Enterprise "Horizon" watch party | S02 E20

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

0:05 It's the Decon Chamber.

0:12 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekkies and Trekkers, welcome back to another Decon Chamber Watch Party episode. I'm your co-host Dominic Keating, joined as always with my bestie upstairs, Mr Connor Trenere's in the house. Heyo. We're flying a duo today to talk about episode 20 in our season two, which is Horizon, a long overdue episode solely concentrating on the character of Travis Mayweather, played by Anthony Montgomery. Andre Bourmanis wrote it. It was directed by James A. Kontner.

0:51 Has a couple of good guest star roles. His mother, played by Joan Pringle. His brother, played by Corey Mendel Parker, and a blonde cargo ship shipmate, played by Nicole Forrester, playing Nora, who, funnily enough, played a Darbo girl in an episode of Deep Space Nine. A little bit of trivia.

1:12 I love how they're just bringing them back in. I love that. I really do.

1:15 I love that, too. I mean, I look at some of these guest star actors that, you know, was just great in our show, and you go... You know, did they go on to have careers? Or did the business just eat them up and... Some did. Preferably spit them out.

1:33 Yeah.

1:34 I mean, look, I was thinking about this too, Con. You know, look at the guest stars we did attract on our show. I mean, we, you know, we just did Canamar. And we had, what was his name, from the Shawshank Redemption. And he was terrific, wasn't he? One of the three sisters. And of course, it was the big tall dude who was the nasty prison guard.

1:56 Clancy Brown. Clancy Brown, well done.

1:58 Clancy Brown and Dean Stockwell, of course. I mean, obviously that came through a circuitous route. Peter Weller. I mean, the list is pretty impressive for a, what you might term another Star Trek show on UPN, we attracted some pretty heavyweight talent.

2:16 That's a good point you're making. I was thinking about this. I read something today.

2:20 There was a beginning of a merging between film actors and television actors. And the actors who were fortunate enough to sort of land themselves in film at first would choose projects if they could choose them. that were going to be, for instance, Star Trek or Law and Order or, you know, significant franchises that they do in TV. That's all changed now. But there was a real time when it was film or TV.

2:55 Yeah, absolutely. And in and out of the twain hardly met. You certainly didn't do a commercial. And George Clooney might do a whiskey commercial for Japan.

3:04 Yeah.

3:05 Possibly for England, but that was like, you know, you've got to back the truck up for that one.

3:11 Yeah.

3:11 And now he'll sell coffee happily in America. There are no guardrails anymore.

3:16 Not anymore.

3:17 You see all of these actors, really what you want now, because our business has changed so much, is that what you want is actually.

3:26 To be the person who is the spokesperson for insurance or a drug.

3:34 Or whatever, because what's going to happen is that they're going to pay you a lot of money.

3:39 You know, there's seemingly no sort of, you know, sense of who they're doing that.

3:47 I mean, look, you know, you're looking at times in which I've just started watching The Diplomat.

3:53 Oh, you're great, isn't it? I'm well into it. Yeah.

3:56 Fantastic.

3:57 It really is, isn't it?

3:59 But they do eight episodes a a season. Back in our day, we were banging out, ideally, 26. And that no longer exists. So if you're trying to make a living in this business, boy, selling a weird drug that.

4:16 Yeah, no kidding.

4:17 Yeah. Let's not digress too much. Teaser. We find Travis up in his sweet spot in that part of the ship where the grav plating... Do you remember what the... the scenario was that he could find this spot.

4:32 Yes. There was a, there was a sweet spot and you're out.

4:35 I never shot in the sweet spot.

4:36 So. In the pilot.

4:38 Yeah.

4:39 And I'd forgotten that it ever got used again. And it's used again in this episode where you had no gravity. And that was his place of solace. And I didn't remember that we'd used it again.

4:52 And quiet to you. Yeah. And he's there reading a book. He's got his water container and he's just having a quiet moment. And all of a sudden, he's called to the bridge. And it turns out that Admiral Forrest has been on the blower to us. And not far away, something like 11 light years or something, is a double gas giant, which have got volcanoes that are going to go blowing up.

5:16 It's like going to Six Flags in Sylmar.

5:20 It is a firework display, 11 light years away, a mere stone's throw.

5:24 Some geologic fireworks. It'll be fun.

5:28 So suddenly we're all on a course altering to go there.

5:31 It seemed to me that it was, at least up until that point, the shortest intro that we'd done. That was.

5:39 Very short.

5:40 Very short.

5:41 Yeah. There's something sort of hauntingly lovely about him finding him up there upside down. How did they shoot that, the upside downness, and then him traveling down and then turning around? How was that done?

5:54 They'd flip it. so that when you're sitting there, you're just sitting.

5:59 But the optics are is that, you know, we were- They'd shoot.

6:02 From above, in other words, to get that sense of- Yeah.

6:06 You'd shoot from the bottom. Well, what they'd do is they'd flip the set, I think.

6:11 Right.

6:12 And so you'd be on a cable as you were.

6:15 Yeah, so he was definitely on a cable coming down.

6:18 And then they'd flip it, and then you'd just shoot it as you were sitting.

6:21 It's hauntingly sort of, beautiful him up there on his own. And it has a certain quietude. Yeah.

6:30 I think it was an underutilized idea of a set.

6:34 Yeah. And of course, you know, this, this we're going to talk about because it comes up in the episode. Of course, he learned about the sweet spot on any ship because he's what's known as a boomer grew up on a cargo ship, born on a cargo ship. I love the fact that later on, you know, he, he talks about going home, going to this beaten up, Some of the aliens called it something else like a skug haul or something.

6:58 Like a used car.

7:00 Sarah, what's the word that they use when they talk about when aliens talk disparagingly about our ship?

7:06 Tin can?

7:07 A garbage scow. They call the Enterprise a garbage scow, sir.

7:13 A garbage scow.

7:14 There we go. Yeah, I mean, he talks about home and it is something of a garbage scow. as they truck deuterium and whatever else around the universe from one station to another. So we're in act one. We're in the situation room and we're looking at the said gas giants. The volcanoes are erupting and we're going to make the detour.

7:36 That's been sort of, you know, metered out in the first scene. And then we're in the captain's ready room and Travis comes in and asks basically, listen, I've looked at the direction we're going and the line we're taking, and we're going to pass not far from where my mom and dad and brother are running the cargo ship.

7:56 Would you mind if I took a little leave? And, you know, I'll miss the gas giants, sadly. But it's been a while since I've been home. And I think we know at this point that he knows that his dad's not been well.

8:11 My father's been ill for a few months. But that's all we know.

8:15 That's all we know. So anyway, the captain signs off on that and he's ready. He's prepared to make the pass off and to meet up with the cargo ship and let Travis have some time with his family. You know, fully enough. I mean, as much as underutilized Anthony's character was on our show. And let's, you know, let's address that elephant in the room now because it was he was underused. In fact, there's a there's an article that just came out by Whitney Seibold. Do you know this film critic guy? He comes on KCRW from time to time.

8:45 On Madeline Brand's show, I think particularly. He just wrote an article. It literally is, it's no nonsense, the most underutilized main character in the whole history of Star Trek, Travis Mayweather.

8:57 I mean, I want to add something about, and I agree that Anthony was woefully underutilized. I think that Star Trek in particular, you were going to get your episodes regardless of of how impactful the writers or producers thought that your role was on the show. You were going to get some opportunities. You had to take those and run with them. And he did. It's almost like you're designing a car and you've got these components of the car and they need other components that stay with the car.

9:31 And sometimes those components aren't as... They're pathetic. Yeah.

9:36 Yeah. Agreed. And you and I were very fortunate that... Two things, really. We gelled quickly as actors and then as friends who were actors and then as castmates and characters on the show. And they saw that chemistry. And there was one scene in particular early on. Thank goodness. I mean, I read on Memory Alpha when they were formulating this show, there were a couple of directions they were going to go. And neither of them were you and I. You and Travis were going to be best friends.

10:08 Or me and Travis might have been the duo. That scene we have when we're looking at the transporter for the first time. They were setting up what they thought was going to be their through line thought. And then, as we know, they're watching the show and they see what works and what perhaps doesn't work as well. And they write accordingly. And they were very fortunate.

10:30 I think the key ingredient to that is if they can hear your voice in the writer's room. And that makes that easier for them and more effective for them to tell a story.

10:42 Yeah, it sure does.

10:43 And I would say that, in all honesty, Mayweather... didn't really have opportunities to create that.

10:51 No, agreed.

10:52 Have moments to really create that. So he was- And.

10:55 The same for Linda, you know, I mean, I know she grimaced at times, you could tell. Yeah. Was not happy, in inverted commas, with what she was given to do. I guess, you know, Malcolm, you know, look, we've talked about this many times. The triumvirate was you, Jolene, and Scott. And that is the classic thrust of a Star Trek show.

11:17 And then they're not going to use the prosthetic character guy because it costs them a lot of money to bring him in and put him in that stuff.

11:25 And it's the whole episode about those people.

11:26 And it's the whole episode if they're bringing him in. But it was very rare that John would have to come in and do, you know, a six-eighth page in all that gear.

11:35 And it's not a democracy. No, it's not.

11:38 So Captain's Radio Room. Travis comes in and requests leave to go visit with his family. I like that bit with Scott when Scott says, you know, I nearly didn't become a Starfleet captain. I longed to haul cargo.

11:52 There was a time when I gave serious thought to serving on a cargo ship. There's a story behind it, which he doesn't ever share.

12:01 No, no. And it never came out, does it? No, I mean, no. You know, you can imagine maybe there was some sort of testy stuff between him and his dad. who was, you know, Starfleet through and through. You know, maybe the son didn't want to follow in the father's footsteps. Anyway.

12:16 I don't want to work for Ford. I want to drive a big, giant truck.

12:19 Yeah. And it's then, I think it's now that we learn that Travis knows that his father's been unwell and Scott offers the services of Dr. Phlox should that become necessary. I thought that was a nice little touch. It was a good scene. You know, Scott's such a generous actor, too. You know, he always gave everything. all of us, room to be in our characters whenever we were around him.

12:42 There was never a sense that, and we hear these stories about other lead actors on shows where if you get a moment in the sun, they're going to rip it away from you.

12:52 There's always a payback.

12:54 Yeah.

12:55 No scenarios with those kinds of actors. You know, if you get an opportunity, there's going to be payback.

13:01 Yeah. So now we're in engineering. We're going to start the B story now, which is a It's an odd story. I mean, this is the lighthearted part of what is otherwise quite a sort of, you know, tricky story for Travis when he finally goes home. But yeah, the lighthearted story between Trip and T'Pol and you're prepping for the volcano visit and you bring up the ubiquitous movie night scenario that was a recurring theme on our show.

13:30 Starting Tuesday, it's going to be movie night every night.

13:34 And she, you know, cocks an eye and pulls a face. She has no interest in movies whatsoever. But it's going to be a horror movie night extravaganza.

13:43 Trilogy.

13:43 A trilogy of Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Son of Frankenstein. And maybe, this is the bit, I remember Abbott and Costello's Frankenstein. Oh, my.

13:56 I loved that movie.

13:58 Loved it.

13:58 As a kid, oh, I loved that movie. You know, and I will say.

14:03 just now that we're talking about this, I have heard, and I think that you have as well, whether it's true, I don't know, but that Brannon had said something along the lines of, I wanted to basically make Seinfeld in space.

14:17 Yes, that rings a bell. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:20 If you think.

14:20 About it, kind of, this might be a bit of a Seinfeld. Take away the half-hour comedy bit of it, but Seinfeld in space in the sense that Nothing really happens.

14:36 Nothing really happens.

14:37 But you're acting and behaving throughout the whole thing.

14:40 Yeah, but it shines a light on each of the characters and how they behave in said scenario. Yeah, agreed. Now we're in the mess hall. Dominic, as Malcolm, is tucking into dear Dorothy's fabulous prime rib. I loved it when I had to eat these scenes. I'd eat a bit, and then I'd pack the rest up and take it home.

15:01 And that would be dinner, probably lunch the next day.

15:04 You made such good food. We were so fortunate.

15:07 Maybe other shows have, like, sea packs and freeze-dried whatever.

15:12 She was a serious, serious chef.

15:16 Chef, yeah, absolutely. She really was.

15:18 She took great pride in it. She would ask us if we liked it. She sure did.

15:22 Oh, absolutely. You know, I was her biggest fan. There's one outtake of me doing another scene with Travis in an earlier episode where I literally don't remember what I'm going to say.

15:32 F * * * problems.

15:34 For one day.

15:41 Mmm, good. You are stupid. You are so stupid. It's delicious.

15:54 We're talking about our respective families. Travis is outlining his on the cargo ship and Malcolm sort of grimaces at the thought of even being on the same ship as his family. Well, they better post a psychologist on board because I'd need one if my parents were roaming the corridors. Couldn't bear the idea. In fact, he hasn't seen his family in 10 years.

16:16 The last time you'd had a reunion and you were like, it was 10 years and it certainly didn't sound like it went great.

16:21 No. And then we discussed the differences between, you know, a Starfleet deployment apropos working a cargo ship. And that's when Hoshi calls over the intercom and has Travis go to the bridge, I think. And it's bad news. Captain Archer visits him. Travis up again in his sweet spot. We learn that Travis's father has passed away.

16:43 Commander Tucker told me what happened. I'm sorry. Very nice scene.

16:49 It's a lovely scene. It's very moving. And Anthony just lets the camera be on him. Whenever I see an actor cry, you're like, did they blow the crystals?

16:58 I know. Is that real or not real?

17:02 Did they blow the crystals or did you find that yourself, mate?

17:06 I think I can always tell. You can.

17:08 What do you think? I mean, I think he found it.

17:10 I think that what happened was, and this is just my assumption.

17:14 For those of you that don't know, what I'm talking about is there are methyl crystals that you can have blown into your eyes just before the take. And suddenly you will well up.

17:27 I had a different technique, actually. I would take Vicks Vapor Rub.

17:31 Oh, really?

17:32 And put it under my eyes and then have Jeff Lewis, our makeup guy.

17:37 Cover that up.

17:38 And then I'd lower my head so that it would all... It would all just lift up.

17:43 So it was actually, you know, they were tears. But there's also, and now you see it all the time, where you can tell the product they're using as tears.

17:53 You can, can't you?

17:54 And I wondered that because you do see the streak, don't you? And it's not quite the same as natural tears. There's a residue there, isn't there?

18:01 It's so very difficult, as you know, to spend, I don't know, let's say, kindly, that scene took three hours.

18:11 Oh, at least.

18:12 And then you have multiple takes of each angle.

18:17 Yeah.

18:17 That's only so many times that you can, you know, well it up.

18:21 Yeah, there are some actors, actresses in particular too, who can cry on cue and just find it.

18:27 And they're crazy pants.

18:29 LAUGHTER Well, I was going to say I can do it, but yeah, but yeah. Hello. Crazy pants. So yeah, it's a very moving scene as he learns of his father's demise and now he's going to go home to a much different welcome and homecoming. Yeah.

18:49 Do we know at that point that he had, he does say this in this scene, he hadn't really had any contact with his father yet.

18:58 For a few years.

19:00 We were in calm range a few months ago.

19:02 I guess I wasn't ready to talk to him yet.

19:06 They haven't had a lot of contact. And that's when, this is a lovely part of the scene where Archer advises him, well, you know, funnily enough, your father wrote a recommendation letter to me when I was deciding on who was gonna be my helmsman.

19:19 I wrote it down. Never met a better stick and rudder man.

19:22 There we go. Natural stick and rudder man. Yeah.

19:25 And I'd be a fool if I didn't choose you.

19:28 It's a lovely line. Well done, Andre. And then Anthony's, Travis's response is equally moving. I wish he would have told me that. It's such a sort of chagrin, isn't it? Fathers and sons and so much unsaid.

19:47 I think all of us who have lost a parent can echo the feelings of what that scene is and that, you know, the regret.

19:57 Yeah. And that was done very, very well.

20:01 So now we're in sickbay and we're carrying on with the B story where T'Pol is now trying to wriggle out of going to movie night. And Phlox gives her a hyper spray and says, you know, get on with it. If you're looking for a medical excuse, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

20:18 Well, I'm a little curious that this theme for the B story carried on quite the way that it did. And her concern about not just going and sucking it up, why it mattered so much to not be in a group watching, well, Frankenstein is a brilliant piece of work and Bride of Frankenstein is a brilliant piece of work.

20:40 Son of Frankenstein might not be a brilliant piece of work, but, you know, why you wouldn't go there and just deal with it?

20:48 Yeah, I mean, it's funny enough, I was watching the episode with my wife, Sarah, who, you know, is quite a keen eye of these shows, and she thought, funnily enough, that this was rather out of character for T'Pol, that it was somewhat manufactured, this, you know.

21:06 I would agree. I would agree. I would agree. Yeah, it seemed.

21:09 sort of out of the energy that we were doing for our show and incorporating her into.

21:16 The group, as it were.

21:17 And her resistance just seemed a little too much.

21:24 A bit labored. Yeah, labored. A little bit. You know, we know, I think Andre's discussed this in prior episodes, you know, you've got your main storyline, and if that's heavy, they want to offset it with something a little more lighthearted. it's 40 minutes of episodic telly, certainly 25 years ago. That may not be the case so much today in the formatting.

21:47 Well, don't ask a Vulcan to do comedy.

21:53 It's like getting a German in. Well, it's particularly true. There are some very funny Germans.

22:00 Very long flight.

22:01 Thank you for flying Lufthansa. Anyway, yeah, hyperspray. And then we're back with Travis and Trip. And Travis is prepping to leave to go visit his cargo ship home.

22:15 Zephyr Cochran designed that engine himself.

22:18 And oddly enough, and I didn't notice this, but it came up in the trivia notes. In Travis's, because you guys talk about Zephyr Cochran, don't you, in that scene?

22:29 Yeah, he had his, no pun intended, his signature on their warp engine.

22:34 Yes, that's right. And then when we get to the cargo ship home and he is not given the guest quarters, but is, you know, given his old room back.

22:45 Right.

22:45 And there's the star chart. And I did not notice this, but Sarah did. There is a model of the Phoenix, which is Zephyr and Cochran's ship there in Travis's room. I love the fact that the attention to detail on our show with things like this was really on point.

23:02 Yeah, yeah.

23:05 Easter eggs.

23:05 Yeah, little Easter eggs. Exactly. We're in act two now. We've docked with the cargo ship and Travis has made the pass off. I've been serving on cargo ships for a long time.

23:16 I've made a few contacts here and there.

23:18 I did find it slightly odd that, you know, they're walking and talking in the walk and talk scene straight away. And they didn't address the fact that her husband and his father had died in right off the bat. Did you find that slightly glaring? You had this rather stilted conversation that she said all the scrapes that Enterprise has gotten into are season one and some of season two.

23:45 No, I did.

23:47 I found that actually the ghost of the father's passing really was not addressed much.

23:55 Not much, not enough. I would have at least had two or three you know, lines between mom and son as he arrives that just dealt with that. I mean, wouldn't that be tantamount on everyone's mind that, you know, I found that a bit odd.

24:15 Well, and also it wasn't as though Travis was coming back to the horizon. There's nothing going wrong yet. And so he's literally coming home to visit and his.

24:27 To bereavement. Yeah.

24:29 Exactly.

24:30 The confines of his visit are now very different. And it's not just a visit, it's now, you know.

24:37 In the meantime, who we meet very soon, his brother Paul has taken the helm.

24:42 An ensign ought to salute before addressing a captain.

24:45 The dynamics and the politics of families are fascinating.

24:50 Yeah.

24:51 This was a, I think it was a moment missed.

24:54 Agreed. I think so. Yeah, I mean, I think the thrust of it became too much about outwitting the pirates rather than just dealing with the family dynamic.

25:05 It seemed to me that, again, skipping over the passing of the father, the strained dynamic between the two brothers was put more in focus than the grief of all of it.

25:18 Right. Yes, agreed. Yeah, because as you said earlier, just a minute ago, the father's passing was... barely addressed really it jumped out at me anyway i did quite like the bit when they go.

25:30 To warp and there's a standby to go to warp a good.

25:34 Jolt as the old the old cow gets going the ship is a bit janky a bit janky uh i loved it so you know a lot of the paint work is you know looks distressed it just looks like an old cafeteria doesn't.

25:47 It yeah yeah you did.

25:49 It yeah so he's not in the guest quarters where he expected to find himself but he's back in his old room And the star chart that we just talked about is up on the wall. It's like him looking at, you know, football magazines as a kid.

26:01 I'm going to play for that team.

26:03 And these are all parts of the universe that he wanted to visit as a young man growing up on the cargo ship. I thought that was a nice, a nice bit. And then they finally, him and mum finally address the passing of the father. And it's, it's a, it's a nice, there's a nice moment there between them as they embrace and address that loss and, going to get through this, Mom.

26:25 And talking about our director, Jim Cotner, we called him Jim.

26:31 You know, I think that he managed that pretty well, what he could do with what was unsaid as a director.

26:39 I think he did a nice job with that.

26:40 Agreed. So now we're going to meet Travis's brother in earnest, Paul, who is now acting captain of said cargo ship, The Horizon. That was a nice moment that Travis shows up in his Starfleet uniform and is summarily told, you know.

26:56 You might want to change into something a little less conspicuous.

27:00 You might want to change out of that.

27:02 Yeah.

27:03 Captain.

27:04 Yeah.

27:04 You can tell there's there's unspoken, uncomfortable energy there, isn't there? There's resentment there. And not least that he left, but he ended up flying, you know, the first warp ship in Starfleet. You know, he went to the major leagues. And then we're back on the bridge, Tripp and T'Pola discussing the merits of Mary Shelley.

27:26 I thought it was kind of amusing that she was like, the line is... Mary Shelley wrote it, the wife of a famous poet.

27:33 It was written by Mary Shelley, who was married to a very famous poet.

27:36 Didn't say Ursula Blythe Shelley.

27:38 Right, right. Funny enough, a bit of trivia, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is arguably the first sci-fi novel. Yeah.

27:49 Yeah.

27:50 Yeah. It's got science fiction in there. It is. Anyway, you're trying to persuade her to come along to movie night, and you're proponing all the good advantages of a communal experience, which is just flies over the Vulcan's head.

28:09 It seems as though T'Pol was just in a mood this week.

28:12 Yes, it did, didn't it? And just as you're trying to persuade her, the captain pipes up with a, you know, come as my date.

28:21 Movie at 1930, you'll be my date.

28:23 I beg your pardon. Once again, we find ourselves, I think they're still toying with the idea.

28:28 They were.

28:29 The captain and T'Pol are going to be a thing.

28:32 They definitely, they didn't know what to do. They knew they had to do something. Right.

28:37 I believe it's in our second season where they really attempt to do something about this with T'Pol and the captain. And saying things like that would make an audience think like, oh.

28:52 Oh, they're going there. Yeah. And she's absolutely flabbergasted by the idea. Right.

28:59 It's rather amusing. T'Pol, four years away. Yeah.

29:05 We're back on Horizon and Travis is now in Civvies and he's making upgrades, much to his brother's chagrin.

29:13 I don't remember asking for any upgrades.

29:16 He's come there with all his Starfleet experience per Malcolm Reed, per Trip Tucker III. And yeah, he's making all sorts of modifications to systems.

29:27 It's classic brother versus brother.

29:29 And this classic sibling rivalry, it just bubbles up and blows out. You know, what happens when you go and this goes wrong and I don't know how to fix what you tinkered with.

29:40 With.

29:40 Good point. I mean, I mean.

29:43 The next thing that we get to see is that.

29:46 Well, he's back in his room and Nora shows up. Nora pays him a visit.

29:50 He offers to get rid of the grav plating in their room so that they can.

29:56 Have a float.

29:57 I don't even know. What do you say we turn off the grab plating and jump on the bed? And get grounded again? But I found that curious.

30:04 Yeah, you'll love it.

30:07 Yeah, it just seemed to be like a sexual innuendo.

30:10 Yeah, I mean, because she arrives, you know, she arrives at his room unexplained. We don't know who she is. But obviously they kind of grew up together on the ship, I guess. And they're old friends in that respect. Yeah, it's slightly odd that we don't know anything about her and all of a sudden she's his confidant. Yeah, and they start talking about whether Paul, his brother, is ready for this job as acting captain or captain in earnest.

30:41 Some of the.

30:42 Crew are starting to wonder if Paul's ready.

30:45 For the job. I did like the reference to Magellan and Columbus too as the great explorer. That was a nice little touch from Andre, I thought.

30:54 Columbus Magellan, Travis Mayweather. She's also saying that, you know, it's not going well. He's having a hard time. They missed a couple of.

31:02 Drops.

31:03 Drops. Exactly. And that it may take some time for him to... Get his sea legs, as it were. The captain. No, true, yeah.

31:13 And as they're discussing that, suddenly there's... Is that spatial turbulence?

31:18 No.

31:19 Horizon is definitely under attack.

31:22 It's not turbulence.

31:23 And that closes out Act 2.

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32:03 It's a great way to support the show and rep the Decon Chamber at the same time.

32:07 No, no, no, no. Act three opens on the Horizons Bridge. They realize that they're under the threat of some pirates taking them over.

32:21 What's going on? We're under attack. By who? I don't know.

32:25 And they go to max warp. But they're carrying 30,000 metric tons of cargo. And there's no way that they can outrun this pirate ship.

32:35 There's been a beacon that's been attacked.

32:37 And that's when they, after having been hit a few times, the pirate ship sticks a beacon to their hull, which is a dichobalt signature explosive. I wrote that down. Yeah. And Travis has experience of this and knows it or thinks he could go out on the hull and take that off. He's learned from Malcolm Reed that that's something that could be done. And then they get into this sort of, you know, him, his mother and the brother get into a diatribe between the three of them. about how best to deal with this nefarious situation they're in.

33:14 It doesn't involve fighting back, really. It involves capitulation.

33:18 Paul basically says, let's go to warp two and run.

33:22 And the mother just is like, just give them what they want. And let's, you know, walk away from this unharmed. And Travis keeps trying to sort of advise them from his experience on Starfleet. that there is another way to deal with these a-holes.

33:36 And I think that there's a point in this conversation too, if I'm not wrong, I might be getting ahead of myself, but that the abandonment of the prodigal son, that he left to go do something else and not do the family business.

33:49 I appreciate the advice, but this isn't your problem. You're not part of this crew anymore. More tension, more drama amongst the family. And then we cut from that, of course, to the lightheartedness of movie night.

34:04 We can't stop the film if it's disturbing your conversation. Lox is talking too much, obviously.

34:10 Lox is talking too much. Apparently the Basari come up again, don't they? The Frankenstein analogy is much like some experience he had with the Basarians. T'Pol is not in the least bit interested, and she's busy on her pad. One thing to note is, as a Vulcan... She's eating popcorn with her fingers.

34:30 Does she have popcorn? Does she actually eat popcorn?

34:33 Yeah. It's interesting. They could have dropped the ball there. Yeah.

34:37 Yeah, a little bit.

34:39 You know, if she's going to cut up breadsticks with a knife and fork in the captain's mess hall. Yeah.

34:45 But she ate a handful of popcorn in somebody's hands.

34:48 Yeah. Anyway, and then we're back on Horizon. We find Travis now down at Module 5. reprogramming something that he feels is going to be in the interest of the cargo ship and its safety. Paul, his brother, enters and finds him tinkering around again and not happy.

35:09 I just want us to be prepared. Us. You keep talking as if you're a part of this crew.

35:15 And then they get into the whole, yeah, they get into the whole father thing and it all just bubbles.

35:19 Up, really. You weren't even here when he died.

35:22 You knew he was sick, but you didn't really care. It's a good scene between them, actually. There's something interesting about that actor that played him, Corey Mendel Parker. He came off slightly duplicitous. Did that strike you at all just in his way of being?

35:41 Well, you know, it all comes back to the classic brother-brother that he was probably thought of as second son.

35:52 Right.

35:53 And that Travis most likely would have been the captain that he's gotten his position as a result of.

36:02 Leaving. Yeah.

36:03 Yeah. But I also, I'll also say that in regard to the sibling relationship slash rivalry, that what we know about Travis is it's almost endless positivity. Yes. And that he probably carried that as he was growing up and brother and didn't quite have that. And his grounding was not more negative or.

36:29 He was just resentful. He was jealous.

36:32 Jealous. There you go. There you go. And to put it in real layman's terms. And he played that well. He played that resentment and jealousy well.

36:40 It's a good scene. You know, we find out really right around there that he's really not ready to be captain.

36:46 If you want to be an effective captain, you've got to set your personal feelings aside.

36:51 No, right.

36:52 Option he he has to do this he's got to find this out and his mother says as much in the mess hall scene that he you know he's going to have to figure this out because it is what it is yes.

37:03 It results in a in a complete standoff between the two of them you knew he was sick and you only come home when it was convenient for you and there are a lot of shots across the bow.

37:12 This fancy pants job now on the first starship going out And I'm sitting here lugging 30,000 tons of deuterium.

37:22 Being shot at by pirates every day is like, are we going to make it?

37:27 Right.

37:28 Yeah. We're in the mess hall of Horizon with Mum by now. This was a nice touch, wasn't it? The nutrient-packed strawberry shortcake.

37:36 The first time I tasted real shortcake was in San Francisco. It just wasn't the same.

37:42 I thought that was rather cute. And, you know, and then he said he was in San Francisco and ate the real thing. Wasn't nearly as good. It's like eating Velveeta pasta sauce. And, you know, you can go to a fancy Italian restaurant, but if you've grown up on Velveeta pasta sauce.

38:00 You're going to love that.

38:01 You're going to love it. Yeah.

38:03 I wish that there were more of those kinds of interactions between the family than we got. It is a TV show that has 43 minutes to tell our story. But I think that there were opportunities, as we've said before, that were kind of missed about one of our rare opportunities for our show to explore our own families.

38:29 I thought at that time ER was the big show that was just coming off the air, I think. And I thought that we were going to be something like ER in space, that it would be the relationships between the protagonists, the seven series regular characters, that that would be the thrust of each week's drama. And it wasn't most.

38:49 Of the time. It's a delicate balance, isn't it? It is.

38:52 You know, they had a format con, and we know, and they had a very, obviously a very successful one. They'd done three shows back to back, seven years apiece. It involved Deep Space Nine maybe as its own animal. But certainly Next Gen and Voyager were, yeah, each week we'd meet another alien race and sort it out and move on. And off we would go.

39:12 Yeah.

39:13 That comes from, you know, Roddenberry's dictum from the original show, for the most part.

39:18 I mean, it's classic storytelling, but when you're able to dive back into something like this, and we care deeply about this franchise and deeply about our own show, I would like to say to our audience, these critiques are minuscule. They're looking back on something. It's so easy to have 20-20 vision when you're talking about the past. But look, this episode took a big bite. Took a big bite to try to figure this out. I don't think necessarily Star Trek is particularly good about the nuances between family.

39:54 I don't think it's their wheelhouse.

39:58 DS9 was its own animal run by separate different writers. And so you've got the Cisco Avery relationship and that is covered actually and covered well, but again, they were kind of left to their own devices to write that show.

40:16 And you also had, you know, Quark and his brother and all of that.

40:22 And those things got explored. And we didn't really do that.

40:26 And the fact that they weren't leaving the station and going off too much, that it all did happen in one spot, in one set. Yeah, it worked in their favor in that respect. The scene with Mom and Travis in the mess hall, sort of bubbles up and culminates with, you know, Paul's not ready, Mom. And then she tells the story about the father. You should have seen your father when he took over.

40:52 We fell so far behind schedule, he almost lost his ECA license.

40:57 And how proud he was that you became the helmsman of the first Walk 5 starship, and how proud they all were of you, Travis, going off and finding your father.

41:09 Path you're the helmsman of the first warp five starship i'm proud of you.

41:14 It's a it's a good scene so i think that's when he volunteers his time to i'll i'll get a sabbatical hey let me come and stay let me help out with uh upgrading your guidance and warp uh systems i've got the the smarts to do that now for you know.

41:33 Working on it says anybody can do my job yeah.

41:36 Right yeah Act four. We're in the denouement of the show and we're in Captain's dining room to Paul. He's doing the, you know, the critique of movie night.

41:50 Yeah.

41:51 She likens it to something on Vulcan called Tarul Etec. It uses disturbing imagery to provoke an emotional response. Which is using some sort of, you know, Vulcan ceremony.

42:03 Well, she basically says, Dom... why do humans like to scare themselves?

42:08 Right.

42:08 And some do.

42:10 I mean, I know your wife, Jackie loves.

42:13 Oh, Jackie's crazy. And I hate them.

42:17 Not my favorite either. I have to say.

42:19 I literally, I will hold a hand so tightly. I hate them. I hate them.

42:27 I'm not keen on being a jump scared and the rest of it.

42:31 No, Jackie loves it.

42:33 Yeah. And obviously, you know, a lot of the world does, But yeah, so this Vulcan ceremony to rule a tech, which is some sort of, you know, ceremonial practice on Vulcan of scaring people to move forward in some respect. The fear and anger she likens to the Vulcan's first reception by Earthlings when they visited our planet.

42:56 I don't recall anyone greeting the Vulcan ambassador with torches and pitchforks.

43:02 Not accepting them. And, you know, her takeaway from... the experience is much more intellectual and personal for Vulcans versus Tripp and the captain are like, hey, it's Frankenstein.

43:16 I like that little added touch when she says, Saval should maybe watch this movie.

43:21 Yeah.

43:22 That was nice. I did like that. Hoshi then pipes up that we're, look out the window, captain, said gas giants that we've arrived at are exploding with volcanoes. And strangely enough, there is microbial species being unearthed by the eruption of said volcanoes.

43:41 I do have a day when you all went to the bridge and there was that, Dom, that wasn't your best head shake.

43:48 You basically did this. You kind of went. I noted it.

43:53 I'd have to look back at that. I must have been writing my notes at the time. I didn't know.

44:00 I was like, oh.

44:01 Come on, mate. I mean, they had me in two days that episode. I'm like, really?

44:05 That was a C minus.

44:07 You're bringing me in for this? I've been shaking school. Not my best head shake. I'll have to go back and look at that.

44:15 That's funny.

44:17 Suddenly we're back on the horizon. The aliens are demanding, the alien pirates are demanding the surrender of the vessel. And Travis thinks the better idea is cut the cargo part of the ship loose. Let me fly. I love his red sweater in this scene, too. An interesting choice, I have to say. But quite dynamic. And then, of course, he shows his true chops as a helmsman. And he completely outbirds the pirate vessel and then finds his way behind them and pops off some shots. And he said, we can remove that explosive beacon. And then he doubles back to collect the cargo. It's a good little CGI sequence there.

44:56 Yeah.

44:57 It's a nice sort of, you know, button on the whole of that, of that storyline. And then there's the reconciliation scene between him and his brother, Paul. How about sending me a self-spaced postcard?

45:07 I can count on it.

45:09 I would have liked to have seen a bit more tenderness, but I guess.

45:11 Why didn't they hug each other?

45:13 I know. I mean, I, that's, that's what I wrote down. I mean. Yeah.

45:17 Honestly, why, why didn't they hug each other?

45:19 I remember myself at the end of that going like, Oh, that.

45:24 Would have been a nice bow. Yeah.

45:26 Yeah. Yeah.

45:27 But maybe, I don't know, maybe it would just, you know, you know what it is like as actors, maybe on the day it didn't feel right. And that if they shot a lot of those brother scenes in the same two days, which is probably what they did, they probably would have had Paul come in and do, you know, three days. Yeah. Back to back to back. You can get lost in the telling of the actual story when you're shooting it out of sequence over a sort of compact piece of time.

45:56 Very good point. But I did feel a little hollow regarding.

46:01 Yeah, it wasn't enough for me. I agreed. I found it, if anything, I found it lacking in that moment. They missed the moment there in the scene. Yeah, it did. It jumped out at me. Yeah, me too. What should I write down here? Travis still hopes to see Trelkis 3. Trelkis 3.

46:18 The planet with the multi-centric rings.

46:22 What is Tarkus 3?

46:24 Was that? It's one of the things on his map.

46:26 Ah, that's what it is. That's right. That's right. On the Starfleet, on the Starship map. That was a nice heart back. And then he arrives back on Enterprise and is oddly vague about his whole experience with the captain.

46:38 You're sure everything's all right? Never better, sir.

46:41 Yeah, there was something about that scene too that was a bit stilted.

46:46 It wouldn't have taken much, again, in the goodbye with Paul scene And it wouldn't have taken much in the coming back to Enterprise to just give us.

46:57 Yeah, he could have had a moment there, couldn't he?

47:00 Of the gravity of what he's been through with his family.

47:02 And look, I don't remember this script, and the likelihood is because I looked at what I had to do and was like, I don't need to read this.

47:10 I'm going to go surfing.

47:12 And... And maybe, you never know, with the constraints of it being an episodic, maybe there was something there that just didn't make the cut.

47:23 You know, it's interesting, too, like, and I'm not saying anybody involved in the scene wasn't doing this, including the director. But you have to think in your head about the arc of an episode because it gets shot out of order. Mm-hmm. And you know, what, what, what you are hoping for and wanting in the story that you're the, the, the, the lead in.

47:45 And I've got to know that script like the back of your hand, man.

47:49 Oh yeah. Literally. Yeah.

47:51 You've got to see, you've got to see. Oh, so in the last scene I was doing this and this is the next time you see me. How does that thread together? Yeah.

48:00 Or, or, or you shoot the end of the whole thing first.

48:04 Yeah.

48:05 And then how do you get there?

48:06 Yeah. having just shot that Scrooge movie I did and shooting so much out of sequence, but being in every page of that, I literally, I mean, I was just constantly re-reading, re-reading, re-reading, reading and re-reading to make sure.

48:22 Where was I there? Where do I want to get to? Yeah, exactly. And that goes all over the place.

48:26 All over the place. Yeah. It's about keeping the balls in the air, isn't it? It's like, well, I did that in that scene. Try and vary it. do something different in this scene, you know, otherwise you just hit a note and you just keep on. Yeah.

48:44 Yeah.

48:44 And that can get tedious for an audience.

48:46 Talk about this all the time about keeping the ball in the air.

48:49 And it's a very simple example of a very real thing that we do in our work is that our job is to.

48:58 Yeah.

48:58 Catch it. Throw it back. And you catch whatever they're giving you.

49:04 Mm hmm.

49:05 Like maybe that was a fastball and you dropped that one and you have to look at the ground, pick up your ball and still talk and then do something else. So the dynamic of throwing the ball back and forth Yeah.

49:17 All over the place.

49:19 Well, I mean, it was so nice to see Anthony get an episode. Yeah. I mean, in all honesty, it's not one of our finest. I think some of that is, it's not at his door. It's in the writing, but we got to know more about Travis Mayweather at long last, because actually his backstory per the pilot is, was probably the most outlined. We knew nothing about Malcolm Reed.

49:43 We knew very little about Trip Tucker. Didn't know much about Trip.

49:48 In fact, Anthony's character got the most sort of, you know, he's a boomer, he grew up on a cargo ship, and he knew the sweet spot in any given spaceship.

49:58 He was at home in an environment that wasn't our home until we found it.

50:04 Right, yeah. Well, that said, it meandered a bit, didn't it? That's what I'd want to say. The episode, it had two very different strands that, you know, were oddly matched together.

50:18 And it took an opportunity that we hadn't done before. Our kind of job is to critique what those things are in our episodes. And I think that, well done by everybody involved. I just wanted a little bit more.

50:34 Yeah, agreed. I agree.

50:35 A little bit more.

50:36 Yeah, agreed. Well, on that note, we shall say goodbye. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you on the next episode when we get to it. Until then, nanu nanu.

50:46 See y'all.

51:21 Thank you.