Matt and Sean talk about love triangles, fight clubs and canaries in coal mines. Is this episode a mixed bag or continuing the good trend Star Trek Enterprise is on?
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I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids and with me, of course, as usual, is my brother Matt, who is the guy behind undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at tech and it’s impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing today? I’m doing good. How? I’m doing well.
I’m looking forward to talking about today’s episode, which I’m gonna cut right to the chase. I like this episode. I thought it was fine. I thought it was fun. It had some moments that I liked. It had moments I wasn’t so crazy about, but I was willing to forgive them. How about yourself? ,
You and I, you and I sometimes feel like clones of each other, cuz my reaction was this.
It’s fine. Yeah. There were some scenes I really did not like, really did not like, and then there were other moments. I was like, That’s perfect. So it’s, it was a, it was a mixed bag at the end of the day.
It’s fine. Yeah. So we’ll get into that in a moment and we’ll also get into what the world was like at the time of the original broadcast.
But before we do that, Matt, I know you always like to share some comments from our previous episodes. What do you have in store? Yes,
so we had one from a username, I’m afraid to try to pronounce .
Are you talking about gall gin? Thank you. Yeah. Gall
gin. Yes. It was from our last episode, which was called Stratum, which was how the enterprise basically was.
Trying to fool the Xindi and revealing information. Mm-hmm. , He wrote Announcer over public address speakers, welcome to the NX oh one Dinner Theater. If this is your first time seeing strategy, please do not spoil the ending for others to which Giant hog Weed lives responded. It goes like this. First, watch the episode, then listen to track and time, then read the comments.
Any other sequence deserves punishment in the form of spoilers. , I just wanted to bring this up to basically say we probably, as part of our usual stick, should just remind people before we get into the meat of the episode, We’re gonna spoil the crap out of every episode. Oh, absolutely. We don’t, we don’t do a
spoiler section.
Yes, this is this. I mean, we don’t do a spoiler section. We are the spoiler section. So , Yes, Gallen goin if we spoiled the episode for you, I do feel bad about that. I do. I feel that. We hope you come back and enjoy few future episodes after you’ve watched the episode. The thing about this channel, we of course want as many people, like far and wide.
We want people to enjoy this show. We want people to jump in the comments. We want all of that. But the nice thing about this series of ours, you don’t have to weigh in or watch it weekly. If you haven’t yet watched the episode we’re talking about, Yeah, you can. Save us on before. You save it for after you’ve watched an episode.
We’re hoping that these conversations that Matt and I are having will be evergreen. And somebody three years from now who’s interested in watching a show they’ve never seen before and listening to a podcast about it might find this and be able to say, Hey, these guys are talking about it in a way that makes sense, even two years in the future.
So, Please. Listeners, we want you to be here. We want you to enjoy the conversation. We want you to jump in, but get your, If you’re worried about spoilers, watch the show first. Yeah.
The other comment on the same episode was from Jeff Halverson. He wrote, This episode demonstrates what value the humans bring to the federation.
Humans bring creativity, flexibility, and a wide range of solutions to the problems. Other species are usually defeated by a single attribute. Franky or defeated by their greed, Vulcan by logic and Klingon with honor, and this has been something that always pops in my head when we’re watching this show of, there’s a part of this, which feels, obviously it’s humans writing a show about humans.
So of course we’re gonna be the center of the universe when it comes to the federation and we’re gonna be the best one of everybody. But it is true. It’s like they’ve, they’ve kind of painted each species into a single kind of, I don’t know what you would call it. Character attribute. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, even the Endor are portrayed in a very specific line of, they’re kind of hotheaded.
Mm-hmm. , you know, quick temper, . Yeah. So it’s like there’s, they’re all, they’re all the same kind of like different things. And then we’re kind of the blending of all of them. And we can bring everybody together underneath that big umbrella. And. It’s part of that rubs me the wrong way. But at the same time, it’s kind of like the whole point of the show.
That is the entire point of the show. And my, and my response to that is like, I do get completely what you’re talking about, but all of this ultimately is metaphor and, and the entire point of it is aspirational to say like, if you have a group of people, look for the strengths that can be brought by all those different people.
A mo multiplicity of viewpoints, you know, infinite diversity and infinite combinations. The strength there. Is real and within those strengths are also going to be weaknesses. So how do you recognize your strengths, your weaknesses? How do you blend that with those of the people around you? And how do you accept people who are vastly different from you and recognize your common ground, but also recognize and honor the differences?
And so I think that, you know, in looking at, you know, the hot headedness of the Andorian, the honor system of the Klingon, the logic and the greed of the Frankie and the vul. Those are both strengths and weaknesses, depending on the moment and how it’s used, and Absolutely. The humans in the series are depicted as they kind of stand at the middle of that Venn diagram and they can kind of empathize with everybody around them and say, We have moments like all of you, which makes us the blending of you, but aspirationally as viewers, as a culture.
We can take that metaphor and say, how do we apply this in our own lives? How can I as an individual look at the people around me, even people I don’t agree with, and say, Where is our common ground? And how do I get beyond bias that I’m not questioning? So that’s, that’s the value in the show. So it is something I used to watch, uh, Star Trek with a, a guy when I was in college who always complained, How come every alien species looks like a.
Yep. And I used to say, you’re watching a television show. It’s a metaphor with, Yeah, you’re supposed to be entertained and maybe take away some lessons around like, what does it mean to be accepting? What does it mean to be challenged? What does it mean to be held back? Yep. He had a difficult time with that, so, I get it.
It is, you know, sometimes, uh, tricky to watch a show and say like, Oh yeah, of course the humans are always the hero. But on today’s episode, which of course we don’t really get into the current conversation until that sound in the background is, Removed, and that’s the read alert, if I remember correctly, which means, Matt, it’s time for you to jump in with the Wikipedia synopsis for this episode.
Someone tells me this is not gonna be as good as
last week’s . We’re in a. Streak right now where the next couple are interesting, so, Okay. Okay. .
Interesting. Interesting. Harbinger is the 67th episode of Star Trek Enterprise. The 50th, 15th episode from the third season Harbinger. I read that wrong. I’m gonna start You read that wrong?
Yeah. You’re, Your pacing of grammar has been unique for this reading. Just ignoring punctuation. And we were critiquing what punctuation we’re critiquing Wikipedia, and here you go with that.
Oh God. Harbinger is the 67th episode of Star Trek Enterprise, The 15th episode from the third season. Harbinger works together three plot lines in a single episode T’Pol Tucker, relationship Hayes, the Mako Commander, and retention and uncovering the nature of a mysterious alien discovered in an anomaly and its possible.
Links to the expanse. Severe builders , Guest star Thomas. Ipa. Gonna butcher that name. Cappa plays the alien guest and Noah Tishbe plays Amanda Cole. And the third in the T’Pol Tucker Love triangle. The way this is worded is really weird because it’s not written like sentences. It’s like brief thought.
Yeah. T’Pol Tucker relationship. Yeah.
You have to read it almost. You have to read it. Almost like beat poetry. It’s Noah tpe plays Amanda Cole the third in the T’Pol Tucker Love triangle. Love triangle . So it not just pointed out, Yeah, this is a rough one. This is season three, episode 15. It was directed by David Livingston, who has directed multiple episodes this season.
The story is by Rick Berman and Brian and Bragga with the Teleplay by Manny Cole, and the original era date was February 11th, 2004. And as Matt just mentioned, somewhat cryptically in his reading of the synopsis, Noah tpe played Amanda Cole, one of the Mako soldiers. Thomas Apache plays just named The Alien that will get into the discovery of that character as we talk about this episode.
And Steven Culp returned again as Major Hayes, the leader of the Mako Troop. What was the world like when this episode aired on February 11th? Well, I think Matt, I’ll miss saying this cuz I actually really like this song. Hey. Yeah. It was in its final week at the number one spot for outcast and at the movie theaters.
Barbershop two back in business opened and it earned 24 million at the box office. That’s of course the Ice Cube film franchise, which has now had, I believe, four films in the franchise and I think there might even be another one of the works. And on television on February 11th, 2004, what were we watching?
My wife and kids, and it’s our relative on abc 60 Minutes two is discussing serial killers, Russell Simmons. And combat in Afghanistan that earned 10 million views on Fox. The number one show of this time slot was that 70 show, and if you’d asked me if that 70 show ever won its time slot, I would’ve said, what?
And it turns out I would’ve been wrong. And it was followed by American Idol, which earned 24 million viewers. The Apprentice had 7 million viewers. Smallville had 5 million. Here came Chortling along at the back of the pack, little enterprise with 3.9 million viewers, and in the news, well, I thought it was.
Interesting to return to the idea of cloning given, not that it’s the main focus of this episode, but because the previous episode around a clone of trip is directly referenced in this episode, The actions of that clone in the previous episode where that clone effectively said in his brief life as a result of his accelerated growth.
I am a copy of Trip and I have all these very strong feelings about you. Toal. I think I’m in love with you, but I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s the original trip. That comes to bear on this story. So I thought it would be interesting to revisit this news article from February 11th, 2004, in which the New York Times broadcast that scientists had created human embryos through cloning for the very first time.
Scientists in South Korea report that they have created human embryos through cloning and extracted embryonic stem cells, the universal cells that hold great promise for medical research. Their goal, they say, is not to clone human beings. But to advance understanding of the causes and treatment of disease.
But the work makes the birth of a cloned baby suddenly more feasible. For that reason, it is likely to reignite a fierce debate over the ethics of human cloning. The work was led by Dr. WSU Quang and Dr. Shin Young Moon of sold National University and will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.
The paper provides a detailed description of how to create human embryos by cloning experts in the field. Not involved with the work. Said that they found the paper persuasive. However, there’s a spoiler. So our listeners who don’t like spoilers, you have been warned in 2006, science retracted the articles from these doctors after evidence was revealed that demonstrated that their experiments had fabricated results.
So in 2006, that’s when that happens. But at the time of the airing of this episode, cloning. Was out there as a thing being promoted as something that is right around the corner. We do since then, have made tremendous advancements in cloning and the kinds of research that have, that were conducted and fabricated here have in some cases actually been replicated, including more recently, the cloning of several primates in which they successfully.
Cloned Macka monkeys, and they named both of them with double names. I’m not sure if that was done as a joke. So it’s effectively like John. John and Mark. Mark. So onto the discussion of today’s episode, as Matt in struggling to read this synopsis pointed out this episode doesn’t really have an A plot. In fact, no, it has an A, B, and C plot.
all of which you could argue interchangeably are the primary plot and or a BBB plot. A BBB plot, let’s call it that. So you have the plot around trip and T’Pol’s love triangle, which is introduced through T’Pol experiencing jealousy. When she sees that trip is growing closer to one of the, they’re effectively space marines, they’re, they’re referred to as Mako, The acronym Mako is how the, the soldiers are board the enterprise are referred, and one of these soldiers is receiving.
Acupressure treatment. The Vulcan acupressure treatment. That trip has been learning from Teal. He is now applying to this woman and she is clearly interested in trip. She initiates a kiss. He is receptive and things seem to be moving in interesting way for the two of them and it’s to policies, the two of them spending more time together.
She’s clearly exhibiting jealous. Right, the second of the three plots, and these are presented in no order. I mean, like literally that’s kind of the point of what we were saying at the beginning. The second of the three plots is that they will find an alien in a region of space that is just beginning to form.
As a result of the impact of the spheres, the spheres that they’ve been dealing with in their pursuit of the Xindi, finding the spheres, recognizing somebody is using these things to change space and they don’t know why. They don’t know what it is changing it into, And their previous experience in the most recent episode was that.
The region of space, once it’s fully begun to transform, is incredibly toxic. It removes the normal rules of physics and creates an environment where the ship won’t operate properly and the people cannot live. They cannot survive in it. So when they stumble upon literally a region of space, which is exhibiting this kind of new bubbly, You know, scenario, they’re surprised to see that within it is a small pod and it looks like it might be some kind of lifeboat, and when they pull it aboard, they discover inside is an individual who is covered with all sorts of sensors and electrodes and is clearly being studied for something and they’re not sure.
Dr. Flock identifies that this individual is dying, cannot live in their space, and is reluctant to try to wake him up so that the captain can talk to him. And the third storyline. Is basically a power struggle between Lieutenant Reed. Yep. And the major in charge of the makos. The major has done an end run on Lieutenant Reed and I I, of the three storylines, this is the one that I felt like was arguably the best written at the beginning.
Because it’s about military hierarchy in an environment where military, the, the Federation does not yet exist, but Star Fleet does. And Star Fleet in the future, in the original series in Next Generation is always depicted as a pseudo military. There are moments where it becomes effectively a full military action.
Especially I’m thinking about the Deep Space nine, where mm-hmm. , they have depictions of all out war as a result of conflicts between the Klingons and the Dominion and the Federation, and you see the mobilization of troops and you see Star Fleet as effectively it is a military operation at that point.
At this point in. The Star Trek mythology that has been, you can see it’s being debated. What is star Fleet’s role? Does it hold more of a, of a footing in science and exploration, or is there that military aspect read coming from a military background? leans far more heavily toward the, We should be prepared and we should be prepared as if we are a military operation in the major who has been brought on board expressly for when we find the Xindi, we are probably going to have to conduct operations that will be a full blown military operation.
So the Mako are there explicitly as a military squad, and the major sees weaknesses in the crew not being prepared. We’ve had a number of episodes where the Xindi have boarded the enterprise, and in each case the response has been both Mako and the enterprise crew. And usually in each case, the Xindi have had a fairly easy time with doing whatever they wanna board the ship.
Yeah. They’ve kicked us around again and again and again. Yeah. So the major, looking at that clearly sees a deficit. Wants to better prepare the crew for combat, for weapon uses. And rather than go to Reed, he’s gone directly to the captain right outta the gate. The episode starts not with the conversation between the major and the captain, but the captain informing Reed.
Oh. The major has suggested that we do a thing. Why don’t you work with him To set up a training schedule so the crew can receive some military training and this immediately rubs read the wrong way. So right out of the gate, the two of them are having a contentious time and I appreciated that the conversation, the first conversation we we see between the major and.
Hits all of those notes of, Yep, sir, you’ve gone, you’ve, you’ve not followed military protocol and this is inappropriate for you to do what you’ve done. All of that happens in the first 10 minutes of the episode. I appreciated that that conversation wasn’t held until later. I liked the fact that they had it right away.
How did you feel about that? Uh, well,
lemme just go back. You just walked through all three plots. Of the three plots, This was my least favorite. I thought it was the most poorly handled. I thought it was the two. I thought it was way too on the nose, you know, it was kind of cliche the way it kind of played out.
However, there were moments in this plot line I did like. Yeah, And it really came down to. The fight scene of them in the hallway. I had just had flashbacks to the movie. They live where, you know, Rod Piper is having the big fight scene in the alley and it was like, okay, here’s an eight minute wrestling scene in an alley.
Why is, why is this here? Yeah, who cares? It’s just kind of fun. And it was that I had that attitude source, their fight scene. It’s like this would not be happening right now. This is ridiculous that they’re doing this. Yeah. But a, it’s.
Go. It’s almost played for laughs when a crewman spots them. And Reid, who is bleeding at that point says to him as you were like, Just move nothing away.
And the guy walks away
and then the fight scene ends when it’s like everybody to their stations and the two of them being military guys are just, the fight stops and they go back to work. And so it’s like, yeah, they handle it well and in humor, tongue in cheek. But the senior you’re talking about, I thought was the best part.
Yeah. Of. All of it.
Yeah. And then it quickly went off the rails. Yeah. . That was why I said that the, this storyline, I thought the writing of it was the best of the three at the beginning. Yeah. I think that it does go off the rails. It becomes cartoonish, but as you said, like even though it’s cliche and you know, okay, these two guys are gonna fight like cats and dogs at the beginning, they’re gonna have some kind of big blow up, and then something’s gonna happen where they’re gonna have to work together.
You can see all of that coming. Yes. I thought it was well done. I think that it gives the actor who plays Reed a great opportunity to chew the scenery a little bit, to have fun with it. He clearly has fun with some of the hackles swagger, like he reminds me of that dog. And I say this as somebody who basically owned a dog like this.
He reminds me of a dog who gets very nervous and angry about that grocery bag that’s blowing down the street. Yeah. And his hackles go up and he’s ready to go, but it’s just a grocery bag. And then when it blows around the corner, he looks around like, Well, you’re lucky I’m here because I took care of that.
He reminds me of that a little bit. He gets his hackles up. He needs to, he needs to, to get the energy out. And the way that it comes out in this is with a lot of posturing between him and the major. They’re both clearly strutting around each other trying to look like, I’m not afraid of you, but they’re also clearly looking for how do.
Figure out what our relationship is so that this doesn’t become a problem. Both of them are looking for a way to diffuse it. Unfortunately, for both of them, it involves a detached retina and a fight through the hallways. The show.
So I wanna point out there was, even though I found the whole thing cliched where it went, uh, there were moments I thought were great in this, this plot line because there were great conversations between people that weren’t them talking about them.
And this conflict that I thought were. Hysterical and they were great ways to kind of like peel the onion of their characters and give us a little more insight into them. Like there was a conversation, I can’t remember who was having the conversation, but I believe it was Trip and somebody else, and they were talking about Malcolm and Lieutenant Hayes.
Mm-hmm. . And one of them said, Reed is the most like mil buttoned down military guy. He ate the same meal, the same three meals a day for a year. Yeah. It’s like he is like so buttoned down, finds a routine six to it. I thought that was such a great little drop about the kind of person that he is. Yeah. And then later there was a lunch between Trip and Reed.
Uh, Trip was teasing him, jabbing him about this stuff. Mm-hmm. and Reed said this is a fight to the death as he’s just eating. Yeah. Like he was talking about haze, like how he overstepped it and it’s gonna be a fight to the death. I thought it was just a funny little, like one aside that he made. Yeah. From those conversations, that part of that plot line I thought was the best part, but it was, it was so.
Like you said, predictable, what was gonna happen and all the kind of craziness that went around them. It was just so over the top. It just kind of like failed in that regard. But there were still nuggets that I enjoyed out of the,
out of that plot line. I also thought it was helpful in showing that the training is received well by a good portion of the crew.
Yeah, you get a chance to see, uh, them training other people and seeing the other people being very receptive to it. Like, Okay, this is, I understand why I’m here. So Reed’s territorial response to the idea is more about protocol and a sense of, he explicitly says, You want my job? And as a viewer, I was like, No, he doesn’t, He doesn’t want your job.
He doesn’t, but he doesn’t want the job. It’s like it has to have that level in order for the, for the, for the tension to get to where it needs to be. The two of them have to hate each other in that way. And I agree with you, the conversations about the action in this episode, in some cases are more, I.
It’s almost like reading something that has a lot of footnotes and having all the real information buried in the footnotes as opposed to in the main text.
Like, what do you think about the, the dressing down the captain gave them at the end? I thought that
was hysterical. It was pretty funny. Yeah, it was great.
And it ended it, that it ended that storyline in the best possible way. I loved the fact that it ended with them at attention and the captain gets called away and RE is the one who says, Do you think we’re dismissed? Like he doesn’t know which means in that moment, my reading of that moment is, Because he’s uncertain.
Uncertain whether they’re dismissed. They stay there. Yeah. If the they, their detention, the major. If the major had said, do you think we’re dismissed, Reed would’ve responded with, Yeah, I think so. Or like, But it’s the fact that Reed raises that question that makes it the most amusing. That that part I thought was great.
And of the three storylines, Two of them try to end with that kind of winking at the audience, like we’re having fun. The one that doesn’t end with that is the one with the found alien. The found alien, Yeah, of course. Becomes the threat to the ship that spurs on the major and re reuniting as like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and it’s this alien that at first claims.
He was pulled out of prison and offered an opportunity to shorten his sentence if he would only be a part of an experiment. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He has no idea why he was there. And as they’re looking at him, Dr. Fox and the Captain Archer begins to sense like, Well, this is like a canary in the coal mine.
This is, and here’s the harbinger element. This individual being put into this region of space, which is undergoing this change at a very early stage, is looking to see whether or not this area of space has become livable for whoever is creating this area of space effectively. Have we figured out now that the spheres are changing space and that these people are testing out whether or not it’s working, he believes that that’s what’s happening.
It will progress to him forcing the doctor to bring this being out of effectively a pain induced coma. In order to answer questions, ethical concerns are raised. There’s a, it’s a very minor part of the episode, even though arguably that ethical discussion. Has been the entire focal point of other episodes.
Mm-hmm. the doctor, Romulan, wakes the gentleman up. They have this conversation where the guy says, I don’t know anything. And then you end up with a very nice little scene where he’s talking to the doctor and the doctor is showing such empathy and he says, You and they are not from the same place. Who are you?
What are you? And the doctor reveals they’re humans. I am Delan and we’re from different places, but we try to work together. and then the supposedly struggling alien, incapacitates the doctor in a way that I expect there to be a larger repercussion. He effectively puts his arm through the doctor’s neck.
Yes. And when he does this, it phases through, the doctor collapses. I expect that there to be some kind of like, Oh, what he did was, and it screwed up my, but there’s none of that. It’s just he knocks him. And then you begin with the kind of walking through walls. That always bothers me because if you can walk through walls, how are you not falling through the floor?
And if you can walk through walls, how is gravity plating working on you? Because if you’re out of phase, and yes, there’s a lot of nuts, magic talk in the episode around, Oh, well, they are beings from a trans dimensional. Place, And I don’t like the reference to trans dimensional because we are trans dimensional.
We exist in three dimensions plus time. Like the, like, it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of techno babble around all of this. But effectively we are being told these beings are from another phase, effectively another dimension in space. They’re trying to work their way into this dimension in space, and while they are here, they can manipulate things in the way that they do.
This gentleman walks through the ship, he walks to the engineering section, and he is going to disrupt and destroy the engine simply by putting his arm into the engine. So he is doing something internally to the, the functioning of the ship that could destroy it until. The major and read are able to reverse polarity of the engine.
Again, a classic Star Trek magic wand waving of like if we reverse the polarity, it’s always the polarity. Thank goodness for polarity. Yeah, so they reverse the polarity in the ship, which Incapacitates the alien saves the day and the episode storyline around the alien ends with the alien. Now fully saying to Archer, Yeah, I was lying to you before.
I was not a prisoner. I am part of this operation. I know exactly what I’m doing and, and I’ll tell you the plot as
I dial
and I’ll tell you the plot as I disappear. And what the plot is is he effectively reveals that he is from a people who are manipulating the Xindi into doing their dirty work for them.
Because once we finally have met the big bad, the big bad, the big bad is here. Yes. Once you are destroyed, we will be able to do whatever we want in taking over this space. So here is the real threat. We’ve had episodes just last week we talked about an episode in which like if you’re gonna go through the levels of.
Chicanery to trick a member of the Xindi who’s a member of the Zdi leadership. Why are you not gonna say, Hey, you think humans are a problem? Why do you think that? Cuz we didn’t know about you before you attacked us. Like that conversation didn’t happen. They didn’t have that conversation. Largely, I imagine, because they were gonna have this episode.
in which they were gonna be like, Oh, we’re gonna see who the real big bad is. I still think you could have had that conversation. I still wish it had happened in the previous episode, but here we see somebody who’s saying, Yeah, the Xindi are kind of like just our henchmen. They don’t know it, but we are doing this for our purposes.
So now we see, okay, the spheres, the maker, the spheres, all of this, like it’s all starting to gel and come together. And the fact. The ship is almost done in by one individual demonstrates, okay, the enterprise is out here to do this thing, and they’re not nearly as prepared for all contingencies as they had hoped they were.
Yeah, even with the Mako aboard and then on top of all of that is just a big doop of T’Pol has been jealous. And Trip starts to get a sense of it. And there’s a little bit of teasing. There’s a little bit of. I think you’re jealous, and it’s almost from a perspective of like, I think you’ve got a crush on me.
And then her response is, Well, I thought you had a crush on me because of your clone, which then kind of sets him in a weird place. The best thing to come out of this storyline for me is the conclusion of that conversation. Where they both talk to each, each other in these terms of like, I thought you liked me.
Well, I thought you liked me. And then it ends with Trip looking off to the side and saying, what just happened here? Like, so he kind of recognizes like, did we just both profess our love for each other? .
So I just, I just wanna say you and I are, like you mentioned how clones is a part of this whole thing.
I think you and I are clones because in my notes, in my notes, two things you’ve said are in my notes where it’s it. What was it the, I’ve never understood why people face through walls. They don’t fall through the floor. I wrote that in my notes. I’ve never understood why they hand waved that so much.
Yeah, and you just mentioned that. And the second thing I wrote was the only thing I really liked about the Japa. Storyline with Trip was that exact moment. That conversation was like right out of a romantic comedy. Yeah, it was charming. It was delightful. It was fun to see how a Vulcan was approaching this romantic kind of relationship versus a human’s approach to it, and then trips.
Wait, what just happened here? Like, he was basically asking, Did we just profess our love to each other? I loved, I loved that moment of this entire plot line, but everything else about this plot line I did not like, I thought it was, Oh, how convenient. We’re just gonna suddenly see that this may go is making moves on trip and oh, how convenient it’s gonna make T’Pol feel jealous.
It just felt a little like, kind of like the, um, read storyline felt a little too on the nose, a little too predictable, a little too. I don’t know, teen drama for me, but that one scene was the one redeeming part of that entire plot line for me. I thought it was a really good payoff in in that, in
that moment.
Yeah, I agree. It for me, the end of this storyline also, I really. Did not appreciate. No. Nope. T’Pol is doing this incredibly coy, looking over her teacup with, Well, I don’t really like you. And it’s like, Yeah, it’s very Dr. Evil. And I’m just like, I’m like, what is that ending about? Like I, that I really like, Don’t give us the.
Will they, won’t they pay off and then try to pull the rug out from underneath us? Do something else with her. In that moment, she tries to claim that this is about her curiosity around human sexuality. No. No. Like I would’ve preferred the simple shutting of the door and saying that was an error in judgment.
Like have her shut it down, not as a, Well, I was really just looking for documentary evidence of how the humans love. Like, that didn’t fly. I would’ve, I would’ve been more within the realm of the show if it had been her saying what happened happened. It was an, Aaron should be frank. It cannot happen again.
Should him like, and having him sit there with. Hurt response and have her leave and show us her by herself, having a hurt response. Like, let us know, yes, she’s as disturbed by this as he is. Maybe even more so, but do something that gives us that as opposed to this felt very sick, calm, it felt very, She’s playing a playing,
she’s playing a game, and it’s outta context for Topa and Vulcan to do that.
It makes No, she would been frank and she would’ve ripped the bandaid off
and said, No, we can’t do this. Yeah. And the other element of this storyline that I did actually really like was, it’s the only time up to this point in this series where a little flash of skin. And something for Titillation feels appropriate to within the storyline.
Yes. All the other times has been like, we just went to this alien ship, so we’re in the decon chamber and we better gel ourselves up . And this time it’s literally in the midst of trip having his moment of like, Wait a minute, what just happened here? Are we having the conversation? I think we’re having, yeah.
She just disrobe. She moves to him and I in that moment. You have this shot, which is her from behind. It is very, it’s an extremely revealing shot, but it felt like it was far more appropriate. Even the context then any of the previous shots of like gelling up those legs and he, What do you think about these thighs doctor?
And it was just like, this worked so much better. And I sat there thinking like, yeah, this makes sense. This is okay. It didn’t make me feel at all like they were doing something like to dangle something a little unexpected. It wasn’t intended for titillation and it was actually given the will. They won’t they.
Brewing underneath these two characters for as long as it’s been going. It felt like, yeah, this is like, if that was simply a movie about two people who start off not liking each other and then moved toward this kind of relationship, it would’ve made perfect sense. So I actually really liked the conversation.
I liked the moment where they couple and then in. Payoff, which would’ve been the scene in the dining hall where they are talking about what did happen between us. I felt like they completely. Lost the landing. They, they, they, yeah, they absolutely did. And it felt like it was a bad stumble at the end, so it was, Yeah.
Of the three story lines you end up with, for me, it sounds very much like we’re, we’re in the same ground here. You have three plot lines, and if each plot line has a beginning and the middle and an end, they took turns being. Yes, and were not consistently strong throughout and did not all start or land in exactly the same way.
So the weakest start, it’s a mixed bag for each one. The weakest starting point for me was the romantic entanglement. The strongest starting point for me was the read major conflict. And as far as the endings are concerned, for me, the strongest ending is the alien plot. It’s, I agree. Yeah. You land at the end with like hoho, you thought you knew what was coming.
We’re the big bad, We’re doing things to space. You can’t understand, and we’re kind of superhuman when we’re compared to you, so best of luck. You don’t have a chance that it’s at this point in season’s.
It’s that, that that variability between all of them. Like one had a strong middle, a strong beginning, one had a good, strong middle one, had a strong ending.
It kind of actually helped to balance each other out. It’s like a braided
rope hole. Yeah. Yes. It’s strong as a result. Yeah. Yeah. It was an enjoyable
episode for that, where I was always being entertained, but it was a different plot line at different times that was entertaining me. So at the end I was like, That was fine.
Yeah. But then when you go back and you dissect it, you’re like, Wow, that was really bad. And this was really bad. But that was really good. So you can kind of start to pick apart what was working and not working. But overall,
it was okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought it moved the needle, like certain things needed to be moved.
Yeah. We need to see that. Enterprise crew understands their place in this part of space and the dangers that are in front of them and how they have to prepare, check that box. We wanted to see movement in the relationship between T’Pol and Tripp. Check that box and we wanted to know, okay, are the Xindi truly the entity and how do we marry the Xindi with what is happening in this region of space?
Up to this point, it has been. Well, this part of space is where the Xindi live. But other than that, how do we connect them to these spheres and what is happening here and now? Finally, those two things are brought together. So this is a little bit of a literally middle of the season. Well, we’ve got a bunch of check boxes that we need to tick off, so let’s do that here.
And they did it in a way I actually thought was pretty good. It made a pretty good episode. But I don’t know if all of our listeners would agree with that, so please let us know. Jump into the comments. Do you agree that this was an episode that was necessary for all the reasons I’ve talked about? And that it did an okay job with all those three, Or did you feel like this was your favorite episode ever?
Or did you feel like, yeah, they could have just moved ahead and skipped over all of this stuff? Let us know. You can jump into the comments on YouTube, or you can reach out to us through the contact information in the podcast description. And before we check out for this episode, Matt, next time we’re gonna be talking about doctor’s orders.
And normally I ask, what do you think doctor’s orders is gonna be about? Spoiler, We’re recording two episodes back to back, so we already know what doctor’s orders is, so we won’t talk about that. But before we sign off, is there anything you wanted to share about your upcoming episodes on your main channel?
Yeah,
my, it should be out by the time this is out, I’m putting out a video about discussing that I’m building a net zero factory build house. What I’m doing, why I’m doing it, all the things I thought about. You might be able to get something from, so it should be a fun episode. I hope people like it. Check it out.
As for me, you can check out my website, sean Ferrell dot com. You can also go to a bookstore or a public library, ask for my books there. They’re available everywhere and I hope you check them out. As I said before, I’ve got some stuff for kids. There’s a couple of picture books out there. I’ve got some stuff for adults.
I’ve got a sci-fi time travel book out there called Man in the Empty Suit, and next year I will have. Book out for middle grade readers, so we’re talking about maybe you’re 10 or 12 year old. It’s an adventure story with robots and pirates and all sorts of shenanigans, and I hope you’ll check it out.
It’s called The Sinister Secrets of Singe, and that’s gonna be coming out in 2023. If you’d like to support the show, please consider reviewing. Let me start that sentence over. If you’d like to support the show, please consider reviewing us on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever it was you found this podcast.
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like
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Will you automatically start getting out of time made available to you? Out of time is our spinoff program from this one in which we talk about, sometimes we talk about Star Trek. Sometimes it’s other stuff like Star Wars, sci-fi in general fantasy. Recently we’ve had conversations around some of the animated Star Trek program.
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