The P-51 of Theseus (ENT S4E1)

Speaker 1 Here's to the finest crew in starving. 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 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.

Speaker 1 Wave to the people, Adam. We're on camera today.

Speaker 1 Hi! It's one of our beloved Code 47 episodes. We only had a couple of new items in the

Speaker 1 PO box, but

Speaker 1 we had something sent directly to our houses as well. So I think maybe we'll start with the PO box items and close with the direct to home items,

Speaker 1 if that's agreeable to you. It is agreeable, Ben, as long as you give us an update about your relationship to the post office and the

Speaker 1 post office box, because I think FODs really appreciate following along with the drama. Yeah.
But that can sometimes be.

Speaker 1 The post office was not crowded today, and I got the nicer of the two main people that work the desk. You got a favorite.

Speaker 1 I got a fave, and he was like, you know, it's one of those like you give them the slip that was in your P.O. box and they say, meet me at the door kind of post offices.

Speaker 1 And I go over to the door and I like, my plan was to go just past the door because that's the way it swang.

Speaker 1 Swung? Swings. I like the first one.

Speaker 1 And I was right in front of it when it flies open way too fast for him to have gone and gotten my package and opened it. It's other much meaner postal worker with

Speaker 1 one of those

Speaker 1 white plastic tubs. She's going to go out and collect mail from the outdoor drop boxes and hit me with the door.

Speaker 1 I would expect nothing else, really, from that experience. I mean,

Speaker 1 I would expect either some sort of mental trauma, emotional trauma, or physical trauma from your experience. And this time it was physical.

Speaker 1 The Vegas Oddsmakers didn't have to work very hard on this bet, Adam. But who you got your money on? Who said sorry in that interaction?

Speaker 1 I ran to the window to bet it, and they pulled it off the board. Oh

Speaker 1 get there in time.

Speaker 1 Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you. I'm receiving a code 47.

Speaker 1 Verify.

Speaker 1 It is code 47, sir. Start lead emergency frequency.
Captain size only.

Speaker 1 First package here is one of these, I guess it was maybe drop shipped to us. It was shipped by Fast Mail Nmore out of Melbourne, Florida to you and I.

Speaker 1 I love a name of a company like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm guessing

Speaker 1 that's like a mailboxes store in a strip mall kind of an operation, right? Sure. The more is often copies.

Speaker 1 Got a letter. Hi, Ben and Adam.
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia.

Speaker 1 What the hell? That's not Florida. This says Melbourne, Florida on the package here, but Melbourne, Australia from the letter.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Can you pay less for postage if you're mailing from Melbourne, Australia, and you claim it's from Melbourne, Florida. Oh, this is to get around the tariffs, maybe.
Maybe.

Speaker 1 Is it possible that there's some kind of wormhole between the two Melbourne's and they're in fact one place and this person is exploiting that fact to lower their postage fees?

Speaker 1 I think it merits more investigation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's got to be like a true crime podcast that's getting on this right now, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I've been listening to and a supporter of TGG since I think 2018.

Speaker 1 You might remember me from such online meet and greets as that guy who was in a meeting room at work October 2024, or alternatively, from the classic 2020 P1, which revealed that I have a brother living in Melbourne, Florida.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's starting to come together.

Speaker 1 I do remember you, by the way. That did click, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 For years, I've been wondering what might make a suitable Code47 offering, and at last I discovered some genuine Klingon painsticks while on holiday last year.

Speaker 1 You can tell that these are real both by the scale and the fact that they're purple. Who knew that Worf just wanted his closest friends to gently soothe his aching muscles with lavender unguin?

Speaker 1 In seriousness, I hope these can be of use. I enclose a picture of the beautiful farm they came from on Kangaroo Island, 40 minutes by ferry, off the South Australian coast.

Speaker 1 As I said during our meet and greet, I'm sure there's a sizable FOD community in Melbourne and around Australia, and we'd love if the figures ever stack up for you to make a trip down to one of our many comedy festivals March through May each year.

Speaker 1 I'll sign off with a thank you for the years of brilliant pod and a question. I really loved the film festival episodes over on Greatest Trek.

Speaker 1 After listening to the Goonies episode and noticing that the film included a Troy, a Data,

Speaker 1 and an all-too-easy-to-escape from Brig, and so many Star Trek caves, is it possible that it's canonical next gen?

Speaker 1 Best wishes, Jack, P.S. Mike, son of Fred here, longtime FOD and brother of Jack, son of Fred.
Jack was in charge of procuring the raw materials for this Code 47. God fucking damn it.

Speaker 1 And I managed the logistics. This involved hand-carrying them from my former home in Melbourne, Australia, to my current home in Melbourne, Florida, after a a long overdue vacation.

Speaker 1 It turns out that painsticks are not considered a munition, so no actual smuggling was required. Oh, that's good.
So these weren't in a butt.

Speaker 1 All the best to you and yours, and thanks for the great pod, past, present, and future. So we've got a photo of the farm here.
Sure. Beautiful lavender farm.
I'm going to go into the package now.

Speaker 1 A lovely gift-wrapped box,

Speaker 1 including a pair of painsticks, Adam. Look at that.
It says so right on

Speaker 1 the package. We'll be putting pictures of these up on our socials if you want to check these out.
If you're not currently watching the video, oh, look at that.

Speaker 1 It's got like a ball barricade dispenser on there. I like that.
Like a Roland deodorant.

Speaker 1 Let's see. Let me let me think of where my most painful spot is right now.
Oh, you know what? I bruised myself sitting down on a fence the other day. I'm going to rub some.

Speaker 1 Is that a new chair back there? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Borrowing it from my beautiful wife, who is. How about that?

Speaker 1 Very kindly lending it to me. Nice work.
It makes so much less noise. I know.

Speaker 1 I thought something had been missing from the record up until now.

Speaker 1 Turns out that's all it is. That's great.
Hey, these painsticks are so nice. Very nice.
Thank you, Melbourneians, for the kind gift.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Next package is a big one, Adam, and it's from Harrisburg NC.

Speaker 1 It doesn't say from whom, but I'm going to go ahead and cut in. Maybe you'll find out.

Speaker 1 I mean, any package kind of has to say who it's from, right? What's going on there?

Speaker 1 I'm noticing there's a label...

Speaker 1 There's a label for lube filters on the side. So maybe this is just some lube filters that somebody wanted to send us.
Bill!

Speaker 1 Bill something got through.

Speaker 1 We gotta send this back to Bill Tilly. We've got a read before opening inner package letter here and it says lol package down in the corner.
Hmm. Always fun.
Very fun.

Speaker 1 Dear Ben, on a recent episode you mentioned that Darone was an avid fan of garbage trucks.

Speaker 1 Since I happened to work for the largest trash company, I went to the company catalog catalog in search of a cool hat or stickers or something else that might intrigue a kid.

Speaker 1 I found little mini trash cart, infant onesies, and some baby-sized shirts. But then I found this.
And then it says, please open package. Just look at that package.
Look at the size of it.

Speaker 1 My god, it's huge.

Speaker 1 I guess so.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I see it. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Got a waste management-branded garbage truck. Yeah.
I mean, maybe we should blur out the name of largest trash company.

Speaker 1 That's amazing. This is so cool.
Oh, man. Darone is going to lose his mind, and so is wifey.

Speaker 1 Let me finish reading the letter. Hopefully, Darone will like it.
Hopefully, it won't drive the others in House Harrison to madness.

Speaker 1 And if little Darone asks where it came from, just tell him it's a gift from you.

Speaker 1 Since being a father myself, I think it's probably wise to discourage kids from accepting gifts from weird randos on the internet.

Speaker 1 Just consider this is a pittance of repayment for years of laughter and distraction. Your pods are legitimately one of the best parts of both the beginning and the end of my week.

Speaker 1 And a rock I know I can always cling to, like Kevin with his real doll biz, Shimoda with his isoline ear chips, or Malcolm Reed with creepy ineffectualness.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 here's a second letter here. Dear Wendy, Adam, Ben, Bill, Bill dropped, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, and Rob.
Thank you all for the extraordinary work you do.

Speaker 1 2024 was an incredibly trying time in my life, and the world in 2025 is, well, I mean, look at it.

Speaker 1 And one of the only things that can turn my trembles to rages and keep my soul from becoming Armis, this goo angry and engorged, are the laughs and ponderings you inspire with every audio drop, every trading card, every video, every expertly crafted edit, and every freaking show you do.

Speaker 1 Live long and prosper, peace and long life. And if I may, would you mind expending all remaining ordnance and laying down an O'Brien drop?

Speaker 1 I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. This is fucking spectacular.

Speaker 1 Yours in admiration, thanks, and peaceful coexistence, Adam, aka at Mahale over on Butterfly Hill. Wow.
How about that? Thanks, Adam. Thank you, Adam.
That is so kind of you.

Speaker 1 Darone is going to absolutely lose his mind over this gift and your words are truly heartfelt and appreciated. Okay, Adam.
I think this is the moment we've both been waiting for. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 The gift that was sent directly to our houses because you cannot send booze to a PO box. And

Speaker 1 we lowered our shields long enough. for the nice folks at Lodgepole Distilling to send us each a package.

Speaker 1 And if folks remember, Lodgepole did a P1 on the show a little while back, and they were kind enough to send us some samples in the form of three different bottles of gin.

Speaker 1 It should be said that we probably went through eight factors of authentication before

Speaker 1 sending our home addresses to

Speaker 1 anyone.

Speaker 1 As we've done here with Lodgepole, Lodgepole coming through utterly here with three bottles of hooch in different flavors. We got the Lodgepole Gin Yuzu,

Speaker 1 the Lodgepole Gin Strawberry, and Lodgepole Gin

Speaker 1 Dry. Arboretum Dry Gin.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They're all a little differently colored, too.
Yeah. This Arboretum Dry Gin says it includes botanicals from the Washington Park Arboretum, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 And this is all distilled in Seattle, Washington, your old hometown. Love kayaking through the arboretum.
Oh, cool. Great thing to do out there.

Speaker 1 Are you like sneaking botanicals into your boat and then taking them home and distilling with them? Or how are you working that? No,

Speaker 1 when I went kayaking, I brought my own botanicals.

Speaker 1 As you do. Well, cheers to that.
I thought I would maybe take a little sip a rue of each one of these and then make a

Speaker 1 gin and soda of whichever one I decide is my fave.

Speaker 1 I didn't pre-open these like a dope. These are all fresh, all unopened on my end.
I have a confession that I have opened all three of them.

Speaker 1 Here's what I'm gonna do. I brought out a little thing of tonic

Speaker 1 because I thought maybe tasting these raw would not be giving them the best chance of tasting great.

Speaker 1 And what I also did is I brought out a bottle of control gin, which is Plymouth, which is my current favorite gin of the moment that I have with all my gin cocktails. Give yourself a baseline.
So

Speaker 1 here's a bottle of tonic. Okay.

Speaker 1 And a little glass. And I think.
What are you starting with so I can have the same? I'm going to try just sipping a neat light pour of the dry gin right now.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm going to launch with that.

Speaker 1 Hmm.

Speaker 1 It's nice. It's got, um,

Speaker 1 I'm going to say, some pininess to it. And I don't think that's just because I saw the pine cone on the label.

Speaker 1 I think I'm actually tasting that. No, that's definitely coming through.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's really nice.

Speaker 1 It is smooth, as my father-in-law would say. Very pleasing on the palate.
I like this a lot. I like this in a gin and tonic context, especially.

Speaker 1 Not exactly sure whether I would do this with a martini or not

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 I don't know I feel like the the botanicals of a martini cut a little differently than than this which was which would be more vegetal in my mind you know

Speaker 1 yeah maybe a martini with like a cucumber as the garnishe great call yeah really really good though yeah tremendous and one thing I noticed this is a little bit higher proof than what I've got for Plymouth Plymouth being around 40%

Speaker 1 this being 45. Oh look at that wow Wow.
So a little bit hotter.

Speaker 1 A little high test. Also, 45 is the strawberry gin, which I think is going to be my next go.

Speaker 1 I can do that.

Speaker 1 Do that next.

Speaker 1 I like the way it smells. This, I could definitely see becoming a martini.
It's a beautiful color. Kind of

Speaker 1 ever so slightly rosé.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Cheers.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 That's really nice. And I'm glad I followed the arboretum with the strawberry.
I think that's a good order of operations here. The sweet does really cut through the veg.
It's not super sweet.

Speaker 1 It's got the...

Speaker 1 I mean, not to use the term vegetal again in a second description in a row, but I feel like there is a vegetal overtone to a strawberry. that this captures really nicely.
It's really good. I like it.

Speaker 1 I also just really like the bottle design of these. They're very beautiful.
Yeah. Classy on a home bar, you know?

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes you go to a restaurant and they'll put a water bottle on the table that's just in a nice bottle. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 This looks like one of those nice bottles that you don't throw away after you drink the gin. You keep it and you use it for other stuff.
Put something else in it. Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 1 Look, they're both really good. I think I prefer the strawberry of the two.
Not that I dislike either. It's okay.
It's okay to have a preference, Adam. I want to rank them.
I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 Alright, I'm smelling the yuzu.

Speaker 1 Ben, I obviously know what a yuzu is, and I always have, but while I make my cocktail, maybe you could tell the FODs at home what exactly mean Yuzu.

Speaker 1 Oh man, I mean, I think it is a Japanese variety of citrus, and I don't know much beyond that and that I really like it. Like when I see a yuzu soda somewhere.

Speaker 1 Yuzu hot sauce also is something I remember having and really liking. I feel like I can rely on enjoying whatever that is when I see it somewhere.

Speaker 1 That's really interesting. Like, like if you see it in a thing, you know it to be good.
Yeah. Or the person who included it in whatever they're making has good taste.

Speaker 1 I pretty much always hate like perfumes and scents that people use to make a space smell different.

Speaker 1 Except for every so often I'll be somewhere and I'll be like, what is that? That smells fucking great. And almost always the answer is verbena.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what verbena is, but if I like go find the little scented candle or whatever, it's almost always verbena is the answer to what is making it smell so good in here.

Speaker 1 That is really interesting you say that. And coincidental because I just switched underarm deodorants.
to a kind that that's the scent. It's verbina.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what that is. I'm cuddling with you at the first opportunity.

Speaker 1 Hey, this is really great. I might like this the best of all three.

Speaker 1 Wow. That is really nice.
I feel like that's the one I'm going to want in a gin and soda also, because it's like

Speaker 1 it's really distinctive and I feel like it's going to be its own drink in a really cool way. I take my martinis dry and Gibson style with onions.
And if they don't have have onions, it's ours.

Speaker 1 But dry is how I like them. And I wonder, you could never have a dirty martini with any of these, I don't think.
This is not the kind of flavor profile appropriate for that kind of cocktail, no?

Speaker 1 I always think of a dirty martini as a way to not taste the alcohol as much.

Speaker 1 And...

Speaker 1 Just get something else if that's your deal.

Speaker 1 I don't mean to offend our friend and agent who likes his filthy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I like the hot, sharp taste of a dry martini. But we should beat that guy up, let's be honest.
I'm going to finish up with my Plymouth gin and tonic.

Speaker 1 The gold standard. Let's hear how it ranks against the Lodgepole Distilling Company's wares.

Speaker 1 I should say this bottle of Plymouth sent to me by Jonathan Heffler. Great FOD for many years.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's just perfect. It's just like unflavored.
I mean unflavored in the way that the Lodge Pole is, but like the perfect distillation of a gin in my mind. Just delicious.

Speaker 1 But you know what I learned by having the Plymouth after the Lodge Pole is that the Lodge Pole's in quality just as good, just flavored differently.

Speaker 1 In a way that I'm really looking forward to enjoying in the years ahead, should these bottles last that long. Yeah, maybe the way to think of it is like a

Speaker 1 Coca-Cola is good, but I also like having the like small batch artisanal cola in the slightly smaller bottle every so often when I discover it somewhere.

Speaker 1 And I'm super down with this Lodgepole gin stuff. Get yourself a German Afri cola.
Mm-hmm. For example.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Pretty great. Fentenmans.

Speaker 1 All right, man. Well, cheers.
Do you want to get into today's episode? Can't wait. I feel like we're in a celebratory mood, as all seasoned premieres can sometimes be.
Indeed.

Speaker 1 This being the last season of Enterprise, also. So the last season of this show, potentially.
Yeah, toasting each other and the show for so many reasons. Let's get into Enterprise Season 4, Episode 1.

Speaker 1 It's called Stormfront. Gotta be a speech and it's all

Speaker 1 right. So we remember remember from the last time on that we are in World War II for some reason.
We start back in the shuttle where Mustangs are lighting them up, shooting their asses.

Speaker 1 And Travis Mayweather is a plane nerd, we learn here. He's gone to the air shows.
He knows what these are. And they're keeping them working hundreds of years in the future.

Speaker 1 You can still go to an air show at CFP-51, do some loop-de-loops, apparently. I love that.
Makes me feel good.

Speaker 1 One of the many ways I feel good about the future is knowing that these aircraft will still be flying in the Star Trek future. Are these like the P-51 of Theseus, though?

Speaker 1 Like, by the time Travis Mayweather is seeing them in an air show, like, everything will have to have been remachined and replaced, right?

Speaker 1 That's a great point. Yeah.
I mean, to keep these things going for hundreds of years, I think that's a certainty. I'm just going to say that

Speaker 1 no matter what, a P-51 Mustang would seem pretty cool to an ancient Greek philosopher.

Speaker 1 Are you a little disappointed when the P-51s break off and are replaced by artillery flak? Just how subject to damage a shuttle pod is from conventional ordnance? I thought this was bad.

Speaker 1 It does seem like they should be entirely hardened against this kind of thing. Yeah.
But it's like something's getting into the the intake. And I guess, I don't know what they're intaking, you know?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 what are they gobbling up so that they can shoot it out the back of the shuttle pod? I thought that this was all like warp power and impulse power and stuff.

Speaker 1 I guess, I guess, in some way you're sucking in flak, and flack is bad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, pretty soon they've peeled away, and we cut to one of your classic TV show Nazi Convoys Through Runyon Canyon. We're in in the back of a German lorry with an SS officer who is

Speaker 1 doing

Speaker 1 your classic officer taunt of his prisoner of war, talking about Greta Garbo and all the American babes he is excited about meeting when he goes to Hollywood after the war.

Speaker 1 I think legally you have to make your TV Nazi fixated on American pop and celebrity culture. You see it all the time.
I can't recall a time I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 Americans are good at making movies. They're not so good at fighting.
It is such a paint-by-numbers Nazi character.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh man, if this guy winds up being like the big villain for this episode, I'm going to have a tough time with this. And thankfully.
I mean, it's so paint-by-numbers.

Speaker 1 Jay Paul Bomer is the guy playing this character who played a different Nazi back in Voyager's two-part killing game episodes. Oh, fuck.
He totally did, didn't he? Yeah.

Speaker 1 They don't loaf him up in either version. It's always him.
It's kind of a head fuck when you see it because you're like, is this the same guy for some reason? But no, it's not.

Speaker 1 Do you think that that's just like production being like, we have a guy for arch Nazi character?

Speaker 1 If you're J. Paul Bomer.
And you've been cast twice for basically the same role,

Speaker 1 multiple Nazi roles you're up for and get.

Speaker 1 Do you feel good about that?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I mean, here's the thing.
The genetic superiority argument for Nazis is bullshit and bad.

Speaker 1 But if you're J. Paul Bomer

Speaker 1 and you get these parts several opportunities in a row,

Speaker 1 you got to feel like stereotypically you must have something going for you, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, he also got a bunch of alien roles on very, like, he was on Deep Space Nine.
He had a couple of other Enterprise credits. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Last two credits in 2022, Adam, he had an alien role on the Orville, and he played Larry King on that Dahmer miniseries.

Speaker 1 I gotta say,

Speaker 1 I can't see it. I can't see Larry King.

Speaker 1 Do you loaf up for Larry King? Beautiful American actress for the hour.

Speaker 1 Tucson, Arizona, you're on the line. What do you have to say to Greta Gabo?

Speaker 1 So great.

Speaker 1 Boom goes the convoy, which is under attack from folks in the trees.

Speaker 1 And Archer uses this as a distraction to kick this Nazi, bust out of the back of a truck as if it's some sort of prison that can't hold him.

Speaker 1 He's quickly shot in the arm as he scampers away. Not cool of the resistance to shoot the guy that's like got handcuffs on and is escaping from the people he's attacking.
But you do you, partisans.

Speaker 1 You don't know what you're shooting at this point. You're just shooting to shoot.

Speaker 1 It's just fog of war. Dick Tracy gangster has Archer stuck up at gunpoint here at the end.
Which I should say. All the gangsters in this episode look like they're out of Dick Tracy.

Speaker 1 All of their suits weirdly colored. All their fedoras oddly colored.
Looks like we got every hood in town in one room. Pruneface, flat top, Johnny Rand.

Speaker 1 That was like what the prop closet had for when they filmed Dick Tracy, and then again when they filmed this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think that this episode trades a little bit on how much World War II stuff has been shot in Southern California. And I was like, where is this supposed to be happening?

Speaker 1 And when I saw the strange colors on these guys' clothes, I was like, oh, you know, like maybe

Speaker 1 that's to like add to the idea of them being in some podunk part of, you know, southeastern southeastern Europe or something. But no, we learn it's like Williamsburg, just outside of Brooklyn.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 1 On the Bridge of the Entrepreneur, they're listening to a Winston Churchill broadcast and grappling with the idea that they have traveled in time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Tupal wants them to double-check the sensors, make sure that this isn't a glitch. And

Speaker 1 boy, does this set off Trip Tucker, who

Speaker 1 is like how much more information could you possibly need to gather before you abandon your orthodox views on the existence of time travel clearly we are 200 years in the past what the fuck are we talking about to paul this isn't a damn sensor glitch you met old you like two weeks ago

Speaker 1 This is so uncomfortable for everyone else on the crew.

Speaker 1 This is like working in an office that has a stated no relationships policy when you know two people are dating and they're openly fighting in a meeting in front of you.

Speaker 1 You're like, God, guys, like, can you not?

Speaker 1 Can you not do that? Hey, I don't know if you noticed, but down the hall, there is a breastfeeding room next to the crying room.

Speaker 1 And then right next to that, there is a having a secret workplace relationship, have it out with each other room. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you don't have the third, you can use the breastfeeding room for that purpose.

Speaker 1 Mayweather Mayweather in the scene wonders out loud if this was a mistake to be sent back in time 200 years or if it was intentionally done. Very interesting question, Mayweather.

Speaker 1 Kind of a quantum leapy question, right? Like, is there some like divine intervention happening here? Are we meant to be here for some reason?

Speaker 1 You know what I wish, and I think you could include this in every episode of Enterprise up until now.

Speaker 1 Not only do I want a little more Mayweather, but I want specifically a big gulp that Mayweather takes about the whole yikes, 200 years ago on Earth, not a good situation for someone who looks like me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And were I to be sent down to Earth during this time, I might have some feelings about being given a mission like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's consider some other people that might go on the away missions on this particular adventure.

Speaker 1 That's Starship Enterprise. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not to like have Travis Mayweather write himself out of an episode. Oh, yeah.
The writers do that perfectly fine on their own. They sure do.

Speaker 1 We learn that Silic is aboard because he crawls along the ceiling of a corridor and drops down to the floor. I don't know why I feel better seeing Silic here in this moment.

Speaker 1 Somehow seeing Silic grounds me in the idea that like

Speaker 1 if he's here, this is an actionable situation. It's not we're trapped here forever.
We're in the reality of the show. Yeah.
This

Speaker 1 This will push the plot forward. It's not just an arbitrary side quest that they happen to throw at the end of a very, very long arc.

Speaker 1 We get a conversation between a couple of these gray-faced, red-eye aliens that we saw at the end of the last episode. One of whom is played by Tom Wright, also of Voyager fame.

Speaker 1 I'm surprised he wasn't like the alpha of these aliens, just given like what a fucking powerful performer he is.

Speaker 1 I know i felt the same way doesn't anyone see that this is wrong we didn't get to see the back of the head of this alien in a way that i wanted to see if they'd undone the harm that they did to him when they made him two vics

Speaker 1 contractually i feel like you got to write that in if you're going to come back to star trek right right

Speaker 1 uh anyways they're talking about how the the résistance is really

Speaker 1 ramping up its efforts in this area, starting to become a little bit of a problem for the Nazis.

Speaker 1 And the Tom Wright character is getting in trouble because he did not personally oversee the transfer of the prisoner, Jonathan Archer. So the boss dude Vosk,

Speaker 1 who's in the like SS Obergruppenfuhrer outfit, says, like, you know, you really fucked up on this one. That guy's definitely a temporal agent.
We need to figure out where the fuck he went.

Speaker 1 Spare no expense figuring that out. Yeah, and promises are made about finding Archer given his elevated value as a prisoner.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's all you can say if you're, if you're hench Nazi at this point. Like, yeah, boss, right on that.
Yeah. We'll get him.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Back on Enterprise, TePaul works in Archer's clarinet rental room. She will sit in his chair.

Speaker 1 When Trip Tucker comes in to apologize for all that lip he gave her in the previous scene, that's a good moment, right? Did you say to apologize? To To apologize?

Speaker 1 I didn't say it, but I should have said it.

Speaker 1 They talk a bit about what Captain Archer would do in a moment like this before Reed comes in with some interesting intel about some skirmishes going on in North America and the East Coast and the South, places where Nazis would have to wait decades to take root.

Speaker 1 It's true. Something's very wrong down there.
I like that this scene spends a little time talking about, like, it's really weird that we just did that whole story arc and now we're doing this.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 that's pretty exhausting and wild, right? And they do, you know, give some airtime to that as an idea.

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

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No problem, Griffin.

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Speaker 1 you will never take the greatest chin alive

Speaker 1 bam

Speaker 1 What do you make of an insult made in public, but an apology made in private?

Speaker 1 I thought a lot about this moment because I've stepped in this particular pile of shit before where I'll shoot my mouth off and I'd be like, fuck, fuck.

Speaker 1 Shouldn't have said that. And then later on,

Speaker 1 I'll go and like make amends as you do. But I feel like it is so much more powerful to when you offend in public, apologize in public.
Sure. And so I felt like Trip here was being,

Speaker 1 I don't know, a little weak about it. Yeah, but I.

Speaker 1 But maybe when you're in a relationship with the person, you don't want to over-apologize in front of everyone for fear of outing yourself as being in a relationship with the commanding officer of your ship.

Speaker 1 It feels performative in that context.

Speaker 1 Like, we're in a relationship and I'm going to show, like, you know, like it, like, there are so many dynamics that that could be indicative of that you don't necessarily want to like rope other, you know, innocent bystanders into.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Your apology is for the person you're apologizing for.
It's not for the audience ever. So I think I'm with you on that.
No quad box, no social media post from Trip Tucker. No.

Speaker 1 Just a quiet, dignified, private apology. I'm going to put my nipples on the table and just apologize to you personally.
You're never going to let that go, are you?

Speaker 1 The idea that Ohio and Virginia are loaded with Nazis just doesn't make sense in the 40s. So they do feel that the war is going differently and has been messed with timeline-wise.

Speaker 1 And this is a problem.

Speaker 1 They got to figure out how to solve this thing. In Six Bay, Dr.
Flox tries to get Porthos to eat a bowl of liver and cheese. But he's not having it.

Speaker 1 No, I can't say I blame you. And it's like the chicken livers that you get in a little tub at the deli counter.
No, I'm just going to ask, man, where did he get the liver?

Speaker 1 Now that you say, like, ordinarily, you'd get it in the tub at the deli counter, there's none of those on Enterprise. That's what I'm saying.
Like,

Speaker 1 did they stop somewhere in the Delphic expanse, like, before all of the events of the last couple of episodes, and like do a big shop? And, like, you know what?

Speaker 1 We should hit the butcher counter up, you know. You see, I just harvest the livers from the sea slugs

Speaker 1 that I have in my aquariums.

Speaker 1 As soon as I started in on that impression, I realized how close to Obama it it sounded.

Speaker 1 The liver is something I get from the sea slugs.

Speaker 1 I do this. You see, the Republicans will tell you

Speaker 1 you shouldn't be eating liver.

Speaker 1 Cheese and liver, something I know no dog to be able to resist. This one does.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 almost as gross as a bowl of liver and cheese is Daniels, who staggers in looking like the guy who falls in toxic waste at the end of RoboCop.

Speaker 1 He looks like he is a high-speed car impact away from just being liquefied on a windshield. It's really true.

Speaker 1 He does not look great. Did they overdo it with Daniels? I just got to ask.
He was hard to look at. When they describe what is happening to him later, it actually makes sense.

Speaker 1 Only his costume reads as Daniels, though. Like, I wish that they'd maybe dialed back the makeup just just enough to make him

Speaker 1 obviously Daniels, you know? I think he looks as bad as anyone we've seen on Star Trek. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is really tough. One of those guys, the guys in Voyager that, like, steal your organs.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He's like, yeah, he looks like a Vidian.
A Videan. He's like the guys in Star Trek Insurrection that like get their skin stretched back on their faces.
That guy. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's up on that mountain for sure. Really is.
Archer is also

Speaker 1 in a six-bay type context. He's, he's had his bullet extracted by a lovely young woman who has him in her apartment.
We learned this is Alicia Travers.

Speaker 1 And she explains that it's 1994 and this is Brooklyn, baby.

Speaker 1 And some like obligate Star Trek nods to the like fucked up conditions for black people people in the 40s, even not considering the Nazis have invaded.

Speaker 1 And like looking out the window, it does not look like any fun outside. Say you were thrown back in time or forward in time, just outside of your own time, Ben.

Speaker 1 How long do you resist asking what year it is? Because Archer does that thing in this scene where he's like looking out the window and he's like, hey, by the way, what year is this?

Speaker 1 I don't think you could do that.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 You got to find like a copy of a newspaper or like look at somebody's phone screen. Hope they have the date and time as one of the widgets on there, you know.

Speaker 1 They underplay this a bunch because when he asks what year it is and Alicia says 1944, you don't get her like

Speaker 1 and the and the eyes I made were just like, I looked at a check hitting the table that was way, way more expensive than I thought it was. Just like, whoa,

Speaker 1 this guy's pretty fucked up. Really is.
I wish they'd said which neighborhood in Brooklyn this was. Did you not recognize it?

Speaker 1 I mean, I recognized the back lot that they shot it on. Yeah, so do I.
I think we walked that backlot.

Speaker 1 We sure did. So we cut to the White House.
Also, a place that you and I have walked around. Yeah.
Heavily damaged and covered in swastikas.

Speaker 1 We have an alien Nazi inside showing a weapons test video to a human Nazi major general, and this weapon kicks ass.

Speaker 1 This is a future weapon, clearly. Problem is, it is going to take a lot of power.
And in 1944, like, the things that the future qualifies as power come in the size of, like, a watch battery.

Speaker 1 A 1944 equivalent of that is, like, a...

Speaker 1 dozen train cars full of battery power. Like, they need so much of the raw materials required to make these things that this major general is like, fuck off, man.

Speaker 1 Like, we have a war to fight and we have a perimeter to defend. If I'm giving you all of all of this stuff, like, we're not going to be able to defend ourselves.

Speaker 1 And he's like, why don't you just go into the future and get your watch battery? Oh, because kids would choke on them. Gotcha, gotcha.
Okay, so that does make sense.

Speaker 1 I will try to get you the 38,000 metric tons of aluminum then. Yeah.
And we'll also make it taste super sour, you know, for the kids.

Speaker 1 For the kids, because, you know, like I'm a Nazi, but I'm not a monster. Bingo, how fun.

Speaker 1 We get to see the map of the conquest that the Germans have accomplished in North America here. And it seems like pretty much the whole eastern seaboard has been grabbed, but the rest of the U.S.

Speaker 1 is still under American control. And there's some

Speaker 1 squabbling along the line of combat. Like this guy is like pretty stressed about the idea that the Americans could take all of these conquered lands back.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 this alien dude is like, you know what? We can help you make sure that doesn't happen. You just got to give me all these materials to build these webs.

Speaker 1 This is like that moment in Civ when you advance so far in science that your weapons making ability is like already artillery when the other folks are using like clubs and spears.

Speaker 1 He promises that like, look, defending your territory is not going to be a problem once you have these weapons. It's going to be worth it.
Yeah. They're all fans of purity here.

Speaker 1 Like, that's like, that is what aligns the gray-faced, red-eye alien guys with the Nazis, is their love of purity.

Speaker 1 Didn't you want a half an hour more of a conversation between these two where the Nazi comes to grips with the alien being their version of purity? So you're

Speaker 1 pure?

Speaker 1 Because I'm just, I'm looking at your face. It doesn't look like it, man.
It doesn't look like you've been living clean. I mean,

Speaker 1 you're very clearly white in some places, but I mean, the red eyes,

Speaker 1 the general lumpiness. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't believe you're a vegan, you know? Let's just say that.

Speaker 1 So we're getting our requisition. That's decided.
And back up on the ship, Phlox talks to TePaul about

Speaker 1 the way Daniel's body has been damaged. It's basically like accelerated aging

Speaker 1 in some parts and accelerated de-aging in other parts. And so, while it's all his body, it all doesn't work together very well because of this effect.

Speaker 1 And Flox is like, I'm amazed he's alive. He's not going to live much longer.
And I don't really know how you treat this.

Speaker 1 It's a healthy young person's penis and an extremely droopy pair of balls.

Speaker 1 And unfortunately, I do not have a bat that will suck this out of him. He doesn't know why Daniels is in this condition, only that he's not expected to survive the day.

Speaker 1 And that's pretty bad news to TePaul, who really needs to talk to him because Daniels might be the key to why they're there and also how to get back to their own time.

Speaker 1 In Alicia's apartment, we run into Sal and Bobby Bacola hanging out with him. They're sort of like guys who were the mafia but are now the partisans

Speaker 1 for lack of anything better to do while the Nazis are in town. Yeah.
They're working with Alicia and they're like, yeah, man, like the Gestapo is kicking indoors all over town looking for Archer.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, we're not quite sure what to do about that because it's really fucking our shit up as the resistance.

Speaker 1 And Sal really wants to know why the Nazis are so hot to get their hands on Archer. Archer's been interrogated recently.
Yeah. What is holding a gun to his head going to do at this point?

Speaker 1 I thought this is cute. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I love the feint that he says it's classified.

Speaker 1 That's such a good direction to head with it in

Speaker 1 a wartime context and in a you found me wearing a weird uniform context.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Sal is persuaded not to shoot him, basically. The ideas floated to get the hell out of there, right?

Speaker 1 The Gestapo is doing like door-to-door searches. Maybe they're not going to be safe in Alicia's apartment.
That's something Alicia's not going to do.

Speaker 1 And the gangsters kind of fuck off without them to find out what happened to their guy, Vic, on their own. Indeed.
Daniels wakes up in Six Bay and TePaul is there. He's like, kill me.

Speaker 1 And TePal's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I really want to.
Like, I don't want to look at you any more more than you want to feel the way you feel. But before you go, I need some info.

Speaker 1 You should know that Jonathan Archer is dead. And Daniel starts going off on you have to stop him.
And the temporal war is no longer cold. The question being, who is him? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, what is he talking about? Yeah. The picture he paints is that the timeline is like completely screwed up and in tatters.
And there's like all kinds of

Speaker 1 improbabilities happening all over the place because of it. My balls

Speaker 1 don't match my crank.

Speaker 1 They're different ages.

Speaker 1 They're so low. One ball ten years lower than other ball.

Speaker 1 Make it stop. My bush kind of

Speaker 1 all over the place.

Speaker 1 Impossible to groom.

Speaker 1 I mean, those are Tepal's marching orders. Stop him, whoever that is.
And we cut away from the scene back to Earth before we learn anything else.

Speaker 1 We learn that a Nazi search party has not found Archer yet, but they have a resistance member they can interrogate for more information. They also have found Enterprise in orbit.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That seems to be a crucial bit of business, right? So maybe they'll learn more pretty soon here. This is what Graft says to Vosk.
Like, there's

Speaker 1 like the reason shit hasn't been making sense is that there are future people afoot. And that starts to animate Vosk even more.
So over in Alicia's apartment,

Speaker 1 she serves Archer a meal of stuffed bell peppers, which I thought looked really good, you know? I remember having this meal growing up. Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with this.

Speaker 1 Get some tomatoes and rice,

Speaker 1 mix that up, put it in a bell pepper, bake it. I can see doing this tonight.
Sounds lovely. He compliments it, but she knows that he's bullshitting her.

Speaker 1 I was distracted by Archer wearing her husband's clothes.

Speaker 1 I didn't like this.

Speaker 1 She seems to have encouraged it, like this is her choice, but it didn't make me feel any better.

Speaker 1 I feel like woman living alone in every movie or TV show still has their husband's clothes, whether they're off at the war or dead. Like,

Speaker 1 that's always around, and it all always happens to magically fit whatever dude has wound up in their apartment.

Speaker 1 In between forkfuls of stuffed pepper, Archer like points a fork at the record player, and he's like, Hey, this is colored music, isn't it? I really like this stuff.

Speaker 1 She explains that the Germans outlawed black music, music, but the neighbors all pass a phonograph around night to night so that it's always playing and the Nazis can't figure out where it's coming from.

Speaker 1 Pretty great. She talks about feeling pretty betrayed by the American government for having turned tail and run when the Nazis mounted their invasion.

Speaker 1 And Archer's like, all right, well, this is going to sound really weird, but I feel like I have to ask, have you seen any Germans who are like especially pale and also have beady gray eyes?

Speaker 1 You know, like when someone falls off a motorcycle and gets a bunch of like pavement and stuff impacted into their skin, like have you seen anyone around who fell on their face and like were maybe dragged by their own motorcycle for a time?

Speaker 1 And we're talking like 1940s level reconstructive surgery skills. Yeah.
No insult intended. I'm just saying that like it will get better.

Speaker 1 Let's just say the surgeon in charge made no attempt to remove the gravel from the face. And in fact, maybe they added more gravel.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe they did it on like the roof of a housing project and there were just like lots of extra little pebbles around. And look, I just want to say this, like just so we're clear.

Speaker 1 This isn't an indictment of housing projects or the abilities of a 1940s surgeon. This is just a description of a guy's fucked fucked up face.

Speaker 1 This is like much more about something we can agree on, which is that Nazis are bad.

Speaker 1 She doesn't necessarily believe in these people, but she thinks Sal does. And she's like, I can put you back in a room with that guy if you really want to.
He has some feelings about those people.

Speaker 1 Back on Enterprise, Trip works to repair the shuttle pod on a little floor creeper when Silic scurries in. and Trip blames Silic for this whole situation.

Speaker 1 Silicon in the scene denies it and then he forces Trip at phaser point to let him into the shuttle. Trip doesn't want to do this.
Trip just finished repairing this thing.

Speaker 1 He'll be damned if he's going to lose this shuttle now. And they get into a fistfight and eventually Silic is like pulled into a sleeper hold.
Thing about Silic. He's squishy.
So cool.

Speaker 1 And he slithers right out of it. And Trip gets shot at the end and a shuttle pod is launched.
The shuttle pod launch, they pick up on the bridge.

Speaker 1 And TePal orders Reed to fire on it, like, immediately. Once they realize a Sulaban is on board, Tepal doesn't hesitate.

Speaker 1 Like, she is so much more on her game than those dudes that were working on the Star Destroyer when the escape pod dropped out of Princess Leia's ship. Great reference.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure if our audience would understand it, but I can. No, no, no, no.
Look it up if you're confused.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like Silic did not seem like

Speaker 1 entirely menacing here in a way that I thought was interesting. Like

Speaker 1 when Trip is like, this is all your fault, he was like, it seemed like he wanted Trip to go with him for reasons other than taking him as a hostage is what I'm, I guess, trying to say.

Speaker 1 I was surprised when it was revealed that Trip wasn't on board. It's also like really scary on the bridge when you hear that the shuttle bay has been decompressed.
Right. And you're like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Like Trip was like lying unconscious on the floor in there. Yeah, you expect to see a floor creeper and a and a southern gentleman

Speaker 1 floating outside in space.

Speaker 1 Archer and Alicia meet up with Carmine, Bobby Bacola character. How great does Archer look with this fucking newsy style hat he's wearing? Pretty great.

Speaker 1 He always cleans up nice in his time travel apps. Yeah.
Carmine gives Alicia some burger burger meat and wrapped in some newspaper, and Archer's like, Let me look at that. Let me see what year it is.

Speaker 1 She's like, Why are you always asking that? I mean, you think he's asking about the newspaper, but what he does is like dig a couple of fingers into the grind.

Speaker 1 He's like, This looks like about 30% fat. Wow.
This is definitely like a 1940s-style grind to the ground beef. 70, 30.
Hard to find, you know?

Speaker 1 You know, ordinarily you have to like ask the butcher for something like this. Yeah, yeah.
Like 80-20 is the best you can do typically typically in the, in the case. And

Speaker 1 what do you think it is? Like short rib and like belly meat?

Speaker 1 We are already talking about the ground beef more than it gets screen time. Because once the Nazis on patrol clock them, they got to dump the beef.

Speaker 1 They dump it into a wastebasket to avoid the Nazi patrol. It's like a wastebasket that is full of other newspaper.
So it's like, man, you're never finding that beef.

Speaker 1 Like you're going to, you're going to be sifting through that for years before you find that beef. The beef is gone.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this is

Speaker 1 a pair of like Nazi soldiers on patrol who want to harass what they have perceived as an interracial pair. And it's a pretty ugly scene and very uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 And they got to get the fuck away from these guys.

Speaker 1 On the Enterprise Bridge, the going theory is that the hymn that Daniels was talking about has to be Silic, right?

Speaker 1 Like, that's a pretty straight line to draw between those two things. They don't have a fix on the shuttle pod at this point either, but what they can do is get close.

Speaker 1 We learned that Trip Tucker was not on the shuttle pod in the scene also when it left, and Silic,

Speaker 1 strangely, made the decision to save Trip's life. Dragged him out into the hallway, closed the door, got into the shuttle, and escaped.

Speaker 1 And so they've got a three-kilometer circle to search for the shuttle within.

Speaker 1 And it's going to be Tripp and Travis going down to do this. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Sal brings Archer to meet Joe Prasge in an abandoned building.

Speaker 1 And Joe Prasge says that an alien with red eyes hits him up from time to time for information. And Joe needs the money so bad, sometimes he'll just make up a bunch of shit shit to satisfy this alien.

Speaker 1 And Archer, after hearing this, is like, I would like to meet this alien with red eyes. But Joe kind of hesitates.
I mean, that's Joe's meal ticket, right? Like,

Speaker 1 what is in it for Joe if he gives up his red-eyed alien connect? Well, that's what makes Sal's argument so interesting. He's like, how about I sweeten the pot?

Speaker 1 by giving you more money than what this red-eyed alien gives you. And Joe's like, eh, I don't know.

Speaker 1 and then sal's like how about i shoot you i shoot you dead what do you think of that hey you think the germans are tough get me in a bad mood so tripp and mayweather beam down into a forest and they're looking for the shuttle they're prowling around archer and sal wait for this alien One thing I love about the way New York is always depicted in TV shows is like tons of alleyways, which is like

Speaker 1 anybody who's ever been to New York knows there are no alleyways, which is why there are garbage cans on the street everywhere.

Speaker 1 And in the summer, garbage piles up on the sidewalks and stinks to high heaven. Like, there's nowhere to put it.
There are no alleys.

Speaker 1 It's what made my first visit to New York so confusing. Yeah, it's like I want to go fight some street toughs in a back alley.
Where are they all? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This Nazi with red eyes is trotted out, and he is quickly surrounded by mobsters with guns.

Speaker 1 And he is moved into the light pretty quickly and he is

Speaker 1 ugly.

Speaker 1 Woof.

Speaker 1 This is the first time in the light that this guy has been seen by this group of humans. Not a great first impression.

Speaker 1 Pretty upsetting for all of them and also upsetting is that he is razzing Archer, the only one of them who seems to know anything about what's going on for being such a shitty temporal agent.

Speaker 1 He's like, oh man, for a temporal agent, you sure are a know-nothing dimwit. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 What do you even think this is? Are you wearing that lady's husband's clothes?

Speaker 1 Look at my fine-tailored suit. As a time traveler, there are standards.
This is Hugo Boss. A lot of people don't know that he did the uniforms for the upper ranks of the Nazi regime.

Speaker 1 Weird that people will just buy that suit and wear it to a wedding now. Anyways, Sal shoots shoots this guy.
In the hand. Yeah, yeah.
So like prompt him to make with the information.

Speaker 1 And he's like, I don't want to be here any more than any of you do. Like, this sucks for me too.
We're just trying to get home. Leave us alone.

Speaker 1 And he mentions that he knows about Archer's ship in orbit. And this is the first Archer has heard anything about this.
And he talks about...

Speaker 1 the like insignia on Archer's uniform matching the ones that they've observed on the ship in orbit. Archer is swimming and the air raid sirens go off, so it's time to scram.

Speaker 1 But we hear something about this temporal conduit. Archer's like, tell me about that, and he refuses.
He does a little villain monologuing.

Speaker 1 Doesn't quite beg for it the way Tufix did, but Sal punches his ticket the way Janeway did.

Speaker 1 I mean, Sal... in the heat parlance does not hesitate.
He's already up for a manslaughter beef at that point by shooting him in the hand. What difference does it make? He's rock and roll.
He sure is.

Speaker 1 It's also bad news about that crashed shuttle pod bin because it'll be hours before it could be repaired enough to take off. And that's really not going to work for anyone involved.

Speaker 1 This is a dangerous situation because you've got incoming vehicles to their position. And plan B is what they're going to have to do from here.

Speaker 1 A plan B that we aren't exactly clear on in this exact moment.

Speaker 1 Back in town, Sal and Carmine are trying to get some information out of Archer. Like, what did we just see? Like, who was that guy I just killed? Where is he from? We're talking Mars.

Speaker 1 Ordinarily, I don't care about the folks I killed, but

Speaker 1 this one is going to stick out in my mind, in my memory. Really makes you think.
Yeah. And they're wandering around in the streets at night, and they're noticing that that the streets are

Speaker 1 unusually full, given that it's after curfew.

Speaker 1 And that means they're being watched. And suddenly, German soldiers are like pouring out of buildings, shooting at them.
And Sal gets got, and Carmine, Archer, and Alicia are like running for it.

Speaker 1 And I love that Carmine is such a real one. Like he is.

Speaker 1 He is like taking dudes down left and right as they retreat. How sure are you that Alicia is going to die in this two-parter? I thought this would be the scene where she did.

Speaker 1 Because so often past people are just assumed to make sacrifices willingly for people that they have very little information about their being time travelers or not, you know?

Speaker 1 Well, and also like she is a black woman, so like it feels like, A, like, this is what Hollywood does to black female characters, and B,

Speaker 1 actually, an interesting plot twist would be Archer and Sal now have to work together even though they really don't trust each other you know well I could see that happening I could also see Alicia being introduced to Mayweather as a potential love interest before being immediately killed

Speaker 1 that's a thing that happens in TV of this era that's true that's true this alleyway gunfight is very frustrating for Alicia Archer is not going to be a love interest for her because she's like, we are fucking fighting off German soldiers and you're yelling into your glowing green thing that you stole off of the freaky man with the beady red eyes.

Speaker 1 What are you doing, man? I love her performance of frustration here. Like, she is literally doing all the work, it's really true and defending their lives.

Speaker 1 We cut over to where the shuttle is at, and Tripp and Mayweather have rigged it to blow because they can't let it fall into enemy hands in the past. And, oh, man,

Speaker 1 so many Germans show up with so many German shepherds and clown car into this thing. Like so many of them are physically inside the shuttle

Speaker 1 when they set it to blow. Do you think for a moment you consider at all the idea of shooting a phaser at someone?

Speaker 1 Just gore setting, like fucking up one of these Nazis. As an example, do you think that's too big a bluff?

Speaker 1 Because like Trip and Mayweather immediately have to put down their phasers because there's just so many Nazis with Tommy guns around and dogs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But like, if you make an example of one of them fast enough with this future weapon, do you think you stand a chance or do you think you're still getting cut to pieces by Tommy guns?

Speaker 1 It feels like it must be so galling for a future person to be taken down by people with weapons this primitive, you know? It would feel so bad. It would feel doubly bad to die like that.

Speaker 1 Oh, fucking bullets. Oh, bullets suck.

Speaker 1 It's not like they're from like a Dune future where everybody has like a personal force field on them that makes bullets not work. Yeah.
But like, it's still embarrassing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Finally, Archer gets his little communicator that he borrowed to work, and Hoshi hears from him.

Speaker 1 And the bridge, like, like, Tupala is way slower to react to this than she was to there being a Sulapan on the shuttle that was getting jaked. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The whole bridge is just stunned at the idea that Archer is not dead.

Speaker 1 but she picks up the phone, and Archer and Alicia are like in the process of getting captured by the other eviler of the two aliens, Vosk.

Speaker 1 And they get beamed out in the nick of time. You never know if shooting someone mid-transport is going to damage them.
And it feels like a total dice roll every time.

Speaker 1 We just watched an episode on our hit new and now old Star Trek podcast Greatest trek where someone gets shot mid-beam out on TOS and they are fucked up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It happened to Stephen Culp on this very show. I know.
Not too long ago. I know, but it doesn't happen here.
They both arrive on Enterprise just fine.

Speaker 1 There must just be like a point at which the beam is like mostly gone. Yeah.
And

Speaker 1 that's what happens. So everybody is pretty happy to see Archer back on the bridge.

Speaker 1 Do you think there's a point where like enough of your matter is gone where a bullet could kind of dodge the raindrops

Speaker 1 by luck? Were it to go through the place where you used to be? Yeah, or there's just like not enough raindrops left.

Speaker 1 For it to hit, like, like maybe it does drive like a truck through all of them, but like it's just like a little bit of stomach acid or something. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 That'll leave a mark, but I'm going to be okay. Like, it's tantamount to to like a rug burn or something that just goes all the way through.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. You put a little painstick on it, you're going to be just fine.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How about this scene of reunification on the bridge? It's hugs all around when Archer returns. And if you could hug someone with a glance, I think that's what DePaul gives Archer in this moment.

Speaker 1 What a moment looking at TePaul's face here. Yeah.
I was really moved by this. I'm consistently really impressed by Jolene Blaylock on this show.
She's fucking great.

Speaker 1 Archer has joined a long line of Starfleet captains who have a tradition of bringing black women from the past back up to their spaceships in orbit. Oh, yeah.
I got to bring her to the window, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to. That'll be next episode, I presume.
Yeah. But he's also brought the comms device that he took off of Tuvix.
So he's like,

Speaker 1 let's tap into this thing, see if we can't monitor their comms,

Speaker 1 get on top of what they're up to. But number one priority for me personally, Captain Archer, is to head down to Six Bay

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 see

Speaker 1 my favorite boy, Porthos.

Speaker 1 Porthos first, then Daniels. Yeah.
In a bedside scene where we learn of stealth time travel and that these aliens are capable of it.

Speaker 1 This is part of what they've done to disturb the cold temporal war, turning it into the hot war that it has become.

Speaker 1 This has enabled the faction represented by Vosk to defeat the Federation. And now it is like a race to the bottom.
All of the players in the Cold War are trying to eliminate each other.

Speaker 1 And this is what fucked up. things for Daniels.

Speaker 1 And Daniels is like, I brought you to the past because if Vosk can get his temporal conduit working and go to the future, that is what causes the thing that I am going through right now.

Speaker 1 And I would really like you to prevent that. So if you could do whatever it takes to shut down this conduit, that will prevent the hot war.
It will prevent all of these

Speaker 1 time paradoxes. And I don't know what it looks like, but I know it's 1944.
So with present-day technology, this thing is going to be fucking huge.

Speaker 1 Did you see the deleted scene for this episode? I didn't. It's from this scene.

Speaker 1 And so, like, this conversation happens, but then at the very end of it, Archer is like, Daniels, why didn't you just take Enterprise J,

Speaker 1 the ship you were on,

Speaker 1 back to 1944? A much more formidable ship, a crew of thousands,

Speaker 1 including Cindy, and fight this on your own. Why didn't you do that, Daniels? And they cut to Daniels' face, and it's like, beep, beep, beep.

Speaker 1 A question that would have broken the episode goes unanswered there. I don't know why Archer and company are chosen for this one.
I can't wrap my head around it. Daniels is like, why didn't I take it?

Speaker 1 I'm just an ensign.

Speaker 1 Do you think anyone that I work with knows I'm even doing this?

Speaker 1 Travis and Tripp are brought before Vosk, who,

Speaker 1 man, this guy's just real cranky about this whole situation. You got to believe the interrogation is going to be pretty hostile.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And once they roll Trip Tucker's sleeves up, they're going to know, I mean, where do you, to attach the jumper cables at that point? Like,

Speaker 1 so many options.

Speaker 1 It's what you call a target-rich environment.

Speaker 1 This interrogation is going to take hours. You might have to bring a backup and then a third car battery.
You're just going to run out of voltage.

Speaker 1 We get to see the enormous Nazi time machine. Yeah, look at how long it is.
Look at that thing. Amazing that they take the time to hang the swastika banners over the enormous Nazi time machine.

Speaker 1 But they do, you know? They care about aesthetics.

Speaker 1 I've spent many hours in factories doing corporate video, Ben, and in every one of them, there are giant flags and giant motivational banners in there. It's just what you do in a factory.

Speaker 1 I guess this didn't surprise me at all. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, were you surprised overall by this episode? Is the question I might ask?

Speaker 1 I can't pay.

Speaker 1 Good for late.

Speaker 1 Got okay.

Speaker 1 Tempting

Speaker 1 It just didn't seem so long ago that we were watching Voyager and we got Nazi episodes there. I think I'm just suffering from a little bit of the proximity effect of this to that.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 yes, Nazis are always the enemy, and it just seems a little easy at this point.

Speaker 1 But what else could we do? Like, we're Star Trek in the 90s, and we have a fixed budget, and we have all these uniforms

Speaker 1 And we have Runyon Canyon. Like, what else could we do? This is what you get.
And we'll bring back some of the same actors that we used before, too. Right.

Speaker 1 Like, they're never going to go back to, oh, yeah, like, the aliens are working with the Khmer Rouge.

Speaker 1 Like, they don't have the budget for that, but they got the budget for Nazis are in the United States.

Speaker 1 I think the second part of this episode has the chance to redeem the first.

Speaker 1 This first one just feels a little thin at the moment. Yeah.
I did love seeing Big Pussy from Sopranos.

Speaker 1 I'm happy anytime I see that guy and anything. That's Bobby Bacle, not Big Pussy.
But

Speaker 1 right. Shit.
Fuck. Fuck.

Speaker 1 I deserve to be punished for that.

Speaker 1 He was great in this. And

Speaker 1 yeah, always really fun to think. Bobby Baccho is the one with the trains, right? He is the one with the trains.
Imagine riding in that club car, sipping on a negroni. Who's Big Pussy?

Speaker 1 He's the one that gets whacked on

Speaker 1 the yacht in the first season. Right.
Spoiler,

Speaker 1 yeah. I think a lot of people make that mistake.
They are rotund southern Italian men, you know?

Speaker 1 They all look the same to me.

Speaker 1 Who the fuck really knows? How about you, Ben? You like this episode? I like this episode.

Speaker 1 I like that it's a little bit weird to say this, but they're sort of standing on their convictions with what Enterprise is about, which is that it is humanity trying to go out into the stars and realizing that they are not at all the masters of their own destiny yet.

Speaker 1 Like between the

Speaker 1 Zindi and the temporal cold war and just like the Vulcans meddling in their affairs,

Speaker 1 they are constantly being moved around like a pawn on the chessboard. Yeah.
And that feels very authentic to Star Trek Enterprise

Speaker 1 that they did not get a go home and get the ship fixed up break at the at the beginning of this season. I'm guessing that that will happen at some point in the next few.

Speaker 1 Like I haven't really looked ahead much, but like everybody says that season four is when Enterprise gets like really kick-ass. So I'm very curious to see where it goes from here.

Speaker 1 That's a great observation by you. I really like that feeling.
I just started playing No Man's Sky, and it makes me think of that. Like

Speaker 1 when you're just a tiny little shuttle in a great big universe, just trying to figure it out and everyone's more powerful than you and anything can kill you at any point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like that feels like what science fiction is as a foundational theme. That is a great game for you specifically as a like go make your own adventure in the open world kind of person.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I fucking love that game. I've played it for hours.
I haven't interacted with anyone. It's just the perfect thing.

Speaker 1 During like a deep pandemic, me and Brad Bauman were doing that game a bunch. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Love that guy. I don't know if he's still doing it or not, but anyways,

Speaker 1 why don't we go check the P1 inbox and see if there's anything special for today's episode?

Speaker 1 Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel.

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

Speaker 1 Then we got a promotional priority one message here.

Speaker 1 Here's how that goes. Fun is Forever is a ceramic homewares company for folks enamored with their own space.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Inspired by the colors and shapes of 70s interiors, floral and garden design, each piece is handmade with gusto by Allie in her Portland, Oregon studio.

Speaker 1 Playfully designed, and thoughtfully handmade ceramics feature soft shapes and exuberant colors to make your home more fun.

Speaker 1 Find the perfect mug for your tea, Earl Grey Hot, or a big snack bowl for serving Gach family style. So check it out, Ben.

Speaker 1 Go to funnestforever.com and you get 20% off by using the code GRAYDISTGEN, which is good off of your order and free shipping. This is really exciting.

Speaker 1 I love all the stuff I'm seeing on funisforever.com. My wife and I were just talking about how like a couple years ago we were like we should have like cool tableware.

Speaker 1 Like we should we should not be using the the like mismatched collection of garbage plates that we picked up over the years.

Speaker 1 We should have like you know we're like adults we should have like good nice shit and this is. You should have mismatched collections of ceramics like this.

Speaker 1 This is the way to go, though. Like,

Speaker 1 it's a little bit more expensive up front, but you're getting something handmade by a real person who's also a friend of DeSoto. Yeah.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Can I hip you do a thing that has made my life happier and better?

Speaker 1 A fun thing to eat a snack out of? Yeah. Like that isn't just like a cereal bowl or something.

Speaker 1 Get yourself like a fun snack dish. That's what I'm seeing a bunch on this website, this Fun is Forever site.

Speaker 1 Like a bunch of handmade little bowls, little vases, little things for eating snacks out of. So cool.
That'll make your day better every time. Oh, man.
This stuff is so great.

Speaker 1 I hope Allie gets a really big Greatest Gen bump because I'm very curious and covetous of these wares. Yeah.
FunisForever.com and the code is Greatest Gen. Yeah.
Love these bright colors.

Speaker 1 Our next P1 is from Marianne. It's to Richard.
It goes like this.

Speaker 1 Mzadi, from taking me to my first Ren Fair in high school, watching TNG and playing FF11 in college, honeymooning in Japan, and both Nat Wanning jumping off the same tower in our first ever DNT session.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you are always by my side. Thank you for being my partner in Nerddom.
Happy 40th birthday, my love.

Speaker 1 May we have many more Ren Fairs together. That is so sweet.
Happy 40th, Richard. I cannot imagine Dean being in the same sash with my wife.

Speaker 1 We're close, but we're not close like that. That is an express train to Divorceville, in my mind.

Speaker 1 Marianne and Richard are making it work. I love this for them.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm glad this works for them. It seems like it would be incredibly dangerous for most people, but they're making it work.

Speaker 1 Marianne and Richard are. Yeah.
What a thing. Really cool.
And a 40th birthday. Yeah.
Big deal. Let's not gloss over that.
Yeah. One of the best ones.

Speaker 1 Ben, we got a personal priority message here from Don,

Speaker 1 who has listened since the beginning. And this message is to you and me.
Okay. Don says, this is just a thank you to you both for continuing this great show.
Keep up the good work.

Speaker 1 There's coffee in that nebula. All right.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Don.

Speaker 1 We'll do our best. I mean, we'll keep up the work.

Speaker 1 Don, I got to say, like, so many Priority One messages are just messages to folks celebrating a birthday or folks.

Speaker 1 you know, pimping an awesome business or whatever. It's really nice to just get a message from time to time that says, keep going.

Speaker 1 Because this is hard. Don, we're almost 10 years into this.
It's nice to get some encouragement from time to time, so I really appreciate it. Appreciate all of it.

Speaker 1 And if you'd like to leave a priority one message on the show, it's really easy to do. You go to maximumfun.org/slash jumbotron and set it up today.

Speaker 1 Whether you're going for that greatest gen bump for your business, wishing a beloved person a happy birthday, or just want to say something nice to me and Adam. Yeah, they all work the same.

Speaker 1 Hey, Adam. What?

Speaker 1 Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Speaker 1 Drunk Shimoda! I know what this moment bumped you the way it bumped me

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 this would never happen for either of us. Neither of us would ever do this in a million years.
So here's the scene. Archer has changed into Alicia's husband's clothes.

Speaker 1 He sits down. to a plate of food made by someone who has conveyed food is hard to come by, good food is hard to come by, time to make food.
It's all hard. It's hard to live right now.

Speaker 1 Shit is dire in Nazi-occupied Brooklyn.

Speaker 1 No matter how you feel about the meal that is served to you in that moment, not bad is something you never say to the person who gives you that food out of the kindness of their heart. Not bad?

Speaker 1 That's dark archer shit, man.

Speaker 1 Say anything but that. Say nothing.
Nothing is better than that. It's not excusable,

Speaker 1 but like he's been Dark Archer for an entire season now. Like I do understand that there's a little bit of a hangover off of that.

Speaker 1 He's also got access to the best chef in Starfleet. I didn't consider that.
The bends he has to feel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, this dude is taking MREs and doing magic with them. He's like that guy on social media who like takes like a, like a fast food meal and like plates it up like three Michelin star style.

Speaker 1 There are just so many moments in a person's life where saying nothing is so much better than saying the wrong thing. True.
And this just feels like that.

Speaker 1 Talk about anything else, Archer, besides your true feelings about this stuffed pepper. You got to perform enjoyment of stuffed pepper.
Yeah, that's what makes him my drunk Shimoto.

Speaker 1 What about you, Ben? I got to give it to Bobby Bacola. I love that guy.
I want to know how his train is doing. Bobby Pussy is how I confused him earlier.

Speaker 1 Big Bobby Percy.

Speaker 1 You know, like, I'm wondering if he's able to get his hands on things from the Lionel Corporation now that they're on the other side of the scrimmage line between the forces of evil and the forces of good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, that's got to be weighing on him.
That's a hard thing he's going through. Sure.
I hope he's in the next episode. I would like that very much.
Did he die? I can't remember if he died.

Speaker 1 Kind of a lot of people died out on that street and in the alley. Yeah.
Hard to keep him straight. It was rough.
Faith of the fart.

Speaker 1 Speaking of the next episode, why don't we start to think and talk about that episode? It's season four of Star Trek Enterprise, episode two. It's called Stormfront Part 2.

Speaker 1 With Silic's help, Archer hones in on the temporal operative who altered Earth's past and threatens to destroy all of time. With Silic's help, what the fuck is going on here?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't get that at all. Up is down, down is up.
Dogs and cats living together. Can we trust that guy? He's a little squishy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ben, you gotta go to gock.biz slash game to find out where the runabout is on the game of buttholes,

Speaker 1 the will of the Riker, quantum leap. You do.
Top floor is where the runabout is at this point. Square 93.
It sure is. What's it gonna be next time? Only the 100-sided die can say.

Speaker 1 You're required to learn as you play. Roll.
I'm going to roll it. Do it.

Speaker 1 Ben, I have rolled an 85. Wow.
Tula.

Speaker 1 Did I win? Hardly. Which has kicked us down a couple of rows to square 78.
It, too, is a regular old episode. Okay.

Speaker 1 Nothing wrong with a regular episode. I thought, given the amount of Italian Americans, I thought it would be appropriate if we hit the breadstick square.

Speaker 1 No such luck. No such comedy coming from the game of buttholes at this point.

Speaker 1 What with all the rationing because of the strained supply lines caused by the partisans, you know, harassing the Nazis as they move around

Speaker 1 the map? It might be hard to come by enough breadsticks for that one. Were I to be given breadsticks by a kindly stranger,

Speaker 1 I would say something else besides not bad.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, you're a class act in a way that Dark Archer never was. No, no.
I'm looking forward to that episode.

Speaker 1 We got a lot of thank yous to give out here at the end of every episode of The Greatest Generation.

Speaker 1 First and foremost, got to thank Wendy Pritty, the producer and editor of this program, without whom none of this would be possible.

Speaker 1 Got to thank Bill Tilley, our temporal Cold War time consiglier, who makes the hilarious trading cards you can find on the at Greatest Trek social media accounts.

Speaker 1 Those accounts are managed by Rob Adler, who also helps make the greatest newsletter of our monthly email circulation that I think all friends of DeSoto would really enjoy. Go to greatest trek.com.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's pretty great. You can find links to all this stuff and get signed up for the mailing list.
Go to podshop.biz, get yourself some merch. Yeah, got to do that.

Speaker 1 I think I have it on good authority that some new merch has hit the store recently. It's true.
You've been hard at work on some great new stuff.

Speaker 1 If you haven't refreshed that page in a while, go over to the tab all the way over to the right side of your loaded up browser and refresh that one.

Speaker 1 One great reason to subscribe to the newsletter is to get a discount code at the store. So why don't you do both?

Speaker 1 Got to thank Adam Ragusia for the parody version of Diane Warren's original Enterprise theme and Dark Materia for the original Picard song. And you know what?

Speaker 1 Last but certainly not least are all the friends of DeSoto who support by going to maximumfun.org join and supporting the program. We love you, tens, for doing so.

Speaker 1 With that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise, where Ben and Adam are also being suddenly helped by a former enemy, and just don't know why.

Speaker 1 That's ominous.

Speaker 1 crime. Catching Jon Lu Picard of the USSD.

Speaker 1 Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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