The Greatest Generation - Neither Oobie Nor Doobie (ENT S1E1 & E2)

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

When Captain Archer takes advantage of a diplomatic incident to get his new crew their first deep space mission, no one gets along with the Vulcan science officer assigned to be their chaperone. But when some squishy aliens kidnap a Klingon from Enterprise, T’Pol must take command to get the mission over the finish line. How bizarre is a sci-fi bazaar at this point? Which sandwich resembles Trip Tucker? Will this ship go down with the captain? It’s the episode that paints without masking first!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

The premiere of the streaming side-bottacular was a smash hit! Yeah! Woo! The reviews are in. The friends at DeSoto, they love this live show. And this thing is going to be available to stream until midnight on May 30th. That's the rest of the month, so get a ticket and watch it tonight, why don't you? There's exclusive merch at this show that we didn't have available on tour.

And if you already support us on MaximumFun.org, you'll get a discount for your ticket. Check your email for a promo code. The ticket link is at GreatestGenTour.com. Go check out the show, watch it with someone you love, and share your embarrassment with them. Here's to the finest crew in Starling. When it comes to my crew, you won't get any argument from me. This is a parody

Paramount owns the song But if we change the words Then it's fair use all day long And you will never take the greatest hit alive Band would rather die. No, they're not gonna sue. They got no case. Cause parody and death nepotize me.

And I've got faith of the far heart. Legally it's just a fart joke. It's good faith to believe. I can do parity I won't cease or desist Cause we really think it's fair You scoff at free speech and guitars I can't pay

Good for late Got no case Tempting fate Faith of the fart 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. Wow. What did you call me before we turned the mics on?

Oh, what did I call you? Did I call you big buddy? Sometimes I call you little buddy. Today I called you big buddy. Because of our relative height. I was just thinking about how, like of all the versions of that you get from like a bartender, like a cool bartender especially, or like just a random person you encounter.

I don't like buddy. I don't like it at all. But if someone called me big buddy, I would love that. I don't like buddy. I don't like it at all. But if someone called me big buddy, I would love that. I would laugh and laugh. How about slick? Would you like slick? Run slick as an alias to the FBI. You're going to get the phone book. Do it anyway.

Oh, sure. The connotation with slick is something that I'd like a lot. The idea that someone could consider me a murderous, capable of high crime. Yeah. Well, now that you've got that teardrop tattooed on your cheek, I think a lot of people make that assumption. No one ever calls a hardened criminal big buddy. When I was growing up, one of my school chums' moms always called us sports fans.

Like when we'd pile into the back of the minivan to go to soccer practice or something, she would say, get in sports fans. Like we're of compatible age, but I think there are some very meaningful distinctions between us having to do with that. Like, did you grow up in the time of transition between minivan sliding door on one side and one side only to all of a sudden there were two sliders on either side of the van?

I actually went through that transition as a kid. That was an exciting time, heady days. What a moment. Yeah, I didn't spend a ton of time in minivans as a kid. Yeah, that was an exciting time. Wow. Heady days. What a moment. Yeah. I didn't spend a ton of time in minivans as a kid cause I was an only and... If you're a parent and you got one kid, why get a van? Yeah, I don't know.

Why even? I met a guy at a party that had seven kids and he told me he drove like a sprinter van. Like he had like a 16 passenger van operation for his family. I'm trying to think of the support group that you met that person in who had seven kids because holy moly. Yeah, yeah.

He told me he goes to Costco three times a week. This was a random dude I met at like a holiday party. Was he really going for it? Because when you have seven kids, the opportunity to party has got to be a real release. Yeah, but here's the thing, Adam, what you're failing to factor in is seven kids and therefore probably very religious.

So I didn't ask this man what his religion was, but he did pepper into the conversation that he was from Utah. So I did a little bit of mental math and he was not going for it. He was not getting wasted at this party. Simple! Well, Adam, this has been a long time coming. We are now onto our fourth series on The Greatest Generation. I can't believe it.

I can't believe we made it four weeks. Look at our lives now. It's incredible. Like if they did a montage, like a theme song montage for our podcast, and they showed like all the podcasting heroes that came before, it's basically just all McElroys, like McElroy home movies and shit. And then Conan

O'Brien, because he also invented podcasting. And then finally, like, Smartless. And then there's us. Yeah. And two of these things are not like the others. Is what you're proposing kind of just like cross-fading video of all of the, of all of the things that got us from there to here? Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess if you were to read it a kind of way, some of those examples might be like the sailing ships of old, you know, finally like the, the Chuck Yeager era jet rocket. Right. The original space shuttle, et cetera.

Right. You could probably assign who you want to any of those eras. Yeah, we don't need to do that math for anyone. No. That's just a fun project to do for yourself at home. I can't believe we're here already, Ben. What many believe to be the final era of the greatest generation, I don't believe we're here already, Ben.

What many believe to be the final era of the greatest generation. I don't believe it. How about you? You're more optimistic than that. You're like an earth human. Many people believe that this will be the series that ends Star Trek podcasting for a period of like 10 to 20 years before it comes back again. Yeah.

What do you say we find out if that's the case? I would love nothing less. More? Nothing more. I would love nothing as we begin the era of Star Trek Enterprise, Ben, with season one, episodes one and two. It's a combo ep. It's called Broken Bow.

I've got faith of the far heart, legally it's just a virtual... Is it Broken Bow or Broken Bow? I had a question. I mean, you'd have to ask the folks in Oklahoma. Because it's like when the bow breaks, you know, like the baby is, is, is going out into the star system. But the bow is like a boat term. And I don't know if they have a lot of boats in Oklahoma. I thought the Oklahoma would refer to like native American folks in, in that region.

No pan flutes in this episode. So hard to tell. I lost a lot of money on that, Ben. Ben, did you read at all? Like, did you do any research about this episode? Because a couple of things stuck out. September 27th, 2001 is when this episode dropped. Pretty wild.

Are you shocked? America was ready to laugh again. America was ready to laugh again. Oh, I just fell out of frame, Ben, but what caused it? And also that this whole idea sprung from the minds of Berman and Braga over, I'm just going to assume a lot of drinks on a patio, someplace tropical. Just a couple of guys chopping it up on Star Trek ideas. Just see what comes out. Just a couple of red-blooded American dudes

drinking Readers and talking about maybe sexing up some Vulcans. I love that idea. I mean, you and I have done that hang. We just didn't have the power to take it to series or anything, you know? Just imagine being a creator god of Star Trek and just knowing that like whatever sessions you have could create something like this. Incredible.

It is a power almost too awesome to put in the hands of one Rick Berman. Would you believe that the very first shot of this brand new series are of a plastic caricature of a white space hero and also his son? It's like the sepia toned past scene of father son bonding. And I don't know how your relationship was with your dad when you were growing up and dabbling in the model making. But my dad never would have permitted painting before masking. Wow. That's just sloppy work, kid.

You gotta put some tape down on those windows. Otherwise you're gonna be scraping the paint off with an X-Acto knife. I didn't know that that was a technique that you brought down to that scale. I mean, I've obviously done like masking when I'm painting a room, and I've seen that people do it on like full

size automobiles, but I didn't realize you did it on models. That's interesting. These lines are not clean. I don't know. It kind of informed my feelings about Archer from the jump, like his attention to detail. A little bit more of a Ben Harrison type. I mean, I was going to save that comparison for the piloting. Fun to see Simon Tarsus again.

He is Henry Archer and the young one is Jonathan Archer, who has not yet been taught that it's not okay to just toss racial slurs around, even when you're just around your family. Yeah. I mean, I think the assumption there is that the hobby room is a safe space. Yeah. No, this is exactly what we want to see when people express ideas like this. Firm correction. Don't call them ambassador pointy.

That's their term. We get some information here about the state of the world in this scene. And what we get is that the dad is a pilot and he's working with the Vulcans on a technology for a new ship. And the Vulcans not only have a frustrating reputation, they are frustrating to work with. And so much so that the kids at school know this and make fun of the younger archer over it. Word has gotten out that, can you imagine being on a playground and like the kids at school making fun of you for your dad

having annoying coworkers? What? What is that? These are very sophisticated bullies, you know, like they do the research. And in that way, I kind of respect it. Like don't just knock the books out of my hand and call me a dork. Like really get personal. Get under the skin.

With some stuff that you're not supposed to know. Yeah. Yeah. So we smash cut to 30 years later, broken bow and or bow, Oklahoma. We're in a cornfield. There's a crashed ship that has carved a streak in that cornfield and a Klingon running through it. A cornfield, a spacecraft, a Klingon Panama.

a cornfield, a spacecraft, a Klingon Panama. So he is running away from some other guys. We don't get a great look at them just yet, but they're firing at him. We see like the local human farmer look out on his field and see that some shit is going down in his field. So he arms himself. He doesn't take kindly to people fucking with his corn or his daughter. Like, he's got that kind of energy when he steps onto the stoop and racks that gun.

This farm actually has two rules. So these mystery aliens chase the Klingon into the grain silo and... Oh yeah, the Klingon comes into the clearing and sees just one silo and he's like, one? How do you run a farm with just one silo? So confusing. How about these aliens? Like the doors shut behind the Klingon, and that's not a deterrent for these guys. They get all bendy and they go underneath. They go in the gap between the door and the floor.

They're squishy guys. And, yeah, their loaf is all, like, modeled. Like, they kind of have, like, human-shaped heads, but it's just, like, it's,'s like a totally different texture, which I liked. I really enjoyed the energy, the kinetic energy of this action scene. From the chase all the way up into the silo, to the Klingon jumping out of the top of the silo. Ah!

And the thing that surprised me most of all was that when this Klingon turns around to shoot the silo with these two aliens inside, oh boy it blows big. Oh yeah. That is not corn in that silo, right? Jet fuel is in the silo, isn't it? Man, maybe it's jet fuel. I was thinking it was grain. You know how like certain tradesmen wear jeans with with button flies instead of zipper flies because like causing a spark from your zipper

inside a silo is so dangerous? Yes. So imagine firing a phaser at a silo. I'm just imagining the date that a person goes on wearing those pants with that zipper and the thing you could tell to a potential Lady you're trying to seduce like I don't know baby. I got to be careful with the zipper It's explosion proof Has anybody ever looked into whether the Jets on 9-eleven had grain silos in their payloads,

because maybe that's why it was able to melt steel beams. I think some of the footage might show that tasty grain silo. I was wondering whether or not the silo was filled with something explosive, or maybe this is the only setting for a Klingon firearm. There is no stun on a Klingon dust buster. It's just all the way up. And I love that if that's the case, this is safe distance for a Klingon. Yeah.

He is danger close when he shoots this thing off. And then the farmer runs up and trains his double barrel shotgun on the Klingon. And the Klingons like, now, now that's something I can really wrap my mind around, two barrels. This farmer's like, I don't farm for popcorn. Chk, chk, bam. Hahahaha. Smash cut to a very controversial theme in the Star Trek canon.

I feel like this one has really grown on people over the years, but... Do you think? Oh yeah. I think people have total nostalgia for it now. I wonder if what has happened to this theme has happened to like Limp Bizkit, you know, like everything that was popular that then becomes deeply unpopular eventually does. Comes back around, yeah. Come back around again.

Hey, let us know on our socials whether you have nostalgia for this. So get at greatest track on any social account. And if you're nostalgic for it, do hashtag nostalgia. And if you're not nostalgic for it, hashtag nostalgia. Just let us know. I love it. I did a lot of reading about why they did this, how it was received. Then many people experienced this theme for the very first time at the show's premiere, like the official premiere.

Wow. And it was all anyone could talk about after. Like imagine taking all the air out of your show with your choice of theme. And so many people involved agreed that it was a terrible decision to make. Yet it was their decision. Everyone who had the power to change this did not change it.

They stayed the course with it year after year, season after season with some tweaks. But I was just surprised that they knew it was a bad idea going into it and during and then up to its release. And then after the premiere, I think they had an opportunity to change it out. No, they never did. Berman and Braga wanted a U2 song as the theme. They wanted Beautiful Day as the theme and were unable or unwilling to pay for the rights for that song.

They thought that would be the perfect song for the moment. Oh, man. What if... What if they had gotten the rights to that, but not for streaming, like, in perpetuity? And so this was the song that they'd, like, layered in later because they didn't have the original anymore? If you want to blame Diane Warren, fuck off. Like, get the fuck out of town.

Not her fault, not Russell Watson's fault. Like they've made great music over the course of many, many years. And most of those songs have not been used as the theme for Star Trek series. I think that's the main difference here. Almost all of them. I mean, not all of them, but almost all of them.

So yeah, I mean, I've definitely come around on this. I kind of like it now, but I can see it being a drag at the premiere to be like, hey, we like created all of these new characters and this interesting new premise. All anyone wants to talk about is the theme song. Yeah, that must've been a killer. Yeah, what's that gonna be like to put in a ton of work to create a new version of a thing?

And then finally it gets released to your fans and supporters. And all anyone wants to talk about is... A weird song. Yeah, a weird song that starts it. You guys really did that? Yeah. Huh. I mean, I'll never understand how that feels.

Yeah. Huh. I mean, I'll never understand how that feels. Yeah. I won't cease or desist, cause we really think it's fair use. We get our classic captain riding a shuttle to his new command sequence, but we don't get a great look at the ship during this moment. Now we're too close. Yeah, we're really close. We're danger close again, because this is Trip Tucker and Captain Jonathan Archer

kind of doing an inspection flyby of the ship as it is getting its finishing touches put on. And they even do like a bonk test to, I guess, see if it was structural integrity is up to stuff. Got to do the bonk test before leaving space doc. Pretty ballsy move. Like what if somebody's on the other side of that panel and it isn't ready for the bonk

test? They just get blown out into space in space doc. I mean, that's the safest place to do it. Yeah. I mean, that's the safest place to do it, I think. I wonder, and I wasn't able to confirm this, but is Connor Trenier, the actor playing Trip Tucker, is he doing George W. Bush? Because once I heard that in his twang, I was like, I could not unhear it. And for the rest of the episode,

I'm just seeing Scott Bakula and Commander George W. Bush saunter around their new starship, doing their observations. I have to admit, it became a far more enjoyable experience with that in my mind. Boom, we can't get fooled again. That was quite the era of that's my bush getting taken off of the air. At this show rising to replace it. Archer is wearing the hat of his ship, like a real Navy guy.

You know this guy, right? Absolutely. They're doing the inspection like you do when you get the keys to any rental car. This is a good idea, right? Absolutely. They're doing the inspection like you do when you get the keys to any rental car. This is a good idea, right? Yeah, you do the walk around. I mean, you make your own new dent and point it out to the guy.

You scratched the paint. Sorry. A question I had on my mind starting here that is basically never resolved for the rest of the episode is, what would you say you do here, TripTucker? Because he's not the ship's helmsman, and he's flying the shuttle pod and that's cool, but you see him pop up later on in engineering, you see him operate the transporter at the

end of the episode. I know he's the XO, but he's sort of doing everything and he's rarely ever on the bridge. Yeah, I think he is kind of more like Scotty than Geordie in that way. He's kind of a chief engineer that is just kind of like general purpose tech character. Yeah. Where Geordi like barely ever left engineering, like Tripp Tucker, I feel like can and does do a little bit more than that. So anyways, they get called back to Starfleet medical and there's a bunch

of muckety mucks, bunch of big wigs at Starfleet Medical, some admirals from Starfleet, and some Vulcan ambassadorial staff, including Thomas Kopatchee, are standing outside of a OR, or like an intensive care unit that's got a bunch of glass separating them from the Klingon lying inside.

And I love the idea that like the Vulcans are kind of like trying to explain what a Klingon is to humans that are like, huh? No, surely not. It's a Klingon. A Klingon. As excited as you were about seeing Thomas Capacchi, I was just as excited seeing Jim Beaver and a young Beaver at that. Yeah, young Beaver. Who would have thought? He's one of the greats.

I only recognized him by voice basically. He looks so young. Yeah, and the main ambassador guy is Gary Graham, who passed this year. RSVP Gary Graham. I love the... The main ambassador guy is Gary Graham, who passed this year. RSVP Gary Graham. I love the... Let's talk about the energy that John Archer has entering this room full of important dignitaries. He just barges in, asking to be read in on the situation. No salute for the admirals. He shakes one of their hands and then kind of like pushes the Vulcans aside. Yeah.

What he's read in on is what we need to be read in on, which is Clang, the guy in the hospital bed. He's got information he was trying to bring back to Kronos. And seeing as how he's down for the count, that's going to be hard to do. And the feeling in the air is like, well, because the Klingons live in a culture where death in many ways is more valued than life. We're just going to let this guy croak and then transfer his body back to his home world. And then the job will be done.

So wait, just so I know I'm keeping track, the Klingons want clang and the Vulcans want them to croak? Yes, exactly. Okay. That's it. And an archer barges into what I hope is not some sort of clean medical area. Yeah. Goes on in there, asks the doctor what the deal is.

Excuse me. Is this man dead? This doctor later, we learned his name, Flox. And the doc's like, hey, no promises. I'm doing what I can to stabilize the situation. Like this guy's great. This guy from Jump. I love the doctor.

The doc rules. Yeah. Archer kind of persuades, like the Vulgans are riding hard for, let this guy die. That will be the most satisfactory outcome for the Klingons. And therefore we won't have a diplomatic incident and Archer's like, no fucking way, we're taking this guy back to his home world now that we have this great new ship. The Vulcans are like, have you ever given a ride to a Klingon before? Trust me when I say it is better if they are dead. The cleanup somehow is easier than if they are alive.

The only Klingon rideshare app users that have five stars are dead Klingon rideshare app users. Your metaphor is crude, but accurate. This gives Archer a great idea. He's like, look, you know how we have that ship in space doc ready to go and I'm its captain and we're kind of waiting for a mission? Well there it sits. How about you give me the Uber mission.

We throw this guy up on the ship, we cruise on out of there, we drop him off at Kronos. It's going to be great. It's going to be great for humanity, is what I'm trying to say, not just me. It's going to be huge. Yeah. This is persuasive to the Admiral who breaks the bad news to the Vulcans. There's also this tension that we mentioned in the flashback scene, but has persisted 30 years, which is that humans kind of feel like the Vulcans have thrown a governor on their technological advancement and are kind of trying to keep them somewhat earthbound.

And Archer is just about done with that. So he's like, let me do this mission. I will go out into the cosmos. If you were doing a ranking in this century of Star Trek of the trash of the galaxy, do you think it's humans at the bottom? I mean, they seem to smell like worse than other aliens. Like the Vulgans don't complain at all about the Klingon guy, but they mention.

I kind of get that feeling. Yeah. The humans are these like, hold my beer upstarts that the Vulcans are very trepidatious about. Back on Enterprise, we meet a couple more crew people. This is Malcolm Reed and Ensign Travis Mayweather. And they're observing transporter technology that is a pretty new thing. For now, it's only used for cargo, and neither

of them are excited about being among the first living things to take a trip on this thing. I don't think I'm quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream. I had a little bit of a complaint about the way this was written because one of the cargo things that they beam up is not the thing that they wanted. And I was like, are you not going to do a bit about, you asked for one thing and this transporter beams up something entirely the other. Yeah, that's a great call. It was right there and they did not engage with that at all.

It was like, it was driving me nuts in this scene. Reed and Mayweather meet up with commander George W. Bush in engineering and everyone's super gushy about how awesome this engine is and how fast they can go. There's some real enthusiasm about getting out on those space streets and hitting the gas. Yeah. Really want to open this bad boy up. They're getting ready to go up to like warp four and a half or something, which

is a big deal for humans. I mean, I'm looking forward to it too. That sounds cool as hell. We're dodging around quite a bit here. We're meeting new crew people because part of the moment is about assembling a crew compliment. And a very important part of the crew is gonna be that communications officer. Archer's first choice is in Brazil

and she's teaching a language class to a bunch of students that he interrupts. And when he pulls her off to the side, she's like, look, I'm a great teacher, obviously. That's why you want me. But I'm so great, I'm not going to ditch these students. And all he has to do is needle drop the audio recording on this Klingon. Turn it up. Now that's something I couldn't really wrap my mind around.

Think of it. You'd be the first human to talk to these people. You really want someone else to do it? And she is like, oh, let me at those sounds. Yeah, she loves that guttural language. Yeah, I don't even think she says goodbye to these students. Like- Yeah, they just keep walking. You remember every time a teacher

had to leave the classroom, they were like, okay, read the next 10 pages of this book or whatever. And they go and do whatever important business is out in the hall. Like, I gotta believe that Hoshi does this. It was like, all right, keep working on those vowel sounds and I'll be right back. And then cut to that night and the crickets are chirping.

And that guy's still just trying to like practice the rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Try switching careers. You'll never be able to roll your tongue. Hey, how do you know that? Your girlfriend told me, shut up. You're saying Dan's alien language interpreting career is dead on arrival because he also sucks at giving head? Yeah. He also cannot satisfy his girlfriend. But if we change the words, then it's fair use all day long. So on Enterprise, there's one last position to fill, and it's got to be a Vulcan, right? A Vulcan's got to be the chaperone on this mission. And Archer explains to W that this sub commander to Paul is going to be their science officer.

Thus kicking off a long tradition of Vulcan science officers. A great tradition in Star Trek. And she meets them in this ready room. She is not thrilled about having a dog around. I hope Porthos isn't too offensive to you. Ah, dog germs. She's not thrilled to be there. She's not thrilled to shake hands with Trip.

And Archer feels the same way. He's like, look, I don't want you tattling on me. I know how you Vulcans are. You're always judging us. Yeah. Making me feel uncomfortable. You're messy, alien bitches who love drama, and you're just going to gossip about everything that happens on this ship.

They're on the same level. I feel like they don't want each other around. And when she turns to leave, you get the first of many shots of this character leaving the room. And hearing me describe it, you might think, oh, we're just showing Jolene Blaylock's body in a cat suit leaving the room. No, no.

We see the back of T'Pol's head so often in this episode. It's like they're making a point of her weird hairstyle. I couldn't get over it. Yeah. Well, I think it's like a, this ain't Tuvix kind of thing. Like they just want to make sure that we see that the Vulcan adjacent character isn't going to be a Tuvix on this show. She is not good with dogs. Porthos the Beagle, I gotta say, is probably not a great breed for long-term Starship deployment,

right? Yeah, where's it gonna bury stuff? Like when it howls in this echoey-ass ship, like, that's gonna be deafening for people. Beagles are so fucking loud. Oh my god. You never hear him bark! He's a well-beh behaved boy. Science fiction. That's what this show is. Ben, you can't launch the ship before doing a ceremony. This ceremony

completely without champagne. Instead, you get Admiral Forrest doing a speech. And then, I think this is a good job by him. He's not doing great at the speech, so he throws to a video and this video has Zev from Cochrane in it and it's filmed 32 years ago at the Warp 5 complex. Yeah. So this is a nice little cameo and I thought that this was really nice connective tissue to build a bridge between first contact and this moment. Henry Archer is in the background of this shot, like they're excited about starting to work on a Warp 5 engine. This is when we realize the extent to which Jonathan Archer is just a Nepo baby.

Like no wonder he walks into a room full of admirals and diplomats and like acts like he owns the place. Yeah. This is not Chuck Yeager. This is Biff Yeager. I also just wanted to say like, I thought it was a nice choice that we see a very cleaned up version of Zephyrum Cochrane. Like there's not an ounce of Ooby Dooby in the version of the man making the speech

at the Warp Five complex, you know? There's neither Ooby nor Dooby about this guy. He's got his buttons buttoned all the way up to the neck. Yeah, no like weird fingerless gloves or, you know, duster jacket, it's a clean cut version of the guy. He gave up the booze and the women. Yeah. He was in it for the women, remember? That's Zephyr Cochrane.

That's his vision. Money. You remember his line read? Yeah. Money. Women. Money. You know what I want?

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. You know what I want? Money. Women. Riker's like, why do you have to s- what? Why are you saying it like that?

You know one of my favorite parts of Chinese cuisine? Meng beans. Just in case you forgot how important Jonathan Archer's relationship with his perfect father was. We get a, just the briefest of flashbacks of it going in to the model, the engine, I mean. Was that a little warp core? Seems that way. Yeah.

Yeah. It seemed like it could kind of fly itself around, right? Yeah. I mean, dad had a little, uh, radio control for that. He was flying that thing around. We cut back to the enterprise where Archer is taking the big chair and he gives the order

to leave space dock and go to warp with the words. Money. to leave space, Doc, and go to warp with the words, money. Pretty solid Starship porn and they go to warp and we smash cut to a weird, like cloudy part of space with a space station in it. And one of these lumpy guys that we saw chasing the Klingon at the beginning walks into the room and he's kind of like phasing in and out of existence. And he's talking to a shadowy figure in an energy column. And basically like taking orders from this shadowy figure.

Yeah. He's got bad news this shadowy figure. Yeah. He's got bad news for shadowy figure. I lost two of my guys and they didn't capture this Klingon. Be great for me if you could prevent their deaths. A noteworthy sentence construction, I thought. Yeah. And this shadowy figure is like, no, we're not here to, like, clean up your messes.

Get that Klingon. Gotta get him. We're here to continue fighting a temporal cold war. Whoa. About that, you know what that means, Ben. Time travel. Money. Don't try to be a great man, try to be a money man. It's rhetorical nonsense. Aren't you glad they convinced Dr. Flax to join the crew because in Six Bay, Archer's

there just like wanting to get to know more about him. And in doing so, you get to meet Flax, know him a little better, but also all of his strange medical supplies. Some of them living. Got a lot of little critters and some of them, yeah, like the critters are his sort of frontier medicine approach to making the compounds that he needs to do medicine and he's on, he's part of this medical rotation where different species exchange physicians so that they can learn from one another. Something organized by the Vulcans that

sounds decidedly non-shitty compared to the way they've tried to hold humanity back on the getting out to war thing. This whole idea makes so much sense to me that medical advances on just one planet would go from leeches and bloodletting to future medical science as we know it today and maybe in the future up until you reach first contact. And then when your universe goes from a planet into a galaxy, you need to start all over again with frontier medicine in order to exist out there. I think it's a great concept.

I do too. Flax is such a fun guy to be around. He's so like unflappable. He's like, yeah, this is just like kind of a, kind of a cool little project you got me on. So I'm curious as anyone. As much as I like Phlox, I do get the sense that he's a guy that hits a little bit of the gas before he puts the mask on you.

You know? Yeah. If you're going to try to embrace new worlds, you must try to embrace new ideas. He's got gas mask energy. He does. Especially when he does that creepy ass smile at the end of the scene. You're like, are we supposed to be on acid,

or does his mouth naturally do that? I did not like that moment. What's that, like, creepy character that, like, teens send each other as a prank that does that? That, like, freaky smile character? Oh, I don't know. Is it the ghost mask from Scream when he smokes the weed in scary movies? That's the scary movie.

Yeah. Scream ghost energy to it. Then a truly bizarre sequence happens after this. And I want to know if you clocked this. Commander George W. Bush is revealed to be late for dinner by the end of it, but instead of going straight to this dinner, he goes to hang out upside down with Mayweather, who's in a part of the ship where the gravity is reversed. And crucially learns that Mayweather has hooked up with three boobed alien ladies.

Right. You know that first hand? First hand, second hand, third hand. And then he goes to the mess hall where he's offered a place to sit and have a meal and he's like, no, not for me, I'm eating with the captain. And then in the captain's mess, he goes to meet up with Archer and T'Pol for dinner, and he's late for that. And he has to apologize for being late. Why were you late? What were you doing in the mess hall? I thought he was in the mess hall

like going to bring something to dinner, like appetizers or like a bottle of wine or something. He doesn't have shit. No, this is a chief engineer that is not Six Sigma, you know, like he just fucks around all day, you know? He is a real fuck around engineer. He apologizes for being late, but no one apologizes for it being awkward in this room between T'Pol and Archer and him. Yeah.

She is a vegetarian and they have great big beef steaks that they want to eat in front of her despite her obvious discomfort with this. Did you clock the split diopter between steak in the foreground and tepal in the back? Fucking great. Excellent use of split diopter. I had a real problem with the, when you, when you're trained to drop plates on tables at a restaurant, it's always protein facing the diner. And one of these plates goes in front of Captain Archer with the baked potato closest to him

and the steak further away. And I was like, who, who does that? I got to admit I'm starting with the potato. If a steak and potato hits the table. Am I crazy? I would wait on the potato personally, because it's potato hits the table. Am I crazy? Wow. I would wait on the potato personally, because it's usually way too hot and it needs a lot more time to be bite ready than the steak.

My favorite kind of restaurant is steakhouse restaurant, and I've never really given it that much thought about what I'm eating first. You remain impulsive carnivores. Yeah. Because usually in a steak house, the steak is just a plate with a steak on it. Like it's not a plate with a steak and a piece of kale. I'm usually about four martinis in

by the time the steak hits the table. So that's part of it. You're not worried about burning your mouth on a piping hot baked potato. No. It's a very weird scene also, because like a big plate of like maybe ratatouille or something is put in front of T'Pol and then every time it cuts to the close up of her plate, it's

just an empty plate with one breadstick on it and she's like trying to cut it with a fork and knife. Like what happened to the other thing that she was served? She's trying to make a point by eating Costanza style in front of them. Forgive me for trying to clash up this place. She's like, how do you eat breadsticks with your hands? Before I was a Vulcan ambassador, I was Mr. Pitt's personal assistant.

And this kind of just caught me off guard, but I'm really into it now. They argue back and forth about the judgments that T'Pol has about humanity, and the punctuation on the conversation is T'Pol successfully fork and knifing this breadstick without breaking it, making a point about... Cricket sounds, I guess. You know that feeling of putting a ton of work into something only to realize that there

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She died in 2004. In fact, she had burned all of her music and she literally asked everyone she knew to forget her. I'm Christian Duenas. I'm Yosuke Kitazawa. On our new podcast, Primer, we celebrate unforgettable music from outside the English-speaking world, starting with Japanese city pop. We'll cover Miki's work and others in conversation with Devendra Banhart, Umi, Dame Funk, and

more. Get Primer on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Fleming. And I'm Jordan Morris. We're real comedy writers. And real friends. And real cheapskates. We say, why subscribe to expensive streaming services when you can stream tons of insane movies online for free?

Yeah, as long as you're fine with 25 randomly inserted, super loud car insurance commercials. On our podcast, Free With Ads, we review streaming movies from the darkest corner of the internet's bargain bin. From the good to the weird to the holy, look at Van Damme's big ol' butt. Free with ads, a free podcast about free movies

that's worth the price of admission. Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod spot. No, they're not gonna sue, they got no case, cause parody indemnifies, and I've got faith. Later on the bridge, Hoshi Sato is skittish about the bumps they're enduring in transit, and she does not have any patience for T'Pol, and T'Pol doesn't have any patience for her. They fucking hate each other from jump. They shoot daggers at each other back and forth. What do you think about T'Pol's Vulcan-ness

up until this point? Here's what I think. I think acting Vulcan is maybe one of the hardest things an actor can do, especially an actor who is very charismatic. And I think it has got to be really hard to turn it off, to like put your light completely under a basket. I think there is a moment in this episode where T'Pol comes around to being recognizably

Vulcan, but that's a little while from now. And this scene is an example of that. Like, she is clearly upset with Sato. Yeah, I think that every actor that winds up playing a Vulcan has that early learning curve moment. And I'll be curious to see how this character develops over the series, because she's definitely a little bit different from some of the other ones that we've met over the years. We get called down to Six Bay where, like, they are, like, pushing the ship to

warp 4.4, which seems like a bigger deal than they're making of it in this moment. Like it seems like this is like the fastest humans have ever gone, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's no banner that drops. Yeah. And it's just like, okay, well, we gotta go down to Sixpey, so that's great, but they go down there

and the Klingon has woken up. And I had not clocked this guy until now, but this is Tiny Lister Jr. He's one of the all-time that guys. Yeah. Incredible casting. I love it. Yeah. And like the kind of like guy that I want cast as Klingons more often than not, like huge physically imposing people is like, is my favorite kind of Klingon.

Absolutely. And this guy is it. In this era, no one was more imposing than Tiny Lister. Yeah. Cast his Klingon Tiny Lister. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't going to do it, so I'm glad you did. Big language barrier here. No, no subtitles to help us out.

No, nothing. We do hear the word Stovokor and that needs no translation for us. I kept thinking like, what if this was your first Star Trek thing, watching this episode? And I think that they do a really good job in this pilot overall of it being a, this is the first of a series for somebody that's totally uninitiated, and this is the first of a series

for people that have already watched Star Trek. Like, I think it does a really nice job on both sides of that line. I liked seeing more of a Klingon's body than I can remember seeing in a while. Like, you see his feet. Yeah. You see his feet? Yeah. You see his chest?

The ridges go all the way down at him. We never saw this much of Worf. Did we? Did Worf have ridges on his feet? I don't know. I imagine Worf is not a big sandals guy. No. While they're having this conversation,

the lights go out. RSVP main power. Up on the bridge, they like have a sensor reading that they're like, oh, maybe there's something out there. But they're getting that reading right as the power is going out. So no way to double check it or verify or anything. And I loved this shot when it cut to the hallway and there were just three of these creepy dudes climbing down it kind of Spider-Man style or maybe like even more like alien xenomorph style.

They did a good job with the creep factor on the Sula-Bahn. Yeah, they're in Six-Bay. They're like creeping around in Six-Bay. It seems like they can either go invisible or like, you know, do the Garden State thing where they're wearing a shirt that looks exactly like the wallpaper behind them. Oh, I thought you meant one of the Sula-Ban is listening to headphones and then like puts the headphones onto Sato.

That's how she knows someone else is in the room, like the invisible headphones are put on her head. This song is gonna change your life. Wow. And it's the theme song to Enterprise, and she's like, oh! I hate it! Who's doing those harmonies? They suck! You know what? You compared the the SulaBan They suck! You know what? You compared the the Suleyman skulking to Xenomorph and the way that this dark scene

explodes into action is a lot like an alien film. Yeah. And it's so scary like when one of them like falls from the ceiling onto the Klingon and all of the Starfleets in the room are so distracted with fighting the other one and like getting the, the crewman off the floor who got attacked that when the lights come back up, the Klingon is gone, baby gone. Whoever was shooting coverage of Hoshi Sato waving her flashlight around did Yeoman's work here because they use so much of it as filler.

Yeah. Like it is great. They probably got 10 seconds for doing it and they used 20 seconds of it. There's a couple of reused clips. Yeah. Would you say they did Yeoman Rand's work? No, that's a different kind of work. Oh yeah. Okay.

That's that work is done in the dark. No flashlights. More fun that way, you know? So the power comes back on and on the bridge, Archer is pissed. He's pissed at how his ship systems failed him. He's pissed at how he didn't see this coming. He takes it personally in a very unusual way. And even to Paul, it's like, look, man, shit happens out here in deep space.

Like, stop making it about you. And she is kind of operating from a, well, we lost the Klingon, so mission over. And is kind of assuming that they're just heading back for Earth. And this feeling of chagrin that Archer is experiencing is like enough for him to call her into the ready room and be like, we are not going back to Earth. We're doing this fucking mission.

So take your Vulcan cynicism and bury it along with your repressed emotions. Your reaction to this situation is a perfect example of why your species should remain in its own star system. I love the version of this that is so much like Star Trek 6, where basically Archer in front of T'Pol is like, I hate the Vulcans and I always have. I've never forgiven him for the death of my father's career.

She's like, are you sure you want to say that on the record? Let it go, man. Yeah. I liked his ready room being like kind of cramped, like submarine style. Yeah, I liked that a lot. The temptation with a new show with more money is make all the sets big and roomy.

And I think that they did a nice job making some of these feel real cramped and naval in vibe. I do like that. So he goes down after this big blowout with T'Pol to Sixpey where Phlox is doing an autopsy on this Suleybon and has discovered some weird things about his anatomy. He's like, yeah, this guy is not standard issue Suleybon. He's been heavily genetically altered and we don't know why.

Are you saying he's some kind of a mutant? Well, I suppose I am, but this was no accident. This scene reminded me a lot of the scene in Star Trek Picard with the autopsy of the Changeling. You really get close up to those guts. Yeah, that looks good. Phlox is blown away by this guy and his genetic modifications. He's impressed. I love the enthusiasm that he has basically in every scene, the vigor he has for his job. Good for him.

I think that it's easy to compare this character to Neelix because of that vigor, but there's such a different energy behind it. You know? Like, it's so much less grating currently, you know? I mean, I wonder if it will eventually grate, but for right now, I think it's a great companion to the fuck-around guys that are on the ship at every other station, you know? So one of those fuck around guys is in engineering with DePaul, and she is just smashing his nuts about how stupid their tech is on the ship.

Your sensors aren't capable of isolated plasma decay. How can you be so damn sure what our sensors can do? Vulcan children play with toys that are more sophisticated. Hoshi walks in and has translations of what the Klingon was babbling about. She has pretty much everything figured out except for a handful of words that she didn't know, one of which was Rigel 10, which is the planet he was on before he was on earth. So they're like, well, that's as good a place as any to start our search, like see if we can pick up the trail there.

And that's the plan. Meanwhile, in that SulaBan station, Clang is just getting worked over. He's filled with truth-telling drugs. And this is so frustrating as an interrogator or a torturer. Like you're just really giving the Kling on the business and he's just not giving you anything. Like you just dialing up that scissor to the max. Yeah. Nothing,

nothing actionable. Like the best this guy can do is Saren, the name Saren. Yeah. That's the courier that Kling encountered. That's the courier that Klang encountered. The courier that Klang encountered, one of my favorite neurotoxins. Oh yeah. Just all around popular item. I hope we meet Saren and she's wearing a string of pearls around her neck. That'd be nice.

Yeah. Ramped in a thin film of plastic. Unfortunately incredibly unstable. On Enterprise's launch bay, this is a new set for us. Archer's telling the Dustbuster Club that, look guys, we're going to a bazaar. A Star Trek bazaar. And to Paul's like, y'all better be fucking cool down there, all right? Not like how I've seen you act basically the entire episode up until now, because no one has seen a human down there.

You have a tendency to be gregarious. I suggest you try to restrain that tendency. Good first impressions, all right? All around. Eyes forward, hands ten and two. Like, you know, they're going gonna be gawking at your weird, loathless features. And you just need to, like, maintain. They're looking for the courier that Klang met, and that means there's a pretty good chance that they're talking about Saren.

Yeah. So away they go, and Rigelton is a very snowy place, and they enter this bazaar and, sure enough, full of, like, steam and dangling chains and open barrels full of flame. I thought I spotted the holo-matrix from Voyager in the background of some of these shots. It looked like they just, like, took some pieces of that and just, like, threw it in the background to, like, give texture to scenes. that and just threw it in the background to give texture to the scenes.

I think this should come in a box. The science fiction bizarre setup. If you're a set carpenter or whatever, you should just be able to buy this off the rack at this point. Yeah. Star Trek Ikea just has kits. Yeah.

You gotta have exotic dancers with super long tongues, right? I mean, and they're pimp. You gotta have him in this scene too. There is a, a lumpy thumb that is plying his trade as a pimp, trying to get Reed and Mayweather to book some, some one-on-one time with these alien exotic dancers. It seems like they barely resist this, right? Yeah.

I mean, neither of them seem to be spoken for. Like what a, what a great opportunity, right? Is this a ship of single folks? Yeah, I think it is. Huh. So far it is. Whoa. Okay.

In another part of the station, Tripp observes a parent with a child struggling to breathe, and he thinks what's happening here is torture, but DePaul tells him that it's actually just a weaning process. This is a sort of alien that is birthed and grows up in an air environment of one sort of gas and that they need to be weaned off of that in order to breathe the oxygen in this environment. And look, man, if you're just going to start jumping to conclusions every time you see an alien interaction, I'm just going gonna send you back to the ship. Every time you see a child that appears to be suffering,

if you like start to try and intervene, that's not gonna work for you out here, man. Or if you hear like the cries of a woman being beaten by a monster behind a door, like you just gotta let that shit go. Yeah, there's like many, many scenes that Tripp falls for. I guess suggesting that he is a rube. Yeah.

I mean, I think they kind of all are, but Tripp seems to be the one that's like the silliest about it. Yeah. And also seeing the craziest shit of anyone. He's like a rube in. His naivete is piled high. Hmm. Yeah.

Hoshi and the captain are in another steamy, you know, warehousey factory looking place. And they see a couple of Klingons. A lot of chains. Tons of chains. They radio up to let everyone know, like we think we're close. We think we're onto the trail. And pretty quickly, they get into a great big fight

with some Zulubans who grab them and kind of like pull them into the smoke. This felt like probably where episode one theoretically ends and episode two theoretically begins, right? It was hard to tell. Yeah. It felt pretty smooth to me. Yeah.

Like this is one of those ones where it's like, it's listed as part one and two. And I don't really understand like what the point of that is in just call it episode one, like why is it called part one and two? It's one thing. It's a moment that reads as done, dun, but in the aftermath is revealed to be like, these are good Suleyman. Yeah. They're just locking everybody up while the captain gets to talk to Saren.

Yeah. Look, they just need to lock them up so they can figure things out. Right. Is that so bad? Is that such a bad thought? Is that so bad? Is that such a bad thought? Sarin comes out from behind a cargo container and she is beautiful. She's Melinda Clark from the OC.

She is. And she is, she's really like slinking around. The very, very sexy sequence where she's kind of trying to seduce Arch-er. We find out that this kissy kissy moment is in fact because she needs to touch someone to find out if they're trustworthy, and that's one of her genetic modifications. Can you just see fucking Berman and Braga like sitting on sitting on a patio, getting a huge laugh about this. Well, how is she gonna be able to tell if he's telling the truth?

Make him kiss! She has to suck his dick. Okay, but like, for broadcast, we'll make it that they have to kiss. I love the take that Bakula has here because when she changes from Melinda Clar Clark into the Suleyman, he's like, ooh, did that come from me? That's never happened before.

He kind of feels responsible for her transformation. Now, that's not it at all. Very funny line. She's determined that he is a trustworthy person. She was helping Clang get back to the High Council on Kronos with information about how the Suleyman have been stoking tensions within the empire by like making attacks look like they're coming from rival houses and stuff. And this is all a part of a cabal that she is now fighting against

that are fighting a temporal cold war. Temporal. You've lost me. She would like Archer's help to finish Clank's mission because since he's been grabbed by the bad guys, she needs to get this info to the, to the Klingons, but she does not have a starship. This moment runs out of time, like many moments do in this part of the episode, because the phaser fire comes in again. It's fight scene, fight scene,

fight scene. The Suleymane have found them. Run for it, Marty. Yeah. They got to get out of there. Saren catches a stray and buys the farm. RSVP Saren. We barely knew ye. And then they get out onto, out to the parking lot and like, you know, like Reed has like a huge air conditioner in a box and T'Pol's carrying a goldfish in a bag and they can't find their car. T'Pol's carrying a goldfish in a bag and they can't find their car. Really long action sequence on the roof of this building. Pretty long shootout here where Archer gets hit and they finally all pile into the shuttle

and T'Pol takes command here, not just of the shuttle, but of the Enterprise. We get a flashback here, Archer hitting the leg, probably in an artery, probably starting to bleed out pretty bad here, hence the flashback, where he crashes his RC spacecraft into the sand and he blames the wind and his dad is like, it's like the Christopher Cross song, son.

You gotta ride like the wind. On Enterprise. The scene that I've heard about before watching it takes place. This is in the decontamination chamber. Dr. Flax has told to Paul and George W that they got covered in spores and what they need to do is rub themselves on each other with lube. You guys made a very sexy mistake and now you've got to pay for it. Berman and Braga are like, look if the last scene with the kissing and the telling of the truth doesn't make much sense, we gotta raise the sexual stakes here.

Right. Let's get some body touching. Well, it's really like use these two underwear models for all they're worth and specifically one of the underwear models for all she's worth. I can understand the reason this needs to happen. Decontamination on an alien world, I totally get it. Like the reason that the necessity exists makes sense to me. I even get the rubbing of lube on themselves and each other. What I don't get are the singles on the boobs and the singles on the legs. And what kind of looks like a chubby that Tuck's got

on the very brief pan past his briefs. Oh, you can't show that on TV. He definitely. Get that out of here. He definitely zhuzhed himself before this scene, right? These are both beautiful people. And I'm, who doesn't like looking at beautiful people, but the lingering lasciviousness of the camera here,

I found it shocking. Yeah. And maybe it's because, like, there's nothing to suggest the potential of this ever. Like, if there was an example of, oh, yeah, Star Trek's getting a little cheeky. Right. Like, I could understand that this is more of a pattern of this. There was no pattern that makes this likely.

It's been a long time since I've watched this series. I remember this being a thing that happens more than once. Are you serious? Yeah. I think they come back to this. I think they go harder at this. With different people? No, I think it's basically a T'Pol thing.

Like always getting contaminated down on the surface. Like people on, on Dustmaster clubs with T'Pol are constantly like throwing spores at her. Oh, T'Pol. Oopsies. You got spores on you again. Oh, I got spores on me. Oh, they're in my mouth and genitals. Oh, here's some firma butt hole. I'm gonna need your help rubbing some gel on this.

Turn around. It's a weird choice. I mean, like, I'm all for horny Star Trek. Don't get me wrong. It's weird that we get the Brazzers logo in this scene. That is a strange choice that they made. Yeah. Archer wakes up in Sixth Bay with an osmotic eel cleaning his wound, leech-like. And I liked that he was pretty hurt for the rest of the episode.

He's always limping around after this. To Paul and George W. roll in, I don't think this is right after the lube scene because I would imagine there's an interstitial scene where you got to wipe off the lube. You can't just go straight to do a uniform after that, right? Oh yeah, it'd be kind of gross and clammy, right? Like pulling on a wet swimsuit.

Yeah, so this isn't going great. Like when we rented the Airbnb, we kind of like didn't anticipate how many swimsuits we were going to need and like this one didn't dry. So we're like kind of wanting to go home. But to Paul having assumed command of the ship did not just go do what she would do.

She thought what would Archer do in this situation and did that. So they are continuing to track, uh, the Sula-Bahn that have the Klingon that they're chasing having modified the ship's sensors to the Suleyman that have the Klingon that they're chasing, having modified the ship's sensors to chase these plasma particles. What a great bit of news this is for Archer. He's like, you didn't disappoint or humiliate me at all.

It's amazing. Amazing! And I like the symmetry of this, like, where in that previous scene, she assumes, like, mission over, we're going to earth and she's wrong. And now he assumes mission over, we're going to earth and he's wrong. This is kind of the thing, like, when you expect the worst from people, when you get not the worst from them, it's like pure oxygen, like, whoa. Yeah, it's disarming.

Wow. Ben, this is also the scene that I thought was the pivot point for T'Pol, where she resembles a Vulcan the most. And from here until the end of the episode, she reads as familiar in that way, I thought. Yeah. I think that's an interesting observation. It's so shocking for the captain that he's like doing a captain's log about it later. And he's like, he keeps pausing and he's like, that's so fucking wild. And he's like talking to his dog.

Like you ever heard of a Vulcan doing anything like this? And his dog is like, I don't talk man, dog. The dog does start talking and he's like, man, what was in that eel? I feel great right now. And Porthos is talking to me? Hell yeah. Oh man! Woah, that's so intense.

My ready room couch goes... all the way across the ready room! Oh! Oh, I got two couches! And two beagles! Woo! And you will never take the greatest gin alive. Ben would rather die. They drop out of warp, but he's like, duh fuck. And he goes up to the bridge and it turns out they've just gotten to where the ship

went that they were tracking. They're in orbit of a gas giant that has a lot of radiation in its upper atmosphere that has like dissipated the warp trail. And for a second they think like this was just like a going across a stream so that the trail goes cold and the bloodhounds can't keep tracking the fugitive or whatever. But it turns out that they are able to configure the sensors again to see that a whole bunch of Suleyman ships have gone into the atmosphere of this planet. So this is where everybody's going. This seemed a little unnecessary, like after the last scene

where it seems like to Paul and Archer are going to get along to get a scene where it's like, Oh, now everyone's getting along and working together and like doing science to solve a mystery that didn't seem mysterious at all. Like this is a path heading toward a planet. I mean, I think it was padding probably just because they didn't get enough footage of Hoshi waving her flashlight around in the earlier scene. They were just like, we got to like fill some time here.

Yeah. They used all the flashlight and all the lube. And they still need to make time. So they go inside this gas giant, get some bumps, and then they find this space station that we saw earlier. And they're like getting bangers because it's like a modular space station. All these like little pods connect to it. I like it. It's cool.

Yeah, it's really good looking. Some of them are shooting at them and they don't want to use the transporter to get aboard the space station. So they use the grappler, which is another like, this is like one of those scenes in a pilot that's like, here's a thing that the ship can do. Isn't it wild how in the pilot of Star Trek, the

next generation, there was a grappler. Wow. The pilot of Enterprise, there's a grappler. That is wild. I also thought it was wild that in the pilot of the next generation, they played the entire theme song again when they showed them separating the saucer section. And in this, they played the entire theme song again

when they grappled that one pod. ["Sauce of the Sea"] And we're back. So they got to like study up on how to work the pod. It seems like Mayweather like learned how to do it and is now teaching Tripp how to work it, which just feels like inefficient. Like shouldn't Tripp have just been the one to like learn it, learn up on it? I hated this for Mayweather.

Mayweather is the qualified pilot and for some reason Archer tells him he needs him on Enterprise. Really? What? To sit there in like one position? Cause the plan is that Enterprise is just going to stay in one spot while they go do the mission. If you're giving me the choice of an Uber driver who has driven in this country before,

understands the traffic laws and whatever, like from experience and one who's just winging it, five stars to the first one. How complicated can it be? Up, down, forward, reverse? Figure it out. Unbelievable. Not a great Mayweather episode. Yeah. It's forward, reverse. Figure it out. Unbelievable. Not a great Mayweather episode. Yeah.

It's sad, really. They get some bond gadgets on their way out. Reed gives them a gadget that will like demagnetize the space station and a briefcase with some new pistols. And he's like, oh, these are our new weapons. And it's like, didn't you guys have guns in the previous space station you were at?

Yeah, why didn't they get them then? Like what were they shooting then? If not these. I get a weird vibe from Reed as the tactical guy. Like he seems kind of indifferent to matters of security and weapons and so forth. Yeah. Like unless you told me he was the security guy, I don't think there's very much evidence of that in the pilot.

So far not so much, but so they get to the space station and they do like a little orbit around it and I love that they, they bumped into it by accident because Tripp isn't that good at piloting. That's a nice callback. And then they connect and they start sneaking around and start bulls-eyeing bad guys. It is weird that when Tripp comes into contact with this other ship, like it smears a bunch of lube onto it.

That's gonna be a theme. Yeah, it is that thing where like the screen thinks he's trying to do a multi-touch gesture and it's just cause he left like a glob of goo on another part when he was tapping something? Enterprise continues to take bangers and it doesn't seem like they are long for their position in the atmosphere, but they can't move the ship because that means Archer and George W. won't know where to find them afterwards. Right. So they're in a bit of a pickle. Meanwhile, Archer and Trip find Clang in a clip show device and are somehow able to persuade him to like come with them.

He's ready to start ripping their heads off when they first wake him up. But, uh, this is like waking up a Benjamin R Harrison. Yeah. No, it's dangerous as fuck. I really don't want to have to carry you out of here. He is a real asset for their, uh, skulking around the corridors in the hand to hand combat department. He really kicks a lot of ass. Yeah, but not so much in the stealth department.

Nah. He's yelling crazy shit and drawing a lot of unwanted attention toward them. So Archer places the device from the ship onto a panel and once it detonates, it sends out this wave that causes all of the linked ships to separate. And I love this cut to the exterior when you see all of them float away. And even from the interior, you see them kind of blurp out of their holes. That's really fun. Yeah. It was really well done. And George Debbia and Clang have gotten aboard a pod,

but Archer didn't quite make it for some reason. That felt kind of arbitrary to me. It truly did. Yeah. So, but also there was clearly, there was never going to be room for all three of them in that pod, right? That's a good point. Yeah. That clang is fucking huge.

Yeah. Not called tiny for nothing. No, no. They've moved the enterprise at this point and they got to, they got to like figure out where the pod is. I thought that this whole sequence where T'Pol was in charge on the bridge of the Enterprise was great for her, because she seems like super capable and, you know,

quick on her feet and making good choices as a leader. It's weird to say this because she's a Vulcan, but you see a pattern of this in a lot of movies on TV, which is like the fuck around character gets given an opportunity for responsibility and all of a sudden like snaps into capability. Right. Like you see Jim Kirk to do this in the JJ Abram Star Trek, like, but she's Vulcan. She was always capable. Like something about her changes.

And you're right. She's a great captain in these moments. Yeah. It's, it's cool to see on the enterprise. Dubya is arguing like we need to go back and get the captain. And to Paul is like, there's so many of those fucking ships out there. Like there's no way we can safely do that. That's insane.

And you sort of wonder if there's going to be a Crimson Tide moment here because like who is T'Pol even to be left in charge of this ship? Tripp Tucker is the XO, isn't he? I guess he isn't. I guess she is. Yeah. That's part of their conflict. Archer really has nothing to do on the Suleybon base besides explore. Like he's just got to wait for pickup. And he picks up this strange energy reading on his tricorder and follows it into the temporal one conference room. And he is really tripped out by it.

The way that we've seen the other characters experience this place, he kind of blurs around on his way in there and he hears a ghostly voice from the shadows. It's kind of scary. And all the snacks from the previous meeting are still there, uneaten, and that's creepy. Like, where did they go? Like, a bunch of half-drank water bottles on the conference room table.

Like, clean up after yourselves, guys. Yeah, they're still logged into different Zoom rooms. It's like, what is this? Yeah, Archer finally encounters the Suleyban in the room and this guy really wants Archer to leave. That part seems very important to him. Yeah. Important enough for the Suleyban to hit Archer

with a running spear move. Ah! Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha. Now he's got the Dustbuster and because of the weird time aspects of this place, like the Suleyman shoots at Archer and it discharges the energy, but in such a slow way that Archer can just kind of neo himself around the beam. And then the fight continues and right at the moment that things become kind of lethal and spill out into the corridor, Archer gets beamed away by the Enterprise using the Transporter. You can just do that. How did

they do that? Incredible. Sorry, Kevin. We had no other choice. I love this. Like as soon as Archer's on board, they're like, gun it. Let's get the hell out of here. And where they gun it to is Kronos. Yeah, which is looking very clear-skied and crisp in a way that I've never seen Kronos look. It really looks great. A lot of bells and gongs.

Yeah. I mean, the high council chambers look exactly as they ever have. It kind of seems like they're interrupting something important here when they walk in Yeah. I mean, the High Council chambers look exactly as they ever have. It kind of seems like they're interrupting something important here when they walk in and present Clang. Yeah. Clang and a few Starfleets show up to the Council chambers and there's that dramatic like, pull open the doors, move. So the leader guy takes out a knife and he slashes Klang's hand.

And then he puts some of that blood into a computer. And what pops up onto the screen is Mr. DNA. The code is in your blood. Saren found holes in your frog DNA and put information about how the Sula-Bahn are stoking tensions within the Empire right in there. Klingon blood is pink so we can achieve a PG-13 rating. Yeah this is another example of TV Klingons having redder blood than movie Klingons.

Yeah. I like it. Lower Decks had the right idea with this. Stick with the pink Pepto-Bismol blood. What do you think happens to Klang after they leave? It sure seems like he's going to die, right? Yeah. Like he was captured by humans and Suleyban, both of which

are viewed as kind of beneath the Klingons, kind of the alien trash of the galaxy at this moment in time, right? Yeah, like the Klingons are aware of the humans because of the diplomatic situation, W slash R slash T, clang, but this is the first time humans have made any kind of contact with them. Right.

Finally, on Enterprise in Archer's ready room, he's telling to Paul and W that their orders now, hey, now that we're out here, we're not turning around. We're going to keep moving forward. But what happens to T'Pol now? He makes sure to make this moment about him. I was thinking a Vulcan science officer could come in handy. He wants to Paul to stay, but only if she can make it look like to Paul wants to stay, like it's coming from her. Can she help him out with that? It's like, look how much we've grown as a species.

I am here asking you secretly to date me. I'm just a man asking a Vulcan to ask her bosses to stay on board my ship. Yeah, that seems like it's a yes, and they're off to their next adventure, which is just like a first contact. Like we heard that there's non-humanoid species, a couple of systems over, and we end on another little flashback of Jonathan Archer mastering the art of flying his model rocket ship with his dad. Fade to black end of pilot. Adam did you like this first episode of Star Trek colon enterprise. Well, to use a word we've thrown around a bunch in this episode, I thought this

was a little bit of a clang. I think for a couple of reasons, I thought a lot about the Mercury and Apollo space programs when I was watching this episode. And just like the thing about those astronauts, the weird thing about them is how totally exceptional they were. And also totally fucking weird. Like emotionally and psychologically, because they had to find people who were extremely intelligent and talented and also crazy enough to do the things that they needed to do. Right. And so I'm meeting all of these characters for the

first time and there's, this is basically a brand new space program for the people of earth. And I'm observing their behavior and their interactions with folks. And I'm like their behavior and their interactions with folks. And I'm like, I would really like to know what is exceptional about any of these people. Because all I'm seeing are a bunch of folks that like don't get along. I understand you to make an interesting television show, you need conflict and emotion and all the rest like to create vibrant stories. But like a part of that, when you're telling stories about exploration, you

know, made up of like the best of humanity and so forth, I thought there would be a little bit of that Mercury Apollo DNA, like a little bit of that steely stuff and like this ain't NASA at all. At all. And I'm wondering how soon we get to a little bit of that part because this was meant to introduce us to characters via conflict instead of via competence. And maybe on every other previous Star Trek series

we've gotten, it's been about that competence and just trickling out a little bit of the other stuff. And this series seems to begin as a spin on that in a way that didn't quite work for me yet. Maybe all of that other stuff is to come and I hope it is. But that part was weird to me. What I did really like was how much this felt like an open world video game where you're in level one, but you've strayed a little too far afield. Like that aspect of being like out thought, out gunned, out everything. Once you're far out in deep space, that was really interesting to me.

And finally, I can't get with the sideburns. Why do we have late 90s, early 2000s sideburns here? Like give me those fucking Star Trek dagger sideburns. Yeah. I missed them badly. Yeah. They need the dagger sideburns. I mean, I guess they just hadn't invented that yet in this era.

I guess. Yeah. A lot of potential here. I think that's where I'm at with it. I, uh, I wish it were better. What about you? Well, I felt a lot better about this than I think you did. I thought it was a really nice story. I kept thinking about how good it is from the perspective of somebody who has not watched Star Trek before. I think it does a great job of implying a lot about, like, the richness of this world

that we are going to be getting into in a way that would be fun for a first-time viewer. And was also fun for me as a, like, seasoned Trek enjoyer to, like, imagine characters that had not heard about Klingons before. Like, the guys, like, getting his mind around pronouncing the name Klingons in that early scene. And like, Vulcans that are like more alien than they are in subsequent series.

And I really loved the sets in general. You know, the alien bazaar is like whatever, but like the set of the NX01 Enterprise is awesome to me. Love the way Six-Bay looks. I love the way the bridge looks. Like the set of the NX01 Enterprise is awesome to me. Love the way Sixpey looks. I love the way the bridge looks. I think that like my main gripe so far is just Bakula. Like I don't quite know what he's going for with this character.

Like, cause- I mean, I just get folksy. That's the headline. But it's like, it feels like put on folksiness, you know, like in the way of a person who has tons of power and is like kind of performing folksiness to make himself more approachable or something. There's nothing interesting about a character who has a great dad and a great and supportive family

You know like like that part what that's why I've dedicated my life to failing my son. I Want him to be interesting, you know, you're gonna make a very interesting to rown Didn't it also feel like this is gonna sound like a virtue signal and I fucking promise it's not, but like to go from Voyager and many competent female characters to back into two female characters who so far the introductions are super rockin t Tits and Scared Lady. Like, I really, really, really hope we get some good stories for those characters. Yeah.

Because right now it's Lube and Scaries, and I hope there's more than that. Agreed. Well, I'm looking forward to exploring all of this with you, but I'm also looking forward to exploring the Priority One inbox, Adam. Do you wanna go check in there? Oh. oh, Ben, they're covered in lube. Wow. Oh, and it's not water soluble. Oh, it's getting everywhere. Oh, it's dissolving the condom. Oopsies.

Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel. You need a supplemental income. Supplemental income? Supplemental. Yeah, it's extra. By the interest alone, could be enough to buy this ship Ben our first priority one message is of a personal nature. It's from Zack the Mortician. It's to anybody Their message goes like this

sup, I saw the first night of Wrath of Kana, Chicago. It's freaking great till my girlfriend now wife Left me in the merch line with anxiety. I just watched the spectacular special and really loved it Not a fan of the Beshear piss thing you do, but whatever I'll deal Thanks Fisher and the sister that be men's to me from Zack Wow, Zack the mortician. I'm surprised you don't love the the Bashir piss thing given what you probably do in your work as a mortician working with you know fluids of all kinds. Yeah, maybe that's too close to

home. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Who knows what fucked up shit Flax gets into. Our next priority one message is from Ben, long time first time, and it's to Ben and Adam. And it goes like this. I hope this will be aired during Enterprise. Can I request the Vichy French guy singing Zizi's a War Crime to the tune of the Enterprise theme song? Also, if you ever tour the Southeast, please consider the beautiful city of Wilmington, NC.

Oh yeah. See where the worst Iron Man movie was filmed. Weekend at Bernie's, Empire Records, drink some great local beers, hit the beach. Wow. Boy, I would love to go to Wilmington for a show. It could happen. This is a war crime as theme song for Enterprise. Maybe that's something that we can get into the rotation for interstitials. This is a war crime. Who make all of this propaganda?

That's fun well priority one messages are a great way to support the show and now that we're getting started with the new series We've got some capacity for your message ahead. You just go to maximum fun org Jombotron write out some words Those will come out of our mouths That's a great way to support our shows. Indeed. Thank you to everyone who does it. Hey, Adam. What's up, Ben? Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda in this, the pilot episode of Star Trek, colon enterprise?

Incredible. Drunk Shimoda. Well, I'll start by describing what a drunk Shimoda is for folks who might be coming to the show new. You might remember from the Naked Now episode in TNG, our engineer Shimoda, the drunkest and most fated character in that episode became sort of a mascot for the show and became a segment for the shows that followed in that if there's ever a character or a moment that catches our eye that suggests that a person was having the most fun or acting the weirdest or maybe just being a little anachronistic.

I feel too good for that. That's our drunk Shimoda. And for this pilot episode of Enterprise, I think I'm gonna make mine Captain Archer. He's kind of action Archer everywhere, and I get that given the era of Star Trek we're dealing with, but like he is so hot about the Vulcans. He just barges into that room with all the diplomats. Like he's given a wide berth.

I don't admire him as a commanding officer right now. Like, I don't want to follow that guy's lead. I don't know what's exceptional about him. I think I'm just going to make him my Shimoda for that reason. Like, I hope he proves it and I hope he proves it soon. He's just all over the place. And maybe that's the best description of a drunk Shimoda character we've got. What about you?

I'm going to give it to him as well, not for that, but for that moment after he kisses Saren. And she gets all bumpy and it turns into a, this has never happened before. That's fun. It's because I'm so into you. You know, I'm like a captain of a certain age and like, you can't just expect things to work perfectly a hundred percent of the time. And look, like I'm tired.

I'm tired from this mission. I had all that beef earlier. God, that was a heavy dinner. Yeah. So that'll happen. Totally. So, yeah. Daily double for the drunk Shimotas. Yeah. Faith of the fart.

Okay, we got to go to the game of butt holes right now and roll for the next episode. Do you want to head over there and I'll tell you a little bit about the next episode, Adam? Sure thing, Ben. If you're new to the show, starting now, you should know that we tend to gamify our episodes at the end of every recording. We'll roll a die and then our little ship will go across the game board. And on that game board, there are fun squares

that order us to experience the recording in Miriam ways. Yeah, we got a brand new game for this series. order us to experience the recording in Miriam ways. Yeah, we got a brand new game for this series. So our next episode is season one, episode three, fight or flight, the crew comes across an abandoned ship of dead aliens. Are they frozen? Is this another naked now episode? It's just an excuse to get to Paul to like fuck a bunch of characters.

Ben you've told us what the next episode is going to be and now we need to figure out how we're going to enjoy it and for that we are going to unveil a brand new version of the hit board game associated with the hit Star Trek podcast we do. It has a brand new name even. It does. I am so excited to introduce FODs to the game of buttholes, Will of the Riker, Quantum Leap. What do you think of that?

Oh man, it's even pithier than before. That name might get longer. Yeah. The longer we play the game. Thank you to everybody in the FOD community who submitted pitches for ideas. We kind of scraped them all up and distilled many of them down into what is on this board. And you can head to gach.biz slash game to check out all of the changes that have been made. There's a bunch of new squares.

A couple of squares have been retired, but also a brand new mechanic to the game. No more shoots and ladders, no more inching along. We roll a D100 every single time with this game. I like that idea. It feels like space exploration itself. It's not often in a straight line. You're going all over the place.

Who knows what you'll encounter. Yeah. And that's very on brand for this series. We know what we're going to encounter, Ben. You want to talk about a couple of these brand new squares for this brand new edition? Let's talk about it. Uh, we also, uh, did a rebrand of a couple of pre-existing squares.

Porthos ate my notes being an example of this. If we land on this square, both of the hosts will do the show without notes. Cause Porthos ate them, whoever that is. Sure did. I know that's the dog. Shut up. And then, uh, read alert has replaced Canar with Damar. And that is a pineapple beverage square instead of a, a Canar square.

That's a square that'll benefit both of us and our lovely romantic companions. Well, assuming that they want to engage in that kind of bullshit. to companions. Well, assuming that they want to engage in that kind of bullshit. You know how much we love the theme song to this brand new version of Greatest Generation, Ben? This next square has us recording new lyrics to the theme song, and then that version of the song plays for the next episode. So for example, if we hit this square this time,

we will have to create lyrics that will play on the episode upcoming. Does that make sense? Yeah, so. So based on our viewing of that episode, one of us or both of us is going to do this. I think we can collaborate on the lyrics and then we just have to send off our files to

the goose. We didn't ask the goose if this was an okay idea beforehand. Faith of the Heart Square. Yeah. Pretty heavy. Okay. So for Fight or Flight, it would be like, it's been a lot of dead aliens filling up this abandoned ship.

Something like that. Woof. Yeah. That's, you know, fortunately that's going to be the sort of square that does not cripple the entire episode. Just its very beginning. Do I have to remember all those fucking harmonies? Of course you do.

Oh man. God damn it. This square sucks. I don't know who the Zindi are, but the Zindi arc square means that the hosts must take shots of five different alcohols during the episode. Yeah. We didn't figure out if that's like you take five shots right at the beginning and then record or if you can space it out.

And we'll probably have to cross that bridge when we come to it. FODs who live in Seattle will probably assume that I'm just going to call that the Earl Square. Decontamination square, of course, we record in our underpants and many more to check out on the board game website. Oh yeah. We got some big thanks to give out. Craig Anderson and Felipe Sobrero jumped into action.

We kept promising them that we were going to send them notes for what things we wanted to do with the game. We were weeks and weeks late and they got it done in time anyways. So we really, really appreciate all of their great work. We should also thank Andrew Wong-Hoyer who contributed some web design to the game. But it's all updated and looking spiffy. And why don't you go ahead and roll that bone, Adam? You're required to learn as you play. Roll. All right, Ben. Our game piece is not anywhere and I'm about to roll a 100-sided die to

determine where it will appear first. Okay. Here we go. Let's do it. Ben, I've rolled a 45. Chula! Did I win? 45 is what I've rolled. That is in an empty area of space.

It is also how old I am. Wow. As of this year Coincidental that's kind of like landing on something. Oh, it's like landing on something horrible and only gets worse as time goes on Square 45 is it on this brand new game of buttholes will of the reich or quantum leap so Look out for more of this in the seasons and episodes ahead. I am so excited for more of this fucking bullshit. So many weird squares out there. Go to goth.biz slash game to check out all the fun squares. Some exciting stuff happening over on the game of butt holes. Go check it out. We just have some

credits to do and we're gonna get out of here. Of course, this show is produced and edited by Windy Pretty. Our social media director is Rob Adler and our consigliere is Bill Tilly, who is the person who will reach if you slide into the DMs on socials and want to send something in for a future Code 47, where we open fan packages and mail on the show. Thank you so much to everyone who supports the show at MaximumFun.org slash join. And thanks so much to the great Adam Ragusea who made the music that is now our theme song. With that we will be back at you next time with another great episode of Star Trek Voyager. With another great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of the Greatest Generation Enterprise where I mean if they're not frozen and drunk we certainly probably should be right?

Absolutely. That was a very, we're just innocent men snort that I just had. We're normal men.