The Greatest Generation - It’s Always a Rainy Day at the Dog Shit Factory (ENT S2E17)

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

When Captain Archer and Commander Tucker get snatched out of their shuttlepod, they’re placed on a prison transport ship with an unspeakably dangerous criminal. But when his Con Air plan goes into action and Archer somehow manages to impress him, refusing to go back to Canamar is the last decision he’ll make. Whose poop is so hard that it snapped a spoon? How long will Ben remain a winner in Polo Polo or Pollo? Which specialist is MVP in the Enterprise prop department? It’s the episode that’s pro Canamar.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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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. How you doing today, Adam? Good. Good and wet. Hmm. It's the last day of my wife's business trip. She's been gone all week. Yeah. Party's over, man. Yeah, the party of taking your pup to the vet.

Dude, you guessed it. I didn't have to say it. Yeah. Going to the vet two out of the last three days. Cool. I'm sorry, man. How's Rip doing? She saw a specialist last time she was in there. She is on a, like we put her on a bland diet. As you do, like with the stomach sick dog. You bland it up. You bland it up most often in our household

with rice and chicken. Not bland enough. Oh no. We go in there and the vet, we like our vet a lot. And they're like, look, are you really doing just rice and chicken? Because like we really need to be orthodox about this. Yeah.

And I'm like, no. Yeah. Yeah. Ripley is like super duper treat motivated. So when we go out on walks, I bring a pocket full of treats. We're walking around, we're having a great time. Yeah.

Treat, treat, treat the dog in order to get her to do what you want. And the vet's like, look, man, you can't, like not even treats. We gotta go rice and bird. Yeah, what you gotta do is like steam a chicken cutlet, put it into your pocket, that's the treat. That's what you take on your walk. Ben, you don't know how close you are

to being correct on this. So we've pivoted out a chicken. Evidently, chicken might be a trigger for the dog. Now we're on turkey. Oh, man, you know you're having fun with pet sickness when novel protein comes into the mix. We're trying to eliminate the bomb protein in the sweet girl right now.

So now we've pivoted to turkey. And now instead of treats, I carry a Ziploc bag full of cooked ground turkey in the sweet girl right now. So now we've pivoted to Turkey. And now instead of treats, I carry a Ziploc bag full of cooked ground turkey that I just reach my fingers into, pull out and give to the sweet girl as we're walking. And the trouble with that is, when you have to give a dog medicine,

which I do have to do currently, capsules and pills don't really go into ground turkey very well. So now it's February. What I need to do is find like a half turkey breast and cook it so that I can like slice little slices into it, stick pills in. Like you're putting cloves of garlic into a roast.

Precisely, yeah, yeah. Good luck finding half turkeys right now in a grocery store in February, but that's what I need to do clearly because Rip is not enjoying the ground stuff. Could you just get deli meat turkey and like wrap that around a pill? I thought so. I got some yesterday and I brought it home and the pills went down easy. Ripley loves lunch meat.

But then I look at the package and like even the most organic, antibiotic-free deli turkey lunch meat that you get in like a package. Yeah. It's full of like saltwater and additives and shit. Like nothing is pure in this way. It's really hard to find. So I think the only way is like, I might have to buy a fucking Thanksgiving turkey and cook it in order to have turkey meat in the house. Like, like the kind that I need for my dog. You know what you gotta do is buy a Thanksgiving turkey,

cut it in half, go into the freezer, take all of the fucking candles out of the freezer, throw them in the garbage. This might be how I get rid of the candles. Those candle stumps, get the fuck out. We're replacing you with a half turkey. Yeah. I love this idea.

So here's what I'll do. I'll go to a Ralph's, I'll get a frozen turkey. Yeah. I love this idea. So here's what I'll do. I'll go to a Ralph's, I'll get a frozen turkey. I will wait three days for it to thaw out in the fridge. I will cut it in half. I will throw away candle stumps. Yeah. I think I could get this new system going in five to seven days.

I like it. No picnic over here dog health-wise. We've got a big procedure coming up and a fecal sample was required. Oh yeah, that's fun. I mean, like we don't touch our dog's poop through bags every day of our lives. It's true.

But they give you the thing. It's like a pill bottle, but there's a little plastic spoon built into the cap So it's you unscrew the cap. Is this spoon like the sample at the ice cream shop spoon? It's the sample of the ice cream stop spoon if it were glued into the underside of the cap of a pill bottle Mm-hmm, and I go to scoop the poop just get the get the little spoonful So that so that my customer can sample the rocky road. Now if your dog's making rocky road,

I think you should probably take them to the vet too. Spoon snaps. Oh man. You had one job, spoon. Here's my note for this. Give me the wooden spoon that you used to get from the elementary school cafeteria orange sugar and vanilla cup ice cream. Even give me the little weird red plastic stick from the tub.

Stick is better. Of crackers and cheese spread. That thing never snaps. That's an unsnappable object. So you get, how'd you get it out, Ben? I honestly, Adam, I'm like so sleep deprived and like, and like stressed and frustrated right now. I sat down on the curb and cried a little bit.

Oh, fuck. There is no spoon. No one can see you cry. It's a rainstorm out. Yeah. Yeah. It was like bit. Oh, fuck. There is no spoon. No one can see you cry. It's a rainstorm out. Yeah. Yeah. It was like tears and rain, man. I was fucking thinking about sea beams glittering near the Tannhäuser gate.

And then I realized I've, I do have poop bags so I can pinch a little bit off and like work it into the end, but it's a very narrow opening. So I'm like, you know, inevitably some is getting over the edge of the, of the, of the pill bottle that I'm supposed to pack this stuff into. You know what I did out of spite, which is it's not the fault of the person that works in the lab that tests dog shits. I stuck the fucking spoon in there with it. I know you clearly had a bad day and you're frustrated, but you're not having a worse day than, than, than poop tester, right?

Poop testers day is always the same. There's somebody that goes to work every day and what happens is a tray full of dog shits gets set in front of them. It's, it's always a rainy day at the dog shit factory. Yeah. What do you think the employees at the dog shit laboratory do during their breaks? They go out and they cry in the rain, Ben, every day. Yeah. I was vibing with them that day, man.

God. It's not so bad. It's going to be okay. Perspective. That's what we learned during the Marin today. The dog poop is going to be better. Yeah. I love that. The one detail I now have in my head is that your dog's poop is so hard.

It snapped a spoon. have in my head is that your dog's poop is so hard it snapped a spoon. Yeah, we're really at two extremes of the dog poop number line here. What we need is a fecal transplant from your dog to mine. We could get Ripley right as rain. It's true, yeah. What if we talk about Star Trek instead of this, though. Yeah, a different can is what we're facing on today's episode, Ben on Star Trek Enterprise season two, episode 17,

Canimar. ["Canimar"] A man, a plan, a canal, Canimar. That's what it should have been called. We're like renaming geography on the globe lately. The Canimar. Yeah. Canimar's one word.

I like it. I like it too. Pro Canimar. Yeah. Canimar's one word. I like it. I like it too. Pro Canimar over here. Our cold open is on a drifting shuttle pod and it's drifting in that sick nauseating way that you get in Star Trek sometimes. When things don't move in straight lines and when ships don't face each other in the perfect way. Yeah.

It's bad. On board there isn't even any gravity. That's a fun detail too, right? There's just a floating little tricorder. Yeah. And it doesn't look like anyone's home on the shuttle pod. Archer dead? Yeah.

I mean, what's, how are you vibing into the theme song here, given this? Yeah. Like, did you see a little like, a little like, on, on to Paul's face when, when they were contemplating this, like they're scanning it's shuttle pod one, which I thought was destroyed. Yeah. It's not like when your Jersey gets retired, they don't like, they don't like run it up into the rafters of the shuttle bay.

Is this like air force one though? Like when archers aboard, is it always Shuttle Pod One? Sure. Yeah, maybe so. I do feel like a ripple goes through the crew. Like this could be great for us. I think where people would feel bad is the loss of trip. Like, here's the thing, I'm gonna answer super honestly. I would be

delighted to take Archer off the board of this show, but not at the expense of also taking trip. I don't think that's a fair trade to me. I wouldn't make it. I mean, everyone in the engineering section probably be like, well at least it's like not so distracting at work anymore. Yeah, at least now we can turn the thermostat down. Every time he's like, time to roll up our sleeves and get to work, people. It's not like kind of a sexual harassment thing.

You're never going to let that go, are you? So after the theme, we're trying to figure out what happened aboard the shuttle. And got the flight recorder, got the black box. They did the scan. They found no humans. And T'Pol is like, can we scan for dorks? Like, maybe if we just change the frequency a little bit, like, that'll pick Archer up. Yeah.

Big Starfleet Nerd is an accurate description. No, that doesn't work either. He and Tripp played some kind of space water polo. Yeah, and I thought long and hard, Ben, about whether or not this would trigger the hit game show within a podcast, Polo, Polo, or Pollo. It does not. Great.

A mention isn't good enough. Another opportunity for me to curb stomp the game, Polo, Polo, or Pollo, ripped away from me. Yeah, you remain a winner just a little bit longer. Flax and Reed have done some deep scanning, though, and there is evidence of a struggle. There's blood on some of the bulkheads. They kind of think Archer and Trip have been abducted.

Yeah. Just blood. There's no hair. I kind of wanted like a crime scene kind of... Kind of examination of the thing. Like what we never do is we're never aboard the shuttle pod after that initial cold open, right? And I kind of wanted forensics to go in there or something.

Yeah, and flocks could be like, there are fibers aboard the ship and the fluid's consistent with sexual activity. Yeah, that would have been fun. We don't get that. We're just around the table hypothesizing. A real sad McLaughlin crew. Issue one. Suddenly, we're on some other ship.

And this ship is run by some leather daddies who looked kind of familiar to me. That cheekbone loaf that they've got. These guys hate the Sabon, right? I don't know if these are the same guys. They're not the same guys, right? Unclear. It seemed like they were on better terms with these guys than the guys that hate the sulabon. But man, I couldn't tell that cheek loaf apart from that other cheek loaf. One detail about their uniforms is they appear to be made out of the material that you wrap in glass bottles before shipping them to people.

You and I have received on occasion a bottle of fine liquor in a cardboard box that's also wrapped in very long bubble wrap. Not just bubble wrap, but tube bubble wrap. That's what wrapped in like very long bubble wrap. Yeah. Not just bubble wrap, but like tube bubble wrap. That's what these guys look like. They're wearing. The goose sent me a really nice bottle of scotch when my son was born.

I feel like it came like that. No bottle of scotch when my daughter was born. Yeah. Interesting choice, goose. Yeah. I mean, he sent a bottle of scotch to your wife before your daughter was born. The guards on this ship, not a big fan of being asked idle questions by the various slaves. Like they kind of like, they kind of have them seated like galley slaves in a Roman ship.

And this. Yeah. I wanted to see someone like hitting the drum for rowing tempo. seated like galley slaves in a Roman ship in this. Yeah. I wanted to see someone like hitting the drum for rowing tempo. Rowing speed. Yeah. You never get anywhere in space if you have to row though.

Yeah. Yeah. Archer does that thing where he wants to talk to a manager and that's a bad look anytime, especially if you're in the galley of a prison ship. Yeah, pretty funny that he got his hair done up to look like that though, to ask for a manager. Are you in charge here? Yeah. Interesting detail about how this particular prison system works. It's your handcuffs that electrocute you for punishment. These guards have a little clicker.

They click the clicker, the handcuffs start zapping you and you get shot. That's when another prisoner helpfully warns him, shut the fuck up or you're gonna get shocked again. That's how it goes around here. Little late with the advice. Archer has heard that they are headed to Canimar, and we meet a guy sitting next to...

Canimar! Canimar! Canimar! Do you think people in Star Trek Discovery ever get confused? Like, wait, where are we headed? Canimar? Did you say Canimar or Caminar?

God, great call. confused like, wait, where are we headed? Canimar? Did you say Canimar or Caminar? God, great call. I could have done that back when we were doing episodes about Star Trek Discovery. I know. Never thought to do it. You like ask Siri to put the directions in and you've been like driving for hours and you're like,

fuck, goddammit, this is Caminar. I'm trying to go to a penal colony and I'm at this fucking place with the... The fucking huts on the beach? The guys who dump them out every time they shit their pants? The people who run like horses. That's where I'm gonna stay? Cool. Horse planet.

And the goo guys that look like they're in like crude oil? Great. Yeah. Tremendous. Fun. You know what? I'm gonna sleep in the shuttle. So this mystery prisoner on the ship, Ben, did you recognize him?

Did you recognize a Mark Ralston? Mark Ralston, very familiar, that guy. He always plays kind of like a Weasley fucker, I want to say. I gotta tell you, Ben, when you cast the guy who played Boggs in Shawshank Redemption in your Prison Ship episode, I think what you've done there is inject a fair bit of subtext into every moment, intentional or otherwise. Yeah. Archer did his best to fight off the other prisoners on the ship.

Even put up a good fight. He never said we did it. But we all did. the other prisoners on the ship even put up a good fight. He never said we did it. We also meet Zumis, who is an alien who, uh, all of Zumis' nostrils are kind of along his jawline and just like huge pendulous boogers are hanging out of each one. Is this guy worse to look at or worse to listen to over the course of this episode? Yeah. Sean Whelan, the actor that plays this guy,

also a tremendous that guy, and like very consistently cast as annoying guy. Uh, he's the, uh, the Raymond Burr guy from the Got Milk Ad. He is the Raymond Burr guy from the Got Milk Ad. Excuse me? Yeah. Wow. He's used to wearing a lot of prosthetics starting there where he had to wear a full body cast that covered his face. Here you go. Mmm, thank you. A real blabber mouth. And it seems like you get shocked if you talk.

So this guy has a really maladaptive coping mechanism when he's nervous for this situation. We learned that Trip and Archer have been accused of smuggling. They're trying to explain that they are members of a starship crew and one of them is the captain and they should be treated with some deference, but the guards don't give a shit.

No, no, they really don't. Who does give a shit remains back on Enterprise where T'Pol is doing a FaceTime with a representative of Enolia. And we know that they're related because they wear the same bottle shipping uniform as the prison guards. And this guy has got that very specific Ian Holm from Lord of the Rings kind of look about him,

this actor, like that kind of intensity. Yeah, this is Holm's Osborn, not just a leather daddy, also the father from Donnie Darko. Adam, he's a Donnie daddy. Fuck you. Amazing casting this episode. This guy on the FaceTime says they're pretty busy. You know, it's not easy being a trading post

operator the way I am, but why don't you give me your lost dog posters to Paul and I'll make sure to share them around the workspace. See if anyone tears off any of the, uh, the, the phone number contact information on the bottom. They had a good meeting with these guys. So he seems pretty embarrassed at the idea that it's possible Archer and Trip got arrested or whatever.

Yeah. And we cut right back over to this ship to show why he's embarrassed. Cause we see mealtime and it's not pleasant. How many times have we seen Gruul depicted on Star Trek Enterprise in two and a half seasons? I want to say six times. We've gotten six Gruul episodes, at least.

You get a run at Gruul a couple of times a season at minimum when it comes to Star Trek Enterprise. The props person who got hired for this show, like their specialty was Gruul, and they're like, look, they're telling their friends and their family, like, I got hired, this show, like their specialty was gruel and they're like, I look they're telling their friends and their family like I got hired I'm really excited but like I doubt this is gonna be a long-term project like my specialty is gruel. It turns out they're working it on the Paramount lot for three years as gruel boy. Yeah. Anything else on the menu? I don't know why I got hired on a sci-fi

show I just I don't know if I have anything to offer. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out MVP. There's also a Nausicaa on this ship and that guy wants some gruel. He wants Tripp's gruel because Tripp is being a little bit snobby about the food. And when a guard buzzes the Nausicaa for piping up and, and a threatening trip over his food trip, thanks the guard. Uh, and also gets shocked.

I love this. I love the equal opportunity shocking that happens here. Yeah. It's not fair. That's what this moment tells us. There's a bad place and these guards are bad people. They're bad people, but also like, you know, we're moving into a world where, you know, we may all be called to dehumanize someone and make them suffer.

And I feel like if I've like done the mental work to make all of the people that I'm quote unquote guarding not human to me, like having a remote where I can shock them does sound pretty fun, you know? It makes my job easier. Right! As a prison guard. Yeah. Keeps my hands clean. I don't need to get close to them.

I just hit the clicker. Yeah. I mean, there was that one day I accidentally brought my garage door opener to work instead of the clicker. That was frustrating. I wanted to shock them so bad. I just couldn't. The prisoners never let you hear the end of that one

until you shocked them. I mean, neither did my wife. She's like, why the hell is our garage door opener going up and down all day? Donnie Daddy lets them know aboard the Enterprise that Captain and Trip did, in fact, get arrested. And he agrees to go with them to meet up with the transport to like, give the official word that Archer and Trip are to be released

directly to the custody of the NX01. What a breath of fresh air this guy is. So often we run into an alien species who makes a, you know, quote unquote, mistake like this. And they're like, no, this is actually the way our justice system works. Fuck you if you're not on our level. Like, that's just how it is. But this guy feels like, like suitably regretful in a way that was so different. I loved it. I love a mid-level person in an alien government that's like, yeah, this does suck. Like,

we really got to figure some shit out. What are we doing here? You know what? I'm, I'm going to take this note for action back to the folks in charge and we'll see if we can't make this better down the road. Yeah. Maybe the whole like, uh, you're, you're tried and

convicted by the people arresting you thing isn't really a great deal. You know, and we have gotten some notes about the gruel. I think we're gonna make some improvements there too, in the food and bev department. Yeah, we're gonna upgrade to translucent red puck. It's edible. But I wouldn't call it food.

God, this is... I mean, how many centuries do you need to wait before Puck is available to you? You're waiting a long time. So Enterprise sets off on an intercept course with this guy on board. He's riding along. That's part of the fun. And Archer gets notified by one of the guards aboard the ship like, hey, you two, you're

out of here. You got sprung. You know, you must have friends in high places. You're getting released. This seems low key. One of the meanest things that you could do is like tell these people in front of general population,

that's not gonna be good. Yeah, I mean, like it is fucked up, but also like over the course of the episode, you get a sense of the design of this ship and it really seems like they don't have anywhere to go. There's a tiny little cockpit and the area that the prisoners are in and then the docking ring and no other parts.

It does not seem like there is a bathroom aboard this ship. It looks like there's a bathroom on the flight deck though. The left seat, that looks like there's a bathroom on the flight deck though. The left seat, that looks like a commode with a lid down. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And like the pilot and the co-pilot just switch. Yeah. Yep. So this is when the prison riot breaks out. The Mark Ralston guy, who we come later to learn his name, Corota, just like totally hulks through his wrist braces and punches a guard, gets a gun. He and the Nausicaa team up and take over the ship and all three of the guards are down.

I love the math that they do here during this takeover. They're like, this set is only this big. So if I get up out of my seat and you get up out of your seat, we got to stick the guards in the seats that we left. We have nowhere else to stick them. It's a one for one situation. Yeah. Archer and Trip waste no time in starting to work these guys

and undermine their confidence in their ability to pilot this ship. This is a warp-capable vessel. Not everybody knows how to fly those. And after injuring the pilot, they're like, "'Ugh, maybe we went too hard on the pilot.'" Yeah. They're immediately regretful about that. So Archer's like, I can do this.

Like, I'm a damn fine pilot, and I'm going to need my buddy. And they're like, just you. And I was like shocked at how quick Archer was to accept that deal. Like, what are you doing, Archer? Just say, no, I really can't. Like, we're all going to die unless you free me and my buddy. I mean, I did kind of see it his way in that you can't do anything

of both of you are restrained with one of you at least out. You've got some choices. And I think Archer, I hate giving him this much credit. He's playing a longer game here. Okay. I just think he could have taken one more run at like, let's trip out to, he's a warp engineer, you know, something. Archer's not trying to be a problem. He's trying to get in good with Boggs.

I could be a friend to you. Once he's up on the flight deck, it doesn't take him very long to orient himself to these buttons and the toilet that represents the left seat. orient himself to these buttons and the toilet that represents the left seat. And Boggs is like, here's where you need to steer us to this binary star system. Can you get us there? And then a couple of button pushes later,

that's where they're headed. No further information given. Archer's like, cool, where's that? Boggs is like, not now, maybe later. That's on a need to know basis. Yeah. But what is not on a need to know basis is how he broke through his shackles. This guy has already been to Canimar and escaped it.

And so he put subdermal implants in his wrists in case he ever got arrested again that can like override this type of restraint. And he is classic heist man in a heist movie who's like, I'm never going back to the clink. Yeah. He's gone so far as to mutilate his wrists. Amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. There's some fucking around with the subspace transceiver that results in him like driving the butt of his gun through the panel that runs the subspace transceiver. It seems kind of clear that Archer was trying to surreptitiously send a distress signal and was claiming that he was shutting everything down, but this guy is not prepared to trust Archer. Yeah, yeah. But I was also like, what are the chances

the actual transceiver is right there? Like, wouldn't it be somewhere else on the ship and that's just a button that turns it on and off? I mean, this is one of those story beats that's explained with an edit. Like you go from this scene straight to Enterprise where they momentarily pick up a distress call that then disappears and that lets you know that like that's what the attempt was.

No response from the hail that enterprise tries to send. And so Tupol orders the enterprise to floor it. And the trading post manager like helpfully offers to direct some scout ships to that position because they would get there first. Yeah, Paul's like sure We'll take you up on that. Sounds good. Yeah Websites Everybody needs one. But what the hell are they? Well, I've been looking into it and a website is the best place for people to share what's important to them.

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at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Back on the prison ship, this Zoomus guy, he has all kinds of advice and thoughts to share and TripTucker is in that special kind of hell when you're flying alone on a commercial aircraft and the seat person next to you just doesn't notice that you have your AirPods in and just wants to talk. He's thinking of having his face reconfigured once they're out on the lam so that the authorities don't catch up with him, but also because of all of these boogers dangling out the bottom of it. Maybe just a full face reconfig would help this guy. What's your trick to getting a stranger

to stop talking to you? I wish I had one, man. That's a tough one, huh? This is why I'm so reticent to start talking to other strangers is like, I don't want to be that guy, you know? Yeah. You're good in public. That's the thing. Just leave people alone. My go-to is like, hey, I got a work thing I got to do.

And then I just sort of pop the buds in and open up a laptop or something. And then you watch like, like an extremely violent movie on your laptop. Yeah, and then I movie on your laptop. Yeah, and then I turn on Star Trek. They're like, this motherfucker. And you're like, no, really?

In the flight deck, Archer also can't stop running his mouth. He's got that in common with Sumas. Uh-oh. Here comes two ships on an intercept course, Ben. Those are those patrol ships that that, uh, the guy was talking about on Enterprise. And these ships are ready to fire. They're outgunned. They're outmanned.

They're outnumbered, outplanned. And it's a real like, I'm not going back, like, like fight them and archer going, we are not equipped to fight that type of ship on this type of ship. And Archer takes this opportunity to convince them to finally free trip so that he can rig something up. And they do a classic, like, blow plasma out the ass of the ship and blow it up in space to knock out the pursuing starships move. Pretty fun trick, huh?

Yeah. I was trying to remember where we saw it before and I was thinking like another ship did it to Enterprise, maybe? Yeah, yeah, I think that's what happened. Yeah, but Archer's like, yeah, I do this all the time. I'm just, you know, being that I'm a criminal smuggler. It's interesting because they've like knocked out propulsion like, yeah, I do this all the time. I'm almost, you know, being that I am a, a criminal smuggler. Mm-hmm.

It's interesting because they've like knocked out propulsion on the other two ships and now Corota wants Archer to turn around and kill the other two ships. And Archer's like, I don't want to turn this into a murder one beef for all of us. I'm not rock and roll. Not at the drop of a hat. I'm, I'm hesitating. What the hell is going on? That's what we're trying to figure out.

So Daddy Darko back on the entrepreneur lets to Paul know that, uh, oh yeah, we got, uh, got those scout ships onto the transport, trying to destroy it. We're doing our best to, uh, to just destroy that ship. And she's like, what are you talking about? Our guys are on that ship.

And he's like, yeah, but you don't know this Corota guy, he's also on the ship and it's, it's, it'll be a mess if he gets away. He takes out a VHS cassette copy of Shawshank Redemption and pushes it into the TV VCR combo. And he's like, I think you'll have a better idea of what we're dealing with after you watch this scene. It's just a bunch of reaction shots

of the crew watching Shawshank. Like, what do you think happened to him in the laundry room? How could they cut away? Andy seems changed. He seems darker and sadder now. But it also seems like he has the resolve to do what he must do. Yeah. Yeah.

So, back on the Prisonship flight deck, Boggs is impressed. And this represents the first time on Star Trek Enterprise that anyone has been impressed by Archer in any way. I love that he's like sort of tried to recruit Archer into that life. He's like, he stick with me. We could like, we could really do some heists, man. You imagine how many ships we could gas and then escape. Come on.

It's great. I'm a smuggler. I'm not good at much else. Here's what this scene also does. By Boggs attempting to recruit Archer, it kind of makes Boggs look bad and bad at sizing up people specifically. Yeah, which is a funny detail for how badly he gets tricked

over and over in this. Cause one of the things that Archer's doing is doing that act tough voice and act tough posture. Like he's a dad at a biker bar, like trying to get in next at the pool table, you know? Right, yeah. Like, why don't you just go sit at the bar, man? Maybe pool isn't for you at this particular bar. It's not as if I have a lot of options right now.

Nobody wants your clothes and your boots and your motorcycle now at this bar. T100 sees Archer in that bar, and then you see through his eyes the red heads up display and all the trivia information about him. Sizing up Archer's body. Summary, waste of a bullet. So we learn that we're heading to a trading

outpost in this binary system. They're just going to change cars here. Like they're, they're just ditching the ship and then getting out of there. Back in, in, in the back, Tripp has been re-tied back up next to Zumis. And at this point, Zumis is just driving him fucking nuts and Tripp kind of boils over.

He didn't set a boundary early, so he's like totally dysregulated by the time he actually addresses the thing that's annoying him. He's, uh, he's afraid of being seen as mean or a troublemaker and so he has to eat a bunch of shit for not sticking up for himself. But then when he does, Dumas is pouting and hurt. And the way he soothes himself is by stroking the boogers

hanging out the bottom of his face. It's hard to be honest with someone when they constantly make you feel sorry for them. Like this, this is like, Tripp is in an absolute impossible situation. I just thought it might be nice to have a pleasant conversation before I spend the next 10 years in a penal colony.

One detail that we get is where they're headed finally. They're headed to a planet called Tamal, which is the fourth planet in the system, and it's wrapped in a corn masa, and then banana leaves before being gently steamed till tender. It seems like an exciting place that I would like to go to. Banana leaves is like the Caribbean version, right?

Yeah. Sometimes it's corn husk. Yeah, I cook more with banana leaves than I do with corn husk. Oh. I think banana leaves are easier to use. They're like more pliable and bigger. I've never tried it that way.

I had a friend in high school, the holidays, his family would set up tamale night and everyone would get around a huge table and you'd just sit there at your station and you'd either be loading the tamales or like mixing masa or whatever. And you just produce like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tamales over the course of the night. Then take home dozens of tamales, throw them in the freezer. You got tamales for a long time. We go around the table, like one person's made like 20,

another person 18, another person 25, Benjamin R. Harrison three. Yeah, but they're like, they're another person, 25, Benjamin R. Harrison, three. Yeah, but they're like big fuckers, you know? I'm using like six corn husks to wrap these guys. They're like sack of flower-sized tamales. Yeah. I'm like, I'm going to carry this around high school for a week to learn what it's like to care for a child.

Up front, it's clear that the ship has taken some damage through its firefight with the scout ships, but Boggs doesn't seem interested in fixing it. And that is a clue about his priorities and what the final mission is going to be of this vessel. He's not hungry either, which doesn't really point to anything specific the way not wanting to fix of this vessel. He's not hungry either, which doesn't really point to anything specific the way not wanting to fix the ship does. Like the Nausicaan offers him some food

and he kind of gets upset at the very idea of eating gruel. Gruel represents the way things used to be. We're almost out of here, man. We don't need to eat that shit. Yeah. I will direct you to my comments said previously, wherein I would not go back. Yeah. Culinarily or otherwise. Yeah. You can speak to us normally. Like a couple of the guards had lunch pails up here. I'm gonna go through those, see if there's anything good.

Yeah. He tells a little bit of his backstory, like when he was a kid, he was falsely accused of stealing latinum and thrown in jail for it. And because of the cruelty of that, he sort of like chose a life of crime. Like, well, if they're gonna treat me like a criminal,

I might as well act like one. We get a flashback of young Boggs in the meal line at this prison, in line for gruel. And he does want more at that point, doesn't he? Mm. Yeah. Please, sir, may I have some more, specifically? Exactly. More?

So, he kind of appreciates this. He's like, I've had a very exciting life. I've really gotten to see a lot rampaging around the galaxy. Yeah. Specifically, he's like, I've had a very exciting life. I've gotten to really gotten to see a lot. Rampaging around the galaxy. Yeah. Specifically, he's like, I learned more being in prison than I ever did for my dad. Which, oof, that hurts. Yeah, brutal. Changed him.

And Archer's like, yeah, I mean, my dad was Simon Tarsus. I know, I know that feel. I didn't want to wait for anything. So the prison ship drops out of warp at the Masa system and no one's there to greet. That's unusual, right? They were kind of expecting another ship there. At this point, the plan is revealed. This ship that they're there to meet is gonna dock with them, and then they're gonna leave on that docked ship, and then they're gonna set up the prison ship to

decay in orbit and crash and kill everyone left aboard. Because that would look like an accident, right? If everyone's dead in the ship accident, no one's going to come to look for them. It's the perfect crime except for most of these prisoners get taken out in the process. Archer's pretty horrified by this. Meanwhile, the entrepreneur is entering the same system.

They are right there in close proximity now. Yeah. And Reed's big idea is, look, as soon as we get close enough, let's transport them over. And the magistrate makes it pretty clear that, yeah, I mean, you could try, but the prison ships are kind of made to prevent that from happening. So, do you have anything that like you could shoot out on a chain with kind of a claw attachment

at the end? Because I think once we punch a hole in the hull, we could maybe grapple them out. Yeah, that would probably be the best plan. Something you could grab and pull. Yeah. Yeah, they'd only be in space for a short time. Back aboard the prison transport, they have to fix the docking hatch, because that's one of the things that got fucked up in the attack.

So Archer is able to get Trip freed again. And this is when he kind of like goes over and like whispers into Trip's ear, like, we don't have a lot of time. These guys are fucking nuts and they're gonna try and crash this ship with everybody aboard it. We need to get ready to take over. And aboard the Enterprise, they found the shuttle that's headed toward the planet Tamal to meet up with Boggs and his Nausicaa and buddy.

So when Archer whispers the plan to Tripp, do you think it reads the same if Archer is freed ahead of this already and is on the same team as the prisoners who've taken over? Because I kind of feel like it's a motivation difference, right? Archer feels motivated to save the prisoners because Trip is among them. But I think it makes him and Trip look better if Trip is already on the A squad here and they're working to save people that they don't know, even that dipshit who talks too much. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I think they come out looking pretty rosy in this. Like they're definitely both on team. Like we can't let these, you know, maybe not innocent people die. Yeah. So back on Enterprise, they pick up the ship headed for the prison transport.

Clearly, this is going to be an ally to Boggs. And on the prison ship flight deck, Boggs and Archer argue about this plan. This plan sucks to Archer. Yeah. He kind of puts his foot down, doesn't wanna do it. And as Trip continues to work on the docking port issue, I mean, they're gonna need this thing to work

in order to mate the two ships, right? Yeah, and Trip pulls a fun one, kind of playing to the Nausicaa's ego, like, my arms just ain't the same as what they used to be strength wise ever since I got pregnant. Do you mind twisting on this valve for me? See if you can open it up. Look at this."

And he pulls back the sleeve of his prison jumpsuit. And the Nausicaa is like, I understand. And he goes in there to try to open the valve and Trip gets one of the shackles off of the wall and bonks him on the noggin with it and is immediately then shot by Boggs. Like their attempt to escape, like he gets the one guy down and then Boggs just shoots him. Didn't this same thing happen when Enterprise was taken over by the Suleybon? Like recently. Yeah. Like Reed and Trip tried to fight them off. Trip is shot immediately

That's great. I'm just easy to hit. What's that about? Good enough for me. You're my man now So at this point we're in a decaying orbit and Archer is like trying to reason with Boggs He's like man. This is fucking crazy like like, we didn't even fix the docking ring yet. And now you shot the engineer who knows how to do that. And we need to like change the trajectory so that we're not falling down. And Boggs is having none of it. He forces him to do this repair,

which is now incredibly high stakes. They don't have a lot of time left. We're seeing the ships start to like interact with the atmosphere and that like plasma heat develop around their holes. And, uh, the shuttle starts to come in and connect to the ship. This is a great moment because when the hatch opens to this other ship, it's read in Mayweather and they're coming in hot.

Very fun. I mean, it wasn't like like, that big of a surprise, given the shot of the Enterprise catching the shuttle in the system, but, like, a very exciting moment when a door opens and our heroes just come in guns blazing. And it's a very rare moment for Star Trek. I love a fight scene with another element, right? So, this is not just a firefight aboard the ship.

It's a firefight aboard a ship that is sinking into an atmosphere also. Yeah, and there's a bunch of guys in there that they're trying not to hit because they're like tied up and they don't deserve that mess. I mean, like even Zumis, who kind of deserves it because he ratted Trip out to Boggs. Yeah, I don't care much for Zoomus. No. Not a top line concern for me.

The Nausicaa gets shot just about as immediately as Trip did. Yeah. And then like, bangers start hitting the ship as they get deeper into the atmosphere. They get Boggs and there's a very panicky evacuation of all of the prisoners and the guards to this other shuttle. And we see Boggs kind of stirring as the escape is being made by everyone.

He's like, he like got knocked out, but he's not totally stunned. He's just kind of dazed. This is great when Boggs wakes back up. Yeah. There is a huge tussle between Boggs and Archer at this point, and they're kind of the last ones on board. And it's fists and kicks and bangers. And Archer makes his way to the escape hatch

while Boggs makes his way to the flight deck and he closes the door behind him. And Archer leaves with Reed and the ship separate. And then, you know, that other ship rises up out of the atmosphere and on the prison ship flight deck, Boggs like sits down in that seat, like with the relief of someone who thinks he's gonna make it.

And then he's relieved in a different way. Like this choice the actor makes is so interesting because either outcome is positive. Yeah. Like, he's ready to go. He's not going back. That's the main thing for him. Yeah.

And what's weird is, like, you hear the first couple bars of Life is a Highway play... -♪ BELLS CHIMING AND LAUGHING CONTINUES... -♪ ...as the ship separate and Boggs' ship goes down into the atmosphere and explodes. Speaking of songs and ships, have you seen this thing? I've seen it on Reddit mostly, but it's the opening theme to Star Trek The Next Generation as if the Enterprise-D is playing the music. Yeah, yeah.

And it's like got the Doppler effect as it as it zooms away and stuff. That that's not what I'm imagining when the prison ship goes down. It's like Life is a Highway is playing. Oh, yeah. As it goes away. The Doppler kind of makes it sound tragic and sad. Yeah. Yeah. It starts to minor key itself as it Dopples. Yeah. We get an official Anolian government apology from Daddy Darko to Archer and Tripp

as they come back aboard the entrepreneur and tell flocks about all the prisoners that have a real bad case of gruel butt. They're just not right after eating that shit. And you've got to get a classic like super self-righteous Archer moment at the end here. To kind of spoil the Archer episode that I think up until this point was, was really good for him.

I mean, like Daddy Darko's performance all the way through this was very funny to me. Like the, the like, yeah, there are some things about our society that are horrifically unjust. And I do feel kind of bad about that. And he plays that all the way to the end. Like, yeah, I guess at the end of the day, we as a society have a lot to think about. That's what's so interesting to me about the end of this episode is like,

That's what's so interesting to me about the end of this episode is like, Archer is so indignant and this guy is so like, yeah, right? Yeah. But there is absolutely no commitment to change whatsoever and no promise that Archer is going to follow up on this shit to make sure it's made right. Yeah. Like daddy Darko is a middle manager. He doesn't, he doesn't make the policies, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the tone the episode ends on, Ben. Did you like the episode as a whole, though? I did. You know, like, Con Air in Star Trek is a fun kind of episode, and... Mm-. And I thought that the twist of the prison break happening right as Archer and Trip were supposed to get sprung was a very fun way to trigger the adventure. And, you know, I liked to... I liked all the characters. Like, a bunch of fun character actors in this one.

Uh, acting their asses off. Yeah, great job. Yeah. A really enjoyable episode of Star Trek, in my opinion. How about you? I agree, especially for it being a little bit derivative. A couple of Enterprise crew members are scooped up and put into a prison situation. Like how many times have we gotten that?

Four times in two seasons? Seems like a lot, but this is a new spin on it in a way that I found super enjoyable. And I think the ship is a big part of it, right? Yeah. Being on the ship and having a plan and yeah, I just, I dug this quite a bit. It was good. Good ep. And I really appreciate giving the character actors some work here. Not just one, but several. That's good work by casting. fun. Yeah. Well, there's also a lot of fun to be had in the Priority One inbox, Adam. Should we head in there to check out what the Friends of De Soto have for us? Oh, yeah.

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. Up low. Yeah, it's extra. By the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship Then we've got a promotional priority one message here, okay. Here's what that one says. You know what sucks. Hmm. That's right Raz You know what really sucks

That's right Raz again. Whoa, there is something that sucks even more than Raz. Dang. People dying of drug overdoses. Okay. My wife leads a program that I think she started called WeHeartYou.org. And if you go to Plaveem.com, you can watch the YouTube video of her latest speech. She is a real Leslie Knope. I am more like the douche anyway. That's Plavim.com and once more so you don't forget, fuck you Raz.

Madison was fun. Oh man. How about that? Plavim actual weighing in. Plavim and Raz for newer listeners, legends of the P1 inbox from way back and some guys we've hung out with in real life, they came to our show in Madison recently. And yeah, plavim.com, p-l-a-v-e-e-m dot com takes you to, looks like this is a YouTube video of his wife giving a speech about drug

overdoses. So kind of a roast of Raz and also a good cause rolled up into one thing. Pretty great to celebrate the return of Plavim and or Raz to the P1 inbox here. What a moment. Yeah. Longtime FODs are going to be P1 inbox here. What a moment. Yeah. Longtime FODs are going to be pretty excited about this. Yeah, I wonder if the Razzkulls will mount a response. You know, time will tell. Yeah. We've got another priority one message here, also of a promotional nature, Adam.

It goes like this. Do you listen to Greatest Gen to give yourself a bit of an escape from everything? Would you like some other ways to give your brain a few moments of respite? My hubs, who got me into Star Trek and whom I have now surpassed in Star Trek nerdery thanks to Ben and Adam, recently created a new daily puzzle.

No luck-based game of butt holes, the will of the Richer, quantum leap here. Yes, I do listen through to the end. Instead, use basic addition and pattern recognition to win. This is from Jackie and she's encouraging us to go to notill.us. So that's spelled K-N-O-T-I-L dot U-S to play this game. The game is pronounced not ill us like the Malik species Nautilus. Oh, yeah. There's the pronunciation guide. I like it. Man, I finish my my New York Times games every day and sometimes I'm still wanting another thing to do.

So I'm going to have to add Noddle Us to my list. Yeah, I think a game that just involves basic addition will be something that FODs will not find too challenging. Definitely sounds like My Speed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if your speed is supporting the show with a priority one message, you can do that at maximumfun.org slash Jumbotron.

Write some words about your wife and a project she's doing or about a fun game that you're making and we'll give you the greatest gen bump. Indeed. Hey Adam. What's up Ben? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda?

Incredible. Drunk Shimoda. You know what? I'm kind of speaking out of both sides of my mouth because in the last segment, I was praising the casting choices for kind of emptying the horse stable of character actors on this episode. But at the same time, Boggs on a prison subject show. That choice is my Edward Larkin.

He was also in that episode of TNG where the guy had like, had like committed suicide in the nacelle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dark stuff. Yeah. So I think typecast for creep or off. For like a guy that feels dangerous, like unspeakably dangerous in a prison environment.

Yes. And that is articulated like an award show category. The award for the depiction of unspeakably dangerous character in a science fiction or prison context award goes to... That's mine, Ben. How about you? I'm going to give it to Zumis, the Sean Whelan character. I don't know if it was his, like, his acting choice or something that the makeup department came up with or something that was in the script.

I mean, like, I don't know if the script would ever have a detail, like, there are dozens of long boogers hanging out of holes at the bottom of this character's face, but his choice when he was upset to, like, run his fingers through them. Like, this character is fucking annoying, and we're supposed to be fucking annoyed, but we're also supposed to feel bad, but we're also still supposed to kind of hate him.

And that's also a conversation between the actor and the makeup artist. Like, hey, can I touch these? Like, how much can I touch them? Yeah. So, that moment when he's in soft focus and Tripp is like trying to walk back the explosive reaction he's just had was my favorite moment in the episode.

Just like, ah, don't touch them. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Faith of the fart. You want to hear anything about the next episode of Star Trek Enterprise, Adam? No, let's leave it as a surprise. Wow. Well...

No, we can't do that. We have to do the segment. The surprise will be what happens with the Game of Buttholes, the Will of the Riker quantum leap. The episode will be season two, episode 18 of Star Trek Enterprise, The Crossing. Non-corporeal aliens possess the bodies of the Enterprise crew. Oh, that's fun. They're gonna be kind of puppeted around. Sounds like it. That sounds great. You know why I like these episodes? You get to see

a different gear for our actors. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Play a different character wearing the same costume. This is something that Jerry Ryan did very ably back on Voyager. I think that was maybe the most recent example of something like this. That's good stuff. Yeah, absolutely. How will we be viewing this episode, Adam? Well, Ben, our runabout is currently on square 28. That's made what we've done here a regular old episode. Let's see if we're doing something unusual for this upcoming episode.

Let's do it. You're required to learn as you play. Roll. Ben, we have landed on a special square. Okay. All aboard! It's so interesting that we talked briefly about Slash Fiction earlier on because I've landed our runabout on square four, that is J slash C. Whoa.

The description of this is the person who rolled has to read Jeffrey Combs character Slashfic to the other in next week's Marin, which means I will be sharpening my Slashfic pencil and writing a bit of Slashfic and reading it to you during the open of the next episode. It's gonna be Shranfic, huh? Schranfic, indeed.

I'm semi-tumescent already. That's very exciting, Adam. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be titillating. Titillating for Antenna. Wow. Yeah. Excited. I want to express our gratitude to all of the friends of DeSoto

who support this show on a monthly basis. Your support means so much to us and coming up real soon is the Max Fun Drive. So if you're not already a supporter, get ready to become a supporter in just a couple of weeks here during the Max Fun Drive. Most important time of year for us. Got to thank Windy Pretty, our intrepid producer who keeps these episodes edited and tight and keeps everything on the rails over here at the Uxbridge Shimoda Corporation. We also got to thank Bill Tilly, our temporal Cold War time consigliere,

making hilarious trading cards that you can find at the Greatest Trek Instagram these days at Greatest Trek on all social media. Our social media accounts run by Rob Adler, who also runs our mailing list and makes those things fun to follow. Fun to subscribe to the mailing list, fun to follow at Greatest Trek. We encourage you to do so. Yeah, yeah. Making things fun for FODs out in those social media streets. Adam Ragusea is a partner who has made our theme in interstitial music, music you're

hearing right now is from Dark Materia, gave us permission to use it so many years ago. Adam Ragusea co-hosts Wholesome, Dark Materia does not. Adam Ragusea the third host of that show that we do every week. It drops on Wednesday. It's a fun hang with the three of us and totally different from what we do here on Greatest Trek and Greatest Gen. Indeed. With that we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an episode of the greatest generation enterprise where Adam and Ben are so horny, you might think that we've been possessed by horny people.

I don't need to be possessed to write great slash fiction. But it helps. Just possessed by inspiration. Okay. Make it show. Captain John Lupicata, the U.S.A. Senate Prize. Captain John Lupicata, the U.S.A. Senate Prize. Make it show.

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