The Greatest Generation - To The Podcast (Voyager Series Retrospective)

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

When Voyager wrapped up leaving everyone wanting more, pitching some spicy alternate endings could have avoided the All Good Things comparison. But if there’s no extra time to make a finale truly great, expectations shouldn’t be too high for for a Star Trek podcast either. Why exactly is local news suffering? How did the writers’ room launder Neelix’s character? Whose personal development was the most grating? It’s the episode that never says no without a number.Support the production of The Greatest GenerationGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Caretaker!The Greatest Generation is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social

Friends of DeSoto, if you've been too embarrassed to see a live Greatest Gen show, now is your chance, because we're bringing a live show directly to you. It's the streaming CybOctacular, our live show about Star Trek V, and it's a riot. May 16th is when it comes out, and that night, you get to join me and Ben and a bunch of Friends of DeSoto to watch it together. There's a live chat, there's merch, there's a ton of embarrassment to go around. Don't worry, if you have something better going on that night, that's fine. Because you should still get a ticket.

That stream will be running through the end of May. GreatestGenTour.com to buy your ticket now to watch our streaming live show. It's almost the most embarrassing thing you can do in the privacy of your own home. GreatestGenTour.com There's coffee in that nebula. Make it yourself. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage. Watch your back, Shaggy. I'm Luke.

I'm Captain Captain Brink-Janeway, the U.S.S. Voyager. I'm Captain Captain Brink-Janeway, the U.S.S. Voyager. I'm Captain Captain... Welcome to the greatest generation Voyager for the last time ever. I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Adam Pranica to the podcast, we could call it.

Yeah, this is our Voyager wrap up. I meant to go back and listen to our wrap up of TNG and our wrap up of DS9 to prepare for this, but I didn't do that. I went back and re-listened to our entire run of Star Trek Voyager. Oh, good. But I didn't go back and listen to those previous series wrap-ups, so I'm just as useless as you are. But the series will be fresher in your mind.

It will be. Yeah, it is very fresh. A lot of this Voyager stuff was recorded when I was deliriously low on sleep. So, you know. How much of the Voyager run was droned? I don't know. I mean, it was, it was a sillier run than the Deep Space Nine run, that's for sure. Uh-huh. I think partly just because Deep Space Nine is a darker, more brooding show, so.

Oh, we had our fun on DS9. We did, we did. I mean, Voyager doesn't have a fuck-bo-kai. Surely does not. You got room on your team for a switch-hitting third baseman with good power? First question, Ben. This one room on your team for a switch-hitting third baseman with good power? First question, Ben. This one comes in from Cut For Time. Who is Voyager's fuck-bo-kai? Man, who indeed?

It's gotta be Irish bartender, right? I guess so, yeah. Because he's not real. He's a hollow man. He is a hollow man. He's a stick man. Stick hollow man. Sure. Fuck-bo-kai, definitely a stick hollow man. He's a stick man. Stick hollow man. Sure.

Fuck Bokai, definitely a stick hollow man. Yeah. But he's not a hollow man. He's an imaginary man. Sure. No, I mean, Buck Bokai, real man as hollow man. Right. Fuck Bokai, real man as hollow man as greatest gen joke. So that goes. Is my neck, my back, my reproductive sack the closest we got to Fuckbokeye?

I think it is. In Voyager? And FODs out there are starting to hear kind of what the format of this episode is going to be. Great social media manager Rob Adler got out a great social media manager, Rob Adler, got out into those social media streets and solicited a bunch of prompts and questions from our audience. And a bunch of them came in. We're going to be reviewing those

over the course of the episode. Also have some meaningful statistics. Yeah. And a whole bunch of other fun surprises, Ben. You know, we may even give out our Mount Nuckmores and Mount Armises over the course of this experience. But this is just, yeah, looking back over the entire series now that we have completed our rewatch, I think we should get right into it.

What do you say? Let's not do a big long Marin. No, forget it. It is the retrospective episode of Star Trek Voyager, the television series. This is the only one we're going to do. Episode one of that. Rebirth course. Unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm not turning you out.

Before we start answering listener questions, I did want to talk about the ending and the themes of the ending and what we liked and what we didn't like about the way they chose to wrap the series up. I think a big unresolved theme for me was what will happen to the Mayquise and Seven when they return. Like they sort of resolve the Neelix question, like what is Neelix even going to fucking do when they get to Earth by just writing him off the show a couple episodes before. But there's this huge question in my mind at the end of all of this, like how does life look for a Chakotay or a BLT now that they're back? We don't get any of the people being reunited with their Tom's Mervins,

or their mom and dad in Harry Kim's case, or their admiral father in Tom Perez's case at the end of the finale. So I thought we should talk about that a little bit at the very least here on this wrap up episode. Just hearing you describe what we got versus maybe what we had hoped to see, made me think about just how much of an investment was made in so many characters' post-return lives. Like, this was often a topic of conversation had among many of the main characters, and it seems very unfair to get so much buildup to something that we never experience whatsoever. And I think that's the main thrust of my feelings about it is that if you weren't going to pay

that off, why burn all those cycles on all of those intimate conversations had in so many places about what you hope will happen, what you think will happen, what your fears are once you get there. I mean, for so many characters on the show, the return home was going to be a mystery and maybe even something to fear. I can't remember which writer it was, but one of the writers on the finale, I read something where he was speculating like, did we do an all good things? Was this just another all good things? And I don't think that it's quite just another all good things, but it does borrow a lot

from all good things in the like future version of Janeway, you know, trying to put things right. What an awful question to ask if you're the creator of, of a thing, of a thing in general, and specifically a Star Trek thing. Why would you even invite the comparison? So here's my spicy alternate ending idea for Voyager. What if there had been a scenario that they built up where the ship was like, it's like the ship gets destroyed or the ship goes home, are the two sides of the binary.

Like something is going to happen, and if certain conditions are satisfied, the ship goes home and if they are not, ship is destroyed. I've been living my entire career under this threat. So the cost to prevent ship destruction is a large portion of the crew basically going on a suicide mission or leaving in a way that is even higher risk. And I think it would have been an interesting way to explore the themes of commitment to ideology. The Makewes, by and large, left Starfleet

to go be terrorists. What about their personalities drove them to committing to a much more extreme existence for the rest of their lives? And would that come back into play in a scenario like this? Like, we might not have a great future to look forward to when we do get home anyways,

so we'll take this risk on behalf of everyone else because we're wired like that. Would some of them chicken out and not? Well, I tell you what, Janeway would never allow it to happen unless she were going to lead such a mission. Sure. So I, in absorbing this theory, I wanna ask you,

what if Janeway died at the end of the series, you know, leading a group of folks as you've described, does that not enshrine her, maybe at the top of the mountain of great Starfleet captains given how little they ended up using her and I'm setting aside the Star Trek prodigy aspect of it, but in the decades that followed Voyager up until new Star Trek, I mean, she was a cameo. Right.

And that was it. I suppose that that removes a lot of books out of the bookstores, but I don't know. I asked a similar question about Neelix. Like, wouldn't you rather have killed him if that was going to be his ending? I do really like your idea, Ben. Like the idea that it's a greater sacrifice, but the sacrifice we get is a future Janeway willing to die knowing that her timeline will be undone if there's mission success anyway. Do you feel like that's a hollow sacrifice then? Yeah, like it's Janeway that's willing to die

to make things right, but Janeway lives in the end anyways. They get to have their cake and eat it too in the writer's room. And what a fucking controversy it would have been if they'd ended the series with Janeway making some grand self-sacrifice to get everyone home. And alternately, just the Maquise or some subset of the Maquise

or Chukote making some grand self-sacrifice. Like, I think that a very modern TV idea that everything has to have these like huge operatic themes and we have to like be able to understand characters in those terms. And I think that one thing I like about the 90s era of television is even though the shows like maybe have simpler stories, like I think the characters

get to be a little bit more three-dimensional because they don't have to just be like a motif that is personified. Yeah. But, uh, I don't know. I thought that would have been an interesting place to go. Another idea I had was like, what if they got home in like season seven, episode 15, and a bunch of the rest of the story is about reintegrating, about answering

questions about what happened, about, I don't know, maybe you could have a lost, we have to go back moment. Well, why not both of those things, Ben? Say a Voyager with Chakotay in command returns through the hole and the last six episodes are what happened? And it's a crew grappling with the grief of their lost friends and family that that had to sacrifice to stay behind, the grief of a crew about their fallen captain. Why did that have to happen to Naomi Wildman? Yeah, you joke, but I'm sure a lot of the Admiralty would have a question like, why

did you do it that way? And the idea of a person having to answer for making an impossible decision and one that affects them so deeply, and in many cases, like emotionally, I think that would be really powerful TV, but maybe the sort of TV that doesn't get made in this time period. Maybe it's too hard to look at this through past lenses and too easy to look at it through modern television lenses, you know? All that being said, I think it is a great seven seasons that just has a bit of a bummer finale.

And like the number of TV shows whose last episodes aren't quite up to par relative to the series that preceded them is enormously high. It is a very tricky thing to tie up seven seasons and 150 some odd episodes or whatever. I wonder if in a weird way, just because the track record of series finales is what it has become over the years, do you think the stakes aren't as high as we might assume they are given that if it works great, I still don't have a job after that. If it doesn't work, we tried as much as we ever did,

and it didn't work, and I still don't have a job after that. Like, I wonder if there's some sort of weird thinking about it in that way, because I'm not talking about specifically about Star Trek even, but just generally on TV in that series finale, it seems so difficult to stick that landing. I've got to wonder if part of it is just, you don't get more time for a series finale. You get just as much time as you ever got. So maybe it's like, fuck us. Like, why are our expectations so much higher for something that, that only

ever has the same amount of, of resources to create? Yeah. I mean, I think that that's a great point. Like the, uh, the papers that I was turning in second semester, senior year were not my best work. And I think that the teachers were willing to forgive that because they know what's up, you know? They know everybody has one foot out the door.

Should we be more forgiving teachers? That's the question I'm rolling around in my mind right now. Our course is locked in. Do it. Listen to me very carefully because I'm only going it's locked in. Do it. Do, do, do, do, do. Listen to me very carefully because I'm only going to say this once. Do it. Ben, speaking of this finale, statistic for you,

Star Trek Voyager debuted to 21.3 million viewers. Wow. Any guesses how many viewers saw the series finale? 21.2. Just a little high with that. 5.5. Dang. Million viewers. They really bled over the course of the series.

How would you explain that? I think that happens with every show. People are excited to see the new thing, and seven years later, you're going to lose some viewers. I mean, that happens going to lose some viewers. That happens everywhere except Star Trek podcasts. Our hockey stick continues in the upward direction. Thank you for calling it a hockey stick and not something else because it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I imagine Lost and The Sopranos and shows that are really zeitgeisty like that, maybe

it goes the other way like you get. I remember when Seinfeld was in its last season, the evening news, the local evening news would have stories about it's about to be the last season of Seinfeld. It was such a huge deal. Imagine getting that kind of free press. Incredible. I know. No local evening news has ever done anything about the greatest generation.

To their detriment, I think. I think this is a big part of why newspapers and news organizations in general are suffering in our modern America is not enough greatest gen coverage for the people's liking. I don't think it's their fault. I think we just need to do something newsworthy. I say as I put on Joker makeup. I wonder how that played into that like morale of the writers room, morale of the production staff. like morale of the writers room, morale of the production staff. If not that many people are even watching,

like another reason to ask yourself, how hard are we even gonna try on this thing? I mean, to compare it to podcasting again, how many folks have you ever had the conversation with about how to do a podcast? Gave theirs up after six weeks because not enough people in their mind were listening. Right.

Not enough people in my mind are listening to The Greatest Generation and it's a ton of work and I think we should probably quit. We edit that part out at the beginning of every episode. Yeah, but leave this bit, leave in, Wendy, because people will be interested to hear that that is always on the table. Every time we step up to the microphones. Ben, I have a few more statistics here to share that I think you'll be interested in. You and so many FODs out there wanted us to do some sort of academic count of the many things that didn't quite add up

over the course of the show. Things like the torpedo continuity. Many, many FODs asked a question about what we thought of the initial complement of torpedoes versus how many we saw fired during the series and then how many we imagined would be remaining. Did you go back through and also rewatch the entire series when you were re-listening to all of our records? I did. Ben, you might remember 38 torpedoes worth the total number of torpedoes kept on Voyager when it made its journey to the Delta Quadrant of its

38. How many do you believe were shot over the course of the series? They were firing full spreads right up to the very end of the series. So I'm gonna I'm gonna guess that they just used them all up. I'm gonna say they had 38, they fired all 38. Ben, you're correct. They did shoot all 38, but in total they shot 123 photon torpedoes on Star Trek Voyager. I would cite my sources for all of these statistics. However, they came from a number of different places and I was too busy watching old episodes of Star Trek Voyager to note all of them. So apologies to all of the folks who actually did the work here that I then stole for use here. You know who you are and we appreciate you. Ben, interesting thing about the number 123, because Harry Kim copulated with 123 distinct

alien species over the course of this show. It's Voyagers 47, you know? It's a number that just kind of keeps popping up. Who knows why? 123 minutes, the average amount of fornication time. Wow, all right. That Harry Kim spent with each one. Hell yeah, Harry Kim. Something about it reminds me of being in the womb. Get up, Harry. Who are you? Harry Kim. Parents must be very proud. Who are you? They come as a pair. Who are you? Harry Kim. Who else

is she supposed to get chummy with? Harry Kim and your mom. Very proud. Who are you? They come as a pair. Who are you? Harry Kim. Who else is she supposed to get chummy with? Harry Kim. And your mom? Very proud. Who are you? Harry Kim. That lasted 22 minutes. And your mom?

Very proud. Harry Kim. Who are you? Harry Kim. How many times do you guess Captain Janeway ordered self-destruct on Voyager? It sure did feel like a lot of times, right? Man, I think that they must've done it about

once a season on TNG. So I'm wondering if Voyager was more or less than that. I'm going to go a little less. I'm going to go five self-destructs. You're really close. Here's the thing. Janeway only ordered self-destruct three times. Okay.

One of those three times was botched, like she was unable to do it because the computer would not accept the order. The rest were threats. Didn't she threat all the time to blow up the ship? I think that's the thing that sticks in your mind is how willing she was to do it. Right. Yeah. She was all talk though. All hat, no self-destruct cattle. Yeah. I think her reputation is one of a hair trigger self-destructor. Yeah.

Without maybe going all the way through it. She, I feel like had a ship that got invaded so much more than so many of the other Starfleet captains. We are so fond of talking about, like I think that the image of a bunch of bad guys marching down the hallways of Voyager, like having already taken over Voyager when the episode starts, or viruses taking over Voyager, that feels like such a big part of this series in particular

is how vulnerable the ship was made to feel over and over again. One hundred and fifty-two crew people was the total crew compliment on Voyager when it left for its mission. Ben, how many people died? Well, I feel like a ton die in The Caretaker, parts one and two on both ships, do they make it home with like 120? I'm gonna say they get back with 120.

137 is what I found, which means 15 crew people died. But I guess you made a crew person with Naomi Wildman. So you're making news. And, and seven in each head? Yeah. I guess this is a statistic about people dying and not. Right. Replacement.

Yeah. For the crew compliment. I think that, yeah, dozens die in that opening episode. And then when you add the Mayqueese and your Naomi's and your Sephens back in, it's not that bad. Ben, over under 15 shuttles destroyed on Star Trek Voyager the series. What do you got? Oh man. I'm going to take the over. I feel like they went through shuttles pretty willy nilly. You got it Ben.

16 shuttles destroyed on Star Trek Voyager. Just an amazing number. Yeah. More than two a season. Hmm. Incredible. Ben, those are all of the statistics I was able to find. I thought those were the most interesting ones.

Adam, I have one little, little block of statistics here. I was reading about all of the different ways that they sped their trip up a little bit. And there were categories such as shortcuts, technology boosts, and then like unsuccessful trip shortening attempts. So, there are a number of episodes in which they got, you know, 5,000 or 10,000 extra light years closer to Earth. And I wondered if you could guess how many shortcuts they took, how many technology boosts they got,

and then how many unsuccessful attempts they made at shortening their trip. I wanna go in reverse order. How many unsuccessful attempts did they have? I'm gonna guess less than one per season. I'm gonna guess six. There were four unsuccessful trip shortening attempts. The episode Eye of the Needle, the episode Prime Factors,

which was that like, oh, these people are prime directiving us episode. Futures and an inside man. So I guess the end game, the finale, maybe we leave out because that's the final trip shortening attempt. How many technology boosts do you think that they used? I'm going to guess far less. I'm going to guess two. The article I read counted four. The Voyager Conspiracy, Dark Frontier, Timeless, and Hope and Fear. Do you want to take a guess on how many shortcuts they found?

I don't know. Four? Three. So there was a shortcut in Year of Hell. There was a shortcut in Knight and there was a shortcut in Q2. Hmm. That's right. Q was so kind to give a little nudge. A little nudge. I mean, could have done more, as always. I guess like the gift,

when Kes comes back and gives them a mind push, you could probably count that as a technology assist, right? And then Dragon's Teeth, they found a subspace corridor. I mean, they were a lot closer by the end than they thought they would be at that point, you know? Like it starts as a 75-year journey and it was down to, like, I think I had like 30 or 40 years left on the trip by the time Endgame came around. That's like a career for some people, you know? Not too bad. Yeah.

There are three things to remember about being a Starship captain. for some people, you know? Not too bad. Yeah. All right, Ben, let's get into some questions from FODs. What do you say? I love that idea. Now, Ben, we received questions from just about everywhere FODs gather. The Discord, the Facebook, X, Blue Sky, etc. etc. This first one comes from the Discord at DrunkShemota.com. Vitas Ed says, for me, I know that I started out the series really hating Neelix, but by the end I thought the character had grown a lot, especially after Kes left. And now I consider him a great part of the show. I'm wondering if you felt similarly, and maybe it would be a good topic for the retrospective to see how he evolved as the seasons progressed. I feel very similarly. I mean, I think that he was written to be a very silly character, comic relief character initially. And

well, I think he hung on to that in a lot of ways. He became a lot larger than just joke guy in the course of the show. And I really liked, you know, his final episode where he's on the bridge and questions are being asked about like, what does he even do here? And some of his fellow crewmen really hold him down and say, he serves so many roles, it would be impossible for him to just have one station. I mean, it's fun to take ones off the top rope about like his food being bad.

And like the show definitely didn't do anything to disabuse anyone of thinking his food was bad. But yeah, like I wind up really liking Neelix toward the end. I think a lot like a comic who digs a hole early in the set only to like exert themselves getting out of it. I think maybe starting Neelix off the way that he was in this series is like an example of that. It seems incredibly difficult to start off a character with all of these,

I'm going to say like social deficiencies and then redeem him by the end of it. There were so many reasons to dislike Neelix, but I think maybe a lesser actor would not have made him redeemable. I think what Ethan Phillips does with Neelix, season after season, in digging out of that hole is kind of a minor Star Trek miracle. And I do wish he got a better goodbye than the one that he got. I'll say it again, I wish he died. I think that would have been a spectacular ending for him. But as it was, a character that did get better and better,

but he started at the absolute rock bottom for me. A character that I resented, a character that I did not like and was frustrated by and the many storylines he was a part of. But by the end, he wasn't just like a net neutral to the stories he was involved in. Like he was a positive aspect and an interesting aspect to those stories.

So yeah, I think he could be one of the best examples of Star Trek character redemption. He sort of strikes me as having been inspired by the character of Quark. Like when you're breaking what your new series is going to be, you're looking at the old series and like, you know, I think TNG inspired, like, a lot of the roles and character types that they had on DS9. And then DS9 goes on to inspire the roles and character types they have on Voyager. And I mean, I'm just thinking about, like, costuming

for Nelix and Korok, very similar, like very, very loud patterns and colors and stuff. And then you can't make Neelix a criminal element aboard the ship or it doesn't work, you know? Like they would just get rid of him if he was Quark in a Voyager context. Yeah. So he has to be like in a certain way, it's like the most challenging character to write because he's got to be like there for fun and hijinks the way Quark is, but then they have to round off

all of Quark's prickly edges that, you know, make him slightly villainous, you know, put him in that interesting gray area. Like, Neelix has to be there for the hijinks, but always the goodest guy, you know, at the end of the day. He's always coming from being a companion for a very young person in Kes, in a bad way, in a creepy way, he then ends up becoming a companion to another younger person in a great way. Right. In a caretaker way, if you will.

And I wonder how intentional that was as a choice. Yeah, interesting that Naomi Wildman is also from a species that ages at a really accelerated rate. Yeah, yeah. But they like, yeah, maybe there was some feeling of we need to launder this character through another juvenile that ages at an accelerated rate. Ben, related question.

I want to make sure I call out from reasonable bloke. What did you dislike at the beginning of Voyager that you came to appreciate later? I think, I think it is Neelix for me. I think that's, that's the best example. Pete Slauson Yeah. I think that another one I'll raise is the like, Chakotay fake Native American-ness stuff that, you know, I think we have talked to death, hopefully, the ways in which that sucked. But I've also had a few conversations since starting Voyager with members

of the Native American community that are like, you know, like that does suck. But we also really like Chakotay as a character, because honestly, we don't get that many positive representations in media. And it was cool to have something in Star Trek. I think that both things can be true. There's the things about it that we can decry.

I think it got way better over the course of the series. First few interactions he has about his heritage in the show are just like, yikes. Like this might as well have been written in like the 1830s the way they are talking to him about it. And then, you know, by the end, like they really like used the pan flute pretty sparingly and in much better selected scenarios, I thought. He was the only one with a musical theme, wasn't he?

He was, yeah. Come to think of it. Yeah. So he had that going for him. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Ben off of the Discord Star born in the sky asks maybe a question about the Voyager Battlestar Galactica connection but do you think Voyager would have been successful if the stakes had been similar to the situation of Galactica

with limited resources like truly limited resources and fewer crew people or maybe a less crew person and make we as cohesion. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Cause I mean, I haven't watched all of BSG, but the idea is that they're always on the run. They're always losing people. It's like, they're always right on the knife edge.

So do you take this question to be like, what if Voyager had always right on the knife edge. So do you take this question to be like, what if Voyager had been always on the knife edge the entire time? Would it have been a better show? I think the best we could ask for for television of this era is the very special episode. Like, the exhaustion you feel after a year of hell storyline, like could you sustain something like that for 26 episodes? Year after year, you really couldn't.

But I mean, Battlestar Galactica was a bleak show for dozens of episodes and my appetite for it was not satiated. Like I could have gone longer with that show. I just don't think that that's a brand that Star Trek goes for. Like bleak as a concept. I wonder if it would have really felt like a Star Trek show at a certain point. I think that's also hearing you bring up the number of episodes per season.

It might be an artifact of this era of television that you couldn't afford to go as hard and as bleak over 26 episodes as you can over 13 or whatever. Like when your episode order is an episode a week for half of the year, like, it's a lot to ask people to tune back in to experience like deprivation and stress every single time they watch your show. And, you know, I think about a show like Battle Star Galactica or The Wire or Breaking Bad, any of those shows that kind of like go into the darkness

and never come back out, I don't know if they would have worked in in a 26 episodes a season paradigm. I think maybe that is what helps to make it work on modern prestige television. In a 10 episode season, I think your appetites are different. Totally. For that kind of tone.

And it's more palatable if it's 10 or 12 episodes versus 26, has to be. We hear all the time people want to go back to longer seasons of shows and... Can you imagine the bitching about that though? Like, were we to get a 26 episode season? The cries of filler that we'd get every time an episode in a 26 episode season

wasn't an absolute fucking banger? No, you couldn't compete as a television show now. Like, if, like like imagine the Star Trek Discovery writer's room being given a 26 episode order. Like there would not, like these are writers that probably wouldn't know what to do with that. You know, the people that we have working in the industry now are good at writing arcs.

You know, like it's, you can over 10 episodes the industry now are good at writing arcs. You can over 10 episodes of TV write something that is a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and end. I don't think that we could really realistically keep track of a 26 episode arc that every single episode addresses and moves forward. When DS9 did big long arcs, like they never went more than like six or seven episodes, right?

I wonder if we're trending toward an even tighter shrink in the years ahead. Like, are we going to get fewer episodes per season, even still, with storylines that arc even shorter? That's a movie. Eventually you get to movie. Yeah. And movies are getting longer and longer. So like, is there an argument to be made for taking a Killers of the Flower Moon and lopping it into four 45-minute episodes and just calling it a special miniseries event

or something, you know? Jared Siffle-Beeps asked a very similar question and more to the point, do you think Voyager would have been a better or a worse show if the writers had hewed more toward their resource limitations? I think the better or worse is so hard to answer because- It's different for sure. Over 26 episodes, I think it's exhausting. 26 episodes a season.

I think early on it's a better show. If it's just a mad dash from place to place to get the things that you need to survive. But I don't think that's sustainable over seven seasons. I think eventually you need to find a cache of those things. Right. That gets you onto a different kind of storytelling. Yeah.

I think that, um, this question is one that we jokingly asked all the way through the series, like how many, how many of these torpedoes do we even have left? How many of these shuttlecraft do we even have left? And I mean, the show, I think, sort of does itself a disservice not establishing like, oh, we pulled into a port and they have a similar enough kind of warhead that we can replicate our photon torpedo casings and put this type of warhead in it and we rearmed the ship this week.

But that's a little bit more of like a video game storytelling mechanic than a movie or TV show storytelling mechanic. Like you want your hero in your movie or TV show to be going through shit and it gets harder and harder and harder until at the end, your hero perseveres. And in a video game, it's sort of like reverse, right? Like, you get the bigger gun and the cooler car

and the better armor and all that stuff. The further you go in, and it enables you to, you know, face bigger, you know, enemies with more XP or whatever. Does that feel like a kind of show that would be interesting in a Star Trek container? No, I don't think so because A, I don't think XP is like a concept that maps well onto a television show because, you know, you don't want all your characters walking around on screen with their like, with their stats bar hovering above their head like, Oh, Janeway's only got only got 13 coffee points left. And, you know.

But I wonder in a very specific versus general kind of way, all of our characters need to grow. Yeah. All of our characters need to grow. All of our characters need to get better through their experiences. We're not talking about like apples on their power bar, but we are talking about a wharf who teaches yoga and stuff. And grows as a father. He never takes a parenting class. He would never. Ben, question from Bridge Makes.

Assuming the back of the head wasn't an issue. I can already tell what this question's about. Perhaps some sort of paper bag policy could be implemented. Then would you totally murder Tuvix or technically allow Tuvok and Neelix to die? So this isn't either or. Tuvix or Tuvok and Neelix. You do not get and. As much as you want and, you can't have it.

Listen, as much as I love Tim Russ and as much as I love Ethan Phillips, I think the show is ten times more interesting if the Tuvix episode just blindsides us and replaces two characters with one character for the rest of the series. And it might be even more interesting if they had saved the dividing them back up again for an episode two seasons later where it becomes clear that Tuvix is going to have to self-sacrifice so that Tuvok can come back and like do a mind meld that Tuvix isn't

capable of or some shit, you know? That's interesting, the idea of just sitting in it with Tuvix a while, living with that. Yeah, and then feeling the pain of losing to Vicks after having grown accustomed or tolerating his head. I think that's a great note because what you're suggesting is more pain, like more emotional trauma. Yeah. Like ultimately, I just want to feel something when I watch a show and I think you get two bites of that apple for one character.

Yeah. In a really elegant way there, Ben. It seems to me that it must be some, like, TV contract thing that prevents them from doing stuff like that, especially in this era, like... Well, plenty of actors take episodes off, or are not written into episodes for a period of time. So that's true.

I'm sure they could have made that happen if it were a, if it were a four episode arc and the two in the middle are without the Tuvok and Neelik characters, I could see that playing. Yeah. Tell you what though, that guy probably has his hands full like doing all the ship's security and, you know, staffing the mess hall and, you know, massaging Naomi Wildman's feet so that she can go to sleep every night. I'm not sure what he did with Naomi Wildman.

There is no way a child of any age wouldn't be horrified by a Tuvix in their company. It would never happen. Mom, Tuvix in their company. It would never happen. Mom, Tuvix's head is under my bed. I think it's about intent. Like do Tuvok and Neelix want to be conjoined or was it accidental that they were conjoined? That it was an accident means that I think you need to do all in your power

to separate them, even at the sacrifice of a new character. I'm with Janeway on this. Janeway did nothing wrong. No. We need to talk. It's been a while, right? We should probably catch up. And we can really do that, because when you buy a VIP ticket to the streaming side-bottacular, we'll get to talk, face-to-face.

Think of it like a Zoom call, except funny. On the show, we tell a lot of funny and embarrassing stories and this is your chance to share your embarrassing Star Trek story with me and Ben. But maybe you don't have an embarrassing story and you're so cool. That's fine. We'll still be together where we can say whatever we want looking at each other during. Maybe you have a favorite bit you want to come back or a pet you want to introduce us to. You could be doing this call from a weird shed filled with metal hooks hanging from the ceiling, like we saw that one time. Can you beat the shed with the metal hooks? Let's find

out. But it's not a contest. It's just a chill hang with you and me and Ben. And if you want to do it as a group, you can. Get a few FODs together in that shed filled with hooks, and we'll have a great great time at the streaming CybOctacular. Tickets for the show and the meet and greet are now on sale at greatestgentour.com. I've dedicated my life to something. Keeping sharp, dangerous things away from my junk. This is a great thing to dedicate one's life to. However, it has one drawback.

Makes it hard to look your best downstairs. This episode is brought to you in part by the Spring Cleaning Champions at Manscage. They have Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra that has two interchangeable, skin-safe blades. A standard one for taking a little off the top and a new foil blade to go smooth wherever your heart desires. This is safe and is not going to give you cuts or nicks. It's the best of both worlds. You look all clean and nice down there and you've kept sharp things away from your sensitive stuff. They also make stuff for above the waist like

their Beard Hedger Pro Kit and Handyman Electric Face Shaver and whatever you want you can get 20% off and free shipping with the code SCARVES at manscape.com. That's 20% off and free shipping with our code SCARVES at manscape.com. Nothing like a little spring cleaning in your old pantaloons. Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts is a real podcast, made up of fake podcasts. Like, if you have a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it? So I'm going to say mugs. A little yogurt and a spoon.

A small handkerchief that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed. Maybe some spare honey. I'd keep batteries in it. I'd pretend to be a toy. that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed. Maybe some spare honey? I'd keep batteries in it. I'd pretend to be a toy. If I had a cupboard in my lower back, I'd probably fill it with spines. If you had a cupboard in your lower back,

what would you keep in it? Doesn't exist. We made it up for Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts, an award-winning comedy podcast from Maximum Fun, made up of hundreds of stupid podcasts. Listen and subscribe to Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts now. Oh my gosh, hi, it's me, Dave Holmes, host of the pop culture game show Troubled Waters. On Troubled Waters, we play a whole host of games, like one where I describe a show using

a limerick that our guests have to figure out what it is. Let's do one right now. What show am I talking about? This podcast has game after game and brilliant guests who come play you. The host is named Dave. It could be your fave. So try it. Life won't be the same. A big business starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. Close, but no. Oh, is it Troubled Waters, the pop culture quiz show with all your favorite comedians? Yes. Troubled Waters is the answer. To this question and all of my life's problems. Now, legally, we actually can't guarantee that,

but you can find it on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Captain Captain J.N.W.E.D. The U.S.S. Forbidden. I'm Captain Captain J.N.W.E.D. The U.S.S. Forbidden. Our buddy, Philippe Sobriero, chimes in on Instagram and says, character growth.

How did you feel about the main characters of this show in the pilot versus at the series finale? Maybe we could kind of lightning round this one. Do you want to take it from the top with Janeway? Yeah, I think I do. Catherine Janeway, kind of a wonky science nerd up top. Yeah. Yeah.

Did great in school, we learned. Like just kind of the classic dorky captain you want leading a science ship. Basically what we get at the end though, grizzled. War veteran even, you could consider her. She's been through some shit. How many times does she kick the Borg's ass over the course of the series? Like three or four. So many.

Pretty decisive ass whoopings by Janeway. I think Kirk is always going to be the most exceptional captain because of the sheer brand new things that he had to do being like the first long range exploring Star Trek captain there ever was. Like there was no book or experience of other captains who came before him that like went as far

for as long as he did. So- Well, you'll change your tune starting next week, but. But like the only ding against Janeway is that someone else, like no one else has gone as far as her, but the idea of like, like first contacting every fucking week, encountering threats that want to kill you every other week, like episode after episode, no one did that more than Janeway. Yeah.

And she probably violated the Prime Directive fewer times than Picard did, despite how much more grace and leeway she probably would have gotten when she submitted her captain's log at the end of their voyage. I mean, if you're just starting with generic Starfleet captain,

and that is basically what you get with Catherine Janeway in episode one. What you arrive at at the end is an enormous leap. I think what you get at the end with Captain Janeway is truly one of the best captains. And I think the greatest leap in character growth in the whole series. There's coffee in that opportunity to grow. Chikote is harder to put your finger on,

like, where the character growth did and didn't happen. I think that most of his character growth kind of comes in season one, like, going from Mayquist to loyal first officer. And then, like, every time that loyalty is tested, he is kind of unfailingly the right guy for the job, that he was the right pick. And I have no idea if this is true or not.

I read somewhere that Robert Beltran was getting paid like a crazy salary by the end because he was sort of dissatisfied with how underwritten his character was, and was basically trying to get them to write him off the show by asking for a fuck you raise. Like he would say like, okay, I'll come back, but you got to pay me this much. And they're like, okay. And he's like, what?

Just write me off the fucking show. Okay. Well, if you're going to pay me that much. We talked about it a lot when we were both freelancing, like what's the fuck you number. Yeah. If it's a job you don't want to do, everyone's got a number. Yeah. That's the number you ask for, for a job you don't want to do.

Never say no without a number. Yeah, exactly. That's the Chakotay rule. Tuvok similarly doesn't change radically. I mean, Vulcans rarely do, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his debilitating mental disease maybe creates a downward arc for his character growth. Wouldn't you say?

Sure. Sure. BLT, I think is another interesting case. Like I feel like grows a lot more than most characters. Through her relationship with Tom Paris, I think we could probably consider them connected in that way in their growth. Absolutely. And so much more in control of her faculties and her power by the end in a cool way. Yeah. I also really like the arc that Harry Kim takes. Like I think that the criticism that is often leveled

at this show that they kind of underserved his character, you know, didn't give him the promotions he was probably due because they were more focused on demoting and then repromoting Tom Perez are totally valid. And I would have liked a few more scenes where we see Harry actually get to put it in, but he is so green and so wet behind the ears at the beginning of the series.

He was stating the obvious again. Getting conned by Quark in that opening episode and then by the end really feels like a capable officer who is like, he's definitely one of my favorite guys on the show. So we already talked a bunch about Neelix, but that kind of leaves the doctor in terms of, of main cast characters. I think my main issue with the doctor is that he was so intentional about displaying his growth, promoting his growth to everyone around him. It feels like for most people, those parts

of themselves are mostly private. You know, you experience a thing, you learn some lessons from it that you can take away and apply toward future moments. And maybe you're fortunate enough to achieve a kind of growth that way. But like the doctor was so loud and broad and made his growth into other people's experiences or problems. That, I mean, you could argue successfully that the doctor grows most of all,

but at what cost to the rest of the crew, I might argue. Can you reprogram him or something? Yeah, Seven and Kes are the two characters that don't span the full range of the show. I thought they did a nice job with Kes's character toward the end. I like characters on Star Trek who reject Star Trek. And I don't mean the actors. I mean the characters. Like Kes by the end was ready to freshen everyone up. She rejected the premise. And I think there's room for

that type of character in this universe. Yeah. And Seven is sort of the opposite of that. She sort of starts rejecting the premise and is persuaded more and more by her crewmates that maybe Star Trek is the way. And it's a great character. And I loved getting to follow up with her in Star Trek Picard. And kind of now that we're done with our Voyager rewatch, I kind of want to go back and do a Star Trek Picard rewatch just for the seven of it. You know, like she's such an interesting character and imagining the, you know, getting back to Earth and then, you know, where we pick up her story in Picard is a fun thing to think about what happened in those intervening years.

The Stuck Duck asks, the Chakotay 7 thing came out of nowhere. I know that one holodeck episode, but when they were stranded together a few eps later, nothing. Not even a longing look. Also, is it icky that they teased Janeway to Cote for seven years only to have him choose her younger, hotter protege? A lot of interesting ideas in this topic. Hotter is very subjective, you know.

I think part of why the finale didn't quite work was that there was no ramp up to that relationship, that it really did feel out of nowhere in the way the Stuck Duck describes. I like the tension unrealized of a Janeway-Chicote relationship. I mean, these are aspects to many of the great television programs of the

last 20 years. And in many of those examples, the eventual reality of that relationship brings about a lesser quality show in the aftermath because that tension is released and gone. So- Imagine a Cheers where Sam Malone's bar has a floor littered not with peanut shells, but with the halves of snapped pencils. Right. Right. And he never closes the deal with Diane. I mean, let's not blame Chakotay here.

Sounds great. Janeway did not want anything to do with him and stated it fairly directly when they were marooned on Planet Bathtub. Right? Yeah. So, let's not get it twisted. I mean, and what a tough call for her to make because I think that she felt the feels, but just felt like her responsibility outweighed her ability to indulge in those feels.

And I respect the hell out of that. I wish that they'd drawn a brighter line under that because I think that that's one of the things that makes her amazing as a captain. Like Picard dabbled in having a relationship in one episode of TNG and like, you know, it was like touching a hot pan on the stove. He like pulled his hand right back and was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, can't do it. And the idea that Janeway was in this like much more desperate situation, you know, with no shore leave to like get her rocks off, like no way to really take care of her intimacy needs at all.

Like she, and she monk like, like endures this entire experience without many romantic interludes at all. And you know, I think that that's like one of the things that makes her an amazing captain to me is like how, how great of a personal sacrifice that is. Cause I, I believe it is a great personal sacrifice. Right. But it's also one that she chose and she didn't have to make. I contend. I think that captain Snoggin, the first officer is the path to a ship falling apart. I think it's a path to a very interesting season.

All right, Adam, we've talked a lot about the series Star Trek Colon Voyager, but I think people would be pretty mad at us if we didn't give out our Mount Nuckmores and our Mount Armises for best and worst episodes of the series. I've picked four for my Mount Nuckmor, and I feel less sure about this list than I have about lists in years past.

I think these are maybe episodes that stuck with me the most as far as my Mount Knuckmore ones. They're ones that I like think back to a ton. Like I was making this list and I was like, man, I should probably like go back and check if I like claimed to like this at the end of the episode in which we talked about them. But like, these are the ones that I like think about

all the time from Voyager. So here's my list. Meld, which is the one where Tuvok mind melds with lawn suitor. Nemesis, where we entered the prone zone. I take it you're in charge here. Team leader, brone, fourth board defense contingent. I got to get a pump. That's it, get it.

And then a couple of two-parters, gear of hell and futures end. Year of hell, obviously, the time erasure fight and futures end, the, you know, Terry Silverman, A plus. I think our, our mountains are very similar. Melt and year of hell for sure. Uh, I also thought, uh, timeless was really great. That episode where we got old Harry Kim. Yeah.

Working through the timeline to save a frozen Voyager. That was cool. Yeah. Uh, I thought the timeline to save a frozen Voyager. That was cool. I thought the Scorpion two-parter was great. Yeah, Scorpion ruled. That was really fun. And maybe an honorary mountain posting would be the one where the Borgs with the big butt was created out of a lab. I thought that was great. Yeah. Okay.

My honorary mention is Flashback, the one where we go back to Star Trek 6 a bunch of times. Oh, great one. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Mount Armas. Well, one of them is going to be Darkling.

You remember that was the one where the doctor has those contact lenses that turned some evil. And this is a Kes episode too. This was, I don't know, like this Jekyll and hiding of the doctor. And remember how frizzy his hair was on the side of his head? That was wild. The Thaw is a classic Mount Armas episode, even though it has the great Michael McKeon in it. Just, I don't know, like, like when you describe it as bat

shit as it is, like it's worth rewatching. It's totally bizarre. Yeah. But like what makes that hell is like how gratingating it is sonically and visually. It's like an unpleasant episode to watch also. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get out of here. You got it. You know what?

There was the one where I think a lot of mine are going to involve the doctor. The one where the doctor falls in love with a meat person and then, oh my God, she's beautiful once you take all the loaf off of her. And then they end on the holodeck like in the convertible at makeout point. That was no good, right? I think those are the ones that come to mind. Maybe you'll energize some more inspiration out of me. So first one on my Mount Armist is the fight, which is Chakotay's boxing Vision Quest episode. Great call. Yeah, that's got to be on there.

That's got to be on there. Couldn't you have seen like a Chakotay thread where like it starts with the boxing, but then like maybe he goes down to that planet and builds a bathtub for Janeway and he's like John Matrixing around, like logs and shit around. Like how did Chakotay get so buff? Yeah.

I want that storyline. Yeah, that would have been cool. Tattoo is the one where they're like on that like moon and like Chakotay keeps having flashbacks of his father. And it's like one of the most pan flute heavy episodes. I don't remember if I liked any of these or not when we actually watched them, but I like wince when I think about that one, you know?

How about the episode that's like Carrie when Paris falls in love with a ship and the ship wants to kill his girlfriend? That's not a great one, right? That feels like it's bad. Once upon a time, the episode where Naomi Wildman spends most of the episode in the holodeck with Flodder and Trevis.

That one for sure. That is a total mud bath episode. Ben, I'm shocked neither of us have named Threshold. I feel like I like Threshold. I feel like Threshold is on this side of the Mount Nuckmore, Mount Armis Valley for me. We're going to need an entirely new episode, an episode of its own for an argument about Threshold, Ben. Okay. My final entry for my Mount Armis is real life, the episode where the doctor has a hollow family that I'll like, you know,

think about, you know, it's like a 1950s through a 1980s lens family. Amazing. It's like this is a 90s. Why are you doing an 80s thing about a 50s thing? God, so many of these are doctor related. Yeah. The doctor really racked up some, some all time cornball episodes. That one where he's like a celebrity musician on a planet. That's right.

He was opera man. Oh, brutal. Amazing work by Robert Picardo throughout the series. Not his fault. Like getting thankless after thankless after thankless stories. Amazing. Yeah. And he does really cool work now with the Planetary Society.

He's like become a very charitable guy. I've had a lot of fun going through Mount Nuckmores and Mount Armistice with you, Adam. We've got one more segment before we get to our P1s and then our overall series Shimotas. Why don't we get to that segment right now? I'm really easy to get along with most of the time, but I don't like bullying. I don't like friends and I don't like you. Ben, one final question. The last one we're going to get to on our Voyager series retrospective episode. How stoked are you for Enterprise? Oh, man, I couldn't be more stoked. I cannot wait. There's a lot about Enterprise that I really like. stoked. I cannot wait. There's a lot about Enterprise that I really like. I will say that I am a little bit sad and maybe this is telling on myself. I don't know. I really

like Picard and I really like Cisco and I really like Janeway. They are, as the leads of the series, characters that I am terribly fond of. I'm not going to go ahead and rank them right now, but... Many, many people asked us to do that. So if you're hoping for that in this episode, maybe not this time. Maybe not this time. But I will say that having watched Enterprise, I think I've watched the first three seasons of Enterprise, and I have not seen its notorious final episode yet.

So maybe I've seen like three and a half seasons of it or something. But I remember thinking that Bakula was kind of weak as the captain. So that is one thing that I am going into Enterprise with a little bit of trepidation about. I remember really loving the crew of Enterprise and feeling like, I love Bakula, I feel like he's great, but maybe he's like not bringing his A-game to this part or something. Or maybe it's like underwritten or something, but yeah maybe I'll have a different take on it this time.

That's the one thing that I've got some trepidation about. Yeah, mixed feelings from here too, because at the end of every series, I miss that series. That's happened the last three times. And up ahead is a series I've never seen even a moment of. I am really curious to find out why Enterprise as a series is so often kind of ignored in the conversation. And I know that there are people who really love Enterprise and I'm not minimizing their many great opinions on the show.

But like when you go to a convention or you talk about Star Trek with people, it is often not an actor on the banner or a great character talked about when you're arguing who the best captains or the best minor characters are. I don't hear that opinion from many places and this is not an invitation to send me those opinions. I think it is objectively the truth that for some reason Enterprise the series is not in the firmament of when you think of Star Trek television shows,

it's not top four and it's not even close. I want to know why that is. And I'm excited to find out. Yeah. I feel like the, yeah, the uniform doesn't get cosplayed. You don't see the ship represented as much in things. Yeah. Yeah.

It's an interesting point, but it's a series that people have a lot of love for. And it's, it's one that I've definitely heard. A lot of people say it was getting really great when they kind of unceremoniously canceled it. So I'm ready to love it. I want to love it. That's what I'm going to say right now.

I'm going in with an open mind and an open heart. I want to love it too. I'm really pumped for it. And I'm really pumped to be watching that like middle era of Trek is like pre new Trek, post old Trek. It's like, I feel like that's part of it is that it's like in it's no man's land, uh, by itself. And it should be a really interesting time.

And it's starting next week and we have new music for it that, uh, our buddy, Adam Ragusea has been helping us put together. We actually went to visit the Goose in Tennessee to work on this song. And I guess it'll debut right at the top of the show next week. Really excited for FODs to hear that. Adam, let's check what we've got in the P1 inbox for today,

huh? Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on Secure Channel. Need a supplemental income. Supplemental income. Supplemental. Yeah it's extra. By the interest alone could be enough to buy this ship. First P1 is from mom dad Alex and honor. It's to Margot goes like this. Last time on Star Trek, the next generation. We congratulated our son, your brother, for graduating from medical school. Now we congratulate you on finishing college with a 4.0 in your major. And your major.

And your major. I don't believe this. We are proud of you and love you. Good luck jaking a shuttlecraft to your new job as just plain simple worker. I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. This is fucking spectacular. Wow. So triple 4.0 major is what Margo is?

Check out the big brains on Margo. I bet Margo doesn't have an answer to this question. Why is the carpet all wet? Todd, I don't know Margo. Margo's never know the answer to that one. No, no, they're always asking that question. Yeah. Wow, I hope you are

Graduating toward a career where you are more than just a plain and simple worker with that kind of experience get on you Margo Yeah, and and hey, you deserve a vacation after working that hard. That's uh, that's huge Don't let anyone convince you that you can't take some time off between college and a life in the workforce. That's bad advice. Anyone telling you that that would be bad for your career or whatever, that you need to preserve some sort of continuity between your collegiate work and your work work, fuck that. Take a break. Take a break.

Who knows when you'll get another? Indeed. Ben, our second priority one message is from Captain Lozoto and the Dith and all the cruisers of DeSoto, it's to Ben and Adam. Their message goes like this. Does a drink with Robert Bacardo sound like fun? How about laughing like mad with Denise Crosby

or perhaps running into BLT and B-Dunks in a turbo lift? Wow. Then come join a great group of FODs on Star Trek, The Cruise 2025. First round is on me. Wow. Hey, all of these FODs are great and familiar, long time, good FODs. What are you doing making commercials for the cruise? What are you doing? Yeah. This should be a commercial priority one message, guys.

First of all, it should be a commercial priority one message. Second of all, it should be coming in from Star Trek The Cruise, and it should just be a commercial commercial that we get paid full freight for and not the heavily discounted rate of a Priority One message. Star Trek The Cruise. I think about it all the time.

Yeah, is 2025 our year, Adam? Oh, sure. Yeah, let's make it our year. You know what you convinced me, Captain Lazoto, the Dith and all the cruisers of DeSoto. I'm there. Wow, you heard it here first. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe to be a money out year, not a money in year.

They're all money out years. Well, if you'd like to leave a priority one message on an episode of the show, you can do it. You just go to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron and set it up and it'll happen. Yeah, and with a brand new series coming up, you're gonna want to get in there for Star Trek Enterprise. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of action in our scheduling calendar, so if you got a specific date, jump on it! Hey Ben! What's that, Adam? For the entire series of Star Trek Voyager,

did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Incredible. Drunk Shimoda. Such a juicy question. I think I got to go Neelix. And I feel like it's a cop-out because Neelix is written to be the drunk Shimoda of the series, almost as if the show runners were like,

this show needs a Shimoda character, but in the main cast. But yeah, he's the silliest, he's having the most fun. I feel like setting the hours and hours and hours in the makeup chair aside, isn't Ethan Phillips just having a fucking hoot being on this show? Got to believe it. I respect the hell out of Simon that looks like

they're having as much fun at work as he is. Like, he's either having the greatest time or he's the best actor on the cast by a long shot. So, yeah, he's my drunk Shimoda. How about you? Ben, to me, it's obvious. It's obvious because my nomination for Shimoda of the series never got any better. Never grew in any way.

If they grew in any way, it was just more grating. Dr. Mark. Oh, hi, Mark. Obviously, the drunk Shimoda of Star Trek Voyager. Wow. Neelix got better. Neelix got better. Neelix became fun. The doctor, Dr. Mark was just consistently out for his own interests.

Little bit creepy. Yeah. Creepy a lot of the time. Maybe a little bit more than creepy. Totally self-serving for a medical professional to be as self-serving as the doctor was. I don't know. Keep him away from me.

That's all I got to say. Go back into your real life holodeck program, buddy. Just stay there. Yeah, that's what I got, Ben. Wow. Well, this has been a ton of fun, Adam. What a fun retrospective. What a fun retrospective. What a fun series. I feel like at the end of every Star Trek series,

I always have a fear that we're just gonna shed listeners, because, oh, this was the last one anyone gave a shit about. I felt that when we went to Deep Space Nine, and then again when we went to Voyager, and now as we go to Enterprise. Yet I also have felt like it revitalized our show every time we've switched series. I am a ball of trepidation and a ball of optimism over here. That's Benjamin R. Harrison right there in a nutshell.

Our show has continued to grow series after series because I think it has much more to do with you and me than even the subject we're talking about. I hope that trend continues. I expect it to. It's going to be a lot of fun when we start talking about Star Trek Enterprise next week. I guess we don't really have a game of butt holes. We don't have anything to roll right now. We'll be back next week to unveil a brand new version of our game toward the end of the premiere episode of Star Trek Enterprise.

And new theme music who dis? It's going to be a big week. It's coming soon. So with that, we're going to wrap it up for today. Our thanks to all of the generous Friends of DeSoto who have supported this journey by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. If you like this show and like the idea of continuing with it on into the future, the best way to ensure that is becoming a monthly member

At maximum fun org slash join. There's gonna be lots of great bonus content, especially associated with our run of enterprise coverage I'm really excited about That we got to thank Wendy pretty the producer and editor of this show got to thank Rob Adler who runs our social media, and Bill Tilly, our Zindi wartime consigliere. And we gotta thank Nick Ditmore, who made our show art, and the great Adam Magusea, who is hard at work on the next theme song for this show. Of course, Dark Materia, who let us use the Picard song all those years ago.

Really appreciate you as well. And with that, we'll be back at you next week with a great episode of Star Trek Enterprise and an episode of the Greatest Generation enterprise that is looking forward, not back. Make it show. Make it show. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Make it show. Make it show. Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

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