Matt and Sean talk about the Xindi Council collapsing because of bridge building. Is this another positive step in the right direction for Star Trek Enterprise?
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Episode 22. The council. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological order. We’re also taking a look at what the world was like at the time of original broadcast. We’re currently still in Enterprise, but we’re in season three, and we’re right at the end of season three.
We’re three quarters of the way through. Matt, can you believe it? I can see the next series from where I’m standing. That’s right. Who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a. I read some sci-fi. I read some stuff for kids and with me as my brother Matt. Matt is the guru and inquisitor behind the YouTube channel, undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives.
Matt, how are you doing on this fine Sunday? I am
doing great. The weather is fantastic. Doesn’t feel like fall Dunno what’s going on, but it’s great. How
about you? My partner and I were out yesterday and stepped outside for a nice November. Jaunt about the city and discovered that it felt like it was mid August instead of early November.
It was a little tricky navigating the city when you’re dressed like it’s November, but your body is saying, What the hell are you doing to me? So , But we had a nice time. It is a lovely weekend and we hope everybody’s enjoying their time as well. Before we get into the newest episode that we’re gonna be talking about the council, Matt likes to share some comments from previous episodes.
So Matt, what do you have from us, from our listeners? Well, there’s quite a few
comments. One from Sky Father, what show are you doing next? Is it restricted to Star Trek or you ever do something like Babylon five ? I have to bring that up cuz if we did Babylon five, this show’s gonna take us probably like 60 years to complete cuz we’re watching every show of Star Trek.
Mm-hmm. . Babylon five would just be tacking on another decade on top of that. Yes, but, But it’s a great show.
Yes. We are limited to, we are limited to star Trek, but you know, if Matt and I both win the lottery and we decide we’re done doing anything else, we’re just gonna talk about TV shows. Babylon five would be a show out I enjoy talking about.
And I will
say that if you subscribe to Trek in Time, become a, a supporter and become an sn, we do have a spinoff show just for supporters called Out of Time where we talk. Random pop culture, things like, we’re gonna be having one today where we’re gonna be talking about other TV shows. Like we talk about Star Wars, Star Trek, you, you name it.
Mm-hmm. . That’s catching our eye. We’ll talk about, So we maybe if there’s something about Babylon five we wanna talk about, we’ll talk about it
there. Like the reboot that is being done right now. Yeah, I know.
So another comment was from Robotrav. He wrote, this is on the episode 69 Damage. He said Sean had.
I can’t remember exactly how you phrased it, but you had made a comment about like, this episode was kind of long. Do you think our episodes are too long, too short? Mm-hmm. , how do you feel about that? And Robotrav, I’ve answered. I agree that your episode should be longer. I may have misunderstood the question , and then directly related to that King of 1 3, 3 7.
Putting an artificial time limit on your episode is a disservice to your audience. You should run an episode as long as it reasonably. If one episode’s 20 minutes and another is an hour, that’s perfectly acceptable. Keep up the good work. So I just kind of, We got some feedback to your question that you got to the audience.
I’m in the camp of the episodes are as long as they need to be. We’ll, we’ll talk . As long as we think there’s something to talk about. And we’re not gonna say every episode’s an hour. We’re not gonna say every episode’s 20 minutes. Yeah. It takes what it takes. Yeah. I
appreciate that. That’s helpful.
Guidance, especially considering when we first started doing these, it felt like it was. 90 minutes, but it was largely because of inefficiencies of never having done it before. And as we’ve moved forward, we’ve gotten more efficient. So thank you everybody for weighing in on that. And directly related to the episode,
uh, of damage, uh, Jeff Halverson , just put your name.
This episode really bothered me. You saw no hint that Archer struggled with the decision and is not, was not in character for him. I believe this was a problem in Scott b acting and the writing. Additionally, they had no consequences, which I found to be particularly egregious. Archer should be court marshaled.
This was about the one where he made the decision, that tough decision. To, um, basically rob that ship .
Yeah, we had some, we had some disagreement in our discussion on that one where I think I was a little more like, this kind of doesn’t fit within what we understand these characters to be. And I would’ve appreciated a little bit more in the writing to kind of like show us how they were forced into a decision that really stood out as being problematic.
Yep. But as for today’s episode, we’re gonna get into that in a minute. And as you could tell from the sound, that’s probably a little bit louder than my voice. That’s the read alert. It means it’s time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. And Matt, I will give you a heads up. It feels a little bit like, as we’ve moved into these better episodes, there are.
There’s a little more effort put into the descriptions of some of these episodes, so , I don’t think you’re gonna find yourself quite in the weeds the way you have in previous episodes. That’s great.
Set The 22nd Century. The series follows the Adventures of the First Star Fleet, Starship Enterprise Registration NX oh one, season three of enterprise features and ongoing story following an Attack on Earth by previously unknown aliens called the Xindi.
In this episode, Captain Jonathan Archer, Scott Bala attempts to convince the Xindi Council. Not to use their super weapon on earth. Meanwhile, sub commander to Paul, Jolene Blalock leads in away team to a nearby sphere to attempt to retrieve a data core in order to get more information on the sphere builders.
That’s a
very good description. That is a pretty succinct take on the episode. This episode, season three, episode 22, directed by David Livingston. This is his fourth directorial turn. This season episode written by Manny Koto, and this is his fifth episode written this season. It originally aired on May 12th, 2004, and guest appearances include Randy Osby, again as Degra Tucker Smallwood, again as the Xindi Primate counselor, Rick Worthy, again, Asar, Scott McDonald again as Commander Dolan.
Josette DeCarlo as the sphere builder woman, Sean McOwen as Corporal Hawkins, Mary Mara as the sphere builder percentage, and Ruth Williamson as the sphere builder Primary. There are various, they look very much like different versions of the same person. But it’s, Yep. Uh, very subtle differences. And it’s, and it’s basically just, you can recognize the difference via voice.
It’s a little distracting at one point when what looks like three versions of the same person are talking to each other. And it’s a little hard to tell even intentionally when they are or where they are because it is a completely white background. So it is this sort of, Heaven like discussion of we have to do things because things aren’t happening the way we want them to happen.
And those are the three actresses who are playing those parts. I thought they were gonna start to
introduce the next
iPhone. Yeah. Yeah. If at any sudden moment it had turned to a colored background and all we could see were earbuds, then that would’ve been your clue.
As I mentioned, the original air date of this May 12th, 2004. What was the world like at the time of this broadcast? Well, Matt, I don’t think you’ll forget that you were singing along to Maroon five. This. No, that was the mm-hmm. . That was the song that spurd you on to get your first back tech too. So
and in the movie theater, people were lining up to see Van Helsing and I don’t know why. 51 million in its opening weekend for Hugh Jackman, Cape Eel in a movie that largely forgettable, forgettable, and is available on Peacock in case you don’t wanna forget about. And on television on this day, May 12th, 2004, what were we watching?
Well, once again, not really watching Enterprise, although the numbers were up a little bit, and that was one of the things that popped out in my research is somebody said the good news for Enterprise at this point was that the viewership was up. Well, the viewership was up to 3.2 million. So that’s really looking at a silver lining of a pretty dark cloud.
Smallville and WB was getting 4.5 million NBC’s special on the mentalist. Ooh, remember that show? 6.2 million. That 70 show was earning 11.5 million, 60 minutes too, was getting 9.8, and my wife and kids was airing back to back episodes, getting about 8.7 million per episode. And to give you a sense of, you know, we’ve talked about in previous episodes the change in television from the broadcast commercial, Model to what we have now, which is, is called the prestige version, where it’s a lot more subscription based and we now have the.
Reemergence of commercial television, but it’s slightly modified in the form of either an app that has commercials still embedded in it, or free services like Tubi and Pluto where you can get some programming and commercials are embedded in it. But to give you a sense of how pairings of shows really does work or does not work to lead to a block of programming that consistently brings people in, you want shows.
Don’t necessarily have to be directly related, but can kind of be a part of the same conversation with the viewers so that you end up with something like what happened on WB Smallville leading into Angel. Angel got about 4 million viewers. So you end up with these two shows that are both gonna appeal to the very same audience.
Uh, obviously NBC is using. Block of programming for its main primetime shows leading into the West Wing, one of the strongest and most critically acclaimed shows on television. At the time, that 70 show was leading directly into American Idol, and you end up with sitcoms like my wife and kids leading directly into the Bachelor.
So it’s you, you want your programming to kind of be of a theme, even if it’s not all of the same. What were they doing on upn? Well, Star Trek Enterprise was leading into America’s Next Top model and it’s finest programming and it’s finest. This is a little bit like taking two very different balls of mud and throwing them both at the wall to see which one sticks.
America’s tech Top model, Amer, Let me say that again because I said the wrong word. America’s next top model was getting viewership of about 1.4 million. It was not retaining star Trek Enterprise. Fan base. Nope. No surprise. But it was also not a show that would’ve brought people to u p n an hour earlier in anticipation of getting to that show.
So there’s no crossover. There’s no crossover. There’s no appeal for like somebody to tune in at eight o’clock and stay until 10. It is. You’re showing up for enterprise or not, and then you’re showing up for America’s Next Top model or not. That kind of synergy does not help either program, and so that’s what we’re seeing here, I think.
Yep. And what was going on in the world at large? Well, the United States right around this time in May announced. That the US Department of Energy would be building the world’s fastest super computer capable of sustained performance of 50 trillion calculations per second compared to the 36.5 trillion for Japan’s earth simulator, and less than 8 trillion for the USS ASC White computer.
The computer to be federally funded to the tune of 50 million will be built at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And where does that fit in the big picture, Matt? I’m sure you’re wondering, Frontier is the name of the current fastest super computer. It is at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The machine was built at a cost of 600 million, so more than 10 times.
The previous Department of Energy computer cost. It began deployment in 2021 and reach full capability in 2022. It clocks 1.1. Exaflops. What is an exaflop? You’re asking? I do not know, but it is a lot more than the 50 trillion calculations per second of the. Yeah, computer that was proposed 20 years ago.
Computer technology, the evolution and the expansion of it is exponential in nature. So it is no surprise that the bold broadcast in 2004 of we’re gonna build the world’s best supercomputer now looks. Archaic in comparison to what we’re building now. also around this time in May, in 2004, the Mexican Air Force released a video of 11 UFOs that they had filmed over the state of Camapache.
And there was debate about what the source of this was with some people saying it was just pockets of atmospheric gas. And on the war on terrorism Al-Qaeda, Emanuel was found at one Al-Qaeda raid. Which listed basic instructions for Al-Qaeda members regarding the hierarchy of terrorism. Targets first target US citizens, followed by Britain’s Spaniards, and then Australians.
Now onto the current episode in discussion. This is the council, and this episode, unlike most of the previous ones, actually has a date attached to. It is February 12th, 2154. It’s nice to be reintroduced to what the calendar is supposed to be within the show. So at this point, the enterprise has been jetting around the galaxy for roughly three years, if we can recall the original date of launch.
So, yep, we find ourselves in the the meeting. Degraand Archer were trying to make happen the cause of the previous episode where we ended up with time loops and all sorts of shenanigans around how can we make sure the future happens the way the past said it should. And while that episode didn’t have quite the same gravitas and maybe.
Footing underneath it as the previous episodes. This one feels like a return to that more solid ground. I almost feel like you could remove E squared from the viewing timeline. And you really wouldn’t miss all that much in the big picture context. You would lose the nice character development moments around to Paul and her experience with incorporation of emotions and, and giving advice to herself and really saying like, reach out to the people around you.
These are, these are the people you care about. You should reach out to them. But as far as the big picture, the Xindi storyline, you can really kind of remove that one from the viewing and, and step right into this episode. What did you think about this one, Matt?
No, it was the same thing. It’s like the last episode.
You could have skipped and gone right to this one because it’s so clearly tied to what had been happening before. Overall, I really like this one a lot. I thought it was very enjoyable. Couple little things that were throwing me off, one of which was. The wonky eyes. , it’s such a, the little contact lenses and the extreme closeups of the reptilians.
Mm-hmm. and one eye being like slightly rotated like
this. Yes. Do are a little off, but if you, but if you just attend part Camille, technical
details. I liked it. I thought it was a very good episode.
Yeah, I agree. It has, Within it, the, the Xindi Council’s scenes to me stand out as the most important within the.
because as opposed to what we’re accustomed to on enterprise, you’re not gonna end up on enterprise with a lot of drastic difference of opinion regarding what the plan is. Everybody is on board with. Here’s what our goal is. We’re trying to form peace. We’re not going in to blow up their weapon anymore.
We’re trying to really find a peaceful solution here. So what we’re seeing is the emergence of what would be in the original series and next generation. We’re seeing the the, the building Phlox of peaceful solution should be our primary goal. Mm-hmm. as opposed to. The way the season started, which was we need to go do whatever it takes in order to stop this thing, including just full blown war.
So there’s an evolution there. Meanwhile, on the Xindi Council side, it’s the opposite. There’s more drama on the Xindi council side simply because you have them splintering. and the arguments between them. Dere giving. I love the sequence of Archer and Dere talking about what should you anticipate when you get in front of the council and the little glimpses of all the different Xindi types and saying, Well, you know us and you’ve got the the arres, and here’s the aquatics who are going to be, It’s gonna take some effort to get them.
They’re reasonable, but it takes them forever to make a decision. And then there’s the insectoid in the reptilians, and they are probably gonna be impossible to convince. So that little sh, you know, set of shots of these different things, including giving a name to the aquatic, which I thought was a nice little touch.
Like she’s very reasonable, but sh do not expect her to make any fast decisions, but really kind of like focus on. I
might be alone in this, but that sequence, I actually noted that it irritated me just a little bit. It felt a little too much, like too much of an exposition dump. It didn’t feel as organic as it probably could have been, but super minor nitpick.
Yeah, I did enjoy the fact they were giving this, but at the same time it was like, Yeah, we already picked up on the subtext of what you’re talking about if you’ve been watching all the episodes up until now, but it felt like, well, they had to put this in here just in case somebody hadn’t been watching all along.
So it felt like they kind of had to do it the way they did it. Yeah, I get it. But at the same time, it was kinda like, Yeah, you did. Yeah. You’ve already kind of half said this stuff, and reading between the lines and previous episodes, I already picked that up, so why are you talking about it now? That was the only part I did like the fact that they gave names to some of these people.
Yeah. That we’d been seeing that we hadn’t heard before. And like also the, the name of the, uh, Insectoid, which was like, their names get longer the, as they get older, the older, the elder, I, I, those little nuances were kind of fun. So it’s like there was enjoyment out of it I got, but at the same time it felt a little exposition heavy
to me.
I, I agree. There was exposition there and I agree that the cause of it was probably to make sure that anybody who joined the. Without having seen previous stuff was up to speed. But I do think that they did figure out enough of a balance for me to make it feel like D doesn’t know what Archer knows about these different species.
So he is like giving him that like, Okay, here’s what, Who’s this one? Or she actually has a name and then there’s this one, I tell you his name, but it would take me too long. So like little insights into that I think balanced out the overall, Hey viewers. Maybe you remember from these previous episodes, Literal shots from previous episodes, but we really get to see Doum in this one as more than just a heavy mm-hmm.
I feel like we get to see a little bit of the motivation that works from the sphere builders, which is you. Have to stand by and watch other members of the Xindi Council give away your safety, and he really does see himself. This is, this is key in good storytelling. Your villain has to believe that they are right?
Yep. Your villain has to believe that they have good reasons. They have to see themselves as the hero of their story, and this is a case. In the early days of enterprise, it always felt like, like the Suliban were introduced. Without there being, you never got the sense that any Suliban actually believed in what they were doing.
No. It always felt a little bit like, well, if I had a mustache, you would see me twirling it. It’s not quite sold in the way that this is where Doum has the conversation with the severe builder who says, unequivocally. You could be the hero of your people. You are, you are not. You do not need to stand by and that he takes that and uses that in his argument with DRA, I think is very important to the story that he’s standing there in front of Degraand saying, , your name will be a a.
You will be viewed as a villain in our history. I will make sure that your bloodline ends with you. There’s no doubt in my mind that you are a traitor to your people. And I will not stand by and let that happen. It’s a very, very Shakespearean story in this episode, whereas the previous ones have felt a little more plot based in the form of the mechanics of like, Well, how do we get from point A to point B?
How do we make sure that we escape safely into this other terrain so that we can get to that meeting? Yep. This one feels more evocative to me of some of the Klingon storylines from next Generat. in the kind of like blade sharpening, machinations, getting into somebody’s chamber, and then just letting them know what they really think about the other person before they stab them.
This is, this is a more Shakespearean trauma. Yeah.
The one thing I, I will agree with you. It’s good storytelling on this. I love that. That scene was great of, It was very menacing. Yeah. And he came into Dees chamber. You knew, Oh, something bad’s gonna happen here. It’s all done
with. Yeah.
Yeah. Brilliant. But my one complaint though is, while it’s good storytelling for this specific episode, it, this comes back to the unevenness of the show at large.
It’s like, if this was your end point, why were you not building some of these characters out a little bit more earlier on? Cause up until this point, the Reptilians have. That mustache twirling. Yeah. Word. Just evil. Ah. And it was like, there was never any kind of backstory until this episode. You could have been planting the seeds of what, what?
What’s this head ion’s name? I can’t remember his name. Doum
Dole. Commander Dole. You could have been setting up Dole’s
character like. Weeks ago, like many, many weeks ago, about like giving little hints as to why he is the way he is, the, his line of thinking of how he thinks he might be able to do better at leading the council than the council itself.
You could have been dropping these nuggets of information in a more coherent way than just like a kind of a massive dump of information in this one. I enjoyed it. Yeah. But I just felt like, ah, you had a missed opportunity. You could have been building up some of these villains earlier on. I agree. Do you feel the same way?
Yeah, I agree. There’s, there are moments where I found myself thinking you’ve used do. In multiple episodes, but there were episodes where you didn’t use Doum that could have really benefited this long term storytelling that you’re talking about. Like the episode where the reptilians were back in earth’s past, conducting an attempt to create a, a bio weapon to destroy humans before.
Would ever get even close to being a threat to the Xindi. And I found myself thinking like they could have done something before that or after that with Doum talking about that plan. Like, and if it was done in the form of him saying, I hate having to use this kind of subterfuge, but what we’re trying to accomplish here is too important.
We’re talking about the safety of our people. Like a simple line like that can go a long way. And there’s been a number of episodes in the council. Where, as you mentioned, he is largely just being intransigent and mustache twirling instead of making coherent arguments around, this is about our people’s safety and, And if there was more credence given, not only to Doum but to the insectoid, I would’ve liked it if the insectoid made some arguments as well in the form of.
We’ve been scrambling for a safe territory and we feel like we’re on the verge of finding a new home world and like we need to stay united. From that perspective, it would’ve been interesting for the insectoid to be making those arguments, and I also like the idea. That they’ve built into the personality types.
There’s the humanoids, there’s the arboreal. The arboreal are a little more methodic, a little more detached, and it’s, it feels literally lifted out of, Well, what’s the personality type of this type of creature? So arboreal sloth, like maybe a little more like, Oh, kind of moving at my own pace, moving at my own time.
Then the aquatics are moving at a completely other scale of speed. Born of the style of communication at one point in this episode, it’s really nice that Hoshi refers to, there’s a point where they use sonar for the past tense. Yeah, like little nuances like that that are fascinating. It would’ve been nice to see that for the Reptilians and the Insectoid as well, because the ones that seem to be potential allies feel more fleshed out, whereas the ones that are viewed as villains are less so, and it would’ve been nice to see there being a little bit more argument, like what kind of argument does an INSECTOID make about community and family?
What type of statement do they make about. How they, do they envision all Xindi as part of a hive? That kind of thing. Are we a nest? Like is there an importance to the episode where the insectoid hatchlings are discovered and the hatchlings use a chemical to basically create reverse imprinting? Yep. How does that manifest as a philosophy within the adult insectoid?
I’d be interested in that kind of argument coming from them saying if we, like if an insectoid were to say to the council, If we can’t make the humans part of us, then they need to be rejected. They need to be destroyed. It’s as simple as that. Right? And this. Finally does that with Reptilians. When Doum is confronting, de one of the best parts of that conversation is they are in the, they’re basically in the homes of the Avian Xindi and Doum looks out a window and says, I’ve always hated it here.
That’s too exposed. Yeah. We prefer to be on the ground where we can see what’s coming and it’s the first moment that you. Th there’s also their personality manifested from like, what is an instinctive, reptilian approach to safety versus where they are. And I thought that that was, And the aggression, It was nice.
Yeah. The, the
stench of failure, he says it’s, it reeks of failure. It’s like there’s the whole, we’re strong, we can take care of ourselves. And, and that kind of ties into one of the things I wanted to bring up about the whole counsel arguments that they make when the evidence is being shown. And how the reptilians keep saying, Oh, that’s manufactured.
That’s fake. Mm-hmm. , you know, there was a whole, I know we’re talking about Trek in Time and context for when the show was made, but it felt so present to now. It was uncanny. Yeah. Of if something doesn’t fit your belief in your narrative, it has to be fake. Yeah. Fake news and it. Fascinating to me how it, it was, it was, felt like it was written today.
Mm-hmm. , but clearly the writers are, you know, playing on human tropes that have been around for thousands of years and they’re playing in history about how, how democracies fall and how things fall apart. They’re writing that into the story because it’s happened again and again and again, and we’re in the moment right now where the strong man.
Is front and center right now in our politics around the world. And so it was interesting to see the strong man arguments playing out in this episode. So I, I, I , I loved it. I loved it for that, that reason of, if there was one episode I was gonna pick from this season to tell people, Hey everybody, you should probably watch this episode.
It would be this specific one because it feels
so current to me. Yeah. It also fits in with within the context of 2004. Yeah, this is following on the heels. Hey everybody, we gotta go into Iraq because they’re building weapons of mass destruction. Yep. And then here we are in 2004. No weapons were found would ever be found, and this would be part of the major push from the Democrats in their campaign with John Kerry as their candidate.
to remove George W. Bush from office effectively saying he was wrong. He was, they made up stuff in order to be able to go in and do what they wanted to do. Yeah, so this was on everybody’s, this was on everybody’s radar at the point, and I don’t disagree that it is evergreen as a topic. Mm-hmm. , it has resurfaced again in.
You know, 18 year cycle we appear to be in of, If you don’t agree with it, it’s fake. And the, And only I can
solve this problem. Yes. It’s that, that mentality, that’s the
strong man argument and it is from Dolan’s perspective, it is one other element of this that I really would’ve appreciated. We just talked about, wouldn’t it have been nice if Dolan had been revealing a little bit more of his positive motivations in the past?
I would appreciate more in this episode if he. A little bit more of, does he actually think that the sphere builders are being honest or does he see there is an opportunity for his people, his specific group of people to take the top seat? Because I think it’s more compelling if he does all of this reluctantly.
Then you have a Macbeth Charact. Like, I don’t want to have to do this thing, but I got these people telling me that if I don’t do this, that all Indy are gonna be destroyed, so therefore I have to do this terrible thing in order to do this. I wish there had maybe been a little more reluctance in his actions, because what they put on the screen is a little bit of, as you just mentioned, him saying fake news about all of the evidence, and then being told, Well, if you don’t do this, your people will all die.
So he act. But it’s unclear. Does he fully trust the sphere builders or is he just Yeah, they’re telling me what I wanna hear. So it’s like I, I feel like there’s a little bit of a nuance that isn’t clear enough in what his motivation is. And I think that there’s a lot of room for the drama of it could have been, um, turned up a.
Depending on picking one path over the other, there’s a certain amount of drama that could absolutely come out of him being like, Yeah, I know she’s lying to me, but I like what she’s saying. And then there’s another one, which is. , woe is me. I have to take this blade and I have to stick it to your chest.
And the death scene for me for de was a heartbreaking one because I kept thinking, I kept running into future head cannon of how will de be spoken of in the history books of the federation, Like right, That future that we know is coming, because we know those shows. What does Picard know of Dere? What does Picard know of the discussions between Archer and Degra and how to form a piece?
And I kept thinking this is the kind of thing that would be taught at the academy. This is the kind of thing that members of Star Fleet as they’re going through the academy, would be taught. Like how did Archer do this? What was the turning point for building a piece instead of just going after the weapon?
And how did he do it? What was the connection? Right. And I kept thinking, you know, part of me was going back again and again to, well, if Archer is the old, old West, Kirk is the old. And Right, and thinking of Kirk and his approach to like all those over acted moments of. I know what you’re going through.
When he would say to aliens, I know what you’re going through, because we went through this on Earth, Like he’s constantly throwing that out as like, Hey, empathy. Hey, I understand. Hey, I get it. You know, like all of that feels at work in that scene with Degrawhen he’s being murdered and being told you will be forgotten.
And I kept thinking, No, no, you’re not. No, he is not. This is, this is a moment where he’ll be talked about. As this man who saw the opportunity for peace and was murdered for it, but ultimately had done enough to help bridge that
gap. It ties right into this another scene that I wanted to call out, which was between Trip and Dere.
There was a couple scenes between the two of them where Trip was continuing his. Passive aggression. Yeah. Towards Degra, and I love that. Degra finally stood up to him and called him out on it and said, Listen, I am risking my life and my family’s life because I know this is right. He basically cut me some slack here.
It’s like, You don’t have to forgive me for what I did, but understand I am risking my life for this. And I thought that was a really be. Seen, and it was a great chance for trip to kind of start to turn that corner of like, well, oh crap. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. And so it’s leading into that, you know, in history, like for the Federation, for the Picard time.
You know, that de would be some kind of talked about as a man who gave his life to do the right thing. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, he’s probably revered in
that in that way. Meanwhile, we haven’t even touched on the shuttle pod. Yeah. Which is off collecting data from Sphere, which includes a. Very, very minor moment, but I thought it was a nicely constructed touching moment where you see Reid invite one of the makos to join them.
can I
This? That whole scene to me was so. Tragic because he’s inviting this guy and you’re talking to him and I’m thinking, You should be wearing a red shirt right now cuz you’re gonna
die. That’s just what I was gonna say is we make a joke out of the Reed Alert. This is also should have been his reed shirt.
It was, Hey, hey, you know how to use an exo suit, right? Well, why don’t you come along? Oh, and here’s this red shirt I made for you. You could put that on. It’s, Yeah, you know that the guy’s gonna die, but the way, the purpose behind his death doesn’t feel like an original track where it would be like we beamed down to the planet and Oh my God, that guy’s dead.
It was, it was, They have a role for him. There’s a logical reason for him to be. He is defending the team from something that is obviously a threat and he gives his life in his attempt to defend them. And then ultimately the biggest part of the payoff is you see Reid have a breakdown on the shuttle. He freaks out and he’s just like he’s, he’s wrestling with the idea of acceptable losses.
I thought that was a very touching and very important moment for Reed’s character. I really.
Yeah. Especially when you’re saying acceptable losses is 20%. 20%. Yeah. We’ve flow past that. Yeah. And it’s just like him having enough, it’s like, enough is enough. He doesn’t wanna lose one more person. Yeah. Which I thought was, It was really nice for him.
And I wrote in my notes, what I wrote was when he died, I wrote red shirt, exclamation mark. All that EV training for nothing. Yeah.
not only EV training, but EV combat training. It was just like the whole thing. It was like, you’re the perfect guy for this job. Oops. Yeah. Oh, . And then ultimately, the reason that they go to the sphere is to collect data modules from the sphere, and then there’s no payoff within this episode.
They are limping back to the enterprise because the shuttle craft is damaged by transitioning through the spheres protective barrier. They’re still functioning that are gonna make it back, but then all hell breaks loose because the reptilians and insectoid manage to steal the weapon, get it off of the building, uh, platform and into space, and they get it to a warp corridor where it disappears.
All the other Xindi and the enterprise chasing after it, trying to stop it. And at this point now there’s a full fracturing. There’s an, It is effectively the first stages of a coup and civil war where all the other Xindi, other than the Insectoid and reptilians, are now fully firing upon others Indy in an attempt to stop them.
You see the enterprise. As a part of this, I love that there is just the briefest of the shuttle craft is kind of calling to us and archer’s like, Tell him to wait here, , we’ll be back, we’ll be back , we’ll come and get him. And it’s just like, what? Like I could only imagine how upset, uh, to Paul and Reed might be when they and Mayweather, when they get the signal back from the enterprise of we’ll be back and see everybody disappear into warp.
and they’re like, We’re just here in Xindi space with this planet full of Xindi who don’t know that there was a co. So how safe are we? Yeah. This episode, and we’ve had a number of episodes that we’ve, we’ve talked about recently where one ties directly into another, one leads right into the next, and you see that cohesive storyline.
But this one was the first one where as I was watching it, I actively thought, I don’t want to not watch the next. I had the same thing.
Scene I need to keep, just go ahead and watch the next one right now .
And I knew there was nothing stopping me from doing that, but I really felt like compelled to like, Holy cow, this is, this is pretty grip.
I want get to, Yeah, I wanna get to the end like, and in looking at the upcoming episodes, I notice that the dates that they give for the episodes are like literally the same. So the next couple of episodes effectively do follow one on top of the next. So I’m really looking forward to getting to those. So before we get into the next episode, which is going to be countdown, and as I mentioned the, the start date of this one, there are no start dates yet, but it’s February 13th, 21, 54 with the final episode, zero hour hitting on February 14th, 2154, Valentine’s Day.
It feels like it’s, it feels almost like it’s worth looking at them as part of the whole, but we are still gonna be treating them as individual episodes just to let everybody know. So don’t rush through watching them if you don’t want to sustain that cliff hanger momentum or lack of momentum, I guess,
And in the meantime, let us know what you thought about this episode. You could drop a comment beneath this YouTube video, but if you’re listening to this as a podcast via Apple, Google, or Spotify, wherever it was, you picked it up, go back there and leave a comment there. Leave a review, reach out to us through the contact information and the podcast description.
Let us know what you thought about it. Matt, what do you have coming up on your next? Um,
it’s a very star treky topic, nuclear fusion. I’ve talked to a bunch of nuclear fusion companies that are startups that have some really cool tech that’s bringing fusion to market much faster than you might think is possible.
It’s a really interesting. Subject I like touching on every once in a while,
as for me as usually you can always go to my website, sean Ferrell dot com, or you can just go to wherever it is that you find your books. That includes everything from Amazon to your local bookstore, to your public library. You can find my books at all those locations and I’ve got books for young readers in the form of picture books.
I’ve got stuff for adults like Sci-fi, Novel Man in the Empty Suit, which is about a time traveler who may in fact have murdered himself. So those are all available for you. Please check ’em out. And if you’d like to support the show, please consider reviewing us on Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever it was you found this.
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It’ll start showing up in your feed. And what do you get on out of time? Well, you get all the things that we won’t talk about in Trek, in Time, in other words, Yep. We will talk about some other star Trek shows. We’ve previously talked about things like lower decks and strange new worlds. We will talk about things like the Star Wars program and or which is what we’re gonna record in just a few minutes for this upcoming episode of Out of Time.
We’ll also talk about movies like the Two movies I want to talk about today, Watcher and Barbarian. So we hope you’ll join us there by becoming a direct. Thank you so much for listening or watching, and we’ll talk to you next time.