The Greatest Generation - Chekhov’s Banality (ENT S1E8)

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

When Enterprise discovers a great big comet, Captain Archer sends a team to get a closer look. But when a personal matter involving T’Pol threatens her future on the ship, her professional opportunities may be frozen as well. What color is an embarrassed Vulcan? How many dick pics is a doctor allowed to have? Does IDIC apply to snowmen? It’s the episode that is enshrined into the Star Trek Foley Work Hall of Fame!Support the production of The Greatest GenerationGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Riker - Quantum LeapThe Greatest Generation is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social

You know, sometimes you'll hear tickets are going fast for a live show. Well, I just checked the website for the Greatest Gen live show at the London Podcast Festival and it looks like we are 80% sold out and that show is all the way in September. September 14th, 2024 at 4.30pm that is. Don't miss out by waiting until later. The show is going to sell out, maybe even this week. So don't wait. Head over to greatest gentour.com and snag your tickets. Ask anyone who went last year. It was an absolute riot of a good time and I can't believe we

got invited back. It's something that Ben and I are really looking forward to. So head to greatest gentour.com right now for tickets. Hurry up and get them before they're gone. Here's to the finest crew in Star Trek. When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me. This is a parody. Paramount owns the song. Welcome to The Greatest Generation.

It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast. I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pranica. Oh, Ben, you got that low voice, don't you? You going low. It's almost like it's early in the morning, but it's not. No.

I think my voice is, it does sound morningy and I'm getting over a cold after my horrific ordeal with dental surgery and my son having hand, foot and mouth disease. All that was capped off with me getting a cold. Great things come in threes, don't they? They really do. This morning, because my voice now sounds like morning voice, this morning it was so much lower that I was trying to get my home assistant to play children's music for my son. And it was saying, like, I don't recognize your voice.

Who is speaking? Who is speaking? So, it thought your voice was so low, it was like, now playing, boys to men. Yeah. For me and the other childless FODs in the audience, what mean hoof and mouth disease when it comes to a kid? I don't know what it is exactly, but nobody our age seems to remember this being a thing. And I don't know if that's just because you get it when you're like littler than you can remember or what, but it seems to be like a total rite of passage

for this age of kids. And it's just some virus. It like gives them a little rash and little spots around their fingers, toes, and mouths. And butts, let's and mouths, and butts. Let's be honest, and butts. If your kid doesn't have it at a certain age, you got to stick them together with another hoofed animal. I think that's what you do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we took them to like a play gym, like one of these like indoor,

you know, everything is a padded surface kind of places. Ben, even I know that's how you get it. Yeah. You think they're washing those balls? Well, so like one of the other parents said like, don't, yeah, don't let them go in the ball pit because that's where the hand, foot and mouth is. And, and I like asked our pediatrician I asked our pediatrician, is that real? Is there a particular worry about the ball pit?

And she was like, no, he's just going to get it. There's nothing you can do. And then a week later, he got it. That kind of resignation is an affront to everything inside me that wants to put in an effort. Like at least try, you know? That sucks. And you work here. We tried. Wash your balls is what I would have said as a concerned parent. Yeah, we tried. We tried very hard, but I think it just comes for all of us. And

apparently if you get it as an adult, it sucks. How have you, of all people, not gotten this yet? You get everything. I get everything and like after my horrific dental surgery, I was prescribed an opioid painkiller, which I like filled because like I didn't fill it initially but then Doron came down with this disease and I was like I'm gonna go get that just in case because I've heard it's like extremely painful to get as an adult and I was like I can't be recovering from surgery and And doing that and not have some some bigger guns, you know?

Yeah, just give yourself a chance. I gotta go to the weapons locker and get the big phasers. Big phasers? Hey, by the way, we just had a meeting, you and I, about going to STLV. Looks like it's on this year. Stay tuned for a release about what exactly that's going to entail. But I think so far the idea is doing Prana Cabana and some hangs and maybe, maybe not some participation

in panels or whatever. We'll see, we're entertaining offers at this point. We are entertaining, aren't we? Well, on that note, let's get into it. Star Trek. I'm offer only, Ben. Season one, episode eight, Breaking the Ice. Opening in the mess hall, Ben, it's Flax and TripTucker remarking on a truly awful

And it's Flax and Tripp Tucker remarking on a truly awful children's drawing of their ship in space. And it's one of a stack of them. That's the worst part. It's not just this one. Did you get the feeling that these were actual drawings by kids? Because I feel like in movies, I often see, oh, this is the drawing of a kid and it's either like too good or too bad in the wrong ways. I think we had a similar conversation around Captain Picard day back when we were talking about that episode of Next Generation. And I think where we landed was that only a kid could make a drawing that looks like a kid could make a drawing that looks like a kid. There's something about an adult's drawing, the steadiness of their lines maybe, that

just kind of betrays the age of it. An adult would never try to make it look like the stars by doing the five-pointed star that you draw over and over again across the top of a piece of paper. It made these really charming to me. I recently did an arts project at home for our friend and agent. His birthday was flag day and what he asked for was flags from the people who would come to this party.

And so me and my wife- My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. Yeah. I think hoof and mouth lost in the mail. Yeah. I think hoof and mouth RSVP'd for you. So, so my wife got blank flags and a bunch of paint pens and we drew flags to bring. Wow. And my flag was the flag of Negroni. And I, and I drew like this big Negroni with like ice cubes and a curly lemon peel and all

that. And like, if I step back and look at that, a kid could never draw that. Too sophisticated. That's an adult's work right there. They don't even know what a Negroni is most of the time. They don't know what a curly lemon rind looks like. Forget it. I feel like Negroni is a drink that you could get like a pretty young kid to be able to mix competently for you.

I know. That's something I should start to think about. When this kid's like four, I could be like, hey, go make me a Negroni. Is that part of the reason you had kids was like, just to get a little more help around the house? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't have a lawn, but I'm going to need someone to mow something at some point.

I'm not sure that's worth it for me. I think I'm going to keep doing the chores. To Paul Locks in, and she knows better than to take one of these crude drawings from the stack, especially with the terrible and sort of racist depictions of her species. The coloring it in green feels like, feels aggressive. Yeah, don't love that. I mean, they got the hair right. They got the ears right. The coloration, kind of hurtful. Is this Vulcan embarrassed?

Would a Vulcan blush green in a situation where their emotions bubbled to the surface sufficient to permit a visible sign of one? Do Vulcans get green erections? Like green robbing erections? Oh yeah, do Vulcan ladies get their manicures painted the same color as their Vulcan partners green tip? That is really something to think about. That will probably haunt my imagination for a long time. Well, amidst all of the rave reviews for this art, they get interrupted by the ship dropping out of warp and the captain getting on the 1MC to basically announce like we're flying

over the Grand Canyon. And if you happen to be one of the one sixth of people on this airplane that have a window seat on the right side. You can get a look at it. It's got to be something every airline captain loves to do. The sort of unnecessary PA call. Leave five sixth of the people out of a cool thing. Nice.

Love it. Thanks for pausing my movie to do that. I mean, the worst people are the window seat sitters who keep their shade down just the whole time. What the fuck are you doing? God bless the window seat sitters that keep their shade down. I don't want that thing up. That's the one downside of sitting on the aisle for me

is that I have no control over that fucking window and I don't want it up. I want it down. We are incompatible travelers and getting more incompatible with every year. It must be so interesting to hear us become crankier and more recalcitrant over the years for our listeners. Watch a friendship blossom and then fall apart before your very eyes. Hey man, if you're sitting in a different row, that's fine.

Preferable. I'm keeping my window up. So the encyclopedia Volcanica contains no references to this comet. And so they're like, archer's comet? We could call it that. I mean, what's interesting about this comet is that it's the biggest on record. What? Big honker.

Yeah. Measuring from the end of the trail on that. It must be. It looks fine, especially for how cold it is. Kind of an impressive size. Jack said you've got a great big comet. I guess so. Ben, I recently had to have a testicular exam from a doctor.

Speaking of impressive size. This happened to me just yesterday. Like, the moment comes, I dropped my shorts and I yanked out my hog so that it like, not that it looked bigger, so that it wasn't stuck to my sack. I wasn't even thinking about it. Like it was just like, oh yeah, like down and then flop. Was that wrong? As soon as I did it, I didn't mention it.

The doctor didn't mention it, the doctor didn't mention it. Uh, the, the, the, the examination was done very quickly, obviously. And then, uh, and then it was over, but afterward on like the walk in the parking lot to my car, I was like, why did I do that? It's just force of habit. My physician recently revealed, uh, upon a groinal exam that the iPad that keeps all of my medical records has like past images of my junk in it. Whoa. Yeah.

Like, yeah, just for comparison, you can see like last time you were here, it was this. It was like, whoa. The doctor hits a button and it's a slideshow set to Sarah McLaughlin's, I will remember you. Yeah. It's up on the flat screen in the waiting room. It's, it's the sunscreen song from, uh, from everyone's late 90s graduation. Yeah.

Yeah. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. How many pictures do you think are in that file of your dong? I don't know. I didn't remember them being taken, so it came as a real surprise. But it was plausibly me in that picture. Oh yeah. Only you look like that.

Uh-huh. I cannot believe a doctor held up an iPad to your groin and like hit the shutter. What? Yeah. Must've had the silent mode on so that I didn't hear it. There is no photographic evidence of my genitals, I think, anywhere. Well, I mean, the only photographic evidence of mine is HIPAA compliant, so. Sure. Wow. Anyways, speaking of things that we'd like to ignore, T'Pol is like, Hey, this comet, these are who gives a shit, you know, like comets are comets. There's nothing remarkable about comets.

Leave it alone. And they're like, actually, we're going to explore this comet because interested in this great big comet. That standard issue ball kick by T'Pol here. It's not strong enough to overcome the vibes of the bridge crew, which are immaculate right now. Everyone is fucking psyched about this thing. And not even she can throw a bunch of warm water on this because of the comet. That's why I chose the temperature. That's a little behind the joke right there. Right, I got you.

Yeah. So it's late night. Trip has found some pecan pie in the ship's automat and is enjoying that with some cold milk. And T'Pol comes into the mess hall and he invites her to sit with him. And she cannot be enticed with Pi and shouldn't have really sat with him because she wasn't interested in conversation. And that's, I mean, maybe because he didn't say, would you like to sit and talk? She interpreted that like super literally. I think it would be less hurtful while still being hurtful if she just left without sitting down.

It's the sitting down that kind of draws out the hurt in a way. Right. But I think like if Tripp pitched this in a true romance kind of way, I think like without any of the Tripp pitched this in a true romance kind of way, I think like without any of the romance, I mean in the movie kind of way, like. Yeah, you like to eat pie after you look at an asteroid. Care for a bite?

No, thank you. It's delicious. It's mostly sugar. That's where I'm going with that. But yeah, she does not want Pi. She does not want company. She fucks off and it leaves Trip alone to consider the question that I had in the scene because you see it from all angles.

In this light, I couldn't help but think, does Trip Tucker have the best dude hair in Star Trek? Wow. He is having a great hair day right now. I don't know, man. I kind of had hair envy here. He's looking good. He's a handsome devil.

Did you ever sun in or bleach or anything? Like he's, I think it's the color of it that I really respond to. He's got some good highlights. I was a teenager in the 90s. I did sun in. When your pediatrician flipped through the dick pics in your file, one year was the sun in year.

The frosted tips on the pubes. Yeah. Later on the bridge, the crew is studying the composition of this thing and it's got a pretty rare mineral inside, Icilium. You don't see that too often. Let's go get a sample. Not even the Vulcans have studied this. This would be great for us, right?

So the plan is to go take a shuttle over there and do an Armageddon style mission. We're going to do a core drill. It's going to be Malcolm Reed and Mayweather on that mission. And as that is decided, a Vulcan starship pulls up. This is our first Vulcan starship of Star Trek Enterprise. And this one's called the Timur. And I like it. It's like a big hula hoop in space.

It's too bad we never got to go inside because I think we'd see in the shuttle bay a large banner that said, Team War makes the dream word. You know, that's a little bit of team building you wouldn't expect from the Vulcans, right? Yeah. That captain over there, Captain Vanik really knows what's up. Yeah.

There's no I in Team War, except there is. You know what I love about this ship? It isn't the obvious. It isn't like the ring around the fuselage thing. It's that it's red. I love that. There aren't enough red ships in Star Trek. It's a very handsome color and very proud. The bow part that sticks out from the middle, it looks like the prow of a mighty ocean-going vessel or something. You're saying it's got proud prow.

It's got proud prow. Do you think if they took this ship to a ski resort, they would do proud prow and the pow-pow? Yeah. Are you lost? Not at all. I loved Captain Vanik. He looked like a T.O.S. Vulcan in all of his FaceTimes. Like this, I don't know, like something about his hair and like the color palette of his

ship when they did FaceTimes with them. And he's like, yeah, just I'm also here. I kind of wanted them to get into a dispute over who found the asteroid first because the humans seemed really excited about this not being in the, in the Vulcan database. And he says something about like, oh yeah, we found this like two days ago, but I didn't, I was unclear on the timeline, whether the humans could claim it or not. Yeah.

Nothing is made of that kind of stick your flag in it ownership at all. No. Because it's like an opportunity for comedy, right? Like if they were like, well, we were calling it Archer's comedy, but if you guys found it first, uh... And he'd be like, I really don't give a shit what you call it, you know? Like... The comedy in this scene has to do with Captain Vanik

deciding to just lay back and watch like watching Archer do shit on enterprise. It's is like watching chive TV and like a program about people getting kicked in the nuts for an hour. Like this is entertainment for Vulcans, like you doing whatever it is you do. Uh, week to week, it's fucking great for us. We're going to watch you do your cute little spacewalk and we're just going to enjoy ourselves. I love how that is in conflict with the idea that Archer feels like they're spying on him,

but really it's just like, it's way less nefarious than that. It's purely entertainment. Just more Vulcan chaperones to look over his shoulder and watch his work. And he really chafes under this. Reed and Mayweather head down to the comet and they're in like special spacewalking suits and excited for their little away mission. It's two suits and a box full of pliers. Almost exclusively pliers are what they're bringing down.

Yeah. I mean, that's a, you need those for mining, right? I'm sure. I guess you're going to be digging for a long time with pliers. How great is Mayweather on the way down though? His smile is giving me life. I feel like you don't see a real, sincere, excited smile on Star Trek very often, and he's got it.

He's sort of the flip side of the Archer coin for me, because as we're getting more and more into this show, I am appreciating Scott Bakula in a way that I feel like I didn't in previous watch throughs in that like, I think Archer is being intentionally portrayed as kind of a fuck up and like, and like a nepo baby who is like, maybe not the like person with the right stuff, but the person with the right dad, but like all the same loves that he gets to do it and is excited about it. And like Mayweather is in a purer way,

a guy that is just like, fuck, I can't believe how great this is. He kind of like early season Harry Kim. I mean, he's just excited about snow. Yeah, this is fucking great. He's seen it twice before, and now he's gonna go to the biggest snowball anyone has ever found.

Amazing. So in engineering, Trip Tucker calls Hoshi over to a screen and he has been doing some diagnostics and discovered that signals are coming in from this Vulcan ship and being received by none other than Sub Commander T'Pol. And this is raising some eyebrows around engineering, and Hoshi is going to decrypt the message and figure out what's going on. When Trip tells him about it in his ready room, Archer feels betrayal about to Paul doing this. She's gone behind his back because she promised

not to do stuff like this. And that she did has got to feel awful. It's sickening and potentially like a security problem. I mean, like nothing about the previous episode comes up here, but like after they discovered the like huge surveillance infrastructure that the Vulcans had built, it seems like, you know, oh, maybe Vulcans are all super untrustworthy. And we need to like reevaluate our relationship with them would have been on my mind here if I was Archer.

What do you think is the A story right now? And what is the B story right now? Based on that first scene, the A story is the relationship between the Starship Enterprise and school children back on earth. And the B story is Mayweather is gonna get to see snow. Stick a pin in that because we're gonna come back to it later.

I think that's important. The next scene on the bridge Ben I think is created in order to guarantee that the episode makes its time because... It's so long. You can do this as long as he need it. This is like doing crowd work at a stand-up show. Like, all right, well, I mean, I guess I've got 20 for whatever the fuck this is. Yeah. You two on a date? Yeah. So, this scene is about Archer recording a message to the elementary school that sent those awful drawings

in the cold open and he's doing Q&A with the classroom about what they might want to know about what life is like on Enterprise. And absolutely none of these questions are interesting. All of these questions should be stuff that school children interested in spaceflight or the Enterprise mission specifically should already know. This is a total fucking time waster. What do you eat? How do you date? How do you speak to aliens? How do you go to the bathroom?

A poop question, sir? And what's up with germs? These are the questions. Six minutes this scene takes up. Out the 44 minute runtime of an episode of Star Trek. I think this is on Archer. What do you think? Because I'm sure you're having to comb through all of the questions to get the five or six most interesting. These are the ones that he chose. Archer, is this your idea of an interesting question? When school kids send a question to the International Space Station, they like play a guitar or

like light a bubble of hydrogen on fire or something to like show them what happens in zero gravity, right? Do you get the sense that this is on video? What they're sending back? Cause I don't. I was imagining it was like a video FaceTime. I don't know why I thought it wasn't. It's just audio?

Yeah. Like the fucked up thing is they're not even doing the teacher a favor, you know, back on earth. Like the teacher can't even like take a smoke break given the length of this thing. Like it should either be half an hour or 30 seconds, you know? Archers like, well, I can tell that this isn't an art class that I'm talking to. Ha ha ha.

Disappointing the teacher and the students, that's what this scene does. Disappointing me was the snowman that Mayweather made. What the hell? What is this shape, Mayweather? I mean, you can't help but think of the smiley face that Picard drew in the cloud coming out of the warp core. This is now two smiley faces on Star Trek.

I didn't think we'd ever get one. I know. Hey, and also, you talked about having a snowball fight earlier. That's what we wanted to see. You know what I want to see more than a snowball fight. If you're going to say that we can't mess with the costumes for continuity, I totally get that. Hey, Reid, check this out. I'm going to throw a snowball further than it's ever been thrown before and Mayweather like balls one up and like chucks it out of the gravity. How cool would that be?

Throw a snowball at the Vulcans. Throw a snowball at the snowmen. Yeah. They didn't do anything. I feel like it should have been more fun. So when Archer's incoming transmission comes in, it like clamps it down even harder. Right. But that this moment is so not even that fun. Right. But that this moment is so not even that fun, it makes Archer's condemnation of the fun

feel like it's too much. He's too much of a strict school teacher about it, you know? Right. Yeah. I mean, he just doesn't want the Vulcans to see them doing anything, not science. I mean, Archer does stop them before, like, they carve in the straight bangs and like the weird hair, or like they antique the snowman with some green powder or something.

I mean, the snowman does look like a great big pile of shit, and maybe that's why he stops them is like, it's like you've never seen a snowman before. Everybody knows it's the three balls in slightly descending size. What this shape this is a pile this is not balls yeah that's the note I have about this this is a bad snowman an ugly fucking snowman I wanted to see this thing blow big later because they put one of the charges right underneath them oh that sucked there's so much more fun that could have been had with this. I know. How do you fuck that up? You know?

I was hoping for a little more symmetry. Over in engineering, Hoshi has decrypted the Vulcan message and she is cool because she did not read it. That is for Tripp to do. And when you get the shot of his face as he takes it in, you can't help but see Crestfallen as the parenthetical script note for this, right? I mean, if you were looking at his face, but I was looking at his hair. Remember when the Colonel looks at Dirk Diggler's cock at that party. And, and like, he asks to see it. And then like his forehead kind of like drops when he does, both at being so impressed and so discouraged.

Like that's what Tripp Tucker's expression is. But thank you, Eddie. The kind of news that can only be described as Diggler like, and Tripp goes to deliver it to the captain. This was not a super secret Vulcan military plan or anything like that. It was a very personal matter. And Tripp is like, I'm not gonna tell you

what was in the letter, cause it's so private. Also, I am fucking pissed that the Vulcans made me read this. He really does make it about him here. What do you think about the decision of leaving the truth of this letter in mystery for as long as they do? Because several scenes pass between now and when we finally get the revelation, that it almost diminished its power by the time we got there, I thought. Yeah. I couldn't get there with it being like that sensitive an issue. Like it's obviously

very private, but it's not like- Because you're very pro arranged marriage generally. It's not like he got like, oh, this is a letter from to Paul's doctor with a picture of her junk, you know. Let alone a slideshow of like her junk through the years. Through the years is another great song for that, isn't that Kenny Rogers? Kenny's a great choice for that slideshow. Yeah, Loggins or Rogers, either way, you know. An Archer's Quar quarters trip tells him that,

I can't tell you it, and I'm feeling so bad that I need to talk to Paul about my knowledge of it. An archer at the end of the scene tells him that he admires his honesty. But really, I think when you're carrying a secret that is going to hurt someone to disclose, I think sometimes it can be an asshole move to share it. Like it's selfish to make yourself feel better at the expense of someone else's feelings.

I think in this case especially, like there are some cases where like the truth is better, but in this case, you got to eat it, Tripp. Yeah. I also thought about like, isn't it weird that they're just telling her that the Vulcan codes have been compromised? Like, that's like a pretty big deal, right? To be like, hey, like, so it's no big whoop for us to just read your mail. No one mentions this. The Vulcans are going to change the fucking ciphers, you know?

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Oh my goodness, we have the solution for you. It is to listen to the podcast. Oh No Ross and Carrie. And you will never take the greatest chin alive. Ben would rather die. He tries to make this relatable to her by saying like, Hey, have you ever screwed up massively? And she's like, no,

not something I can say I've done. Hey, Tripp, is this your idea of a private conversation? And I'm gesturing to the bridge where they're having this conversation. What the fuck are you doing? I mean, this is like what the Vulcans need to realize they're doing by sending encrypted messages in a cipher that the humans can easily crack. She is pissed. She almost blushes green. She's so pissed. She's in damage control mode here.

She wants to make sure that Tripp's the only one who's read it because Tripp is enough of a problem at this point. This has been such a pain in her neck that it's a literal pain in her neck. We find out that she's having stress headaches from it. Over in Archer's ready room, he has pitched the idea of a ship visit to T'Pol. He's like, hey, I've had worse dinner companions, I'm not going to lie, and I'm talking about you T'Pol. He's like, hey, you know, I've had worse dinner companions. I'm not going to lie. And I'm talking about you, T'Pol. Why don't we get that guy over here? And here's the best part. You can work with the ship's chef on programming a dinner, coursing it out in such a way

that he will have to go away and he'll take a ship with him. Can you do that? And this is something that for some reason T' to Paul agrees to right after having the most awkward conversation she's ever had in her life with Tripp. I want to meet the ship's chef, by the way. A couple of mentions of this person in this episode. Do you think we're not because Neelik's loom so large in the, in the Star Trek memory? Make it another fun character and sell another cookbook. Why not? Come on, fan-sitters. Pick up the phone.

The number you dialed is not in service. He'll never do that. You think he even has a phone? He's got a flip phone. I bet you anything. So, T'Pol winds up in Six Bay and all the stress of this letter she's gotten has been such a pain in her neck that it's a medical issue. A laser level is the only device that Phlox has to diagnose a condition like this. You got yourself a laser level, Ben? I got one of those a couple of years ago and it's the fucking greatest.

I got one literally three weeks ago for the first time. Are you loving it? I'm loving it. You see this shelf right here? Hey! Laser level. Laser level makes all the difference. Imagine hanging a fucking shelf like a sucker with a, with a verbal level. Laser level makes all the difference. Imagine hanging a fucking shelf like a sucker

with a with a verbal level. I mean, I hung those other two without, but uh, and they're good, but the laser level made it made it so much easier. Snappy. You can tell the difference. Lasers. Who knew? Tepal is not going to take flocks as advice about talking to someone about her problems. She will take that shotx's advice about talking to someone about her problem. She will take that shot to the neck though, to relieve some of her pain. And back on the comet, Reed has placed those explosive charges all around the area, but not in the crotch of the snowman, which would have been the best and funniest spot. And I think you can put that on regular TV.

Yeah. That's TV-able. What is bewildering about this is that the safe distance from the explosion is just behind a little ice outcrop. This thing blows big and it does not look like they're at a safe distance. We cut before the like, the, you know, onrushing cloud of debris hits them, but I kind of wanted to be there for it with the like, you know, it suddenly becomes an absolute tempest around them as the, as the shockwave comes in.

Why isn't the intercut of the exploding snowman part of the sequence? Go wide, close, wide again. Like that's dynamic. You're thinking like a Stallone director, you know. I always have. So this is a pretty deep crater that Reed for some reason just scrambles down without any rigging. I thought that was surprising.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's like, what would you say this is? Like five feet deep, this hole that they blew? It's bowl-like. So even if you lose your grip, you're just going to slide down. Yeah. You don't want to tear your suit though. Yeah. I didn't even consider the suit tear risk. Right. Cut yourself on that icy snowman dick that ended up on the wall of that thing. You could cut yourself on the icy energy in the room and the captain's mess when

Captain Vanik comes for dinner, Adam. All that talk about giving the chef advice, we get absolutely no detail about what they're serving. Say what you're serving! Looked just like chicken breast, you know? It specifically looked like canned chicken breast. Oh, interesting. Like it was flaky.

Yeah. Something wrong with your pock-tar? No. Archer's doing all the talking, as he usually does when he's dining with Vulcans, and that makes him the sort of dinner companion that always finishes his meal last. I don't like this. I like eating with folks that share the conversation and eat at the same time in such a way that like

everyone finishes at the same time. You know what I'm saying? That feels so good. It's incredible. I mean, you know what the problem is, is, uh, Tripp Tucker and T'Pol are middling and they're no good at middling. Not everybody has the personality for the middling. It's very presumptuous of you to even be sitting here. You know what hurts is inviting someone over to dinner and they've already eaten. That is such a fucking asshole move. What a dick.

I couldn't believe this. Oh, oh, he doesn't want the tea either or a tour of the ship. He accepted the invitation and that's it. And the totality of all of these things finally builds Archer up into a boil and he can't deal with this. He finally kicks Vanik off the ship and on his way out, Captain Vanik looks down at T'Pol and he says something in Vulcan. No one knows what he said.

What did he say? We'll never know. I mean, it'll be one of the enduring mysteries of film and television right up there with the Lost in Translation. But yeah, like the vibes are so bad between the Vulcans and the humans. Like it's so interesting, like they keep digging the Vulcan hole on this show. Like when are Vulcans going to be like the good guys that are friends with the humans? And it's not anytime soon it feels like.

So on the bridge, Hoshi shows Archer a picture of the comet and uh-oh, some of the information on the screen is in red. So Archer blows a message into Reed on the surface of this thing and he's like, look man, when you blew up the snowman, it changed the rotational dynamics of the comet and that means that the shuttle and you guys

are turning toward this sun. And once you're in the light of that thing, you're gonna get cooked. So the important thing is to be done with your business before that happens. Right, so we have a couple hours left and up on the ship, T'Pol calls Trip Tucker into her quarters to confide in him about the dilemma she is facing.

This is where we finally find out what was in the letter. And we find this out because she's like, I need some advice from somebody and like you already know my dirty secret. So just to like keep the circle real small. I would like to seek advice from you, Trip Tucker. Is this the most illogical thing we've seen to Paul do at this point? Because it would seem as though the most important thing for her to do is to seek

the counsel of someone who could actually help, but that she chooses Tripp Tucker purely for cover, like to cover up your shit to make sure it doesn't get out even further, that seems illogical to me. What exactly is Tripp gonna do, advice-wise? He's set up to fail. What would Tripp Tucker's Relationship Advice Podcast even be called?

Fuckers and Tuckers? That sounds like the name of a drag show. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't sound like a podcast, so it can't be that. No. No. Trip and Fall Into Love?

Hmm. No bad ideas. We're just, we're brainstorming right now. Anyways, the deal is her wedding plans are fucked. This was a letter from the parents of her betrothed. And we learned a lot about the planned marriage situation on Vulcan. Not enough is made about to Paul getting a message from her betrothed's parents. Yeah.

Because anytime you get a message from your partner's parents directly, that is not going to be good. Yeah. That has never helped me do a surprise party. It tends to come from a selfish and fucked up place. And the thing I think we've all seen in, uh, in friends, if not in ourselves, is like a person that's kind of torn between the stuff they want to do and like familial

and cultural expectations being put on them. And it seems like it's only a dilemma if she wants to stay, but she's like never openly admitted that she wants to stay because the parents are saying, you got to get off that dirty human ship and get your ass home and marry this guy or the wedding's off. And Trip is like, so just if you want to stay, stay. And if you want to get married, go get married.

This is actually a good scene for Trip because like as much umbrage as he takes with the idea of this arrangement, he really is on the side of what T'Pol wants. And he asks before he even gives his own advice or opinion about things. Like that's just a bro being a bro right there for a friend. And I liked that moment for him. What I didn't like was how surprised T'Pol seemed to be about how unhelpful Tripp would be in a moment like this and how insulted Tripp became that T'Pol started to recognize this. He leaves in an absolute huff.

What else was going to happen here? There was no outcome that was different from this. I didn't think when I voted for the Jaguars eating faces party that the Jaguars would eat my face. Right. Kind of a thing. She doesn't like his advice and feels like all of her obligations are the things she's going to go with at the end of this scene.

We cut down to the planet where Reed and Mayweather have finished their mining operation and are packing up their equipment and Mayweather eats a ton of shit on his way out of the hole. I mean, you got to have one of those sharp hammers for climbing on the ice, right? Those are so much fun. To own some of those sharp ice climbing hammers. That would be so great. Or Geordie-like, make them with a phaser because you fell down in your own hole on a Galorndon core. How great slash awful was the effect they used for the sound of Mayweather's knee buckling. Travis!

Ah! This sounded like deboning a chicken. It was spine chilling. This is Star Trek Foley Hall of Fame work right here. I loved it. So they are scrambling and they're going to lose their equipment if they... They got to get back to the thing or they're going to get cooked by this star as it rotates into the sky over the part of the asteroid they're on.

Reed looks down at the core sample and he looks at Mayweather and he's like, we got to keep this thing from melting. We got to put it somewhere so it stays safe. Mayweather's like, what do you mean? We've got to keep this thing from melting. We got to put it somewhere so it stays safe. Mayweather's like, what do you mean? There's no time for lubricant. There's always time for lubricant. Many decades ago, we started using space suits with little jets, little jet packs even for

our space walks. Why don't these things have little, shh, shh. That would be cool. Shhh. Like, like, like little, little bomb around jets. They should have had the rigging that they used when they faked the moon landing footage to make their, their hops look more like they were on a low gravity environment, you know? So that if I were to kick you in the balls, what happens to you?

I'd float away. Yeah. That would have been fun. Why don't they use that more often? They've got it in Hollywood. They invented it in the 60s to fake the moon landing. It's in the same warehouse the Ark of the Covenant lives in. No one's getting in there.

So they're hobbling back to the shuttle and the meltiness of the star starts putting cracks in the ice. They did not seem to speed up when the ice started cracking. Like, I kind of wanted a little bit more of a like, oh, fuck, it's giving away. Hurry up, hurry up. It's more like stop and look around at it giving away kind of energy. The energy has diminished, W slash R slash G, the danger of this for that reason.

But they get on board the pod and when they try to take off, they fall into a sinkhole essentially. There's an effects person who's like, oh, so just like the shuttle fell through the planet's crust a couple episodes ago, you just want me to rotate that and make it cold looking? That's what we're going for? The exact same thing. Are you sure? Throw this back up to the writers room and see if they could come up with some other kind of jeopardy for the third act climax. We learn when Archer radios them that the shuttle has dropped 18 meters, which is a distance. No one has ever figured out

But it seems like the sort of distance that the enterprise with grapplers should be able to get them out of like like as they're in this ditch Meanwhile, the Vulcan ship is hailing them like hey we noticed Very familiar effect. We just saw with the shuttle falling through the surface, need any help? And Archer's like, nah, we're shooting the grapplers. And so they try to do that, except one of the grapplers hits and the other one misses and they try to winch it up anyway with one grappler.

That's never going to work, Ben. Why do they not have seat belts inside this pod, by the way? Like they have seats. They're just flying around in there like pennies inside of a soda can that you're throwing to discipline your dog. It's madness.

They end up dropping another nine meters. How far is that? We will never know. It's Paul is great in this scene. I love this. Here she is with her hand up Archer's ass, puppeting him. Why not prove him wrong? You can save them or you can let your pride stand in the way.

Yeah. But interesting, right? Like, Vanak is like looking for you to be a prideful idiot right now. So the more you act the way you naturally want to act, the more you are playing right into his horrible assumptions about what a dickhole you are. This is so great. Fuck you for thinking the worst of me. I'm gonna be great at you is what Archer does. Yeah, rising above. So, Vanik helps by doing a tractor beam

instead of a grappler and saves the pod. Vanik is getting ready to leave. He's headed out in an hour and this is go time for T'Pol to make her decision about should she stay or should she go now. We get a moment where Tripp asks DePaul what's up and she doesn't answer him and instead turns and walks out a door, which I think makes us eight for eight on shots of DePaul leaving a room in its entirety. If I go I will be Vulcan

And if I stay I will be sulkin Come on and let me know. Should took Paul's day or should she go? We'll be right back. Did you like this episode? I did generally, but here's why I didn't specifically. I was promised a Reed and Mayweather episode. This is why I asked you in the beginning what the A and the B story was.

I feel like this is an episode that told me the A story was Reed and Mayweather. The B story is going to be all this intrigue with T'Pol. That wasn't the case at all. Instead, it's where it should be. Like the most interesting part is the T'Pol story. Sure. Once again, we learn nothing about Reed and Mayweather, even though this is a moment where,

like, this is almost Baywatchian. Like this could have been an entire episode where Reed doesn't suck the blood out of Mayweather's snake bite and you're left to wonder how close they are to begin with. Right. Like, like we learned nothing about them individually or, or as friends or coworkers.

And I thought, I missed that opportunity, but if I'm going to miss it, I'd rather miss it for something this important. Like that was a huge headline to, to Paul's character that, that occurred in this important. Like that was a huge headline to T'Pol's character that occurred in this story. And very interesting to learn what her priorities are. Like this is now multiple times in the first half of this season where she has rejected the pull of Vulcan culture or Vulcan obligation in order to stay on the ship. And she has never articulated why exactly that's happening,

why she's making those choices. And I'm interested in hearing more. It's really interesting that when she is interacting with Vulcans, it's, I'm going to go check out this human situation. And when she's interacting with humans, it is like, you guys ain't got shit on those Vulcans. Like she, she really is pushing hard against both in a, in an interesting way. She's like the transplant from a city with a sports team. That's a dynasty.

Like she will always be a Dallas Cowboys fan, even if she moves to Portland, you know? Right. I liked how like loose and almost unstructured this one was. Like that like, hey, we're just gonna spend like a significant percentage of the episode on this scene that has nothing to do with anything.

It's just us blowing in a call to a fourth grade class in Ireland. It was a wild choice, but like one of the most interesting taffy stretches I can think of because it's so long and so mind-splittingly banal that it keeps you on the edge of your seat just by dint of seeming so out of pocket.

I loved it. I gotta say. It's Chekhov's banality. It really is. Yeah. Here's one thing I want to say about that scene is that I have famously disliked Star Trek The Next Generation episodes featuring child actors because most of them were bad. But the other part about those scenes

and how they're used in TNG is that there's almost always unintentional comedy or awkwardness. That's what this scene needed. I think we needed something on screen. We needed an awkward kid asking a stupid question and then we needed to react around the bridge. Like, get a load of this guy. Check out those pigtails.

Something like that. This ship doesn't even have a battle bridge. What are you talking about? Go play in your weird dirt. I think that's the punch up for that scene. Like that way it seems less, uh, transparently, like, a six-minute road to nowhere. That's the thing. Like, I think that this whole episode

has punch-up written all over it. Like, make Reed and Mayweather do way wackier shit on the surface. Like, make them put the explosive in the crotch of the snowman. Like, do all of the silliest in the crotch of the snowman, like do all of the silliest things you can think of with those two. Like, that, like if that was like the totally madcap like two boys on a screw around road trip, uh, B storyline to to Paul's like big feelings torn between cultures, a storyline, This would have been such an amazing episode. One of the writers of this episode joined the production team of Mad Men working as

a producer. Wow. What that? Husband and wife team. Maria and Andre Jacometon. Do you want to see if there's anything French in the priority one inbox? Plenty of husband and wife and partner and partner teams in there all the time. Let's check it out.

Priority One message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel. We need a supplemental income. Supplemental. Supplemental. Yeah, it's extra. By the interest alone, could be enough to buy this ship. Adam, we got a message here from Maureen, and it's to Henok. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Goes like this. Happy birthday to he who is my husband, Henok. You are a remarkable man, and Martin and I love you in Miriam ways. Thanks for teaching me life hacks like how to tell time based on which Star Trek is on. H&I. I love seeing how much joy this podcast brings you and how much Martin laughs when you dance to the theme songs. Live long and prosper. H&I is the heroes and icons channel and the reason I know that is like that's one of the weird cable channels we'll encounter sometimes. H&I! I've never encountered that particular channel. Sometimes it'll come

in over Antenna too. It's one of those like channel 6.7 channels like buried in between channels but yeah and that channel is great for like all-day Star Trek watching if you want pretty good stuff. Well happy birthday Hanukkah. I'm sorry this is a little bit late but uh sounds like you got a great partner in Marine. Good stuff happy birthday. Ben our next message comes from Captain Lisoto and the Dith. We know them. It is to Adam and Ben and parentheses Always it's always been an Adam. Is it always been an Adam? Typically people style it Ben and Adam, but I like I like both orders. It hasn't really ever mattered to me whose name goes first

But I appreciate the consideration. Here's the message. We love you, man. Man. We love you, man. We are chilling at Quarks and relaxing all cool and playing some baseball and punching out Q when a couple of Cardis, in parentheses, they were up to no good. Started making trouble in my promenade. I got in one little fight and my pa got scared. He said, you're moving to Starbase 80. Damn, Starbase 80? And that's when I finally got the reference. Oh man, that's funny.

Good job, Captain Lesoto and the Dith. Sorry I was a little slow on the pickup there. Well, that was a lot of fun, and if you'd like to leave a message on the show, you can do it by going to maximumfun.org slash JemboTron and getting one today. It's a hundred bucks for a personal message and 200 for a commercial message and Sure appreciate it. Hey Ben What's that on did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda this episode? I

Think I'm gonna have to give it to trip Tucker cuz Like cracking the Vulcan codes and then like, ah, I just feel so guilty about cracking the code. I'm going to go tell her that I did it. Feels like there's gotta be a regulation against indulging that desire. Like I, I respect the man for feeling like he violated somebody's privacy and he needed to own up to it. But when your country's surveillance capabilities are on the line, you got to be careful about

how you do that trip. Yeah, that's no good. I think I want to choose trip for the same moment, but for the different reason. I really was sincere about that. I'm all for unburdening yourself when it makes sense to do so, when it doesn't bring another person down into your misery, especially. Part of being in a close relationship with someone is also choosing the spot and sometimes making a hard call, whether or not to like absorb the pain of a thing yourself,

cause you can take it, or sharing that burden and spreading it because it's better for you both if you both go through that. I just think this is one of those moments where it's written this way to expedite story, but not a great decision, either from the security aspect of it,

or from like a real life relationship aspect. It was a bad choice by Trip. Totally. Faith of the fart. Well, that all being said, it's about time for us to figure out what's going on next week here on the show. Of course, next week's episode, we will be covering season one, episode nine, civilization.

The Enterprise crew encounters a pre-industrial society that is afflicted with a plague caused by exploitative secret visitors. How about that? This sounds like it's actually out of civilization, the game. Yeah. This interests me greatly. This this sounds like it's actually out of Civilization the game Listen it interests me greatly no kidding

To figure out how we will be watching that I'm gonna go to Gah dot biz slash game or we keep the game of buttholes Will of the Riker Course we roll a hundred side of die on this game board, so we could end up anywhere on it. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. Right now, we're on square 83. So I'm going to go ahead and roll this bone

and see if anything happens to us for next week. Oh, I'm so excited. I rolled an 80, putting us on square 90 for next week. Chula! Did I win? Hardly. Well, that's nothing. That's a regular old episode.

Sure is. How about that? How about it? What a relief. We could have been eating breadsticks or cheese or, God, any number of other things. There's kind of a lot of consumption squares on this thing. This is not distribution. This is consumption. I like those squares. Yeah. Well, we'll hit one eventually. Not

next time though. No. Next time is a regular old episode. Thanks to everybody who supports the show at MaximumFun.org slash join. Lots of great reasons to do so. Chief among which is making sure a thing you really like gets to stick around for a long time. But also you get tons of bonus content behind the paywall. You're always adding new stuff to that. And boy, we've got so much fun bonus content planned for the next few months.

Get back there. Check it out. You get a lot for supporting the show. It's not just throwing it down a crater that you just blew up next to a snowman. And almost nobody breaks their leg supporting our show. It happened one time. Jeez. We're still in litigation. We can't talk about it. Yeah, we've been ass-player attorney. Hey, speaking of

people who are at risk of breaking their legs, our roller derby hero producer and editor, Wendy Pretty, deserves a thanks. Wendy's doling out the leg breaks. That's what I think. Yeah. No one's gonna break her legs. Yeah. That's what I think. No one's going to break her legs. Yeah. She's probably going to break our legs. We go much longer on this episode. We've got to thank Adam Ragusea for making our parody theme song, and of course, Diane Warren, who wrote the original, and Dark Materia, who wrote the original Picard song that you hear under our voices right now Gotta thank Rob Adler who runs our social media accounts and Bill Tilly our temporal Cold War time

Consigliere We love a ton. He's back making make him playing cards About every episode check out our socials to get a look at those. They still hit, they still make me laugh every time I look at them. Bill took a long time away from these and he's come back to them like he never left. It's amazing, it's like riding a bike for him. It's great, good job by him.

With that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of the greatest generation enterprise where I start to suspect that I've had my health get adversely afflicted by an exploitative secret visitor. It's like, what the fuck, man? Yeah. I mean, I would guess that at this point it's just week after week, month after month, hoof after hoof. Yeah. With you over there. I keep texting Adam, can't

work this week, sorry. John Lupicata, you make it, stand the prize. Make it, make it, make it, make it, make it so. Make it so. John Lupicata, car, car, car. Wendy, go ahead and pull this clip and save it as an effect. Get well soon, Ben. Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.