Improvised Star Trek · Improvised Star Trek

Ep 221: Seeking Counsel

October 28, 2019·33 min·2 clips

A Vulcan counselor admits love felt 'distractingly better' in the moment but 'somewhat devoid of truth' across a longer life.

The order starts weird. Someone asks for half synthahol and half ethanol, the kind of drink that sounds like it should come with a therapy chair. Someone notices. From there, the talk drifts into old Starfleet days, with one person claiming past service and another pressing on the details. Risa comes up fast. Being born and raised there stops feeling like backstory and starts feeling like a trap, especially once comfort, desire, and reputation get tangled together. Nobody stays smooth for long. The supposed counselor keeps trying to sound professionally fluent while mangling the language, dodging discomfort, and announcing readiness with the confidence of someone missing the verb. Very Sisyphus. The best pressure point is not the setup, but the deadpan claim that counseling illogical minds somehow proves anything. Then the ship gets named. Saying the Sisyphus should clear things up, but it only makes the room wobble into disbelief, wrong names, and repeated claims. The denial comes fast. One person says they were the counselor on the Sisyphus, and another answers with the exact same impossible credential. The bit stays tight. Jaffe, Torvac, and Ravec all get pulled into the confusion, as if even basic identification cannot survive the scene. Laughter turns into evidence. The exchange feels like two ex-crew members meeting and realizing memory, rank, and self-image all started drinking before they did. The ending eases up. A toast to the Sisyphus and all the animals turns the mess into a little ritual, letting the ship fly on in everyone's hearts before the credits take over.

As heard by us

A barroom mix-up turns into a silly, affectionate Sisyphus reunion.

Seeking Counsel follows a barroom misunderstanding as it keeps widening: a supposed counselor, a confident Risa native, and a slippery argument over who served on the Sisyphus.

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Need a late-night Star Trek riff built on drinks, Risa, and mistaken identity?

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