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Transcript
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.
Haramel owns the sun.
Welcome to the Greatest Generation.
It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.
I'm Adam Pranica.
I'm Ben Harrison.
We're on camera today, Adam.
I mean, we're always on camera.
Always are.
Everybody pretty much watches the stream.
Few people listen on the podcast, but we're going to post this part to our YouTube as well.
It's true.
That's because it's a code 47.
Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you.
I'm receiving a code 47.
Verify.
It is code 47, sir.
Start lead emergency frequency.
Captain's eyes only.
It's been a long time.
Oh, yeah.
So long, in fact.
Why don't you give us an update on how nice the postal workers were when you went to pick up our largesse of mail?
I have to say, I've been twice in the last few weeks and the vibes have been much, much improved.
Immaculate, even?
I mean, you know, it's a post office.
I'm never going to call the vibes immaculate.
I got good post office vibes last time I went.
That's good.
Thing about a postal worker behind the the glass, they don't want to give you a pen.
No.
If you do not have a pen on you, they do not want to loan you theirs.
And I don't know.
I was vibing with this dude.
I was like, hey, dude, I wrote this wrong.
I could really use your Sharpie.
And he's like,
man,
really not supposed to do this.
And I was like, come on, man.
And I give him like the two-finger thing, like, look at my two eyes.
I'm looking at your two eyes.
You poked him in the eyes and he put his hand up like a fin to stop you?
The code for you got eyes on me, I got eyes on you.
I also like pointed the two fingers at the sharpie.
I was like, eyes, eyes, Sharpie.
Like, no one is letting this out.
Yeah.
I mean, if he knew you as well as I know you, he would have no concerns that his Sharpie is walking away.
Yeah.
But that's not, I mean, most people.
What do you think that is going?
Like, if you're a postal worker and you work at my post office, a bulletproof glass-free post office, an open-air post office, are you like, what gives?
Is my life not worth protecting as much as the post office down the road with
the two inches of leucite?
This post office in question was right next to the grove, which has me asking, what's going on near the grove?
Man, this is the thing about Rick Caruso.
It's like he creates this perfect little simulacrum of safety.
No, I would say he creates the perfect simulacrum of a walkable city in all respects.
Yeah, and then he pushes all of the degeneracy to the immediate outside of that.
Yeah, the fun part.
Yeah.
The outskirts.
But we got a few packages.
One or two that have been sitting around here for a long time.
I feel a little bit bad about it.
As ever, we hope they're not food.
Yes.
Because Bill Tilley tastes everything
before it makes it to us.
Yeah, and, you know, brown wine will be consumed, but, you know, we're not going to be happy about it.
Update to the brown wine situation of last week's Quarks Bar.
Just a little behind the pod.
I had about half of that bottle and felt full bottle drunk.
And that's because I think it over alcoholized through its aging.
It was about 10 years old.
Yeah.
Damn.
And that's what happened.
It was like super high-proof wine.
It was like...
It was like Pruno.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You basically had prison hooch last week.
And let me tell tell you something, Ben.
I think you got a taste for it.
Yeah, yeah.
I put a cork in that thing and I finished the rest with dinner.
Are you starting to look for like prison-themed bars in your neighborhood?
Like, you know, there's tiki bars to make you think you're in the tropics.
There's also pruno bars to make you think you're in the...
in the cooler.
I'm keeping it more local than that, Ben.
I got a bathroom near the studio out here in the ADU.
I got a Ziploc bag with some fruit rinds and stuff in there.
I started my own batch.
Amazing.
Great.
Well, I can't wait to taste it next time I come over and visit.
Yeah.
We're going to start today with a beautiful postcard.
Wow.
This is a hand-drawn postcard of Cork and Morin hanging out at Cork's bar.
Did it go through the mail like that?
It did.
What?
It arrived perfect.
I mean, if anything's immaculate at the post office, it's this card.
It comes from Kyle F.
out of St.
Paul, Minnesota.
Incredible.
Dear Ben and Adam, please enjoy a hand-painted postcard.
I don't know anybody in my life that likes DS9 personally, only parasocially.
Thanks for years of entertainment.
I'm sure I'll catch up on the pod someday.
And
his
blue sky handle is at Nadthorne.
N-A-D-T-H-O-R-N-E.bskuy.social.
Really gorgeous stuff.
I'm going to put that right up on my wall.
That is really nice.
That's really great stuff.
We should
collaborate on some artwork together, some greatest gen artwork.
Wouldn't that be fun?
That would be great.
Nadthorn, of course, is what happens when you drag your nards through
a prickly bush.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, through a gorse bush.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe.
This one, Adam, this looked really familiar to me.
Maybe we opened another one just like it.
This is from Defested.
Okay.
And it's to both of us, and I found it sitting here, and I was like, like, man, this looks like something I feel like I remember opening.
Do you remember Defested sent us those things for sealing wax?
Yes.
Is it possible that this is just another one of those and Defested sent two and we only opened one of them?
Let's find out.
Okay, I'll open it up.
Did this fall between the cracks of your broken studio chair?
Like a lost piece of mail on a mail truck?
I'm still in my broken studio chair, which only is in the lean back position anymore.
It's really making life delightful, especially this past week where I've been doing a lot of desk work in particular.
You got up and left during a production meeting, and me and Wendy were hypothesizing whether or not that was a new chair or not.
She thought it was a new chair, and I said, No fucking way.
No, I don't have money for it.
How would I afford a new chair?
Yes, this is another set of stamps we can use to seal envelopes.
Finally!
There's a BH one.
That's cool.
Hey, that's really nice.
I'll go with that one.
Yeah, of course.
That is a greatest generation logo one with the Starfleet Delta and the lasers.
That's real nice.
And
just a regular old Starfleet Command Delta one.
There's
a little unit that they magnetize to.
So just to be clear, there is no AP stamp?
I think that that must have come in the other one.
Must have.
Yeah.
Let me see if I have that over here.
That would make great pod if you went and searched for that.
I found it!
Hey!
Hey, absolutely no editing is what happened just then.
Ben instantly found it.
There it is.
My initials.
AP.
Pretty great.
And you even got like cooler lettering than I did.
I mean, mine's just regular lettering.
Yours is cool.
Me and Defested are good buds.
God damn it.
What did I I do to piss Defested off?
That's my question.
I don't know.
I mean, they probably have a list.
Yeah, I'm guessing.
Maybe that's why my medical app doesn't work all the time.
Defested going in there, putting their thumb on the scale.
Okay.
Got another package here.
This one is from Brian Fernandez out of Huntley, Virginia.
Feels like books.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess books.
But there's a letter.
Dear Ben and Adam, I have have been a long time FOD since that article in that magazine I don't read apparently bumped you up high enough that my podcatcher recommended you.
I remember you were preparing to move on to DS9.
During the Bible readings, I would often think about the enclosed book.
I purchased my copy when I was in high school in the 90s.
I am the middle brother to the both of you from what I have been able to discern of your ages.
I was the only trekkie nerd for miles, and I too dreamed of film school.
The contents of this book and the old making of Star Trek book made Hollywood something I could understand and aspire to be a part of someday.
I think you will both find the contents fascinating.
I haven't noticed anything about split diopter lenses, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I have wanted to send you my copy for years, but there was more to the story.
When I was a poor broke teen, I went to a convention and Andrew Robinson listened to me talk about wanting to go to film school and graciously signed my book even though I couldn't afford his headshot.
So now surely Ben understands.
I can't give away such a gift, so I purchased one to send to you.
Then, of course, I was worried that that was rude, so I planned on sending two.
Then COVID happened.
Then we couldn't afford to pay Max Fund for a while, and I was too embarrassed to send a book when I couldn't even pay for the subscription.
Oh, don't worry about that, man.
Like, we don't know who is and isn't paying.
That's totally opaque to us.
You and this person should be friends.
I love this guy.
Years later, I thought I lost the third copy.
My wife says I never reordered it.
So I have ordered yet another copy so I can finally complete the task I set out for myself in 2019.
Please enjoy these used copies of an old book, which are either the second and third or second and fourth copies I have purchased in my life of the same book.
I have enclosed in each of your books a photocopy of the autograph of that king among kings, Andrew Robinson.
Sincerely, B.
Fernandez of Virginia.
P.S.
Attached is a picture of what my copy looks like now.
You probably wouldn't want it.
I put plastic on it in the 90s, but then it sat on the toilet at my college house for like five years.
PPS, my wife says, if we ever find another copy here that isn't my old gross copy, she will send in a P1 to let you all know.
Because all she does is bets, bets, bets.
PPPS.
I did make it to film school just like you.
Again, I no longer work in video editing.
Wow.
Oh, man.
What a story, Brian Fernandez.
Here is the copy we're glad we didn't get.
Yeah, don't need the toilet book.
Cool.
And here's one of the nice, fresh, used copies that Brian sent in.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that cover.
Nice and glossy.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Not spent any time on a toilet.
Almost no weaponized fecal matter coagulated coagulated on its surface.
No.
Oh man, I love this.
Schematic pictures of
the insides of runabouts and stuff.
Oh,
how fucking sexy.
Do you think it would make Brian happy or disappointed if we both took these books and put them on our toilets?
In honor of him.
My toilet is a pretty high action zone right now, given the almost three-year-old who's learning to use it at the moment.
Here's a question about toilets.
I'm seeing a lot of toilets with buttons in the middle of the lid.
Yeah, that's what my toilet has.
Yeah.
By going in that direction, what we're doing is taking out a great place where books used to live.
Yeah, but it wasn't a great place for books to live.
Because then when you had to like fiddle with the little chain inside, you had to move everything off the top of the cistern to do it.
Always do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a clean lid now.
Just button.
Just button.
Yeah.
And it's good because it's like enough out of the way that the toddler isn't going and flushing it, you know, willy-nilly.
Because toddlers love levers.
They love seeing the result of an action.
Now it's just one button only.
Thank you so much, Brian.
Thanks, Brian.
One last thing here.
This is from Clayton out of St.
Helena, California.
And I believe Clayton was the fella who won our contest in the Max Fun Drive.
The
winner of a nubbin bug.
Amazing.
For joining and/or boosting during the Max Fun Drive.
Oh man, look at how lucky I am.
I opened it at this end.
That's the end the letter is at.
You should buy a lottery ticket.
I know.
I mean, I would never, but
I appreciate the use of the expression.
Keeping it fun.
It's Benjamin R.
Harrison.
Dear Adam and Ben, I'm still in a state of shock over having won the nubbin bug during the Greatest Gen Drive.
Truly, I never win anything.
The two exceptions are the Nubbin' Bug and a book on CD of William Shatner's autobiography, which was taped under my seat at Greatest Gen Con in Brooklyn like six years ago, or whenever that was.
Wow.
I still haven't listened to it, and I don't have a CD player.
I'm so sorry.
Well, I'm very disappointed.
Yeah, I mean,
I was expecting a book report like two years ago.
What do you think we got that book for free?
We did get that book for free.
The nubbin bug is truly an honor, one I'm embarrassingly proud to have on display in my office, causing my wife to roll her eyes every time she walks by.
Thank you so much.
In any event, my cup runneth over with your generosity, so I feel it only appropriate to fill yours and hopefully Wendy's, Rob's, and Bill's as well, with some wine from my wife's family vineyard.
Whoa!
Oh, what?
A replenishment of
FOD wine.
This is amazing.
Timing.
Incredible.
This is a real lose-lose situation for her.
These are two of my favorites, a Cabernet Sauvignon for the red wine enthusiasts at Uxbridge Shimoda and a Sauvignon Blanc for the Cougars.
It sounds like neither of those is for me because I'm a brown wine enthusiast.
Please enjoy in good spirits and thank you for all you do to improve the lives of FODs everywhere.
If you ever find yourselves up in Napa Valley, I hope you'll hit me up.
Warmly, Clayton.
P.S.
When you asked me if I boosted or upgraded during our chat, I honestly had no idea there was a difference.
But mine was an upgrade, which I think is better.
No boost.
PPS.
No need to include this in a code 47.
I really just wanted to say thank you.
The exception is if you'd like to use it of excuse to push FODs to join.
I think you said you hit 100% though.
Congrats!
In which case, I will happily share my embarrassment.
Wow.
We may have exaggerated when we said we hit 100%.
I think we underestimated what happened.
We had a great drive.
Thanks to all who supported.
My wife and I are at Napa all the time.
We'll hit you up.
So, Clayton married into the Joseph Phelps wine family, it looks like.
In a couple of
beautiful bottles.
Yeah, if you don't get into wine, you get into swimming in that family.
Only two paths.
Yeah, I love seeing them out there on the vineyard getting ready to pick grapes.
Go on.
Yeah.
Two paths in a vineyard, and I
took the one that was wet.
Adam, we got some great gifts from the FOD.
We really did.
So generous and thoughtful.
Thanks, guys.
And, you know, Archer finds some generous and thoughtful aliens in today's episode.
Doesn't he, though?
Yeah.
Wow.
Real helpful, guys.
Just a really uplifting, positive episode on deck today.
Something that I know I'll come back and re-watch time and time again when I'm trying to relax.
It's Enterprise Season 3, Episode 19, and it's called Damage.
Got me speech
and guitar.
So we had some confirmation in our last time on of a thing I think we'd speculated about that TePaul's kind of emotional unease and dysregulation possibly has something to do with her ongoing exposure to the expanse.
It's like with DePaul though,
she always sort of looks like she cuts her own bangs.
So like if she's going through something, you gotta, you need other clues is what you need.
But luckily, she's given off those clues.
Kind of a lot of them.
Especially in the last time on.
Yeah.
We cut back right in the midst of the ship getting hammered.
It kind of felt like they didn't even need the fade to black at the end of the last time on.
They could have just, like, continued with that.
Yeah, fair.
I mean, the whole engulfed in flames and blowing people into space level of things, fairly intense.
A real crescendo we arrive at in terms of the bangers here before they just suddenly stop.
I wondered why it was Malcolm Reed's job to give all the damage reports, given that he should be like aiming and shooting at stuff.
Like, wouldn't that occupy like your full unbroken attention is like trying to fend off the attacking ships?
Is that what his problem's been the whole time?
Divided attention?
He's got two jobs.
He should have one job.
He has two jobs.
That's a problem.
He needs to delegate the reading of the damaged systems to someone else so that he can concentrate on the grappling and the shooting of things.
They don't even deploy the grapplers in this.
Like, wouldn't it be fucking sick to see the Enterprise NX-01 grab a ship and like fling it into another ship and break it in that way?
It would be the best.
It would be amazing.
It would be great if like,
you know, the overcoat that you open up and there's like the big boxing glove on a spring that comes out and like shoots.
It would be like, what if you could just shoot your grappler like that?
Like, the grapple part flies off
as a projectile.
It's got a payload on it.
That's what I'm saying.
I like that.
Maybe the grapple is already holding onto a bomb or something.
Yeah.
A sticky bomb.
And then you fly off with it.
I love this.
That would be so cool.
Anyways, the Zendi stopped shooting, and the ship is adrift.
It is in bad shape.
And that is our cold open.
It's a weird feeling of like you can't retreat the way those guys are over there.
All you can do is drift, and that sucks, right?
Yeah, it's not like they're much safer.
It's just that they're not in like immediate impending danger.
Yeah.
So we get our theme sign, and when we come back, we're hanging out with some of the Zendi Council, and the lizardman is pissed off that Degra ordered the attack stop.
You're permitting an enemy vessel to remain in orbit orbit near a military installation.
Their ship is critically damaged.
They no longer pose a threat.
Degra's explaining, like, you know, we might need them, like, we want their captain to go before the council.
They're talking about, like, we should board and imprison everybody on that ship.
Big disagreements between the Lizardman and the rest of his fellow counselors.
I mean, there's a presumption that Dahlum has here.
That's like, Degra superseded my orders.
Like, who the fuck put Degra in charge?
And the council is like, well, we all kind of did, right?
Like, that's how a council works.
And, like, some folks on the council say that they're on Degra's side, more or less.
Right.
They also,
Dollum, kind of want to interrogate Archer ourselves at this point.
Doesn't seem like you're getting very far with your own interrogation.
Yeah, like, beating the answers out of him seems to have only taken you so far.
And maybe, maybe we, the council, could could do something else like we saw some of the footage dolem and it actually seems like archer's just talking more and more shit the harder you beat him like is that actually some sort of flex i don't understand with the reptiles indie like is that good for you yeah yeah we also didn't love all the polaroids of you like you know with archer up on a on a milk crate in the middle of a room you know doing a thumbs up there was that weird shot of dolem like with a cigarette in his mouth like like pointing at archer's face with one hand and a thumbs up with the other we did what we were told to do i don't feel bad about that pretty casual dolem yeah yeah i mean like none of your none of your commanders are gonna get in trouble but the people on the ground uh definitely in big trouble for that one They really stretch out the teasing of Dolem here.
Like, not in the jokey way we describe, but in the, hey, we want to interrogate Archer.
Dot, dot, dot.
We want Archer brought to us.
dot, dot, dot.
You're probably not the right person to do that given what we've seen already.
Why don't we let the aquatics, who have done nothing but build the entire weapon themselves on their underwater planet, as if they haven't done enough already, have the aquatics transport Archer to us.
Yeah, they are going to have that job.
Ben at this point, what did you think it would be like on an aquatic ship?
Like, my mind was going crazy about like, so is archer in like an air aquarium inside a an aquatic ship like how is that gonna work is this also not the worst type of zindi to bring archer to them yeah i mean like at least our boreal zindi would have a ship full of like leaves and wheat and stuff you know there would be lots of nanners to eat sure yeah they're not thinking that far no i was guessing spacesuit or just helmet you know like helmet at the bottom of an aquarium, like burbly treasure chest and archer and archer standing there.
That's not the direction they went.
Do you think in the history of Star Trek Enterprise, were they to make that choice?
Aquatic Zindi transport Archer on their ship.
They make Archer wear like the old-timey diving suit with a...
There's like rainbow-colored pebbles on the floor.
Do you think that is a top three visual in the entire series?
Oh.
No one would ever forget that.
Yeah, that'd be amazing.
The Aquatic Zindi, and I'm going to do the translation because otherwise it would just sound like
the Aquatic Zindi are talking amongst each other.
They're like, okay, well, we downloaded some computer shit from Enterprise during the attack.
We know.
how they survive underwater, and it is primarily some sort of combination of bubbly treasure chest and
hose to metal suit.
he will appreciate that we have just done the research ourselves, made things comfortable for him.
Yeah, it's like Mitch Hedberg joke about putting a leaf and a stick in a jar to
make your butterfly friend feel at home or whatever.
Yeah.
Reed and TePaul catch up in one of the hallways of The Entrepreneur, and so many girders have fallen out of the ceiling.
It's a wonder that the ship is even holding in one shape.
Maybe the most we've ever seen in one scene, right?
Just an absolute murderous row of girders.
If you're trying to sell a depth of field, girders foreground to background is what they're doing here.
Yeah.
Pretty solid bit of business.
Does great work.
Ship is very fucked up.
E-deck totally exposed to the hard vacuum.
So there's a cargo bay that DePaul is concerned about not being able to access.
We also learned from Trip that the warp coil is cooked, and it would would take a long time to fix even if they had the parts, which they don't.
Hey, Trip, kind of a terrible way to put this.
Like when Trip Tucker gives them some crazy timeline dependent on parts that they don't have, not helpful.
Who gives a shit about that timeline?
Unfixable would be the simpler way to say that.
Yeah, yeah.
As it stands now, warp drive is out of the question.
Reed fires off a line, like as they're having this conversation, like shit is just exploding behind them, like, it's a fucking naked gun film, and Frank Drebin is, like, telling the press that there's nothing to worry about.
Reed is like, you know, we got a new captain here gesturing to Japal.
He's like,
let's try not to lose another one in one day.
Yikes, Reed.
Yeah.
Is that a threat?
Just another example of the grasp Reed has on death and near death
as an experience.
Yeah, yeah, weird.
Tripp asks for more manpower in engineering, which is kind of like intermittently catching on even more fire as they're having this conversation.
And we cut over to the aquatic ship where we learn the boring truth of how they chose to depict this.
Everyone knows you're not supposed to tap on the glass of an aquatic life form and what Archer presupposes is maybe using a clenched fist and just straight up pounding on it is a great way to get an underwater being's attention.
This thing doesn't appreciate that, clearly.
He must just push like the knockout gas button, which I'm sure every fish that's ever been in an aquarium wish they had.
Like knock out the hairless ape that's knocking on my glass.
Off-screen knockout button, wasn't it?
Like we don't really see what this one's doing.
They used to do that all the time in Star Trek.
Like somebody would just reach just past a panel that you couldn't see and you'd just hear like beep beep beep.
Don't need to get the props department involved in creating a button panel for this.
Archer pounds on the window.
This Aquatic Zindi swims up.
Archer's like, what the fuck, man?
Where am I?
Aquatic Zindi like shits in the water, like like jets out some sort of ink.
Cut back to Archer.
He's like, oh,
Aquatic Zitti hits the button.
Down goes Archer.
Where are you taking me?
See, this could have been fun.
In a bummer episode, give us some fucking fun shit.
I'm trying to make damage fun again.
If we change the words,
then it's fair use all day long.
Back on Enterprise, the repairs continue, led by Reed and ordered by TePaul.
And just then, a ship rolls up on them.
But before they blow it out of the stars, and we need to emphasize this is their first instinct, they're like, we got to get rid of this thing right now.
Just before they do that, they notice that, hey, this ship's a little small, isn't it?
Like a one-person ship, and also it's unarmed.
TePaul, with this information, goes, Let's just go ahead and bring it on board into the shuttle bay.
And they crack this thing open.
Guess who's inside?
It's Kaylar.
Kalar
was my mate.
I understand why they didn't do this because it's expensive and bad for a set, but if they crack open this thing and just a bunch of water poured out, that would have been really funny.
Sorry, we don't have a way to do just like gaseous atmosphere in this thing.
Yeah.
Or if Archer himself was wet.
Yeah.
You got to believe they had to pass him through a wet chamber to get him to the escape pod, which is also in a wet place, right?
Right, it would have had to been.
Just imagine how heavy those uniforms would be if they were soaked.
Like, this is a uniquely bad Starfleet uniform for that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, Flox examines him, and it's mostly superficial punchy damage that Archer has sustained.
Don't waste time on me.
It's good to see you again, Captain.
Flox is like, hey, try not to punch another biobed, dude.
Still trying to fix that other one.
It's looking like Ben Harrison's studio chair.
uh yeah he's getting his own damage report and the ship's damage report you know last time he leaves topal in command i'm guessing just based on how fucked up the ship is when he comes back yeah kind of a geordi situation happening with tipal here you know definitely not in one piece 13 dead lots and lots of damage we're just storing the deads in six bay on the floor in the corner right i think so i think they have where else would they put them you know they need all the rest of the space to work.
Guess so.
Pile up girders and stuff.
Yeah.
I found it interesting to think about Archer's mindset in this episode through the lens of he was expecting to be dead at this point.
Like, he goes kind of past Dark Archer, I think, at this point.
Interesting.
Because in not dying, he failed his mission.
He failed to eliminate the threat of the Zindi weapon.
So it's all revenge from here.
Yeah.
Kind of feels like that, right?
He does seem different and darker.
Absolutely.
And I mean, part of it, part of what really helps sell it is just how dark the ship is.
With all of its damage and its lack of power.
Like, he's never been more dark than this.
I was also surprised that this was Degra's plan.
Like, why send him back to the Entrepreneur?
What does that get the Zindi Council?
Like, they wanted to bring him before the Zindi Council.
Couldn't they get him there?
It's a great question.
And I guess the answer that we don't know is that, like, Degra still needs to keep this a secret, their affiliation a secret, or that he believes Archer a secret from everyone else.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
So, anyways, Archer wants the pod examined.
And a towel?
Can I get a towel?
Because, I mean, I don't know if anyone's noticed.
I was just on an aquatic ship.
I'm very wet.
Topal goes to hand him a towel, and
she has picked up a little bit of a tremor in his absence and
this is treated as like a real moment but I was also like I mean the ship was almost fucking destroyed and a lot of people died.
Like I think it's excusable to have a little tremor.
Like this is fucking scary shit they just experienced.
It's what makes this moment so interesting for a viewer and for a long time viewer of Star Trek.
It's like, oh, this really affected our Vulcan crew person in a way that is kind of like a 10 out of 10.
Like, if you're going to get a tremor out of a Vulcan, it's probably going to be after a situation like this.
Yeah.
And I think that's what Archer's feeling in this scene.
Like, noted, I don't love that, but understood.
Yeah.
So she leaves and kind of falls apart in the hallway.
And
she's sort of starting to have a rubber soul outlook on life as she wanders through the ship and the anamorphic lens twists around on the uh on the lens mount.
There's not a lot of problems that can't be fixed with a little sink water splash on your face, though.
She finally makes it back to recorders
and does a little bit of that.
She's straight in time for the McLaughlin group.
Issue one.
In which Archer explains to the crew that the Zindi are not unified.
And I mean, he talked to Paul a little bit about this, like the idea that he may have gotten through to Degra a little bit.
And,
you know, they need to fix their ship, but he thinks there may be a diplomatic solution that they can work their way toward.
Their plan is to hide in a dust cloud behind a comet.
They're talking about this when somebody radios up from engineering and warns them that a bunch of rocks are about to fall out of the ceiling.
Oh, I hate those things.
They always fall out and hit me on the head when we take damage.
That's pretty fun.
Tripp's like, why do we keep him up there?
It doesn't make any sense.
I hope a cartoon show eventually explains this.
Well, their non-centrosymmetry disrupts the charged leptons and the isolinear pathways of the main deflector, which then causes.
I trust you have it in hand.
It's hard to feel comfortable in a meeting when there's the constant danger of a panel explosion, right?
Yeah.
There was also like no everybody okay.
moment, you know?
That's how you know they're down bad, is there's no, there's no show of empathy toward anyone else during this moment.
It's like, all right, next thing.
Yeah, it's like when you get into the war zone in a war movie, and there's the commander that's been there for a lot longer, and like mortar fire comes in, and he doesn't even flinch when it goes off 25 feet to his left.
Yeah, in a come and see pirance, Trip is like 13 years old.
And this is what he looks like now.
I'm a child.
The ethics of what was done to me to make this effect on the movie are deeply troubling.
He wants them to look for the weapon.
He's like,
why are we running and hiding?
Like, we're here.
I mean, the answer trip, you fucking dumbass, is that they aren't really in any position at the moment to do that.
Sensors are still out fine.
Let's focus on getting ourselves operational.
Priority is repair.
Yeah.
Everything else, let's put underneath repair at this point.
I suppose if they could go to warp, they could like kamikaze the ship into the weapon if they could find it.
At this point, you can't take that strategy off the table with Archer.
It feels like everything's in play.
Hoshi and Travis have been given the job of tinkering with the Aquapod.
Can I ask you a question about Hoshi?
She is the least dark of all the dark characters.
And I mean in both
attitude, but also like she's covered in less shit.
Like she seems uniquely beautiful compared to the other beautiful people on the ship who have been like smudged up and tussled and stuff.
I just thought that was interesting.
Yeah, she doesn't have fallen samurai hair or anything like that.
Her little like aside about like, I should have, I should have like learned to play an instrument or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean, Tripp bursts into the room and he's like, yeah, if you were a piano teacher in Florida.
Oh,
never mind.
I'll see myself out.
Yeah.
Travis is optimistic, though.
He thinks that they're going going to win this Wawa and see their homes again.
That's nice.
Yeah, I'd like it a little better if Hoshi played her Walkman full of aquatic Zindy hits, like through headphones, though.
I'm sure Mayweather feels the same in this scene.
Almost sounds like music.
Yeah.
I mean, they're bangers, obviously, but it's just not the mood everybody's in.
Yeah.
Over in Engineering, Trip and Archer.
Wonder what side Degra is on?
That's still a question.
They hit some switches and fire some stuff up, and that is what that literally does.
It barbecues parts of engineering.
This experiment's all interrupted by Tepal, who radios in about a ship in distress en route.
And so they roll up on this ship, which was damaged by spatial anomalies in the area, and they invite these folks on board.
They're talking to them over the radio, and I was like, that sounds like Degra.
Like, is this some ruse by the Zindi?
Not a distinct enough sounding voice.
I thought the same thing.
I mean, it's not until it is.
Like, when we see whose voice it is, I was like, damn, Casey Biggs has a Degra voice.
Yeah.
We weren't prepared for these spatial anomalies that you call them.
These folks seem like not a threat.
They make it clear right away that they're explorers, and that's a good sign, right?
They don't even know about the Zindi, and they don't even know about the space insulation you need to make it through this part of space with all the anomalies out there.
These facts come out in such rapid succession, it just makes it clear that they're like a ship full of deer in the woods full of bears.
They're like there to study this red giant and they have no idea what a sticky wicket they found themselves in.
They walked into the wrong bar.
Yeah, they really did.
Yeah, they're basically the band in green room in this episode.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That was a cover.
Archer is like, hey, well, so great news.
We have a whole bunch of this Trellium Trellium D that you need to shield yourself from the anomalies.
We will trade it to you along with lots of other great technology that you've never even conceived of in exchange for one warp coil.
And Casey Biggs is like,
no deal.
Like, I don't want to take three years to get home.
We didn't stock up for that.
The Illyrians are that sieve that has like aluminum and you really want to start making airplanes, but you have no aluminum on your continent.
You're like, I will give you anything for aluminum.
And they're like, nope, I denounce you.
Not only do I say no, I denounce you.
That's what they're going to do.
It's like, I'm getting in fucking diplomatic trouble for asking.
What the fuck?
Legally, it's just a fart joke.
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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 Fund member of the month.
Can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member?
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Really helped with doing
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You will never take the greatest shit alive.
Man would rather die.
I love how this scene plays out because it builds to this crescendo of like, we really need this.
Can you give it up?
Casey Biggs, captain, is like, nope.
And then the ships just part ways.
Yeah, later.
Yeah.
Isn't there a moment baked into this scene, though, where you're given enough time to consider what just happened and with how you feel about Dark Archer up to this point?
Do you think Dark Archer would just kill a guy for that warp coil?
At this point, I was already there.
Like, this is going to happen.
This is Chekhov's underpowered alien vessel, right?
Really is.
Yeah.
This is Chekhov's Casey Biggs.
The jangly keys to distract us from that, though, is a nude to Paul in a shower suddenly getting some friendly hands on her shoulders.
I did not think about how intentional that was as a distraction from that thought.
I think it is.
Because I was very distracted here.
Yeah, it's distracting.
I mean,
let's be honest.
It's very distracting.
At what point if you're Trip Tucker, does this become too much?
Because I'm going to say at no point for me does this become too much.
She turns green.
She turns crazy.
Yeah.
Shit's going wild in the shower.
Bring it on.
I might not ever wake up from this.
Whose dream is it?
Yeah.
Tipal finally wakes up.
She's tweaky and sweating and she goes kind of quickly to an EV suit, like she knows exactly where she's headed.
She moves through a damaged part of the ship, and finally, she gets to that cargo bay that we heard about before that you couldn't get to, evidently.
And this seems like a dangerous place full of wharf barrels.
And they're like, if a barrel could lick its lips, seeing someone nearby, that is what they are doing when TePaul tries to scamper down
into the lower part of the hold.
You talk about walking into the wrong bar.
Yeah.
TePaul takes a tumble, and her air hose gets knocked out of connection with her helmet and there's a scary moment where she's like groping up behind the the bulk of her EV suit to get it back attached.
She does and then goes digging in the crates.
You're going to wonder why those air hoses aren't on the front.
Yeah, put them on the front.
If it was like here, would it be like blocking too much of your view and you'd constantly be like looking around over the air hose and stuff?
Maybe, but counterpoint, upside for when it gets yanked out accidentally, you can plug it back in easily.
I suppose when you're when you're scuba diving, you're not bothered by the the hose being right there.
No, I guess not.
You can see just fine.
Yeah.
Dramatic air hose placement is what that is.
That's what you need.
It's Chekhov's air hose placement.
So she finds like a crate that's full of space thermoses, and these contain the Trillium D
and she takes it to a lab, like a chunk of it to a lab, and turns it into a liquid form, which she then slams.
There's a machine in there with a bunch of cast iron fry pans.
And there's a bunch of trap music being played.
There's a clips record on in the background that I thought was really cool.
Good throwback, you know.
The way Tipal slams this into her veins seems practiced.
She has done this before.
Ben, when you said Trellium, I wasn't there yet with this.
I wasn't sure that's what this was.
You were with it faster than I was.
I was because it was blue and it was established as blue in the episode that introduced it.
So
Archer in his ready room gets a report about that escape pod from Hoshi and Travis.
They found mainly regular ass shit in its onboard computer, but one document of an aquatic engineer asking a supervisor for something, and the supervisor's names in the document are the names of Degra's children.
So when I saw that, that was a dead giveaway.
Arch is like even the secret third child that no one's supposed to know about?
That's weird.
Not even I'm supposed to know that.
They're coordinates embedded in this document, coordinates at a time.
So be here at this place at this time.
But we can't make it to that because we don't have a warp coil.
What are we going to do?
Who do we know that's almost as defenseless as us and has a warp coil?
When you're Dark Archer, it doesn't take very long to
have a plan come together, a dark plan, even.
We need their warp coil.
They won't give it to us, so we're going to have to take it.
Captain, get your mending out.
this is the moment where dr flox brings porthos back to archer
another moment that demonstrates how dark archer is gone a priority to get his dog back not really anything he's thinking about at this point once he lived he's just sitting in his totally fucked up office with a girder like crashed across his desk.
You wake me up from a coma or whatever, and if my dog isn't there, you should leave.
you should leave and go bring my dog yeah and then i will see you they're not allowed in the hospital adam i don't give a fuck
then release me from the hospital
how about dr flox and the way he's lit and shot through the throughout this entire episode i thought this scene was so interesting the I'm going to put it in quotations, the counsel that he gives Archer here in this moment.
Archer has to admit, he's like, Doc, Doc, I'm thinking about doing something super dark.
Dr.
Flox is like, I don't know, Archer.
I don't know if that's something you should do.
Is Flox the gainin of this show?
I like that.
I like that a lot.
Because he's kind of the like the wise elder that Archer can consult in times of great need like this.
I wonder how intentional it was.
Because here's the thing that Dr.
Flox does.
Dr.
Flox definitely does not talk him out of going super dark.
No.
And when he does not do that, Dr.
Flox's face is also almost entirely unlit.
All you can see is like the rim, the rim light has.
Just rim lit.
They're going to do something that's not, strictly speaking, super ethical.
Dr.
Flox is like, you do something super dark, Archer.
You better just remember one thing.
Archer's like, what's that?
Flox is like, a good supply of body bags.
Because I'm actually kind of running out in 6 Bay.
I don't know if you noticed the row of bodies there zipped in.
I don't know if it's ethical to reuse those, really.
Probably should have brought like as many as the crew and then a few extras just based on the context of the mission.
We're going to pick up some extra bodies.
Yeah.
You know that.
Archer goes to Reed and says, get your buddies ready.
We're going to go steal a warp coil.
And I was like, where?
Get in, nerd.
We're going to go murder some folks for a warp coil.
I was like, where is Hayes?
Like, where are the Makos?
Why is Reed the only person he's talking to about this?
Because Reed needs something to do, I guess.
Fair enough.
I'm just hoping we don't keep you quite so busy.
But how about this take by Dominic Keating here?
I thought it was so interesting how once he's told of this plan,
he takes a half step back from Archer in this moment.
Like he's physically moved away and repulsed by this.
Yeah.
Everybody is horrified by what Archer is doing going forward, but is going along with it.
It's true.
I have heard that there is a mirror universe a couple of episodes of this show, and I'm thinking, like, how would we tell this Archer is distinct from that one at this point?
I'm curious.
Very curious.
Oh, we forgot to talk about this in the last episode when Degrew was like, we should talk to her.
Maybe she can do something for us.
And we meet she yeah in this next scene she who is the sphere builder yeah she's a uh
a very heavily loafed lady who is just meeting with the mammal types of zindi and is a little bit pissed off about that like she wants the insects and the lizards and the and the fish to be present i won't help fuel your internal bickering Yeah, maybe you could wheel in some sort of giant aquarium like you'd get in the lobby of a seafood restaurant.
You know, that would be cool.
I'd like a, I'd like a fresh aquatic Zindy to talk to, guys.
Did you see that tank that broke at the aquarium in the Pacific?
No social media?
Like a lobster tank just like broke in the middle of
like people going to the aquarium.
Oh,
what a bummer.
I know.
Those things are big.
This was like a fucking serious ass fish tank.
Anyways.
This sphere builder really was throwing change leader from DS9 vibes.
So much so for me that I looked it up.
I was like, is this Salome Jens?
No, it's Josette DiCarlo.
Obviously.
Duh.
Yeah.
Of.
You got it.
Without a Trace.
She was in an episode of Without a Trace.
Without a Trace.
This Sphere Builder admits to being involved in the Reptile Zindi bioweapon time travel project, which is a real mouthful, now that I say it.
I didn't expect her to admit that.
She does that on the one hand, but on the other hand, she takes great umbrage with what she perceives as an interrogation here, and she blurps away almost immediately.
Yeah, she's like, fuck you, I was doing that to preserve the council.
She's like, I don't like that you guys and those guys are backbiting and there's like intrigue.
And it's like, you fucking started it.
You let them go off on their own secret mission.
Like, that's the beginning of this, not them having questions about that.
I kind of like her deal, though, because she's like, don't call me again.
Click.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just build your weapon.
Yeah.
But at the end of this, Degra seems to sort of have emerged on the team of Jonathan Archer.
Maybe she is the enemy.
She's never shown us any like tangible evidence that what she's saying is true.
And Archer had that challenge coin.
And I've got faith
of the far heart.
Legally,
At this point, I was thinking about, like, if Degra's on Team Archer, that would be big.
But would he stay on Team Archer once he learns of the Dark Archer warp coil raid that has been planned?
Because, like, from what we know about this guy, he's a big softie.
He's a big softie that just builds genocide weapons, but
I think he'd be really hurt if he learned of some Illyrians getting their warp coil jacked by a desperate man.
We've seen genocide mad characters with hearts of gold before.
It's actually kind of a trope on this program.
This is not new territory.
Let's just say, I built traps in my lawn so that Degra could run.
We get another McLaughlin group
about the warp coil raid.
And
Trip explains that this is not something you can just beam out of their ship.
We got to go in there and decouple it from their propulsion systems by hand, which could take 10-ish minutes.
Is that because it would do permanent damage to the ship they took it from?
I was trying to figure out why you couldn't just beam it.
And that, to me, seemed to be the case, right?
But that planted the seed in me that this would one day be returned.
Yeah, it seems like they're trying to do this in a way that the Illyrians can still move at impulse and that their ship doesn't explode from the extraction.
So like there is the idea floated like, what if we ask?
And Archer's like,
I kind of blew it by asking already.
I don't think that's going to work.
I did a bad ask earlier.
There's no second ask after a bad ask.
Yeah, so we need the element of surprise.
Not to mention the element of Trellium D, which we're going to give them lots of along with food.
It's going to to be like when you steal a candy bar and then you, like, leave $5 on the counter at the gas station.
Yeah.
You know.
Guess who has a problem with this?
T'Paul.
After this meeting over, she post-games it with Archer and she's like, You remember those Marauders that one time that came and stole a bunch of our shit not that long ago?
You remember how bad you felt about that?
Well, that's us now.
And...
You know, it's one thing to say that like the Illyrians can defend themselves because they have a ship and that's it.
A very slow-moving ship.
But like, you're leaving them out there with their pants down, just like waiting for whatever alien out there wants to come give them a pounding.
Like, it's squishy morality.
Yeah.
Just because you did not kill them yourself doesn't mean this isn't tantamount to killing them by leaving them like this.
And there are lines of morality and discussions of where they're drawn and going this far and no further and falling back and so forth until finally TePal breaks her iPad to make her point.
We don't have a choice.
I won't let you do it!
She thinks he's rationalizing and he is really shocked by how emotional she is being.
He's like, you broke your little iPad.
Interesting because her losing control somewhat undercuts her argument, even though her argument's pretty sound.
That's very true.
Yeah.
Yeah, it doesn't emphasize or give punctuation in a way that she probably had hoped, right?
Yeah.
So she goes to Six Bay in a great deal of distress and reveals to Flox that she is a total Trellium junkie.
Dr.
Fox is very surprised that she's been shooting it for three months.
Yeah.
And it was a pretty slippery slope, she describes.
The first exposure made her crazy, but then she kind of liked some of the stuff she experienced.
Maybe like micro-dosing it in little bumps would be something to get her by.
And so she did that over and over and over again.
And once access to the cargo bay was cut off, she had to go through some withdrawal symptoms.
And she does not want to go through those again.
She's pretty much at rock bottom here.
Yeah, yeah it's a tough feeling if you were to bet on the one main cast crew person to go through a drug withdrawal at the beginning of this series super duper long shot is to paul let's do something where we count down from three and say who we think is most likely to have had that storyline okay three two one one
reed
yeah i think i think so yeah
so yeah she's totally strung out and she's like she's had like a weird interaction with detox that was forced by this cargo bay being out of reach for a while.
And she's realizing that she has become chemically dependent after having nearly died going to get some more trillium.
It's weird how grosser
watching Tepal grind up a bunch of rocks and shoot them into her neck is from like conventional drug use, which is just as gross.
Like it's still rocks and shit.
Right.
It's like no more gross than like putting a lighter under a spoon
with some H in it and like letting it boil.
And then.
And yet there's something about looking at these rocks
and like watching them go in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why is that?
That's weird.
I know.
They did a really good job with that.
Yeah.
They're kind of like in the middle of this addiction conversation when she gets called to the bridge and she's like, this is just between you and me, right, Fox?
And Fox is like, secret safe here.
And.
Just like everything else.
He gives her his giant smile.
She's like, weird time to do that, actually.
Anyways, I'll catch you later, Flox.
And she goes up to the bridge where...
Is my Dr.
Flox Charles Bronson?
I feel like it is.
It's like higher Bronson.
Yeah, it is.
It's like Happy Bronson.
Yeah.
Happy Bronson.
Yeah.
Now I've heard everything.
They killed my family.
I pledge revenge.
They killed my family, and I uh pledge revenge.
I uh used to be a cop, that means I have a
lot of weapons at home to use for this mission.
Anyways, uh...
Kind of wanna blow up a bus, kill a bunch of gang members.
I uh do not care what collateral damage happens
in the achievement of my vengeance.
It almost sees as if justice was never important to me in the first place.
So Archer gives to Paul command of the bridge, and he goes to head straight into the fray.
And it's him and some Makos and like Casey Biggs is aboard his ship learning of the attack when Archer and some Makos beam over and start shooting dudes.
I was a little surprised at the ratio of Mako to regular Starfleet here.
Yeah.
It seemed like they were under-mako'd for this mission.
A mission almost tailor-made for Makos.
Such a weird choice.
To the extent where I expected the few Makos on this operation to be looking at each other like, ain't this fucking great?
Like, this is why I signed up for this.
Just fucking boarding ships and shooting people.
Why any extras not in Mako attire?
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, I don't know.
But
this is a fairly fair fight, despite the fact that the Entrepreneur would be a much better ship if it was at its full fighting weight.
It's just so goddamn fucked up.
They get the propulsion offline on the Illyrian ship, but they can't take out the weapons, right?
Like their archer's orders are not to leave them defenseless.
Quote-unquote, defenseless.
There's all this like and forth shooting between the two ships while Tripp and another guy go up to the warp core to try and get it.
The grabbing of the warp coil does not go well.
They expect it to be easy, but that it's surrounded by this force field kind of stalls out the mission in such a way that they get pinned down for a bit, and it allows the Illyrians to kind of assemble a counter-attack, which really does some damage.
It takes out one of the Makos that they got to beam back, and it's really bad all the way around.
Are these the same kind of Illyrians that Una Chin Riley is from Strange New Worlds, by the way?
I mean, they don't have the same loaf, but they do not.
They do have the same name.
Yeah.
I wonder what that's about.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, if they are the same as Una Chin Riley, like, not people I would want to piss off.
You know?
If they are the same, nothing about the Illyrian background is explicit or implied in the episode whatsoever.
No.
There's this moment where the Illyrians start to fight back, and it looks like this whole plan is about to go bad because it's going bad in the ship-to-ship combat, and it's going bad in the man-to-man combat.
But Tipol comes up with this specific power junction for Reed to shoot at, and he shoots that thing, and it knocks out power all over the ship.
And Trip and his buddy get the warp core out.
And Archer and the rest of the guys are about to beam out when they run into the Casey Biggs character who's like, man, what the fuck?
Like,
why can't you just take no for an answer?
And Archer's like, I didn't have a choice.
Anyways, I left $5 on your counter.
It should buy plenty of warp coils.
This moment hits so hard, like, because the way you get through to Dark Archer is through his dark heart.
And Captain Captain Casey Biggs is basically the friend from Can't Buy Me Love who's like, you threw shit at my house, man.
You threw shit on my house.
Flox pays TePaul a visit in her quarters, and they have...
I like the, like, the wall art being a little askew on the wall.
Like, like...
Archer's quarters are like filthy and there's girders everywhere.
TePaul's got like slightly askew wall art.
There's a girder that is like on his desk.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like, move the one on your desk, man.
You gotta move that one.
Otherwise, you're just not getting any work done.
Your work area has gotta be clear, right?
Yeah.
Anyways, she's still having a tough time suppressing emotions, even though she has gotten the Trellium monkey off her back.
And he's like, well, you know, this will take time.
And
that's time you could use for some kind of vengeful purpose.
We could explore a dose of trillium methadone
I really thought dr.
Flox's advice here was interesting because
You know so much of what Tapala's saying here is like her her inability to marshal the power to resist these withdrawal symptoms and these emotions and and so forth and dr.
Flox's advice is very Buddhist.
He's like Observe the feelings.
Don't resist them.
That's maybe as good as you can do here.
Yeah.
In engineering, we learned from Trip that the Illyrian warp coil was surprisingly compatible with their systems and they just, you know.
I just slid it right in.
It was almost too easy.
It was so easy, I pulled it back out and slid it in again, and then I just did that a few more times.
It made its own lubrication.
That's nice.
They get a deadline here to meet Degra.
They're going to make that deadline because they jumped a maximum warp right then and there.
And that's the end of the episode.
Ben, did you like it?
I can't pay.
Got okay.
Tempting fate.
There's a moment at the end of this episode where Archer is asking himself if they did the right thing, and Trip is like trying to reassure him.
What is this?
Fucking saving Private Ryan?
What is this horse shit?
Am I a good captain?
Shut the fuck up!
He slaps him.
I think that that's an interesting question that not many Starfleet captains have ever had to stop and ask themselves.
It feels like a Benjamin Sisko kind of moment in a way.
Except he asks it while he's doing bad things.
It's not at the conclusion of the bad thing doing.
Right.
Which is like the normal place to ask whether or not you're a bad person who's done bad things, right?
Yeah.
I mean, he's asking it at the end also.
He's asked it all the way through, before, during, and after.
He started five-paragraphed essays, the morally compromising choices.
It's hot, it's sexy, but is it okay?
And
I mean, I think that Star Trek at its best gives you tricky moral conundrums to chew on and like, what would you do?
And I think that this is a good episode for that reason.
Like, they, they did a bad thing that wasn't up to the standard they would set for themselves, but they tried to mitigate how bad it was at every turn.
And given the stakes, I feel like they did make the right call.
The Illyrians are going to be pissed, but maybe they can patch things up with them.
They seem like pretty nice guys, right?
It's really interesting that you came down on right call because I agree.
You have to do this.
It sucks, but you have to do it.
What I don't love is how transparent it feels that eventually they're going to find this ship and give back their warp coil.
Like, I have not watched a head on this series, but I am positive that's going to happen.
We're going to see Casey Biggs again, and he's going to forgive Archer on screen.
You think so?
I will throw up if that's what happens.
It better not happen
because this is the line crosser.
Like, I don't think Archer as a character can recover from this.
And that's fine.
Just be who you are, Archer.
Be Dark Archer from here on out.
You be you.
You did bad things for the greater good, but like, heavy is the head or whatever.
Like, you're the captain.
You've got to make those bad calls.
And you have to absorb the grief of those calls so your crew doesn't have to.
That's also another big part of it.
Like, everyone is feeling this in a way that they've not been absolved of, which I think and hope is coming too.
Archer needs to absolve his crew from this and like take it on completely.
I agree.
Do you want to see if there's anything morally compromised in the P1 inbox?
You know what?
There kind of is.
A lot of that, isn't there?
Yeah, I think the friends of DeSoto are fairly tarnished ethically at this point.
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.
Then we got a promotional priority one message here.
Okay.
And it is asking us to go to A E K I N C A I D dot com.
A E Kincaid.com.
Here's the message.
I am sending this P1 on behalf of she who is my wife.
She is an independent author.
Whoa.
There is no agent, no publisher, no
big book backing her up.
Just a total badass who published a trilogy of funny fantasy books through sheer force of will.
Wow.
Road dropped there.
Like it.
Book one called The Demon, the Hero, and The City of Seven is about an unlikely pair of opposites who get swept up in a quest to save their world.
They are light, breezy, and touching.
I'm so proud of her.
Visit AEKE to learn more.
Once again, that's AEKINCAID.com to purchase a great trilogy of funny fantasy books by an indie author.
Hell yeah.
I love a spouse supporting their spouse's creative project with a P1.
That's such a sweet way to do it.
Yeah, Justin, big spouse, supportive energy here.
Good job.
I got to check out these books.
Got to.
Who couldn't use a light, breezy, and touching book this summer?
It's still summer, right?
I mean, it's like the middle of September, but in LA, it's still summer.
It'll be summer till January.
Our next P1 is from Loud Shovel, aka Paul Sarah, and it's to Nick.
It goes like this.
Nick sent Paul a happy birthday P1 in September, told him about the pod while moving firewood.
Maybe another Nick knows a Paul born in September who also chucks wood.
What my theory presupposes is maybe I'm in the mirror universe?
It had explained W slash R slash T everything and my prior goatee choices.
Happy B-Day, Paul.
Good luck in the Prime Uni.
Here's to Nicks for being awesome.
Pretty great.
Pretty great work.
I love it.
Anyone who calls themselves Loud Shovel,
this is Paul that Nick is talking about, makes me think of that, you remember that video?
I think it was a vine, where like a shovel gets dropped on a frozen pond
once, and then a couple of times, and then it turns out it's the exact first couple bars of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.
That's a loud shovel to me.
That's what I thought of.
Yeah, it's good stuff.
Probably means something very different to Paul and Nick, though.
Nah.
That's got to be it.
Yeah.
Ben, our final priority one message is from Anthony, aka
Horbertwast
on Discord.
It's to you and me.
Oh.
Here's that message.
Slash fic
historically refers to MM fanfic.
So I'm taking the chaotic good route and paying you to read a gay JC micro fic.
Wow.
And Anthony is using their remaining
characters to write that for me to read.
So here goes.
This is going to be the shortest micro fic ever.
I love this.
Ready?
Uh-huh.
My body is ready.
Archer shifted his weight to pin Tran to his ice desk.
Andoria was cold, but the captain's cock was nevertheless stiffening and red hot.
Wow.
It seems like we've both been losing sleep over each other, the Andorian replied, smirking.
And scene.
So ends the reading.
Oh, man.
I love how much that leaves the imagination.
Yeah.
That fucking ice desk is going to melt.
That's my prediction.
You know, it strikes me that the P1s could be an interesting place to do a little slash fic telephone.
Like, or not telephone, like where one person writes one.
Like a tandem writing project.
Yeah, exactly.
Where we just go and go and go and pass the baton.
Yeah, somebody could pick up where Anthony left off.
We've got some room on upcoming priority win messages.
You can continue on where Anthony left off by going to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron.
Get in there because it is a great way to support the production of our shows.
Sure is.
Hey, Adam.
What?
Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?
Drunk Shimoda!
I think it's going to be Captain Casey Biggs for me.
Okay.
I think Captain Casey Biggs thinks the best he can do is be mean to Archer out the door.
But he really could have shot him there, right?
I think so.
Why didn't he shoot him there?
I don't know.
It seemed like they went in with everything on stun, right?
Like, maybe there's like a rules of engagement thing to it.
Like, I'm not going to fucking shoot a guy just because he stunned everybody.
Here's the thing.
When someone comes to take your stuff and tries to rationalize it out of desperation,
that still doesn't get you unshot in my mind, you know?
Like, especially if it's the difference between a three-year journey home and
maybe blurping a guy with a phaser, you know?
Yeah.
I'm going to get that warp coil back.
I'm the captain of the Illyrian ship.
That's my job.
It's not to fucking moralize to a guy I barely know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can you imagine what his crew thinks?
The crew who's around Captain Casey Biggs at that moment sees that happening.
Archer and Makos beam away and they're like, what the fuck was that, Captain?
They're like, all right, Captain Casey Biggs, you have a drinking problem and it's finally time to admit it and start the long process of healing yourself.
Captain Casey Biggs, you have hurt me in the following ways.
What about you, Ben?
I'm going to give it to the fish Cindy who has the knockout gas button.
Yeah.
I just think that's a fun button to have.
Are there other buttons available?
We may never know.
Yeah, we didn't see the reverse shot.
There's a button for clean the water.
That's definitely a button they've got.
Yeah, they're not using it.
No.
Just for having a fun button is why that guy gets it.
I wonder if we will see a fish Zindi characterized at all, or if they will just be a guy on the other side of some glass, like
occasionally weighing in on the conversation.
Like, do they want anything?
Do they need need anything?
What are they up to?
Do they love their children?
There's so much we don't know about the fish Zindi.
They probably want some dried food flakes sprinkled on top of their water from time to time.
Not too much.
No, no, no.
You could totally throw off the nitrate levels.
Oh, yeah.
If you give them too much.
And plus, they'll just eat and eat.
Like, that's the thing about an aquatic Zindi.
Like, they will eat past full.
Sometimes you'll see an aquatic Zindi that like has been, you know, taken out of a really big aquatic Zindi ship and put in a much smaller aquatic Zindi ship and you're like ooh it grew too big for the size of ship it's in and that's just sad yeah it's not good faith of the fart well we got to figure out what we're watching next week on the show Ben for that uh you're gonna give us the rundown of what the episode's about while I head on over to gox.biz slash game Adam the next episode is season three episode 20 the forgotten two high-ranking Zindi offer to to stop the launch of their super weapon if Archer can prove they've been manipulated.
Meanwhile, the crew mourns their lost mates.
This is your chance, Ben.
If you called your shot about introducing Aquatic Zindi as main characters, this could be it.
Could be it.
Because we know they built the weapon.
Maybe they have the power to stop it.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe they built like a fail-safe in.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Adam, this will not be the first time I've reviewed The Forgotten on a Star Trek podcast.
Really?
Yeah.
Way, way, way back in the day when we were very fresh as Star Trek podcasters, I went as a guest on a show called Random Trek, which selects a random Star Trek episode and reviews it with a guest.
And I was the guest for season three, episode 20 of Star Trek Enterprise.
How about that?
Yeah.
So
I wonder if I should go back and listen and make sure sure I
only say things that agree with the things I've already said publicly about this episode.
According to their website, this seems like a podcast that no longer makes episodes.
The last one was in 2024.
Yeah, I think that...
Was that the episode that you were on?
No, I think I was probably on in like 2017.
But yeah, I think the guy that makes it still puts one out every so often, but it's not like a primary weekly concern concern of his.
I see.
Well, a primary weekly concern of mine is how we're going to experience the next episode, Ben.
The game of buttholes,
the will,
the Riker, Quantum Leap is where our runabout is on square 87.
That's made this a regular old episode, but at the end of this roll,
we could be anywhere.
Sure could, Adam.
You're required to learn as you play.
Roll.
Here goes.
ben i have rolled a 57 okay which means our runabout is on square 44
which also means it is a regular old episode love a regular app mm-hmm
i love a friend of deSoto who takes it upon themselves to go to maximumfun.org slash join and ensure the ongoing production of this show means the world to us and keeps us going keeps us going It keeps us from going dark.
Tell you that much.
Keeps us regular, like fiber in our system.
Keeps Wendy going, keeps our producer employed.
Wendy pretty.
Keeps the shows coming out on time and
super funny.
One of the most crucial members of our team.
We really appreciate all her great efforts.
Got to thank Rob Adler, our social media director, who also writes our newsletter.
Subscribe to that.
Go to grazedrech.com for links to sign up to the mailing list.
Go to podchup.biz, etc.
Got to thank Bill Tilly, our Zindi wartime concigliary, our social media director Emeritus, who still makes the hilarious trading cards.
Boy, Bill Tilley has been really en Fuego lately with the trading cards.
He's really been making me laugh with those lately.
Really great stuff.
If you're not following our social medias and getting the cards every week, what are you doing?
He also chooses the image that is our show art for that week and has done so, I think, for all of it.
Yeah.
Since we switched to proper screen grab show art for every episode, there's a lot of comedy in that selection every time.
And he just does a great job.
Shout out to Bill.
Best in the best.
I got to thank Adam Ragusia with whom we collaborated on our theme music for this show.
And we also collaborate with him on a little podcast called Wholesome that you can find at patreon.com slash wholesome underscore pod.
It's a patrons-only show about stuff we like.
Get to know us a little better.
You know, stuff that happens behind the paywall stays behind the paywall.
So you might hear
a little shit talking about the world that we might not put out on Maine.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
You're going to love it.
Thanks to Dark Bateria for the original Picard song.
And with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise where those fish Zindy are like not today assholes
that that was almost Zindiopra
you give the super weapon a pin
everybody gets a super weapon
make it so
captain
U.S.
Finn, the crime.
Captain, Jonathan Picard, the USFID,
make it so.
Make it so.
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