Eye Dumps (ENT S3E18)

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 owns the sun.

Welcome to The Greatest Generation.

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

I'm Ben Harrison.

I'm Adam Prianica.

It's a very special episode today, Ben.

You know why?

Are you talking about because of what you rolled or because of something else?

Oh, because of what was rolled at the end of the last episode.

We landed on a special square, a quarks bar square, a neighborhood of the game of buttholes, I feel like it's been a long time since we've been here.

It has been.

Yeah.

We've had other drinking episodes, but not one.

You know, I was like, maybe I'll like knock it off with

the booze a little bit, like the couple of weeks leading up to Vegas.

No, that won't happen.

Um,

I've got my glass of ice uh prepared here, which has melted pretty significantly just in between the back of my house and the studio.

So I'm gonna drink the water just to get that the fuck out of there.

All right, while you drink the water, uh, maybe I'll share what I will be drinking on today's episode.

I reached into a cardboard box

and I pulled out the last bottle I have of Chateau de Soto wine.

This was sent to us from Adam Tuck of Courting Hill Vineyard and has maybe my favorite thing I've ever said on the show as its tagline at the top.

It says, as dangerous as it gets for a podcaster.

And what I mean by that is drinking wine that an FOD has sent in with its own label.

This wine

genuinely of tremendous merit.

Yeah.

I'm not a wine expert, but I know good wine when I taste it, and this is good wine.

Yeah,

this is actually a vintage 2016 Racogino Noir.

Yeah.

So this has been aged quite a bit.

And I thought, why not class up Quark's bar a little bit today and honor a great FOD in the process.

I would love for Chateau DeSoto to be made available to people.

I don't know if.

Would you have to clear the rights to Captain DeSoto, or is it silly enough that you could just do it?

I think it's silly enough to just do it.

But, I mean, we should get back in touch with Adam Tuck and see what the deal is over there.

We really should.

I've just poured myself a large rum, Adam.

So that's what I will be sipping on today.

Oh!

Corkbuster!

Oh, no!

I might need to vamp a little bit longer until I can figure this thing out.

What vintage is your rum, Ben?

I'm drinking a

Mount Gay Eclipse Heritage Blend.

It sounds like having sex on a vintage bed, is basically what's going on over there.

Did you get it out?

I got it out.

It's got a corky hole.

I'm just trying to get a bunch of the

shit out of it.

Does it smell okay?

are we dealing with a corked bottle or is it uh that that's just it like i wonder if i did that thing where i aged it too long man i'm really really bad at telling whether a bottle is corked so i could probably drink this whole thing and it would be yeah you're just you're just smelling for dank basement if you smell any anything in the dank basement neighborhood Honestly, it smells like wine.

It smells a little fruity.

Okay, good.

You're good.

I sent a corked bottle back at a restaurant one time, and the waiter gave me a ton of shit.

And he's like, No, we're specially trained to identify when the wine is corked.

And I was like,

I don't know what to tell you, man.

It smells like, it smells like mildew.

It's not good.

This is why we have the whole thing of them pouring a little bit in a glass for you to taste.

That's the ritual.

I need to do the same thing.

I

stupidly brought a stemmed wine glass out to the studio.

Something I would caution you you never to do.

And

there we are.

There we go.

It looks very dark.

It

looks like one of the darkest red wines I've ever seen.

It's almost brown.

It really is.

Dude, I don't know if it's turned or not.

It tastes like booze almost.

Like it tastes hot.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Maybe it might just need to lay down in the glass a little bit, breathe, you know?

Yeah, I like that.

Let's go with this, Ben.

It's a quark spar episode.

I'm not sending this

back.

Let's let that shit breathe.

Cheers to you, man.

Well, I am.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let's go, Ben.

We've got, as exciting as that Marin was, an even more exciting episode on deck today.

Incredible.

It is Enterprise Season 3, Episode 18, and it's called Azadi Prime.

Got free speech and the time.

There is not even a cold open to this one.

We are getting into it.

We pull up.

It's that red giant system

we've been promised.

We learn that there's tons of Zendi security.

There's like a security grid.

There's lots and lots of activity with ships floating around everywhere.

We don't see the grid this episode.

Does that bug you?

Oh, like an actual grid in space.

Like that episode of TNG where Tasha Ram Yarlin is in, you know, like, and they set up that net and then Data has to yell at a guy.

That's my summary of that episode.

But that's their grid, right?

They're trying to make a grid to stop the Klingons from coming over.

Some would edit Memory Alpha to say that that episode was the one where Data had to yell at a guy.

That's my recap.

Yeah, I didn't have a problem with it because they're satellites and

it's just a detection grid.

I feel like if you got the shield around the planet that Prince Vespa comes from in

Spaceballs.

I remember that.

And the Rogue One shield?

That's just like a hard shell.

But a detection grid, I feel like you kind of want that to be subtle.

You don't want to make it obvious that it's there.

It's like a tripwire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want it tripped.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You want it tripped.

That's a line I've been using on

interesting females my whole whole life.

Only one of them's ever gotten me pregnant.

You're never going to let that go, are you?

Hey, you almost tripped my line.

And by line, I mean penis.

Hello, I'm Trip Tucker.

I don't want you to get the sense that it's really, really skinny like a piece of wire.

No.

It's not.

It's got a nice girth to it.

If you were to drag a foot into my penis, you wouldn't break it.

And you wouldn't set off a claymore.

Something's going to explode, but it ain't no bomb.

There's a bunch of ships that they pick up in a convoy they zoom in on the on the front one that's degra's ship right there this is such a fun moment i mean this is as heroic i'm not gonna say as heroic as archer gets this episode because like getting the shit kicked out of him i think constitutes a big part of being a hero in a story like this but that whole like

Like he's leaning forward in the seat and he's standing up, like leaning forward.

He's like, everything about him is like, we got got to get this guy.

And it's a big moment when he fingers the view screen and points it out.

On board Degra's ship is where we cut to next.

And celebratory moment over there, not unlike a Quark Spar episode.

We're all drinking to the big completion of the weapon.

What an accomplishment.

His toaster is really something else, Ben.

Degra pours something out for his buddies and he's like, here's to being single, drinking double, and exterminating triple.

And everyone's like, whoa.

Okay.

I feel like everybody is giving Degra pats on the back, except for the lizardman.

I'll reserve my gratitude for when the humans have been annihilated.

No aquatics in this episode, no bugmen in this episode, but

I guess they didn't, they expended all of the CG ordnance on other shots, so they weren't having insects and

swimmers in this one.

When you said that there are no aquatics in this episode, my mind went to the planet where they're building the bomb.

Yeah.

That must be where they live, right?

My assumption was that that was an aquatic planet.

They volunteered.

Build it over where we are.

That way we can actually do some of the manual labor.

They probably regretted that right away.

Yeah, we want to be involved.

And then they're like all getting chemocyte burns.

yeah, it sounds terrible.

You know, the industrial accidents that are befalling them are yeah, bad news for them.

After the theme, it's clear that like we're doing real life Zindi Council meetups on Degra ship and a bunch of time is given to like people being really stoked to finally do this in person.

This is great.

How much more efficient are we when we're all in the room together?

Feels good.

You know,

it was nice to try the work from home thing on, but now that we're back in the office, you know, you just like, you're coming up with ideas.

You're at the water cooler and you just strike up conversation.

This is stuff that can't happen

when we're all doing this over Zoom.

Enterprise has

been laying low behind a moon that obscures their position from

the Zindy sensors, I guess.

And on the bridge, they discuss this defense grid that is between them and the weapon they're trying to get at.

And there is no way Enterprise is going to make it through this grid.

the holes are too small and also like if you take out one of the satellites uh it's it's designed to like self-repair so

yeah they do pay off that ship that we kept wondering about in a recent episode yeah they kept that thing in the shuttle bay only problem is no one knows how to fly it That task is given to Mayweather and Trip Tucker, and they try to get themselves up to speed while on board.

But there's this other aspect to the mission too, right?

Like Trip and Mayweather have to learn how to fly the ship, but we need to have some sort of facility with the Zindi language, right?

Because like we're going to get pulled over once we drive the stolen car into this territory.

We got to be able to talk to the cops, right?

We don't know if the registration has expired on this thing.

Like we're going to get asked questions and we don't speak click and pop the way the insectoids do.

Hoshi is on the click and pop project and TePaul hits her up about where she's at on that.

Not very far.

The translations do not go well, Enterprise.

TePaul is already a little bit punchy in this episode, like a little bit not cool with the progress Hoshi is making, kind of riding her a little bit.

That's an interesting observation because of what happens with TePaul later on in the up.

Like she's already a little tipped over into

being her version of emotional or emotionally raw

for what's to come.

Do you think this is burnout or is something else going on with TePaul?

Is it like that they have that other...

There's chemo site and then there's the other stuff that you're supposed to coat your hole with?

Is she just getting enough like low persistent dose of that stuff?

That's a great question.

By having the Zindi shuttle on board and not really knowing where TePaul's quarters are in relation to the shuttle bay.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Could be affecting her.

You know, she might want to rip some eyeballs out is what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Or be inside out, as the case may be.

I don't know how Vulcans decide these things, but I was just thinking about Tripp and Travis down there in that ship.

They have to be so grateful that the insectoids keep their shuttles a little bit tidier than they keep their hatcheries.

They're not getting dirty.

They're not getting goo all over their uniforms in there.

That's a great call.

It is dressed very differently than that on-planet crash ship situation was.

Yeah.

Much less disgusting.

There's some discussion right before Tripp and Travis depart between them and Archer, where Archer is at great pains to insist that they not make this a suicide mission.

Like, this is recon, and we're not going to get the information that you get if you don't come back.

Yeah, you're only supposed to take pictures, guys.

Just photographs.

Under no circumstances are you to engage the enemy.

Sort of seems like something you shouldn't have to say, you know?

Yeah, say less, Archer.

You're kind of making me nervous.

He is as emotionally piqued as TePaul.

He's just shown it way more.

Yeah.

These flying lessons do not go well.

Like, there's that thing where you sort of fly the craft on the ground before you finally take it out for the first time.

on its test flight.

Yeah.

And

the initial flight, the first flight, goes as well as that first flyby they did of Enterprise in the first episode.

It reminds me of a guy who's like getting into motorcycling and tries to get on a 150cc bike before he's really

learned the ropes.

They leave the shuttle bay and immediately collide.

with the entrepreneur.

There's a physics to this that makes it seem different from a normal shuttle in that like a shuttle is very straight ahead yeah but this cindy ship seems very floaty in a dimensional sense like it's sort of like

we're spaced to have waves in it it seems very subject to like bobbing and turning and and floating around

there is something about the way it moves that

I thought was really great because it reminded me of model ship on a piece of fishing line.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which I imagine is really hard to accomplish in a 3D animation environment, you know?

Like there, we've seen bad 3D animation, and this is not that.

It's like good 3D animation to look like bad model work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In a funny way.

So the Zindi shuttle makes it to the security grid and they pass right through.

This is great.

Except as soon as they pass through, here's a patrol comes right up and hails them.

And this is like immediate shakedown for Hoshi's translation program.

Insect Eric Estrada comes and like they roll the window down.

It's like, you know how fast I clocked you going back there?

Insect Eric Estrada grabs like the external bone structure of its skull and like pulls it back like a hairline trick.

I need to see your license and registration.

And if you could put an orange wedge on a paper plate, I would appreciate that as well.

Has there ever been more done with less than Eric Estrada has done with the fake wig trick that he does with his hair?

It's fucking perfect.

It works every time.

It's so funny.

So they do have this translation matrix that Hoshi made for them.

And it's sort of,

it feels very rudimentary.

It's like speak and spell, not live universal translator.

giving you all of the feeling and inflection.

But it gets them out of trouble.

Like they're ordered to reunite with their mothership or whatever.

And they're like, gotcha, we'll do.

See you later.

And we cut back to the entrepreneur where suddenly they're getting scanned.

And there's no ships in sight.

They realize this scan is coming from the surface of the moon that they're hiding behind.

And they realize there's an installation down there, a complex.

Maybe you'd call it a facility.

Anyways, it's down there.

Maybe you'd call it a Felicity, even?

Oh, yeah.

I thought that place was great until the haircut, and then it's just like, I don't even care anymore.

Guys are going to hate it.

Yeah.

And I've got the

of the far heart.

Legally it's just a virtue.

Exposure to oxygen triggers chemical reactions that turn alcohol into acetaldehyde.

Ankylosaur.

Which makes wines turn turn brown.

Oh, maybe that's why it's so dark.

Yeah, I was just looking at that.

Here's my search term.

Wine tastes like alcohol.

Dangerous question mark.

I don't think this is unsafe to drink.

I'm feeling good.

I mean, most of your hair hasn't fallen out yet.

My field of vision, I mean, it's closing.

But like all it needs to be is here.

Right.

You just need to be able to see the screen so that you can be on for the people watching the stream.

Absolutely.

And I am.

Yeah.

Very much so.

You're doing great.

Thanks, David.

I don't think we have anything to worry about.

I don't think I'm being slowly poisoned by this at all.

I think you're safe.

I think you've found the least dangerous thing a podcaster can do.

This is exciting.

I didn't think could happen.

Anyways, they're talking about this place, this Felicity down there,

and they can't raise the alarm because of the moon's rotation.

Like, the Zindi that are down there are facing away from the rest of the Zindi, I guess.

So there's

nothing to worry about in the short term, but Archer is pretty quick to react to this, and he nukes the entire site from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Fucking hey.

What'd you make of how fast Archer went from knowledge to action here?

He really went hard and fast, didn't he?

Yeah.

Three folks inside.

RSVP, those guys.

Amazing to see his after five shadow just instantly appear on his face.

I think this moment is crucial in the episode to understand that nothing is off the table for Archer.

Absolutely.

Like, I don't think anything he does could surprise from here.

Everybody on the bridge feels weird and bad about this, including Reed, who pulled the trigger.

It's like the boss doing something terrible at a holiday party.

Like, whoa,

you're not supposed to sing that song at karaoke at a work function.

Yeah, like my

it rubs the lotion on its skin karaoke song.

Oh, yeah.

That was one of those.

You do not want to see like the senior VP for your region do that at the holiday party.

The Open Pike Night guys are holding on to that video, and we'll release it at a time when we're most sensitive.

The Open Pike Night guys are very much the push-a-tee to my Travis Scott.

I've always thought this.

Are they who we're having a podcast war against, finally?

Are we heating this up?

You know, another...

dangerous thing for a podcaster to do given the footage that they probably are in possession of but let's let's fucking do it.

I think we can smoke those guys.

We're undefeated when it comes to podcast wars.

Tell you that much.

So Trip and Trav are on their bug shuttle and they find something on a water world, which has lots of little islands, but nobody living on the islands.

But they've discussed how this shuttle has high structural integrity, so they can go underwater with it.

and they plunge in and like immediately come over an ocean ridge and there is the Zindi weapon in a construction apparatus.

Let's be clear about this.

This is a planet-sized planet that is almost entirely ocean.

They did not know where the weapon was under the water

and they submerged right next to it.

Yeah, I mean, there was some talk of Trip getting some readings of something.

I feel like that explains it, but like, yeah, it's a whole ass planet.

Were you looking around in the water at the thing swimming?

I could swear I saw some aquatic Zindi in there.

Oh,

were they like waving goodbye to the shuttle as it went by?

Like the guy in the

shipbuilding facility when the Enterprise leaves.

You know what?

They looked fucking tired of doing all the work.

They're toiling.

It sucks for them.

Yeah.

Anyway, they go full on inside this thing.

This was unexpected, too.

Mayweather and Trip are flying their little Zendi shuttle around.

They go up in it.

Yeah.

We've talked a lot about how the prototype weapon was a lot smaller than we expected.

This one bigger than I expected.

Ships are going in and out of it.

Like a lot of them.

There's traffic.

They have to do like a full zipper merge to get in there.

Like like the heads of a magic shop where's the regular size

we're all ready to woohoo ha

you skipped regular size cindy

and we are immediately back in a mclaughlin group issue one in the command center we go through a dissolve transition to get there though i really like that That's not something we get all the time on Star Trek.

The rare dissolve transition in track.

Did you have a favorite number of frames for your dissolves when you were doing production?

It comes preset at one second.

One second is the default of a dissolve.

Which is bad, which I never did.

I don't know about you.

No, yeah.

It's like it comes preset at this so I can mess with that.

I was a 10 framer.

10 frames?

Wow.

Like it softened the cut enough to like...

to not make it feel hard, but like it wasn't this luxurious

dissolve.

I thought it worked under most circumstances for stuff I was working on.

I made a music video that had a lot of whip pans in it, and I was trying to do dissolves between the whip pans.

And I kept shortening my dissolves until I realized it doesn't need a dissolve.

In a whip pan, you can do a hard cut, and it's invisible.

Sneak it right in there.

Yeah.

Dissolve is

hard to deploy artfully, I would say.

It's very funny because all of the consumer grade video editing things that have ever existed all the way back to Video Toaster put so much work into all of the weird video transition effects that they pack in, like cube rotate, star wipe, and and they all just look bad for the most part.

Do you think dissolve as a transition is

like for the past?

Because I'm thinking of modern TV and movies and you don't really see it anymore.

Yeah.

And were you to see it, it might bump you a little bit.

I think that they do it in like the Star Wars things to signal this is a Star Wars thing.

But it was like, hey, look at this neat thing we can do in the 70s when they made Star Wars.

And now it's like, this is just so you're not getting it twisted, this is a Star Wars thing.

Sure.

I mean, because Star Wars would still do an iris open, Iris close kind of transition.

And that's still fun and cool, but they're the only ones that get to do that.

Yeah, yeah,

I like a nice long dissolve.

Yeah, the one in Spaceballs is great.

Nice dissolve.

So, what's happened here is we've dissolved from

the planet side to Trip and Mayweather having returned to Enterprise, reporting on what they found in their mission.

And they are able to decide on a part of the weapon that would be best served to destroy it, were they to deploy a shuttle full of explosives to do it, except that would make it functionally a suicide mission, wouldn't it?

Because if you were to go in there with the shuttle with all these explosives, like you're not leaving.

Right.

You're not getting out of the shuttle and like dumping explosives out of it and then leaving before the blast radius hits you.

You're just hitting the button from inside.

Did any part of you wish that they had like preserved some technology from Dijamat and his people and sent somebody on the suicide mission with a brooch that they could stab into themselves.

I love that a lot.

I think that would be great.

Like they go into great detail about like

the thing about these shuttles is once they get crushed There's a lot of guesses about how much suffering there would be were you to fill up with a bunch of billionaires and then have that thing get crushed up like were anyone to volunteer for this mission, it's a total mystery about how painful it could get.

So, maybe we give you a poison brooch and you stick that into your arm and hit the button at the same time.

That removes the possibility of any suffering.

And Mayweather, hearing this, is like, put me in, coach.

Yeah, I want this.

And I want to pause the episode right here.

I wanted this for him.

I love this for him because if you kill Mayweather in this way, in this episode, he becomes the ultimate hero of Star Trek Enterprise forever.

Just like being back in the womb.

Who are you?

In St.

Travis Mayweather.

Parents must be very proud.

I should be the one to go.

Forget it.

Who are you?

I'm the helmsman.

I'm the only one that can pilot that shuttle.

And your mom?

Very proud.

That's true.

Takes practice.

I think I'm getting a feel for it.

I think I found reverse.

An actual memorable thing for him to do, which they haven't really done for him up until now.

Hard for Trip to do it because he'd have to stab that brooch right into his nipple.

I'd have to find some flesh in between.

But what if I miss?

It's all Areola all the way down.

It's a moot point because Archer's like, no, it's got to be me.

I'm doing the suicide mission.

This is a hell of a way to end a meeting.

Like, as soon as he says that, what else can you say?

Like, he's the captain.

All right.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're gonna go with a bunch of billionaires in a vessel of dubious structural integrity like i got respect for you going yourself it's a dubious can yeah it's good faith jubilee

i can i prepare

archer is like going to get on the elevator after telling travis like meet me in the shuttle bay for flight lessons in half an hour and he gets on the elevator and is immediately aboard.

What we learn is the Enterprise J

and it's in the middle of a war.

Enterprise J,

kind of a wide king, as we see on the Master Systems display behind them on occasion.

We don't really get an exterior shot of this ship at this moment, but we do see it in schematic.

I'm going to say a better-looking ship than Enterprise E or F.

Wow.

Fuck.

Harsh.

Harsh but fair.

It's something that we only see in schematic at this point, but

Daniels is there and he's in his ropey outfit.

Just for some reason, miles of feces and urine going through the tubes.

Like,

doesn't that ever drive you crazy?

Like, when in health class, you're told, like, yeah, the small and large intestine is like 40 feet long.

And you're like, that's impossible.

Yeah, if you took it out of you, you could stretch it out.

Yeah, like you could go to the moon and back four times off of the length of your small and large intestine put together.

Like, that doesn't make any sense.

That's what's going on here with Daniels' shit tubes.

And Archer's like, I guess, because Dune is like 10,000 years in the future.

So, like, it takes that long to come up with the technology for the feces just to be processed in the thigh pads.

In your time, it has to be processed everywhere.

Yeah.

It's getting harder and harder to surprise you, Captain.

And yet, Daniels looks warm and comfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're in that weird nebula that everybody had to sleep their way through.

And I presumably the J has some kind of shielding that protects from that nebula.

But this is a conflict between the Federation and the Sphere Builders.

And we're told that sphere builders are using those spheres to terraform the galaxy, essentially, to turn it into a place where transdimensional beings can hang.

They're kind of beings of mystery at this point, aren't they?

I mean, they just have normal-looking ships.

Their ships are kind of like dumb-looking, honestly.

I thought so, too.

They're like looking out the view screen, and Daniels is gesturing broadly.

This is one of the great moments in Federation history.

We finally get over

on these fucking sphere builders, and it's great because it represents the promise of what the Federation is.

You know what the Federation is, right, Archer?

And Archer's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

You've mentioned this before, but it doesn't ring a bell.

Yeah.

And Daniels is like, well, needless to say, Federation is really important.

It's a bunch of different kinds of guys that all got together, and they're not going to get together without the humans.

So if the Zindi take you guys out, just really shits on galactic history from that moment forward.

What do you make of how emphatic Archer was in his defense about wanting, maybe even needing to die at this point.

Send someone else.

I won't do that.

No one tells me not to die.

God damn it.

I just took out an entire Felicity from Orbit.

I feel terrible right now.

This is the only way I can think of to atone.

Daniels has got to do more than just say it's really bad, doesn't he?

This is not enough.

Yeah.

At this point, Archer has like moved through time, and so he has this sort of

way about himself that like he has the confidence of of someone who's had a time travel experience talking to a professional time traveler and being like i'm on the same level as you yeah i know what you're talking about yeah when he kind of doesn't yeah it's uh it's rough the message from daniels is go convince the zindi Like, in the way that you're trying to convince me, you know shit about time travel, go convince the Zindi that you know shit about what they're up to with their weapon and that they need to not proceed with the killing of all humans everywhere.

Like, if you sacrifice yourself, like, you're blowing the whole thing.

Like, you've got to live through this, and you've got to convince the Cindy not to use their planet killer.

Do you think there's something about Archer's understanding of time travel that makes death seem a little bit squishy as a concept?

Like,

a little less permanence than he might normally associate with it, pre-knowledge of time travel?

Yeah, I mean, interestingly, we've learned from Daniels that the results of actions taken in Archer's time propagate through

the timeline in a way where Daniels doesn't feel it immediately.

Yeah.

So like Daniels doesn't know what Archer's going to do here.

Pretty wild.

Yeah, you've got to be thinking like, I mean, Daniels knows what he knows, but he doesn't know what I know.

I could do anything at this point, you know?

Hey, listen, Archer, I see you're pretty dug in with the whole kill yourself aspect of this mission.

Let's just pretend that there is a moment of doubt for you at some point.

I'm going to give you this little brooch.

In case you choose the diplomatic option at some point, I want you to have this in your pocket.

This belonged to a Zindi crew person who's on this very ship at this very moment, the Enterprise J.

Let's just say if you're ever in a in like a, you know, a Starfleet bar and somebody comes up to you, you're going to want to have this in your pocket.

Archer's like, why is it all wet?

Daniels is like, well, that's because this is an aquatic Cindy.

And Archer's like, I didn't think they did anything.

Like,

what?

He kind of mostly wrenches on things.

He's kind of a, you know, he, he's a laborer.

He's not the brightest guy in the crew by any extent.

They work for the navigation cetaceans, like

kind of a job without a lot of opportunities.

Like, that's just where they're going to be.

You wouldn't think that a huge tank full of whales would need like a janitor, but there you go.

Yeah.

He's scraping barnacles

off of the navigation whales.

That's what he does.

It's also what he eats, amazingly.

Yeah.

TePaul and Archer catch up after this encounter.

And he's like, I don't know, man.

I just really am kind of hot committed on the whole killing myself thing.

And she's like, I don't know.

I mean, like, let's hear this Daniels guy out.

He did prove to us recently that time travel exists.

So maybe, uh, maybe listen to him.

This is that kind of ugly argument that a person can get into where they use the other person's words against them.

Like, Archer's like, Tipa, you don't even believe in time travel.

So shut the fuck up.

Like, you don't get to have an opinion here.

Yeah, that never works.

No, it does not.

And she's also just, she expresses, doesn't want him to die, doesn't consider it to be necessary.

In one of the moments of this episode where Jolene emotes here, like the mask of being a Vulcan slips just a little bit in this scene.

Yeah.

I think more and more over the course of the episode.

Yeah.

Catch up with Degra.

He is having a hang with like, I guess like the main lizard guy.

The main Liz.

The Sliz Liz.

Yeah.

Do we have a name on King of the Lizard people?

Oh, yeah, we do.

This is Dahlem.

Dahlem.

Dahlem, he's got plans.

He wants a bunch of ships.

He wants four ships to go with the weapon when it goes to take out the Earth.

And his idea is that that many ships will be needed to chase down any Fujis that attempts to depart the system upon the destruction of the planet.

Degra's really stressed out about whether the vortex can be made that is big enough to accommodate the weapon and four ships.

Like,

we've been stepping it up in the plugs over the course of weeks to get stretched out and ready to accommodate this weapon.

I don't know if we can stretch it much further, to be honest.

I mean, and what Dahlum is writing for

to use to use that description is that, yeah, I mean, you just need to get a weapon plus four escort ship size plug to get this thing worked out.

Yeah.

I got to say, aren't you on dolem's side here?

Like, why would you fly this thing unescorted anywhere?

Like, I don't know.

Removing the idea of like, yeah, we got to do the mop-up duty with the refugees, like, with the other ship, obviously.

But, like, wouldn't you want something flying interference?

Makes a ton of sense.

I mean, it is a super weapon.

Like, can it not defend itself?

Like,

can it just just take out anything that comes at it i don't know i don't know super weapon-ally i don't know or is it is it a one-shot deal like it like the other one kind of took its shot and then and that that was it so this argument is interrupted with news that the moon base is late for their check-in and if you'll remember it's because they're dead and exploded over on the moon base not exploded in the good way where your your muscles look good but the the bad way Yeah.

Where you're dead.

There's a conversation here between Degra and Jannar where it's like two bad guys talking about the bad thing they're about to do and like maybe the mixed feelings they've got during.

Yeah.

You know, we're about to be successful with our extermination, but also,

you know, it's them or us, and that makes it complex, doesn't it?

Women and children, etc., etc.

Yeah.

The arboreal guys like, no, genocide is the right path.

We should do this.

And we love women.

Am I right?

Am I right, Degra?

You know I'm right.

I like that the humanoids and the arboreals are kind of like,

you know, like, ultimately, like, they get along.

We're more similar than all those other kinds of guys.

We breathe the same way.

Our blood temperature is very similar.

Yeah.

Legally, it's just a far jump.

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If you're enjoying Greatest Generation and Greatest Trek, but you haven't dipped into our other HIIP program, Wholesome, you're only getting part of what we do.

That's because because on Wholesome, me and Ben and Adam Ragusia talk about all kinds of things that make us happy.

With each episode being hosted by one of us, where we share what we're enjoying at the moment and have a conversation about all the little ways it makes our lives better.

With topics about movies, neighbors, ice cream, mid-TV.

It's a weekly dose of good vibes every Wednesday, and you can get it at patreon.com slash wholesome underscore pod.

So listen to wholesome.

Maybe it'll inspire you to share something that you think is wholesome with your friends.

Every Wednesday at patreon.com slash wholesome underscore pod.

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

And

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

But no, no, you would be wrong.

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

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

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

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

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

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

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

Let's learn Everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

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

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

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

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no.

It's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubbard.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

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

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

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

You will never take the greatest shit alive.

Ben would rather die.

Over on the Zindi shuttle, Mayweather is giving flying instructions to Archer.

Archer having maintained he will be the guy at the stick flying this thing on its suicide mission.

And Mayweather has to question at this point, now that they're alone, why he would lead this suicide mission.

Archer being a pretty high-value crew person,

especially compared to Mayweather.

He knows this.

Archer's answer is pretty simple.

He's done a lot of killing, especially lately.

And it is time to go for the most perfect game.

And that's himself.

What if I could also kill myself, Mayweather?

Yeah, yeah.

What if this mortally zero-sum game I'm playing could end with a perfect score?

It's the reason of a crazy person, and Mayweather could do nothing to talk about of it.

Sorry I asked.

But Adam, would a crazy person leave his dog in the care of a kindly doctor like Flox?

This moment kind of bumped me because you know how Dark Archer's gotten when he doesn't outwardly emote anything during the rehoming of his dog

on the eve of a suicide mission.

Like, there isn't even...

You can tell the person who wrote this episode isn't a dog owner or lover because there isn't that last moment of like, I love you so much.

Scritches.

And then like he turns away and like bites his fist.

Come on.

You get your hands under those floppity ears and you get the side of the face.

And you might comment to the person, I wish I could explain this to him.

Yeah.

You know.

The writer of this episode thinks that the cheese thing is that.

The cheese thing is not that.

Yeah.

Give my dog diarrhea on purpose is not that.

Yeah.

It sounds very biblical.

Give my dog diarrhea in remembrance of me.

Do this is off to see you eat it.

Take, eat the cheese.

Three writing credits on this one.

Brandon, Rick, and Manny

got together on this.

Who knows?

Who fumbled the dog ball this hard?

Yeah.

Yeah, hard to know.

A real bumper of a scene here.

Dr.

Vlox is like, I don't think we discussed this previously.

Like, I feel like you're kind of dumping this dog on my doorstep.

Not really fair.

Did you see a fire station logo on the door to Six Bay?

What are you doing?

There might be something baked into this scene that we're not talking about, and that is maybe the percentage chance that everyone believes this mission will be successful anyway, versus them all believing they're going to die because this isn't going to work.

Like,

maybe that's the energy Archer has here.

He's like, well, you're going to be taking care of Porthos for about, looks at his watch, three hours.

Good luck.

That's interesting.

I mean,

it's a question of like what we bring to the viewing of a thing like this.

And it's like, it's Star Trek.

Like they're going to save the planet, you know?

Sure.

Especially in prequel Star Trek.

We know that the Earth will be fine.

That's a great point, except for the thing that Daniel said about the sphere builders existing out of time and thus being able to control situations all over the map.

Archer also says his goodbye to his crew.

Maybe a reverse of what it should have been.

Maybe he should have saved this much emotion for the dog and just given a pretty perfunctory speech to the crew.

But he really proud poppers them.

I mean, and maybe this undercuts what you just said about their like feeling about

the doomedness of their mission because he's talking about all of the other captain butts that are going to sit in that chair.

Of all of the captains I have ever known, I am the most

angry.

I'm so angry.

Yeah,

he's angry, but these guys rule and away he goes.

Yeah.

It would be great if he bumped Enterprise for old time's sake.

Like he flirped the ship around like, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Like, bonks into the shields, bounces off, goes their separate ways, and everyone on the bridge crew is like, damn, there goes a real one.

Like, he was always himself, wasn't he?

He scrapes off the last E on

the name of the ship.

Enterpris.

Yeah.

The fuck is that?

Through the grid he goes, just like the first time through.

Like, that's pretty much assured.

Yeah.

I like that he doesn't get pulled over.

I thought that the episode made a good choice not having the,

you know, the chips are out there on the highways, but they're not catching every single speeder.

TePaul has watched long enough.

She goes into the clarinet rental closet because that is her space to cry.

Everyone knows

you don't cry at work.

You don't.

You got to take that into the breastfeeding room or someplace private.

No matter who you are, you do not cry at your desk.

You'll never be seen the same way again.

Yeah.

There's actually a second room now right next to the breastfeeding room for crying because he, because it's like, but I don't want to be seen going in the crying room.

I'm going to the breast room.

Because then at least it's a mystery.

Yeah.

What's Adam doing in there?

That's weird.

What does Adam identify as, anyways?

It's not appropriate to ask at work.

It definitely isn't.

And it isn't up to me to objectify his body and whether or not he has lactating breasts.

I'll just roll those questions around in my own mind.

Those are inside thoughts.

She's having a real hard time with this and actually lets a tear go.

What has that got to feel like for a Vulcan?

It's got to feel orgasmic in a weird way, right?

Right.

Like taking a massive dump after being super constipated.

Eye dumps.

That's what she's doing.

Yeah.

Archer makes it there pretty quickly and comes up to that construction apparatus that the sphere was in but uh the sphere was in it it is no longer

i love archer's take here this is so disappointing they really did a good job with the reveal too oops the only thing we have around us are uh these aquatics indie yeah finally a break yeah finally i get to eat

They're all sitting around with like

with like, you know, buckets full of coronas on ice.

Yeah.

Thank fucking Christ.

Oh, speaking of beers,

I've, uh, I've switched my, my

intake to a, uh, one of my few remaining spotted cows.

Amazing.

I thought I saw that creeping in a frame there.

That's, that's awesome.

Good job by you.

I'm almost down to the bottom of my second glass of wine, and the reason I've slowed down a bit is because I feel like something about this

is very strong.

I'm feeling pretty drunk after two glasses in a way that two glasses of wine doesn't usually do to me.

I think there's something about what's happened to this bottle that is strengthening it up.

I wish there was a way to assess like how much, like what the percentage, like you can't like, like wave your phone over a glass of wine.

I wish there was a way to know if I was drinking poison or not, because

I think maybe like micro-dosing poison would feel very similarly to what I'm experiencing right now.

I mean, there's only a few lesions breaking out on your face.

And like, you know, when you bring your hand up to move your hair,

I can see that one of your fingers fell off, but the rest are fine.

I do feel like

very warm face feeling.

I do feel funnier than I usually feel, which is also a symptom of being drunk.

Like you really think you're funny when you're drunk.

So that's part of it.

The bits are really cooking.

Yeah.

How about this moment where Archer goes to the coordinates, finds no super weapon there, takes bangers, and then powers cut on this ship before we cut away.

Like he's in the dark and underwater.

And I almost wish that they stayed with this moment a little bit longer because the creeping dread of that is really powerful.

Like use it.

Every submarine film that's ever been made has used that moment.

And this episode cuts away from it and lets us just spin on that.

And we learn in the next scene between T'Paul and Trip in the clarinet rental closet that it's been two hours with no news from Archer, no evidence that a massive explosion erupted on that planet.

He's like, T'Paul, you got to be on the bridge.

Like, this is important shit we're doing right now.

And

she is...

too bummed out, too sad, trying to put on a brave face that she's just being a stoic Vulcan and that if she's needed, she can be summoned easily.

But it's a real best of both worlds moment.

Like, Trip almost goes into the, like, that's now your chair.

Is it, though?

I was close with Archer, closer than friends, closer than family, and I can say goodbye.

I really wonder how the rest of the crew feels about a non-commissioned Vulcan officer being given the captain's chair on a starship in this way.

Yeah.

where like she quit her job, she's a fucking contractor, yeah.

Like, there are people who would have real gripes about that, I think, especially in a moment like this, especially with her being such an absentee captain.

It's more interesting because of tripping to Paul's intimacy

that he feels empowered to do this and that she feels empowered to tell him to get the fuck out of her office.

Like, yeah, it's a level of vulnerability that is really intense for this scene.

These are now your clarinets.

So Paul's like, I actually didn't know what were in these cases.

It's really what it is.

I won't cease or desist,

cause you really think it's fair use.

Archer's getting beat up in one of those interrogation rooms where you get your hands chained to the ceiling.

Oh, this is great.

I love this.

His prisoner taunts of his captors are really tremendous because he's getting beaten up by lizardmen and he's bragging about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Around 65 million years ago, most of the reptiles died out.

Mammals became the dominant species.

How unfortunate.

He has got a lot of lip for a guy who failed his mission.

Yeah.

And this is something that

Dollum calls him out on later.

Like, do you want to die, dude?

Like, what are you doing here?

You're You're making it a little easy for us to beat on you.

Yeah, Talum also tells him that the Enterprise has been clocked in the system and that they're going to destroy it unless he makes with the information.

I guess the information that they want is like, what are you doing here?

And, you know, how many Starfleet ships are in the expanse?

Like, what are we up against, basically?

Archer breaks the spell here by

bringing up the idea of Degra's third mystery child.

Yeah.

And Dollum's like, what are you talking about, dude?

Everyone knows Degra's got two kids.

Archer's like, nah, not me.

I know.

I know the truth.

Third mystery child.

You know what?

I was kind of a fan of Degra before he was really famous.

You know?

I think the stuff that he put out before he was on a major label was...

some of his best work and I'm familiar with some of the deeper cuts.

Let's just say that.

Anyways, I want to talk to him and not you.

I'll tell him everything you want to know.

Cut over to Enterprise.

And TePaul, hey,

return to the bridge.

Good job, TePaul.

That's where you need to be.

It is clear by now to everyone that the weapon was not destroyed.

And the question in the room is, what do we do now?

Like, the expectation was the weapon would be destroyed, or we'd hear from Archer, or we'd be destroyed by now.

So TePaul and Reed and Trip Tucker are talking it over and they're like, we don't want to just wait for whatever.

How about

we give this one more hour before Tepal goes through with her plan to go in by herself

and do a little Vulcan style diplomacy?

Also sounding a little bit like a suicide mission in this case.

She's like, I'll just take a shuttle and I'll go in and I'll try.

And they're like, huh?

But you don't even have that little pin that Archer was given.

Pin seems important.

That's gonna be in one of your Earth hours.

They're gonna wait until TePaul goes and tries this.

That's a lot of time to keep beating on Archer.

But in this case, Degra has actually gotten word about what Archer said, and so he's brought in and he does that thing.

That's great.

He dismisses everyone from the room.

Yeah.

So they can talk privately.

Or I guess if you're Archer, like, do you talk primately?

What do you think?

But they're humanoids, and the primates are the Dr.

Zaius guys.

So they can't talk primately.

But, like,

what are humans if not evolved primates?

It's a great point, Adam.

It's not good terminology in the Zindi.

I've been saying this forever.

Like, I don't know if the Zindi came up with this or if, you know, the Earth government came up with this.

For the purposes of my wordplay, I think we can agree that they are talking primately.

You know what I think?

I think the universal translator is to blame for this, and therefore Hoshi is to blame for this.

She fucked this up.

Yeah.

Because humans are primates.

Humans are a type of prime.

Humans are apes.

We're great apes.

Yeah.

You know, we share 99% of our DNA with bonobos and chimps.

Created by the great ape creator.

Some would say we're damn dirty apes.

I wouldn't.

I think we're quite clean generally.

Yeah, all my parts are clean.

Yeah.

But anyways, all of the lizardmen leave and the conversation begins.

And

Archer has Degra listening because he's got lots of

semi-secret biographical information about Degra's life.

And he explains, like, you guys are acting based on a lie, based on, you know, wool that has been pulled over your eyes.

And I can prove it.

And he taps that coin on the on the counter of the bar.

And Degra's like patting all of his pockets and he's like, oh shit,

I don't have one of those.

This whole idea that like when you destroy the humans, you destroy yourself, man.

Yeah.

The weight of that is in this scene.

Cut to later,

where Degra has this coin quantum dated.

This thing you took from Archer.

And he's out talking to the council.

He's just talking to like mammals.

Yeah, he's not talking to the whole council he's talking to his dudes about what to do about this and there's like kind of a lot more discussion of detroit than you'd ever expect on a zendi ship maybe ever

like if if this were a bettable ass thing like how many times the word detroit is said on a zendi ship i would i mean i would set the line at 0.5 and it's basically a yes or no

he described the pizza of this place and it's a thicker crust with

sauce on top of the cheese.

What we get out of this is a fair bit of news about the insect Cindy developing the secret bioweapon.

Like, that's the main thing that happened in Detroit.

Right.

And that is driving a wedge between the insectoids and everyone else on the council.

They're like, those fucking guys.

And there's some discussion of like, should we go to the big the bigger council with this information?

Or should we like just tell the aquatics?

Because it sort of seems like the lizardmen and the bugmen are in league.

But, you know, the council doesn't work when we're all kind of like making

backroom deals among subsets of the species.

I got a great question about the Zindi bioweapon.

The reptiles made the bioweapon in Detroit.

It wasn't the insectoids.

Yeah.

But if the insectoids wanted to make a bioweapon, why wouldn't they just squirt a bunch of ropes in people's faces and it just transforms them into a Zindi insectoid protecting people at their core?

We have to help these children.

All of a sudden, everyone on the council is pro-Zindi insectoid, going along with whatever their ideas are because it's good for the insects.

We've seen one example of what this huge weapon can do.

Maybe this even bigger one, what it does is sprays ropes all over the faces of every human on earth.

What you do is you get a bunch of well-dressed Zindi insectoids wearing boot and ears

on their chests.

They're going around asking folks to smell their flower.

Oh, Zindi rope.

Zindi rope again.

All of a sudden you're on our team.

They could sweep through the earth population very quickly that way.

Absolutely.

That's not their idea, though.

They're not as smart as us.

On the Entrepreneur, Trip is basically chasing Tepal through the ship and into the shuttle bay and trying to convince her not to go on this solo diplomacy mission.

And if you thought she was emotional before, brother, you ain't seen emotional.

Is this a word that's ever been said before?

Is this diplomacide?

That's what I feel like TePaul is after.

And she gets like on the threshold of a shuttle pod before she is stopped with news that Zindi ships are incoming.

That like grabbing the elbow move always feels bad to see a man do to a woman in a show, right?

And yet that is like the language of TV and film for time in Emerium.

It really is.

I feel like that is a function of

weak dialogue.

If you can't write dialogue that acts as a placeholder for grabbing a woman's arm, than like you failed write better dialogue you know rick berman is like uh let's toss out these four lines and just have him grab her elbow now is it and i'm playing the part of rick berman here now is it possible that trip could like grab her elbow and all of her clothes could fly off like

like maybe she slips down the ladder into the shuttle pod and like whoop

And he's just up there holding her cat suit like, oh, dang.

I didn't know it came apart like that.

Yeah.

And then she climbs up the ladder and they got to make out because that's what they need to do.

There's a moment where she's climbing the ladder and trying to cover herself up, but she's not doing that good of a job.

Can we write that into the script?

I've seen everything.

I've seen it all.

Rick, sorry, standards and practices are not going to let us do that.

Fuck.

Cut over to the bridge.

TePaul's hails of these four ships go unanswered.

So we're left on this cliff when we cut over to the Zindi jail cell.

Archer, unshackled.

He's already received a ton of trust in this scene.

He's asking for more trust.

He wants to address the Zindi Council directly and personally.

And man, that's a big ask, I think, in this moment.

They're like,

I don't know.

He's like, I...

I really insist.

You're fighting the wrong enemy.

A guy I know that has poop running through his entire uniform insisted that that was the case.

We're running toward the last couple minutes of this episode.

Enterprise is getting absolutely rocked by these Indy ships.

Sparks and girders are flying and dropping.

Also getting dropped as Archer at a detention center for more interrogation.

That's because Dollum has taken control of things now.

And the orders to attack Enterprise actually came from him.

That's the way it's going to be.

That's final.

He has sort of superseded superseded everybody and decided that he is going to destroy the Entrepreneur.

And if there are any survivors, they can join Archer in their interrogation center.

These fucking lizardmen are acting like they'd run the place.

It really feels like when we see these scenes of Enterprise being attacked, like this is the most amount of damage a ship named Enterprise has ever taken.

Like it's an Enterprise-C amount of damage they're taking at this point.

Right.

Like aside from like blowing up the whole damn ship.

This is it.

And people are getting blown into space.

People are catching on fire and like rolling around on the ground and getting, you know, fire extinguishers blown at them.

It's so much.

People are recreating the Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here album cover.

Left and right.

We get a super duper zoom in on the eyes of TePaul in the captain's seat.

What does that mean?

This was such an interesting composition because there's so much chaos going on with the exterior of the ship being attacked, the interior of the ship being attacked, and then like the stillness of a TePaul,

like almost scorekeeping in her mind.

Yeah.

And that's it.

That's the way the episode leaves us.

Did you like this episode?

I can't pay.

Couldn't forlate.

Got no case.

Tempting fate.

I don't know, man.

This might be my favorite episode of Enterprise.

I don't know whether this is the brown wine talking or not, but I really thought this was great.

And I think it was great because of how it just grew and grew in intensity toward the end of it.

Like, it started off with Archer going on, like, insisting on a suicide mission, and it ended with the possible death of not just Enterprise, but like Earth at the hands of the super weapon.

Like this, this crescendo of a of a tone was very persuasive.

Like it just made me feel like this is one of the high watermarks of the series itself.

I don't know how many episodes of Star Trek we've watched, but it's like dozens at least.

I mean, I think we're talking about 591 episodes of Greatest Gen.

Yeah, and then a handful over there on Greatest Trek, too.

335.

Yeah.

When the credits rolled on this episode, I was shocked.

It's a great moment, right?

I was like,

that's it?

That's it?

Like,

I had no concept of where I was in time at that point.

I was so locked in on this episode.

Why not to be continued this?

I think that's this amazing choice.

Like, it's an amazing...

To be continued is old-fashioned shit.

Like, this is a modern television show, you know?

You know what I loved?

I loved the interior dish of the bridge falling like a chandelier.

Yeah.

Like, you know, shit is bad when the chandelier falls on the bridge.

And Mayweather doing like a shoulder roll to get out of the way of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good situational awareness by a guy who was

presumably very occupied with maneuvering the ship to notice that the chandelier was hanging by a thread and getting out of the way.

When you know that you don't have to deliver dialogue, you can concentrate on all sorts of other things in your scene.

Do you want to see see if there's anything worth concentrating on in the Priority One inbox?

Oh yeah, I'm holding it together for that, Ben.

Okay.

Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channels.

Need a supplemental income.

Supplemental income?

Supplemental.

Supplemental income.

Yeah, it's extra.

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

We got a promotional one here, Adam.

Hey!

Goes like this.

I'm going to get political.

Star Trek has always been a socialist and humanistic vision of the future.

Funding has been cut to public radio.

I am calling for friends of DeSoto to donate.

Hashtag rascals resist.

And the call to action is donate to your local NBR station.

Ira the Gooch with this message.

Fuck yeah.

Longtime friend of DeSoto.

Absolutely despicable what happened to public radio, and it will

unfortunately disproportionately affect the most rural stations in the country.

I mean, you and I, Adam, have lots of friends in those public radio trenches and we have friends everywhere.

Veterans of those public radio trenches.

And I couldn't agree with the Gooch

more strongly.

Like this is a direct attack on credible information being delivered to people all over the country.

So if you've got the means and can do so, I highly encourage you to give a little coin to your local affiliate.

I, for one, have stiffened my resolve.

I know there are a bunch of public radio folks out there who see the value of these things.

We're going to come together and make it happen.

We're going to do it.

No one's going to take away our NPR stations.

That's just not going to happen.

We will save them.

We got to.

Ben, we got a personal message here.

It's from Courtney and it's to Robert.

Here's how that goes.

Happy 40th birthday, honeybear.

You're aging like a fine chateau Picard.

You're the Jennifer to my Sisko, the Rom to my Lita to my Rom.

Whoa.

What does that mean exactly, Courtney?

Oh, man.

The Rom to Maileta to my Rom.

Hmm.

The Bashir to my Garrick.

The prophets say to bring your batleth to Tarak Boudoir.

Hell yeah.

Let's pawn far, baby.

Wow.

Courtney, a very well-written, a very seductive

priority one message here.

Robert.

Lucky man.

Time to go.

Yeah.

Time to go, dude.

Turn off the episode right now.

If you know what's good for you.

Yeah.

Courtney, well, well done.

Well met indeed.

Our last P1 is from Samantha.

It's too ben and Adam.

It goes like this.

Hey, guys.

Long time listener, first time P1er.

My first episode of the show was Ginger Jesus.

I was riding my bike and decided to try this new Star Trek podcast I laughed so hard I crashed I still have a scar on my upper lip whoa

I've been listening ever since for nine years I've never admitted to anyone what caused the crash it was dick valet oh my god

oh Samantha Samantha what the fuck

Ben, we gotta stop doing this show, man.

It hurts people.

This was Adam's fault in particular.

He definitely said Dick Valet.

Yeah, that was me.

And on his behalf, I want to say that I'm very sorry for making a Star Trek podcast with him.

I want to be clear.

Ben apologizes not on my behalf ever.

I do not apologize.

Amazing story.

Holy shit.

Samantha.

Damn.

What a secret.

What a secret.

What a thing to be withholding from your friends and relations.

A good idea to withhold it, by the way.

Yeah.

That's a smart move by you.

But, like, you know, not in that context.

We encourage people to share the show with their friends.

Like, you know, there's a podcast I really like.

You might enjoy it too.

Sure.

Just don't tell them it disfigured you.

No, unless it's like a cool scar.

Yeah.

Thanks for getting a P1 to everyone who did one this week.

and highly encourage

anyone listening to arrange one themselves.

I'm looking at our inventory.

We got a lot of availability on GrazGen, which is unusual.

We're usually booked several months out.

I think people are going to want to get into this P1 inbox, especially after today's episode.

Indeed.

Because doing so is a great way to support the production of our show.

Maximumfund.org/slash jumbotron.

Get in there.

Hey, Adam.

What?

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Incredible.

Drunk Shimoda!

There's an inner life to Degra in this episode that is totally unscrutinized.

Like, what I wanted to see more than anything was for Archer to tell

Dollum the thing about the third child.

And then I wanted to cut over to the bridge.

I wanted to see Degra get told and for him to be like, like to spit out his coffee.

Like,

I'm Degra.

My job is bomb like like what what am i involved with this prisoner bullshit for and for that to change his entire life yeah i think a lot is made of that moment where degra is brought into the cell and and he's like

because he has no memory of anything going on between him and archer before he's never met archer there's a way you have to be in front of the prisoner where it's like tie is up you're buttoned up you're being stoic nothing nothing's gonna rattle you i want to see the part before the rattle.

When Degra permits himself to be like, what the fuck?

What?

No, guys.

There's no third child.

What?

Everyone knows.

I'm two-child Degra.

That's like the main thing about me.

Yeah.

It's like my whole identity at work.

They didn't have time for a last time on.

They didn't have time for it to be continued.

They didn't have time for that.

So I get it.

But like, I'm going to make my drunk Shimoda Degra

because

there had to have been that moment, the moment that just melts his mind.

And that we never see the mind melting deprives us, I think, of a great moment in this episode that we just have to conjure out of our imagination.

My drunk Shimoda is,

I couldn't quite tell if it was one or two extras on the bridge during the big combat sequence at the end.

It might be two guys, but

in my heart, it's one guy.

Because there's a guy that we see get like the traditional Star Trek.

My instrument panel exploded, blasted me in the face, and I went ass over tea kettle over the horseshoe.

Yeah.

And then I think it is that same guy a couple of beats later in the same sequence when a girder falls.

He's like just gotten up from being blasted out of his seat and gets up, and a girder comes out of the ceiling and takes him out from the back.

And I just,

man, I loved how that guy was just having like the worst possible day on Star Trek

I love how understood the girder is as the angel of death on Star Trek yeah yeah it's like you know what it's almost like its own character on the show I love it good one Ben faith of the fart what a fun episode Adam I can't even imagine what we've got coming up next is it called a Zadi Prime part two like this is this is not a to be continued so I'm going to say it can't be.

No.

Our next episode is season 3, episode 19,

damage.

While dissension among Zindi ranks festers, Enterprise tries to recover from a devastating attack.

I don't see how the Luke boys are going to get out of this bucket.

Enterprise is looking pretty bad.

Yeah, it's not

going great for the ship.

Ben, the game of buttholes, the will of the caretaker quantum leap.

I rolled the last one.

It's landed us on square 32.

That's a quarks bar episode.

Really wondering if we're going to experience the next episode in any kind of way.

Yeah.

A brown wine kind of way, even.

We'll see.

It could be anything, Adam.

That's the thing about the game of buttholes.

She's a cruel mistress.

You're required to learn as you play.

Roll.

Sometimes she's nice.

I'm gonna go ahead and roll this hundred-sided die and see where we land.

Do it.

Oh, Adam.

Narrowly avoided disaster.

We are on square 87.

Tula!

Did I win?

Hardly.

Doorstep of that temporal Cold War, but a regular old episode for the folks next week.

Just looked up Courting Hill Vineyard, a website that hasn't been updated since 2015.

Oh no.

What does that mean?

But this vintage is 2016.

I just want to say at this point, I appreciate everything that Cording Hill Vineyard has provided me.

Up until now, I also want to dedicate this episode to Jimmy Laydon,

the owner of Cording Hill Vineyard, who died in 2021.

Possibly the reason

that we have not gotten an update on this vineyard or its status.

By all accounts, a great dude who is well loved.

Oh, buddy.

And I hope that I'm not drinking the last bottle that could possibly be gotten from this great place.

Adam Tuck, you got to reach out and give us an update.

Let's try and drill down on the Adam Tuck situation, figure out what's going on.

Yeah.

Before

Adam Pranica shuffles loose this mortal coil.

Let's get some advice on whether or not you should finish this bottle.

Got to thank the friends of DeSoto who support at maximumfund.org slash join.

Thank you so much.

Got to thank Wendy Pretty, our amazing producer and editor.

Got to thank Rob Adler, our social media director.

Follow at Greatest Trek on all social media platforms and subscribe to the newsletter, greatestreck.com to get all of the information about all of the things.

We got to thank Bill Tilley, our temporal Cold War time consigliary,

and Adam Lagusia, our beloved music director of the Uxbridge Shimota Corporation, and our co-host on Wholesome.

Check out that show at wholesome underscore pod on Patreon.

A really special show, I think.

People would like it.

It's really good.

I look forward to it every week.

You want to know Ben a little better than what you know about him from Greatest Gen?

There's a lot more under the surface.

Oh, no.

Let's try and come up with something actually compelling to pitch the people with.

Ben is weird.

How weird?

You'll find out on wholesome.

With that, we'll be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise where I am frantically trying to put Adam Pranica back together after his disastrous run-in

with a bottle of brown wine just as the crew of the entrepreneur are trying to put their own ship back together.

Yeah, I think I'll be okay.

I had a broad before this.

Good thinking.

Yeah.

I'm gonna keep drinking this wine the rest of the afternoon.

I feel awesome right now.

You look awesome, Adam.

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