Trek In Time

Matt and Sean talk about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Star Trek Enterprise is getting back on track with this one.

Show Notes

https://youtu.be/_o84RCDhXZg

Matt and Sean talk about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Star Trek Enterprise is getting back on track with this one. 

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Creators & Guests

Host
Matt Ferrell
Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts
Host
Sean Ferrell 🐨
Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In today's episode of Trek in time, we're gonna be talking about what happens when your new best trend does you dirty. That's right. We're talking about enterprise season three, episode 13, halfway through the season. Proving ground. Welcome to Trek in time where we're talking about every episode of star Trek in chronological order.

And we're also talking about the context of what the world was like at the time original broadcast we're currently in the third season of enterprise, which means we're also talking about 2004. Who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. And alongside me is my younger brother, Matt, who is that?

Matt Ferrell of undecided with Matt Ferrell and Matt Ferrell. How are you today?

Matt Ferrell is good today. How about you, Sean

Ferrell? I'm doing okay. I'm looking forward to chatting about an episode that felt just quick, big picture, a bit like the perfect mix of action talking. All around star Trek. How did you feel about it?

Just a short synopsis.

I loved this episode.

as usual before we get into discussing the most recent episode, we like to share some comments on our previous episodes. So, Matt, do you wanna jump into what people have been saying about what we've been. well on

chosen realm, which was the last episode, which was about the, the religious extremists that took over the enterprise.

There was a lot of, uh, interesting comments around religion and how the ha show handled it and how we discussed it. And one of them was from hago 69. He, he laid out a very long thoughtful comment. I'm just gonna focus on the last paragraph. I'd recommend anybody go and look at it and read the whole, the whole comment, but he ended it.

One last thing, while you may consider the war over scripture details to be a punchline. It is in fact, a very real thing that has happened throughout human history, many worshiped the same gods by different names, and they would fight each other out just because they could use different mouth noise to refer to the same deity, not to mention the countless Protestant versus Catholic wars.

It's also worth noting that many religious wars were about expanding power than who was. But that brings into a philosophical discussion about the winner's right. History and might makes right versus truth, which may start an existential crisis about what, about all of human existence and everything that you know about life.

I thought that was a very, yeah. well, put agree a hundred percent on that. Yes.

I think we, I think in our discussion, we kind of viewed that moment of the depiction of the different religiou. Aspects as like the very tail end of, of a dog. We didn't like, we were both like the, like, they didn't give us enough to mm-hmm really be able to take this with any kind of seriousness, but ghost is absolutely right.

You could tell a very compelling story that starts with that kind of simple difference, but then dig down into it to get to the kinds of things that ghost talks about. Yeah. I don't feel like that episode did any of that, so yeah. But yeah, ghost is absolutely right.

Uh, I like this comment from a J Chan, he wrote, I was surprised that this enter episode of enterprise didn't paint faith in a redeeming light because enterprise is the only star Trek show to mention.

Multiple times per episode. I mean, just listen to that theme song. And then you wrote out the theme song lyrics, cuz I've got faith of the heart. I'm going where my heart will take me. I've got faith to believe I can do anything. I've got strength, the soul and no one's gonna bend or break me. I can reach any star.

I've got faith. I've got faith, faith of the heart. And it's funny that. Yeah. That's the theme of the freaking show. Yeah. And the way that they basically took a dump on faith in that episode is like what? . Yeah. There's like a dissonance that I love the ag pointed out

there. Absolutely dissonance there. Yeah.

Yeah.

The last time I wanna bring up is from over Trav, he said, I'm intrigued by a response to this episode personally, I saw it as an important message about the dangers, faith and religion and anti-science culture poses to a society. I saw Archer as fighting. Ration and reason against irrational, unreasonable people, I guess it all comes down to your perspective.

I just can't help think that having faith to the extent that you're fully willing to ignore or race acquired knowledge to maintain an ignorance, backed belief is a very dangerous thing. And I want to kind of C this one, cuz it's like. my whole channel is kind of about that. my undecided YouTube channel.

Yeah. Like the breaking, the myths around EVs and that EVs are the, a path forward solar power dealing with all the ignorant thoughts about that. Having our former president saying that when turbines cost cancer, it's like there is so much people of people putting their ideology ahead of truth and reason happening right now in our society.

It is scary, damaging and terrify. That we can't have. We can't agree on what truth is. Yeah. Because there's a prevalence of belief over rational thought right now. Yeah.

I, I also like robo trabs comment. I think that it, it, one of the things that I was hoping would come out through our discussion was that we are not against what he's looking.

In his comment, that kind of depiction of like, there's a point where perhaps faith has to open a door to reasoned scientific arguments. Yep. Yep. This episode didn't do that though. It felt like this episode was taking a, a club to faith. Not because it countered science, but simply because, well, the faith based people are idiot.

And that was, that felt like that's where that episode was coming home from for me. So again, I'm, I'm all on board with that kind of discussion. And I think star Trek has had that discussion many, many times and done it. Yes, really. Well, the episode we discussed last week was just didn't feel like one of them.

And now that signal in the background, that can only mean one thing. That's the read alert and Matt, I know I've told you to buckle up before. Yeah. But. This one's gonna take some, I have one recommendation for you. Forget everything you know about grammar. Forget everything you know about sentence structure.

Oh no. And just read the words, just go with the words. Good luck.

Let the words flow through me. Yes. Okay. Proving ground is the 13th episode from the third season of the television series star Trek enterprise. It's the 65th episode of the series. First airing on January 21st, 2004. This is a science fiction episode about a spaceship dealing with an attack on earth by aliens in the 22nd century.

The episode of continues the Xindi story arc opening with a montage of scenes from the previous shows. . Archer and a recurring character, the end Dorian captain Tran take on the Xindi in an uncertain Alliance. Sorry. I'm glad that they even put a comment about the previously on serial clips. Yes. Yes.

That's

super important. The synopsis, including that the episode had a synopsis. It gets a little meta there for a little bit. It's it's,

it's a conception world folding in us. Yeah.

It's just, it's just like suddenly, like who put this here? So this episode is from season three. Episodes are 13. It's directed by David Livingston.

This is one of the 60 episodes that he's directed during this period in time it's written by Chris black. As Matt mentioned originally aired on January 21st, 2004. Guest stars included Molly brink as Lieutenant Tallis, Randy SBY ASRA Scott McDonald as commander doum Tucker Smallwood as the Xindi prime counselor, Rick worthy as gen Grandville, van Doon as the Endor in general, Jeffrey Combs, of course, as commander strand and Josh Dre.

As Deborah's assistant. What was the world like when this episode aired? Well, in this very first part of January, 2004, we were still dancing to, Hey, yeah, by outcast and at the movies. Well along came poly, it earned 27 million. The Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, gross out comedy is still available for streaming on stars.

Despite the fact that it is not well rated. So. You are warned. If you decide to go out and check that one out and on this evening on January 21st, 2004, what was enterprise up against? Well, it was losing, it was losing against my wife and kids and it's all relative. It was losing against 60 minutes too, which was looking at among all things.

A new story about a virus deadlier than SARS. There's no such thing, Matt don't be ridiculous. Pandemics. Ah, yes. And on Fox American idol was getting almost 30 million viewers, which is a bit more than enterprises, 3 million viewers and on NBC, the apprentice cough cough in its second week and on WB Smallville was earning a solid 5 million and in the news, well, Wanted to share this, which is a book review, which is published in September of 2004 at J store, which is a journal storage facility online one by a group, a nonprofit group, which has the goal of providing journal entries permanently stored online in perpetuity for a future need.

And I wanted to share this opening paragraph of a book review. It's titled the worst of enemies. The best of allies reviewed by Ronald Krebs of the department of political science at the university of Minnesota. It is his review of dangerous alliances, proponents of peace, weapons of war by Patricia Whitesman.

Which came from the Stanford university press in 2004, he writes Patricia Weisman's dangerous alliances begins with an often neglected insight about the nature of alliances. Alliances often are often not just, and sometimes even not primarily a means of aggregating power to balance the members' common foreign threats.

They may be designed in the first place as devices to manage. Among the members to control an adversary by enmeshing it in an institution that is mutually constraining Alliance motivated by this tethering imperative to use Weissman's term is oriented more internally. Externally not surprisingly such alliances are not terribly cohesive because the internal threat often exceeds the external threat, dangerous alliances identifies several motivations for Alliance formation and elucidates, the consequences of each for Alliance cohesion.

But the book's distinctive contribution lies in its discussion, not of balancing or bandwagoning terms that have long been part of the international relations lexicon, but of tethering. I thought that this was a fascinating introduction to the entire concept of the Federation mm-hmm . And this episode in particular ties into.

Concept. If you look at this episode with the idea of tethering in mind, you can see the ongoing tension between earth and Vulcan. And now you can see the introduction of the Andorians into this tethering. The Andorians show up, say we're only here to. But what are they really looking for? Well, they're looking for that one planet killer weapon that could keep the Vulcan off their back.

Despite the fact that the Vulcan onboard the ship would be the first to tell you. Yeah, we don't really want anything from them. Mm-hmm . So I thought that was an very interesting concept and I'd like to keep it in mind as we move forward through enterprise. And perhaps even through it's an interesting lens to look at star Trek as a whole, because the Federation, there was recently an episode of strange new worlds, which actually makes the argument of tether.

Yes, it does in the effort to get a neutral planet to align with, with the Federation instead of the Klingons. And in that episode, the captain of the enterprise captain pike says by joining us, you're gonna be destabilizing your relationship with the clients. And it's gonna probably play out with some antagonism, but we need that because you going to their site is worse for us.

That's tethering in action. So, yep. Very interesting idea. Set up in this book. And I thought that Dr. Kreb's review was a great introduction to this episode. So as I mentioned at the hi at the head of the episode, I thought that this one did a lot of things really well, excluding the, what felt like an overly long and detail.

Previously on which I felt like, yeah, my goodness. Are we ever gonna get out of this previously on once we did. And the episode starts

on that note, they had to do that because they've had so many episodes, which had nothing to do with the mini plot line. Yeah. And you and I, for the past couple episodes had been bagging on those episodes that had very little to do with the main plot line, cuz they were lackluster.

Felt like padding. Yeah. They didn't do that. They wouldn't need this previously on.

Yeah. If this season was 12 episodes instead of 26 or 24, whatever it is, this episode, would've this episode likely would've followed right on the heels of the episode where they introduced the mining facility, where the material.

That is used in the construction where they met the scientist, who had no idea that he was helping to build a super weapon and they got his assistance and his promise, like, I will do what I can to stall this project. And you see the fruit of that. Now it, the story literally opens with. Hoshi suddenly magically being able to say, Hey, I was able to find that trail.

We lost it's like, wow. Like all those episodes in between literally could have been pulled out and you would've missed nothing. You would've missed nothing. So maybe what we're looking at is a sign of why TV shows and series are built a little bit differently. Like more consolidated. Let's tell some stories that can be told in 10 to 12 episodes instead of really trying to figure out how we filled 24.

Yeah, exactly. So we, we see the Andorians Galvan about the expanse. Apparently they've got some tech that allows them to just completely avoid being affected. The anomalies that litter all of the expands, they weren't willing to share that technology.

I got the impression, it was something like, it doesn't allow them to fly through it, but it allows them to fly around it.

Like they may be able to detect them in a much better way. And they hinted it that in the episode, because their sensors are a lot more sensitive than. Enterprises. Yeah. And they show that where they keep several different times where SHR shares their long range sensors yeah. With the enterprise. So they can see what's going on off in the distance.

And it's like, okay, they're way more advanced than the, uh, star

fleet at this point. Yeah. So we see the Andorians coming into the storyline and they show up with there's a certain amount of tension within the Andorian ship around what they're doing here, why they're still here and whether the humans could possibly have even survived this long, another nice sh strand moment where he says don't underestimate these people.

They're mm-hmm, they're, you know, gonna be a, a lot more tenacious than you give them credit for. And when they finally catch up with the enterprise, it couldn't be at a better moment. Cuz the enterprise finds itself in a position where they are. They've gone into a place where they can't get out. They they've tried following the trail that will lead them to what turns out to be the testing grounds of the weapon.

But they've gotten themselves trapped in a bunch of anomalies. Begins to raise a question which continues to lurk in the background here, the anomalies, the creation of the anomalies from the spheres. Is there a reason that the anomalies are so much more impactful in this region of space? Are the Xindi somehow using that to their advantage?

Is it related to what the Xindi are doing and experiencing. All of these questions, continue to lurk in the background. But what we end up with is the Endor swooping in to save the day, so to speak, pulling the enterprise out of danger, and then the enterprise and the Endor ship work together. And we end up with a story that is effectively.

Masterfully two stories at once. I really liked the screenplay for this one. I think Chris black wrote a really great story that manages to two birds with one stone throughout the entire thing. It is both about what are this Indy up to? How dangerous is this thing? How can we stop them? And at the same time, are these friends.

Are these people working for their own goals and the entire scene with Fran, basically calling out to Paul for having to resign her commission in order to remain on the ship. The three of them having a. Three way conversation around, like, why are you even here? What are you doing here? Yeah. Like everybody's pointing a finger everybody else and saying, well, what's your reason for being here.

You don't really have a reason either. And it creates tension that doesn't feel like tension at the beginning. And as the episode continues, you end. Feeling that tension like the, the two plots effectively swap positions. It's really masterfully done that by the, at the beginning. It's the Xindi are the problem.

Oh my God. Here comes some Andorians and the end of the episode is like, these Andorians are a problem. Yeah. What about the Xindi? And I loved how that was. I loved how that was cons.

Yeah. And how they, how they established in the beginning, the, the questioning of like, why are the endurance willing to risk so much to come help us?

And they fairly quickly, and I think definitely kind of answered that by basically setting up the endurance, hate the Vulcan so much. It came, it came across as we want to help the humans. Cuz we see the humans as a potential ally against the Vulcan. Right. So it's like in the very first 10, 15 minutes, you get the sense of.

That's why they're here, but the really good storytelling was over the following 10, 15 minutes. After that they keep pushing things a little further of like, uh, that doesn't quite feel right enough. And it's like, oh no, something is a little off here. Yeah. So by the it's like you mentioned how they not only Swed swapped the a and B storylines, the way that they just slowly ratcheted it up, the Andorian storyline, it felt very natural and it felt.

On its own, right. A little bit of a thriller and its own. Right. Because it was like, something's not quite right here. So when things did turn, it didn't feel like a left turn in Albuquerque where it's like, what is going on with the storyline? It felt very natural, natural, organic, where we ended up and why we ended up there where other short other episodes may have taken like shorthand solutions for that mm-hmm and didn't suddenly just rip the bandaid off.

And you would've felt like you were like, what is happening right now? Yeah. Never felt lost. Plenty of action, really good character development on top of all of that,

I, I loved it. Yeah. I also thought it was really well done from the perspective of one of the things you can do when you're watching a show like star Trek is analyze it from the perspective of who's wearing the white hats.

Who's wearing the black hats. By the end of this episode, everybody's wearing a gray hat and I thought that it. At the beginning of the episode in particular, a really good use of a lot happens in this episode. So they had to use a lot of shorthand at the very beginning, which came across as a little bit weak in the storytelling.

Like the first 10 minutes was pretty obviously like, oh, they're trying to get a lot of ideas out in front of us quickly. And the way that that's presented is a little bit of a. Cartoonish method like Strand's first officer is cartoonishly pushing back on, why are we here? Why are we gonna work with these people?

She's, she's hooking up with Reed and is like you stupid humans. And he's like you stupid end Dorian so that they can come together by the end and have a mutual respect grow. I especially appreciated the fact that Reed didn't at any point say, so how about we have sex, which I feel like in previous seasons there would've been a little bit more of a SHARMs to his response to her

Reed's

grown up.

Yeah. In this one, I really appreciated the fact that Reed's response to her was just like, she's done some things that really are. Very helpful and have really moved this along in a, in a great way. But the, the, the elements, I was just gonna say the elements at the very beginning of the episode, which felt a little cartoonish and one dimensional, I think was so that they could have the time toward the end.

Yeah. To really flesh them out because all of that stuff disappears. It becomes, she moves away from being the black hat strand moves away from being the white hat. They all move toward a sort of gray middle area, even Archer, I think by the end of the episode where he's like, look, and I love the turn of, yeah.

While you are letting us use your long range sensors, we got information you weren't aware of.

Okay. So that, that ties into something that I thought was, I agree with you, there was some shorthand taken at the very beginning and yeah, I don't know if I would agree with the term cartoonish, but it felt, I don't know.

I, I, I forgave it because it so quickly got to a place where the gray hat analogy you're using. Mm-hmm that I liked so much. And part of that was with the Reed and the, what was her name? The security officers, the end do security officer. The relationship between the two of them was interesting where

she was Lieutenant talls by Molly brink, who I thought did a very good job in the episode.

Yeah.

Sore and talls come in. And they're basically both of them separately are like, We were technologically superior to the enterprise, but there was some, there was a great line that Tellis said, maybe two-thirds of the way in to read. It's not the technical superiority of the weapon. It's the person who's using it.

Right. And I thought that was such a great line to drop because that is the humans and the, the star fleet that is, that is summarizes. They may be outclassed, but the humans are, are very. Tenacious thinking outside the box, finding solutions resilient really good, which is the ending. Strand's like, oh, we're gonna take this thing.

We got shields. We can, you know, we can take the weapon and put it at our bay for you. We've got shields that will protect the radiation, which you can't do. We're gonna help you out. And then they try to steal it. And here's the humans. We were ahead of you guys. We knew you were up to something. We saw that you were trying to take down our sensors and we fixed it quickly.

We knew that you were gonna probably try to pull something and guess what? We knew something you guys never even figured out with your fancy sensors. We know how to turn it on remotely. Correct click. You know, I thought that was such a great. a fantastic, like execution on what Tallis said to read. It was so great that it's like, they got completely outclassed by the humans because of how they approached the entire scenario, which is another reason I like the ending, the we're jumping all around to episode,

but is fine.

Given the, yeah. Yeah. The type of episode, what it was

the ending where at the very end. They get a coded message. What looks like subspace noise. And it was clearly strand sending a message of the high resolution scans they got of the weapon when they had it in their bay that he's sharing with, uh, the enterprise so that they can do what they need to do to try to save their own people.

And I just, it, it. The fact that the captain made the comment of like, you know, like I've got some indoor nail, you know, let's, let's, let's celebrate this it's it shows that he's not holding a grudge against sh right. He knows. He knows why they did what they did. He understands that they were looking out for themselves, but they're not the big, bad.

It's a, it's a con there's a little bit of a contentious relationship there, but he understands why it was done. And he has respect for sh the person. And it was neat to see in the episode that sh has so much respect for Archer, that there's this wonderful relationship between the two and the way they portrayed it.

The entire episode is part of the reason I love this episode so much. from the first scene you see, when the enterprise discovers the endurance are there pulling them out and it goes to the view screen and you have the back Archer head and you have the two blue antenna that come up over Archer head.

Yeah. It's like the way they portrayed everything between that relationship is just so wonderful. And for me, this is where it's like this star Trek fan fictiony side of it kind of kicks in for me. Yeah. I love seeing how the Federation is coming together. How Endor. Vulcan and earth are coming together.

And this episode for me is like one of the lynchpins of how it's coming together. It's like, you can start to see right here, why the Federation gets formed. It's like, yeah, the endurance had their ulterior motives, but they did come to help. They were coming to help, even though

they had their own words.

Yeah. This episode also does another thing that's really important to recognize. It's the first time that you see in a room with a Vulcan where he doesn't turn to the Vulcan and, and just start barking at the Vulcan. Like you stand in our way. You're constantly pushing our borders. He doesn't do any of that.

He's in the room to Paul and he's like, we've now worked together enough that. Don't view you as a Vulcan, he's even highlighting the fact that you resigned your commission. So in some level he may even be thinking like she's not really a Vulcan anymore. Yeah. She's not part of the problem. We also then also for the first time, see Strand's gap between him and the larger and Dorian goal in the beautifully done argument that he has with the end Dorian general played by Grandville van Doon, who makes.

The statement, you're doing such a great job. I'm gonna give you a commission and accommodation and SHR turns it down and says, please, don't what are we doing here? He makes the point that his Lieutenant has made to him to the general saying like, why are we doing this in this way? Instead of just straight up offering support, because this Alliance may serve us better.

If we don't taint. Then what we're currently doing, getting this weapon may not be the end goal that we think it is. And the fact that it's pulled out from underneath the end, doen the way it is by Archer. Mm-hmm I think on a certain level, SHR may not actually, like you mentioned, Archer, like is not holding any ill will.

I think strand long term might actually think this is better. Like he may walk. Slowly, like they mentioned, the ship is damaged and they're limping back to known space. Having rejected the offer of assistance in repairs. I loved that little tease at the end, like, oh, we offered them their as our assistance, but they said, no, thank you.

They're going home with their tail between their legs. But I almost feel like strand may be returning with a, this may ultimately be better. Like he's offered the olive branch of like, here's some additional information which you might find useful. I hope that we can still be friendly with an, with one another or friendly enough in the future.

And that he gets to go home and say, like, we shouldn't do that to the humans again, we're gonna make another enemy. Like he, the fan fictiony part, you just mentioned the fan fiction aspect of this. The fan fictiony part of me is sh going back and telling his commanding officers. We almost started a war with another planet and it's we don't want that.

Yeah. It, it, it, it's what I'm really enjoying about the fan fictiony part is there's the machinations of the faceless governments, the enduring government Vulcan government, the human government. Yeah. That are all kind of clashing. It's always it's being done so well between setting this Federation up of showing how it comes down to for the lack of a better word, the human relations, the person to person relations are what's gonna make it work.

And it's, it's how. You've got to Paul and the captain as the bridge between Falcon and humanity, you've got now SHR and the captain creating that bridge there and the, the tightness of that relationship. And there's, there was two scenes that for me kind of crystallized how well I love what they're doing with SHR.

I, every time Combs is on, I get super excited. Yeah. Cause I love trans probably my favorite

character on this entire little, little fun fact about the, uh, at this point in the show comb said that he had worked with the puppeteer who controlled his antenna and they created personality. They created certain staging, whereas it did feel very much like early on in depiction of the Endor.

The antennas seemed to do their own thing without much rhyme or reason, but in this there's a brilliant moment. Combs turns his head to look at a comment and both the antenna swivel and point at the person that he's responding to. It's this very natural movement to them as if they are no different than the eyes that they are swiveling in the same sort of way, without any conscious effort.

And I really, really liked the depiction of him because

he's in the captain's, uh, the captain's room and he's walking and there's the bulkhead and his antenna go. And we come back up again as he walks under the, the thing. And it was like, that was such a cute little, like, I wonder how many times they had to practice that to get the timing, right?

Yeah. But it was so worth it. But the, the two scenes I wanted bring up are there was a scene between trip Andre as they're walking through the ship. Yeah. Andre is basically saying, I heard you lost your sister and the two of them have this wonderful. Conversation about vengeance. Yeah. And it was great to see trip and show how he's evolved from.

He wanted to go out with nothing but vengeance and venge in his heart at the beginning of the season. And at this point he he's realizing that is not the path forward here. Right. We have to look at the bigger picture and he says that Tor, and you can see that it's hitting strand in like a, almost like a, I hadn't thought about it that.

Moment between the two of them of like, wow, I wasn't expecting that out of trip. Yeah. So it was a really wonderful

moment, especially given that sh Strand's personal loss, which was, he reveals, it was a brother who died in conflict with the Vulcan when there were more skirmishes between the two planets, that death is much longer ago.

For SHR than trip's loss. And I think part of it is that sh is looking at somebody who is so recently lost his sister, having come to a calmer place so much faster. And I think sh is a little bit like I still carry around. Like my hurt. How do you, how did you not hold onto it in that way? I really like that scene too,

but the willingness to also give the, that very proprietary technology.

Yeah. Because trip had asked for that, like warp core something or other, and he was like, not willing to give it at the end of the conversation. He's like, I'll have that sent over. I thought there was just a nice character moment between the two of them. Yeah. And then the other one, which was just, uh, fun to see an enduring outside of their comfort zone.

Was the mining consortium scene where enden keep flying into the Xindi and we're like, Hey guys, yeah, we scan the planet. You know, don't pay attention to our scanning. We're, you know, it's omnidirectional. We're not actually scanning your ship, sorry for invading your privacy. Yeah. And how they threaten them to get them to go away.

And when he cancels the, uh, when the, the connection gets cut and he says, Go the other direction, but don't go too fast. The mining, the enduring mining consortium runs from no one. Yeah. It was just a wonderful moment. Cause it was fun to see. Yeah. Here's strand having fun was he's making a

joke. See him.

Yeah. He knows that. He knows that Archer and his crew will appreciate the joke. Something that if these were Vulcan that you wouldn't have had, he wouldn't have been like that. You might have had the moment of, of subterfuge trying to get the, the same thing. But here, the Andorians in this moment, um, You know, as I was watching it, I was just like, it kind of depicts that the Endor have run into the Fe.

Again, the fan fictiony part of it, of my brain was just like, yeah, he's, he's run into a few forge and he's using a little bit of the, the fast talking sales pitch that a FEI would use. And I really like, but it was funny to see cuz it's

like, that's not how endurance would've ever handled that moment.

Yeah. He would've never done that. Yeah. But the captain asked him to do it. Yeah. And so he did it and he looked like he was out of his comfort zone a little bit, but he had fun with it. Yeah. And it was fun to see how the humans. Once again, it's very human-centric but it's like how the humans are the center pillar of the Federation showing how they're kind of bringing the best out of all the people that are kind of coming in.

Yeah. It's like how they're impacting the Vulcan in a positive way, how they're impacting the endurance in a positive way. It's like you can start to see those seeds of the Federation coming in. And it's part of the reason I love this. It's like as a star Trek fan, it's like, oh, this is so cool to see these friendships being built, even though the endurance is about to screw them over.

It's like, there's still, you can see the, the building blocks of what's coming.

And it really does come back to, as I mentioned at the beginning, the idea of tethering that they're all bringing each other closer together with, there's a certain amount of hesitation, a certain amount of the unknown and the show for two full seasons was all about the unknowns between the Vulcan and the humans.

And now here comes the Endor element and the humans and the Vulcan are a little. Easier in their footing. There's a little bit more, even with whenever you've had the, the more recent episodes with the Vulcan ambassador who looks at Archer as like I've learned, I can't tell you what to do. Like mm-hmm, , there's a certain amount of easiness there in that relationship and the introduction of the same thing from the Andorian side to come in and say, like this isn't all about being best friends.

It's in some ways more about making sure. You guys, aren't going to do things that I don't like simply because we're now too much in the mix with each other, that kind of tethering. Yeah. I, I really like that little article I found around tethering. So listeners, what do you think? Do you think that this, I, I think I'm, I'm gonna speak for Matt and I'm gonna be surprised if he disagrees, this felt like it really moved into a star Trek.

Territory that felt very familiar and very, very engaging. And do you agree with us, did this feel like full blown star Trek to you? Or were there things about this that you didn't like, let us know in the comments next time Matt, we're gonna be talking about stratum. What do you think that's about strategic?

It's a, it's probably all about S and maybe even a game of stricto.

Before we sign off Matt, is there anything you'd like to remind our listeners about what do you have coming up on your main channel? Well, I've

got a video coming up probably about a week after this comes out of wirelessly charging your EV I had a chance to visit a company. That's got this technology that allows you to charge your EV wirelessly.

That's gonna be the future of where autonomous driving goes. Vehicle to grid technology. It's it's a really cool thing that I so desperately want my electric vehicle, but it's not there yet,

but it's a really cool technology. As for me, you can check on my website, Sean Ferrell dot com. You can also look for my books directly at.

Any bookstore that goes all the way from Amazon or barn and noble down to your local bookstore or public library, keep an eye out for my new book, which will be coming out next year. It's, we're still a ways away, but it should be next July or so. And it's going to be the sinister secrets of singe. And I just today received from my editor, the copy-edited document.

That means I have to go through and take a look at what a copy editor has said about my ability to use the English language. It is usually shocking and disturbing, but I'm trying to prepare myself for that emotionally. What do you mean a comma? Doesn't go there. What's a period. How do you use exclamation mark?

Some of these things, allude, even people like me, who've done it so many times. Anyway, if you'd like to support the show, you can keep doing what you're doing right now, using your ears and your eyes. If you're on YouTube, we appreciate the listening. We appreciate the viewing. You can also review us, go back to apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube, wherever it was.

You found this. Leave a comment. Leave a review, share it with your friends. And if you'd like to more directly support us, you can go to track in time.show and click the, become a supporter button. It allows you to throw some coins outta our heads, and we appreciate the bruises. And don't forget when you do that, it also makes you an Ensign.

And when you become an Ensign. That means you get direct access to our spinoff show, which is out of time where we talk about not only star Trek, but anything that passes are fancy. So we're talking about some of the new star Trek programs. We're talking about some star wars we're talking about other sci-fi fantasy programs that we're watching.

Most recently, Matt was talking about the new Lord of the rings show. Spoiler. It cost a lot of money. And we also talked about lower decks, which spoiler is a lot like next generation, if it was Rick and Morty. So we appreciate your support and we offer you the opportunity to jump into that program as well as a thank you.

All of that really does help support the show. Thank you so much for listening or. And we'll talk to you next time.