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Here's to the finest crew in starving.
When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.
This is a parody.
Paramount owns the sun.
Welcome to the greatest generation.
It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.
I'm Ben Harrison.
I'm Adam Pranica.
You really bill marred that word in the open.
Oh, man.
Ben, wouldn't you say you're a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek party type?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
That is what he says a lot of the time.
New rule.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm
leaving for Vegas in the morning for the fifth and final time, maybe in my life.
You say that every time you go.
My head's a little scrambly as a result.
Yeah.
Are you one bagging at this time?
Oh, you know it.
Yeah.
Best way to fly?
Going out of Burbank?
No.
Whoa, okay.
Not doing the burr.
I'm doing that thing where my wife is out of town for work, and I'm dropping a car off for her to pick up because she's landing an hour or so after I take off.
You're going to ships in the nighted again.
Very elegant maneuver there with the.
This happened the last time you went to Vegas.
Yeah, we're getting good at it yeah
well
why don't you tell me what I should do in Vegas what's your favorite thing to do in Vegas and then maybe I can try to do it hmm I mean I do I feel like we've done a lot of my favorite things to do in Vegas together besides buying a tiki glass and smashing it
like what's your second favorite thing One thing that I've found is a nice thing about Vegas is some of the hotels have movie theaters right there inside of them.
And I would say in the last three years, I've seen more movies in Vegas than I have seen in theaters in Los Angeles or maybe an equal number.
Wow.
Because I'll be in Vegas and I'll just be like, well, there's a fucking movie theater downstairs.
I'll just go see a movie and nothing can stop me.
Ben, I went to see a movie in a theater today.
I'm shocked by this.
Did you see a movie during Star Trek Las Vegas?
This year I didn't, but,
you know, it was a different year.
We were manning the booth so much.
Usually I do.
Last year at STLV, I saw three movies.
Crazy.
I saw Twisters.
I saw,
what was that horrible movie?
Wolverine meets Steadpool, something like that.
Yeah, I saw a lot of movies.
I like Twisters a lot.
Good movie theater movie.
Twisters was a great movie theater movie.
Yeah.
You know, we're always there during summer, so there's some blockbustery scale stuff out usually when I'm in town.
An off-strip sojourn, like to the pinball museum or something like that, is always a fun little diversion.
But
you're going to play poker, man.
Like,
you're going for the reason they built that town.
Yeah, I'm going for a stake and a gamble.
That's going to be my couple of days there.
It's going to be great.
Bets, bets, bets.
Best of luck.
Yeah.
I hope you take all of their roles, roles, as a fella says.
I'll do my best.
I'll follow up on the next episode.
You'll have to remember to ask me.
Wow.
I will not remember, but yeah, I'm excited for you.
You know why, Adam?
That will be one of the many forgotten things in my life.
See, I threw you the reference underhanded and I thought you'd missed it, but no, you didn't miss it.
I had to go back for it.
What you did was you swung the bat, and then the bat hit the ball on the other side.
On the come around?
Yeah.
Yeah, clumsy.
You know, I'm clumsy on the best of days.
This isn't even the best of days.
Very rom in Take Me Out to the Holo Suite was that pivot to episode Ben.
Let's get into one that's
bright and shiny and fun.
Star Trek Enterprise Season 3, Episode 20.
It's called The Forgotten.
Got me a speech and guitar.
So we've got that very fucked up entrepreneur at Warp.
We got tin canned a little bit last time on, and because of the feeling of being way, way down in the final quarter, we get Archer addressing the troops, and this happens in the shuttle bay so that he can be up on the second level, yelling down at everybody like an emperor.
Enterprise is a tough ship.
It's a stirring speech about how we're still in this fight and we're still going to do everything we can to keep the earth from being blown up in the nuclear hellfire that the Zindi mean to visit on it.
But we also got to set aside some time to remember the dead.
18 people have died so far on this mission.
The way you said that is what makes me so upset.
If we have some time, let's talk about the dead.
Ben, let's presume that you have some sort of consciousness after death.
If I'm one of the 18, I am so fucking pissed.
Do not use
what should be a eulogy about me to talk about this other thing.
The ship sacrificing itself as if the ship,
the ship is better than me, who actually died
as a sacrifice.
I feel like I would be like, don't talk about any of it.
Get back to fucking work.
Like, don't make me have died in vain so that you can make your big grand eloquent speech i want you to take it to them zindies i want my own time i want my own memorial i don't want to share it with 17 people in a ship i don't want to like be wondering how how much of each pipe on the bagpipe is allotted to me i want all the pipes
Gonna put you right on the spot here, man.
And
I know you'll do it.
Hey, hands up off of the keyboard.
Let me see them.
How many pipes are on a bagpipe?
Three.
Are there?
Oh, well,
plus the mouthpipe, right?
That counts.
Does that have pipe?
So I'm going to say four, four total.
I'm looking it up now.
Your hands are still up.
Is there a standard?
Is there like a bass bagpipe that's got like one massive pipe?
Hey, Ben, you're going to love this.
You're going to love this.
You ready?
Okay.
There,
oh,
four
pipes.
Yeah, this is a Star Trek podcast, motherfucker.
All right, that's been our show.
Thanks a lot for supporting maxfun.org.
Let's join.
We have a conversation between Trip and TePaul and Archer.
More conversation about all the dead people and also
the weapons, which are
weapons are back.
The ship is very fucked up.
There's a lot wrong with the ship, and Trip is like kind of advocating for like maybe before we go meet up with your boy Degra, Archer, we stop and patch things up a little bit, like
tighten some of these screws, lick our wounds before we try to like
run into what is almost certainly a trap to finally destroy our ship.
It's the hierarchy of priorities, though.
Meeting with Degra in 10 hours is...
The thing that supersedes all of it.
Like, no matter what, we got to make this meeting.
You can do whatever you want want in the next 10 hours, Trip.
Yeah.
This is when Archer gives Trip a mission that he is not relishing, which is write a letter to the family of a woman that worked in your crew.
Like, one of the engineers is dead.
I guess Archer will write the other 17 letters, but Trip has to write one of them.
Archer's like, I already put another crew person on the other 17 letters.
And God, I could not get him to not volunteer for this.
Wouldn't you believe that Reed wants to write 17 letters to these 17 dead crew people?
I mean, coincidentally, all of them women.
Yeah.
All of them exes.
He really fucked his way through the lower decks.
I need something to do with this shit, Commander.
Fair enough.
Unaccountably, like, it just doesn't make sense.
But Reed bags the babes.
Dear Crew and Taylor's family,
my name is Trip Tucker, and I was not Crewman Taylor's boyfriend.
That was Reed, Malcolm Reed.
And I just want to say I never agreed with that relationship.
It just didn't seem right to me on a number of levels.
In many ways, she is in a better place because she's not dating Malcolm Reed right now.
So you can take some small measure of comfort in the fact that Malcolm Reed is not dicking your daughter down.
Enclosed in this package is the dinner napkin we draped over Crewman Taylor's bounty.
As we do on board this ship, whenever we cover a corpse.
Oh, that's a reference to our other hit Star Trek podcast, Greatest Trek, isn't it?
Yeah, he doesn't relish this.
He says he doesn't want to do it, like, flat out.
Yeah.
I'm barely holding this ship together.
I have time to sit down and write a letter.
It doesn't have to be long.
If you don't want to write the dead crew and Taylor letter, you're right to say it if you're not the right person.
Yeah.
There's something to Paul wants to get out of as well, and that is visiting Dr.
Flox.
She is still in the, I guess, recovery period on kicking her Trellium habit.
Not totally clear how much of a, like, like, they didn't have to, like, chain her to a radiator so she wouldn't go score again, right?
Like, she,
she went cold turkey all by herself, right?
She's cleared for duty.
I mean, to both please that booty and kick the Trellium.
Right.
One thing about her experience that I didn't expect was that here we are in the third season of Star Trek Enterprise, really admiring Jolian's work as an actor.
All you need to do is give a character a drug problem
if they're a Vulcan, and all of a sudden, like, I respect her craft.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's...
a very of its time story arc for a main cast character on like i feel like every show had this had
this storyline at this time but yeah so there's this conversation they have about like the the feelings are still right up here dr.
Flox like I'm dealing with emotions in a way that I'm just not accustomed to
and I don't quite know what to do about that and he's like you know you like burned a lot of new neural pathways over the three months that you were slamming Trell
and you're gonna to have to just ride this out.
Like, you're the first Trillium addict in recorded medical history.
We don't know how long the recovery period is going to last.
Not to blame the addict or anything, but Dr.
Flox is like, look, when you go for the record on emotions,
things aren't going to work quite right for a period of time after, and maybe permanently.
You might see some swelling.
You might have what we call kung fu grip syndrome going forward.
So watch out for that.
Once it's out, it's extremely difficult to put back in.
But we're going to be at the coordinates soon, and that's really exciting.
But we hit a spatial anomaly.
That just seems to happen whenever they need anything to happen on this show.
But we're really like not ready for it this time, you know?
Like,
this is really outrageous to trip.
He's like, come on, like, this is fucking awful timing for this.
What the hell?
I'm trying to write a letter.
And you cut to him and he's like scribbling all over the
paper.
I got to start all over.
I have one piece of paper left.
Now I got to go down to the supply closet.
Come on.
It drops bangers all over Enterprise.
And at this point, Archer's like, fine, fuck.
Like, like, let's just turn around.
Like, we can't do this.
We could die trying to meet up with Degra.
And what good are we then?
So, he almost orders the ship around, but then Degra's ship appears and beckons the Enterprise to follow with a sort of come hither hail.
Yeah, the Canadarm extends from Degra's ship and does a
come this way motion.
And into
the cloaking field around a sphere they go.
And now they're in orbit of one of those.
And Degra has his planet ape buddy from the Zindi Council there.
And they link up and Archer comes aboard to meet up with them.
Really fun choice that LeVar Burton does here as the director of this episode where you see the back of Archer's head and over the top of it are like Degra's cornrows that he has on the side of his head.
Good callback to the Shran episode.
Yeah, yeah.
It's starting to become kind of the visual language of this show.
Yeah.
And it's starting to look like they have built the beginnings of an anti-reptilian conspiracy here.
The Planet Ape guy is like, all right, Degra is a lot more convinced than I am.
There is some pretty hard to swallow talk about time travel
and evidence that we're being tricked by our very smooth friend who helped convene the Zindi Council.
Like, I want to show and tell.
I want you to show off your evidence of all of this shit to me.
Speaking of hard to swallow, do you want to do something fun for the folks who are watching the stream right now?
Oh, yeah, let's do it.
Let's do an impression of Jannar having this conversation.
Ready?
Okay.
Something seems hard to swallow about
this so-called evidence.
And part of what makes me sound so weird is like my upper lip doesn't touch my bottom lip, so I just look like my teeth are out the whole time.
I cannot swallow.
swallow.
It's just a thing for all members of my species or just me.
And how does somebody who can't keep his teeth inside his mouth rise to the level in my society that I have?
My job does not involve a lot of public speaking.
And that's a good thing.
I mostly write the speeches.
And I've got faith of the far heart.
Legally, it's just a far jump.
Archer is like, um, yeah, I mean, I can show you some stuff, but like, what assurances do I have that while we're having this hang, there isn't a super weapon showing up at Earth and incinerating it?
And Tegra and Jannar are like, okay, like, we'll look into like delaying the super weapon for several days.
I love this through line that Archer has.
This entire episode is like, yeah, we could have a meeting, but like, in some far-off place, the final wrench turns on the super weapon are taking place.
Like, do we have time to even have this conversation?
Because
it's not in the in the little cradle underwater anymore.
Like, who even fucking knows where it is?
It could be en route.
Yeah.
For all we know.
Probably is.
So they're like, okay, if we see proof of what you're saying, like, we, we could probably stop the weapon.
This could all be proven if the Zindi used a find by super weapon app and could like just show Archer on the pad where it is.
Yeah.
It's just pointing at the same part of Florida.
Like, it's not going to do any harm for us to do that line one more time.
It's like following a rideshare app, like, on the streets, and like the super weapon is, like, going
up some weird.
Yeah.
Like, how is that the way to Earth?
Like, that doesn't even make any sense.
Ooh, I'm pretty sure that's a one-way street, and it's going away from me up a one-way street.
What the hell?
Why is the super weapon spinning?
So TePaul gets some dinner with Trip, who is struggling on the letter to Crewman Taylor's family.
We learn in this scene that he's also not slept in a really long time.
He is all fixed ship and write letter and no take care of himself.
Banger, Trip and TePaul find a burned up person right after their meal.
And when they try to tend to them, we see an exterior shot of the ship revealing a sort of pinhole leak in the hull, and that doesn't seem good.
This was the part of the episode that I that really stuck in my memory-the pinhole leak.
Because, as I mentioned, I've reviewed this episode one time before on a different Star Trek podcast, and I was like, We're like so far into this episode, and I was like, When the hell is that?
What did you just say?
Yeah, I uh I dabbled in
son of a bitch,
you no good son of a bitch.
I will wear that proudly.
But yeah, early in our run, I think we were still on TNG, I went on the show Random Trek, hosted by Scott McNulty, and talked about this specific episode.
Believe it or not, we've had this conversation before.
And I was remembering that there was like a problem where something was coming out of the saucer section.
They had to go on the saucer section to fix it.
Yeah, this is that.
First stop in in the Zindi show and tell is the morgue where Archer shows those lizardman corpses to Degra and Jannar.
Speaking of pinhole leaks, when they wheel out the table,
the drain is just
stuffed.
With like a thicker than you'd think liquid coming out of them.
Yeah, it's very gooey.
Jannar is like, did you consider just shooting off their tails and seeing if they grew back?
I bet you thought we wouldn't recognize these two lizardmen, but we do.
We know this guy.
He hasn't been around for a while.
You think he was in Detroit?
Why there of all Python?
I know you think this is sufficient proof, but
I still don't believe in time travel yet.
You know, nobody would be able to put a knife cock on me, because you couldn't fit a gun in this mouth.
Not with these teeth.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Just aprovo of nothing.
Archer takes them to a second location, this being insufficient to prove his point.
That second location being where they store the bioweapon that was used in Detroit.
It's okay.
It's inert right now.
It can't launch any of the bioweapon toxin.
And
I love Jannar in all these scenes because this not prove anything more than the last scene.
This is a device that was with these lizards, Indy, maybe in Detroit.
The Detroit part in the past is the part that we need proof of, Archer.
Yeah.
You're doing it all wrong.
I mean, they're talking about chronotons.
Time travel.
A bit of a stretch.
He also shows them the pictures of the party dude that they found hot boxing his Mark Iv.
And they're like, okay, this is a little bit more persuasive.
Like, we've only seen one other, one of those guys, and
you know, she's only ever a hologram kind of person.
We cut over to a corridor where Tripp is just
clobbering the balls of Crewman Rivers over his attention to detail issues with some of the repairs he's having to do.
I ran a pressure test.
Tell it to the man line in 6A.
Test them again, all of them.
Aye, sir.
And Crewman Rivers is like, you think this damage is bad?
It's not half as bad as
that time I tripped over an EPS conduit and fell into Marilyn Monroe's bosoms.
What?
It's just so random.
It's like not even really a joke.
Like an eight-minute chicken fight happens in the corridor here.
He bumps bumps into Dr.
Flox, who knows about the Trip no-sleeping situation from TePaul.
Dr.
Flox is the sort of person that intervenes in an argument that's happening in public between two people.
Like, he just happens to be walking by, this ball clobbering, when he pulls Trip aside.
Commander, I'm a little busy, Doc.
So it seems.
Man, I bet Seth McFarlane was fucking thrilled about that.
Big fun.
Yeah.
They do this haggling over the amount of sleep sleep that Trip is ordered to go get.
Yeah.
Initially, it starts at six, and I love that.
I feel like Trip Lox's number should have been higher.
You know, you want your initial position.
Four is just not enough hours of sleep.
Like, you, I feel like if it started at like 10 or 12,
he could have gotten a solid eight hours out of Trip.
Well, my point is, what Trip's point is, is that the ship could explode if he's sleeping.
And that maybe the minimum amount of sleep is the right amount of sleep to prevent that.
Maybe,
you know,
maybe just like pull a cot into engineering so that he can be nearby and they can wake him up.
Like, I was thinking about that in the context of the episode where they had to go through the space queso for four days and it was making Flox go crazy.
Like, it was all pretty quiet around the ship.
Why could Trip not have slept in engineering?
You know, they have the most uncomfortable hospital chair in the entire world.
The one that you could sleep in.
Yeah, it technically lays flat.
Which is like the worst chair that's ever been made.
Yeah.
I've spent a lot of time in that chair around the births of my children.
It's a bad chair.
Are you saying that with all of this technology, you have not been able to develop a better chair?
This is the first time I'm meeting humans, so it's very confusing to me.
So we cut to a dream that Trip Tucker is having where he goes to Crewman Taylor's quarters and he's confronted by her ghost.
Yeah.
And she gives him a bunch of prompts for him to work off of for his letter, which I thought was really considerate.
Tell them how hard I worked.
Tell them how much you liked me.
Adam, did you notice that there was a bronze scuba suit in Trip's quarters when he was sleeping?
I did.
Was that part of the dream or is that something that he really has next to his bed?
I have no idea.
What was that about?
Anyways.
I was hoping you wouldn't see that.
That is what I like to use for breathplay.
I have a kind of steampunk approach to my breathplay.
So, yeah, he's like, he's like in a hallway and he finds this photograph of Kruben Taylor, or maybe is it his sister?
Hard to tell because the glass is all broken around it.
And she's like talking him through how to write this letter.
Like, you think I would have made a great chief engineer one day?
Say that in the letter.
Like, talk about how much I fucking rule.
You, uh,
you think I was an okay crew person?
Say I was a good crew person.
If maybe you want to say I was a good crew person, say I was a great person.
Give them no place to go.
Lead them as far away from the Malcolm Reed issue as you possibly can, is what I'm trying to say.
Like,
don't want them asking any questions about what was going on there.
As soon as Malcolm Reed's name is spoken, he wakes back up.
Unclear how much sleep he's gotten.
And I sort of wondered if his resistance to sleeping was related to his not sleeping toward the beginning of the season where he was not not sleeping because of how haunted he was by the death of his sister, and he needed all that neuro pressure to get back right.
He's got grief insomnia.
Yeah, like this has just rinse-repeated that situation.
Hmm.
Yeah.
No one gave Trip Tucker bad news.
I think that's the lesson here.
Yeah, but like then you start to wonder, like, is this a defense mechanism?
Like,
does he make no one give him bad news because they know how severely it will affect them?
I'm also suspicious of this.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Legally, it's just a fur jump.
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Hi, I'm Alexis.
I'm one of the co-hosts of Comfort Creatures, and I'm here with River Jew, who has been a member since 2019.
Thank you so much for being a listener and a supporter of our show.
Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long.
Yeah, right?
As the Max Fun member of the month.
Can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member?
I used to work in a library, so I just used to listen to podcasts while I reshelved all the books.
Really helped with doing meeting at work.
So I just wanted to give back to what's been helping me.
Yeah.
It feels good to be part of that.
As the member of the month, you will be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fund store, a member of the month bumper sticker, and you also, if you're ever in Los Angeles, you can get a parking spot at the Max Fun HQ just for you.
Yay!
I'm actually going to LA September, so I'll get to use the parking.
Yes.
Thank you so much, River, for doing this.
This has been an absolute blast.
Yeah, of course.
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Yay!
Become a Max Fun member now at maximumfund.org slash join.
On Degra's ship, Degra and Jannar are post-gaming the three locations they were taken to by Archer and the so-called evidence they were shown in these places.
Look.
It's not enough for Jannar.
Like, it just isn't.
He needs more proof.
And Degra is like, I'm open-minded enough to go with this.
And not only that, I'm going to go back to Enterprise and see how much more evidence I can find.
And Jannar, as Degra goes, is like, hey, try not to forget about our genocide plan.
Stay on Team Genocide.
So Degra finds himself in the command center where Tepal and Trip are showing him the map of the spheres that they made and are like trying to undelete from the computer.
It's a little bit messed up and glitchy on the screen, but this is part of how they're going to try and convince Degra that the spheres are part of the plot to terraform this region of space by the trans-dimensional beings that convinced him to build the super weapon in the first place.
So important that he believe what they are telling him right here, but Tripp is a little bit hyper-fixated on the destruction of Florida and people being vaporized there
and kind of lays into Degra in a way that is like, yeah, man, I mean, righteous and you're absolutely correct, but maybe not the right time or place for that particular axe to be ground.
I've had 20 minutes of sleep.
My logic is flawless.
You can't argue with me.
He is going off on Degra, and TePaul is trying to calm him down when Archer shows up.
Archer shows up like a teacher on the playground during recess who can tell that two kids in front of him have just been fighting or like about to throw punches.
Yeah.
How are the repairs coming?
Just need a few more minutes, Cam.
Archer invites Degra to the clarinet rental closet, and the second they leave, TePaul is like, Trip, what the fuck, man?
Archer is trying to build trust with this guy.
It's a fucking delicate situation.
And you're going off on him.
Hey, buddy, you need a back rub?
That's kind of my specialty.
I may be going through the DTs at the moment, but even I am managing to hold it together.
Do you want me to dump out these nasty Tootsies for you, Trip?
Would that make you feel a little bit better?
Meanwhile, as we have seen several times already this episode, what was once a leak on the hull of the ship has turned into a full-on rupture of plasma And in order to repair this hole, they are gonna have to go outside to do it.
And Trip Tucker and Reed are just the two to do it.
If only this had happened a little bit quicker, a little bit earlier, Trip wouldn't have put his foot in his mouth in front of Degra.
Yeah.
Because he would have been out on the on the on the hull with Reed.
Yeah, bad timing.
This is one of those trip on the hull scenes where you got to get the panels open and turn the knobs and crank crank the cranks.
And Reed can't get his panel open.
He's complaining about this to Trip, who does not give any fucks.
He's like, Solve your own fucking problems.
I got my own panel to deal with.
I was delighted by the moment we were told about the six-minute deadline being while they were out on the saucer doing the repair.
I had no idea the situation was as urgent as it was.
I mean, I knew it was urgent.
The ship is venting plasma, but like, I didn't think they were six minutes from death.
Yeah.
Hoshi gets a couple of lines in this episode.
She gets to talk about how Reed is overheating in his suit.
Ben, I think we actually have time to play every line of dialogue Hoshi has this episode.
You ready?
Okay, let's do that right now.
He's telling us to follow him.
They're hailing us.
Captain,
the temperature in Lieutenant Reed's suit is over 44 degrees.
46 degrees?
Captain, Dagger's hailing us.
Wow.
Okay, I barely was able to take a sip of water, but I got back on mic.
Let's hear it for Linda Park.
That's a wrap on Linda Park for the episode.
Yeah, he gets a little too toasty in his EV suit,
and he ignores orders to get back inside and heroically gets the panel off and, you know, turns the knob or whatever.
Reed sacrifices his health and safety for that of the crews, Ben.
And I just have to ask you, as far as Reed stock goes, higher, lower, or unchanged based on this?
I think it's a little bit higher.
I think this is a good moment for Reed, you know?
I'm just disappointed he didn't die.
Yeah.
This would have been a good moment in the season to take out one of our main cast characters.
And like, with stakes this high, like, I feel like a modern television show would take out a main cast character at this point i mean there's so many close-up shots of the panel that the visual language of that often means that panel is going to explode and then wing your character into a flaming plasma geyser and shoot him into space yeah it would have been epic yeah he wouldn't have even had time to write the letters and then trip has to write the other 17
oh man My hands got a cramp.
I gotta wait to write that one.
God damn it, I got as many letters to write as I have nibbles.
You're never gonna let that go, are you?
My hands are all crampy from all the letter writing and the breathplay.
But mostly the breathplay.
Guilty as charged.
It feels like a great success until it's not because once Reed and Tripp get back inside Enterprise, Reed is unconscious.
And
in the changing room, after they take Reed out of there, for some reason, Degra is there with Archer.
and that is just wrong place, wrong time for Degra.
Degra,
maybe keep your hope for Reed's condition to yourself, given what a live wire Trip Tucker is.
He is really in no mood, and he rips into Degra for being a seven millionaire, for the body count that he has, and for, you know, feigning concern about one more human life.
We just got to get these two guys apart.
We can't have them in the same room anymore.
I got to put this on Archer.
You just can't do this.
No, like you were already standing in the back of the classroom.
You saw that these two students are at Degragra heads.
Good one.
In the command center, Degra is shown the information Enterprise had gathered about the spheres.
That's all cleared up now.
It's unscrambled.
And it's a real sphere counting contest between Degra and Archer in this scene.
A contest that Degra wins because the Zindi have counted 78 of them.
And that is a real surprise to Archer, who thought it was a 59-sphere situation that they were dealing with.
Archer on his back heel also apologizes for what a bitch Trip Tucker has been about the whole mass murder thing.
Like, he's usually cool.
Like, any other circumstance, if you guys met, I think you guys would be total bros.
But yeah, he's just real touchy about that right now.
The thing about Trip tucker's family is like
one sister is just a total fucking bitch and if that had been the one that had been killed like i think things would be very different but like the good sister that he liked yeah got killed and that just changes everything degrees you got to know this about him and his sisters They're talking about the like trust building exercise that they've been undertaking over the last few hours.
And
Degra makes a joke about how like, you know, like if you hadn't tricked me and wiped my memory that one time, I might be trusting you even more.
Who knows?
It's so weird why I don't feel comfortable dating you after the whole Roofie situation we went through on our first date.
Yeah.
But Archer is able to turn things around in this moment.
Feels very precarious, but suddenly.
Degra, you gotta trust me now.
Things are different with the spheres.
We've been flying through sphere pudding for the last two days and
you're not going to like being inside of it.
Arthur whips out scans from inside a sphere, which Degra has never seen before.
And this is very valuable information.
And Degra's like, how the fuck did you even get scans like this with your warship?
And Archer's like, that's just it, man.
This ain't a warship.
And Degra's like, you mean like in a porno porno way?
And he's like, no, no, no.
I mean, like, it's just like a, it's like an exploration vessel.
Was your reference a this ain't no warship type of movie title?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Like, like as in this ain't the Cosbies or This Ain't Cheers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have you ever seen This Ain't Cheers?
I don't want to see This Ain't Cheers.
I've seen a little bit of it.
And what's amazing is that they built the bar from Cheers, like a perfect replica of it so that they could shoot people having sex in it.
It surprises me very little that you've seen Cheers porn
The George Went looking porno star enters the bar
everyone yells moan
So cut to Trip Tucker recording his letter to Crew and Taylor.
And after a false start, the second draft...
Oh my god, he's getting it.
It's starting to sound pretty good.
Until, god damn it, Reed interrupts with a tactical alert.
Oh,
that was gonna be it.
That was gonna be it, but this reptilian ship has entered the cloaking barrier.
God, the Zindis suck.
They ruin everything for Trip.
The Reptilians call up Degra's ship at the Planet Ape guys like, oh yeah, no,
yeah, what are you doing here?
Nothing important.
You guys shouldn't worry about us at all.
Degra residents, this is Jaddar.
Degra, can't come to the phone right now.
Jadar's speaking.
And then he FaceTimes over to Degra, who's on the Entrepreneurs Bridge, and is like, yeah, man, like, they're going to start shooting.
They're pretty pissed.
And Degra's like, like, stall them, stall them.
And Archer's like, come on, man, you got to help us, like, fight these guys off.
And Degra's like, those are my boys out there.
Like, they definitely caught me doing some stuff I'm not supposed to do, but, like, I'm not going to help you get them.
Like, there's no way.
Those are Zindi.
We don't know whether Degra gives Archer exploitable information at this point, because we cut to Degra's ship undocking.
from Enterprise after being ordered to dock with the reptile Zindu ship.
And on Enterprise,
I love this moment.
Almost a minute goes by where we're like, will he?
Won't he?
Is Enterprise going to shoot first?
No, it's Degra's ship that shoots first.
They sucker punch this reptilian ship, and then the entrepreneur starts letting go torpedoes and phasers,
and they pretty quickly disable this reptilian ship.
And there it is, like listing in space.
And then Degra fucks around and destroys it.
And he explains to Archer, like, couldn't risk them getting back to the council with what's going on here.
Don't like what happened today, but that was the way it had to go.
Degra doesn't hesitate, he's rock and roll.
Once it became a Manslaughter 1 beef,
he went ahead and took out the whole ship.
What difference does it make?
Yeah.
Jannar heard it mostly.
Tapal runs into Trip in a hallway, and Trip has a giant box of portable Zindy power cells, a little gift from Degra.
And he's still so pissed off about this letter that he has to write.
They have a little conversation, and it's revealed that the thing that has been making it such a high bar to clear for him is that he's really been trying to think of his sister as just another victim of the attack on Florida and not a personal loss.
Even though I hated my other sister much more, I should still think of them as equal in siblings to me.
They're both members of my family, and part of this is the guilt of wishing it was the other one, and
part of this is that crewman Taylor just kind of looked a lot like the other one.
And it's like, I kind of wish it, I just, I'm forced to confront that I really wish
that that horrible wench had died.
Connor Trader does two things as Trip here
by kicking over the power cells, he does the like
first level of emotions that TV actors get to do most of the time.
The physical outburst that shows that they're hurting.
But then he falls into this really emotional display of grief that, like, I think represents maybe the best acting that Connor Chanier has done on the series.
I thought he was excellent in this moment.
Yeah, it's definitely like some of the most vulnerable moments I can think of.
And it's interesting given the context of what TePaul's been going through lately because she's like, he's saying, like, God, I wish I didn't have these feelings the way you don't.
And
she
either lies to him a little bit about not having those feelings or
is telling the truth and is like getting in more control of what she's going through emotionally because she says, in many ways, I envy the fact that you're like experiencing real grief in this moment.
It's such a great choice because she doesn't say the thing.
She just describes the thing.
And I think a worse episode of television would have had
Tipal admit her addiction in this scene as a way to exchange grief currency or experience currency.
Yeah.
And I'm glad that doesn't happen here because
that's a weakness some friends have in situations where one friend is struggling.
Like, let's just talk about the one thing without having to draw an equivalency.
Totally.
So, with this exchange having been done in an elegant and artful way, we cut over to Degra and Archer, where Degra has decided to invite Archer to meet him in front of the Zindi Council, where Archer can lawyer Archer his case
and that's going to happen in three days and Archer's like yo yo yo but like what about the weapon like we still don't have status on the weapon you haven't find my super weapon yet and Degra's like okay like I will I will do everything I can to delay it which doesn't sound like a promise it sounds like a we'll see what I can do
It really demonstrates the asymmetry of trust between these two characters.
Like, Archer really trusts him that he's telling the truth, even though in many ways Archer has wronged Degra big time.
Yeah.
I think it's a trust of necessity because both of their species stand to be destroyed if they're wrong.
Right.
So Degra's like, all right, here's how you get there.
You got to go through this nebula.
Fair warning, there is a hostile species that will try to kill you on your way, but I'll catch you in half of a week.
Degra looks at the completely busted-ass jalopy that Enterprise has become, and he's like,
good luck with that.
Final scene of the episode is Trip laying down an absolute banger of a consolation letter.
If you're bereaved parents, this is the fucking letter you want.
It tells you a lot about Crewman Taylor.
It tells you a lot about Trip Tucker.
It tells you a lot about the crew of the ship that your daughter has served on
in a really interesting way.
It's vivid and good and personal.
And Reed didn't write it, maybe best of all.
Yeah, there's not a drip of horniness in this letter the way there could have been.
So easily.
Dear Crewman Taylor's parents,
I do regret I was unable to know your daughter better.
Biblically.
And then it is revealed as the camera swings around that the thing Trip was holding this whole time while he was recording this letter is not a picture of Crewman Taylor, but it was a picture of his sister.
So I guess he said goodbye to her
away.
The frame says like favorite sister, number one sister.
Best sister in the universe.
She's also wearing a number one sister sister t-shirt in the picture.
Holding a foam finger.
Yeah.
And then in the background is the
sister that didn't die wearing a bullshit other sister t-shirt.
The good sister's wearing a shirt with an arrow, and the words on the shirt say, My sister is a total C.
And then in parentheses, under not in the Australian sense.
Did you like this episode of Star Trek Enterprise, Adam?
I really did because it helped me know Trip Tucker a little better and it came so close to killing Reed.
I think those two things are qualities and episodes I really like.
How interesting has Degra become?
Those first couple episodes, he was a fucking zero as a bad guy.
And just how complicated the relationship is between he and Archer, I think does a lot to make him interesting.
The one thing that you must remember about the asymmetry between Degra and Archer is that, like, there is no downside to waiting for Degra.
The weapon is built.
It can be deployed at any time.
They have the benefit of time on the Zindi side.
And so I feel like he can luxuriate in this little side quest to get proof sufficient for Janar
and be just fine.
I think the pressure is way more on Archer here.
Yeah.
And that just makes it interesting with every interaction that they have.
I also love one detail I really want to call attention to, I don't think we have.
Everyone is dirty this episode.
Like, no one has changed their uniform.
Trip Tucker sleeps in a dirty uniform.
Like, everyone's looking haggard in a way that really works.
I don't even have time to change into my old-timey scuba outfit that I normally sleep in.
If you were giving me four hours to go take a nap, I'm using five minutes to take a shower.
I'll tell you that much.
What about you, Ben?
Yeah, I'm curious to go back and re-listen to that other time I've reviewed this one because I really liked it.
Yeah, listen to yourself doing it with some other co-host, Ben.
See how that makes you feel.
I wonder if picking it out of thin air the way it works on that show without all the context of the season that preceded it,
would I have liked it?
And I'm thinking maybe I didn't like it very much on that episode.
And I have to say, it felt really strong and earned and good to me.
Yeah, good up.
Got to say Crewman Rivers reminds me of someone or a time that something happened.
Can't quite remember which, though.
Gotta remember to go check priority one messages, Ben.
You want to see what's over there?
We got to.
Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channels.
Need a supplemental income.
Supplemental income?
Supplemental.
Supplemental income.
Yeah, it's extra.
But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.
Got a promotional P1 here.
Goes like this.
Are you a fan of Dr.
Ta'ana?
Mares?
Aurelians in general?
Prefer your aliens with more snout and less loaf?
I know there are other Trek furries out there, and what this P1 presupposes is, if you like Bennon Adams' brand of crude humor, incisive commentary, and appreciation for craft, maybe you'll like hanging out with a demon goat at twitch.tv slash brinthout a hell.
Rock and knuck Sunday through Thursday, 3 p.m.
PST.
All are welcome, regardless of your appreciation for sci-fi and throws.
So that's twitch.tv/slash B-R-Y-N-T-H-O-U-T-T-A-H-E-L-L for indie games, chill hangs, and gilk.
Yeah, so Brinth out of hell.
Brinth out of hell.
Furries, Ben.
Furries are in our F-O-D community.
I've long suspected this.
Yes.
They appreciate craft, And
what's the Demon Goat?
I mean, I think I've primarily seen like wolf and fox-based furries in my limited experience.
Demon goat sounds like a really fun kind of furry.
I wonder what it's like to be part of the motorcycle club that has the really exotic bike.
And that seems like what Demon Goat is in a group full of fox
slash...
what was the other one you said?
Oh, yeah, like wolves and foxes.
If you're a wolf or a fox, it's probably really crazy to see a demon goat come through.
Like, gotta fuck that guy, right?
What's that all about?
Yeah, that seems like the table stakes there.
Yeah, Brinth out of hell on twitch.tv.
Yeah, follow up and let us know if you get the greatest gen bump for this one, Brinth.
Got a priority one message here from Ian, he who just caught up, and it is to to Ian.
Whoa.
And Newton.
Here's that message.
After COVID watching TNG and DS9,
layoff watching Voyager, and now finally pod watching Enterprise, I, for the first time, have zero EPS left in my TGGQ.
Whoa.
You kept me company through heartache, job search, onboarding, and rebuilding my life.
Your team has made so much wonderful and entertaining pod that I can't thank you enough.
So $100 will do.
O'Brien and Brenner drops.
I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien.
This is fucking spectacular.
I'm Chris Brenner.
Brenner Information Systems.
You know, interface, operations, net access, channel 90.
That Chris Brenner.
Hey, Ian, let me hip you to our hit new Star Trek podcast greatest trek.
Are you caught up now?
I don't think so.
Yeah, just reset your odometer.
Check it out.
Hey, it sounds like you're back on your feet, Ian.
That's great to hear.
Much appreciated for the P1.
If folks out there would like to get a P1 of their own, it's real easy to do.
You head to maximumfund.org/slash jumbotron, and you can book one today.
Hey Adam.
What?
Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?
Drunk Shimoda!
Is anything gonna convince Jannar at this point?
Or is he just being obstinate?
I kind of feel like he's being obstinate here.
I kind of feel like I am team genocide until I'm not and nothing is really feeling like a persuasive argument against genocide at this point.
The burden of proof is on time travel.
So, yeah, Jannar for me.
Yeah.
I got to go with Trip.
Who has a old-timey scuba suit in space?
Of all things
to take in your quarters.
People were really paring shit down before this mission.
Yeah.
We got to
like bring only what you need to survive.
Well, I need my scuba suit.
Captain, how else did you think I earned the nickname Scuba Suit Tucker?
Faith of the fart.
Let's talk a little bit about what we got coming up next, Adam.
While you figure out what we watch for the next episode, I'll head over to goch.biz slash game where the game of buttholes
will of the Riker Quantum Leap is found.
Next episode will be season three, episode 21.
E Squared.
An attempt to use a Zindi subspace corridor leads the Enterprise crew to a bizarre encounter with their own descendants.
Oh boy.
I got a vasectomy many years ago.
This is very surprising.
I don't remember coming across any silver goo people.
What's going on here?
Oh, this sounds like a fun one, Ben.
A fun episode to maybe do in a special way.
Let's find out how we do that.
Is that the hostile aliens in the nebula that
Degra was warning them about?
They don't sound so hostile.
They sound chill, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
I got to roll some bones to find out how we will be
experiencing this one, Adam.
Right now, our runabout is on square 44 of the game of buttholes, and we could go anywhere.
So let's see what happens.
You're required to learn as you play.
Roll.
Oh,
boy, Adam.
After a couple of narrow misses, we have landed once again on square 96.
Next week, we will be doing an episode that employs many Vory tellings.
It's a Brone Zone.
I take it, you're in charge here.
Team Leader Brone, 4th Vory Defense Contingent.
I gotta get a pup.
That's it, get it.
I kind of wish at this point it was the breadstick episode
i'm running out of bori language usages here but uh let's see what we got could be fun it could be totally fucking annoying but uh only one way to find out adam yeah is to fucking do it let's do it let's also do the most important thing which is to thank all of the people who make this show possible uh we got the friends of deSoto who support at maximumfund.org slash join Thanks to all of you.
Those people get monthly bonus episodes, which I'm very proud of.
We do really nice work on those.
And
they also just get the good feeling of knowing that they're
the main reason why this thing gets to continue to exist.
It's your fault.
I also got to thank Wendy Pretty, our producer and editor.
who keeps all the plates spinning around here.
I've got to thank Bill Tilly, our Zindy Wartime consigliary, helping Rob Adler with the at Greatest Trek social media account.
Rob Adler also helps us make the greatest newsletter, which comes out once a month.
Get yourself a discount at podshop.biz every time that comes out.
Find out what the nuck of the month is.
There's always good stuff in the newsletter, and I highly encourage you to subscribe to it.
You can find a link for that at podshop.biz or just at greatesttrech.com.
Got to thank our buddy Adam Ragusia, with with whom we make the show wholesome at patreon.com slash wholesome underscore pod.
Nice, diverting, under an hour episodes every week of things that we really enjoy and lively discussion about them.
And I think if you're looking for a way to stay out of Bummerville, which I think these days all of us are, wholesome is a great thing.
Adam Ragusia, of course, made the parody of Diane Warren's original Enterprise theme.
We appreciate all his work on that.
We also got to thank Dark Materia who made the Picard song.
And with that, we will be back at you next week with another
great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise, where
we meet our descendants also, and they're just all my descendants.
That'd be really funny if they roll up on the descendants and it's like
all of them are the children of
weeds.
Father,
I'm so happy to see you.
It's a bit challenging running a ship when it's all tactical officers, but we muddle through somehow.
Would it surprise you to know that on a ship full of tactical officers, we have never once hit the target?
Not surprising at all?
Oh.
Captain John Lu Picard of the USF.
Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.
