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Here's to the finest crew in Starlink.
When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.
This is a parody.
Paramount wants the song.
Welcome to the Greatest Generation.
It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.
I'm Ben Harrison.
I'm Adam Pranica.
Adam.
Recording this on my 41st birthday.
Everyone remembers their 41st.
You and I are big fans of the show Doughboys.
I've been a little bit off.
I'm not like up to date on the show currently just because I haven't had as many spare cycles as normal.
But I love that show.
Now I know you're busy because no one has more cycles for podcast listening than you in my life.
Yeah, I mean, we love that show.
Those guys are really funny.
Somebody on social media was posting this morning about nick weiger's famous comedy bang bang bit where every year he goes back to comedy bang bang and does a new sequel to the monster mash
and uh
he i guess like remarked at some point about you know working on sequel number seven monster orgy Yeah, while his brother was welcoming like the third child into their family.
Yeah.
And I was just, I mean, I'm not going to compare myself to those guys.
Those guys are the best, much funnier than I will ever be.
But I was like, at least I have a family also.
You know, I may be doing bad at family and bad at podcasting, but at least I have both.
That's the takeaway from this story.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
It's possible to have everything if you just lean in.
I feel like this is some sort of 41st birthday bat signal that you're shining, and it's just like
scenes of your disappointments.
Like on top of the light, there's like a shape that's changing to depict them.
Right.
And here we are.
Wow.
It's just a sphincter getting smaller and smaller.
If only there wasn't a really important Dodger game tonight that I made plans to watch with my wife, I'd head over there and take you out for your birthday.
But that's how it goes when you're in a committed relationship, man.
Wife stuff overall.
Yeah.
You're one of the legendary wife guys, Adam.
Oh, yeah.
I would never say that.
What do you have planned?
Oh, we're going to go out to dinner at just like a...
a nice place in the neighborhood.
At her favorite restaurant.
I looked up the place in the neighborhood that we're going to go to, and apparently they got protested for being a gentrification restaurant when they first opened, but then they got really good reviews, and so they're doing okay.
Did that make you a little jealous that your home didn't get a little bit of that?
Oh,
I'm sure my home is due for that at some point.
Maybe slip them a card or some contact information when you're there tonight.
Yeah, if your haters ever drop in, make sure they know about me.
You're like, speaking of leftovers, why don't you slide some of those my way?
I live in a house that's the exact same layout, but slightly smaller and in a slightly less well-off neighborhood than the one I grew up in.
So I feel like, if anything, I'm backsliding.
Semilateral moves.
We are lucky to have made those, I think.
In this age of backsliding.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's important, though, Ben, to stop for some self-care every once in a while.
Stop for some maintenance.
Yeah.
Get the screws tightened,
get the holes that have been blown into your side patched up.
That's what this episode of Star Trek Enterprise is all about.
No one has declared a birthday on the crew for this one, but this seems like one of those moments.
You stop and you repair and you take stock.
Much like a birthday, Ben.
It's Star Trek Enterprise Season 2, Episode 4,
Dead Stop.
You know,
when your ship is very badly harmed by a mine, you could call that a struggle.
You could call it a mine struggle or a mine comp,
if you will.
And this is not going great for the entrepreneur tripping an archer out, assessing the damages.
Could you like lean forward a little bit so I can see the back of your neck?
It's been four days since they got away from those ROMs and I loved getting to see even more beauty shots of this blown-apart hull section.
I want to talk to you about this.
We have seen damaged Enterprise over the years, over the decades.
Yeah.
In a couple of different ways.
Not all the ways.
We have seen, you know, Star Trek VI through and through torpedo.
Sure.
We've seen Star Trek 3 Enterprise pull into the starbase, showing off the big scar in the Grundle.
We've seen six or seven different versions of the Enterprise D explode in that one episode.
What do you think of
Rim of the Dish damage as it compares to all the rest?
I think it is striking and upsetting to see the way that it's like blown apart like a can of tuna with an M80 inside or something.
We always did watermelons when I was a kid.
You did tuna?
Yeah, you got to do tuna.
That's horrific.
The neighborhood cats love it.
And that was what really sold it on an 11-year-old Adam Pranica who was getting up to no good.
It meant we would go home not smelling like fireworks at all.
It was a thin layer of atomized tuna to mask the cordite.
Yeah, no one would ever suspect.
Yeah, I like it a lot.
I wonder if the Apple Computer Corporation considered suing them for trademark infringement, the way this bite is taken out of the hull.
Over the years, there's thankfully not been a lot of this, but like
you know, you see the scene of the commercial airliner with a window that's popped out, and maybe someone has been unfortunate enough to get like partially sucked through it or whatever.
And like back in the 70s and 80s, this is far more commonplace.
You had cargo doors flying off and roofs flying off of planes and stuff.
I always ever ironically an era where almost no one was partially sucked.
Almost everyone in the 70s and 80s was making it to completion otherwise.
But airplanes, you know?
Yeah, I mean, how did you end up here?
The thing I always think about when I read about those events, sure, I think about like the main person who was injured or killed, but I think about the seat next to the seat.
And when I see the Enterprise looking like this, I'm like, someone's quarter shares a wall with that.
What is that person's life like for the last four days?
Because that's the story here.
It's been four days since the mine exploded.
Yeah.
You're trying to figure out how to triage the situation.
Archer and Trip are in the shuttle pod taking a closer look.
Like, is anyone on the other side of that wall?
Oh, man.
I would hate that.
You know what's fucked up about me?
You're spinning out this premise, and I'm thinking about survivor's guilt and just how comfortable that would fit me.
Give me some of that.
Oh, like you'd volunteer for the, like, if someone were uncomfortable sleeping next to that wall, you'd be like, give it to me.
No, I want to be the person sleeping next to that wall and be like, man, it should have been me.
Yeah.
I I mean, probably
four of the best nights of sleep a person could have would be Ben sleeping next to the cutout
of this enterprise.
There's hard vacuum right there.
You like move your cot closer to that wall.
There, that's better.
I like how it gives me the shivers because it's so fucking cold on that side of the room.
Has to be.
Yeah.
This is going to take four months to fix if they're lucky.
Did you think the show would pivot to this as
an overarching storyline?
This excited me.
This kind of turns into Voyager, but just way slower and in the alpha quadrant.
Like, it's still like an absolutely arduous journey back to Starfleet.
It's just way lower speeds.
It worked for another great series.
Yeah.
Archer makes a tough call here, having heard from Trip that they're really not going to be able to do any more missioning with the ship in the condition it's in.
And that is to make a distress call of their own.
Captain, we don't have enough shuttle pod doors to put over the opening.
We already wasted two of them.
We only have 65 of them left, and we would need at least 75 or 80 to cover all this hole.
Did you get the sense that this wasn't just a speed tape thing?
Like, like they were like, oh, we can't go as fast as we used to because of the hole.
And I was like, well, I mean, is that the deal?
Or is it like other systems?
Can you just not go fast if you've got a hole in the hull?
Yeah, I mean, I didn't get that part.
I don't know, man.
You know, when you like, get on an airplane and you look out the window and you see like tape on the on the engine of the airplane.
Hey, dude, do you want to get there or not?
Speed tape.
Is that what that is?
That's the catchphrase for speed tape.
Okay.
Yeah, I just, I don't know.
Maybe other side of the bulkhead guy is like, I mean, I like it a little blown apart.
Don't tape it up, you know?
What's weird about how my mind works is when I look out of the window, the window seat that I have selected for myself, because I'm a window man.
Tim Ma'am, and you're an aisle man.
I am much more upset by a dirty plane than I am a speed taped plane.
I one time wrote Alaska Airlines after a trip back when I used to fly Alaska a lot out of Seattle.
Like, everything on board the aircraft, great.
The service was good.
Everything's clean on the inside.
But, like, when the flaps go like 50% flaps, and you see all the places that have never seen rain at all, I guess,
and like dust bunnies and shit pour out.
This is what a maniac I am.
I actually wrote Alaska Airlines customer service, and I was like, hey, I was on flight derp to derp.
And I just got to tell you, it doesn't give me a lot of confidence flying on your product when the airplanes look so shabby from the outside.
Man.
Let's hose those things off.
Yeah.
I mean, what fun, right?
Get up on that crane thing with the high-pressure washing system.
Yeah.
They used to de-ice them.
You know, when a pilot retires, they'll get the like crisscross airport fire department fountain on the taxi back to the gate.
Yeah.
Maybe it just says that Alaska Airlines doesn't have a lot of close to retirement pilots.
It's just a lot of younger folks, a lot of Captain Chads and so forth.
Right, yeah.
A lot of guys that have freshly cycled into
flying commercial.
I'm your Captain Josh.
First Officer Stephanie.
Everybody's like getting a little nervous in their seat, like
pulling their lap belt a little bit tighter.
I'd feel the same about First Officer Adam.
That doesn't sound right to me either.
No,
sounds dangerous.
Remember how Reed got his leg all fucked up in the last episode?
That's right.
He got stabbed by a metal mind tripod.
He is in physical therapy with Dr.
Flox, who is not only the ship's physician, but also providing PT services.
Gonna be another couple of weeks before Reed can return to duty.
Everybody's fucked up.
The ship's fucked up.
Yeah.
Situation is not good.
If you're wondering, like, why
they don't just call for help or whatever, they can't communicate over a long distance either.
And that, like, it's, it's compounding issues all the way down.
I liked the feeling that calling for help was a little bit of a gamble, though.
Like, you, you don't know who you're going to get out here, and it might be somebody that's like looking for a ship that can't defend itself as well.
It's why the moment it is decided that general distress call is the course of action, you really feel that.
You kind of feel it in your gut, like, ugh,
anyone could show up.
It's like having a house party and leaving your front door open.
Yeah, you really want to make sure the people were actually invited.
They get a response on a very bad signal from some tellerites, and they can't really make out what they're being told, but something, something repair station
might be in there, and they get a set of coordinates that takes them three and a half days to get to.
And we pull up sort of ominously based on the music cue to a space station that does not answer their hails.
We'd be grateful for any assistance you could offer.
Please respond.
It's a space station that looks like a Klingon flashlight
when you first see it.
Yeah, except for it's you know horizontal, which would be useless to a Klingon.
It's got to be vertical for them.
Oh, really?
Sometimes you feel like you can't go fully vertical.
Maybe it's just
a stick out.
You're just saying they're like lying horizontally on the bed.
How would they use this?
You know, I haven't thought this through all the way, Ben, the way you clearly have.
Ligaries, just a
This is an aspect to open world video games too, right?
Like you've rolled up on something totally different.
Yeah.
It's up to you to explore it.
See if there's a weird old hat in there or a gold bar or anything.
Like this is just yours to figure out.
They start scanning it and it's like it's cold and it's got like a weird atmosphere inside.
It's not answering the doorbell.
Doesn't seem like it's a big enough station to provide service even if it had a staff.
Yeah.
And then this bright light washes over them, and that itself is also a scan.
And suddenly the station starts reconfiguring itself to accommodate the girthsome saucer section that the entrepreneur NX01 has to offer.
It goes from like dual
fleshlight configuration down to the human config, which is just the one shaft.
Down to mouth.
Yeah.
So Kafleshlight opens wide enough to accept the Enterprise.
And almost immediately, this isn't the only change in this station.
Like the air changes inside the station to something that's more breathable for their people.
And Classic Archer, like his main problem is that no one is communicating with him about this.
No one's getting on his folksy level.
That's his problem.
They need to work a little on their hospitality.
I don't know if it was just the music cues making me suspicious, but it made me very unnerved that the three most important people on the ship go just like get right in the airlock and walk over to the station the second it connects.
Did it seem to you like that was their intention from the jump?
It seemed to me like it was a like, okay, we got to go greet when the tube is extended.
And when no one is there, it kind of felt like, I guess we go through the tube to see if maybe like
I wonder if culturally this happens a lot.
Like, the tube between ships is extended.
Who's going to be the one to transit the tube and meet at the doorway?
I guess we got to go over there.
Is the thing?
Oh, it's a passive-aggressive species.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then they get down the tube and they're like, what are you doing?
You didn't take your shoes off?
You got to take your shoes off.
When they get over there,
it feels very past science fiction ship
and station aesthetic, aesthetic, right?
It felt very true.
2001.
Bingo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love this look, and I love this look next to contemporary Star Trek.
It's always cool when they're able to do this as well as they did here, where it like the aesthetics are so different that it just makes it feel so it's very human feeling, but also very alien feeling at the same time.
Yeah.
Passive aggression is a great description to give to this, Ben, because as soon as they get over there, they see a projection of their ship with all of their damage circled in lipstick like a scene out of nip tuck
like here are your problem areas is what the station is suggesting and they are totally baffled by how accurate the probing was that gives them like it's not just the superficial blown-apart saucer stuff it's like a laundry list of damage and things that they should be maintaining about their ship.
It includes the damage that was done to Malcolm.
That's up on one of the screens.
The ship wasn't the only thing they probed.
All the screens are in English, which is a real trip.
If you've ever been to an unscrupulous service station where you're just there to get the one thing fixed and you get the, like,
you get the laundry list of other stuff you got to do, this is how it feels a little bit, especially when the idea of payment is discussed almost immediately.
I immediately recognized this computer voice, voice of Roxanne Dawson, also the director of this episode.
How about that?
Your inquiry was not recognized.
She's hitchcocking a little bit.
I know, I like that.
I wonder which came first.
If they were like, hey, Roxanne, you want to come do a computer voice?
And she was like, I'll do it if I can direct an episode.
Or if she was directing and they were like, oh, I guess we got to cast someone for computer voice.
And she was like, just pay me an extra whatever.
I would like to know that.
Yeah.
Next STLV, hopefully.
Yeah.
There are a number of payment methods offered.
Cash, grass, or plasma
is on the list.
I was surprised that Archer didn't try and haggle.
We know he can haggle a little bit.
Like, he should have been like 200 liters of wart plasma.
How about like 150?
Oh, man.
I don't see that about him.
He did some haggling in season one.
I think the thing about this moment that
may shake the jangly keys at you out of like sort of noting
the weirdness of a bunch of this is the speed at which the repairs are promised because so much of the episode spends so much time early on going from years to months and thinking about repairs in those terms that when they finally get like 32 hours of total repair time, it's sort of a mind eraser when it comes to like the need to haggle something like that, given that you were just at a point where you were rationalizing years of time wasted on this.
I think it just gets you repair drunk a little bit.
Like, oh, fuck, yeah, repair it.
Woo!
Captain Archer is like mulling this over and to Paula and Trip are both like, it's a good deal, Captain.
You should take the deal.
I noticed nothing on the list about my nipples.
I guess we're just gonna leave those where they are.
I guess that's not considered damage by whatever system runs this place.
You're never gonna let that go, are you?
They won't even need to loan a car.
That's how quickly this repair is gonna get done.
And that was sort of what I thought the other cylinder would be for.
Oh.
Like it weaves up like a spider, like it weaves up a brand new ship for them to hang out on.
But no, there's like a waiting area
that they can hang out in.
And like...
I was expecting like coffee and newspapers and popcorn and all the rest.
And you kind of get a version of that here.
Yeah, there's like a hand hand-wash car wash in my neighborhood that has a waiting area like that.
And it's like, I've like gone into it thinking, oh, maybe I'll wait in here.
And then I like see what things they have thought to put out.
And it's all things that like
people obsessed with cars and nothing else would be interested in.
And I'm like, oh, I guess that makes sense.
This is not like my bag, personally.
Does it have like the bun coffee maker?
It absolutely has the bun coffee maker and then like, you know, like glossy magazines with bikini ladies standing in front of cars, you know.
Does the bun company still exist?
Bunomatic Corporation, bun.com.
Wow.
Ben, I'm going to bun.com.
We're going in.
Oh, look at these.
Wow, they do not look like they used to 40 years ago.
They got rid of the orange.
The orange is what I love the most.
The orange is for the decaf, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's too bad.
Do not go to bun.xx, though.
That's
a Princess Leia fantasy site.
Yeah.
Would it help if I got out and pushed?
What would you order if you were confronted with
like first-time replicator?
What's your test order?
So as they walk into the recreation facility, it does just seem like a big empty room.
Like when you're in a Star Trek context and somebody says recreation facility, like your mind immediately goes to free love sex place,
but it's just tables and chairs.
And they walk in and they say, no water?
And what do you know?
A bunch of water appears.
And that's not all.
Am I remembering this wrong?
I didn't think that Vulcans drank cold water.
So when TePaul requests ice water, I was like, that's not TePaul.
She's been body snatched.
Yeah, it felt a little haunted housey to me at this point for reasons unintentional.
Wow.
I didn't know that about Vulcans.
Maybe she's like.
I could just be projecting.
I don't know.
Maybe she's been human-pilled and she's just like doing all of the human things now.
Fucking Trip Tucker sees a replicated glass of water and goes for something a little more complex.
One pan fried catfish.
I would never order a fish dish from a replicator as the first trial balloon of food.
I for sure would.
There you go.
Yeah.
I have no fears when it comes to Strange Restaurant.
But it's like a little unnerving, right?
Because they're like, so they like got the DNA of catfish out of our database, presumably, when they scanned our ship and the recipe for pan-fried catfish also
so
huh i guess they really scanned the shit out of us this scene would have lasted an extra couple minutes if the character of adam pranica was there because the thing that i locked in on immediately was did you see that lime they even did the curly lime thing where you you cut a part of the circle out and you twist it and it looks like that fun lime garnish it's a very cheesecake factory plating it is it's good It has cornbread on the plate.
It's a meat-and-three, but with catfish.
Yeah.
How about this next scene, Adam?
Weren't you excited to see half of an exocomp?
Always am.
Are you sure this thing knows what it's doing?
This repurposed prop is
shining a light on Malcolm's injured leg and repairing it on the molecular level.
Flox is really excited.
He wants an exocomp.
I mean, I wonder if Flox is excited to see this thing because it it means he might be freed up to take a three-day nap or whatever
as he was interrupted from his planned nap not that long ago.
This thing is great, but as he's expressing his desirousness of it, it beams away back to the station.
You better be damn sure that this station understands which holes should remain and which holes should get shut.
Otherwise, this episode goes in a very different direction from here.
Dr.
Fox, I can't shit.
There's no hole for it to come out.
There's just little tiny curlicues of shit coming out my arm nipples, because that's the only place it can find to come out.
I'm like that Play-Doh toy from decades ago where you just take the lever
and tiny poop curls shoot out of my nipples.
I strain as hard as I can.
Biomechanically, it makes no sense.
Why would it go all the way up to my forearms?
I gotta take a real good shower after my shits now.
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 plan 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 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 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 Lawrence.
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.
Reads back to 100%.
He can go back to duty.
And
in the captain's ready room, DePaul reports to him that the repairs are going great.
They've been given like a schedule, and there's parts of the ship that people will need to leave so that the station can get its work done.
It's like got these giant canadarms fixing everything in phases, and it's really doing an absolutely fantastic job.
Like, there was a squeaky floor plate in Archer's ready room that's
not squeaking anymore.
That's kind of making Trip look like a piece of shit, but
they're really pleased with the work so far.
They don't do this a lot in this episode, but every time you get a scene with a couple characters talking, and in the background, the observation window of the work happening.
Those are my favorite compositions in this episode.
Like, I love incidentally watching the action happen while we're listening to character dialogue.
It's good stuff.
Because it's like a...
a complex special effects shot that would have been the whole shot in any other Star Trek series up till now, and now they can afford to do it just as incidental stuff going on in the background.
Archer isn't feeling the sense of relief or accomplishment that you might expect a captain to feel when the repairs to their ship are taking 32 hours instead of 10 years or whatever.
He is suspicious.
He doesn't like the exchange rate.
This feels very airporty to him instead of just like going to a bank.
He's got those two good to be true vibes happening.
These repairs are one hell of a bargain at only 200 liters of warp plasma, don't you think?
Hey, another thing?
Whatever happened to the station's inhabitants?
What's going on?
Nobody seems to be over there.
It seems to be just working automatically and he wants to know like who built this thing and TePaul's like maybe they were just altruists that put it out here to like help people and they don't want to be thanked directly because they're they're private people.
Did you ever consider that, Archer?
How many times in an open world video game have you just found something extremely valuable and that's all it was?
Hey, neat.
A very powerful weapon out in this field.
There was the Simpsons game that was kind of, it was like Grand Theft Auto, but set in Springfield.
And one of the little ad-libs that the Lisa character would say as you drove around and like collected power-ups was, who put this here?
Yeah.
Perfectly stated.
You know what?
I think you unlocked something that is going to be useful from here on out.
And when I think about Enterprise up until here, Archer's kind of the Lisa Simpson of the show, isn't he?
He really is.
I mean, clarinets and not saxophones, but otherwise, yes.
Yeah.
I thought it was very funny that like we smash cut from him expressing deep concern and suspicion of what this station is and if it has an ulterior motive to like everyone from the crew chilling in the recreation department of the station.
I kind of wonder what percentage of crew people is over there or not.
Like this episode did a really good job of the too good to be true vibe.
Like if you watch Star Trek for any length of time, I think you see all these people not on the ship.
Like, I'm looking out the window wondering when that ship's going to start backing out of the station, you know?
Yeah.
Like at what point does the Starship Mine storyline take over?
Exactly, yeah.
Tripp and Reed are talking as they hang out and eat their replicated food about, like, what is up with this station?
Because it seems like it should have like stupendous computing power given what it's capable of, but there's no volume of the station that seems big enough to house a computer capable of that.
Tripp would very much like to sneak around the station and figure this mystery out.
Yeah.
They're very covetous of the computer that runs this thing.
Coming from their piece of shit ship and computer that takes up a giant room, they're like, this thing probably
could fit in my pants pocket.
Let's try to find it.
So their path to do this is through air vents, and they pull down like a literal MERV 8 home air conditioning filter.
That was really fun to see.
I'm really deep into home air filtration at the moment.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It's very familiar to me.
What do you use it on your home air filters?
Because I was doing 13s, and then I read that that can shorten the lifespan of your air handler, so I went down to eights.
We had the same experience.
The HVAC guy who was here saw what I was working with, and he was like, you tried to choke HVAC.
He's like breathing through potato.
Yeah, and knocked me down like six merv units yeah like uh like where it's got to be so air is more free-flowing because you got the co-way air filter also so you let that do the filtering sure the filtering at at floor level right down where down where you spend most of your time
can't tell you how nice it is to come to and
be breathing so well.
It's like being in a national park when you come to
crisp air.
Sure is.
Yeah, so they go through this Jeffries tube.
Meanwhile, we cut over to Mayweather's quarters where he is looking a bit of all right with his shirt off.
Yeah, I mean, Reed pulled Trip up into the ducks.
And speaking of pull-ups, it's never not pull-up day for shirtless Mayweather.
Oh, my God.
If we have seen him shirtless before,
I must have blocked it out of my mind because it was too sexy.
Holy mackerel.
Yeah, looking pretty cut here.
He gets summoned somewhere that he was under the impression was off limits by the captain.
We cut back to the Jeffreys tube where Tripp and Reed trigger some kind of proximity detector and they get transported right to the bridge.
They come to on the floor, Ben.
Where the air breathes easy and good.
Right at TePaul's feet.
Not a great look for them, I don't think.
No.
Yeah.
They're all like grubby, like they've been up to no good.
Yeah.
You know.
Mayweather's got to go report to the launch deck where Archer told him to be.
I mean, you'll listen to your captain when he tells you to go somewhere, but Archer's not there.
What is there is a scorch mark on the wall panel in the shape of a heart.
I could not unsee the heart part.
As if that was part of the confusing message.
That also not part of what's being conveyed here at all.
I'm bringing a lot of weird baggage to this episode.
Archer's romantic overture in the form of wharf lightning.
Yeah.
Speaking of affection, not a lot of that being given to Reed and Trip Tucker in the next scene.
Captain Archer only has a heart for Mayweather, I guess.
Archer is pissed about this stunt that they've pulled.
He's doing that real police sergeant thing at them.
Right.
They could have been killed.
They could have been beamed out into space for all this computer new.
And between Nipplegate and the dieharding around, kind of a bad reputation with these two.
Your senior officers, you're supposed to be setting an example for the rest of the crew.
Restricted to quarters until further notice, but also, like, I'm so curious, what did you see in that tube that we weren't supposed to be in?
Yeah, to just go straight to grounding and not getting kind of a report on this.
A little bit of a missed opportunity, Captain Archer.
But he gets called down to the shuttle bay where he finds Flox tending to Mayweather's dead body, RSVP Travis.
I'm looking at my wristwatch that doesn't tell time.
Instead, it tells me what season and episode of Star Trek we're in.
And I'm like, kill Mayweather.
Yeah.
Like, I totally get it.
Oh, man.
Let's do it.
Archer wants answers.
He's been having a bad day overall.
He just had to put Drippin' Reed on ice, and now he's like lost a crew member.
I was just thinking of Mayweather's,
like the version of Mayweather's funeral in the 21st century, where there's the hollow Mayweather giving his own eulogy.
And he's like, I just became friends with all of you, and it just occurs to me that we don't really know each other that well.
Well, here's a little bit about me.
And then everyone just starts like filing out of the cargo bay.
I'm trying to beat traffic.
No disrespect intended.
Not interested, Mayweather.
That's what this show feels.
Yeah, so they're going to look into how he could possibly have found himself in this section that was supposed to be off-limits, and they're going to put security guards in all the other sections that are off-limits.
But he also goes over and demands answers from the computer on board the station, and it gives its classic answer.
Yeah.
Inquiry not recognized.
With how
Reed was repaired, were you on the level that Archer was over there to see if, like, by giving a few more buckets of plasma, maybe he could pay for a Mayweather body repair?
Right.
Mayweather Resurrection.
Yeah, it did seem like a...
a path this episode could take.
And then from here, Mayweather just isn't quite right, and you're waiting for the big moment with Mayweather.
Suddenly, Mayweather becomes extremely interesting for the rest of the series.
Whoa.
That station can do everything.
He's not really saying anything differently or doing much more than he always has.
And I don't know any more about him as a character.
And yet, a thousand percent more interesting that he could be like some weird construction by a malevolent computer who's just ready to snap at any moment.
Man, and he's like the sleeper agent that they're just accepting the presence of.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
There you go.
Archer is having an experience with this station computer that is much like me, like continuously pressing zero when I'm trying to get through to like a car rental company or something.
Oh, yeah.
I need to talk to a person.
The system doesn't respond.
There was like a weird like POV of the the computer looking at him, like that was fun going ape in there.
I know you know why you do that.
It's because if you have one actor in a scene, like talking to the sky or whatever,
it's really difficult to create a sequence where you're just like cutting to a different camera angle of that one person.
I think changing POV is actually really useful in a moment like that.
Totally.
And it makes it feel like he's being watched in a way that is creepy.
Like it's it, that's such a one-way experience.
Totally.
So, yeah, it it serves to unnerve.
In Six Bay, we get a phlox topsy sequence.
Yeah.
Dr.
Flox is like, oh, my scalpel arm is tired just cutting through all of that muscle.
All of that smooth, smooth muscle developed over years of working out.
Maybe I should put him back in
that cylindrical scanner and set it to low and slow just to like break down
some of the fibers, make it a little bit easier to get through.
Sometimes before I do a surgical procedure, I've got to shave the patient down.
Not this time.
Pre-shaved.
Hairless.
Sexy.
Hoshi comes in, and we actually do learn.
a thing about Travis's personality that came as a total shock.
He's sort of the cloonie of the crew, always playing pranks on people.
Classic learning about it after you're dead kind of situation here.
Hoshi's great.
Like, she's upset in a way that you need her to be, but not the way you need anyone to be at this time.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like, it is very specifically her.
And then Dr.
Flox notices something weird about Mayweather's body scan that's not purely titillating.
There's something going on in there.
There's something going on in Mayweather's room as well.
Archer is checking with Reed, who has
been trying to figure out what could have caused Travis to leave his quarters during some off time.
He never used the comm system.
There is a letter home that expresses dismay over Archer canceling breakfast plans with him.
Oh, Archer, you fucking piece of shit.
Archer just can't get his arms around the whole breakfast with the crew thing.
How does he keep repeatedly fucking this up?
Oh, man.
I mean, like, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right?
I've heard that.
Maybe Archer's insane.
Maybe we should stop continuously releasing Star Trek podcast episodes, if that's the case.
Just because we're doing an episode about a character does not mean that we are supporting their behavior.
Okay.
Okay.
RTs do not equal endorsements.
But Flox calls up and he's like, hey, weird news.
This is not Mayweather actual.
This is a perfect down-to-the-atom
copy of Mayweather.
And he knows this because he vaccinated the whole crew against something.
And the vaccine contains these microbes that should be alive.
They should have survived the kind of warfare lightning that killed Mayweather, but they're all dead inside his birdie.
And so Flox believes that this is just there to make them think that Mayweather is dead when Mayweather may have, in fact, been taken.
Yeah.
Everyone we injected with the vaccine became autistic, and this Mayweather isn't.
So
that's how we know.
The one other guest character on this show, in addition to Roxanne Dawson, was RFK Jr.
Right.
Amazing because, like, when Dr.
Flox calls shocked by what he's found, I was like, his heart's beating or something.
Right.
Again, I'm expecting like zombie shit.
Right.
Because we're recording this episode around Halloween.
It's the spooky season.
Yeah.
From our perspective, it's the spooky season.
So Archer's like, well, Tripp and Reed actually like got further into exploring this station than any of us did.
So he would like them to talk to him about this break-in and whether they can reproduce their results, but more successfully this time.
Yeah.
So the repairs are just about wrapped up and Tripp shows up in the core of the station with a bunch of barrels of warp plasma.
But he'd like to, he'd like to speak with the manager.
about the quality of some of this work.
He is doing a great job carroning out out on this station while Archer and TePaul and Reed start breaking back into the jail that is this station.
And the way this works is Reed goes down the tunnel that he and Trip were in when they got beamed out and triggers the alarm while Archer and TePaul are scanning so that they can see where the trigger is and shoot it with their phasers, which definitely does not cause the station to have an alarm.
Do you think when they're working out the plan for this mission, everyone is in agreement that Reed will be beamed away?
Or do you think Reed is surprised to have that happen to him, leaving TePaul and Archer to complete?
As soon as he goes, I was like, do you volunteer to be a part of this if you know you're the guy?
Because I feel like that guy's going out into space.
Like, the first beam is a warning.
The second beam probably isn't going to work out well for you.
It's a fool me twice beam the second time.
Yeah, it fooled me.
We can't get fooled again.
But no, it beams him right back to the bridge.
Sure does.
Same boot black smeared on his cheeks.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Archer and TePaul do, in fact, get through and
they get the iris to open back up and they make it into what should be the computer core, but is actually just like one of those high-density urban parking lots that stacks cars vertically.
Yeah.
But for bodies.
Pretty great.
It's kind of a the matrix situation without the goop.
Yeah.
Like very little lube in this matrix.
Dry matrix is what this is.
The bodies are in those clear like glass cup type things and you can hear them all squeaking and moving.
You just you clip a couple of cables in there and that would let the bodies hit the floor, wouldn't it?
It really would.
Yeah.
Guess what?
Everyone's alive in here, kind of.
Yeah.
Their brains are being networked together, connected to this computer in there, and they find Mayweather hanging in what would be like the top bunk if this were bunk beds.
They've got a scram or the station is going to get cranky with them.
So they like unplug him and
they're trying to like fire phasers to like blow a hole in the wall, but the station cannot arms start getting grabby, and the ship is stuck, and its command functions are starting to get overridden, but crucially not its torpedo firing functions, because I guess the station doesn't consider those to be a threat.
Would you?
I think the station is safe from torpedoes.
That would be my presumption, also.
Yeah.
So they get Travis to Flox's arms, and Archer runs back up to the bridge and they set off the warp plasma.
It wasn't just cans of innocent warp plasma.
It was a bomb, baby.
They set the station up the bomb.
I think most things can be turned into improvised bombs on Star Trek.
It's true.
And it goes big.
Boom goes the plasma, but I really love the sequence of this because like there's an initial reaction that explodes, but they they really got to wait for the bigger boom.
And I like that there's that moment of pause where you're like, ah, is this thing going to go up or not?
It does.
The biggest boom happens.
The trouble is, Enterprise still can't escape.
Is this the like warp plasma doesn't melt steel beams thing that causes the delay?
It might be.
Yeah.
Once this station has you in its claws, you can't break free because this station is made of metal
and the station is strong.
I don't even know why the scientists make them.
So they do find one thing in the universe that is vulnerable to their torpedoes, and it is the Canadarms still grabbing them.
So they break free, and the repair station blows big.
And we cut down to Six Bay, where we're checking in with Mayweather.
He's doing good.
He's going to be okay.
It's explained to him, perhaps like reiteratively for us viewing at home that it was trying to upgrade its own processing power by adding a human brain to its network.
I was like, yeah, I think we got that.
I don't think we need further exposition about what was going on.
There is a real desire to get the crew off the hook for leaving those bodies in there.
Yeah.
Like a real, it was too late for them.
We had to save ourselves kind of reasoning.
Right.
That is pretty heavy-handed.
Like, they could say half as much here, and it would be believable.
That they say all of this makes it kind of seem unbelievable to me.
I noticed a Klingon among the aliens in that computer core,
and I am here to say that severe brain damage need not hinder the life prospects of a member of the Klingon Empire.
I am here to say Kronos TSA
is hiring.
Look at all of these worthy candidates.
If you've had a Klipjo device attached to your head for several years, you might want to consider applying.
A lot of interesting stuff in this episode up until the final scene when the station starts repairing itself and we are given a Twilight Zone ending.
This episode ended so much better than I thought it would.
It really stuck the landing.
Fuck yeah.
What a fun moment.
Agreed.
Did you like the whole episode, though, Ben?
I really did like this episode.
I think there's like a couple of silly parts and I'd just say like I wanted more of a horror feel when they get inside the computer core like it like it's dirty and rusty and ropey but I wanted it to be like fucking disgusting or something like or like more upsetting in some other way I it just didn't quite nail that part but yeah that ending man like it's hard to say anything bad about an episode that ends as well as this one does There are a couple of ways you could do that.
You could go like with the gore of it, or you could just go with the trauma.
Right.
And this episode kind of decides neither.
Even through like the way that they shoot the bodies, like you're always seeing the feet and you're seeing like an implied amount of tubes and shit going into skulls.
And the fact that the room is dirty, I think, does a lot of that work too.
Like, it's clearly no one gives a shit about the people who are stored in here.
Right.
It's like, we'll keep a mop bucket and also all of these bodies.
Kind of sensibility to it.
And that, that's upsetting.
But like, I wonder if you had some twitches of the bodies to help it a little bit.
Like, I think there's just a little bit of finish work to be done to make this scene get a little, like, veer a little toward the grotesque, you know?
I mean, Star Trek is not afraid to do an homage to another sci-fi thing.
And if it had felt like the atmosphere processor on LV426, when they find all of the...
people from the station.
That's such a great observation.
Add three zeros to the amount of people there.
Like, we're already understanding that the station is much bigger than the areas that they're given access to.
Show me the fucking warehouse of 10,000 different alien species.
Like the way that you saw the Borg ship from the inside.
Yeah.
You could do a composite like that that I think works.
Yeah.
So I think that that's my one punch up, but a really fun episode and like such a good job of getting out of the show grinding to a halt that the dilemmas of the previous episode could have represented.
I think they did a great job with it.
Yeah.
I agree.
I mean, I like the business and bullshit of space travel, and we get so little of that in Star Trek.
Like some of my favorite episodes are like the TNG episode where they do the Baryon sweep.
Like if you're going to be traveling in space for long distances over long periods of time, you must do the maintenance of space travel.
And often the maintenance of space travel kicks off a new and weird adventure and this was that kind of genre within a genre
give me one of these every season in a weird way every time i dug it quite a bit
i dig priority one messages and i'm dying to get in there and see what we got at them all right ben
priority one message from starfleet coming in on secured channel
need a supplemental income supplemental income supplemental supplemental yeah it's extra but the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.
First one here is of a promotional nature, and it goes like this.
Hey, live in Seattle and want to have some delicious gin made by two guys who like this podcast?
Then go to your local PCC and buy Lodgepole Distilling Yuzu or Strawberry Finished Gin.
Join the next Corks Bar episode.
with a Lodgepole gin and tonic, a fresh long drink, or see how great Lodgepole Strawberry Gin makes gin tiki drinks like a basil gimlet.
Or if you're a Seattle bar owner and want to make a bit more on a signature cocktail with our very cost-effective gin, DM us on Instagram.
Wow.
So the call to action here is run to PCC and buy our gin.
And also follow us on Instagram at Lodgepole Distilling.
Ben, no pronunciation guide for this, so I'm just going to give a couple of alts here.
Okay.
Lodgepeli.
Okay.
Lod Gapol.
Is this because like you're a Seattle local and you know that this is in reference to something specific?
No, not at all.
This is great.
I miss PCC as a grocery store where I got a bunch of my weekly stuff.
Man.
I'm glad that FODs are doing business with them.
That's neat.
And God, give me a Yuzu.
Give me a Yuzu anything.
Yeah.
Any day of the week.
I like that lane for you guys and i'm going back up to seattle in december for some time so i'm gonna go see what i can find from lodgepoli distilling
then we've got a another message here this one's from chris
and it is to raz and plavim
okay their message is
can't we all just get along
Apparently not.
Wondering
if this is in reference to like Chris being just way back in the stacks, the TNG stacks, when that conflict was very present
at all times.
Or maybe Chris was at the Madison Greatest Gen Second Contact Show where their conflicts were in full view.
Yeah.
Chris might have seen
the stream still available.
Sure.
Greatestgen tour.com.
Yeah.
Razin Plavim
played a surprisingly big big part in that show.
Yeah, unexpected.
Yeah.
But welcome for sure.
And yeah, who knows what Chris is talking about, but the message, can't we all just get along?
Really a good message to share whenever.
I support it.
Our last P1 today is also from Chris, and this one is to Robin.
And it goes like this.
Hey, buddy.
I know you're only on season one of TNG TGG, but the Temporal temporal prime directive prevents me from going back to 2016 to wish you a more timely happy birthday.
Anyway, remember when I told you about this drop during our bike ride in August 2024?
She got a
great ass!
It is, in fact, Al Pacino's line in heat.
Cheers, Chris.
It's so fun when someone has a specific memory that goes like, you remember that joke I told you about when we were doing this totally separate thing?
Chris knows that they tried to get Robin
on his level
while riding bikes.
And I think everyone knows the shame of like sharing a piece of comedy that they just don't get.
This bike ride, foundational to the Chris-Robin relationship.
Yeah, and somehow Robin actually gave us a try after all that.
So our thanks to Chris for spreading the word and our thanks to Robin for finally making it here, assuming Robin does.
Yeah, welcome, Robin.
And thanks to everyone who does a priority one message.
You can do your own by going to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron, writing a couple words.
We'll do the rest.
We're pretty good at that.
And priority ones go a long way in supporting the production of our shows.
Hey, Ben.
What's that, Adam?
Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?
Drunk Shimoda!
Drippin' Reed kind of like felt like they were gonna be it for me with their like sneaking around on the station that was doing them a huge favor antics.
But I think I'm gonna give it to Flox actually because
Flox had the line that made me laugh the most in
the episode, which is one of the ways he's treating Malcolm Reed at the beginning is with some kind of like blood parasite that he's been like letting creep around inside his body.
Sure.
And he like defensively goes like like, he'll climb out eventually or something like that, which really made me laugh.
But also.
From where?
He doesn't even have nipples.
We got all our whole sealed ERP.
The scene where he's doing the phlox topsy and Hoshi comes in.
He's like really trying to be sensitive and solemn and trying to look after Hoshi's well-being.
And when she finally convinces him him to let her
look at the corpse of her departed crewmate, he just pulls the shower curtain aside very suddenly.
It was also just like, wow, the mood shifted so fast.
I mean, the shot reverse shot in my head as he pulls the shower curtain behind.
We cut back over to Hoshi, and Hoshi's like, damn.
So, so it's going to be Flox for me.
That is a hard one to beat.
Same scene, different reason.
I get the sense that Flox has just a very different relationship to life, death, and health than anyone else on the ship.
Yeah.
The sort of relationship that I think when things go really bad,
you might find comforting or welcome in a Flox ain't going to lose a shit.
You know, Flox is steady Flox.
And I could also see some people resenting that about him too, in a, in a like,
Dr.
McCoy hates Spock for not feeling things all the way the way McCoy would.
But
I do appreciate in this exact moment, like a great and terrible event has happened.
And
Flox is the guy you want on that emotional wall kind of doing the patrol and does
a very good job at making sure.
Hoshi is prepared for the amount of titillation that will occur if he were to pull the shower curtain off of Mayweather.
So good doctoring by him.
Just
an interesting character that's getting more and more intriguing to me as time goes on.
Indeed.
Faith of the fart.
Well, I think you'll be excited to learn about our next episode in that case, Adam.
That episode is called A Night in Six Bay.
It's season two, episode five.
Archer spends a night in Six Bay after Porthos falls ill with a deadly virus following a visit to an alien planet.
Can't say I'm surprised.
I mean,
this is a dog owner that
I know loves Porthos quite a bit, but
letting them wander around all willy-nilly on strange planets.
You got to do better than that.
Get the long leader.
And the planet, it turns out, is made of cheese.
What are you doing, Archer?
Yeah, the one alien species discarded a a chicken bone on the planet of cheese
and created a situation for poor Porthos.
There's recently been a wing stop put in about a block from my house, and the whole neighborhood is so hazardous to my dog now.
That sucks.
Yeah.
I know no one who listens to this show is the problem, but throw away your fucking bones.
Yeah.
That's bone.
Ugh.
Really nothing a dog wants to snarf up off the ground more than a discarded chicken wing bone, and nothing worse for him.
Ugh, that's brutal.
As brutal as it sounds, very looking forward to that episode if it means more, Dr.
Flox.
Yeah, indeed.
I'm going to go to goch.biz slash game
and
we're going to find out just about how we will be
enjoying our discussion of this episode.
Currently, our runabout is on square 51.
I'm going to go ahead and roll this bone.
You're required to learn as you play.
Roll.
Adam, I landed on something.
Oh, no.
Something bad.
Landed us on
the notorious square 88 temporal cold war.
The hosts must react to three old, bad reviews.
The greatest generation on the next Marin.
Oh, that's gonna get us going.
I can't believe it.
Wow.
I'm sure Wendy will pick out good ones that aren't gonna traumatize you.
That will be interesting things to discuss.
How about new?
It's a new season.
I do have a Vito here.
Oh, come on.
Don't do that.
Let's face it.
Let's face it together and grow stronger from the facing it, Ben.
Alright.
God fucking damn it.
We can do it.
Hey, if you left a bad review back in the day, but you're still listening, go back and edit your review now.
Oh, interesting message to send.
Yeah, you could remove all of the fangs from this.
I know you're still listening, you nasty freak.
By self-deleting a bad review.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Got that.
All right.
You know what?
You do that.
That's like throwing away your own chicken bone.
Don't let Ben choke on your chicken bone next episode.
Wouldn't be ripe.
Would not.
Okay.
Time to go, Adam.
Got to thank all of the people that support us by going to maximumfund.org/slash join and becoming monthly members of the show.
You get bonus episodes instantaneously for doing that and the great feeling that comes with making sure your favorite Star Trek podcast stays around for a long time.
December is a month where many people give each other gifts.
So, if you've got a person in your life that might enjoy the stuff that we do on the bonus feed, like that's a gift that keeps on giving the whole year through.
So, sure is a gift membership is something you could do over at maximumfund.org.
Yeah, or a gift of access to our streaming live shows, which are available at GraceGentour.com.
Yeah, got to thank Wendy Pretty, our producer.
She does such a great job editing this show and keeping all the plates spinning here around headquarters.
Also got to thank Rob Adler, Bill Tilly, who run our social media accounts at Greatest Trek all over the internet.
If you'd like to send something in for a future Code 47, Bill Tilley is going to be the person you encounter in the DMs.
And
boy,
what a mensch.
You love talking to him.
Yeah.
I mean, I want to give myself more reasons to talk to that guy.
I know.
He's great.
And meanwhile, Rob is making all kinds of funny videos and stuff.
So if you're on a social network, throw at Greatest Trek a follow.
A lot of fun.
We'll make it worth it somehow.
Pat and Bragusia made our original parody of Diane Warren's Star Trek Enterprise theme, and Dark Materia made the original Picard song.
We appreciate them both tremendously.
And with that, we will be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of The Greatest Generation Enterprise
that finds out that some of these were traditional buffalo sauce wings and some of them were Korean
hot wings.
And no wonder Porthos's runs are as violent as they are given that situation.
I made hot wings last night, and
Whoa.
God damn it.
I just had like pesto.
Like you just had pesto and a spoon.
Yeah, like a bowl full.
I ate it like soup.
I hope you have a better dinner tonight.
We're going to my favorite restaurant, pesto.
And that's it.
you'll look at card of the US
and the crime.
Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.
Supported directly by you.
