeah, it's like, like, I think that without having the words prime directive, an interesting, another interesting treatment by Enterprise of that idea and them kind of grappling with what their newfound position as possessors of very advanced technology means for the other people they might encounter in the galaxy.

Speaker 19 And I thought it was a really exciting little ride through that series of ideas.

Speaker 29 How about you?

Speaker 10 I really liked it too. My big takeaway from it is that it sure did feel expensive to make, didn't it?

Speaker 36 It did, yeah.

Speaker 10 It wasn't just the compound set. It was all the little rooms in the compound.
It was how well everything was lit.

Speaker 17 Beautifully lit.

Speaker 10 It really had a polish and a richness scene to scene that you could feel.

Speaker 34 Totally.

Speaker 10 I was really impressed by it. I think it made the episode much better to feel like it had this kind of money thrown at it.
So yeah, uh, great job to production, is what I'll say.

Speaker 42 Well, do you want to see if there's anything great in the priority one inbox, Adam?

Speaker 10 There always is, Ben.

Speaker 10 Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel.

Speaker 79 Need a supplemental income.

Speaker 1 Supplemental income. Supplemental.
Supplemental.

Speaker 79 Yeah, it's extra.

Speaker 76 But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.

Speaker 79 All right, this one is of a promotional nature and it goes like this.

Speaker 66 Are you a veteran?

Speaker 40 Are you a college student in Texas?

Speaker 17 Do you have thoughts about those things?

Speaker 29 I want to talk to you.

Speaker 44 I'm also a vet and in school and I'm trying to finish my doctoral project.

Speaker 14 I'm researching the experiences of student veterans like us. By sharing your insights, you could help improve support services and resources on campuses nationwide.

Speaker 26 Participation is confidential and only takes an hour.

Speaker 22 For more information, email campusproject at pm.me.

Speaker 10 Hey, this sounds great.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I'm all about this.

Speaker 29 And it sounds like very confidential if they're using ProtonMail to get their participants.

Speaker 10 I didn't get that reference. That's funny.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I'm all about getting the resources for veteran students or otherwise once they're back home. So this sounds like a great opportunity.
Yeah. Why not participate? Especially if it's confidential.

Speaker 68 I know that we've got lots of former service people in our audience, so I hope folks will reach out.

Speaker 10 Yeah, good stuff. Ben, we've got a priority one message here from Matt in Seattle.
It's to Tom in Seattle. Here's that message.

Speaker 10 Happy birthday to my best friend slash roommate slash lover slash partner.

Speaker 63 All right.

Speaker 10 That sounds like a sequence, right?

Speaker 32 Yeah, that's the order.

Speaker 10 When we first lived together, I know my Star Trek fanaticism came down on you like a bird. A bird? Yes, a large black bird flying towards you, shrieking.

Speaker 10 Will I keep having these flashbacks?

Speaker 85 A series of disjointed images in my mind.

Speaker 85 I was frightened.

Speaker 4 I felt fear.

Speaker 85 I must rejoin the collective.

Speaker 4 Hypnocock regression.

Speaker 82 Flashbacks.

Speaker 4 Flashbacks?

Speaker 4 I am Gorg.

Speaker 4 You were Gorg.

Speaker 10 Somehow it never phased you, and that makes me the luckiest Trekie on earth. I love you, too.

Speaker 32 Wow.

Speaker 33 That's so sweet.

Speaker 25 So it sounds like Tom and Matt are both listeners, but Tom has been tolerating Matt's Trek fandom.

Speaker 10 Yeah, potentially, but if Tom ever wants to enjoy this sweet sweet and thoughtful message from Matt,

Speaker 10 he better have kept on board

Speaker 10 as a listener, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 40 Yeah, I sure hope you did the right thing, Tom, by sticking with our stupid show.

Speaker 10 Matt, I'm glad you requested that particular drop. That is one of my favorite bits of business that Wendy has made for the show.
Really fun.

Speaker 83 If you'd like to get a priority one message on the show, head to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron and set one up today.

Speaker 10 Hey, Ben.

Speaker 8 What's that, Adam?

Speaker 10 I know you found yourself a drunk Shimoda.

Speaker 63 Drunk Shimoda!

Speaker 50 I'm going to give it to Dr.

Speaker 13 Tamek.

Speaker 69 Just the like, oh yeah, we're genetically engineered super soldiers and him going like, hmm, yeah, that does sound like what they probably are.

Speaker 10 Seems very plausible in the moment.

Speaker 15 That made me laugh.

Speaker 10 Mine's going to be Reed for doing the classic Reed thing. As soon as it appears as though they will be executed, Reed in his cell is like, what do you think TePaul is going to do with our Barities

Speaker 10 and with the stack of love letters that I keep in my quarters labeled send to my lovers in case of my death?

Speaker 10 Like, it just takes no effort at all to tip him over into the gloom of, I guess, what Reed's personality is. You know? This is just Reed being Reed.

Speaker 10 I don't know, man. If I'm Archer, how much of this do you put up with?

Speaker 19 I mean, you're in jail.

Speaker 25 There's not really.

Speaker 56 It's not like you can go anywhere.

Speaker 10 Yeah, he's stuck.

Speaker 18 He starts raking his metal cup against the bars.

Speaker 22 Like, Jailer, I need to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 10 There does seem to be a bunch of scenes where folks are stuck with Reed when he's doing this.

Speaker 10 Everyone gets a turn.

Speaker 10 faith of the fart speaking of turns ben it's our turn to talk about what the next episode is going to be of enterprise and how we're going to experience the review of it yeah that's true uh the next episode is season two episode nine singularity

Speaker 10 while enterprise is surveying a black hole in a trinary star system the stellar phenomenon causes strange effects on the crew doesn't that sound like an episode where we should have strange effects dictated to us by the game of buttholes?

Speaker 77 That sounds only fair.

Speaker 10 I think so too. Gaks.biz/slash game is where you can chart our progress.

Speaker 35 Indeed.

Speaker 26 And I'm headed there right now to roll the hundred-sided die.

Speaker 14 Currently, we are on square 14.

Speaker 11 We could go anywhere.

Speaker 83 You're required to learn as you play.

Speaker 61 Roll.

Speaker 32 Ooh, we came very close to a square Adam.

Speaker 14 We jumped right past looking at each other during onto square 67.

Speaker 7 Tula!

Speaker 48 Did I win?

Speaker 55 Hardly.

Speaker 26 That's a regular old episode for us.

Speaker 10 Also close to the decontamination chamber episode where we would be forced to record while only wearing underwear.

Speaker 52 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 And this being a December 30th episode, I guess I'm also glad that we didn't land on a power hour episode or something.

Speaker 10 So close to New Year's, right?

Speaker 79 Yeah, yeah, we might want to be cleaning up our acts in the new year.

Speaker 10 Yeah, seems like it.

Speaker 8 Well, thanks to everyone who gave this episode a listen. If you liked it, consider leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcasting app you prefer.

Speaker 5 Or leave like a comment if that's the thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 61 Whatever it is helps.

Speaker 10 Sure does. Speaking of helps.

Speaker 10 Takes a village to make this show.

Speaker 3 A complex, if you will.

Speaker 10 Shout out to our great producer, Wendy Britty.

Speaker 17 The uh,

Speaker 10 I'm trying to think of a James Bond bad guy character that she could be.

Speaker 10 Who's the one that throws his hat?

Speaker 31 Oh, uh, Oddjob?

Speaker 13 Is that Oddjob?

Speaker 10 That Wendy would be Oddjob, too, huh?

Speaker 76 Because she throws her hat?

Speaker 10 As a producer that does so much.

Speaker 79 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 Hard to get headshots on job because he's he's a shorter character than the than the others in the game rob adler uh also steps in to produce some shows sometimes but mostly he's our social media manager along with bill tilley keep things on the rails in all the places yeah follow at greatest trek on all the accounts uh repost a post if you if you see it and like it yeah that helps too

Speaker 79 we've got to thank adam ragusia who made our parody of dion warren's original theme for star Trek Enterprise, and Dark Materia, who made the original Picard song.

Speaker 79 And with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise.

Speaker 5 An episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise, or I guess, like maybe that's the one where we roll a weird square because the

Speaker 76 singularity is having a weird effect on us.

Speaker 10 See, that makes sense.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there's no weird effects in this episode.

Speaker 79 The regular one.

Speaker 61 Right.

Speaker 61 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Happy New Year.

Speaker 10 Woo!

Speaker 10 Make it so.

Speaker 10 Captain, Jon Lu Picard of the U.S.

Speaker 10 Captain Jonathan Picard of the U.S.

Speaker 10 Make it so

Speaker 18 Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows supported directly by you.