The Greatest Generation - Duraflame Money (ENT S2E1)

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

When Captain Archer and Agent Daniels are stuck in the future, they scrounge up the raw materials to communicate with the past. But with Suliban in control of the Entrepreneur, Commander Tucker hot wires everyone’s doorbells so that Hoshi can Die Hard through the vents to retake the ship. Which art project is dripping glue? What takes more technique than people give it credit for? Who should have voiced the last time on? It’s the episode with an auto-destruct-shaped hole in its heart.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

Tickets to the stream of our second contact show in Madison, Wisconsin are now on sale, but let's be real, everyone's getting tickets to all three of our streaming live shows. Because it's a fantastic deal. At 30 bucks you get access to hilarious video streams of me and Adam returning to roast and review TNG episodes, The Survivors, Sub Rosa, and Conspiracy. Plus, if you're a MaxFun supporter, you get 10 bucks off that already low price. These live shows are super fun. You can stream them right to your living room TV. During the premieres, Adam and I and the rest of the gang from Uxbridge-Shemoda hang out in

the chat and goof around, and it's a real hoot. Once they've premiered, each stream will be available through the end of the year. So even if you miss a premiere, you can still catch all three. Get access right now at greatestjentour.com. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. 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 just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast, I'm Adam Pranica. I'm Ben Harrison. Adam, how would you describe your skills of an artiste? Bad? Here's what I'll say. I grew up building models.

I grew up making the little diorama thing. I grew up as someone who enjoyed drawing with colored pencils and stuff, but I don't think any of those areas of interest equal artistic quality skill. My parents and my friends didn't see these things and go That guy should go go to a special school. Not in the art school way, I should say. What about you Ben? Well, I did go to art school I mean I went to the the art school at NYU for college, but- And what is your favorite curse word Ben? for college but and what is your favorite curse word Ben what is the curse word that you would tell to God were you to meet them at the pearly

gates that's the new school which is right up the block but you know like I think like you grew up you know like drawing my own comics. And for a long time, my friends and I loved making our own trading cards. Like Marvel trading cards were really popular when I was a kid. Yeah, did you ever get The Wizard magazine? Isn't that the one that came with Marvel trading cards or comic book trading cards?

I think I knew of it as like a, this was the thing that you would look up, like what the fair market value of your trading cards was. It was like the blue book for trading cards. Is that roughly what Wizard magazine is? See, I don't want to get this wrong because comic book folks are fucking savage. Yeah. The atomic wedgies we would be in for if we got something like that wrong. I mean, I just kind of remember it being

a magazine about comic books, but I don't remember it being like a Beckett baseball card magazine that gave you like a listing of values. That at least wasn't the reason that I bought it. I remember it almost being a form of comic in its own right. Yeah. Like this is me, this is my comics,

this is my wizard magazine, which is a comic in its own right. That's how I would introduce us when we go meet other nerd friends. So I didn't really read any Marvel comics, so the characters on the trading cards, which I intensely wanted because everybody else wanted them, so I had the binder with the three ring pages and you would put the individual cards and get them all organized and everything.

I mean, the organization was the most fun. But the characters were totally outside of context for me. So making up my own characters and making up trading cards for them was just as much fun. So I would draw on like, I would get a little like, buck slip and draw like a character on the front and then flip it over and come up with stats on the back for them. And I attempted to sell these on a number of occasions.

Like instead of having like a lemonade stand, I would like go up to the playground at the school near my house and like see if like the older boys would buy trading card packets from me. Carful of teenagers drives by, throws a bag of trash... ...at the foot of your comic book card stand. A single tear goes down your face. I'm like, trash man, that's a pretty good idea for a character.

Ha ha ha. Amazing. I admire your interest in monetizing your nerdery. That's a pretty good idea for a character. Ha ha ha. Amazing. I admire your interest in monetizing your nerdery. Yeah, from an early age. Yeah. You always had that interest. Ha ha ha.

But yeah, I never took visual arts classes in college. I think it's interesting, because we're both creative people. We do something creative for a living. But I think, like, the most drawing I've done recently is we put the Chateau Shimoda wine label design on a t-shirt in Podshop.biz. And what we had for the, like, three inch square sticker

that has gone on bottles of wine at our various wine shows around the country didn't scale up right. So I had to like draw a new vineyard from scratch. How about that? I didn't know you did that. You never told me. It was just like a while we're watching Real Housewives, I would be on the iPad like, you know, drawing rows of vines. Yeah. Kind of a thing. It was no big deal. But I chose to draw for my art project today because we rolled a Naomi Wildman square.

All aboard! We sure did. For the very first time, we hit this special square. This square required us to create a piece of art that was representative of the episode. I felt distinctly rusty getting out the marker pens and the crayons and black wing pencil Trying to create something that looked like anything Ben why don't you come up to the front of the class and and show the other students what you've made

Okay, so I got my Bristol art pad. Did you have that already or did you go and buy things special for this? I did have it already, but it is the first use case of it. Am I using? I had recently gotten some markers and pencils with the idea that maybe I should be doing some drawing around town.

Here's my picture. Wow. Wow. You're much better at drawing than I expected you to be. So the picture, hold it up again, is Sillick in the scene where he's trying to communicate with the ghostly figure from out of time that he usually talks to,

and he can't quite get him in the booth. And instead of him in the booth, there is a giant middle finger flipping him off. Just incredible. Simpson's yellow is the color of the finger and Sillick looks pretty good in the like red pajamas and the greener skin. I was going for the yellow-y hologram,

like when Archer is communicating to him from the future and stuff. But it did kind of come out Simpson's yellow. I think for first time back at it, after a long time away from visual arts, I'm pretty pleased with how that came out. It was like getting back on the rowing machine, you know, it's like, man, I haven't done this since I was 17. Let's see if I'm still any good at it. Nope. Rowing's such a weird comparison because

good at it is also a weird description of that activity. More technique and rowing than I think a lot of people give it credit for, but yeah. I'm also just weaker and have less stamina. And, you know, analogously, I think that drawing is something that you probably get worse at if you don't practice, so. Like so many things.

Yeah. What did you do for your piece of artwork? You warned me ahead of time that glue was drying. Yeah. Yeah. I hope it's dry because I've got it in clamps right now. I'm gonna take these clamps off and cross my fingers when I hold this thing up to the

camera. I thought about doing a diorama was my original plan with the concept that I had, but I only have epoxy and stuff for gluing up things around the house. I didn't have any Elmer on hand. I have all kinds of adhesives in my house, but my problem was I don't have any Elmer on hand. I have all kinds of adhesives in my house, but my problem was I don't have a color printer. Because I was gonna print out scenes for a diorama and put them in the box so that there's a foreground

and background effect. Would have been great. I mean, just hearing the description. That's a fantastic idea. Yeah. I mean, I always knew you had a lot of adhesives around the house, because every time I go over there and I try to open a magazine like can't wedge it open to save my life. Can't do it. Now what I do have

is a bunch of trash at my house so what I did is I made a model of the Starship Enterprise NX01. Wow! And it's just out of frame. I'm gonna take it out of its clamps and I'm gonna hold it up and I'm going to fucking pray that this thing doesn't fall apart in my hands. Is this a spiritual sequel to the whale probe model you took on tour a couple of years ago? It might be!

Okay, what I've got is that. Wow. Oh man, so what Adam has done is glued two like paper plates, like party paper plates with a jazzy design on them together in kind of a clamshell pattern. He's made the superstructure of the ship out of some corrugated cardboard and disposable spoons. And then the warp nacelles appear to be a pair of Gatorade bottles with blue straws

glued alongside to simulate the plasma fence. That's right. Which is very clever, because the orange top of those Gatorade bottles, the basard collector in the front of, God, I feel like such a fucking nerd that I know this terminology. You know all of it, yeah.

Don't forget the spoons, Ben. Yeah, I noted the spoons. The spoons are good. Oh, and they're also on the underside. Uh-huh. Tremendous. Then I've got a length of cardboard that I've kind of sandwiched together, also glued. The one thing I couldn't quite pull off is the angle of the nacelles.

Yeah. The gravity of the bottles just pulls them down in a way that I couldn't account for. Yeah. You need some metal within that cardboard to hold the shape or something like that. We got some drippy glue here. Tacky glue, the brand of glue that I used. Okay. It's not quite setting up all the way, but there it is.

It's a thing of beauty, Adam. all the way, but there it is. It's a thing of beauty, Adam. I filled up these nacelles, like I lit some matches and I blew the smoke into the nacelles. I was wondering. But you can't really see it because like, what I wanted to make was like a version of the ship that was doing that trick.

Yeah. You know, the busted warp core trick, but it doesn't really read. I mean, they do look steamed up inside. I think that that's the effect. There's some condensation and some steam in there. I like it. I am so delighted by your, your art project.

And I'm delighted by yours. You should, you know what, Ben, you should put that on your refrigerator. Kick some of Doron's fucking shitty art off of there. Take back some of Doron's fucking shitty art off of there. Come on. Take back some of that real estate. He can barely draw a circle, you know, upon request. So he doesn't really have much to offer in the visual arts department, not like his dad. Art school, not in his future.

Well, Adam, this was a momentous square to hit for a momentous episode. We're breaking into season two of Star Trek Enterprise. This is season two, episode one, Shockwave, part two. We were hanging on a cliff at the end of the last episode, Ben, and when we come back to this season, we do not hear Major Barrett's voice giving us the last time on. It's Scott Bakula. What do you think of that choice? There's so much that connects this series to It's Four Bears.

I think this was a mistake. I think it should have been Majel. I mean, it hasn't been Majel for a long time, but. I guess, yeah, she's not the voice of the computer, huh? Yeah, and I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, anyone but Bakula might have been a more interesting choice, but I guess, I guess in talking it out, like,

he's the one that's out of time. I guess maybe I would have preferred Crueman Daniels to be a human adjacent or fantastic kind of representation of the last time on, you know, sort of a computer man in his own right. Yeah. He's a very emotional guy. So it's hard for me to picture like the way he would, he would take it if he was given that voiceover. But yeah, we're reminded of the cliff we've been hanging on, but also like, I feel like when we actually cut

into the action, the cliff is not nearly so tall as we were led to believe. I think so too, yeah. Because DePaul is still on FaceTime trying to persuade Sillick that Archer left the ship, like you can come over and check yourself. And that's what he agrees to do instead of just destroy them, which seems like he should be perfectly happy to do. The Enterprise at this point is living out one of Ben's fantasies, being surrounded on all sides by balls.

There are 30 armed vessels surrounding us. And it's interesting that Sillick doesn't just blow the ship away. Yeah. It seems at every point of both the last episode and this one, that is what he wants to do. Very much so, but he doesn't. He boards them. They're talking about like having security meet these soldiers and T'Pol's like, no, we must be super duper chill because they are capable of blowing us away at any moment.

And we need to treat that seriously. You can really tell these are past people because Janeway would have already set Autodestruct at this point. It's my favorite way of relaxing. Is there an Autodestruct on this version of Enterprise? Wow, great question. This is the use case. We have been through an entire season of Star Trek and that hasn't come up.

That accounts for the emptiness I felt at the end of the first season. Just like something's missing. I can't put my nipples on it. I've got a auto-destruct shaped hole in my heart. Speaking of Tripp, he does not want to just let these people come over. Being boarded seems like the worst possible outcome in this instance. Back to the 31st century, Archer and Daniels are walking around this wasteland, this ruined city that they were like way high up.

I was appreciative that they cut out the middle episode that was just them going down like 80 flights of stairs together. Yeah. Yeah, they could not quite build the abandoned stairwell set that was required for a moment like that. We learned that time travel is very complicated. It's not just some dumb HG Wells mechanics.

There's no way for you to understand. Try me. But Daniels is like kind of constantly trying to dissuade Archer from asking too many questions about how any of this stuff is working. They're on the ground now and Daniels notices that there is a monument missing in this part of town. It's right near the library and it commemorates a certain federation.

You know, Archer doesn't get to know what is a federation of, but it means that like some key stuff didn't happen in this timeline. Because this city has been fucked up for a long ass time. Things are so messed up in this city that this observation doesn't really stick out maybe like it could, I thought. Like, oh yeah, the timeline has been ruined due to the choices that have been made.

But like, yeah, the statue's gone too. That sucks. I bet a lot of things are different. Right. Like how can you tell that it was never built and not just that shit got destroyed here? Yeah. Like it's not that there's a different ruined monument

that says not for the Federation on it. The library seems like a great place to go in a circumstance like this. That's the decision that they make. Let's go there and see if we can learn about what other historical events have changed in this timeline. And once they get inside, they find a matte painting

of a giant room filled with bookshelves. And Daniels is like, paper books? Heee, heee, heee. Must be a very unusual smell to Daniels. Yeah, the dust budget on this episode, through the roof. Absolutely, gotta cut over to Enterprise and find that Suleyman are just all over the ship. They're scanning for Archer.

They're hitting buttons. They're doing whatever they want. It feels gross. It feels gross as paper books in a library. Yeah. It's bad. You don't like to see it. They're tossing the ship.

They get their computer disks back, which is like the whole fucking thing that they spent the entire last episode stealing from the SulaBahn. Right back in the SulaBahn's hands. Sillik is finally satisfied that Archer has time traveled because they have some readings from the TurboLift that indicate that there's like temporal shenanigans afoot in there. So he's like, I guess, going to like be super cool to the crew of the entrepreneur and not murder all of them. But he is taking their ship. Yeah.

That part isn't to be negotiated. And so, uh, the enterprise gets underway surrounded by all these balls. And, uh, with the crew shoved into their quarters, it seems like the ship is going to be run by the Suleyman from here. It's like a shelter in place kind of a thing. Yeah. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Admiral Forrest is in big trouble with the Vulcans. They are big mad about the entrepreneur having been ordered home

and no call, no showing. Yeah. This will get you fired from your average service job. It's a bad look. And so, Val is kind of like rioting for that. He's like, this is totally unacceptable. Like they were supposed to drop Vlox and T'Pol off with that Vulcan ship and they were supposed to be here now, you haven't heard from them. They're three days overdue. We had them on long range scanners surrounded by other ships. What's that about?

This would have made me so mad, this whole lie of omission thing, because Soval has known the whole time that something's up with Enterprise because it's covered with balls. And that is the reason why it wasn't able to meet up with the Vulcan ship on schedule. Why did Soval not mention this? It really irritates Forrest for good reason.

He's like, if you knew how much Archer loves being surrounded by balls, you would understand the choices he's making. you would understand the choices he's making. It seems like Soval doesn't really want to do this, but does anyway, like ordering that Vulcan ship to go and find Enterprise, like not just to wait for Enterprise to come to it. Yeah, like it kind of feels like whatever that Vulcan ship was up to

was more important to them than commissioning the human space exploration program. Yeah. The outcome is at least a Vulcan ship will be involved in this incident. You know, regardless of the reason that it's there, it seems like they'll be able to help in some way. I did like the comedy in this episode. This scene ends with a laugh out loud line from Admiral Forrest and he says, "'Archard knows what he's doing.'" Yeah.

Does he really? Woof. Ha ha ha. ["Sulting Long"] There you salty long. Enterprise has been taken back to some kind of Suleyman base and inside Silek and at his hench argue about why the shadowy figure that they serve won't show up and give them further

instructions. They can't just make their own choices. They got to answer to this guy. Where's the boss? This was kind of part of the inspiration for my picture of the, of the middle finger flipping off Silic. I don't necessarily want this to be

representational of that man or of Archer. Like I want, I want the viewer of this piece to be able to bring, you know, whatever that is to the, the, the picture. But I feel like Silic's relationship to the picture. But I feel like Silek's relationship to the shadowy man in the light column is very much one of someone who is in an abusive relationship. He does not want to piss off the shadowy man because he knows that that will be bad for him. So he really wants to run everything by the shadowy man.

Yeah, it's a real pain in the ass for the people who work with the shadowy man when he just refuses to contact them in an intense situation. Like what are the SulaBans supposed to do? It's weird. It's weird, it's like we're supposed to read your mind, but you know, you don't need to know what we're up to somehow.

One interesting data point about this moment is that Sillick and the Hench feel a little bit differently. Sillick is positive that these temporal signatures that they found mean that the mission isn't a failure, but the Hench is like, you fucked up, Sillick. We're going down for this. I don't know why you're trying to reach the shadowy man so hard. Cause-

Probably take more mutant powers away from you if you tell them about how bad you fucked up. Yeah. So they're on, they're on different sides of this particular issue. Over in that wreckage of a library, Archer and Daniels are looking for evidence of the Federation and they can't seem to find anything. And it's becoming clear that if, Archer and Daniels are looking for evidence of the Federation and they can't seem to find anything. And it's becoming clear that if Jonathan Archer doesn't exist in the

past, if he's been plucked away the way that he has, the Federation doesn't happen. That's how instrumental Jonathan Archer is. I don't get it. There's nothing really past the Warp Five program that lines up with the history that Daniels knows about. So they wander around this library. Archer really should be supervised in here because there are lots of books that he shouldn't know about.

The Romulan Star Empire. What's that? Maybe you shouldn't be reading that. It's mostly played for comedy, that Daniels is just like, no, no, no, no, no, don't look at that book. Oh, Robert McKee's story? Slap.

Save the cat? I'm interested. Daniels believes that the only way to restore the timeline that he's familiar with is to get Archer back to his timeline. Yeah, because Daniels was trying to save Archer and therefore the timeline by pulling him into the 31st century, but by pulling Archer out of the past, that was the thing that completely ruined history.

That explains why Sillic was so dead set on getting Archer specifically and not even like destroying the entrepreneur or whatever. Everything has been fucked up on this planet, but using Archer's communicator and scanner, it seems like they are a few random pieces of hardware away from creating a piece of gear that might

help them out in this moment. And that's kind of where this scene ends. Archer, go get me this list of things. And so he goes. It's interesting because like the bad guys in the temporal Cold War are 300 years earlier in the timeline than Daniel's and they don't have the ability to actually travel in time, but they can send information around in time. And so Daniels is going to fight them on that turf. He's going to modify the technology that Archer has to send information. Back on the Sullivan base, T'Pol is being interrogated and she's got some kind of device around her neck pumping her full of truth-telling drugs. and she's got some kind of device around her neck pumping her full of truth-telling drugs.

And that's the only thing interesting visually about this scene. There's absolutely nothing going on in the lower portion of the frame that caught my eye whatsoever. Nothing heaving and trying to burst out a very thin fabric. Yeah, the Sula-Banian pentothal was too distracting for you. Yeah. But it's interesting in this scene, like, to Paul's truth is that time travel is impossible.

So she's not, even when she's pumped full of these drugs, like, her answers serve to mislead in an interesting way. She is a non-believer in what everyone else in the temporal cold war knows to be true. And yeah, it's very frustrating for Solek. Meanwhile, back in the future, Daniels is disassembling all of Archer's gadgets and, I guess, rewiring with like pieces of copper that Archer has found on like a soup ladle. Have you ever seen a spoon like this covered in metal?

It seemed like the handle was like wrapped with copper wire, which is a terrible place to put copper, because that's going to make your hands stinky. Yeah. I think they needed to come up with a different idea of where they got the copper TVH. Yeah, but like you look at a city like this and you know that junkies will have ripped all the wire out of the walls, you know. Over in Reed's quarters, he gets a call from a speaker on the

wall. It's Tripp Tucker who has hot wired his doorbell to use as a communicator. I thought this was going to be Daniels and Archer on the communicator, but it was Tripp, actually. Sure was. The good news is that he's figured out a way to talk to people using their doorbells. The bad news is that this is the only thing he's able to do about their situation. I mean, Reed hasn't been doing nothing. If you'll notice, he's put on some bright lipstick with his time alone. You should always look your best, even though you're by yourself.

You know what I mean? I never noticed this. My TV does not represent their lips being hot pink or whatever you're saying they are. There is something about Dominic Keating's character specifically that seems to be wearing the most lipstick on this show. It is a lot.

He is very kissable. And this composition is so close to his face because he's leaned right up into the doorbell. Yeah. A lot of people are leaned up into the doorbell a little later on, but, um, T'Pol winds up kind of tossed back into her quarters and she's still super drugged up. Archer has finally, with Daniel's help, figured out a way to communicate with the past and this disembodied hologram head of archers appears in T'Pol's

room. You're on the ceiling. Why aren't you on a monitor? There's no technology for him. I thought this scene was really well done, like the T'Pol not seeming to be in a head space of knowing whether or not what she's experiencing is real space of knowing whether or not what she's experiencing is real and probably also like sort of at the mercy of the drugs in terms of like being forced to answer questions honestly. Yeah her reacts here are great because you can see her slowly becoming more with it, but there's never a moment in the scene where she's 100% with it. He needs her to shape up and go to Daniel's quarters and get a thing.

There was a little bit of a moment in a previous episode where T'Pol had to like say like, hey, Archer, I know you've, like we've known each other a long time now. Have I ever asked you a favor? And this sort of feels like Archer cashing that chip when he's like, I just needed you to trust me on this. I know you don't believe in time travel,

but I need you to make this happen. So she gets onto the doorbell communication system with the rest of the crew and this jailbreak society starts talking through how they're going to get out because they can't just open the doors from the inside. That's something that the Sula-Bahn appeared to have thought of. But there are channels and passages through the ships that if your body was little enough, you might be able to wriggle through. And that's how Hoshi Sato gets nominated to be the jailbreaker. Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs. be the jailbreaker. Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs.

You can't not see the diehard similarities happening here, right? But because Hoshi's involved, I would call it try hard. That's what they could have named the episode as she wriggles her way through all these tiny areas of the ship. Yeah. Making her way finally to the area

above Dr. Flax's quarters. Yeah, it's like a Jeffreys tube, but way shittier. Like they didn't clear as much of the equipment out of it. So yeah, it seems like real cramped quarters. She reaches a hands down through like the ceiling cat is watching you masturbate whole. He passes her, I guess some hypo sprays that he's manufactured. She then keeps wriggling to a channel that she can get out of to get to Reed's quarters.

And oh, wouldn't you know it, Rick Berman had something to do with this episode, Adam. Adam Tate Yeah, because the episode's written by two 12-year-old boys. We need to get what should be a heroic figure topless as soon as possible. Yeah, she jumps out of this hole, but a hook grabs her top and like an 80s, like, like ski comedy rips her top off. The one person you don't want seeing you like this

is Malcolm Reed, right? Yeah, he seems like the most lecherous character in the main cast. That's the worst part. I mean, shit happens when you're wriggling around the vent system, but yeah, that's not how you want to be found or who you want to find you.

Do you think, I feel like Trip is ass-bad. But maybe he understands better now that he's covered in superfluous nipples. You're never gonna let that go, are you? I don't get creepshow vibes from Trip Tucker at all. The way I do from Reed. No, but he's just, he's very horny, you know? Anyways, some Suleymane guards stumble upon T'Pol in the hallway. She appears to be still suffering from the after effects of the Suleymane pentathal.

That's just a bruise. She's being used as bait to distract them so that they can be knocked out. They drag those bodies to Reed's room where Hoshi's job is to watch them there. Kind of a shitty job like she had a hero turn. You lose your top one time and you get stuck watching the bodies. That sucks. They never take you seriously after that. Yeah.

Faith of the fart. Remember when you said you'd never find the time for the gym? But then you got the membership, didn't you? And suddenly, it's just a part of your routine now. A couple times a week, no excuses, it's just what you do. Reading is kind of like that, right? We all say we don't have the time, but the truth is, we don't have the right environment. That's why there's Soul Reader, the world's first wearable e-reader.

It's like a gym membership for your mind. Just put it on like glasses, lay back, and your books appear right in front of you on a pristine e-ink display. No distractions, no excuses. 20 minutes before bed, and that's all it takes. Now you're reading more than ever and you don't even need to take a shower after. Unless it's that kind of book. Soul Reader, your personal sanctuary for the mind.

Visit soulreader.com to start reading without distraction. That's S-O-L-R-E-A-D-E-R.com. Use the code SCARVES to check out to receive free shipping on your purchase of Soul Reader Limited Edition, available now. You know that feeling when you grab a toothpick of cheese at the grocery store and you discover your new favorite snack? Or when you test drive a car and just know it's the right one? And no one would buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first and walking around the store, right?

The best things in life let you try before you buy. That's why Squarespace gives you two full weeks to build your dream website completely free. Just like that test drive, you'll get to experience everything. Stunning templates, drag and drop design tools, and award-winning customer support. And like those grocery store samples, there's no pressure. Take two muffin papers of nuts. No one cares. You're just getting a handful of possibility right at your fingertips. So join the millions who have turned their passion into a beautiful website and start off by

grabbing yourself a little nibble off the tray by going to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch by going to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash scarves to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You never know what you'll learn more about on the Celebrity Trivia Show Go Fact Yourself. For over 150 episodes, we've welcomed guests like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Audie Cornish, and Andy Richter to tell us why they love what they love, and then get quizzed on it. And past quizzes have included some pretty unexpected topics like... Reverse painting. The perfect flip turn while swimming.

Prince's house party playlist from that one episode of New Girl. And so much more! Plus, our guests meet surprise experts in their topics. Like the time we met an actual celebrity cow. So listen to Go Fact Yourself twice a month, every month on Maximum Fun. Do it for the cow! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo We say, why subscribe to expensive streaming services when you can stream tons of insane movies online for free? Yeah, as long as you're fine with 25 randomly inserted, super loud car insurance commercials. On our podcast, Free With Ads, we review streaming movies from the darkest corner of the internet's bargain bin.

From the good to the weird to the holy, look at Van Dam's big old butt. Free with ads, a free podcast about free movies that's worth the price of admission. Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod spot. And you will never take the greatest hit alive. Ben would rather die. Rather die. So that leaves Reed tripping to Paul back out in the corridors, skulking around,

avoiding the patrols. And Reed breaks into Crueman Daniel's quarters and reaches into a locker. This is a fun shot, right? The idea being that this locker is impossibly long. You could throw a hot dog down this locker's hallway and not hit the end of it. It's crazy. He pulls out a device from it, a device that's similar to all the other weird shit that they

found in Truman Daniels' quarters. He doesn't get very far. Once he gets outside, he's found and then Scylla interrogates him. And I mean, Reed tells the truth when he says, I don't know what this thing is. I don't know what anything in Crue and Daniel's quarters is. All I know is Archer wanted me to grab this thing and destroy it or something.

Whatever I was trying to do was to keep it away from you. I really liked this because it, like, I wish, I sort of wish we'd gotten to see what Archer told to Paul about this thing, because it does feel like Reed is like giving Silic exactly the kind of information that will make him intensely curious and want to turn this thing on, which appears to be what Daniels ultimately wants to have happen. So he tells Sillick that they were worried that he was going to use it to contact someone. Sillick immediately assumes that that's shadowy man. And meanwhile, the rest of the gang do a raid on engineering and take out all of the SulaBond guards in there.

This evidently is a sort of place where you can discharge weapons freely. This is an absolute firefight in here. A really great and exciting scene, I thought. Yeah, like we had that scene in an episode a few weeks ago where they were like pushing the engine as hard as they possibly could and little like wisps of flame were coming out of grates in the warp core. This is what that should have looked like. The amount of sparks and explosions that they do in this scene is so exciting. Well, this is season two, episode one budget.

Yeah, absolutely. Whereas the episode you're talking about was toward the end of season one. Right. And they just had like Dura Flame money for the effects. Yeah, that's it exactly. Sillick on the Suleybon base studies the mystery device that he took from Reed when he gets a call blown in from the SulaBahn on the Enterprise, telling him that there's a warp core

breach in process. And I love how interested Sillick is in delegating the task of dealing with whatever that is. Like, he doesn't have time for that. He's like, stop bothering me with it. Just tow the ship away. And the guy is like, are you going to tow the tractor beam, guys? And he's like, no, you do it.

I'm doing something else. Yeah. I'll only slow you down. That's such a great managerial line also. Oh, yeah. No, it seems like you got things handled. I'll only slow you down. We'll be fine.

Good luck. So yeah, the core breach is in progress. The SulaBan ships start dragging the entrepreneur away from the SulaBan hive so that it's not going to blow up the rest of their little cell ships. All of the SulaBan soldiers crucially evacuate. And it's looking really explodey when the cell ships kind of drop it and head back to base. And then the explosions suddenly stop and the entrepreneur goes to warp. Great job by TripTucker, like selling this. They really sold the shit out of it. The effects make this look dire.

Like these nacelles are definitely going to blow big, but they don't. Silic finally gets his column of light going after messing with this gadget. And he thinks he's talking to his shadowy man. And then the shadowy man like jump kicks him in the chest. And it turns out that was Archer and he's now back in his present. Time travel is confusing for me, Ben. Does this moment suggest that it's always been Archer

as the shadowy man? I don't think so. Yeah, it can't be. But it could be. Maybe, that'd be fucked up. Like mirror universe Archer. Because didn't we hear that it's like the guys from Voyager with the triangle full of hair that are one of the parties in the temporal cold war?

Oh yeah. Yeah, you know they're a big part of it. Yeah. Archer is pissed in this scene. Holy moly. Yeah. Like holding a phaser up to Silek's face, angry. Talking about blowing his fucking head off and shit.

Yeah. He wants those ships that are chasing Enterprise to be called off because once Enterprise went to warp, it's not like it's going to be able to escape. Suleymane are chasing after it. So he wants the chasing ships to stop. And he also wants those data disks back. That's the only way he can get out of jail with the Vulcans and the Starfleet command people that are so mad at him back at home.

So we see the entrepreneur getting absolutely rocked once again, surrounded by balls. And this time it is an open firefight. And they actually get a couple of good shots in, like they take out one or two of the cell ships and they're like rushing again to get into the warm embrace of the Vulcan ship, which is presumably much better armed than they are. Jared Sautner This felt to me like the most action-packed ship-to-ship combat scene we've gotten on the series,

the entire series. It's really well done. It was really wild, but they don't have the Vulcan ship on the sensors. It's looking pretty dire and then suddenly the attacks just subside. And I love the way all of the moments on the bridge after the attacks subside had like smoke kind of like hanging in the air. It looks so great that the bridge wasn't like super fucked up, but you could tell it had just been through something. One of the balls out in space is a little unusual. It's different from the others.

And that's something you're going to have to check out. And the reason it's so different is because that's the one that Archer's on board. They hear from Archer, he's back. Great news. I feel like I've been away for a thousand years. It's not just Archer though. He's got Sillick in there too. Yeah. Not standard Starfleet procedure to take hostages, but he's bent the rules once again. From what I understand, there aren't many standard procedures anyway.

It's true. To break. We cut to, I guess, a few days later and they're presenting all their evidence and they're docked with the Vulcan ship and on FaceTime with the high command and Soval and the rest of the diplomatic Vulcans back on Earth. Soval is satisfied that they did not, in fact, murder all those thousands of people in the colony. I is satisfied that they did not, in fact, murder all those thousands of people in the colony. I really thought that with time travel, they were gonna like un-murder those people.

No way. They did not. They stay dead. Yeah. Which means Archer's still gonna have to make those phone calls. All 3,000 of them. That's what season two is, is just episode after episode of him making hundreds of phone calls. This moment's interesting because it's an opportunity for the Enterprise crew to defend

their actions and get an extension basically on the project. And when Saval isn't trying to hear that at all. Trip just goes off script, like tearing into him in a very satisfying way. Are you pathetic? That's enough, commander. He's doing that thing where he knows he's getting fired. So like, this is why you have security escort people out of the building.

It's for stuff that Trip Tucker does in scenes like this. Right. He is this far from Edward Norton in fight clubbing himself by kicking his own ass all over the bridge. What sucks about this moment is how fucking feckless Admiral Forrest is, because as soon as Tripp does this, he basically grabs Ambassador Saval's boot

and like sticks it in his mouth entirely. I thought this was maybe the worst Admiral Forrest scene of the series. I fucking hated it. And I hated him for it. It's not great. But what it does instrumentally though, is it forces to Paul and Archer to be the ones to defend

themselves instead of Admiral Forrest. And I guess that's, there's a utility there by him being so useless in this moment. What's weird about what Archer says though, like Archer, Archer can't stop speaking in metaphor. So he's like, you know, you know, we're a lot like animals. It reminds me of what I like to do on holiday, which is watch animals give birth. But really maybe the comparison is more like human development because human space exploration is a lot like that, isn't it? We're gonna go out into the night looking for action. When we find something we like, we're liable to clumsily mount some planets. Maybe we'll shoot our ropes into some nebulas.

Your analogy is very colorful, Captain, but I question whether it addresses the consequences of your actions. Trip is going to grow some extra nipples. Remember that trip, don't you? And Trip's like, I don't want to talk about that, Cap. Sometimes the ropes shoot back. Remember when we visited Planet Come? We like see scenes from season one in this moment. Like that's, that's big fun. Aliens are getting pregnant. We're making them pregnant, which means the babies

are going to come out weird. And I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me. And that's what being human's all about. Shooting your ropes out into space and seeing what happens. To find out what happens. What? When humans stop being polite with alien species and start getting real, what you get is the real Star Trek.

Enterprise. It's a speech that goes into a lot of places. Yeah. But ultimately, T'Pol hears this and is like, this isn't enough. This is not convincing. I'm gonna have to step in here to help emphasize Archer's point.

And T'Pol does that great T'Pol thing where she is not gonna be 100% positive in her description of what's going on here. She's like, look, there's been a lot of bad and I could show you the video of all that bad. Ropes have gone into some really crazy places. That temple, that wasn't great. Yeah, but there have been some good things too. Like when they uncovered that secret base,

that was interesting, right? You like that. Yeah. And then kind of generally sticks up for the humans. And Ambassador Saval doesn't want to hear this so fucking hard, he just turns and leaves the room. Feeling like kind of an emotional reaction when he walks out in that huff. Maybe it's just the way his robes fly around when he pivots on his heel to leave. It's unclear about whether or not this entire moment has been persuasive.

And we get like the single brass instrument of T'Pol saving Archer's ass once again, which kind of like teases the idea that this whole thing worked in my mind. Yeah. Archer pays her a visit in her quarters after hours and she's wearing her like mid-riffy silkiest, sheerest pajamas. And he's immediately like feeling a little bit guilty about it like, oh, I think somebody saw me come in here.

They're gonna get the wrong idea. It is always ab day for T'Pol, right? Like when you go to the ab crunch machine on the ship's gym, like always occupied. Yeah. Very intense belly button on T'Pol too. I'm not going to be a judge of belly buttons. I'm not judging it.

I'm just saying it's remarkable. And it's out all the time in this episode. It's funny that T'P all the time in this episode. It's funny that T'Pol is so like put together when Archer walks in wearing the dumpiest gray sweatpants you've ever seen on an episode of Star Trek. Like these are store brand sub champion level dump truck sweats.

Yeah, no, these, yeah, these are Kirkland sweats. Yeah. These are Kirkland sweats. Yeah. And he tells her that he believes the human's right to explore space has been extended. And it was T'Pol that made the argument irrefutable. So thanks for that one, T'Pol. Did you like this episode? Star Trek colon enterprise. I am glad that we get to keep exploring space with this crew. I mean, it would be a very interesting place to stop a series.

Season two, episode one, series finale. Did not see that coming. What it does is like, instead of ending the series, ends once and for all, any sort of affection I would have for Admiral Forrest. That guy fucking sucks. That entire scene with him and Soval, not forgivable in my mind.

Like Soval's always gonna Soval, but Forrest has got to say something. He's got to at least try that he doesn't. Oof. Hard to know how he's ever gonna earn my trust or respect back after that. Yeah, I couldn't tell if that was because like he needed to like maintain some veneer of dispassion so that

when he then made the case to the command council later, it would, you know, seem honestly derived or something. But like, it's not even clear that Forrest is on the command council. Right. Like what does Saval have on you, Forrest? Does he have, like, you know, pictures of you cheating on your wife or something? Yeah, I don't know. That scene stuck out to me so much that it kind of shades how I feel

about the episode in general, even though I think generally I like the episode and I'm satisfied with how the cliffhanger concluded. I have two. I think this is a much less annoying version of time travel than we usually get in Star Trek. You know what's so interesting about the resolution to the time travel story is that we don't get Archer bouncing through a portal and the reverse shot of Daniel's being like,

I did it again. Or like the cityscape around him being like magically rebuilt. Right. In some way like... We never check back in with him. Don't we need resolution with Daniels in this episode? Well, what I really love about the way Daniels is depicted in this episode is he has seemed sort of all powerful and all knowing in previous interactions with him and...

But he's not. He's not. He's screwed up big time. Like he describes pulling Archer into the future as like the greatest error in the history of time travel in this episode and it's his fucking fault. Time travel just seems like a thing you can't make a mistake doing. Like as much as the stock has crashed with General Forest,

like so too is it as it crashed with Daniels. Like what the fuck is that guy's deal? Yeah, I don't know. You better believe I'm going through his quarters, going to that giant locker, taking out whatever I can find. I want to go into the endless locker that is our P1 inbox though, Adam, see what's in there. It really is.

I reached my arm into it and it just kept going and going. Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel. Need a supplemental income. Supplemental income? Supplemental. Supplemental. Yeah, it's extra.

By the interest alone, could be enough to buy this ship. Then we got a priority win message here of a promotional nature. That message goes like this. My friends are FODs in Salt Lake and they do incredible work. Outer darkness tattoo parlor in Salt Lake City. If you could give us the Jim Jaw song as well as an O'Brien drop. Miles be Jim Jaw, Miles be quick, Miles go under the Jim-Jaw stick, all around the Jim-Jaw clock, Mila wants that Jim-Jaw cock.

I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien, this is fucking spectacular. Wow. We recently went on a space camp adventure where I was the captain and it was highly difficult. Please give a thank you to the crew of the Odyssey as they deserve it and tell Cad and Alex I love them from Colton. So here's the thing the Outer Darkness Tattoo Parlor in Salt Lake City is a place that you should visit. Yeah. If you a tattoo, you can find it at 423 West 800 South in Salt Lake City. Just, but like, who fucking uses an address anymore to find anything?

Outer Darkness Tattoo Parlor is what you gotta enter into your map application and that's how you find it. What is going on in Salt Lake City? This is like the kind of address you see in a city in Europe. 423W800SA300. What is that? Yeah, I don't get it. It sounds like Colton might be the one

to make something indelible on your birdie. How fun would that be to get ink from an FODO.D.? You're an F.O.D., they're an F.O.D. They're tattin' you up, you can talk about the show, try not to giggle while they're, you know, doing a sensitive little bit of drawing on your skin. No chance of that. I think I might put the show on to ensure steady hands. There you go. Our next priority one message is from Nick and it's to Bridge. Bridge, you're my drunk Shimoda. I posted on Mastodon that I was having a shitty day and your first response was to ship two

cases of tea from England to California. So my response is this priority one message. You rule. Thanks for being a true friend of DeSoto and of me. And now, please play the Road Drop. ["Rolling in the Rain"] ["Rolling in the Rain"] ["Rolling in the Rain"]

Good job, Bridge, for seeing the FOD bat signal. Yeah. And taking action. That rules. That's how you do it. I bet that tea was good. They don't fuck around in England. I'm sure there's shitty tea everywhere.

You think? I know. Finally, Ben, we've got a message from an employee of WGBH Boston. Whoa! I can't read those letters without hearing the sound, right? No, impossible. Outlining the letters. It's a total classic.

One of the S-tier logos. It's almost as amazing as, what's the production company that we made fun of for an entire episode? Steven J. Canel. Holy shit, I just pulled that out of the air. That's wild. That, yes. Hey, I'm gonna put you on the spot, Ben.

Better logo. Stephen J. Canel or WGBH. It's an impossible question to answer. Yeah, like, it's like picking between my children, you know? Obviously, Daron is better. Well, we should maybe put a poll into the socials. Let the FODs deal with it. Yeah.

Anyway, this employee's message goes like this, today I suffered through the experience of having to sit in a real person professional meeting about this old house and somehow Not get to do any bits about it. I managed it If only just and figured I'd throw you some scars for making my professional life just a little more embarrassing Keep up the great work guys. Man. I do not think I would be able to I do not think I would be able to survive that meeting without doing any bits. That's, you were made of tougher stuff, an employee of WGBH Boston.

When you work at WGBH, do all the phones ring with that sound from the logo screen? Are the cubicles all like handmade, beautiful pieces of woodwork by by Norm? Imagine what that office is like so much cool stuff. I bet They're gonna go back and do a show in Boston and then maybe do a studio tour They have like a they have a performance venue at WGBH. I think didn't the Flophouse just do a show there. I Don't know. We don't need to do a wine show every time we go to Boston.

I'm sorry, Ben, we do. Oh, really? We really do, yeah. Contractually, we must do a wine show. Okay, well, if you would like to see us return to Boston or just would like to hear some of your words coming out of our mouth, go to maximumfun.org slash Jumbotron and get yourself a P1 today. Hey Ben.

What's that Adam? Did you find yourself a Stephen J. Canell? What are you doing taking your top off, Hoshi, you silly goose? Wow, blaming Hoshi? Yeah. Yikes, Ben. She just loves dumping them out. Clearly. Oh, I hate what they did to Hoshi this episode. Not just for the boob scene, but she should have been the McClane. Like for once in this entire series.

Like give her the A story, make her instrumental in the success of the mission. It would have been so cool. Now how she babysit these fucking comatose Suleyman. That's what you get to do. You get humiliated and then a bad boring job. What a bummer. Yeah. So thumbs down to that, but it's her fault. Wow.

Oh, is this going to be what season two is like? Yeah. Ben switches lanes on his entire personality. That's exciting. Yeah. It's the car swerving toward the off-ramp of extremely bad takes about Star Trek Enterprise. Yeah, I love that. When it was up that hench this episode.

Yeah, yeah, that one guy. I kept thinking that he was gonna die because he's kinda popping off a lot, kinda has a lot of his own ideas about things in a way that like, Sillick is running the show if it's not Ghostly Man. Yeah. Similarly, Commander Williams back at Starfleet HQ was kind of popping off a lot in a way where I was like, this guy is done for in some way. I just haven't figured it

out yet. Yeah. They've really felt like two sides of one coin. I mean, all those guys back in San Francisco, like lantern jaw classic, like military industrial complex types. But this hench, I don't know. I didn't think he was long for the world. Very surprised he lived through this episode with how much he was popping off in a situation like this, with how Sillick treated him in that very dismissive way.

Go ahead and deal with the warp core breach guy. I mean, to deal with this, that's what makes him my drunk Schmota. Wow. Faith of the fart. It's time to start thinking about our next episode though, Adam. Why don't you head to gach.biz slash game? Well, I tell you about season two episode two, carbon Creek. After Archer and Tripp become curious about a visit to Paul made to a Pennsylvania mining

town called Carbon Creek, she tells the two a tale about a Vulcan ship that crash landed in 1957. I think it's 1958. Wow, how about that? Story time with T'Pol. Probably completely absent any embellishments, Ben. And Cusack, the third Cusack sibling in this upcoming episode, Adam. About that. Let's see if the way we experience the next episode has any embellishments.

With that, I will go to the game of butt holes, The Will of the Riker Quantum Leap, where I will roll a 100-sided die that will tell us how we will experience the next episode. Here's that roll. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. Ben, we have bounced down to square thirty four.

Did I win? Hardly. It is on the threshold of an His Eyes Uncovered episode, but not quite there. That means story time with T'Pol is going to be a regular old episode. Fantastic. Also fantastic are all the friends of DeSoto who support this program on an ongoing basis. We really appreciate your support. MaximumFun.org slash join if you would like to join those people, get monthly bonus episodes, get discounted access to our streaming shows,

and our eternal gratitude. We are also very grateful for Windy Pretty, who produces and edits this show, and all of the crap coming out of the Uxbridge Shimoda Corporation. Gotta thank Bill Tilley, our temporal Cold War time consigliere, and Rob Adler, our social media director. Follow at Greatest Trek on all the platforms. Follow those accounts if you want to see the pictures of our art projects. Yeah.

We're gonna have those posted today. If you're listening to this episode, they're gonna be up there, so check them out. Go check the Insta or the Blue Sky or whatever. Whatever your social media thing is, we'll probably put them up there. Vote on which one you like the best for sure. And also vote on whether or not WGBH or Stephen J. Canell

has the better logo and music treatment. Yeah, what's fucked up is that it's one poll. Yeah. So like. Yeah, you have to choose one out of four answers. Is Ben's art and WGBH logo the best or is Adam's art and Stephen J. Cannell the best? Oh, I thought you meant it was a four answer multiple choice question Where you only answer one time? I mean, I think we're all gonna lose to WGBH if I'm a betting man I don't know. I kind of like the underdog spirit of the Stephen J. Connell.

All right. Thanks to Admiragusea for helping us make the parody of Diane Warren's original Enterprise theme and dark materia for the use of card song. Sign up for our mailing list, it's a lot of fun. We put a lot of work into it and I think it is totally worth being signed up for. 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 we are putting on beanies to hide what's going on with our ears. And our hair. Sure. Do you like wearing a beanie in winter? with our ears. And our hair. Mm-hmm, sure. Do you like wearing a beanie in winter? You just wake up, put a beanie on, get out of the house. You don't have to put yourself together.

You're wearing a beanie. Yeah, until you go inside and your head starts sweating. And then you're fucked. I don't get head sweat with beanies. I don't know why. Ice cold head. You and 90% of the extremely mediocre but very hot white guys in LA. Jesus. Cots raised from all the way over there. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, you exist at the price. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, you exist at the price.

Make it show, make it show. Make it show. Jean-Luc Picard. Card, card, card. Maximum Fun. A workaround network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.