The Greatest Generation - Gruel Bumps (ENT S1E15)

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

When T’Pol takes the fall for the Andorians attacking P’Jem, Captain Archer’s final attempt at a hang gets them both kidnapped by rebels. But when the crew’s rescue mission gets Tucker and Reed jumped too, Shran’s sense of indebtedness pays out double for the Entrepreneur. What heightens the urgency of being tied up with a colleague? Which food prep is best left to the professionals? How do you save money on a casket? It’s the episode that rockets Worf to the middle.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

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pick up a P1 message, that's where you can do it. Podshop.biz? Get your tickets to these live shows at greatestgentour.com and your priority one messages over at podshop.biz. These things might be available now, but not for long. I think all three of these shows are going to sell out, so don't wait. GreatestgenTour.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 sun. 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.

You want to talk about what you just did before the show? What? What are you, narking on me? You just hit a little thing? Yeah, I had a little thing here. Taking a little puff off of it. Do you still have a neighbor that has just a truckload of those things? No, my fucking neighbor, I used to have

this neighbor, she moved to fucking New York. To be in the witness protection program? Nah, I don't know. She, she wasn't vibing with LA, which I get. Cause fuck LA. But like, if you can live in New York and you don't have to live in LA, great choice. 10 out of 10 would do.

LA, great choice. 10 out of 10 would do. But yeah, she runs like big time celebrity charitable initiatives and was doing something with a very famous singer that one of the sponsors of was a weed vape pen company that is very popular here in the state of California. If I guessed the singer, would you tell me? Uh, we can beep it. Jennifer Lopez. More known as a singer than JLo.

Madonna? Madonna. Last guess. Okay, yeah, last guess. Cher! Okay, yeah, last guess and... Share! She's had number one hits in like the most consecutive decades of anybody. Kylie Minogue?

And by number one hits I mean... Pfft! Pfft! BLEEP was the correct answer. Oh, interesting. Cool. Also works with BLEEP, but... And those are bleeped out so people don't know, but you know.

I've met all of them. This weed pen company sponsored one of the initiatives that they were working on. And as a result, a closet in her house was just absolutely stacked with weed pens. And you know, she's like, she was English and she was like, I can't get through them, babe. You take as many as you want. And she would just like hand me like, five of them at a time.

And then you just like backwards Homer walked into the bush of vape pens? Into the cloud of vapor. Wow. Wow. You're someone that I would describe as being very polite. I wonder if you are given an offer of take however many you want. How many does Benjamin R. Harrison take?

I mean, when it's like something that I sort of think of as somewhat of a vice, like a weed pen, probably slowing my roll a little bit more than if, for example, I go over to your house and you're like, we've got too many limes, take as many as you want. Oh yeah. Because your lime tree is so feckoned. Oh yeah. We're due for more lime giveouts.

Yeah. You had to come over for them limes. I should finally bring that Tupperware back that you lent me to take limes home in. I have been missing that. That's our lime Tupperware. Sorry. You're using it as a fucking bedpan when you sleep out of the studio. Yeah. God damn it.

I'll run it through the dishwasher before I give it back. LAUGHS But I could only take like five at a time. And she was insisting I take more. Five seems like the right amount. With the, I got a closet full of vape pens, have a handful, five is a handful. Yeah, and I gave four of them away.

Like, I can't sit around with like a shelf full of marijuana. That's no good for me away. Like I can't sit around with like a shelf full of marijuana. That's no good for me or anyone. Why can't you? Cause I just use it. I did, you know. Oh, you use it cause it's there. I use it cause it's there. Yeah.

Like this doesn't cost me a nickel. Puff puff. Don't pass. We'll see what it costs the viewers today. This episode of Greatest Gen. One of the rare episodes that is very closely connected to another episode this season. Sure is. Yeah. This is almost like a sequel. As if that episode earlier on in the season cast some sort of shadow onto this one

and the incidents in it. What do you say we get into it, Ben? It is season one, episode 15 of Star Trek Entrepreneur. Shadows begin! Let me ask you off the top. Do you like Admiral Forrest? Because I love seeing Soval just kick the shit out of him in this opening scene. They've been in space for six months and they've already destabilized an entire sector. I also love that Admiral Forrest gives as good as he gets. He's like, kind of not our fault guys. You're the ones building the surveillance installation

under your reputedly very holy site. I am definitely not saying that Sival is right here, but I am saying, uh, I like seeing Admiral Forrest pushed around a bit. It does not seem fair though, because what's happening here is the Vulcans are blaming Archer and the Enterprise for the whole Pajam incident. And if they had maybe been a little more forthcoming with the whole, we have a secret spy operation

happening on Pajam, maybe this whole thing could have been avoided. Right. Right. Like, you can see where the Vulcans are coming from. It does sort of seem like though they can't show it, they're like super humiliated that this happened. We don't even know what happened yet.

That's another thing I like about this scene is it sort of implying like that this is about what happened in the previous episode regarding Pajam? Yeah, yeah. The thing that is comical in this scene to me is the way they talk about Archer. He's the best there is, but he's a loose cannon. He just can't be controlled. He's violent and aggressive and so forth. I'm like, Captain Archer is like a beige on beige captain. Just like totally not objectionable, totally not fly off the handle. Shouldn't be in trouble. He's kind of a golden retriever though, right?

Like he's like very enthusiastic. Like he wants to hump the leg of every species he meets. Very distasteful to the Vulcans. And this is a pretty significant diplomatic FU, right? When he's like, I've been recalled to Vulcan and also joint fleet operations are suspended, which we don't really know what the contours of that are, like how fucked the humans are without Vulcan fleet support, but it sounds bad, you know? It does.

It sounds like Admiral Forrest's hands are tied here and he's going to blow in a call to Archer. We don't get to hear this phone call because after the theme, we're in the captain's mess with Archer and Trip Tucker. Does it seem to you like Trip Tucker is permanent dining companion for the captain, such as he does not need to eat in the mess hall anymore with those people? Pete Is that just a rank thing? Is it like, because he is the second highest rank thing? Is it like because he is the second highest pipped human aboard? Like it seems like it's kind of him and T'Pol and like somebody if they get a nice tap on the shoulder, but

like Malcolm Reed isn't in there all the time. This may be obvious and I may come off as an idiot here for even suggesting it, but could Trip Tucker eat in the captain's mess by himself if he wanted to? Oh, yeah, I guess- Or must you be escorted in the captain's mess by himself if he wanted to? Oh, yeah, I guess. Or must you be escorted by the captain? Right. Like does his medallion status grant him access? I mean, like there's like officers messes on Navy ships, right?

But then like, presumably there's like an even better mess that's just captain and whoever the captain suffers to be there with him. I know. The idea that it just keeps getting better, like there is a version that's the ultimate captain's mess. Yeah. Not even the captain can go in there. I was talking to John Hodgman one time. We bumped into each other on a plane and he was in first class and I was not and we were like walking together off the jet bridge and he was like, when I got to LAX, because I was like in Delta One or whatever, he wasn't even in first class, he was in Delta One

and that meant there was like a whole other entrance of the airport just for him and it was like a marble hallway and like people carrying your bags and you don't have to tip them and stuff. I was there on day one. I was there on the first morning that that happened. Wow. I don't know what or how I was there. I somehow was in possession of a Delta one ticket and I was going somewhere

domestically and I went in there on the Delta One ticket and I was going somewhere domestically and I went in there on the very first morning and they were like, hey, we just opened, welcome. And it was a bunch of really well-meaning people who were super nice that were like, hey, here take this absolutely gleaming TSA tray and put your things in it and then put it through the private X-ray scanner. Oh, private scanner.

Private scanner. So cool. Oh man. That's never going to be my life again, is it? It was pretty dope. Ugh, I missed it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyways, Archer gets asked by Tripp, like what gives with the ship changing trajectory and Archer's like, oh, there's this great planet, Corridan, wanted to check it out. Heard there's a lot of people there and that they are in contact with the Vulcans. And I talked to their chancellor and she's gonna roll out the red carpet, give us a tour. Here's the thing, Tripp, you can't go. I hated Captain Archer for this. You don't like bits on trips? This is like me and you together and I'm going, yeah, you know, I heard about this great barbecue

restaurant. There's a tiki bar attached to it. Ben, it's inside a Delta Sky Club with its own entrance and everything. And the brisket, oh, you love it. They serve it on a TSA tray. They have the fat and the lean. It's amazing. It's so wonderful.

I cannot wait to experience it, but we're not going to experience it together, Ben. I'm going with Hoshi. I would walk into the sea. It just doesn't seem nice. There's not a lot to look forward to on this ship if you're a crew person. I think that's my point. Like it doesn't get any better than Tripp Tucker doing nerd starship shit on a planet that really has a grasp of awesome starship shit. Yeah. You should lend Hoshi your camera. I'll be sure she takes lots of pictures. But he's going to get to go. I guess so. It was a bit. We don't get very far down the road into

how Tripp takes this. Yeah. Because incoming is a call from Admiral Forrest and Archer takes this privately. Forrest gives him a little more backstory about the destruction of P'Jem. They bombarded it from orbit, man. Yeah, I thought that was neat. That was the only way the Andorians could be sure that they got rid of that installation. Fucking A. Kind of makes the Andorians seem reasonable and good. They were like, hey, bombardment starts in four hours. So why don't you clear out your antiquities from the fucking reliquary so we can get with the bombing.

I actually thought this was a great look for them. Yeah, very thoughtful. Speaking of looking, we transitioned straight into a gazing window scene and a really nice sequence on the exterior of the ship pushing up into it. Yeah, I kind of wished they'd pushed up into the next shot because when we get the reverse of Archer looking out this gazing window, He is surfing so much butt. Did you clock his fucking ass in this shot? This is the thing about these uniforms. They are dumpy AF.

But when he's bent over on that window, like you could set a drink on that thing. Hey, Captain Archer, destroy the internet. Yeah, yeah. He's an the internet. Yeah. Yeah. He's an absolute dump truck at this window. Amazing. Uh, to Paul comes in to receive, uh, the bad news that he has summoned her there to break to her.

And I had to think like, when you're a Vulcan, a human coming up to you and going like, this is so hard to say, has got to just be the most eye-rolling, cringe moment, like, of any kind of interaction you can have with a human. Like, yeah, like, I don't care. Like, my emotions are fully suppressed. Like, it's...

Like, get to the point. Yeah, this is hard for you, not me. I don't give a fuck. I wonder if that's a description of every single conversation a Vulcan can have with a human. Not just the one that comes at the preamble about needing to break bad news, but just like, fucking come out with it, man. Yeah. It's like halfway between tone deaf and super insulting because it's like,

you know that I don't have emotional reactions to things. I have logical reactions to things. And also like you're insulting me by like implying that I'm as fraught as you are when it comes to stuff. And that you love this as much as I do. It's got that real energy of like a manager letting someone goes like, God, I know how great it is to work here. I mean, I see it all the time. People tell me they love me.

They love working for me. Don't be sad. This is going to be great for the team. Or like the worst possible version of a breakup where you're like, hey, I'm sorry, this just isn't working out. And, uh, I know I'm great to be with and very, uh, sexually skilled, but, um, I got to let you down easy, babe. Here's a banker's box full of your shit. It's a weird projection. The energy to this scene just feels a little off and he feels possessive of her too.

That's, that's another part of it, right? Like, she is a part of his crew. Well, yeah. I mean, he's feeling defensive and like, wanting to, you know, we learn more about this later, but like, basically the way he's interpreting this is that all of the shittiness from their encounter at the Andorian incident is falling on her because the humans aren't gonna punish him for it because it wasn't a fuck up from the human's standpoint. So, like, the fact that she isn't expressing any grief or indignation at all is, like, extremely bothersome to him.

And he's like, well, we're going to fight this tooth and nail. And she's like, why? Not just because she's a Vulcan. I think I would be saying this if she were anyone, but like the, I think the moment a person recognizes that they are just a cog in a machine to create wealth that goes only upwards or whatever, that is a very freeing realization.

In a Star Trek universe, what she is is a cog in a political and cultural machine, you know? Pete totally. Pete Archer Archer bumps into Trip in the hallway and really does tell him he's off the away too this time. This is why you don't do bits on Trip. He's got bitlash. Yeah, it would have been much more fun if Trip was like, come on, don't bullshit or bullshit or you already tried that once, you know. He should have taken this all the way to the entrance of the shuttle pod, like,

putting on his boots, packing his bag. It is kind of fun to see like, who starts rumors on the Starship though. Like, when Archer explains to Trip why he wants to take DePaul instead, it's like suddenly the whole fucking ship knows. Yeah. Cause Flax is visiting DePaul in the mess

to try to do his own kind of pep talk. Like, I also think this is fucking bullshit. And I think that the Vulcans are wrong about this. Well, it's interesting that in Dr. Flax's mind, this can only be a promotion. Yeah. Like of course, T'Pol has done a great job. I've got stories about how great she's been.

She tolerated humans for like six months. Yeah. Yeah. She set the record. What happened was you left to Paul alone long enough. She decided to go for the record because Ben, every Vulcan has a record. Every Vulcan has gone for the record. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At a certain point, it's not even fun. It's just a point of pride for that Vulcan.

Pride is a human indulgence. Because they don't feel things the same way as humans do. Well, especially after that long, you know? Yeah. The outshot is be on the lookout for that surprise goodbye party that the crew's planning for you. Get ready to be surprised and thrilled. She does not seem to welcome this prospect at all. So she and the captain are on their way down to the surface in the shuttle pod and he's explaining like, oh yeah, just like wanted to spend some QT with you before you have to go. And she explaining like, oh yeah, I just like wanted to spend some QT with you

before you have to go. And she's like, I have tons of stuff that I need to be getting done. Like, I wish you'd like asked me about this scene if I was into it before you fucking stuffed me into a tin can with you. The fucking hubris of Archer being like, yeah, and you know, one last mission, just you and me. That's a gift, right? That's a gift from me to you.

Yeah. Isn't that nice? They don't really get to analyze this too much further because a banger gets dropped on the shuttle they're getting shot at, and they're ordered to like pull over basically by this ship that doesn't identify itself. And rather than comply with like what I was assuming at this point was like the port police

or something of this planet, they fucking dogfight this guy. Bring the plasma weapons online. Ready. Ready. Fire. Love it. Love this little, uh, it looks like an airplane out there. Love this little guy, dogfighting it,

and the shuttle pod has hit bad enough to trigger an elliptical edit. Because in the next scene, we've got Archer and T'Pol on the ground in a dark room, wearing hoods over their heads and restraints on their limbs. Yeah. A guard walks in and rips off their hoods and starts making with the questions. He does not recognize the chancellor's authority. This seems like it's going to be a problem, right?

Yeah. They're like, why are you shooting us down? The chancellor invited us. Yeah. Not doing the math on, we have hoods over our heads and we're on like a drippy floor in a shed somewhere. Yeah. I loved the design of this room, by the way. Like, there's almost no set design to it

other than the way it's lit. Like, you cannot see any surface really. You can see like one little window that it's like raining outside of, and like a bunch of bullet holes maybe in the wall that little points of light are shining through. There's a quality to this scene that extends throughout the episode, which is darkness and fog. Like if you maybe you don't have a lot of time

or not a lot of budget to do some world building, darken it up, mist it out, obscure it. That's what we get here. Yeah. Let your mind fill in the blanks. So this guy is also kind of blown away that initially Archer is telling him that he's the captain and that DePaul is the junior officer. And he's like, I've never seen a Vulcan take orders

from any non-Vulcan. Like the math isn't mathing. And just to like kind of make it so that Archer can't get himself into any more trouble, DePaul's like, no, he's ensign hospitality. I'm the captain. Amazing. I love it. And it was so unexpected to hear T'Pol be the one doing the improvisation here. Yeah.

A bald-faced Vulcan lie. Amazing. A lie? A choice. I so wanted this episode to pivot into cooking show. I wanted the lie to be used in such a way that was like, oh really? Because the rebel leader actually has a birthday.

And the thing he loved most of all is a great feast. We have all the ingredients. All you need to do is cut them up. Yeah. That would have been great. Here's 50 pounds of carrots. No, we cut up to the ship where the chancellor has placed a call and Trip is not getting it that this was not part of their plan initially. He's like, yeah,

no, these are rebels, not us. And we don't know where they went down. And he's like, why didn't you tell us that you were having like a civil war? And she's like, we're not. They're just like a couple of little rebels. There's not really much of them. You couldn't really call it a war. This chancellor has the extremely irritating affect of the, whoever it is that records that your call is extremely important to us message on a customer service line. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Cause Tripp is like, don't tell me that things are okay and I'm extremely important with my concerns, like this is pretty fucked, and you should have told us that there was a chance of this. She was very funny. Um, she's like, yeah, like, so, good news is they're probably live. Bad news is probably they're gonna ask you to pay for them.

We ask that you do not, so as to discourage future hostage-taking. And they get off the phone, and Trip is like, fuck that, we're scanning for them. We're scanning for life forms. Where are you? Tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch to back and they begin by sitting on the ground, but they got to stand up together. Yeah. It seems like these guys might've been late to the last company picnic cause they don't have a lot of reps doing this. They keep falling over and bonking.

This is an extremely uncomfortable configuration for bathroom stuff, I thought. Oh yeah. The urgency to get out of this, I think is pretty heightened when you consider that. They're like tied together back to back and they come up with the idea if they can shimmy around and face each other, they can untie each other's bonds and- I got to tell you a story.

Hubba hubba. I was hanging out with an old friend from college in Seattle, who I hadn't seen in many years. And in the course of the, how have you been over the last decade conversation, he said he'd had some very terrible back pain and back troubles that necessitated surgery. And the story he told was his back acting up so bad and him being so unable to move that he could not sit. So he had to basically stand sleep. You know where my mind went. How did you use the bathroom? The number two bathroom. He said, I had to stand with one foot on the toilet and one foot on the tub and drop it

from height. This is how painful the back situation was. He could not sit at all. He had to shit standing up. Did you know that was even possible? What about the splash? He had to pull his cheeks apart and shit standing up. And then how does he clean up the splash if he can't like bend over?

And why is the carpet all wet, Todd? I don't know. Does he have like a mop and a bucket at all times? You know how there are only a certain amount of questions that you can ask in a situation with someone you haven't seen in quite some time and are still trying to feel out how close you could be with them

to get that kind of information. I ran out of question runway. I admire your restraint, because I can imagine as a person with such a keen interest in what goes on in there, you would be just brimming with questions. Can you imagine dropping one from like three feet up? That's the dream, isn't it?

I wasn't gonna give this guy advice because I haven't been in this situation. But you gotta use the tub, right? That way you're just going in with tongs a little later. Tong it in the turlet, and then you use the hot shower water and your feet to clean up the tub situation. You're not bending over.

Your back doesn't allow you to bend over. Maybe it was renting. Don't get a boner, Archer. Now that you're facing forwards, very weird scene here as they untie each other. This felt like Slash Victim-y. Yeah, like T'Pol is kind of like describing how her reasoning must have become compromised because of her long exposure to humans, and that's why she didn't stop the worst possible thing from happening at

Pajam and they are kind of getting into like their very different understandings of what happened there when they tumble over and she falls boobs first onto Archer's face. And then she just, she just kind of has to turn around and face the other way in a sort of 69 configuration to get the rest of the restraints off, like, come on guys, what are you doing? Yeah, I don't know. I'll say good for Archer not doing that, like

turn to camera moments that I think could easily happen, just the like whoop. Like they don't play this moment for laughs in a way that, God, if I could respect anything about this scene, I guess I kind of respect that. That it's played for like, this is kind of humiliating for both of them way. Yeah, it is a very Austin Powers, oh I fell over sort of situation.

It's very humiliating for both of them, but only one of them is gonna jack off about it later. Hey, hold on. T'Pol might need a little extra to go for the record. This is an extremely awkward time for the prison guard to come in with their food rations. Yeah. And this guy gets the jump on him.

It appears as though Archer does the sort of yoga shoulder stand kick situation. Yeah. That I don't remember seeing on TV before. That's pretty fun. Yeah, does plow kick. Yeah. That I don't remember seeing on TV before. That's pretty fun. Yeah, just plow kick. Yeah. But there's another guy. You never plan for the second prison guard and the escape does not go well, Enterprise.

On Enterprise, Reed and Tripp Tucker have observed that the capital city is huge and it is also surrounded by a huge shanty town. Yeah. You know, the politically correct term is informal settlement, but yeah, Trip is very, he really dunks on the like socioeconomic development of the people of this planet. He's like, wow, this really sucks for a lot of them.

And they start scanning and they're kind of like thinking that the shuttle is down in this donut of poverty that surrounds the capital city. We're talking about a plain cake donut, unfrosted, when we talk about the donut of poverty. What's the plainest fucking donut there is? I wouldn't... I guess, like, the plainest donut to me is glazed, like, raised donut there is. I guess, like, the plainest donut to me

is glazed, like, raised donut, though. Can you even get a raised donut with nothing on it that's just unglazed? You can get, like, the sugar-coated one and then, like, kind of brush the sugar off. Yeah, I guess so. What kind of monster does that? I don't know.

What are you even doing in a donut shop? I don't know. I don't know why in a donut shop? I don't know. I don't know why anybody's in a donut shop. They're not that good. Reed is writing pretty hard for sending down a search and rescue team at this moment. Yeah, and they are kind of talking about that when a call blows in from voice only

and Tripp gets on the line with the hostage taker, and he says, like, "'We have your captain and her little buddy.'" I was, like, completely blown away at how badly they did the math of what this meant. Yeah. They call it Captain Her? Are we sure they've got the right hostages?

I think it would have been fine for them to just be like, T'Pol must be claiming to be the captain due to the political arrangement between the Vulcans and these people. Yeah, because the leader of the dissidents just goes on and on about how women can be captains too. You know, it's not unusual for us in the rebel compound. We also get a message at this point from a Vulcan

ship that's on its way. The Navar, I thought that was kind of cool. How about that? Is that like what they wind up naming the planet after? Spoiler alert in Discovery? I mean, it must go on to do adventures way cooler than the one depicted in this episode. Like it's, I gotta believe has hundreds of years of distinguishing achievements under its belt. Yeah. This is just a side quest, not really worth writing anything down about. But the Vulcan

captain is on camera with Tripp Tucker and Tripp is like, oh yeah, like, sorry, we can't get you to Paul right now, kidnapped. And the guy's like, I'm sure. He thinks they're holding out on him. Tripp Tucker has to believe this guy because it's Gregory Itzen. Again. And when you've got a great character actor like Gregory Itzen, he brings a certain gravitas to the scene and the moment. A certain gravitas that allows his character

to hang right up on Trip Tucker like the first guy. This is two hangups for Trip in one episode. Killer. Which I think could be considered a record of its own. Yeah. It's so galling to be hung a record of its own. Yeah. It's so galling to be hung up on. So utterly galling. Yeah.

It's fun to be the hang-upper, I gotta say. The few times I've done it. I cannot imagine being the hang-upper. I cannot imagine it at all. You gotta do it instead of saying the thing that you will regret later. Sometimes you just need to do it. Like I said, I'm very inhibited.

I'm not worried about saying something I'll regret later. In the next scene, Captain Itzen is on Enterprise talking a bunch of shit about how unprepared they are to get their own hostages. And he thinks the Vulcan crew is way readier for this kind of thing. Yeah, it's sort of like in like the Bank Heist movie when the FBI comes and takes over for the local PD is kind of the vibe here.

He's like, we'll take it from here. You guys have screwed this up so badly. I thought it was so weird how Itzen is writing for use of force and Reed, of all people, is like, whoa! That sounds pretty dangerous to me. Even though it was five minutes ago, he was like, send an assault team down in a shuttle pod.

We're going to go get our folks. But now that it's like Vulcan commandos, he's not into it. Yeah, the Vulcan commandos not nearly as careful as whatever he's got to bring to bear down there. What the fuck? We got the guy who serves our eggs with a phaser rifle going down with Reed and Mayweather, the kindest guy on the entire ship. Yeah.

I kept thinking, like, why no line about whether beaming them up is riskier or less risky than assault team? Like there's gotta be math on that, right? Like they, they have used the transporter successfully before, so there must be like a, it's a 10,001 risk that it scrambles you and we consider that unacceptable, but in these circumstances, that is an acceptable risk. The moment that Jolene Blaylock's breasts were

pressed up against Scott Bakula's face represent the only time that you're permitted to think about a body commingling between those two. That's it. co-mingling between those two. That's it. There will be no T'Archer created with the Transporter. The back of that head, on camera, a lot. He lies to this Vulcan captain about whether or not they know anything about where the captain and T'Pol might be. And before these Vulcans are even out of the room, he tells Reed to like fire up the shuttle

and get ready for an extraction. It's great. Faith of the fart. Don't think I don't see your posts online about how great Adam's Squarespace ad reads are. I'm seeing them. They're very hurtful. I can tell that that's an attack on me personally.

Well, I feel very confident in this ad read because I'm talking about Squarespace again. They're going to save you a ton of time and make you look great when you go build a website. And that's something I can say with my whole chest in utter earnestness without being jokey or silly without entertaining you in an ad I can just talk about how Squarespace has an all-in-one platform that lets you accept payments and build a beautiful website and upload video content and organize a library to showcase what you do on a gorgeous website and you basically don't need any prior technical skills.

Go 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. If you were at STLV, you know how great it was to see so many friends of DeSoto wearing official Greatest Jan and Greatest Trek designs

from Podshop.biz. Podshop.biz? We saw Major League Domjot t-shirts, West Hot American Summer beach towels, Greatest Generation crossbody bags, towels, Trunks Trunks, and Kern Koozies at the pool cabana, and more. And we're always adding new stuff at Podshop.biz, so go check it out and

grab something today so you'll be prepared for your next Star Trek convention. Hello teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls. From the twisted minds that brought you the Adventure Zone, balance and amnesty and graduation and ethercy and steeplechase and utraspace and all the other ones. The McRoy brothers and dad are proud to reveal a bold vision for the future of actual play podcasting. It's called The Adventure Zone versus Dracula? Yeah, we're gonna kill Dracula's ass.

Well, we haven't recorded all of it yet. We will're gonna kill Dracula's ass. Well, we're gonna attempt, we haven't recorded all of it yet. We will attempt to kill Dracula's ass, the Avengers of versus Dracula. Yes, a season I will be running using the D&D fifth edition rule set, and there's two episodes out for you to listen to right now. We hope you will join us. Same bat time, same bat channel.

And bats. I see what you did there. And you will never take the greatest chin alive. Ben would rather die. Rather die. We cut down to where Archer and T'Pol are kept. This time they're not chained together, they've adapted. They're chained apart.

The locals are really into Shibari, it turns out. I don't know what that word means. Japanese rope bondage. Oh yeah. And then when they cut the rope, they glue them back together with a little bit of gold flake. Kintsuki shibari.

Yeah. That is? Yeah, and then they say, thank you. It's Kintsuki shippari arigato. In comes the gruel, it's chow time. Yeah. How are they supposed to eat this? Archer demonstrates.

Doggy style is how you're supposed to eat this. No nasty dog, doggy dog. I love that Bakula was down for this. Like, yeah, I'll roll around on the dusty floor licking gruel out of a bowl for the character. That is such a great call, Ben. This is so thankless. There's, like, in the time of memeification of every fucking TV show and movie that we have watched

for the last ten years and will watch forever, like, this is a moment that would be screen-grabbed with an impact vaunt. Bey got me like, and it's just him like... Yeah. T'Pol just uses a finger, which I'm not sure is much better. Yeah. But she's got like a little, you know, her manicure is kind of long,

so there's like some good scooping action on that fingernail. She's got that long, so there's like some good scooping action on that fingernail. She's got that long pinky oatmeal shovel. She's got... Yeah, she's doing gruel bumps. Yeah. Archer finds an air tag in his meal. Why didn't he eat this? I wanted so bad for him to be like going to town on the oats and then to hear the sound of him attempting

to chew on this hard thing. Yeah. Maybe they didn't make it out of a food safe like adhesive or something. So he didn't put it in his mouth. But yeah, it's an interesting little development that is hard to puzzle through in this moment. It's hard to know like why this is here or what it could possibly mean. If you're smuggling in contraband, I feel like oatmeal is a great vessel for that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's like opaque. Like that blinky red light is not gonna, is not gonna show through. And what are you gonna do? You're gonna like take a wand or whatever and

like stir the oatmeal. That thing's just going to stir inside the oatmeal. Nothing's going to happen. Yeah. I'll pick that up. Yeah. So yeah, the, uh, the Vulcans call the entrepreneur and now not even Tripp is there. Hoshi is the one that picks up the phone and Captain Itzen is fucking

pissed, he's like, I wanted to talk to your captain. Now I'm not even talking to your third officer or whatever. Who the fuck are you? Pretty great scene for Hoshi freelancing like this. Because he's like, he's also like, I want to know what happened with that shuttle that left nine minutes ago. Captain Itzen, what were you doing in the last nine minutes that was more important than asking about that?

I thought the same thing. Like, we cut over to the Navarre where Captain Itzen is, like, watching the view screen of the shuttle happen, and then just nine minutes of stroking his chin, thinking. He squeezes one off because he's going for the record today. Yeah. This scene represents why you hire Itzen, though. Like, he is uniquely able to be this sort of perturbed.

Yeah. And a great moment for Hoshi to kind of freelance her way through lying, creating a bunch of static interference, and then hanging up on him. Pretty great. You gotta hang up on someone, Ben. It's so worth it. I don't think I could ever do that. Ben's hyper compliance. Whoa. Did you see the memo about this? Yeah. If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what is, what's the rule? Compliance.

Mmm, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't thank me or anything. Not since Picard walked through the barrio on Cornish have Starfleet officers been in a dangerous neighborhood as bad as this one. How badly did you want to see the soup of this neighborhood? Ah, if they could have ordered one thing

before getting jumped. I know. No soup for you! It sort of seems like they are in the rebel compound initially when we cut to later when they have bags over their heads, because it's a very similarly lit room. But the bags come off, and their interlocutor has a very familiar voice at him. I love the sound of this voice. You should have listened to the Vulcan.

He warned you against doing anything foolish. What the hell are you doing here? Jeffrey Combs unmistakably in the room. I love how they play the moment for drama, how he like steps out of the shadows as if you have no idea who this voice is attached to. Yeah. How fucking great to have Jeffrey Combs, Gregory Itzen, and Gary Graham all in one episode together. You're just rich with character actors. I mean, not to mention Von Armstrong.

Yeah. So fun. We must protect our character actors. Yeah. So turns out the Andorians are here. They have been spying on the captain of the Vulcan ship because he like runs this sector and I guess all the Vulcan codes are cracked and Tran is like in a position to reveal that to the humans.

are cracked and Tran is like in a position to reveal that to the humans. And, uh, basically like he and his people are trying to support this uprising against the Vulcan sympathetic local government, because then I guess maybe they can get somebody installed that's more Andorian sympathetic. There is a lot of palace intrigue to the reasons that Tran might be there, but the reason he's really there is revealed to be a very like Rocky Balboa Apollo Creed situation.

Like he owes him for the favor he was given back on Pajam. Ding, ding. And he hates owing somebody a favor, so he's gonna repay it by hook or by crook. Yeah. This is a guy you don't want to buy dinner for. Yeah. You don't pick up the check for Shran. No. He's like my wife. He is going to... He's gonna make it, like, beyond awkward for everyone

before he lets you pay for something. Yeah. They're like, okay, we're going to do this raid and we're going to get your captain and T'Pol back. And we've got a guy on the inside, hence the air tag in the gruel over there. I loved that reveal. I loved that, like, we had no context for what was happening with that until now.

So great. Trip and Malcolm want to get in on this raid, like add a couple of warm bodies to their numbers because there are a lot of guards and like they have a map of the compound, they know, you know, where they're going and what's going on. And the Andorians are down with this. They're going to let Malcolm and Trip shoot some guns. Did you clock the other Andorian? Was that Purvey Andorian from the Pajam episode?

Cause I don't like that guy, but he's not Purvey here. Yeah, it doesn't do anything Purvey here. I couldn't remember if he was a guy that we've met before or not. Traig, I think is his name. Yeah. Unclear. I mean, they all look alike, right? We get to see this plan they hatch for this prison breakout and the scene is shrouded in night and mist and fog. Very foggy, permanent dark kind of environment we're in, I think. Yeah. They tell Archer a little bit about this. Here's the note that was just confusing me.

Blinking Dumpling starts talking to Archer. That's what I came up with for what that thing was that he found in his soup. It wasn't an autocorrect. It was me being a fool. It's the thing you want to order out at a restaurant instead of try to make from frozen or whatever. It's always better if you get the blinking dumplings while you're out.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's not worth the effort at home. Pros are going to do it so much better than you ever could. Yeah. So Tripp tells them like, here's the plan. We're going to be coming in. You guys got gotta get yourselves

out of there, you're 20 meters from the entrance or whatever, Archer wants clarification on how far a meter is. I mean, these guards have gotta be like 14 stone. Shran's like, what? We get to the opening gambit of this raid, which is Trip with like a cloak on stumbling up to the gate guards of the

rebel hideout with a bottle of booze and offering some to them and they accept it. Like these have got to be the worst gate guards of all time. Like, we're running an op, we currently have hostages behind the gate behind me. We're keeping our head on a swivel for the government. Hey, this guy just came over and offered me this alien of a kind I've never heard of, just offered me a swig of booze.

I'm for sure down to clown. Like, let me get some of that. You know why this scene works? It's because they don't describe it beforehand. Because if they were in the back talking about, okay, so Tripp, we don't have this yet, but we're going to find a bottle of booze for Tripp to have. And he's going to stagger through to the gate area acting all drunk. And he's going to offer this bottle to the guards. And you know they's going to stagger through to the gate area, acting all drunk, and he's going to offer this bottle to the guards, and you know they're going to drink it. If you hear that described as a plan, you don't believe it at all.

You can't believe it. The plan is terrible. But when you see it on screen, for some reason, it shouldn't be plausible, but it is. They sell it. Yeah. Meanwhile, the inside man pulls some of the corrugated siding apart on the exterior barricades of this compound. So much siding on this set. I was taking notes. I'm a part of our renovation that we wanted to, involves a little, uh,

corrugated siding and I was like, hmm, looks nice. You know, that stuff is a pain in the ass to cut in my experience. I'm not cutting it, baby. Good. That's what I'm saying. Keep it that way. Yeah. So Shran and his bunnies sneak in and the raid seems to be going great.

Like, they are silently KO-ing guards, and it's like in, like, a Batman game where, like, all of the takedowns are non-lethal, you know? But they're doing a perfect job of it until the fucking Vulcans show up and make this sneaky-ass raid into a loud frontal assault that involves like Kool-Aid manning through the side of the compound with huge explosives. Vulcan Kool-Aid man is like, oh yes.

Oh yes. I love that their entrance is preceded with an explosion. It's so unusual. Yeah. It's so unexpected. It's a complicated firefight because you can't tell for some of it, whether the Andorians, the Vulcans are firing at each other

or if everybody's just firing at the locals. It kind of seems to me that eventually, like, all they're doing is shooting at locals. Like, the various commando teams are not trying to, like, start a hot war between their peoples. But these Vulcans are such fucking cowboys. Like... They really are.

They are rock and roll. I was impressed. They had to get it on. Yeah. So, Shran and Trip make it into where the hostages are and start cutting all of the beautiful rope work off of the captain and to Paul. And the locals are eventually all shot dead

or knocked out or whatever. And we get this like super tense standoff scene between the Vulcans and the humans and the Andorians in the courtyard of the compound. Yeah. It feels a little Mexican standoffy here in a fun way. I was impressed that the captain of the Vulcan ship went on the raid himself. When you've got an Itzen playing the role

of the captain, you bet your ass he's going to be on the away mission. Yeah. Yeah. Fun to get him trading barbs with a Jeffrey Combs. What I don't like is slow-mo and post. Yeah.

And this moment where you think there's a dead guy, but he's not dead, he's actually alive, and he still has a weapon that hasn't been kicked away from him, kind of comes to you and tries to take a shot at it, and you can't take a shot at it. I wonder if non-filmmakers know about slow-mo in post. You see this very much more often in television

and then in films. But when the slow motion isn't smooth, when it kind of like jumps from frame to frame and you can see that they're kind of blending between it, it's because that shot wasn't shot at a higher than normal frame rate so that they could slow it down smoothly. It was shot at a normal frame rate and in post they were like, this would be better if it was slow-mo and they just slowed the shot down digitally. And yeah, it always distracting to me. Yeah, it's too bad.

Occasionally it's used like intentionally, I think, as like an aesthetic choice, but I would say 98% of the time when you see this, it's because they didn't get the coverage they actually needed for the way they wanted the scene to unfold in the edit. Sometimes slow-mo is cheesy. So I wonder if in the way you're describing,

if the jerky slow-mo as an aesthetic isn't a way to take off a slice of cheese from this moment. Maybe. Cheese on the side. Yeah. T'Pol gets shot in the ass when she jumps in front of the bullet to save the Vulcan captain. Oh son of a bitch! You shot me in the ass! Archer goes down to his knees like right next to her ass like like grieving and crying. And he slips and his face

falls right into it and he's like everybody's, man? You put your face on her boobs and then her butt in one episode? Yeah. In his mind, this is going to be a face down, open casket on the bottom situation at the funeral. Yeah. I mean, with T'Pol, it makes sense, right? You want to be able to see the back of the head. Yeah.

But you also want to be able to crane your neck down under and see the face. I mean, what I think you to be able to crane your neck down under and see the face. I mean, what I think you're making the case for is total open casket. Does that ever happen? We're not talking about the sort of doors that are split in half, just one door. Body on the table casket. You probably save yourself a little money that way by just having the single door option. Right, because all the extra hinges you need to get for the two doors.

Less work for the embalmer too, to only have prepared half the body instead of the full one, you got to have them get in there and do the whole thing. Oh yeah, yeah, I guess so. Top and bottom. Is it because people get erections in death and the rigor mortis would be embarrassing? It's not appropriate for a place of worship or whatever? It's probably because there's a lot of thought put into that part of the body, if it were to be total open casket, right?

Yeah. Like, you don't want to do the whole walk-by procession and you're like, God, Uncle Gene, there's kind of a concavity to everything under the belt. Like that doesn't look natural. And conversely, like if there's a mortuary person who's like padded it up. Oh yeah, the mortuary person that's slipping a gherkin in there.

Yeah, that doesn't feel right either. That's how he would have wanted to look. Like he has a real big one. Uncle Gene always looked like he was Stefan. That's why I wouldn't let him hug me close. So there's some debate over who's going to treat to Paul, whether the Vulcans are taking her back with them, but Archer kind of pulls rank.

She is still technically a member of his crew, So they're taking her back to the entrepreneur and the next scene is in Sixth Bay. It should be noted that he takes her back to the entrepreneur by cradling her in his arms. Yeah. Did you feel something in this moment in a way that suggests a greater relationship between them or something has changed with them in terms of their professional affections? Yeah.

I mean, I think where my head went was like, I was a little surprised that they weren't playing this more for this might be the end of T'Pol. Because that's sort of the stakes of the episode as it's set up at the beginning. And a twist on that is yes, T'Pol is no longer on the ship, but it's not because she got cycled back to the world. It's because she fucking died. And I sort of thought that they could have, you know, pulled that moment out a little bit and made it more fraught. Yeah. But yeah, we get to Sixth Bay and man, do they work this captain.

They try to make him feel so bad about what happened to DePaul. Where she live? I wish I could say. A person who should seem impervious to feeling bad in this and any other situation. Yeah. Plus it's Gregory Itzen. What do you think you're going to accomplish here?

Itzen's the greatest. He's not going to fall for that shit. There is a kind of Itzen-ness that he brings to a moment like this that makes me feel like, of course he's going to win. It's Gregory Yudson. But they kind of beat him up on this, right? Like they extract a huge favor from him, which is, she just jumped in front of a bullet and saved your life. The way you can repay that is by going back to the Vulcan High Command and asking for her to get permission to stay on board the entrepreneur.

And he's like pretty reluctant to do it at first, but eventually relents. And he's like barely out of earshot when they wake her up and she seems like totally fine, way less on the knife edge than they described her condition as being. There's a quality to the answer to the, can you do me this favor? When that answer is, yeah, if there's time. That is such fucking bullshit. Yeah. Did you believe it? I mean, it seems like they do because they wake her up and they're like, hey, great news. That guy's going to get you your job back.

I don't know. This hope seems a little too optimistic to me. That's a Gregory Itzen over there. Well, I'm an optimist, so. He's playing three dimensional Itzen chess. I like that they kind of give to Paul the option to run after him. And she's like, no, I'm pretty comfortable. Yeah. A fun bookend to the whole, we don't have fuel to turn around and fly home in the shuttle

pod that she mentioned earlier. That's pretty fun. Yeah. I liked it. That's our ending. Did you like this episode? I wonder if they thought at all about DePaul taking the bullet for Archer and what that would have meant.

Like I know it's useful for the story if she takes it for Itzen because it's instrumental in keeping her aboard the ship. But I think I'm more interested in her relationship to Archer and that possibly changing. And I think when it's done like this, there are fewer effects to that end in a way that made me wonder. They're in a weird place with this character that is sort of analogous in a funny way to Wesley Crusher. Wesley the boy.

The boy. Young Wesley Crusher. Wesley the boy. The boy. Young Wesley Crusher. My son. Where Wesley was like written as being so ambitious that eventually it became silly that they still had him on the ship and he was constantly like taking the exam to get into Starfleet Academy and like not getting in for some like stupid ass technical reason. Well, I mean, Malden was a much better student than he was. Yeah. But the like will they, won't they of writing to Paul off the show, I feel like they need to like hopefully treat this as like the last time that's a serious

possibility. As you say, I think there's such an interesting quality to the first season of a show or a last season of a show and having the option of that on the table. It really does feel possible that she could be killed here in a way that's useful for the tension of the thing. Totally. Yeah, I thought it was a really good episode and I love a prison raid and I don't

know if they showed Jeffrey Combs his credit, but I certainly missed it if they did. So it was like a great surprise when he showed up in the middle of the episode. I love food that is real, that's getting eaten and manipulated. I love that on Star Trek. That food eating scene was great. Yeah. I love seeing food messed with. I love seeing oatmeal eaten with a face, just like I love seeing a birthday cake being sat on and farted on. This is the two things I like.

Call me crazy. Call me a pervert. Have I got a website for you, Adam? Is it maximumfund.org slash Jumbotron, Ben? Because we've got to go check our Priority One messages. Yeah, that's what I meant. 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. We got a promotional priority one message here, Ben. It's from Kevin Miller, and here is their message. How many friends of DeSoto are going to buy a coffee table book about Texas County courthouses?

Probably not $200 worth, but I'm overdue to show my love to Adam and Ben. I might as well promote my weird project in the process. The 90 prettiest County courthouses in Texas and the 10 ugliest is the unwieldy title of my book that takes an irreverent look at the historic fortresses of justice around the Lone Star State.

It's the perfect gift for your weird aunt who lives in Fort Worth. Now I'm just a simple country lawyer, but I'm detecting a reference to a certain style of a gentleman's club in the title of this oeuvre. Just incredible. I want this book, Ben. I know you want this book. FODs can get this book at courthousebook.com. Wow. And just to make this P1 worth everyone's time, when do you please

play my favorite drop, which is Jazz Horse? Tell me you love jazz. Horse, earth horse. Okay, boys. Saddle up. You're as handy with a shoot knife as you are with a woman's heart. I'm beginning to see the appeal of this program. I suggest you find a new line of work. of this program. I suggest you find a new line of work. It's okay girl, just a scratch. Wow, haven't heard the jazz horse drop in a long time. That's nice. Kevin, this book is nothing without that title. I think you chose really well there. Outstanding. Man, 100 courthouses in one book. Can you believe it? I can't. My coffee table is

naked without this. Okay, next priority one message here is from Taro to Janny. Goes like this. Happy 40th birthday, buddy! Thanks for all the board games, sweet hangs, and vacation trips with and without COVID. Yikes. Thanks to you and Ben and Adam for helping me rediscover Voyager's good parts and be less serious about Trek. I'm not at all embarrassed to be your friend and only a little embarrassed to like this dick and fart joke podcast. It's pretty sweet. Happy 40th. That's a big one. Happy dirty 40. Welcome. And a reference to the theme of this whole thing, the embarrassment inherent. Being a fan of our programming. Ben, we've got a priority one message here from myself and it is to my greatest embarrassment.

Your message goes like this, my greatest embarrassment was going to the Portland live show and practicing what I would talk about. I practiced thinking the great hosts about podcasting, something interesting, but no. No! I ranted about Mark Twain. Samuel Clements. Why? Fuck! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Thanks for the great pod. Gonna buy another P1, cause y'all rock. Hey, myself?

Just want you to know, you did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. The meet and greets are so much fun for us. It's always a treat to meet FODs, and none of them ever have ever done anything memorably embarrassing. That's true. I would say that part of what's fun about them

Also is that they feel like unrehearsed and we have like really authentic interactions with people and when you rant about Mark Twain You're you're saying it with your whole chest and that's totally cool Yeah If you've got a message for us to read you should take it on over to the best Sitting on a cake and farting in it website that there is. That's maximumfun.org slash Jumbotron, where you enter a couple of words in there. Those then come out of our mouths. And check it out, we're selling books.

We're giving you the greatest gen bump. What could be better? Flying off the shelves. Court has book.com. P1's help support the production of Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek. Get your P1 today for either show. Hey Adam. What's up Ben? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Incredible. Drunk Shimoda. I think there's a moment in every director's life when he's got to tell an actor to do a thing and pretend that they believe that this is the right creative choice for the show. There is a conversation that happens during the shooting of this episode where Mike Vahar tells T'Pol to press her breasts into Scott Bakula's face, because it is important to the show. It is meaningful to what's going on here,

and it's going to work. I'm not saying I've ever told anyone that I've directed on camera to do anything like this. I haven't. But I've many times tried to convince a person in a corporate environment that what we're doing here is not stupid. You're not going to look bad.

Everything's going to be fine. And then it's going to be done. Yeah. Mike Vahar, you're my drunk Shimoda for somehow pulling this off in this moment. Yeah. I'm shocked that it made it to screen for that reason, because I just can't imagine that conversation happening between three professionals. So fucking uncomfortable. And like you can, you can feel Rick Berman off to the side going like, hee hee hee hee hee.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Ben? I'm going to give it to that guard that took the big old swig off of the bottle of unknown booze that Tripp just walked up to him with. Like when you're working security, you gotta know that that's a bad call. Like you don't know what's in that bottle, man. You don't know this guy? You don't even know what species he is. You didn't watch this stranger take off the foil top to this bottle.

Yeah, if this seal is broken, do not drink part. The worst security depicted in all of Star Trek. One of the worst, I'd say. Oh, yeah. Really bad. Wharf is like rocketing toward the middle after this scene. Incredible. Yeah.

Faith of the fart. What a bunch of fun it was to talk about this episode. Why don't we start putting a little thought toward the future, Adam? What do you say? Every time I cringe in terror about the prospect of my own retirement. That's what thinking about the future does to me. Okay. Sorry. Nevermind. Next episode is season one, episode 16, Shuttle pod one. Tucker and Reed set out on a mission in a shuttle pod as Enterprise is busy investigating an asteroid field.

Disaster strikes while the pair are away, leaving the shuttle pod damaged and the warp drive inoperable. They managed to make it back to the rendezvous coordinates, only to discover that Enterprise is apparently destroyed when it crashed into an asteroid. With the ship seemingly no more, the pair are left abandoned in the middle of nowhere,

with only a few days of air remaining. Pretty fun. That is a very long summary. Yeah. How about that? I hope and expect that we're going to get to know these characters a little better during their trauma. How do you feel about these longer summaries?

I've started drawing from a different source for my summaries and, uh, like that is pretty wordy. Maybe we go back to the ones on Paramount Plus, which are often just wrong. I think those are the superior capsules in my mind. Okay. All right, well, that was a spectacular description of what's coming.

There's only one way to figure out how we're going to experience that episode, Ben. True. For that, I'm gonna go over to gach.biz slash game and the game of buttholes, Will the Riker Quantum Leap, where our runabout is currently on square 60. And I'm going to roll a hundred sided die

that will take us literally anywhere on this board to determine what kind of episode experience we'll be having. Can't wait. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. Now let's see where this die takes us. Ben, we have been catapulted forward up to square 71. Chula!

Did I win? Hardly. This is gonna be a regular old episode. It is right next to a read alert pineapple drink drunk-a-soad. Wow. Tantalizingly close to our ropes being made tastier. As it is, they will be just the same gross old ropes. Damn it.

But they've always been. Fuck. I feel bad for my ropes. Damn it. That they've always been. Fuck. Feel bad for my ropes. Yeah. I feel grateful to all the FODs who support our show, who have supported our show over the years. Indeed. We gotta get Wendy and Rob Adler and Bill Tilly paid.

You should know that support for the show goes towards making sure that they're made whole for all their great contributions to the show. Wendy, our great producer, Rob Adler, the great social media manager, Bill Tilly, our card daddy, and Cindy Wartime, consiguier. Indeed, gotta thank Adam Ragusea, who made our parody song based on Dianne Warren's

classic theme to Star Trek Enterprise. Gotta thank Dark Materia for using the card song. 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 where Adam and I discover that our podcast has been destroyed and it's like more of like a relief in a weird way. I often look at the the oxygen sensor in my studio and realize that I too am running out of air over a period of time when we're doing the show. Yeah, it's rough man. You weren't using that oxygen anyways. I don't think the show suffers at all during the hypoxia.

Yeah. Make it show. Make it show. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S.S. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S.S. Make it show. Make it show. Make it show.

Make it show. Make it show. Make it show. Make it show. Make it show. Make it show. Make it show. Make it so. Make it so. Jovi Picada. Maximum Fun. A workaround network

of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.