Leech Wish (ENT S4E3)

Speaker 1 Here's to the finest crew in Starling. When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me.

Speaker 1 This is a parody.

Speaker 1 Paramount owns the sun.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the 600th episode of The Greatest Generation. It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who was a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.
All 600 of them.

Speaker 1 I'm Adam Pranica. I'm Ben Harrison.
How does that number make you feel? You know, I was thinking about it and then I was like, it's kind of inaccurate because we've got bonus episodes.

Speaker 1 We've got, you know, greatest track episodes, which, you know, could be argued as somewhat counting toward the total. I think 600 is noteworthy in that we've just done a fucking lot of these.

Speaker 1 I think when it comes to like metadata and file organization, I don't like the food on my plate touching. So it's very easy to tell that like in this folder on Dropbox, there are 600 episodes.

Speaker 1 There's one folder with 600 files in it now. That's pretty cool.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's pretty cool. I mean cool maybe

Speaker 1 an exaggeration in terms, but exciting.

Speaker 1 We did like a hosting change maybe halfway through our run. And I think when we switched hosts, we had

Speaker 1 did we have like 20 million downloads at that point before we switched?

Speaker 1 Somewhere on my computer, there's probably screenshots of our stats because those are not portable. Like that's

Speaker 1 a number that you can't take with you if the files move onto different servers. And then I'm looking at what's on our current thing, and that's like almost 15 million.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we've really lost some of the

Speaker 1 enthusiasm.

Speaker 1 Oh, but you know, when we started, we were doing two a week, which was crazy. Sure.
Also, we don't know I don't remember quite when that transition happened, so we could be doing just fine. Could be.

Speaker 1 These numbers, though, it's just hard to

Speaker 1 imagine how many people that is, you know, like the human mind can't grasp

Speaker 1 15 million downloads in a couple of years. It's staggering.
It feels amazing to be here. We really appreciate everybody that's been with us for even part of the journey.
I know.

Speaker 1 Much less you sickos who have like listened through a couple of times.

Speaker 1 I'm glad we made it this far. Like

Speaker 1 it wasn't a guarantee, you know? Like in the beginning, we were like, let's just do this thing and have some fun. And then let's do Deep Space Nine.
And then let's do Voyager just because that's next.

Speaker 1 Let's just do Enterprise because that's next. But I don't think when we started out, there was any promise of any of this.
No.

Speaker 1 None of it was promised. Still isn't.
We're very lucky to have found the community that we found.

Speaker 1 Maybe the most remarkable thing about this whole project is that you still say things that surprise and delight me every single time we sit down to record one of these. And

Speaker 1 you're just a really fun person to get to do a project like this with. That is a really nice thing to say, Ben.
I feel the same. And I also just feel like...

Speaker 1 There's no one else in my life I could have done this with besides you. I think you're a unique combination of being willing to do it,

Speaker 1 being good at it, and being the sort of person that you can do a project with for years and years and years. Like, fuck, man.
Like, maybe that last qualification is the biggest. Like,

Speaker 1 in many ways, this is a weird, fucked up marriage. You know, you're like a work husband to me.
Like, we've been doing this for nine years. It's going to be 10 years pretty soon.

Speaker 1 And that's like, what is the divorce rate of people normally? And like, what is the rate of podcasts that start and don't even make it past a year? Like, that statistic, I bet, is bonkers.

Speaker 1 I can only imagine. I mean,

Speaker 1 the stakes couldn't be lower, but like, yeah, I mean, if

Speaker 1 we can make it, I think you all can make it too.

Speaker 1 We got a great episode of Star Trek Enterprise to talk about today. Do you want to jump into it? Do you want to keep gassing each other up or do you just want to get on with it?

Speaker 1 Like, Like it's a normal episode. It kind of seems like the latter.
The thing I'm realizing, Adam, is that home is where I want to be. Hmm.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what is home if not the comedic recap of an episode of Star Trek?

Speaker 1 Then this time around,

Speaker 1 the 600th time around, it will be Enterprise Season 4, Episode 3, and it is called Home. Got a free speech and guitar.

Speaker 1 What a moment in this cold open. Yeah.
A stadium built over the water. This is like some airports in Asian countries.

Speaker 1 Like, I think Japan has one or two of these where like they've built an entire airport. They just dumped a bunch of earth out into the water.
Yeah. Built it up with pilings.
And there's an airport.

Speaker 1 And that's what the stadium reminds me of. Is that like more earthquake safe? Like, oh, this is new, new ground, so it's not going to bust apart like old ground does?

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm an idiot, first of all, but I got to believe when your ground is wet all the time.

Speaker 1 That can't be good.

Speaker 1 And why is the ground wet, Todd?

Speaker 1 I don't know, Marco.

Speaker 1 Huge, huge crowd. And it's a little bit end of new hope.
Like, there's people standing in ranks for this hero's welcome.

Speaker 1 Is your sense that that the crowd is purely starfleets there are no civilians here this isn't a ticket to get in your mind in other words i'm thinking the stands might be mixed company but the the people standing in the middle you know the pit that that reads a starfleet to me we get a shot reverse shot of archer here and i was shocked no notes No teleprompter.

Speaker 1 Archer's going off the dome here. It's going off the dome.
I I bet this is Dark Archer as the engine for this. Like, Dark Archer doesn't need a prompter.

Speaker 1 I noticed that the lectern has, it's got the Earth on it, but just one laurel on one side of it. And I wondered what that was about.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, you only get two laurels if you're like a diplomatic organization, like the United Nations or the United Federation of Planets.

Speaker 1 There's something about the asymmetry of that that I find very displeasing. I don't like it.
It really looked broken.

Speaker 1 Like, they moved the lectern out there and the two guys that moved it like accidentally bumped it against something and were like, ah, shit. Oh, well.

Speaker 1 Couple of union stage hands out there.

Speaker 1 This is a dark stage right now. No one with the lectern.

Speaker 1 Hey, who the fuck is this guy? He doesn't have a COD. Get him out of here.

Speaker 1 I was also a little surprised surprised that sexual icon Admiral Forrest up on stage is sort of like the host of the event. Like,

Speaker 1 you guys aren't here to hear me, right?

Speaker 1 You guys are super jazzed about who I'm about to introduce. It's a speech that starts off pretty strong, like Archer kind of deferring the hero stuff to his crew.

Speaker 1 And specifically to those who passed away in the project of preventing the Zindi Zindi from destroying Earth. But man, it feels fucking first draft as hell once he's through that emotional opener.

Speaker 1 I was just like, man, maybe you should have had a teleprompter. Maybe there should have been some folded up printer paper inside the breast pocket of your uniform, man.

Speaker 1 Isn't it kind of great that the theme song kind of saves this moment? Like, we don't see the body of this speech.

Speaker 1 All we see is the student that has crafted the attention-getting introduction into the theme song. And it kind of gets him off the hook.

Speaker 1 The 27 RSVP salute is really something to endure from an audio-visual level. Like,

Speaker 1 they really play that loud in the stadium. Because it's a prime number.
You can't do...

Speaker 1 You can't do seven guns three times or whatever. You know what I wanted for real?

Speaker 1 Was like a missing man formation with a bunch of shuttle pods, like a flyover. That would have been nice.
The budget was all spent on Vulcan bells.

Speaker 1 What else was on the program for this? Like

Speaker 1 Archer's like 45-second B-minus of a speech, and then what? You know,

Speaker 1 I didn't even intend to make my observation of the flyover be related to that, but you're right. How else do you end a moment like this except with flyover or fireworks or something? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can't just have Archer go, all right,

Speaker 1 thanks.

Speaker 1 Everybody should have two drink tickets in your program. Enjoy.

Speaker 1 Amazing. We're in the bar after the theme.
Unclear whether this is the 602 bar. It looks like it's dressed the same, but

Speaker 1 I did not see its neon sign or its exterior establishing shot. What we get is an archer in here, about ready to get a drink when he's approached by Hernandez.

Speaker 1 And Hernandez has some playful banter for him that really drives home the idea that they were a couple extremely into fantasy roleplay at one time. The bar is reserved for regular customers.

Speaker 1 Galactic heroes have to sit at a table. They get to talking.

Speaker 1 I mean, it seems like she's making a move, like, or at least if not making a move, like making it very clear that she's available, should that be the kind of mood he's in, because who knows?

Speaker 1 He doesn't want to talk about what he went through in the Delphic expanse. That's not really something he's up for.
She washed her launch bay before going to the bar that night.

Speaker 1 What kind of shape is your shuttlecraft in? I haven't seen you in a while.

Speaker 1 What's up with the weird extra part on the front of your shuttle pod?

Speaker 1 Did you take a lot of battle damage while you were out there?

Speaker 1 Interesting that she's a professional. He's a a professional.
She wants to have a professional conversation in the bar. What happened to you in the expanse?

Speaker 1 Being one of the topics she wants to get into. He is not trying to drink and talk about that.
He wants to talk about the lighter stuff. Seen any good movies while I was gone?

Speaker 1 Nice to hear that the film industry survives this far into the future. I wouldn't have bet on it, but there you go.
People love an award show. Yeah.
Our audience is proof of that.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. They must have given out awards at that after that speech, right? Oh, yeah, that would have been fun if he'd come in with like a bunch of medals around.

Speaker 1 They tried to get one around Dr. Flox, but he uh blowfishes his face.
You can't get it around, he's just like wearing it like uh, like a crown, like Rambo's uh headband.

Speaker 1 It's like when uh you're invited to a party and uh you don't show up, doesn't really matter,

Speaker 1 It turns blue.

Speaker 1 Hernandez does not seem like she's interested in like dating him or like getting back together or anything, but she does seem like available for sex.

Speaker 1 That's really it, isn't it? That is the energy. Like, welcome back, War Hero.
You can get this if you want this. We used to knock it around quite a bit before you left.

Speaker 1 I just want to say, I'm leaving for my own mission soon. Like, why don't you why don't you do for me what I did for you before you left on your mission, huh? Send me off in style.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Send me off with a dumped-in shuttle bay.

Speaker 1 Trip visits to Paul.

Speaker 1 They're both going on shore leave, but he's kind of not sure what to do with his free time because of the place and people he would visit having been wiped off the face of the map.

Speaker 1 Guess this is my home now. It seems pretty clear that he's fishing for an invite, and the invite she has for him is, come back to Vulcan and stay at my mom's house with me.

Speaker 1 I did not see this coming at all. There's a trendle bed in the, in the basement, Trip.

Speaker 1 One thing this episode really gets right is the vibe of like, it's the end of the school year and everyone's going off. And like, some people,

Speaker 1 some people don't want to go off. Like, some people don't know where they would go or if they want to go.

Speaker 1 And this idea of trip visiting to Paul feeling like that, feeling like I don't want to go and visit

Speaker 1 my sister for a variety of reasons. Listen, if I wanted to go visit a gash in Florida,

Speaker 1 you'd have to check my head. There's a gash I'd much rather visit.

Speaker 1 It's on planet Vulcan. It's on a turtle bed in the basement of your mom's house.

Speaker 1 What a deal. And he's going to do it.
He's going to do it.

Speaker 1 He's doing it.

Speaker 1 Never let it be said that Trip wasn't an adventurous soul. Yeah.
Yeah. It's good faith to believe

Speaker 1 I can do it.

Speaker 1 parody.

Speaker 1 Archer and Captain Hernandez are touring the bridge of the USS Columbia, which is the ship that she will be taking out pretty soon.

Speaker 1 It's just getting the finishing touches put on it, as is evidenced by the 10,000 people arc welding various things all over the bridge.

Speaker 1 Just so many fucking sparks flags, such an active and dangerous-seeming work site. I could not believe that they were not wearing hard hats for this scene.

Speaker 1 What is the post that the random welder behind the command chair is working on? It looks like he's putting up a basketball hoop. Is that where the command chair is gonna go?

Speaker 1 Is the command chair just sitting there waiting to be put onto that post?

Speaker 1 Oh my god, I did not put that together. That makes all the sense in the world.
But much in the same way as you

Speaker 1 I'm not an architect, clearly, but like you make a tall building flexible so that the wind and seismic events won't break it for being so brittle. Wouldn't you want some sort of like

Speaker 1 playground spring on the bottom of that command chair for when the bangers get dropped?

Speaker 1 I think that's going to be a banger-enhancing situation. You're going to be like, whoa!

Speaker 1 It won't stop.

Speaker 1 Somebody come put a hand on this thing. As an actor, that makes your job easier, though, right? You don't have to go flopping around.
The chair's doing the work for you. Sure.
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 You put a quarter in and it does it a little bit itself, you know? Pretty great.

Speaker 1 He recommends getting some lumbar support for that some bitch because

Speaker 1 you're going to be sitting in it a lot. I love the idea of like a throw pillow on the captain's chair.
Just a little

Speaker 1 something, you know, pop of color, little accent. Are you saying that because the captain is a woman, Ben? A fucking accent pillow on the command chair? How dare you?

Speaker 1 I'm saying it sounds like that is what Archer needs. He specifically needs a little extra pillow for his lumbar.
Also, Adam, I don't think it's sexist to say pillow.

Speaker 1 Personally, I think it's okay to like pillows.

Speaker 1 I'm looking forward to your new children's book, It's Okay to Like Pillows.

Speaker 1 Soon to be banned from a public library near you.

Speaker 1 Ben, I feel like if there's a point to this scene, The point is Archer wishes that they didn't need all those weapon systems, but actually encourages all of those and then some. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Actually, more weapon systems. If Starfleet offers you X amount of weapon systems, say two weapon systems.
If they offer you three, say you want four. Give them no place to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Columbia is being configured a little bit differently from Enterprise based on lessons learned from the surprises that they've encountered in the last three years of their mission, and specifically in the last year.

Speaker 1 And Archer is very weapons-focused focused in this scene. We gotta have weaps.
He's the key. And the next scene is the debrief of Archer in front of the two great sexual icons of this show.

Speaker 1 Obviously, Admiral Forrest and Ambassador Sauval,

Speaker 1 among others. Hernandez is here for this as well.
This is Archer answering all of their questions about what went down in his long time away from Earth in the Delphic expanse. And the

Speaker 1 subject seems to really revolve around specifically the Vulcan ship Salaya and the crew dying, and maybe that being Archer's fault.

Speaker 1 Like, this is a huge sticking point for Saval and the rest of the Vulcans.

Speaker 1 As far as I can determine, you didn't try to save a single Vulcan crewman.

Speaker 1 There was no point, they were too far gone. You ever get invited to a meeting that turns out was a grilling?

Speaker 1 Because I feel like if Archer was told this was a debrief, on the menu was his ass, and I don't think he was told about that ahead of time.

Speaker 1 Archer walks into the room and is like, what are you guys all doing here? And Sauval pulls out a yellow legal pad with some thoughts written down on it. Oh, no.
It's an effect.

Speaker 1 We don't know what really happened aboard the Salaya. What the hell does that mean?

Speaker 1 Sauval is so interesting here because he draws an equivalency equivalency between the bloodthirstiness of the Vulcans that Archer found on that haunted Vulcan ship with Archer himself in making the decision to blow up that ship.

Speaker 1 And there doesn't seem to have been enough evidence gathered to satisfy Sauval that the Vulcans were too far gone, as we were assured

Speaker 1 in that episode. So it's a bad look for Archer.
Like,

Speaker 1 if he wanted to come home looking clean, he did not play every moment of that episode correctly.

Speaker 1 And he really does not like the implication of what Saval is saying and starts getting defensive and starts screaming at everybody. And basically, they just have to shut the meeting down.

Speaker 1 Like, okay, Archer is not in a place to answer this super cool Vulcan's questions.

Speaker 1 What do you think is worse? And don't even think about it. I would like your most instinctual answer to this question.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Crying at work or blowing up in a meeting, which is worse?

Speaker 1 Absolutely blowing up in a meeting. I mean, crying at work, you just go to that room right next to the lactation room.
You know, sure.

Speaker 1 Archer has a lot of capital. Coming home a hero to the hero's welcome, getting schools and shit named after you.
He's banking a lot of that that he has then dumped.

Speaker 1 He's like withdrawn from the ATM machine and then just thrown it in the lake with this blow-up here. I got more help from the Andorians than I ever got from the High Command.
That's enough, Captain.

Speaker 1 He gets kind of like hauled into Sexual Icon Admiral Forrest's office

Speaker 1 after they like suspend the meeting. And he's still yelling and ranting and raving, like, fuck the Vulcans, the earth would be dust if it wasn't for me.

Speaker 1 What the fuck does that guy get off saying that?

Speaker 1 I mean, it is lunchtime, and so it doesn't surprise me that sexual icon Admiral Forrest is like behind a desk eating a sandwich using tissues as a napkin. What am I supposed to use?

Speaker 1 We put you in front of Sauval to make nice with the Vulcan high command, and you blew it. Yeah.
You blew it. Their relationship is not good.
Like, it has been pretty good up until this moment.

Speaker 1 Now, I'm not so sure. With this briefing on hold indefinitely and

Speaker 1 Archer being so mad that Forrest didn't take his side.

Speaker 1 It is

Speaker 1 a terrible look, and Forrest basically orders Archer to go on vacation and cool his boots for a minute.

Speaker 1 We cut up to the ship where Flox is getting ready to go on shore leave, so he has packed his menagerie up into dozens and dozens of little terrariums and cages.

Speaker 1 So many that he needs Lieutenant Reed's help carrying them through the ship. Reed's perfect for this

Speaker 1 as a bit of a valet for Flox. I need something to do on this ship, Commander.
Fair enough. Finally, we've found something that Reed is good at.

Speaker 1 Reed adds some extra baggage to what Flox is carrying here ahead of his vacation with the bit of news about folks on Earth being fairly prickly toward those of a non-human

Speaker 1 descent or whatever. There's been some ugly xenophobia happening on Earth, given the gash that was carved into Florida by aliens.
Dr. Flox, not concerned with all of this.

Speaker 1 After all, he has a couple of suitcases full of leeches to use as personal defense.

Speaker 1 I can handle myself,

Speaker 1 Lieutenant Reed. I so wanted the payoff to this scene.
Like, we get a very fun payoff to the xenophobia, which I maintain is the perfect description of that. Fun payoff to xenophobia ahead.

Speaker 1 I wanted it to involve leeches. I wanted this fucking hillbilly to come up to Dr.
Flox starting a shit, and then instead of mace or punch him out, it's leeches to the face. Bah!

Speaker 1 He's like, What the fuck? They're in my mouth!

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're going into the space between his eyeball and his eyelid. There's,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 full body horror. You don't seem to know who you're dealing with.

Speaker 1 A doctor with vengeance on his mind,

Speaker 1 you must have a leech wish.

Speaker 1 The only thing more bloodthirsty than me are these leeches.

Speaker 1 Hillbilly xenophobe goes back to his pickup truck shuttlecraft and he's like picking them off of his face using the rearview mirror.

Speaker 1 And then like classic move, man, he looks down the front of his pants and like reaches in into where his crotch is and he's like, oh,

Speaker 1 because you know one's on his dick. You got to get a leech on your dick.
They always find the dick.

Speaker 1 You like that hill, Billy Bully?

Speaker 1 Now I'm using pulp fiction dialogue at you.

Speaker 1 First time I've seen a shuttlecraft with a lift kit, by the way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, man, that thing, it seems like it's always detailed, not a scratch on the bed of it. It seems like you never actually put something in that and haul it around.

Speaker 1 Are mud flaps really necessary on a shuttle pod? Like, especially ones with like in-profile pin-up girl? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Andorian pin-up girls. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, dude.

Speaker 1 Did you just pitch a bumper sticker for the store?

Speaker 1 Andorian pin-up girl. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's exactly the silhouette of pin-up girl, except she's green. There you go.

Speaker 1 I'm also thinking Andorian dashboard hula dancer would be fun. I said green, thinking that you were not thinking of Andorians, but thinking of

Speaker 1 Orions.

Speaker 1 I blew it! You blew it! You green it.

Speaker 1 But we could do it for both, right? Yeah, we could do it. Yeah, we could have a green one and a blue one.
I mean, it's just that I don't see color. Ben, in that same way.

Speaker 1 I got confused because the Andorians and the Orions were teamed up in that one season of Discovery. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyways, don't sue us. I won't cease or desist.

Speaker 1 Cause I really think it's fair use.

Speaker 1 Captain Hernandez finds Archer getting ready to go rock climbing. This is his vacation.
He has like gone off into the wilderness to go on a rock climbing trip solo. And somehow she had intel on this.

Speaker 1 Like she knew exactly where he was and how to find him and how to scold him for doing this, not using the buddy system.

Speaker 1 I kind of feel Archer's vibe here. He wants to go do something alone.

Speaker 1 If you've been spending a year in the expanse growing out your five o'clock shadow and killing a bunch of people, like maybe the only thing you want to do is bust off of a cliff. Maybe.

Speaker 1 To feel something new and fresh.

Speaker 1 I think that while their relationship may not have lasted a really long time, I get the sense that Captain Hernandez knows exactly how Archer's head gets cleared.

Speaker 1 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 She is just biding her time until that moment happens. Yeah, I mean, there is a form of seduction that is so passive that you could just read it as being there, just being around,

Speaker 1 waiting for the right time. And that seems to be Hernandez's play here.

Speaker 1 There's a form of seduction that takes the form of just being a little bit ahead of the person that you're climbing with on the rock face.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We cut over to Vulcan and Casa de Tepal,

Speaker 1 which has a neat patio with some water features. I really like this

Speaker 1 outer courtyard that you go through before you're inside the house. Really nice digs.
It seems like the sort of place where you'd learn how to meditate and maybe

Speaker 1 get some yoga. Like, this is a retreat retreat-style place from the looks of it.
Very cool. Uh-oh, Ben.
Here comes Mrs. T,

Speaker 1 and she was not expecting guests. Mother, you're home,

Speaker 1 obviously. She's a little bit unpleasant to Trip initially upon learning that she's got unannounced house guests.
Isn't she entitled to that?

Speaker 1 Great call.

Speaker 1 I was really on T-Less's wavelength here. Yeah, it's like,

Speaker 1 I know that the episode is trying to paint her as like a bit of a domineering bitch so that Tepal can have some conflict with her mother.

Speaker 1 But I was like, T-Les has like done nothing to deserve this crumb bum coming and staying on the trundle bed in her basement. Like,

Speaker 1 you know, a little warning would have been nice. It's not like they don't have subspace radios in the future.
Her name might as well be Sayless to Trip Tucker,

Speaker 1 given how that situation is going. Trip gets excused to go unpack his shit in the trundle room, and that leaves mother and daughter to discuss why mom is home.
Aren't you supposed to be at work?

Speaker 1 That's actually not something she's interested in saying too much about. What you would rather talk about is the letter left to TePaul by Cos,

Speaker 1 her former fiancé. And this is someone that her mom is very much in favor of her being with.
Now that you say that, I'm thinking even more about how much I sympathize with T-Less.

Speaker 1 Because what TePaul was imagining was that her mom was going to come home from work and Trip would already be ensconced on the trundle bed. That would have been worse.
Worse? What the hell, TePaul?

Speaker 1 What are you doing?

Speaker 1 Or she comes home from a long day at work and she hears the sound of Vulcan Euro pressure being done.

Speaker 1 She smells it in the air? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
You know, she smelled Trip Tucker before seeing him. Yeah.
Oh, did I forget to take out the garbage before I left for work?

Speaker 1 It fucking stinks in here. What is that? Who's shit? I'm Charles Tucker.
Pleased to meet you, man. Archer and Hernandez are climbing these rocks and shooting the shit.

Speaker 1 And this is like one captain who has not yet gone out on her five-year mission.

Speaker 1 full of optimism and excitement for what is to come with another captain who's already been ground into a pessimistic state of mind by his nightmare over the last year telling her like you need to be ready for all the battling you're going to be doing and all of the eulogies you'll be reading

Speaker 1 I mean I know you and I used to have a thing but uh you should just prepare yourself for the amount of alien nut shot at your face

Speaker 1 the way I was unprepared for because let me tell you it'll shoot you from far away and you'll not be able to wash it off. We have to help these children.

Speaker 1 Let me just say this, because I'm glad we're in a private context. You're one of the few people I know knows what this means.
The nut that the aliens shoot doesn't work like the nut that humans shoot.

Speaker 1 Like, try to imagine if I roped on your face, and then from then on, you became connected to me,

Speaker 1 defensive for me, willing to just sacrifice everything for me from that point on. And you'll get a little bit of an idea of what it's like to fly in the expanse.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 As opposed to sort of the opposite of that, which is what really happened.

Speaker 1 You remember when I did that and then we didn't talk?

Speaker 1 I was never able to look you in the eye, even though it was my idea.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Interesting this moment.
I mean, Hernandez is like, hey Archer, did you read the email with the,

Speaker 1 you know, the position recommendations I'm going for? I'm trying to staff a ship here. Archer's like, nah, I got no time for that.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to be on vacation. Just make sure you put the bloodthirstiest motherfucker you can find in terms of tactics because I made a mistake there.

Speaker 1 You may want to find someone with more field experience. Amiko.

Speaker 1 How conspicuous was the absence of Reed's name in this moment? In a, like, this could have gone a bunch of different ways.

Speaker 1 Either find yourself a real Reed type, which would be like very complimentary, over-complimentary of Reed, I think you could say, or a,

Speaker 1 God, you got to do better than Reed. Like, let me tell you, you go out in a deep space with a guy with that kind of shooting skill that's not going to work for you.

Speaker 1 Or, I was expecting Archer to thrust Reed upon her. Like, you know, who'd be great for you? Someone who's been out there before.
He's got some city miles on him. He's

Speaker 1 had a few reps at the old tactic station. This is a reference to our other hit Star Trek podcast, but Archer, could Charlie X

Speaker 1 read up a little bit? Like, gas him up. Like, hey, you should take this guy.
You'd love him. Let me just say, he's been a pleasure to have aboard.

Speaker 1 You're going to want someone who can write letters. Believe me.

Speaker 1 They spot some mountain lion tracks as they're climbing, and that's a little concerning, but the tracks are old, so maybe they don't have that much to be worried about.

Speaker 1 And over on Vulcan, it is early in the morning when Tales starts banging the gong in the courtyard, and Trip is awakened by TePaul. It's 4 a.m.

Speaker 1 You know, Mrs. T is hitting the gong a little bit louder than she would normally.
She fucking loves this. Yeah.
This is great. Yeah.
It is incumbent upon the guests to prepare breakfast.

Speaker 1 That's just the custom on Vulcan. What a thing.
Get an early start. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We cut to that meal directly and Mrs. T is still wondering what the hell her daughter is doing there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a bit strange that TePaul has spent so much time amongst these humans and TePaul reveals that she has been offered a commission in Starfleet that she's giving some consideration to.

Speaker 1 And this is

Speaker 1 pretty dismaying to Tales.

Speaker 1 There's some argument over whether TePaul's father would have approved of all of this Starfleet shit or nah.

Speaker 1 And they kind of disagree on that. There is something about

Speaker 1 a confrontation with a disappointed parent that made this scene feel extremely familiar and uncomfortable in that whole like, I thought we were arguing about this, but now it turns out there's actually four more things that you're taking umbrage with because it's not just about like the command with Starfleet.

Speaker 1 Like Mrs. T also has that energy of like, it would be great if you blew in a few more phone calls and visits from time to time.

Speaker 1 And she's clearly been keeping score in a way that infantilizes an adult woman, an adult capable person like TePaul in a way that feels like I've totally felt this way.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you have, but I think, I feel like a lot of people have where you're like, fuck, like, what do I got to do to look like a capable adult in front of you?

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to have a sleepover with my human friend on the trundle bed. I think that in retrospect, the way Tillesse plays all of these scenes

Speaker 1 makes so much more sense when you find out that she is being punished for the perceived crimes of her daughter. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Like it's got to salt the wound so fucking bad that DePaul brought one of these fucking humans home with her too. Yeah.
Mrs. T is like,

Speaker 1 you can

Speaker 1 have him eat my breakfast. You can have him sleep in my trundle bed, but you cannot have him ring my giant Vulcan gong.

Speaker 1 Is it a bell or a gong?

Speaker 1 I think that they're interchangeable based on the way way it's being used. Yeah.
Maybe? I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 My giant postmodern bullshit yoga retreat house. There's just a shot of a bunch of Vulcans sitting at a bus stop and Tales

Speaker 1 screeches up in

Speaker 1 an unmarked crown Vic, opens the passenger door and kicks a gong out the

Speaker 1 door and drops away. So Paul's like, I defile myself myself with Trip Tucker.

Speaker 1 Hey, now what's that you save? What?

Speaker 1 Legally, it's just a fart joke.

Speaker 1 Wonderful is a podcast where we talk about things we like.

Speaker 1 That's hard to sell in a promo like this, so we've enlisted the help of piano rock superstar Billy Joel to tell you about some of the topics we've covered. Take it away, real Billy Joel!

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Speaker 1 Keep me up, eat time capsules, Wayne's World Cheese Bulls, Wallace, Stevens, Donkey Kong, Fun Size, Almanjoy.

Speaker 1 They didn't start the podcast.

Speaker 1 Except that's not true. They didn't 22.

Speaker 1 They didn't start the podcast.

Speaker 1 No, they actually did. That was an act of film.
Listen to Wonderful Every Wednesday on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, Real Billy Joel.
No problem, Griffin.

Speaker 1 Have you heard? Friends of DeSoto? Greatest Trek, the hit Star Trek podcast about new streaming Star Trek shows, is going back in time to where it all started.

Speaker 1 Which means Greatest Trek is now temporarily something we're calling this old enterprise, covering Star Trek the Original series from the beginning.

Speaker 1 Every week we'll give you the Greatest Gen treatment on Greatest Trek about Star Trek the Original series. I promise it's not as confusing as I'm making it sound.

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to tell you, we're covering TOS on Greatest Trek.

Speaker 1 So subscribe to Greatest Trek and get your fill of me and Ben talking about Star Trek the original series until new Star Trek comes back.

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Speaker 1 You will never take the greatest kid alive.

Speaker 1 Ben would rather die.

Speaker 1 This argument between mother and daughter doesn't have a resolution here. We instead cut to Reed and Dr.

Speaker 1 Flox and Mayweather, who I feel like, in an establishing shot, I don't like seeing the back of Mayweather's head for like a period of time before we go like, oh, Mayweather is also there.

Speaker 1 They're holding down a three-tap at the bar and Reed is signing autographs. That's got to be a thrill for him, right? Oh, man.

Speaker 1 He's like, this is the first time I've written my name on a piece of paper without writing a very sad letter right before it in a long time.

Speaker 1 The angle on is the piece of paper on the cocktail table, and Reed starts his signature on the paper, but then it goes off onto the table, and he's like, fuck, I can't even hit this.

Speaker 1 They get approached by a racist Townie who is very clearly spoiling for a fight with Dr. Flox.

Speaker 1 Is he anti-nob or is he anti-anything but human? I think he's anti-anything but human because he's doing that like, I can't tell the difference between all you aliens. But that means he's not racist.

Speaker 1 You know what that means, right?

Speaker 1 Species are a social construct. Yeah.
That's what you're arguing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Therefore.

Speaker 1 These guys are about to catch an absolute beatdown.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're like in the midst of catching this beat beat down when Flox puffs his head up like a puffer fish, and it so startles everyone in the room that the fight stops.

Speaker 1 There's a couple of things that bump me in this scene. The first one is, what kind of a punch does this hillbilly throw? Because it looks like the punch crosses Reed's face without hitting it.

Speaker 1 Was he going for Flox? I thought he was going for Reed.

Speaker 1 There's something about the composition that suggested to me that Reed was the target, but you're right, if it was Dr. Flox, then that would make more sense.

Speaker 1 It's almost slow motion in how it plays in the shot. That part bumped me.
But also, when Dr.

Speaker 1 Flox goes full pufferfish, I thought he was doing it in that like diffuse a situation with comedy kind of way. Like

Speaker 1 two kids on the playground are fighting, and to like get them to break the spell, he like puts his thumb in his mouth and blows real hard. And then like,

Speaker 1 i'm weird mr puffer face guy

Speaker 1 look at me yeah and then the kids forget what they're fighting about that's not it that's not it he seems embarrassed when it's over and like maybe a little tired like it took something out of him to do that this last shot of the scene i think does so much work in in conveying the weird feelings that dr flox has about it really great take t-less has been having some trouble with her fridge and, you know, it's one of those $10,000 units that you can put the same material on as your cabinets so that it just blends right in.

Speaker 1 God, those are so cool. They're so cool, but they're so fucking expensive.
So she doesn't want to have to replace it. So Trip, using his skills of a warp engineer, is

Speaker 1 fixing some components when Tillesse comes home from the market with only extremely phallic vegetables, like an entire shopping bag full of only vegetables that are dick-shaped.

Speaker 1 And she's like washing them in the sink, like rubbing them up and down. Well, telling Tripp that she is aware of what his relationship with her daughter entails.

Speaker 1 She's like, I know about all the neuropressure, etc.

Speaker 1 You know how when someone has been amputated, they will often describe a phantom limb sensation,

Speaker 1 a feeling of something being there that actually isn't.

Speaker 1 When Mrs. T returns with all of this phallic produce, I was looking for a mom's teach sex logo in the corner of the frame that

Speaker 1 wasn't actually there. Yeah, yeah.
Maybe they used AI to like replace that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he fixes her fridge, which is great. I feel like this is Tripp's save the cat moment for T-Less.
She's like, holy shit, maybe he's not so bad after all. Yeah, you really do feel that in the moment.

Speaker 1 He does a a good thing, and then he feels like he can ask a couple of questions. Like,

Speaker 1 it's weird that TePaul told you about me in the way that you understand it. Like, I'm a little bit on my back foot about how much you know or don't know.
And Mrs. T is like, She didn't tell me shit.

Speaker 1 I can smell her on your dick.

Speaker 1 Like, a mother knows.

Speaker 1 Would this be a bad time for Cost to arrive?

Speaker 1 because he does

Speaker 1 she's like when I wake you with the gong at four in the morning something's going on can I smell your dick

Speaker 1 that was a classic I can make a reference to a rap or hip-hop thing but you actually have

Speaker 1 the backup

Speaker 1 you actually have the true knowledge of it yeah I mean

Speaker 1 what a classic that song was. Great music video.
Nothing bad about it. Check out the balls on Cos, though.
Cos doesn't call ahead. No.

Speaker 1 Cos comes right over, thinking that the letter was the call ahead. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, but he did more than Tepal did about bringing Trip. That's true.

Speaker 1 The door flies open, and everybody turns their head and goes,

Speaker 1 Cos,

Speaker 1 what are you doing here?

Speaker 1 I thought I recognized this guy under the loaf. Did you? I didn't.
Because when Cos and Tepal go out into the courtyard to talk, I'm like, something about this guy isn't working for me.

Speaker 1 And I finally figured out why. That's because the actor who plays this guy plays Goval, the Lenny Borg from Descent Part 2.
Whoa.

Speaker 1 Do you remember that guy?

Speaker 1 Man, it's been such a long time since we watched Decent.

Speaker 1 A character who tended not to get things back then

Speaker 1 and now.

Speaker 1 She is doing everything she can to get this guy off her scent. You have the option of choosing another mate.
I don't want another mate.

Speaker 1 She uses her terrible and debilitating drug addiction for a reason to tell him to fuck off and that doesn't work. Or maybe a fight to the death.
would get you off my ass, Lenny.

Speaker 1 That's not going to work either. Finally, Cos got a hail marriage.
He's got family connections that could put Mrs. T back to work at the Vulcan Science Academy.

Speaker 1 All you got to do is marry me, and the best part is, we don't even have to live together after a year. What do you think of that? And TePaula's like, What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 1 Like, why would she want to go back to work after she retired? And he's like,

Speaker 1 Oops,

Speaker 1 oopsies

Speaker 1 On the mountain, it's nightfall. And are we talking about day for night here? Is this the scene where they're like looking at the stars?

Speaker 1 Yeah, except the trees are fully lit, and there's like a weird halo effect around Archer.

Speaker 1 I sort of wondered if they like chroma keyed the sky or something. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, there's some weird effect happening here. I mean, it's definitely day for night plus something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like there's there's a lot of talk about, you know, interesting places they've gone, but Archer's sort of come around to the perspective that they're going around and poking their noses into shit.

Speaker 1 And what that has done is stirred up trouble and brought a lot of that trouble back to the planet Earth. And it is just more of him trying to talk Captain Hernandez into his dark archer worldview.

Speaker 1 Archer left Earth with a Starfleet as a promise kind of mentality and came back as a secure our borders on the homeland

Speaker 1 type.

Speaker 1 And what I think about, like we've gotten a series of these scenes so far, Ben. Archer's doing all the talking.
Hernandez is doing none of the judging.

Speaker 1 She's being a really good friend by just kind of absorbing this and listening. Absent any judgment.
And I thought that was so interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is like something that I'm embarrassed to say took me like well into my 30s to understand that sometimes when somebody's going through something like this, they are not asking for you to talk them out of their thing, they're just asking for you to be an ear.

Speaker 1 Oh man, I'm so glad you got out of this in your 30s because this remains a challenge for me

Speaker 1 almost constantly. Hey, Adam, you don't have to compare your own situation to anyone else's when they bring up an issue.
Like, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 You think that's bad.

Speaker 1 Wait till you hear what Ben Harrison said in the in the slack today.

Speaker 1 Got free speech and it's all

Speaker 1 back on Planet Vulcan, DePaul confronts her mom about this situation with her being voluntold to retire.

Speaker 1 And turns out she was under investigation by the security ministry over the theft of sensitive data. And this this was all a bunch of bullshit because

Speaker 1 Tepal was out of reach for the Vulcan security apparatus. And so they wanted to punish somebody over what happened to Pejem.

Speaker 1 And it was just Tales's bad luck to be TePaul's next of kin. These accusations are truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Speaker 1 They are, yes.

Speaker 1 TePaul does that thing.

Speaker 1 She doesn't blame her mom, but she doesn't not blame her mom for accepting this. You know? Like, it's clearly wrong.
She was clearly steamrolled by this. Right.
Shouldn't you have fought this?

Speaker 1 But she also accepted it. And that's something that TePaul takes great umbrage with.
It was not what TePaul would have done, she imagines, in a similar circumstance.

Speaker 1 Terles calls TePaul on how emotional she's being and is like, this must be because of that boy you brought home.

Speaker 1 That boy down on that trundle bed must be bringing this out of you.

Speaker 1 It's weird that she starts from this scene forward calling him Boa.

Speaker 1 And Tripp's like, that's mighty nice. That's what my mother called me

Speaker 1 before she was vaporized by that Zindi bean.

Speaker 1 TePaul does not confess to her Trellium addiction in this this moment. Did this surprise you? I thought this episode was leading toward a moment where mother and daughter would put down,

Speaker 1 you know, their weapons and she would become maternal for her daughter who had been suffering or who had suffered a great loss.

Speaker 1 In the way that TNG's family episode finally resolved into a roll around in the mud, like there. Certainly there was going to be a

Speaker 1 literal or metaphorical roll in the mud between mother and daughter, right?

Speaker 1 It seemed like we were building to that, and I was

Speaker 1 at a little bit of Trellium blue balls at the end of this scene. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well put. Archer wakes up to the sound of mountain lion noises.

Speaker 1 He gets out his gun and starts creeping around in the dark looking for this mountain lion.

Speaker 1 And everybody knows what Archer is searching for is a mountain lion, but what this scene presupposes is maybe he's getting jumped by a couple of reptiles, Indy?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they've got knives. What?

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't they just shoot him? I loved PlayStation 3 Archer going off the cliff. That was really fun.

Speaker 1 Really cool.

Speaker 1 He starts awake. It was all a dream.
And

Speaker 1 he starts getting his shit together, like he's going to go climbing again. And Hernandez wakes up and is like, what are you doing, man? Like, you cannot rock climb in the dark.

Speaker 1 Are you just trying to climb away from your feelings? Oh!

Speaker 1 Get his ass, Captain Hernandez. Get him.
Are you telling me I have some kind of a death wish? You tell me. Archer's like, when else is Dark Archer going to climb? But the dark.

Speaker 1 He just wants to be alone. And

Speaker 1 this is where it becomes clear that he sees in Captain Hernandez his innocence lost. And he just wants to undark Archer himself.
How do you even do that? And she's like, he, hee, hee.

Speaker 1 This is the moment I've been building toward from the second I walked up to you in that bar.

Speaker 1 And then the camera cuts to a starship entering a wormhole and a train going into a tunnel and

Speaker 1 a volcano erupting.

Speaker 1 The Echo Park Lake for some reason shooting its fountains.

Speaker 1 A bunch of birds flying out of a tree.

Speaker 1 Interesting, the parallels between Archer and Zephyr Cochran, right?

Speaker 1 Also, a person

Speaker 1 on whom heroism was thrust, right?

Speaker 1 Like, he did some things, but he was super flawed. He doesn't want a statue in high schools named after him.
That stuff makes him very uncomfortable. Why do we keep doing this to people, Ben?

Speaker 1 In Starfleet?

Speaker 1 I mean, but also, like, Archer did try to become captain of the first Warp V ship. Like, I think a little bit of this he signed up for.

Speaker 1 So he failed to anticipate the way it would feel when he got the thing.

Speaker 1 He is the dog that caught the car, basically. He has been thrusted, but he is also the thruster.
Yeah. Yeah.
In so many ways.

Speaker 1 On Vulcan, speaking of thrusting, TePaul has thrust Trip into a little sightseeing trip. Isn't Vulcan always a little more lava-y than you think every time we go there?

Speaker 1 It does not seem safe, this place. Like, these statues seem like they could be eroding from underneath because of all the magma and just fall right over and crush you.

Speaker 1 You want to get a million emails and tweets, Ben? You ready for this? Okay. Kind of reminds me of whatever that planet that

Speaker 1 Darth Vader lives on. You know, like, why would anyone choose to live in a place like that with all the lava and so forth? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know what that planet's name is

Speaker 1 or like what his base is called or whatever. Did Frank Lloyd Wright design that? Falling lava? Wonderful.

Speaker 1 She breaks it to trip that she's decided to marry Cos.

Speaker 1 Not so much because she wants to be married to Kos, but because she wants to set things right for her mom.

Speaker 1 And this arranged marriage would have been a big deal to step away from, even without her career getting destroyed. But she's got to do it.

Speaker 1 And he's very pissed off, mostly about the inconvenience of having traveled 16 light years to get this bad news. And how am I supposed to take this?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. Much in the same way that we saw, you know, a bunch of visual metaphor for what's going on between Hernandez and Archer, we pan away from Tepal and trip into where those lava pools were.

Speaker 1 And what was once like hot and steamy is now like just dry and cold.

Speaker 1 I wonder if that's like a symbol for something.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Maybe another scene will tell us. On the mountain, it's day again.
Ben in the mood is better because Archer has roped.

Speaker 1 There are so many more mountains to climb, it seems.

Speaker 1 Like those two on Hernandez's chest. Do you think that's like a symbol for something? Yeah.
I think so. Why'd they ever break up anyway?

Speaker 1 We see this moment. We've lived this moment so many times.
What did we break up for?

Speaker 1 are great.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, it was the inappropriate workplace thing and the

Speaker 1 unbalance of power during. But Hernandez has a great point here.
She's like, hey, we're both captains. Look at me.
Look, she holds out a mirror, like, selfie style to them both. Look at us.

Speaker 1 We're the captains now.

Speaker 1 You could but tell your chips on Hernandez.

Speaker 1 Archer can once again sink his piton

Speaker 1 into her rock face. If we change the words,

Speaker 1 then it's fair use all day long.

Speaker 1 Hey, Adam, did you remember that the character of

Speaker 1 Hoshi Sato is one of the people on this show?

Speaker 1 Wow, genuine spit take here on the show. I hope you pulled that clean because that's the only time I'm ever going to do that in the studio.
My studio is a fucking mess.

Speaker 1 She is in Six Bay, doing great, almost parasite-free after her ordeal with the reptile, Cindy. You ever spit take for fun? That was fun.
It looked really good.

Speaker 1 It looked like you'd been practicing, honestly. Like it was

Speaker 1 an S-tier spit take. God, I hope it sounded good.
It sounded good.

Speaker 1 Fox is not feeling great after his little run-in in the bar. And Hoshi's aware of this.
She heard about it from Mayweather. I heard you blew some guy in a bar,

Speaker 1 Dr. Fox.

Speaker 1 Am I, did I hear that correctly? I mean, I heard it like fourth hand, so the story has kind of gone through a bunch of different versions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's been going around the ship that you blew a guy in the bar. And

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that rules. I know that you're...
Holly, I didn't know you were Pan. That's great.

Speaker 1 She doesn't agree with the shame around Dr. Flox's experience there.
He doesn't want to go back to Earth anymore.

Speaker 1 No matter how much he loves egg drop soup, what he's come around to is the idea that when millions of people are murdered on a planet by aliens,

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 giving the humans some time to heal is the best thing to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I know reflexively, Hoshi's opinion is like racism is bad and a great defense for racism is just being head held high out in the world living your life.

Speaker 1 Those things are evident and true. But in a Star Trek context, in this context specifically, what Dr.
Flock says here, I thought, gave humans a lot of grace. And I kind of agreed with him.

Speaker 1 Like, maybe it would be bad for me

Speaker 1 if my instantaneous. It's not poke to bear, you know, like hurt people hurt people and I don't want them to hurt me.
And I understand why they're hurt right now.

Speaker 1 As a medical professional, especially, like, he does not want to hurt. He wants to heal.
And if heal equals Dr.

Speaker 1 Flox not being there, even if it means sacrificing a meal of a great soup, that's what his choice is going to be. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I just feel like on a superficial level, I feel like the reaction to this scene would be like, fuck that. Dr.
Flox has got to go out there and be in the the world and fuck the humans. Right.

Speaker 1 But like, I don't think so. I think this is more nuanced.
And I totally understand and get Dr. Flox's side of it.
She'll bring him takeout anyways.

Speaker 1 In many ways, takeout Chinese food is superior to a restaurant. I love going to restaurants as much as anyone else, but I love all the little boxes.

Speaker 1 Why is it when you get Chinese takeout, you make a fucking mountain of Chinese food on a plate in a way that when you make food at home normally, I I am never making a bunt cake amount of food on a dinner plate the way I'm making it out of Chinese food.

Speaker 1 I don't understand it. I get Chinese takeouts sometimes here in the neighborhood and like the volume of food looks like it should feed like four of me.
Yeah. Like for days.
I can't help it.

Speaker 1 And I'll fucking plow through that whole shit. Yeah.
I love it. It's amazing.
Yeah. So back in the debriefing, which is sort of winding down.

Speaker 1 They've got Archer strapped to the chair this time, so we won't get out of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, his eyes are clamped open.

Speaker 1 We don't see it though. Like, it's just concluding.
It's the end of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would imagine that this would be days and days worth of debriefing.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, they must have all of his logs, and then, like, they would go through them and ask questions to clarify things, I'm guessing.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's been gone for a really long time and has seen some fucking shit. If you were to sit down and someone were to ask you the question, what happened in Enterprise seasons one through three?

Speaker 1 How many days could you fill up? I could talk about this show for an hour, I think. Yeah.
Before I run out of steam. Yeah, I probably wouldn't remember a lot of it.

Speaker 1 Before I come out of my chair at Saval.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Archer is actually,

Speaker 1 he is so refractory that he's actually able to apologize to Saval for the blow-up. And they have a little moment.
Saval is like, hey, like,

Speaker 1 you were totally out of line earlier and I'm like still a little bit weirded out by our ship, but like Dark Archer was a necessary evolution of your character and something

Speaker 1 that had to happen to save not just your world, but mine. Like the like the thing you did made a huge difference for everyone.
And I'm so impressed that I'm not going to do the Vulcan hello.

Speaker 1 I'm going to do the human hello and shake your hand. Archer's a changed man, and I think all it took was nutting off of a cliff for him to get some clarity here.

Speaker 1 Good job.

Speaker 1 Tripp's getting all gussied up for the wedding, putting on some Vulcan regalia. I don't believe this.
You're going to put that thing on and parade around like one of them? And it fits him great.

Speaker 1 Tales comes in and helps him with it a little bit.

Speaker 1 And she is

Speaker 1 feeling a little bad for Trip, I think. She's like, you know, know, like, this is TePaul fulfilling a family obligation.

Speaker 1 And maybe she wouldn't even be doing this if you'd been totally honest with her. And Trip's like, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 And Tales reveals that she understands that Tripp is madly in love with TePaul. What a fucking bomb thrower, Mrs.
T is.

Speaker 1 I mean, I saw this coming a mile away, but still I was like, what a little meddler. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And now I'm thinking, like, Vulcans appreciate a grand public gesture?

Speaker 1 You better do it, Trip Tucker, before it's too late? Before you lose her forever?

Speaker 1 Here's to you, Mrs. T-Less.

Speaker 1 Vulcans don't show their feelings outside.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I do love this turn for her in the like, look, they may not see eye to eye on basically everything in their life, but deep down, she wants her daughter to be happy.

Speaker 1 And this fucking guy who smells like garbage that's been left in a kitchen for an entire summer, like if he makes her happy, if Garbage Boy makes my daughter happy, then I don't want her to go marry Cos.

Speaker 1 Kos, the derpy Vulcan, who for some reason just reads to me as a little slow. Tripp is like, stuck in this horrible dilemma where he's like, I'm going to feel terrible if she marries that guy.

Speaker 1 But if I tell her that I'm madly in love with her, I'll feel even more terrible if she goes and marries him anyways, and I'll feel terrible for having like messed everything up and put this amount of pressure on her if she doesn't marry him.

Speaker 1 We've talked a number of times about how much Jolene Blaylock does with her eyes versus the technology an actor has with the rest of their face that they're able to use. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That she specifically can't because she's portraying a Vulcan. And when you see Tapal in this wedding scene on the verge of tears, kissing Trip on the cheek as if to say, save me,

Speaker 1 like, that is super affecting.

Speaker 1 She is so good at this. And like, the tragedy on Trip Tucker's face in this moment is just gutting.

Speaker 1 I thought this was the moment where he would intervene, but when like she goes to Kos and like kneels and they start doing the ritualistic finger stuff, I'm like now it feels too late yeah now that this thing has started i don't know that there's any stopping it the only thing that can stop it ben

Speaker 1 is a fade to black wow

Speaker 1 did you like this episode adam i can't pay could

Speaker 1 late got no case tempting fate i was angry that it stopped here

Speaker 1 Because this is a cliff I didn't see coming. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Could we not get it to be continued here?

Speaker 1 I don't know. We just not doing that on Enterprise?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I mean, it's such a fun feeling to, like, not know where the story could possibly go from here.
If it's a serialized show, they're all to be continued, right? I suppose so.

Speaker 1 I like this episode because it made me feel some things, specifically the desire that Tripp has for Tepal

Speaker 1 and...

Speaker 1 the knowledge that he's gonna lose her for some bullshit reasons. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And like, I think when you're growing up, you get in your youthful relationships when you're trying to figure out what it's like to be in those, what it means to be a boyfriend,

Speaker 1 and like the many reasons those relationships end, most of them bullshit. Like

Speaker 1 this really rang

Speaker 1 true to me in a like sometimes you just can't control these factors and for Trip to have to confront them personally like he's all alone he's on Vulcan and he's seeing the girl he loves marry this fucking dipshit like very sad didn't like that especially because I know we've said this before on the show trip tucker like maybe my favorite character on the show he's so great I want good things for trip tucker I don't want his heart to get broken and this would do it

Speaker 1 I don't love that, but I thought the episode was very effective in making me feel those feelings, and I think that's what makes it a good episode. What about you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like the episode of TNG After Best of Both Worlds is like such an obvious comparison, like this horrific, bloody incident that has changed all of them.

Speaker 1 I think that the writing in this is really good and subtle. And I like that they kind of withhold some of the catharsis that you're hoping for in some of these scenes.
That feels more realistic.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't just come home and it's all candles and birthday cake.

Speaker 1 But what is Mrs. T

Speaker 1 if not another Robert?

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 fucking hardcore, hard ass,

Speaker 1 not understanding family figure, you know? Totally. She's really good.
I hope they do more with this character. I really liked the character a lot.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, I say T More, not T Less, personally.

Speaker 1 I want to say T-Mobile, the official wireless company of Greatest Generation.

Speaker 1 Ben, neither of us mentioned the Archer storyline, and I think

Speaker 1 I suspect

Speaker 1 it is because that is kind of the weaker story. The one that

Speaker 1 is kind of nothing. Like, I kind of wanted for even more to Paul and Trip Tucker than

Speaker 1 settle for what we got with Archer and Hernandez, right? Like, what do we really get out of that?

Speaker 1 I don't feel like Archer's okay. He's still Dark Archer.
It's not like after nudding with Hernandez, he's fixed.

Speaker 1 No, but I think

Speaker 1 I get the sense that his trajectory has changed. Even if he's still in the darkness, he's like bounced off of the warm embrace of her shuttle bay and

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 headed in a more positive direction. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well put. See if anyone puts anything well in the priority one message inbox.
Great idea.

Speaker 2 Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel.

Speaker 1 Need a supplemental income. Supplemental income.
Supplemental. Supplemental income.
Yeah, it's extra. But the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship.

Speaker 1 We've got a promotional priority one message here. Oh, yeah.
None of these people knew this was episode 600.

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 1 We should have

Speaker 1 put it out there. We should have.

Speaker 1 Other, you know what? No. We shouldn't have.
Other people should have been counting.

Speaker 1 It's not our fucking job. All right, this message is from Crusher's Pizza and Wings.
Message goes like this. Hello, Atlanta FODs.

Speaker 1 Allow me to reintroduce Crushers Pizza and Wings Indecator. Formerly Corner Slice, famous throughout the Alpha Quadrant and Atlanta for fluffy Detroit pizzas and our thin bar pies.

Speaker 1 Plus, crispy wings salad sandwiches and housemade sesame focaccia and cannolis.

Speaker 1 We have something for the whole crew. Our pizzas are named after Trek, with our most popular being the Riker, spicy yet consensual, and the Cerritos, a pizza worthy of second contact.

Speaker 1 Order at crusherspizza.com.

Speaker 1 And here's the call to action. I got a C and D, which I think means cease and desist.

Speaker 1 We had faith of the heart, but they didn't think it was fair use. Wow.
Over at Crusher's Pizza and Wings. Dang.
What does that mean? I went to their website, and it's still there.

Speaker 1 Maybe some of it had to change.

Speaker 1 I want a Crusher's Pizza and Wings t-shirt. All pizza places have a t-shirt, right? I've got to.

Speaker 1 If you're in the ATL, go try Crusher's Pizza and Wings. I'm looking at these pictures.
It looks absolutely gorgeous. This is one of those pizza places that also

Speaker 1 has a hoagie, which I fucking love. Yeah.
Got a meatball palm on there. Got a chicken parm.
You know what I say? Take the pizza.

Speaker 1 Leave the cannoli, because I don't care for those, but I would eat all of this pizza. It looks fantastic.
You can get it by the slice, which I love. That's great.
You got the bar pie.

Speaker 1 You got the Detroit pie.

Speaker 1 Love this.

Speaker 1 Didn't Chuck Bryant say that he tried this place and thought it was good? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what I love?

Speaker 1 I love a fake wooden bowl of dinner salad.

Speaker 1 That's what Crusher's Pizza and Wings has. I'm looking at a picture of it right here.

Speaker 1 I love those little wooden bowls.

Speaker 1 Got a little death wish on that.

Speaker 1 Don't try to serve me a dinner salad in anything but a wooden bowl. I want one super cold grape tomato.

Speaker 1 I want the stem of the romaine in my salad. I want to pick around the stem.

Speaker 1 So dense I can't even drop a fork into it.

Speaker 1 Crasherspizza.com, get over there. This next P1 comes from Tyler and it's to Geord.

Speaker 1 Happy birthday. You're a great older brother and best friend.
Thanks for always trying all the scary things first. Going to school, getting a job, even watching DS9.

Speaker 1 After all these years of competing, I think it's time we both finally admit that the funniest brother is Ichebs. I hope to hear him wish you a happy birthday.
Love you.

Speaker 1 Hey, Ichebs, been a while.

Speaker 1 I'm still back here.

Speaker 1 Keeping things moving. You know what I mean? Hey!

Speaker 1 Sorry for blowing out your birthday candles with this hose of raw sewage that I got all over your face and cake.

Speaker 1 Anyways, you're closer to him than I am, so you tell Jordan happy birthday.

Speaker 1 Pretty great couple of messages there, Ben. Indeed.
Birthdays and businesses and everything in between, maximumfund.org slash jumbo Toronto is where you can go.

Speaker 1 Just write a couple of words, and we'll do the rest. Great way to support the shows that we make.
Indeed.

Speaker 1 Hey, Adam.

Speaker 1 What? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Speaker 1 Drunk Shimoda! I'm going to make mine, Mrs. T.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 When you put your husband's clothes on

Speaker 1 a person who isn't your husband,

Speaker 1 I feel like there's a connotation there. There's like...

Speaker 1 I'm not saying there's a sexual energy. I'm saying that there's that's significant.
It is.

Speaker 1 And I found it strange that there's Trip Tucker dressed in her husband's clothes, and nothing is made of how weird that is.

Speaker 1 Either by Trip or her. Also, he asks for a tailor, and that shit fits him so well.
Yeah, what does he need a tailor for?

Speaker 1 Here's the thing, like, because the central point of that scene is the whole make the grand romantic gesture, that's the jangly keys that distracts you from what's Trip doing wearing her husband's clothes.

Speaker 1 I wanted more of the husband's clothes energy to that scene, and I think for that reason, I'm going to make it maybe Mrs. T and Trip Tucker split the drunk Shimoda there.

Speaker 1 I think one of them needed to say something. Another line of dialogue about the husband's clothes is necessary there.

Speaker 1 I think. What about you?

Speaker 1 I have a time code, Shimoda, for you, Adam. Oh.
If you'll take your episodes to eight minutes and 43 seconds.

Speaker 1 This is the scene in which we are starting out the debrief, the scene in which eventually Archer explodes at Ambassador Sauval.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's the shot reverse shot. And over Archer's shoulder in the corner of the room are Captain Hernandez and an unnamed admiral who is an older white-haired gentleman

Speaker 1 who has gone and fallen asleep in his chair.

Speaker 1 God, there is always one of those at these big corporate events, huh? Yeah. I just loved seeing that guy snoozing in his chair.
Do you think this is

Speaker 1 intentional snoozing? Or is this an actor who's had a long day?

Speaker 1 I'm looking at this guy and I kind of believe that he actually fell asleep and they maybe thought it was funny and like, let's just keep it.

Speaker 1 Could you imagine being a background actor and falling asleep during?

Speaker 1 I would imagine you'd have to be so vigilant about like

Speaker 1 gesticulating just the right amount and doing the mouth movements without saying things and making it look robotic. Like to be a good background actor is a skill.
How could you fall asleep?

Speaker 1 The thing of it is, his role in this scene is just to sit in a chair. He's not supposed to be talking or reacting even.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's tough.

Speaker 1 Poor fucking guy.

Speaker 1 Poor fucking guy getting called out 20 years later on a Star Trek podcast.

Speaker 1 Faith of the fart. Let's start talking about what's happening next week on the show, Adam.
It'll be season four, episode four,

Speaker 1 Borderland. Criminal Eric Sung is brought aboard Enterprise to assist in finding some genetically enhanced humans he created after stealing DNA

Speaker 1 left over from the eugenics wars. Ben,

Speaker 1 this next episode is not about Trip Tucker making a grand romantic gesture, breaking up a wedding, and then running off in a shuttle pod with TePaul?

Speaker 1 That's the cold open, but then the rest of it's about some other shit.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 As long as we resolve the other thing. Yeah, I'm sure we will.
Ben, what we need to resolve is how we're going to experience this episode. Me too.

Speaker 1 Gach.biz game is where you find the game of buttholes,

Speaker 1 the will of the riker quantum leap. Currently, our runabout is on square 58.

Speaker 1 That's where we left it for this one. It being a regular old episode, we need to find out how we're gonna do the next one.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 For that, I will roll this 100-sided die, which could take us anywhere.

Speaker 1 You're required to learn as you play. Roll.
Here's that roll.

Speaker 1 Whew.

Speaker 1 Ben, I've rolled a 77. Tula!

Speaker 1 Did I win? Hardly. How? Big roll.
Which puts us right on the doorstep of his eyes uncovered episode. Alas,

Speaker 1 not that square. Just ahead of it on square 35 is where we are.
Regular old episode for us. All right.

Speaker 1 I'm alright with that. Yeah, me too.
I love a good metaphor, but can't have everything you want.

Speaker 1 Hey, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone who supports the show at maximumfund.org slash join.
Thank you to Windy Pretty, our producer. Thank you to Bill Tilly, our peacetime concigliary.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I guess so. Got to thank Rob Adler, our social media director, who with Bill runs the Act Greatest Trek social media accounts.

Speaker 1 Send something in for a future code 47, slide into those DMs. Got to get yourself signed up for the greatest mailing list at gravestrech.com.

Speaker 1 And we got to thank Adam Ragusia, who made our parody music based off of Diane Warren's original. And Dark Materia, who made the original Picard song.

Speaker 1 With that, be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise, where Adam and Ben try and

Speaker 1 augment our genetics and it really fucking backfires. I can tell.

Speaker 1 I shouldn't have picked at it.

Speaker 1 That's the problem.

Speaker 1 You feel like you're gonna do good and it's just bad. Now everyone notices the augment.

Speaker 1 What's that thing on the tip of your dick?

Speaker 1 God damn it.

Speaker 1 Just left it alone. I have to keep that thing out of my shuttle bay.

Speaker 1 Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.