Temporal Culture War
SCUBA is the "Cellar Door" of Acronyms
(music) Hello and welcome to Temporal Culture War, where we dig into what the hell was going on in America in the early 2000s while we watch one of television history's most maligned properties, Star Trek Enterprise. I'm Mattie Lipchansky. And I am Clayton, actually. This week, it is episode three of season one, fight or flight, and the week of September 27th to October 3rd, 2001. Hey, Clayton, how you doing? Hey, so some big news happened since the last time we recorded this, and I feel like it's important that I start with this. Okay. I was just bugging me so much I had to know if I knew what stained was. If you knew what stained... It's been a while. It's been a while. Sure, it's been a while since we thought about stained. It's been a while since I thought about stained. And I watched the music video and then I did remember that one. So if that was in my brain somehow, important update. Stained in the brain. Stained in the brain. That's a huge... Thank you so much for keeping me posted on whether or not you know what stained is, which I... You know what? I'm so glad you brought this up because it has been keeping me up at night. I went to the doctor. My blood pressure was spiking, and he said, "But it's wrong." And I was like, "Well, you know, this guy do a podcast with... I don't know if he knows about stained." Okay. So, just to get into culture at the time, in terms of music, there was something really new. So I'm going to skip right past that. No problem. No problemo is there. We covered that already. Stained was a bad eye on them. Stained was there. Everyone is still listening to Alicia Keys' fallen climbing up the charts insanely. And Rike Glesias' hero, so just maybe a spoiler for future weeks that we're going to get there. Maybe. I'm rooting for you in Rike, so we can talk about that song. In the world of entertainment, the show scrubs premiered that week and ran for approximately 70,000 seasons, I think. Is that... Can we say that's one of the things that maybe held up a little better than most from this era? You know what? Probably, though I have not watched it since I was a child. When it was on. I was like a middle teenager in 2001 at this time. We were a couple months before my 16th birthday here. And I'm kind of like, is it one of those things where is it good or are we just being nostalgic about the show scrubs? Yeah. I simply don't know. I didn't watch it at the time, but it is a show where I have seen stuff. Okay. I was gonna say recently, honestly, this is probably more like short internet clip heyday of the mid-aut 16s. I don't know what you would call that era when I worked a desk job. And so sometimes I would see a scene people were like, remember that from scrubs? Remember that magic janitor? Or he was like a mean janitor, but he was magic. Hey, I had powers. Well, yeah, I think he was just sort of. Anyways, I think it's one of those shows where it is aged poorly merely in its sort of like millennial cringe factor and less like it's evil. Yeah, and that's, you know, a better look for a lot of things. Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, you either live long enough to become cringe or I can't remember the rest of that. We're extremely problematic. Yeah, exactly. And we're cringe. So Zach Raff, who is problematic, I think, he just keeps dating with children is his main thing. And that's not great. And he's in an awful, awful commercial for whatever it is. I don't want to remember it. He and Donald Faison are in it, Faison, reunited from the scrubs on that commercial. Yeah, I hate it. It's not good. They're like, they're singing? Yeah. They're not rapping. They're singing. Unfortunately, I don't know if that would be worse. But they're not rapping. Okay. Yeah. I, because yeah, I'm just ready at all moments to be like, they're rapping when they shouldn't be. This is Lin-Manuel Miranda's evil reach into society. But okay. Scrubs is premiered. That week is also far made 14 featuring just some luminaries at a time like Dave Matthews and John Mellon Camp. Just some lovely, this is the sound of 2001. Uh, wafting into your ears. Talk about wafting. We got Doobie Brothers. Oh, yeah. That seems like a throwback. The Doobie Brothers and Willie Nelson there. Yeah. Even Neil. And Neil Young. Yeah, that seems fine to me. Um, in the world of movies, there's a couple of new on the charts this week. Our two movies that are, the top three spots. Number one and number three are movies I have not heard of. Okay. Oh, I'm excited. But they do not exist to me, but they are real. Uh, and number three, uh, premiering this week is Hearts in Atlantis. What? Which is a, um, what's his name? Uh, Anthony Hopkins film based on a story from a dark tower companion book by Stephen King. Uh, a young boy's life changes for the better when a mysterious man with psychic powers moves into the family home that he shares with his widowed mother. What? Um, that made, listen, I think, I think the box office is still limping back at this moment. But this would have been, why did they make a dark tower spin off? Uh, I don't, yeah, I mean, they're saying it's, uh, it's loosely adapted from Stephen King's dark tower tie and low men in yellow coats. Can you make that poster bigger? For some reason that I feel like it doesn't get bigger. It's one of those big images that become smaller somehow. I don't know why that picture is Anthony Hopkins with his hand against like a window or glass. Yeah. And then a smaller hand on it. Attack. The tagline is really killer. Oh, what if one of life's great mysteries moved in upstairs? Um, it really makes you think. So we used to have taglines. It used to be a real, you know, um, and, uh, number one, I'm skipping number two. Uh, number two is simply, uh, our friend, Zoolander making 18.8 million dollars in its first week in the box office. This is when Zoolander came out. This is when Zoolander came out. I love this is an incredible, just like the plot description. Oh, yeah. At the end of his career, a clueless fashion model is brainwashed to kill the prime minister of Malaysia. And I suppose that is the plot of Zoolander. Do you think that had to be re-edited at all? Or conversely, our Americans simply racist enough that they didn't worry about it. They didn't worry about it. And I guess technically no one in government got, got? Yeah. No, no. I mean, people, certainly in the Pentagon were killed. Sorry, they are government people. They were certainly, no, no one high up in the government. But yeah, it wasn't a targeted assassination of a prime minister. You're referring to, what of it? Oh, sorry. You're right. That crisp, crisp autumn morning. I tried to engineer back, reverse engineer a bit where we do not acknowledge not all of it on this show. Yeah. It's simply impossible. Yeah. It is, it is strange. They're like making, you know, the strokes take New York City cops off their album and they're making Jimmy world change the title of bleed American right before it comes out right around this time. But for some reason, and they, I mean, the part of them postponing a Tim Allen Dave Barry film called big trouble that like the main. It's like a big farce and the main thing that happens on it is I think they, there's a, there's a bomb on a plane. I was going to say it's got a ball plane, right? It's got, it's a bomb on a plane and they postponed it for like a year or something. Like they really, they really just like do not release this until everyone who witnessed 9/11 is dead. Like getting out of here. But for some reason, Prime Minister of Malaysia, I guess he doesn't get killed. Yeah, and it's a spoiler farce. Spoiler farce for Zoolander. Sorry. I just spoiled Zoolander. I'm so sorry. That is a movie I did see, not in theaters, definitely, and I caught up on it. I feel like a long time afterwards, but I think its longest lasting impact is unfortunately the, the GIF version of them all in a buggy. Oh, maybe. There's some jokes that hold up, I think. Yeah. You know, he's a dumb guy. No, I mean, I think, I think there's, I mean, like the movie is not bad. I don't think it's a bad movie. I don't know. I've, again, I don't want to Zoolander in a long time. This the thing is I'm trying to like, it could be better than I remember. I bet it's better than Zoolander too. I recall a tour de force performance from Jerry Stiller in that film. As I believe a gentleman named Morrie Bowles. So I can't be that bad of a movie. Nothing new on the list, really. Glitter has dropped precipitously at number 15. Shrek in its 21st week out is still at number 19. I think we're going to have to have a kind of check in with Shrek every time. Yeah. Can you get the Shrek watch stinger? Shrek watch. Because how long is it at this point? It says there. It's been, yeah, it's been, it's been out for, it is at 21 weeks. So exactly six months? I really do wonder about that one. Shrek. If I saw it before after. Oh. It's a pretty solid chunk of time for a big popular movie. I think I saw it that summer. Shrek. I feel like I probably did, but I don't have a clear memory of seeing it in the theatre. No, I wasn't making memories until I was 35, so I don't have a great recollection. So it's great that I'm doing this show. Yeah. I thought you said the top three were new. The top three were all brandy now. What was the third one? Oh, sorry. God. I completely skipped another movie that doesn't exist. It so doesn't exist. It slipped out of my mind again. It is called Don't Say a Word. Okay. Which is a Michael Douglas film. When the daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, he's horrified to discover that the abductor's demand is that he break through to a post-traumatic stress disorder suffering young woman who knows a secret. Dot, dot, dot. Hold on. Box Elvis Mojo, really, not a great description here, guys. This is like therapist heist. It's like a therapist heist. It was directed by the guy Gary Fleeter, Gary Fledder, who directed both Runaway Jerry and Things To Do and Denver When You're Dead, which is a movie I remember from the blockbuster, obviously. And the film Kiss the Girls, which I recall from being the, there's a Netflix show where the guy was there. The guy in Wisconsin that killed those people and the kid had like a fuck is it called? It's fine. It was like a big Netflix murder documentary. And someone's false confession was that it was like exactly the scene from Kiss the Girls where they killed somebody. And he later recanted and said it was in the book that he read. That's what I remember the about that movie. Anyways. But then he went along and made this. Don't say a word, a movie that nobody liked but made a lot of money. Michael Douglas probably still had a good cache. Yeah. I think so. But also feels like the type of movies you don't really see much because I bet this was a cheap movie to make, not many sets. Yeah. Because it's a therapist. I'm assuming they probably were in a room a lot of the time. Yeah. I mean, it cost 50 million, which is a lot for that kind of movie. But probably some star power there. Yeah. Some star power. It's a Michael Douglas. I wasn't this movie made a hundred million dollars, which is. Yeah. That's insane. This is a great cast, honestly. It's Michael Douglas. Sean Bean. Britney Murphy. It feels like a problem. Oliver Platt and clocky legend, Famka Johnson. I imagine it does some real off things with regards to psychology and psychiatry and various themes. It's tugging at. Yeah. I don't know. You could be surprised as well. Like Zoolander. Like Zoolander. You know, it's a movie notably features Heart Island in New York City, which is a potter's field in the river that you cannot go there. You have to get like a guided tour. And I think even then it's hard to get. I probably spent a little money to do that. Yeah. But it's a cool, cool little thing. They have to assume somebody's grave at Heart Island to find a code of some sort in this film. I'm honestly getting more interested as you describe this. Yeah. I mean, this is a potential bonus episode. Movies that didn't exist from the time. Yeah. I did look up speaking of the Musketeer. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's incredibly hard to watch that film. Oh, yeah. In fear eating, but I did follow along the director's verite, the director's filmography. Cinematography. Cinematography. We both can't get the word. Capricorn One. Oh, well, oh, the O.J. Simpson film. Yeah. I started watching it and I enjoyed so much watching a movie that did not care about starting you just right in it in a way that was letting the audience figure it out for 10 minutes. Okay. Then you're buckle up. Okay. And then O.J. Simpson is there as well. Unfortunately. Yeah. Or fortunately, if you love O.J. Simpson, which I know listeners will and do. So that's movies and entertainment. Now, this week in a weird 2001 fall paranoia is a couple of events here. Oh, it's on a on a Greyhound bus in Manchester, Tennessee crashed on October 3rd, the day this episode aired after somebody slit the throat of the driver, which I remember this being kind of a news story because they're like, is it terrorism because they're crashing buses now. Oh, of course. There was some concern, which is not that big video because at the same time, America had anthrax fever. Yeah. I was really curious how quick that happened because of my memory. It was right right right afterwards. But the first, so he's not he's not at this at this time at this point in time on October 3rd. He's not died yet. Robert, Robert Stevens of the Sun, the tabloid is as gets hospitalized this week and later dies. It was the first casualty of the anthrax mailings. But around, this is the week that he goes to the hospital. So like that was going on. And also the first rumblings of the Patriot Act are being passed are being like circled circulated around in the Senate and house right now. I'm honest. So it's a hell of a week. Surprised it took that long. I mean, I think there was a anti terrorism acts that were passed like immediately like in the days afterwards. Yeah. And the authorization all that happened right up right away. But then it was starting to like get folded into something called the Patriot Act around now. And I believe by the end of the month, we do have the Patriot Act, which is an incredible thing that they did reverse engineer the words to say, which I think is I think very funny every time I think about it. Oh, yeah. What is it? It's I'll pull it up. The USA Patriot Act uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism. Where was the P? Hey, did you start it with uniting? Providing. Oh, wow. Uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate tools. You can't do that with an acronym. Oh, you can. They've really. They really does. Yeah, this is like a real failure of acronym stuff. Like what's what scuba is I feel like one of the most beautiful self contained underwater breathing apparatus. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's the cellar door of acronyms. Yeah. That's what you should aspire to. And this is bullshit. And it's good enough that always make it a scuba is good enough that it makes me think other things are acronyms too, like scuba is so good that it makes me start wondering is laser an acronym? Isn't it? Is it not? Is it? I thought if laser is an acronym, those are my mind, I know that I know that taser is an acronym. Yeah, that makes light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Oh, yeah. Which is that's a really solid one. Yeah. Taser is also good. I know this one off the top of my head. It is Tom Swift's electric rifle real because there is a science fiction like pulp novel character named Tom Swift who used in the books. He had like a gun that shot electricity at the bad guys and the guy that invented the taser was like, this is just like the thing from the book I read as a kid. Like it's literally the guy making like the pain matrix or whatever, like he's, you know, he's like, like, but it's like the book is like, these are cool. I have to be honest. I am shocked. It didn't just come from taking the putting a T instead of a now laser. Yeah. Tom's. Yeah. The title of the book was Tom Swift and his electric rifle as I was explaining this to you, I was like, I better be right. Tom's. So, and that's like a sci-fi book from the 40s. It's a sci-fi book from. I don't know. Yeah. Tom Swift in the electric rifle. I have to be like 40s, 50s, maybe. It's 19. Oh no. It is 1911. Or daring adventures in elephant land. That's cool. That's so whimsical. Yeah. So it was the name of a gun made for shooting elephants with lightning, I guess. And now it's used just to kill everyday people. Anyways, weirdly, weirdly, very phaser-like. You know what? How it looks. In a lot of ways, very phaser-like. So that was that week in America in between, yeah, the last episode on September 26th to this week, October 20th, October 3rd, 2001. What happened on Star Trek? Oh boy. Oh boy. So this one is called fight-or-flight, fight-or-flight. And you would think it might be an exciting, dynamic sort of episode, maybe with fighting or fighting. Either of them. Either of them. But it is kind of neither. It is. So here's the thing. I was kind of excited to do this show because I was like, this show is unfairly aligned in some ways. It's better than you think. But I think because I got to the Googler parts later, I forgot how bad it was at the beginning. The Googler parts. The Googler parts. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't deserve correct grammar. No, they are. They are gooder. So the thing is, is it opens up with a baffling scene where Hoshi has got her worm. Sluggo. Sluggo. They've named the worm. Sluggo. I mentioned Cefricor 1 because that was a like, you're just going in it, kind of, you know, figure out what's going on here. But it was exciting and dynamic. This was not. No. Even with Flock's being there, which he does much better later than this episode, but it was just like, why do I care? She doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to care. They've also like gotten this slug off screen. Yeah. So you don't know why there's a slug. You're also just kind of like, what? Why is there? I mean, which is fine. Stuff can happen in between episodes. That's fine. But they're like, he's just like, Slug's all fucked up, huh? And she's like, yep. And then they're both like, sucks for this slug, I guess. Yeah. It's kind of like us, how sad we are on this ship for two weeks. It's been two weeks. It's been two whole weeks. Like we haven't met any aliens yet. Yeah. They do a shitty weapons test. I don't even care. Everyone's agitated and aimless. What is the tone they're going for on this? Their first episode post. Their first real episode. I feel like as myself, you know, I try to, as a writer of fiction, I try to, when I'm watching these things and they seem like failures and sort of like my gut instinct, I try to think like, why? What's wrong here? Yeah. And I feel like showing boredom is one of the hardest things you can do, especially on television, it's so hard to show boredom in a way that is compelling, you got to really make the characters interesting. So say not the second episode of your show, maybe, you know, like you don't, you don't stick your characters in a fridge that they can't get out of on the second episode of the show. Until we get flocks in a, in a finely good scene, because he's happy. We love flocks, don't we? He's enjoying his synthetic proteins. He wants to watch two crew members mate. Yeah. He's a, he's weird and we love him for that. We love everything flocks does to me is magic. If flocks is on screen, I'm seated and not pausing every 30 seconds to go do something else. I'm engaged. I'm, I mean, I'm engaged or as Archer would say, let's go, let's go. And so they find a broken ship, its trip is so bored, me too. That's what I wrote. He really wants to go on this ship because it's something to fucking do. Yeah. And captains like, no, I need my communications officer in case this ship that won't talk to us, somebody on there does want to talk to us. There's just some reason they wouldn't talk to us. Yeah. I don't know. You know, Archer's anointed S as this thing. Oh, it's the book I read. I didn't mention the name. I realized it's 25 year journey, part two specifically has this chapter on enterprise. It's much shorter than a lot of them like the series, but it, that book I after reading it and just knowing, especially early on the kind of atmosphere that Julia, sorry. Jolene. Jolene. You're contributing to it now with your misogyny by forgetting her name. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So Jolene, how she was treated. It sounds like on that set, when I see how they treat her on the show, I can't stop thinking about that. Right. And he's saying like, he's just doing like a, his little audio recording like Captain Zoo. He was like, it'd be great to be on a mission without a Vulcan science officer who's always sucking the air out of the room. This bitch. Yeah. Yeah. The other note to me, a thing that is one of the first appearances of and a thing that drove me completely out of my fucking gourd the first time I watched the show is when Archer is doing his narration, he's constantly being interrupted or wants to edit his own narration. So he's always saying computer start or computer stop or computer like delete that. And it's just like, who's like, use the pad or something, please? Do you have to say Siri stop phone call now? Every fucking seven seconds. Right. It's now that I've mentioned it, you're going to notice it a lot also and you're going to also be very mad. I mean, once it was, and I realized, you know, I should have learned this years ago that they have voice command on shows because it's better for the audience to have them talking to something. Yeah. I hate watching people use their phones on TV. It sucks. It's never good. Yeah. So that's why Star Trek did it in the first place way back in the '60s and they keep doing it. And then you have people today being like, I wish my phone could do that. And wait a minute, it's clunky because that was never the point. Right. It didn't actually make things easier. It was first, it was a storytelling device anyway. Right. Like it's handy in like, narrow situations. Yeah. For me to like skip ads on a podcast while I'm on my bicycle. When I'm doing, when I'm doing DIY something or fixing something, but both my hands. Oh, yeah. I need to like, take down notes about measurements or something. Oh, yeah. I was like, wow, this is actually an easy, useful thing to have voice command or just talk to like, do a, anyway. That's a good point. Yeah. It's a tangent. Hey. This is not the most compelling episode of television. We're talking about today. Something. But yeah, but he, he admits anyway that even though she's being a real bee, that she's right and they shouldn't explore this thing. But really the important thing about this scene that I really wanted to bring it up is that establishes important canon. It's not good to give Porthos cheese is not good to give Porthos cheese. That's a thing in this show. Get ready for that. Yeah. The, the, this is the first Porthos cheese watch. Played the stinger for that one as well. And then we get to what it turns out as though the first scene didn't listlessly demonstrate this, that it's Hoshi's episode and she's really not into this space thing, maybe, you know? Yeah. It's like, oh, like, I had a nice life. Yeah. And teaching, teaching a Vulcan to children in the rainforest in this paradise university in the middle of the rainforest. Yeah, I was like, like hummingbirds reading out of my hand. And I was being fed guava by a hunk and I was just teaching a language I knew and instead she can't sleep on and she doesn't like being in the claustrophobic spacesuits. She said the stars were going the wrong way on the side of the ship she was staying on, which doesn't make a ton of sense to me. So I don't know. Wouldn't it just mean if you just switched your bed around, wouldn't then they go the other way? Yes. Hello. Yeah. Dog. I don't. She means the window is on the wrong side. I guess. But that's... Turn it off. Close it. Turn the... It's... I'm sorry. It is cool that you have his fucking stars out your window. Yeah. But... And check your privilege, Hoshi. But clearly it's an attempt to establish that she's trying to find excuses that this is not where she fits like she's stressed out about being in space, which is relatable to me. This is also when I picked up, well not sorry, the first scene I realized I picked up, but they really go hard on it later, that what they are doing with the writing is making the metaphor that she's like this slug. More great writing for our women characters. She's very much like Sluggo. Sluggo. She's out of her element. She's out of her element. She's sick. And it's not her, the container is wrong. That's right. So they do go on this spaceship, trip pass to wait. What they find on it are some aliens getting sucked and... They're getting like milked milked for their triglobulin. Yes. They're triglob... Triglobulin. Triglobulin. A word that I was like, they kept saying it and I was like, oh I wonder if this is like, despite me having watched every Star Trek ever made last year into this year, a thing I don't remember them ever mentioning otherwise, but I was like, I wonder if it's like an important Star Trek substance that they are... Yeah, sure. Because like, they repeat and like, you know, they're doing a prequel show. I feel like everything's gonna be like, oh we're gonna see these aliens again, we're gonna... Isn't that the point? Isn't that... I mean like they're trying to... Yeah, they don't even do like the annoying prequel. Like again, prequels are annoying because they're always like, don't you want to know where this came from? Like, no I don't. Yeah. But at least they're not even doing anything or anything ties to anything at this point. Sure. Yeah. Well like the aliens, you never see these aliens again. I don't think. They will get to that. Yeah, but they mentioned Triglobulin and I'm like, oh I wonder if it's like an important substance or like one on the memory alpha to see if there was another mention of Triglobulin. They only mention this episode. So it's not anything. It's just similar to lymphatic fluid. So I don't know why they didn't just say lymphatic fluid. It's this piece. Yeah, it's a piece of work. They had to make up a word which is for when they have three kinds of globs within them. But I did appreciate that it gets flocks on there to analyze them and say like, oh this stuff is used to make drugs, medicines, drugs, sometimes it's even, it's a boner medicine. It's for boners which is flocks is area of expertise we find out later on the show. But let's just like keep it in your back pocket that this fucked up dude. He's a freak. A little freak in the sack in the best way. I love flocks. He loves to fuck. So this episode like keeps, it feels like it's forcing something to happen constantly like against its will or something. And so they get on, they're like, should we go on? I don't know. I don't know. Okay, let's go on there. Oh, there's aliens on here. Should we help them? I don't know. I don't know. Let's leave. They should leave, Archer goes, dammit, I shouldn't have left. That's the American way. Yeah, leaving is for Europeans. Yeah. So they go back and this is when flocks gets on there, figures out the Trigoldian thing. But then the bad guys come back surprise surprise. Yeah. After they put a beacon on there that says we're in distress, we're in distress, help help. Yeah. The bad guy is fine. On this whole time, Hoshi is trying to like translate their language like from their distress call. Yes. And it gets into the weirdness of this show with the language stuff where they have the universal translator, but it doesn't really work. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And though she's got to like manually do inputs for it, but it's also, but also she like learns how to speak this language out loud in like six hours. So it's going to say we get to the freaking the climax of this episode again, showing how bad this episode was again. Like you said, to position it as like the second episode, let's get this audience that like the premier enough to tag along. Yeah. They shoot their first torpedo and it just kind of bounces off the field rocks. And I enjoy that for just like, haha, like this sucks. And so then we actually get this is about translation because they did get the attention of the, the aliens who are getting milked, their, their little guy comes back and they're cool. Actually, I like this alien. Yeah, ship. I liked his interior. We kind of like walked back and forth around it. It was cool. I don't know why. Yeah. I feel more like a spaceship, but they have to do this tense, hoshi translation sequence where exactly you're saying it's this weird poorly, I think used a narrative advice that she has to like kind of fight with it. And it's hard. And she just loses all confidence. She's like afraid of doing it. And then it's a fucking like, you know, use the force look, put away the targeting computer. You can do it yourself if you believe. Just like it says, it's dumb for language and like, okay, so like speaking a language, it's one of those things where if you are learning a language, like a second language, and you are like a little drunk or a little tired or playing in a video game and you're a little stoned or something, you tend, you actually tend to do better at it because you're sort of like, you're, you're human, like your hind brain is activated and just like you power past whatever you're, you know, what's the one in the front. Yeah. It's not a load that's like. This is definitely a thing. So like it gets past it, but also she says like the archer, like it's not Spanish and then she starts speaking it like it's Spanish, you know, like it's not that alien in the language. Yeah. Yeah. It's just you, you can't set up the difficulty bar that high and then the way she does it is by just like, uh, no scope this. I'm just going to, you know, I've never skateboarded before, but I can take this help. Believe me. That's right. Well, I've roll it related. So this shouldn't be a problem. Yeah. And like we've established it. She's like a genius of this stuff already, but they just for something like they make it seem so hard and then when you have the newer star tracks and there is specifically I'm thinking of a strange new worlds episode about translation. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting and fun and it's believable and how like they, they figure out they're kind of like, you know, Rosetta Stone, which is a like more believable, instant way to translate. This is a very famous episode of next generation about translation. Right. Oh, right. A very, very, very, very famous episode of next year. That's one so good that even to think about it as like language, but of course it is like literally that idea that like an alien language could be so alien, yeah, that it would be truly baffling even if they magic translation advice, which he has in that episode. Yeah. Like, yeah, it doesn't work. There's a thing. There's a thing about Star Trek generally and like I understand why and they have it in show explanation for it, which is dumb as hell, but like none of the aliens are that alien. They're all just like, yeah, we're just like a weird kind of person in some way or whatever. And very rarely are they like aliens that are like fully like you are a life form that evolved on the other side of the universe and a different environment with different needs and different in your society would look completely fucking different. And you know, like I know it's, you can't come up with a new race every week for television that feels completely like new in some way because it's really hard to write and there's not that many I'm thinking trying to think of like instances in fiction in which the aliens are like really, really alien. So I can think of like the sparrow if you've read that book. So I'm trying to think of something more Star Trekky and have you seen Babylon 5? I've not. So that one I feel like tries to do a little bit more of like more alien aliens, but you know, that means like a gaseous alien that is always inside a giant, very weird suit. That's cool. But it's at least, you know, weirder. And if I remember correctly, it has even more things that goes farther. And I feel like there were two in universe explanations before the like ridiculous were all from the same genetic country cursor alien species. There was kind of a guy review that explanation, one fart noise. I feel like before that next gen episode, even they sometimes touched on this barely of just like, oh, yeah, we just don't let those aliens in this. This is just a humanoid aliens. Yeah. We just and like, I guess maybe we probably maybe we would not hang out with the gaseous aliens or the the fly the like in a way this enterprise does go a little farther in its later season. That's true. There's the one weird guy for sure that well, I'm thinking of the time that where they, I guess, you know, spoiler there's an alien race that there's five zinties. Yeah, that's right. And there's a cut in planet and like one of them is is not human. Yeah. Yeah. One's aquatic. One's very, I mean, literally do it's again, when they break it down, it's, it becomes very, I don't know, earth. Sure. Yeah. Again, it's a fish one bird, one insect one. Yeah. One that's like, yeah. But it was farther than Austin Star Trek goes as your for sure. Yeah. And I just think about like, you know, like literally, I can think of two books. That like do the translation thing that's very interesting and it's like considered. And I think of the sparrow and I'm thinking of Embassy Town by China Mayville. And both of them are just like, they just consider like what an alien language would be like in a way that is interesting. And I wish that they're going to do an episode that's only about that, that they could have thought about it more than just like their language is a normal kind of language. But we can't figure it out. I don't know. Yeah, I have read, there's like a memory of a memory of Empire entire novels can become about translation and the bridging that kind of gap that aliens really would have, even if they were also, we even had that like, yeah, I mean, digit thing. Hell, like if you, if you are talking to somebody speaking another earth language, even from the same family of languages that your language is from, there's actually no such thing as a direct translation of most words that are not like nouns. Yeah. Or apple is obviously translatable, exactly. But like the word for like a feeling or an action, like there's so many, there's so many kinds of words, mostly adjectives and verbs that are like completely untranslatable that they are, you can only really understand them in if you are a native speaker of the language or if you're fluent, because like they mean different things in different places. And so it's so like lazy to just be like, well, I figured out how they say apple and we're done. Or they really, what it is, yeah, what is it being sort of shouting made up words and kind of getting a little bit of like of an accent that I guess is alien to convince him of a pretty complicated idea, which is that, this is the thing that makes it so funny to me is Archer says, make that alien understand that the tech on that ship that was draining their eyes was from that alien, not our aliens, and if they scan that, they'll see that the tech is not the same. Got that? And she's like, you know, alien blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guy is like, oh, right, all right, it turns around, presses some button, do hickeys, and then start shooting on the other alien. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like Archer didn't really even say like, you know, get him to fight on our side, like save us. Right. But whatever she said made this guy immediately switch sides and start shooting. And I guess it was like, look on your scanner, find evidence, and you know, obviously this is the bad guy. There's a race of aliens with no interiority whatsoever. Yeah, it's very strange and also like the climactic thing where she's like having the conversation with him and whatever language he's speaking, the language itself sounds so goofy that they're just like yelling gibberish at each other and just he's coming back and forth like in like them doing like, tile gibberish, and you're like, this isn't very serious at all. It's not that you know, but I almost wish it had the shitty, like barely intelligible version of what she is supposedly saying because she doesn't suddenly, right, she doesn't suddenly understand it completely, right, just enough to convey this very simple idea that the technology in that ship that's sucking the aliens is not there as if the other guy is a bad guy. He's sucking them off. Yeah, not us. But then we get, and this is the thing that you mentioned earlier about how this alien we never hear from again, but they drop in his little like archer notation at the end that these guys are real interesting. They're androgynous and live 400 years. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's nifty. Sure. But thinking about it, that means this could be an alien who's alive and met Picard. Yeah. This is like living memory for these guys. So if you are, you know, not even going to make like incredible weird aliens, you're not going to make too many, you know, you don't want to touch those prequel rep, you know, this is stuff that it could impact the future. Sure. First time they do things. I'll admit that I think some of the better episodes are when they give in and finally just do some of the prequel ass shit. Sure. Which they literally, like, because I read the 25 year journey, they didn't want to do that stuff early on. They've really tried not to, which is why it's not there. And when it is, it's pretty clunky for a season. Yeah. I mean, if they don't want to do that stuff, my question for them is why are they doing a prequel show? Exactly. Which is like, it's baffling. Again, like, I'm also not like a big fan of prequels and don't think necessarily ever need to exist ever. But, like, I can understand a scenario in which a prequel show exists in Star Trek, where there's, like, literally hundreds of years of stuff that could have happened that doesn't really impact the shows that we've seen. But that's kind of like, yeah, you've got to keep the, if you're going to do a prequel show like that, I feel like you have to keep the stakes moderately low. Because then, otherwise, you're, like, trying to, like, reverse engineer these big events that happen or whatever. Right, exactly. There's a lot like, I think, strange and world functions because it's just about these people and less about, like, then, like, saving the universe or whatever. It's actually canon. Yeah, shit. Exactly. It definitely feels like there's a fight, or that's evident based on what I read the book, that there are people, like some of the writers on staff, even the, like, whole weird, uh, court whispers about how the writing was done with, uh, Brandon. Oh, yeah. And Berman. Berman. Berman. Bergen. I'm a Bergen. I'm a Bergen. Uh, that, that, that it was a fight, always. So it had this muddled and didn't really try to do either thing very well. And, and, and talked about, you know, this whole first season being before they launched the enterprise. Yeah. Like, that's what even they wanted to do. And I, I feel like that could have been that, like, much smaller stakes. It's just about getting this shift off the ground and the finale would have been them launching the enterprise. Yeah. So apparently... And the execs didn't like that. So... Um, so I'm looking at apparently the Axonar, who are the aliens in this episode, were mentioned in the original series. Okay. So they did it. They did it. They did it. They did do the thing. Oh, I guess. But like, in a way that's sort of like, I don't know, it's unsatisfied. They made them too cool. I suppose, yeah. They made them too cool. And I guess I'm homing on this fact. Like, you said it could live 400 years and that makes me think this is the prequel he could have lived through all of the fucking other series. So... But, you know, he's just there, I guess. He's just there. He's there believing what anyone says to him, a third party, and killing them. So maybe it's for the best, maybe it's for the best of these guys in a round. I'm kind of right there. Because he does sort of just do, if you just speak to him convincingly enough in his own language, he will just do whatever you say, including murder. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, I don't know. That seems like... I don't want them around in my utopia. You know? It's a reason they didn't enjoy it. They never, yeah, they never became the Federation because they keep killing people. They're very gullible. They're very gullible. I'm drawing on a slip for 400 years. Extrainarily gullible. So gullible. So gullible. Okay, so actually the last, last thing is that I guess to close off this metaphor, she's not like this slug. The slug does need to be on its planet. It was fucking dying. But she is fine, I guess, on the spaceship? They really mixed it because then she puts the slug down and she's like, and she takes it out of like the Container Store ass caves. They've got it in, it looks like it's like a Tupperware with a clasp. That's why it was dying. It really does look like it's from the Container Store, which I really love. Like I could put a lot of pencils in there. But they take it out of it. She takes it out of the thing and puts it on the planet. And she's like, it's not the same and you're far from home, but you'll be fine. But I guess she's talking about herself. I didn't even realize that some would know because like at the end of the last episode, you might not have heard because you were like bleeding any of your ears from watching that fucking thing. But at the end of the last episode, they're like set course for like some inhabited planet. And I guess they got there and the joke is, I guess, that they only found slugs. See? Okay. And they took a slug from there. I had to interpolate that after reading the memory outfit on the episode. That could be a fun little thing. They keep saying about like glad we went out here to find slugs and it's him, he's that could have gone. Yeah. At least been something more like interesting than boredom. That is a joke from a Voyager episode because at least something, to at least something. Well, I know there are some bright spots on this first season, believe me. So stay tuned, please. Yeah. And nothing else bad happens in 2001 to America. There'll be much more to look forward to there, I'm sure. Thank you for listening and thank you for listening. Keep an eye out. We'll have a patreon up soon for more episodes of the show. Bye. Bye. [Music] (upbeat music)