Trip: A poop question, sir? Can’t I talk about the warp reactor or the transporter?
Archer: It’s a perfectly valid question.

In season one of ENT’s “Breaking the Ice”, the crew of the NX-01 records a video for Ms. Malvin’s class of fourth graders back on Earth, and one of the questions is what happens when someone aboard the ship flushes the toilet, which Archer throws to Trip, and Trip is concerned the kids are going to think he’s the ship’s sanitation engineer.

Now, because Archer is an awkward goober in this episode, it seems like he’s reading the questions off the cuff, with no one other than the possible exception of Ms. Malvin herself, having first vetted them. However, at the start of the recording, Archer announces that he’s the one who selected the questions so he knew going in that the, as Trip puts it, “poop question,” would be in there. Also before the recording Archer told Trip that he needed to there to participate as opposed to dealing with the large amount of work that was on his plate. What’s more, we know from the start of the episode that Trip’s nephew is one of the fourth grade students in Ms. Malvin’s class.

So, my theory is that Archer made the intentional choice to have Trip answer a question he knew the engineer would find to be embarrassing, specifically to diminish him in the eyes of his nephew. Why would he do this extremely petty thing to someone who is ostensibly his friend and most loyal officer? Probably because he sucks and wanted to put Trip in his place for some imagined slight, just like he later has an outburst with the Vulcan captain whom he invited to dinner.

  • @[email protected]English
    8•5 months ago

    I think it’s a stretch to interpret it as petty when it probably just gave Trip a bit of focus and let his 8 year old nephew shout like “that’s my uncle!” or something. Real life astronauts get asked these questions all the time and they’re practically deified in our culture.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•4 months ago

      Yeah, I agree, the OPs reaction here is kinda surreal. I mean, I grew up watching astronauts answer dumb kiddy questions while floating in zero G. When the shuttle was regularly going up in was a regular thing for kids to see on TV. There was ALWAYS a poop/pee/fart question. ALWAYS. This joke in Enterprise is nothing more than a nod to that. I guess Gen Z didn’t ~~pay as much attention to space poop ~~ see as many of these interviews because the shuttle program ended before their time?

      • @[email protected]OPMEnglish
        2•4 months ago

        I guess Gen Z didn’t pay as much attention to space because the shuttle program ended before their time?

        I love that one of the enduring aspects of human nature is that each generation wants broad strokes paint the ones that follows them as lazy, incurious dolts who will lead to the downfall of civilization. Gen Z is getting the brunt of it now, but it wasn’t too long ago that op eds were written blaming Millennials for “killing” everything from golf, to wine, to napkins, to basic courtesy. We can go all the way back to Plato, disparaging the youths of ancient Greece for sagging their togas, and spending all their time looking at tablature as opposed to having real conversations. And, of course, my generation also got its fair share before we all turned into the cranky old men shaking our fists at clouds in between writing those op eds.

        • @[email protected]English
          0•4 months ago

          I didn’t blame anyone for anything except maybe not seeing astronauts getting asked about poop all the time. You specifically are being a troll and generating some fucking weird rage bait where there is none.