Enterprise "Canamar" watch party | S02 E17

0:00 The show has begun with Connor and Dom.

0:05 It's the Decon Chamber.

0:11 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekkies and Trekkers, welcome back to another watch party of the Decon Chamber. I am your co-host, Connor Trenere, alongside my co-defendant and best friend, Dominic Keating.

0:25 Hey, guys.

0:27 Today we are talking about the episode Canamar. I did not write down. It's season two, episode 16? 17.

0:35 17.

0:36 Written by John Chabon and directed by Alan Croker. Off we go.

0:42 Yeah, this is a sort of an odd adaptation of Nick Cage's movie, Con Air, I thought.

0:50 Yes.

0:50 Do you remember that movie?

0:51 Oh, yeah. I think that's a trope that's been used throughout for a very, very long time.

0:57 I guess Harrison Ford did it.

1:01 Because I imagine that film came out around the time that.

1:04 Just a bit before. I actually looked it up. 97 it came out. So within four years, yeah, we're doing our space version of it. And as you say, there are a couple of nice guest star roles in here. Mark Ralston, who played Boggs Diamond, the sodomite from the sisters in Shawshank Redemption.

1:28 Yeah.

1:29 And I say that, you know, to make him sound ugly because he was in that film. He's brilliant in it.

1:35 He's quite good in the film. He's quite good in this episode.

1:37 He is. He plays a mean asshole really well. And the chap, Sean Whelan, who played the nondescript... Well, he played Zumas.

1:48 Yeah, whatever his species was, I'm not really sure.

1:52 I don't think it was identified, but he was terrific, wasn't he?

1:56 Sean had done maybe the previous year. Remember the Got Milk commercials?

2:03 Yes.

2:04 He did the funniest one I'd ever seen. It's a tough one.

2:08 Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?

2:12 Hello?

2:13 Hello, for $ 10, 000, who shot.

2:14 Alexander!

2:16 Hold on, let me get some milk.

2:19 Alexander! I'm sorry, maybe next time.

2:21 Got milk. And he showed up on set and I was like, you're the got milk guy. And he was like, yeah, he was the sweetest guy. He was the nicest guy. Early on in one's career... I mean, I was more impressed with him doing the Got Milk spot than I was having my own job. And he's very funny. He has great timing.

2:46 And he nailed it. I mean, he had a lot of dialogue. And his timbre and his cadence and his rhythm, his rhythms were all just spot on, man.

2:58 And then Holmes Osborne.

3:00 Yes.

3:01 Who plays.

3:02 The clueless Enolian.

3:03 The Enolian official.

3:05 Yes, who knows nothing.

3:08 So Holmes Osborne was a local Kansas City actor.

3:11 All right.

3:13 I was in graduate school.

3:14 All right.

3:15 And he played Stefano in The Tempest, which was my first ever paid gig. And I remember I played Francisco. I'd auditioned as Francisco and as Ferdinand, much different role. I thought that I'd gotten Ferdinand and I was like, that's amazing. And then I read it and I'm playing Francisco. Francisco has two lines in the entire play. We're doing Shakespeare in the Park and there's only so many microphones you could have on a panel.

3:44 Right.

3:45 Maybe eight. Francisco and Adrian didn't get a microphone. So I would have to chase other actors around. And by the time you get halfway through a run, you're not bored, but you're like thinking of things to do. They'd walk away from me.

4:01 The mic's on them.

4:01 The mic's on.

4:02 You've got to say you're lying close enough to their mic.

4:05 I've got to lean in and go, and they would walk away from me. What's going on? But we had our first read through of The Tempest and Holmes comes in. with this affected voice. My name is Stefano. I'm Stefano. And it brought the house down. And it was, you know, and the thing about Shakespeare is like, you can't really grandstand because it has to go by relatively quickly. There's a lot of words in it. The brilliance of Holmes Osborne.

4:37 I thought that he was the greatest actor I'd ever seen in my entire life. And Stefano is not a huge part, but everybody had to respond to him and his, character in a different way than had he just done it like straight and standard. He was brilliant. Yeah.

4:57 Did you remind him of it when you were?

4:59 I did. Yeah.

5:00 Yeah.

5:01 And then he'd also done a character in the boys next door, the lead in the boys next door. And he uses a little lisp and he has this great line where he says, you think you're Xavier Cougat? And he, the guy was, You know, our business is so full of brilliant actors who are workaday actors who never got the luxury that we got, but are just mind blowing when you see them do what they're doing. And, you know, and in this part that he's playing with, as you know, the nameless official was a nothing that I could act his face off.

5:40 Yeah.

5:41 Yeah.

5:42 Well, that was one thing that our show was particularly good at, was finding what you call classically trained actors to inhabit this, you know, Shakespearean intergalactic world. Right. And it was part of the soup, if you will. It was. They were very good at finding them. The teaser. So a nice bit of CGI. I love the floating tricorder in the... Shuttle pod one, just aimlessly floating by. No biosigns.

6:18 That's re-delivers the bad news that it doesn't look like there's anyone alive on the pod. And it was the pod that carried, of course, Trip and Captain Archer, who were on an away mission and getting a bit of R & R.

6:33 Right.

6:34 Were they going to Quito and all? Is that what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

6:40 It's indeterminate what they were doing there, wasn't it? They had gone for a diplomatic blend, I think. And the odd thing is, to me, it's not one of our best moving forward episodes on our show.

7:02 Agreed. But it's not.

7:04 It's not bad.

7:05 It's not a bad episode. I mean, it's as a standalone episode, given that we were still very much in that frame of being, that this is not a bad standalone episode. And as we said just a second ago, inhabited by some really good actors who bring it all to life.

7:25 I just wondered why in the teaser, Enterprise wouldn't have known that Trip and the Captain are gone.

7:32 You know, it's, it's a TV show. Refer yourself to back to, you know, it's drama. So yeah, that's the, that's the teasers. We find this empty shuttle pod one and where's the captain, where's Trip?

7:47 Yeah. And then we find out at the, at the opening of act one, his captain's log had said what they've been doing.

7:53 Yes. They've been meeting up with the Enolians. There's a couple of nice little references here. that the captain had left some note about seeing this game called Panzan, a Panzan match, which was much to his delight, was the closest he'd seen to water polo since leaving Earth. Yeah, and then Phlox, of course, delivers the bad news that there's traces of Trip and Archer's blood inside the pod.

8:20 That results in an abduction theory. And before we know it, we're on the penal colony ship, the Enolene ship. which is taking a bunch of suspected criminals who probably aren't going to face much justice. They're just being shipped off to Canamar, which is a penal colony for the Anolians, I guess. There's a bit of trivia. So Canamar was named after Valerie Canamar, who was the assistant to Michael Westmore.

8:49 No way.

8:50 No way. I love the way they do this. Her surname became a penal colony. which is rather amusing. And at this point, we might mention that 455 Films, our producer, Dave Zappone, is currently in the edit of his documentary of said man, Mr. Michael Westmore.

9:10 Yeah, I think they're nearly finished.

9:12 They're nearly done.

9:13 They might have been locked. We forget as much. We saw him in Vegas. Yeah, our interview is in the Westmore Project. I'm very excited to see it. For those of you who don't know, Raging Bull, Rocky.

9:26 Rocky, yeah.

9:27 Did he win an Oscar for Raging Bull?

9:29 He won an Oscar. Mask, of course. Mask he won an Oscar for, yeah.

9:32 Yeah, an absolute legend. And he is the son of, were there five brothers? He ran all of the studio's makeup.

9:42 Dating back to Valentino, the early days of, you know, Hollywood glam.

9:47 Yeah.

9:47 Yeah, that family is, yeah, they're legendary.

9:50 They're royalty.

9:52 As an aside note, our producer David Supone said to me on the phone just the other day that a lot of people came up to him while they're... we were in Vegas just now at the big 60th anniversary bash asking about the Enterprise documentary and when that would be taking hold. So fingers crossed. We might get to say something.

10:13 Yeah, I've spoken with Dave about this as well. And I think that he has a desire to finish up his documentary career, Enterprise, the documentary that he finishes on. That's great. I think we should do that.

10:29 We can finally tell the story as it is.

10:34 Oh, do I have things to say?

10:38 So, yes, we find Trip and the Captain on the trade ship back to Canamar, and they are shackled in the docks, as it were, on the benches. You have the most annoying shipmate ride next to Zoomass. I wouldn't want to be accused of smuggling.

10:59 They'll probably make an example of you.

11:01 But we don't know what species he is, other than the gills. I love the, the, when he, when he did, you.

11:09 Know, he was so good for our audience. I want to, I want to say that probably we spent five days on this transport on, on the, you know, we'd have to be there in the background, whether or not we were seen or not, you know, sitting there kind of fascinating to be like, you know, in a metal tube for five days, what five, 12, 14, 16 hour days.

11:33 Hot.

11:34 Hot. Yeah. All these people.

11:37 Yeah. All the crew, camera crew and everyone. It's a lot when you're in a cramped space like that. And, you know, in full marks to Alan Croker, I mean, he had some fight scenes to take care of.

11:50 Well, I can't put on that. Like, he does fight scenes so well.

11:55 He does, doesn't he? He really does. I mean, they are, they're the EV suit of directors. I turn the page. And it's like, oh my God, how many pages is this fight scene?

12:05 In a 16 by 10 box.

12:08 Yeah. So then we meet Mark Ralston as Loren, who is one of the captives.

12:17 I'd stay quiet if I were you. The gods don't like questions.

12:21 You guys have been accused by the Anolians of smuggling. We're not quite sure what, but apparently there was some sort of contraband found. spuriously on the shuttle pod.

12:32 Trip left his bag of weed. I thought it was legal.

12:39 That's funny. Trip's the pothead. Pothead engineer. And now we're back on the ship and the Enolians have shown up with Holmes Osborne playing the Enolian official. My officers are kept quite busy.

13:04 I wish I could help you.

13:05 It's just, first of all, it's a zoom call, isn't it? Um, but he, and they can't get any real answers out of him. You know, the, the official, uh, line is, well, you know, we deal with a lot of prisoners. We deal with a lot of smuggling. Uh, you know, your guys could be anywhere. Um, we'll do our best to Paul's not going to let that go. She's like, well, can we send you some, you know, ID photos of our guys? Um, and see if you can't find your officers to locate them.

13:33 I also say that, you know, there's that little moment where you, that I thought John Chabon wrote well and Alan directed well was that moment where, is he a Nausicaan? The one with the- Yes. He's like, you know, give me your food. Give it to me. And he's like, no. Eat your own. Eat your own food. Then they all get shocked and whatever. But it was like, it was a nice little sort of like my imagination of, of what, like, your first day at the mess hall and the joint you like.

14:05 In the joint, yeah, no kidding. Yeah, this episode won an Emmy for its makeup. Oh, sorry, nominated, not won. It was nommed, and rightfully so. For prosthetic makeup in particular, there were three main characters, the Nausicaan, Loren, and your man, Zumas. Yeah, that nice scene with you and the Nausicaan And before you know it, Mark Ralston, as Loren, has suddenly, you know, managed to slip out of his shackles. He's got embedded in his wrist, we found out later, some sort of... Thermal.

14:44 He learned his days in the joint.

14:47 Yeah, it melts the alloy and suddenly... We're in a full-on Con Air prison break.

14:54 But in the meantime, you know, we begin to have, see this, and I'm glad they spent the amount of time they did on the relationship with Zumas and Trip. I really felt like, you know, he was a great comedic partner and this is not, you don't have a lot of opportunities to play comedy. And he was all about finding that point. I'm the chief engineer of a starship.

15:17 He's my captain.

15:19 I should have tried that when they took me. Captain? Zoom us. He was really, really fun to sort of throw the ball around.

15:28 Did you rehearse a lot together prior to takes?

15:32 You know, I don't recall. I don't think so. I think we actually kind of said, like, let's see what happens. Let's just play it.

15:39 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because he had a lot to say, and you had to interject just at the right time. And, yeah, his rhythm was excellent, and your interjections came just right on point.

15:52 And they were deadpan, and it wasn't looking for comedy.

15:56 But that's when it works. Yeah, I mean, he was an unwittingly annoying cellmate, as it were. And there's half the comedy. He has no idea that his endless jabbering is just, you know, would you shut.

16:18 Up?

16:18 Dude. So yeah, first fight scene is, it sets them all free. The Norsican and Lorraine take the ship. But the thing is, the pilot's been injured and is unconscious now in shackles. And there's no one to fly this warp carrier ship. At which point Captain Archer pipes up. I'm a damn good pilot.

16:43 You ever fly a warp ship before? It's harder than you think. Fly a warp engine.

16:48 Yeah, exactly. Can you do that? And Lorenz, obviously, no, don't know how to do that. Yeah, so anyway, the captain offices his services. And before we know it, they've gone into the pointy end of the cargo ship. And now the captain is basically playing for time a bit and trying to get you out of shackles that you can be his compatriot and possibly, you know, feel some sort of escape from these guys.

17:19 Right. And Archer starts to spin this tale about what they are, what we are.

17:27 Yes.

17:28 To this community of thieves. Yeah. And starts, obviously, with, hey, can you fly a warp engine? And he's like, no, I can. And he goes later into, he actually tells the truth later as a lie in the episode.

17:46 Yeah.

17:46 About exactly what we are.

17:48 To get through the checkpoint, I said I was a starship captain and Tucker was my engineer.

17:53 I made quite a point about how I was on a peaceful mission of exploration. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that we're from the Sol system. And yeah, it's rather fun that, I have to say. So, but he's ordered immediately by Loren to take the cargo ship to a binary system, which is four light years away. I think the captain tries to figure out what are we going to do there?

18:20 Which planet are we going to? And he's not told, you know, you'll know on a need-to-know basis. I'll tell you more as we get closer.

18:29 And then he discovers the transceiver.

18:34 Yes, I guess he's trying to send a message.

18:37 Yeah, and that gets booted.

18:39 Smashed right on the nose.

18:42 By Lorraine.

18:43 And that's when, yeah, the captain asked how he got out of the shackles. And he said he had this, you know, from being in Panama once before, he'd learned how to get this subdermal key put under his wrist.

18:59 Subdermal implants. They depolarize triburnium alloys.

19:03 Which is what the shackles are made of.

19:06 Of course it is.

19:07 Yeah, of course it is. Now we're back on the bridge, and the clueless Anolian played by Holmes, he really knows nothing, this guy. Every time you ask him a question, he doesn't know how many smugglers there are. We have hundreds of ships. I don't know the signatures for every one. But now he's in our house. He's on our team. Yeah, and Reed's putting him through his paces. It's time to show up or shove off, mate.

19:35 In the meantime, every time you see Trip and Zumas, it gets more and more annoying. Have you ever been to Borala Prime?

19:44 Can't say I have.

19:45 If you ever go, avoid the polar islands. The people are friendly, but the cold is unbearable.

19:49 Nothing but ice and glaciers.

19:50 I was stranded there for three months when some colleagues of mine decided to leave without me. Imagine that. Yeah.

19:54 It's good because, you know, they always intersperse, you know, what you call dramatic scenes with, if they can, with something lighthearted. Yeah. And this was that, this was, you know, the B story, as it were. And yeah, very nicely done.

20:10 I think that probably Alan recognized really early on that Sean, you know, had the goods and that, you know, we could play it out. In fact, I do remember a couple of times going off script just to see what happened.

20:26 That's very rare in our world. Very rare. I mean, I've never heard of that actually in the four years that we shot this show. of actually going off script a bit.

20:37 Yeah, we just keep going.

20:39 Yeah, well, yeah, to much effect. So yeah, eventually you're like, can I change seats? And not met with the answer you're looking for. And the next thing we know, we're back in the pointy end of the cargo ship. We can see that there are two vessels following and they're Rhinolian fighter ships that have come, as it were, now to the rescue. to find you and the captain, I guess, at our behest from the bridge. And that's the end of Act Two.

21:11 Hey, everyone. Connor Trenere here.

21:12 Hey, guys.

21:13 Dominic Keating here.

21:15 We want to thank you all for tuning in to our Star Trek podcast, The Decon Chamber.

21:19 We've officially opened our merch shop, and we wanted to show you some of the T-shirts you can get there right now.

21:24 There are many designs, including these two wonderful ones.

21:29 I went to Rise Up.

21:30 And all I got was tied up in a basement.

21:33 With him.

21:35 And let me tell you, this is just the beginning. We've got so much more to come.

21:38 If you want to check them out, head to thedeconchamber.com slash shop.

21:43 And if you are a Patreon member, you get a discount on all of our merchandise.

21:48 It's a great way to support the show and rep the Decon Chamber at the same time.

21:52 No, no, no, no.

21:58 In act three, as we enter, we don't have the firepower to defend ourselves in the ruse that the captain is playing.

22:05 Yeah, exactly. Um, we'll be shot down. We just don't, we don't, you know, cause Loren is urging him to, you know, uh, charge weapons, fire back. And the captain's bluff, as it were, is we, we, we, you know, would you, would you want to die here now? They'll just shoot us out of, you know, out of space if we do anything.

22:24 Well, he says he needs trips help.

22:27 And when he says he needs Tripp's help, exactly. And you are released.

22:31 I think I can get us out of this, but I'll need Tucker's help.

22:33 The idea is that you're going to vent plasma out of the back of the cargo ship. It's quite a good plan, actually. I've got to say.

22:41 And then ignite it?

22:42 And then ignite it, which is exactly what we do.

22:45 Well, then we've also surrendered. In Act 3, we surrender to have them come to us. That's an important part of this episode. And then we exit the plasma and blow them up. Cease fire. We surrender.

22:58 And it blows the two patrol ships, the Anolian patrol ships. Then Lorraine is very keen that Captain Archer blows those ships apart with what firepower the cargo ship does hold. And, you know, Scott, as Captain Archer says, is just not interested in adding murder charges to his smuggling charges, which he can deal with.

23:23 Well, Tripp's had enough of the talking.

23:24 Yeah, there's a nice, you know.

23:27 And I think that that shut up line was not scripted.

23:29 Shut up line's not scripted.

23:32 That was nice.

23:32 It reminds me of the time I was on the show.

23:35 Shut up.

23:35 Shut up. Shut up. Yeah, it's very fun. I have to say, yeah, just the right amount of truly pissed off.

23:45 Yeah.

23:46 You know that. Shut up. That person that sits next to you on the bus and says, would you shut up, dude?

23:52 The fourth planet is a trading outpost called Tamal.

23:56 We're headed to this planet called Tamal where we're going to be met by, you know, the hole in the wall gang. Right. And then we cut back to this is, you know, this is where this is where it's good. Could we cut back immediately to the right, the light relief between you and Zumas again?

24:11 Well, what makes you think I want to hear your story? I haven't told you any. You won't let me get a word in edgewise.

24:16 You got a good stretch on this one. It was fun. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, I bet.

24:22 It was also fun because, you know, sometimes when you have the load of the dialogue, it can be a bit of a slog.

24:30 Yeah, and you didn't.

24:31 And I didn't. No. For like the first time.

24:34 Yeah, you must have just had fun. Yeah.

24:37 Yeah, I could just react, respond, and behave.

24:40 To a really good actor, giving you the best balls over the net. Exactly.

24:46 It's like, okay. Yeah, lovely.

24:49 Can we just get 10 minutes silence?

24:52 Just 10 minutes! of course he apologizes to him and he's like but god damn it you're.

25:01 Yeah that's when he was that was i can't i can't think that that was scripted oh no no that was him he.

25:07 Just yeah yeah sorry.

25:11 The gills the stroking of the gills.

25:14 He was, he was one of the best guest stars in terms of throwing the ball back and forth.

25:21 Yeah. He really, he really brought it. He really did. And it's a lot, we've talked about this before, you know, showing up on an already running show. And we would now a season and a half in beyond a season and a half. So we're sort of, you know, set the relationships have been established between the regular cast and the crew and, And then to walk into that space that, you know, as a stranger and be expected to, if you will, take over.

25:50 Hit a home run.

25:51 In your moment, this is your set. And I think it's yours. That's a lot, man. It takes some kahunas.

26:02 You know, I think the secret sauce to that is one's preparation.

26:08 Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt.

26:09 You know those lines, like the back of your hand, and then you can do anything.

26:14 Yeah, agreed.

26:16 Frees you up.

26:17 Yeah, it does. And it scares the regular cast.

26:20 You think they're in for an easy day. He's here. I better get here. Yeah.

26:24 Yes, I did. It happened to me on prison break. And I won't name the actor, but he, you know, usually they give them the honor of first take, as it were, that coverage. And this guy said, Do him first. He wasn't ready for me.

26:43 That happened to me on my very first job in LA, which was Sliders.

26:47 Right.

26:47 I showed up, dialed in.

26:49 All right.

26:50 I knew everything. I could ride with anything. All right. And the rest of the cast was probably three seasons in and were like, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. And then I... Hard.

27:01 All right. And... You could see it in their faces, like, oh, shit.

27:04 Yeah, yeah.

27:05 An actor showed up this morning.

27:07 Exactly.

27:08 Yeah, I know.

27:09 And sometimes that, depending on the people that you're working with, that turns out to be not a great experience for me with some of the main cast, but with Sean, you know.

27:20 We were a very generous regular cast, I think. We, you know, and it came from the top down from Scott. And we, that was just our, it was our culture as actors. We wanted the best scene that we could give. And I can't think of it. I can't think of any of us that ever played silly buggers as regular cast members with other. No.

27:44 Yeah. I don't think any, but I can't think of a scenario at all in our series where we set somebody up to fail.

27:52 No, never. No. This is not what you can say about quite a lot of sets. There were a couple up the road from us. There were that, that all girls show. Well, I mean, I never got a job on that one, but I just.

28:08 Heard anyone- I didn't either, thank God.

28:11 Anyone that was a guest star on that show just said, oh my God.

28:14 Yeah, right.

28:15 Anyway, we digress. And then we have this nice scene between the captain and Loren, which gives us the backstory to his nefarious life as a career criminal, starting from the age of 14.

28:32 I was 14 when I first tasted those rations.

28:35 Whenever I hear that, I go, 14 what? Oh, you've got years there too, have you? Oh, do you? 365?

28:45 365? Just like that?

28:47 Yeah. So, yeah, since he was 14, he's been in and out of reform schools and now, you know, penal colonies. He's a career criminal. He's learned his trade either in a cell Or, you know, on the way to one. So we get the backstory of Mark Ralston's character, Corrado Loren. And it gets pretty heavy. And then we're arriving at Tamal.

29:12 This is where he says, we're going to incinerate the ship. As far as anyone will be able to tell, we crashed trying to land.

29:19 This is when he launches into the best laid plan to crash the ship. in a decaying orbit yeah to make it look like they all died and they won't come looking for me again I'll be free and clear which does not go down well with with the captain.

29:38 Why kill all these people? Just leave them.

29:40 That's a nice close ups in that scene between the captain and Lorraine, I thought. And Alan always gets really good angles. You know, they're they're not just, you know. A slight side on close up. There were some really good angles there. I think we've got to act four already. Crikey. Is this when we dock?

30:01 We get close.

30:03 We get close, yeah.

30:04 The docking hatch was damaged by the patrol ships. Corona wants Tucker to see if he can repair it.

30:09 And that's when Captain Archer springs you. The Enterprise has now found... uh transport near to mall i mean i do write when i look at some of my notes because i'm scribbling these down as we're watching it and you're like it'll mean something to me on the day and then i look back and it's like you know it's like the guy that you know smoked two bowls of weed and went that'll be funny in the.

30:31 Morning yeah exactly and you know and and you know i i don't know what you do but i i write in cursive yeah yeah and You know, for the younger people, that's a style of writing we don't use anymore.

30:44 But sometimes I just sort of scribble that out and I'm like, what the hell did I even say?

30:47 I've got no hair here. What the hell does that mean?

30:51 Yeah, yeah.

30:53 No hair. I don't know what that means. Oh, no hail. Oh, that's right. No hail.

31:02 No hail. They're trying to hail the prison transport.

31:05 They're not getting a response. This is when you set the trap for the Norsican.

31:09 I need a minute. It's a big job.

31:13 Because you can't get the valve open and you need his muscle. And before you know it, you've reached behind you for a big old wrench.

31:22 Exactly.

31:23 And you take him down summarily.

31:26 You almost got it. Trip gets shot.

31:30 Yes, you get shot pretty quick, don't you? Yeah, that's right.

31:34 Trip shot, and then he's talking to Zumas again, and then Enterprise to the rescue. And then you guys all, you and Anthony, show up.

31:42 We dock with the other ship, and then suddenly that other ship contains us.

31:47 In the confined space that we were working in, that's one of the best fights with multiple people.

31:54 Yeah. That I've seen up to this point. But there's a huge fight between then, isn't there? This is when the big fight occurs.

32:01 Yeah.

32:02 Between the captain and Lorraine.

32:05 And then we find within that scene that that's a suicide mission. He's not going to be captured again. I won't go back! He decides, I'm out of here. I can't go back.

32:17 Never doing that again.

32:18 Frig.

32:20 Yeah.

32:20 And it's clear that he doesn't make it.

32:23 The last scene is him making his peace with the fact that he's going to die. I've got some good wobbly Star Trek acting as I come on to this. I have actually said it before, but I might have gone to my first audition and gone walking in like that. Not a titter.

32:46 Not a laugh.

32:47 I said, come on, guys. It's Star Trek. Not a titter, mate. I could have fucked it up right there and then. Definitely. And they wanted to give me that job and they're like, oh, now he's an arsehole.

33:01 I love your story, John. I love your story when you start. I don't know what stage this was in, but all actors will recognize this, that you began to feel yourself.

33:15 Oh, we were at the studio. That was the final audition. Yeah.

33:19 Yeah.

33:20 And I'd gone in there with a bottle of Evian water as the plasma coil that they'd mistakenly sent me that I was all ticked off about. And as I referred to this bottle of water in my hand, and there were 15 people on that L-shaped sofa, and I literally floated up out of my body. I'm on the ceiling looking down at myself like, what.

33:40 Are you doing?

33:42 And luckily I had the presence of mind to go, get back in here now.

33:47 Come back here. Come back here.

33:52 Yeah. But yeah, I was definitely, oh no, this is going away from me. So yes.

34:01 We get back to the ship. We're back on the ship. We speak with Holmes' character and Archer has no patience for his explanation. As you're aware, my engineer and I were falsely arrested. We almost wound up in Canamore.

34:17 It's quite... You know, to my mind, this is one of the strongest moments Captain Archer's had in our show to date. When he just tells this guy to his face, you know, what report are you looking for? I'll give you a report. We were, you know, unlawfully captured, hijacked, put on a penal colony ship. And you're a doofus.

34:48 You wanted a report?

34:50 You've got one. Is there anything else to add?

34:53 Right. Yeah.

34:54 It's a really good moment for him. And it's really well shot. I said what made me giggle is you and him march off. And then T'Pol turns tail and rather sort of vixenly.

35:10 Yeah.

35:10 I know you're looking. She makes the corner. Yeah.

35:15 Yeah.

35:15 It's a great end.

35:16 And some of the notes I have for the end, as we talked about before, Alan shoots actors really well.

35:29 You know, he is the camera with him as the director and the way in which we would all be able to communicate with him. He's so seamless.

35:41 Yeah.

35:42 And you're right, and you said earlier about his close-ups, and he nails them.

35:47 He does, and his editing, he's editing as he's shooting. And you can tell, and you can always tell the good ones, because they are doing that. And, you know, he just, in the fight scenes, there were just moments where, you know, characters would go to the ground, and then suddenly you're covering them And he picks up the coverage.

36:11 It's such an interesting point of view. He keeps that energy going. Exactly. Because it is a static episode. But this is the bottle episode, really. This is truly a bottle episode. They were probably trying to save money at this point. I hadn't thought about that.

36:34 And one of my other notes is that how much having seen this three times, how much music plays specifically when we're, when it is static, when we're all just there waiting for something to happen. Who was our music supervisor?

36:55 Oh God, I'd have to, that's going to be Sarah's job to look that up.

36:59 Well, they were amazing.

37:01 Yeah.

37:02 You know, for our audience, these were recorded videos. live in a room with an orchestra.

37:11 Yes. The orchestra was literally just past the balconies where our trailers were. There was a set down there. Scott took me in there once and I saw them actually recording one of the episode's scores. There was a full orchestra. No half measures. They spent money on these shows.

37:33 I feel bad for those people, especially now. The way that We're sitting in our industry. Paramount's empty.

37:43 I know. It is a ghost town. There's two shows maybe in L.A., The Pit and something else maybe shooting.

37:53 There's not many.

37:55 There's not many.

37:57 And, you know, I will say for myself that as an actor, you know, you expect to lose your job. You expect to have to find the next job. But if you were cellist.

38:11 Yeah, right.

38:14 That, for Paramount, you had a full-time job.

38:17 Yeah, yeah.

38:18 That's gone.

38:20 Yeah, it is.

38:21 And it's such a sad state of affairs at the moment. And I don't know if it can come back. I hope it does. But it's a sad state of affairs.

38:33 Yeah, it is.

38:34 I have a little trivia for the audience. When the show was ending, You know, I said to Bob, hey, there's a couple of things I'd like from the show. And he said, well, okay. Bob is this like six foot four, super thin, very handsome costume designer and a lovely man. And he said, okay. we'll come in with a trench coat because there was security everywhere. Yeah.

39:03 We got the cars got every now and again, they do a spot check in the back in your trunk or the back of your SUV. Yeah.

39:10 So I went into costumes and I, and I said, Bob, not to you. I said it to somebody so you can't get in trouble. I said, I'd like this. I'd like my away jacket. And I'd like that leather jacket that I wore in this episode. I put them both on, put my, overcoat on, walked out, I still have this jacket.

39:32 God bless.

39:33 Yeah.

39:34 Yeah, nice. Nice keepsake. What other bit of trivia do I notice? So this story was coming up in episode 19 of this season, Judgment. which was being developed around the same time. And the original ending was an escape from a prison ship to that episode. And then Brannon decided that he would take that piece of judgment and make it its own episode, which is how we got... Oh, interesting.

40:06 Kalamar Yeah. They were always good at recycling. I mean, you know, like that speech you had in Shuttle Pod 1 about fishing with the captain, spearfishing. That didn't make the cut, but it showed up.

40:21 Season three, same speech. I don't know, Dom. I swear to God, I might have got a couple of episodes delivered to me that said Voyager on them.

40:32 You're kidding me.

40:33 That's funny.

40:34 Yeah, I played Ensign Kim for a bit.

40:44 Regarding this episode, the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, it doesn't move the story forward. It doesn't really do much. I said this earlier in our conversation. You know what it was? It was it was it was a character actor driven episode that I think, you know, carries its own weight.

41:04 Yeah, it does. Well, very good episode and some nice comedy stuff from you and me and not bad action man stuff from me. And yeah, very good fun. I don't remember much about shooting it. I'll be honest with you. I do.

41:20 Do you?

41:21 Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. But I was.

41:25 For five days. You learn a lot about your temporary relationship with the people you're working with.

41:33 Right. Right. Indeed. I hear that. Well, very good. We'll get to episode 18 shortly. And I hope you're all enjoying the show. Until the next one, nanu nanu.

41:47 We'll see you. Hope you enjoyed it.