The Delta Flyers - Alliances

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Alliances. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Alliances:After continuous Kazon attacks against Voyager cost the lives of several crewmembers and the damage to the ship continues to mount, Janeway seeks an alliance to secure Voyager's passage through the Kazon Collective.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise, and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Peter Patch, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Ann Marie Segal, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Daniel Adam, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Shannyn Bourke, Holly Smith, and Jesse NoriegaAnd our Producers: Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Deborah Schander, Eleanor Lamb, Thomas Melfi, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Ann Harding, Gay Kleven-Lundstrom, Gregory Kinstetter, Laura Swanson, Luz R, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Katie Johnson, Craig Sweaton, Ryan Hammond, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, York Lee, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Katherine Puterbaugh, Claire Deans, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Cutler, Crystal Komenda, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Oliver Campbell, Anna Post, Evette Rowley, Robert Hess, Vikki Williams, Cindy Ring, Nathan Butler, Terry Lee Hammons, Andrei Dunca, James Keel, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Ming Xie, and Mark G Hamilton Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey guys, welcome back to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry. As we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager, your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. How are you, sir? Robbie Duncan McNeil here, reporting for duty. Are you speaking Star Trek talk? Permission to? Permission to come aboard, Admiral Kim. I was trying to, no.

R reroute the power to the EPS relays. Yes, exactly. We need to come up with Star Trek wrap. I know, we do. Okay, I do have to say one thing to you. Yes. Happy birthday. Oh, yeah.

Tomorrow. When we record this, by the time this comes out, it will have been a few days of past. That is true. Yeah, thank you. You turned 39? 33. 33.

Amazing. Yeah. Wonderful. It's almost like you were in some alternate universe where time just sort of, you know, stood still for so long. Still or evolved so fast that I could have become a lizard even. You saw that tweet that I sent you. Yeah, I saw that tweet and then I started looking at the thread.

So somebody tweeted a photo that they got a threshold tattoo, which was amazing, by the way. It was like a beautiful tattoo. It was amazing tattoo. It was like the Star Trek symbol, the Chevron or whatever it is. Is that what it's called, the Chevron? The Chevron. That Starfleet symbol. And then it had like the baby lizards coming around from behind it sort of.

But it was just beautifully done with like twinkle stars. I interpreted that as the two mama and papa lizards. I know you tweeted back saying, oh, those are the babies or whatever. But I thought that was actually you and Janeway. Could have been. But never before my life would I ever have said, if someone said to me, I bet you, I can show you an amazing tattoo incorporating the Threshold Lizards. I would say, no way. No way.

This one was good. But as you know, when you went through that message or that post, that threat, there's more people with Threshold Lizards. Multiple people that have tattoos of Threshold Lizards. Yes. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. because for the episode that is seems most universally hated

by so many... I don't know about hated. I don't know about hated. Provocative. Yes. Unforgettable might be a word to use. But you know what this says, Robbie? This says, you've always been proud of this episode.

And there are people, there are fans that are also proud enough of this episode that they are getting tattoos of, to remind them of this episode on their bodies. so we're going to be reviewing this episode very soon actually yes it's coming up what it's coming up right around the corner exactly oh i wish i could get kate to just talk about this a little bit oh maybe in a phoner you could do that you know yeah like we phoned bob picardo just hopefully when we phone kate she won't injure any part of her body like bob did by the way you know i i may have mentioned um that

Ethan Phillips always wears the random flight buttons and t-shirts and stuff for the last 25 years. Every time I see him, he's wearing the button from my fan club when the show was on the air. He just texted me today because he often plays this joke that the fan club is still going strong around the world and that he's traveling to some exotic location for a club meeting. but then he always finishes with the punchline and both members might be there and something like that or you know all the members are dead

but I'm going anyway because the meeting's important stuff like that so he texted something about he's in Indonesia today for the random flight meeting and so I called him hoping and Rebecca was filming it

yes because I was hoping to get into like a hole back and forth that we do about random flight and traveling the world and all the club all the perfect he he didn't answer so I left him a message that I think was very funny so we're going to post that as part of some of our bonus material and Patreon so there's a little something for you guys to look forward to as part of our ongoing fan club joke back and forth that that Ethan and I have but hopefully I'll get him and you can hear his side of that that joke because it's funny I love that I can't wait to

hear that. It is so funny hearing the witty riparte between you two. I got the one, I left him a voicemail and we recorded all of that and I thought I was pretty clever. I hope it's funny. And then we're going to try to, I'm trying to get him at some point. And so we're going to put all these calls together into like a bonus part of it. It'll just be additional bonus material that I think will be funny for everybody to see. Yeah. Most definitely. Speaking of Patreon and things coming up, I just want to say, Garrett and I have been planning a little contest, and Rebecca and Megan are in on these ideas, and our admirals have kind of suggested some stuff to get people to expand awareness about the Delta Flyers podcast and Patreon site and all the fun things that you can participate in. So we're doing a contest. We are making some very special one-of-a-kind contest giveaways.

There's going to be, I think, three prizes. I'm not going to say what it is. Okay. You're going to have to check out our Facebook and our Twitter. We'll be announcing that very soon. But there'll be a couple different ways. You can enter the three different contests. These are going to be one of a kind.

Only one, these are going to be made. You can't buy it anywhere. You can't get it any other way. So hopefully people can participate in the contest. It'll be fun. We'll have a few different ways, three different kinds. contest going simultaneously and you can enter all three, triple your chances to win one of these limited edition, only three ever made. But look for our Facebook page and Twitter and

Instagram will be announcing and talking about that soon. I like the whole mystery behind the one of the kind. I almost want to joke and say, we're going to be giving away Ethan Phillips. We're actually just going to give away Johnny Ethan Phillips as one of our prizes. Neelts. He likes to eat. He eats a lot. So you're going to have to have a lot of, you know, groceries, lots of groceries. You're going to have to be able to provide for his. Yeah, but we'll give them to you. We are going to have these three contests and are one and are all three. Triple your chances. There's going to be three one-of-a-kind prizes that we're making through the Delta Flyers. And that'll happen in the next couple of weeks. You know how people grow their beards out? And are you growing your beard and mustache out for Movember? Is that what you're doing? I'm growing it out because I had to shave it for the helicopter that we filmed last month.

Yes. I had to shave it. So now it's coming back in, which I like my beard. Yeah. It is coming in. Good. Can you see that I have a little bit of growth that I let in there? I see a little bit.

Yeah. See, it's very, very, very light. Like my 11-year-old stepdaughter says, you should grow out a mustache for Movember. And I said, yeah. that ain't going to happen. You could do it. It's so sparse. It's so thin.

Yeah, there was one day I was in Vegas and I saw this Asian guy with a full beard and I ran up to him and I said, can I take a photo of you? And he looked at me like I was crazy.

But the truth of the matter is, you know, a lot of Asians and certain ethnic backgrounds just can't grow a full, you know, brave heart beard. Yeah.

I couldn't grow a beard for the longest time when I was in my 20s. No way. I mean, I did. It did. It did.

but it was very splotchy and... You mean there's hope for me? I didn't have a thick beard, yeah. Robbie, then there's hope for me then. There is hope. If you were able to finally grow a beard, that means when I'm about 80, I can grow my long Kung Fu Master beard,

whispering. I'm just looking up like Asian beards. Like, I mean, come on. That's a... Some, some... That's photoshopped. You think? Yes.

Let's see. That guy's half Asian. Yeah, maybe. It's funny because I do know it's not common to see Asian beards. So I was like, I want to see some nice Asian beards. There you go. There's some in there, though. Yeah, if you want a beard, sometimes I think it would be nice to not have a beard. Like, I don't think it's better either way. It's just different. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. All right. But I see some Asian beards in here. Yeah, two more things. Look at that. Look at that hipster. See, that to me looks photoshopped. I, I, I just, you know, I mean, if you can find an Asian guy like that, it's not, okay. No, that one's not. That dude is, he's the unicorn. He's the unicorn of Asian beards then, okay? Sad news today.

Uh-oh. Alex Trebek. Oh, yeah. For him, right? I mean, that's, that guy, man, he's been around for so long. He's been a staple in everybody's households for so long. And finally succumbed cancer, so rest in peace to Alex Trebek. Yeah.

And typically, we don't really say anything. regarding politics, but I will have to say that, you know, part of this country is disappointed. Part of this country is elated, but I just hope that everybody in this country joins together as one and becomes more unified. We need to see each other as human beings and fellow Americans and get going on that path instead of being divisive and angry, right? Yeah. So I just hope. Well said. Well said. I hope people can come together. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. So, So Robbie, we are, it's so funny, every time we record, Robbie always begins the recording before we start actually recording with the question. What episode I'm doing? There's always that

little. I didn't ask you that today though. You did. You forgot. It's so natural. It just comes out of you. You did ask me that. You said that before. Alliances. So that's the name of the episode. So Robbie, without further ado, I guess you and I are going to go ahead and go watch this episode, Alliances, and come back and give our recap. Hey guys, we are back from watching alliances. Alliances. Asimr, ASMR. Did you do a thing?

Did you do a limerick? I did do a limerick. Oh, my God. Okay. All right, hold on. All right. So, yeah, we already read the Netflix synopsis. So here's my limerick that will completely synopsize

every detail of this episode. You ready? Yes. Janeway is tired of the fight. Then she meets a nice trade one night. He promises peace, then tries to blow all the mages out of their seats. Now she's positive Starfleet principles are right. I like it.

You had a bit of a pause after the word blows, so it sounded like it was going down the path a little bit, a little bit of a noddingness. No, I would never do that. This is a family podcast. This is a family podcast. By the way, for those listening on the podcast, you're not getting this wonderful experience of seeing.

I switched into the new Delta Flyers hoodie sweatshirt with our cartoon characters on the front, doing the podcast. This is a wonderful collectible and super comfy and soft. I am decked out head to toe in Delta Flyers merch and I'm doing funny hand signals

like the guy you know on the street that when it's like sale at the auto used car lot and there's that guy with the fan that the arms are going crazy that's what I feel like right now. I'm that guy. Or you're the guy on the side of the street

that has that sign that says condos for sale and you're flipping in spinning it and everything. That's me right now. That's what you're doing. You're flipping the hoodie. You're flipping the spinning. By the way, this is a comfy hoodie. These just came in this week. It's super soft, super comfy. It's wonderful. And you've got, you know, you and me, cartoon characters from the podcast.

Yeah. And, well, for you that can't see me doing the goofy man dance right now, go to the delta flyers. dot org.org, yeah. Check out. I just burped. Did you catch that? I didn't hear it. I just, I tried to hide it. Would you like to do it? No, don't hide it. No, I tried to hide it because we're on a professional podcast. Listen, and my friend. It's one of the number one rules of podcasting. Don't burp in the middle of your podcast and I just did it. Well, I'm going to say that I think the number one rule of podcasting is to be transparent in this day and age. We need to, we need to just not hide anything. So if you'd like to redo that burp. I don't have one right now. Oh, it's okay. So it's done? Yeah, it's done.

Okay. All right. But yeah, we're super excited. We have hoodies now. So this is something that we've been thinking and talking about. And now we have them. Now we have them. And now that everybody knows, I'm going to read my limerick again because I'm super proud of it.

Okay. Janeway, here we go. Janeway is tired of the fight. Then she meets a nice trade one night. He promises peace, then tries to. then tries to blow all the Majes out of their seats. Now she's positive. Starfleet principles are right.

I paused to get it blow. It's so naughty. This is something that we talked about when I was watching this episode and Megan sitting next to me and she's like, gosh, this episode seems quite naughty. And sure enough, there's your... There's my limerick.

What about your haiku? Let's hear your hyacu. See how much in the window. I changed it. I'm not doing a haiku. I'm just doing a poetic synopsis. Okay, because I felt like 575 was so restrictive and it was too restrictive. So my poetic synopsis would be nonstop Kazon attacks, Starfleet principles in question,

Machi way or the Starfleet way, ally with the Neistram, the Pomar, maybe the Trayb. In the end, we can trust only ourselves. and the Starfleet Way. Is that titled the Starfleet Way? You should title it the Starfleet Way. It's just entitled, the synopsis. That doesn't sound very original. Okay, fine, I'll call it the Starfleet way.

The Starfleet way. We'll do that. We'll do that. Mine's going to be called Blow them out of their seats. Blow the Majes out of their seats. I mean, talking about the noddingness, There's the, you see the go-go dancer and the cleavage in this episode? We typically don't have that.

Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Every time in these older Starfleet, Star Trek shows like ours or Next Gen or even DS9, whenever they try to like incorporate a sexy go-go girls, it feels so gratuitous. It feels totally not necessary. Right. It just feels uncomfortable. It's just, I don't know, I don't know why it feels so leering. and I didn't like it.

Okay. I didn't like it at all. I don't know why. I just always feel like it's distracting. Huh. I don't know. It'd be better if they had a real weird-looking alien. It's not like a human stripper girl.

If they had some real alien and all the people, you know, watching this dancer were watching a six-armed, you know, something and thinking that that was sexy, then it would be cool. It would feel like sci-fi, but right now it just feels like a gratuitous human version of what we find attractive. I don't know. I don't know. No, that makes sense. So if they had an alien that kind of resembled the aliens from Galaxy Quest when they're not in their human form and they look more like their octopus squid form like that with the multiple arms, maybe that would be cool.

Because then you'd kind of go, oh, you'd be like, oh, on these other planets, beauty is very deep. different than our like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is is universally different and interesting and I don't know, but there's something about like boiling it down to, oh, it's going to be like something that we humans in, you know, 2020 or whatever, 2009, 1994 or whatever. Yeah, a 90s show. The 90s show thought was sexy. It just feels like it dates. That's the other thing. It feels like it dates it. Yes, yes. I can see that. I can see. Anyway. But, but that, the inclusion of that cleavagee go-go dancer, your synopsis where you hesitate, you just paused on below the modges and then you said out of their seats, you paused right there. And then also Janeway's

line when she says to Chakote in the briefing room, you can't have it both ways, commander. If you want to get in the mud with the kazon, you can't start complaining that you might get dirty and she kind of says dirty and he was flirty too a little bit so there's there's the naughtiness i feel like there was always a flirtation between those two yeah yeah yeah dirty dirty okay um this was uh written by jerry taylor yes directed by less landa one of our face uncle less we loved less. I thought he did overall a really great job with the directing. I thought there was some great shots. I have a question. Staging, good, yeah. Yeah, did you feel like this, the overall look of this episode, to me, it looked different. I don't know if it was the lighting, the filters,

exactly what, but it looked different to me. I mean, really? Yeah. Did you feel that at all in terms of, like, there's, for instance, I'm going to be more specific. In that scene in the briefing room with Chakote, and the way the camera's set up, it's basically Chakotay's in the foreground and you see him really closely. But my God, you could see every nuance of the makeup, the base makeup that was put on his face. Like it wasn't, it was very, very, um, the colors was, they were richer or there was more, I don't know exactly what it was. I felt I feel like this was a darker episode. I felt like there was a lot of darkness in this episode.

Okay. The battle scene is we open into mid-battle, and it's a huge battle at the start. I felt like it was very dark, like shadowy and emergency lights and all that. Darker than what we're used to, right? Yes. I mean, not as dark as Game of Thrones close to the end of the final episode where it's so dark, the battle scene that you don't see anything. It's just pitch black, you know?

It wasn't like that, but, but yeah, maybe that's it. But I definitely felt that the whole time I was watching, I thought, gosh, this just looks different to me. I don't know. Just maybe the filters that we used. And there were filters, right? I mean, when we were filmed. Yeah, they would use different kinds of filters depending on which actor was there or if

there were prosthetics. They would use a stronger filter than if there were non-perstetics, just to try to hide the seams of the prosthetic. Right. Any edges that were visible, a filter can, then soften it and then kind of give the illusion that that's not prosthetic makeup on an actor and it's really an alien. Okay. Yeah. So I think the filters were different on this one. I thought that that first battle scene was really exciting, very well done. And then I think it was

in engineering. The actor Raphael Sparge shows up, who was in a few episodes with us. But I had known Raphael Sparge back in many years before in New York City when we were a both auditioning a lot as younger actors. I, we had cross paths a lot. He's a very talented actor. I had forgotten that he was in this. I'd forgotten that Simon Billig was also in this episode. Simon I knew also from New York.

We had gone to the same acting school. Oh, okay. He'd gone to Juilliard when I was at Juilliard. I actually sent a message to Simon on Facebook. Oh, you did? If he would be, yeah, I said, are you available for coming on to our podcast? he said, possibly. So we have a definite maybe from Simon Billig. Oh, good. And I think I would love to reach out to Raphael Sabarge. Always been a big fan of Raphao and all the work that he's done.

He's a good actor. And also a really good guy off camera, which is nice. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, he's a good guy. He doesn't have that, that Hollywood attitude or, or any type of, you know, standoffishness that some actors tend to get when they feel like, you know, they've elevated above of everyone else in some way, shape, or form. So, super nice guy. Great guest cast. This whole episode had really good actors, I thought, as our guest stars. A lot of them, too.

A lot of guest actors. Martha, the heck it was in the show. I knew I remembered her. You were right. You call that right. And then, of course, I should have suggested, I should, once you said Martha, I should have said, Anthony, my teacher from UCLA department teacher, professor. And then, you know, I didn't realize that Simon Billig and who played Hogan, that's his character's name.

Yeah. And then Raphael Sabarge is Jonas, Michael Jonas. Like, I didn't know those guys were Maquis. I didn't really, I didn't really. I know. I had forgotten that too. I was like, wait a minute. They're Maquis, you know.

Raphael said something very nice to me once. We were at a convention together. And I had, I had, that was my third time maybe, moderating a podcast. panel that he was in and I think he was in the panel specifically for oh my god I'm blanking what is the TV show based on the fairy tales oh once upon a time yes god dang it see this is this is the problem with age you get older and you start forgetting things I couldn't remember once upon a time the easiest title in a world I've forgotten things since I was 18 years old so okay so I'm not gonna all right I won't hold against it but he did say he's he's he's

He stopped the panel to say, like, I just want to tell everyone that Garrett is the gold standard in moderating. And I thought, I'm sure that was very reassured, especially starting out. Well, that's awesome. He's a good guy. It really is. And Simon's a good guy. Yeah, good to see them both. One thing that I noticed in here about Maj Kula, played by my UCLA theater department, professor, Anthony DeLongas, he has almost like two eyelids.

And the eyelid that's closest to his eye, if you'd love. look at it later in the episode, about two-thirds of the way in, you, I think it's during the meeting, the conference, you get to see, it almost looks like teeth. It's like teeth and a gum. I mean, if you look at... It's part of his prosthetic? Yes, the part of his prosthetics makes it look like he has, you know, the top part of a denture or when you go to the dentist and they do that cast of your teeth, you know, put that, that material that hardens and they make a little cast. It looked like that. like the teeth, which was so bizarre.

I find the Kazan makeup to be confusing, like their hairdos are all different and, yeah, the details of the way they're faced, but maybe that was all the premise. Although I will say one thing I've learned doing our podcast and talking to all kinds of people, I've learned that Michael Pillar

really wanted the Kazan story to be a timely tale about urban sociology, I guess you'd say. say. There were a lot of back in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, the gang situation in Los Angeles was a big problem. It was a big challenge. There was a lot of gang crime and gang violence and the city and people didn't understand how to deal with it. Michael Pillar really wanted the Kazon to sort of be an allegory for that, the gang violence and the gang problems, specifically in L.A. at the time. So this episode, I think, gives a real, even though Jerry Taylor wrote it,

not Michael Pillar, I feel like it gives such a great history. Like we learn that none of this, you know, we think these are all Cajon ships. They go, wait, no, they took it from the trade. Yeah. They stole it. And, oh, what's the history there? Why? Oh, because they didn't have anything.

They were dominated and put into slavery and treated horribly. Yeah. And revolted eventually. And so, anyway, I just found that to be once I was sort of enlightened about why, who the Kazon were, because I honestly hated the KZon. Well, yeah, no, we've made, we both made comments, anti-Kazon comments on this podcast, and especially about how can you guys be so, you know, so technologically, it seems like backwards, but yet you have these amazing starships that you're flying around in. And now we learn from this episode, or at least now we remember from

this episode, that those are not Kazon ships. Those are trade ships. Those are trade, um, technology basically, right? So yeah, so that now I feel bad about. I know. And it's, but it's interesting because you and I made seven years of episodes, but I, you know, that detail had gotten lost in the history of Voyager for me. Correct. So I still had this perspective of, oh, the K's on why, you know, there's, why can't they make water? This episode to me was really important to sort of put in context who the Kazon are and why they, why they have all these little factions, these gangs, all the, you know, the different tribes and alliances and things. Yeah. Anyway, I liked a lot of things about this episode,

especially that. Yeah. And we realized the trade were all along just not good people to deal with. Yeah. They were trying to end the, well, not end. They were just trying to eliminate the leadership of all the, all the Kazan Majes at the end. And when the Trayb are being introduced to Neelix in that scene where they're in the cave. Yeah. The lead, Trayb gets up and says, I'm Abis. I'm M-A-B-U-S. I had to look it up. It's M-A-B-U-S.

Yeah. M-A-B-I-S. I thought he said, I'm Avis, which is the reference to not only the rental car company, but also the deity in the Orville of the krill species. Right. Basically, they revered their god. which was called Avis and I thought that's what he said when he introduced himself and I thought oh my god this is where Seth got Avis from from this episode

but no it's Mavis maybe he heard Avis and that's why he you know he Avis in his show who knows by the way this is the first time in the teaser during that big battle Paris says he wants to go give Torres a hand hmm wants to go Who says that? Paris does that's the first time I've heard him like Oh, Torres is special to me.

When did you, when did Paris say? Captain, permission to go to engineering and give Torres a hand. Yeah, he says that in the teaser. So maybe there's the beginnings of Torres and, you know, he's going to go try to turn her since she's got the hots for everybody else on the ship, clearly. By the way, and also in the teaser, Chikote says, you know, think like the marquee to Janeway. and we learned that this is the fourth attack in two weeks and that they've already lost three crew members.

Yes. So how many are left? I mean, we, you know, it's not a big ship, Voyager. It's not like there's thousands of people. There's maybe 200 people or, you know. There's under 200. There's under 200. We need a running crew count of like who's still alive.

Well, he says three, we lost three crew members. We lost three. Minus three is what we have to have. This is like a blackjack counting cards. Yes, exactly. Minus three. Yeah, that whole briefing room memorial for Krumann Banderah, who we had, I kind of, you know, wish we had kind of explored that guy a little bit more prior episodes.

It's always hard when, yeah, when something like this happens. And, you know, and Chocote is giving the speech about, you know, I was so close to him. And like, he saved my life when we were in the marquee or whatever. yeah well why didn't we ever see you talk to him yeah you know like you're so close to him like yeah so i mean i know that it's hard because they can't keep a thousand you know or even hundreds of characters yeah live and and and i know that these scripts sometimes are written without you know by separate writers and they don't always know exactly who's written what but yeah when they do something like this it would be more meaningful if there had been the setup for his death that we

had seen a moment between him, you know. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And at the end of that memorials, at the end of the memorial for Krumann Benderra, we all stand at attention. We all get up. Yeah. And we watch as, I think that stand, or the background actor was, I think that was Carrie. I think that was Carrie. Carrie, he brings the Bosen's whistle up and he does And that's the end of the memorial. And I remember when we filmed that, specifically, distinctly, I remember thinking, wow, that's so anti-climactic. It's just this little tiny little, like, here, let me pull out this tiny little Barbie doll-sized whistle and go, and I wonder if Carrie, I wonder if he knew how to do that before, and that's why they wrote it in there, or if they said, hey, can you do this?

is. Do you remember? I don't know. I don't think, uh, he learned that was, I thought that was put in post. I thought he just did it silently and we just stood there while he did that. That's what I remember a sound coming out of it. Did you hear something? Okay. I think when we've filmed it. I, yeah, that moment you're talking about, I do remember that though. I remember I had flashbacks of being there and filming that moment. I just felt cheated by the just the Bosen's whistle. I wanted the bagpipes. I wanted You know, I wanted some, I wanted a meal, but I got an appetizer at the end of that memorial. I hear you. I hear you.

Janeway goes to talk to Tuvok about whether or not to do this and get some wisdom, some advice from Tuvok. And Tuvok uses the example of Spock who recommended an alliance with Klanons. Yes. And I had to go look that up because I was like, is that true? And yeah, that is true. That Spock and his father. I forget, the character. Serri.

Yeah. Yeah, they were Syrac or something like that. S-A-R-E-K. CERIC, yeah. They were part of that. Yeah, the Klingons and Starfleet forming a truce. So I thought that was kind of cool. Also, they're in the briefing room,

and Neelik says to the captain, he goes, you know, there's a planet nearby, and there's a Kazon down there that owes me a favor. A rather large favor, actually. It's a naughty episode.

Something about that. I was like, what is he? That was really loaded. A rather large favor. Large favor. I really want to know what kind of favor he owes him. Oh, my goodness.

I know. This is inquiring minds want to know right neelix has really gotten around the delta quadrant so he flies down there we talked about the stripper i think that was unnecessary um and then neelix is by the way and he's arrested in the scene um but by the way he had a cut on his head and uh when he's arrested and um he's got red blood yeah i notice that too that's the first time i think we've ever seen to neelix's nail it's bleeding that I can remember. Yeah, he's never been injured like that.

Yeah, so he has red blood, which I thought was interesting. Yeah, from some angles it kind of look like strawberry jam. Yeah. But yes, the fact that he has red blood, that's something that they could have definitely added a different color to that, right? He could have had orange blood or neon green predator blood or whatever. Something, yeah, blue. Yeah, like the color of your backdrop right now, that Aurora Borealis color blood.

Exactly. I also jumping back before we saw his blood and he got he went down to the cave and everything when Janeway tries to form some sort of treaty with with Kala and he clearly Mahj Kala and he clearly Anthony DeLong just and he clearly pushes it too far he wants crewman on her on Voyager and his crewman Janeway makes the offer she says we'll We'll offer you supplies and medical assistance. And I'm thinking, why don't you just offer them water? Because they don't know how to make water.

If you really wanna seal the deal, just say, we'll give you water and you'll be good. Jane was like, we're gonna give you water. In fact, we're gonna up the ante. We're gonna give you French mineral water known as Evian, Evian water. Evian water. Sparkling, flat.

We're going to give you Fiji water. Your choice of water. We'll give you whatever brand water you'd like. Yeah. I think she could have closed that deal if she had just offered water. She didn't offer water. Good old H-2O would have closed that deal. But now we know why they can't make water.

Because that's not all their technology. Oh, God. All right. So Nelix is the trade prisoner. And this dude asked Nelix to join them, like out of the gate. The guy's like, here's our whole plant. He lays it out, which is very suspicious to me. Definitely. I immediately, I'm like, yeah, I don't trust this guy. He's doing something because you would

not have a stranger, especially a stranger who's not even your species, you know. Right. And just throw out your whole revolt plan. So it sounds like a setup. It sounds like Neelix is going to be the Patsy, you know, he's going to take the blame for whatever going to happen. So you're definitely second guessing or wondering what's what's the motive behind Mabas. What is he doing? Yeah. Do you remember that scene where Simon Billig is talking to Roxanne? So we have Hogan talking to Torres and he says Baylana. So he pronounces it the way that Roxanne pronounces it sometimes, right? Baylanna instead of Bolana, which is the way I've been doing it forever. Listen, I'm married to her. I know what I say it. Do you? Okay.

Balana. Balana? All right. So that's your own? I thought it's bay, but okay. It's okay. She says, who are you to be second guessing Captain Janeway? So she dresses down Hogan, which is identical to the scene in the pilot, where Torres is

not happy about the union of the Maquis and the Starfleet. And so on the bridge, she turns to Chiquet and says, who is she to be? So basically it was the same kind of emotion and same whatever, but instead of her question questioning Janeway. Now it's Billig questioning Janeway. And then her coming back at Billig at Hogan with the same amount of vitriol or the same amount of forcefulness, right? That Klingon forcefulness. We see that. It was so reminiscent of the pilot episode. I'm like, you know, Voyager sees this giant armada and they think they're dead. You know, Kazan are just going to destroy them. And it turns out, Neelix pops up on the screen. He's like, it's not

the case on this is the trade right we are not in deep caca we are told no okay it's the trade and and mr trade dude um he comes over mavis we'll call him mavis the avis or i'm gonna call him trade bill pullman yeah he was kind of like a bill pullman a little bit bill palmanish kind of character the trade bill pullman comes over has a little dinner and and some water because we do water great. We are so good with water. We're so good with water on Voyager. And he comes over and he tells this whole story

and that's what I was talking about with the Michael Pillar of it all. Yeah, I loved, you know, usually these old backstory stories are really boring, but I feel like because we've spent a year and a half of episodes confused about who these Kazon people are. Right. It just, for me, I found that really satisfying.

I'm like, oh, wow, this all makes sense now. It was like one of those Game of Thrones moment where you spend like two or three years wondering why something's going to happen and then all of a sudden you realize it all comes together. So I thought that dinner was great.

Yeah, I thought it was shot well. The performances were good. The writing was great. Then we go into we see someone's on a desktop monitor, some Kazan man named Reddick. And wait a minute. There's Michael Jonas. that's uh um raphael sabar raphael sparge secretly contacting the kazon dang yeah those maquis those dang maquis those dang maquis it's so sad too rafel's such a nice guy he is a nice guy

turn him into a little weasel yeah yeah that that hurt me my feelings were i agree yeah so all the communication protocols he shared all this technology with them he says contact us again and clearly he's been doing something with seska because they he says you know sesska's gets around with everybody almost like balana oh but yeah there's clearly like a plan afoot so that's kind of cool. I thought that was surprising. I'd forgotten that Raphael Sparge was a traitor. Yeah, we have a little bit of the doctor and Kess treating some of the trade for malnutrition and some of their injuries. Tiny bit. Very little, yeah. Janeway yelled at me in this episode. So, remember? Oh, yes, she did. Well, you got a little mouthy with her. I did. You got a little

mouthy, dude. I got to say, like, I would have in the video reactions that I recall. recorded of this thing. This is the reason Megan started making fun of me saying, that's why you weren't promoted. You were such a, you know, you're mouthy and you're kind of a jerk. You know, you look at what you're saying. I'm like, look, I'm just saying what's the

obvious. I'm not, you know. You got a little mouthy. I think you're like cut her off even, which you just don't do. You don't cut off the captain. It did. I did. Yeah. I didn't know my place. You know, sometimes I just I let my emotions get the best of me.

you know as hairy so they go to this this uh conference and uh all of these mages are there which by the way you know you see all these kazon in one room with those hairdos and it's like the miss america pageant it's like there's so much hair spray and uh and you know the higher the hair the higher to god closer to god isn't that what they say and our next contested mr kazon oglamar That's what it, it sort of felt like the Miss America pageant to me. And the way that Janeway and those guys were standing there. Yeah, they were the judges. Yeah, like greeting them and sort of walking by and a little Miss America pageant.

Right. Yeah. And I also got to say like that set to me felt a little cheap. Like, I feel like if you're going to have this big meet and greet where, you know, this big thing, it should have been in a much larger, more. dramatic space. It felt like some side room, like the janitor's closet at the, you know, the Trabbe Hotel with kind of one window over, awkwardly over in the corner, which of course, as soon as I saw that, I'm like, that window seems set designed for a reason. Like it's not,

it's kind of, it's, I didn't remember the massacre attempt, but I was like immediately drawn to that window just doesn't belong there. Why? Okay. Yeah. Did you have the same, when I was watching this and they were bringing all these, where they're talking about the conference and all the modges are going to be there, I thought they were more sex than this. Didn't they talk about, there should have been like 30 of them there. Oh, yeah.

This should have been, this should have been just, you know, there should have been all type of pomp and celebration or, you know, this is a, this is clearly a budget thing. Like they just didn't have the money. Like they didn't have enough money to take, to make the set look good. They didn't have enough money to have more background mages of every single sect there, right? So there should have been 30 of them at least, right? At least. And there should have been assistants and there should have been, you know, nowadays, I think, with technology,

you could do things called digital replication or tiling or all kinds of things. Correct. You could have maybe only hired six or eight actors to put on the makeup, but you could have duplicated them in ways that you could have shot as if there were a hundred of them. in the room. Right. And I think that's, that would have been something nowadays we might have done. But back then, the digital duplication was not common and very expensive and all hand done. And now the technology is, it's cost effective.

You could actually put that in and it's not going to break your budget for this episode. Yeah, you could have done it. It would have been within reach, I think. Yeah. But back then it wasn't. I loved when they got emergency beamed out when she realizes what's happening and the ship's about to shoot and they're all getting beamed out. all got these faces like er and then you look over at what's his name maibus or whatever

he's like he's like smiling he's got this big smile on his face he's like you're gonna die kind of like through his smile yeah he was very well if you remember when we had to do those beam outs we'd kind of get there and then you'd have to freeze yeah one two two three four and then they'd step you out yeah and then they keep rolling one two and they count so I'm sure when he got in there with his smile. He was like, okay, and run in and freeze. And he had a smile on his face. And he's like, one, two, three, four. And step out. One, two. Oh, God. It's so true. Yeah. But at least, you know, to Janeway's credit, she does warn all the maje. She's like, get down. And no one really kind of got down. They were like, well, they were kind of like discombobulated.

But she did try to warn them. And that whole meeting had shades of, uh, of Braveheart film, you know, where they had to meet with all the Scottish nobles were meeting and the English were basically waiting to kill them all. So, um, and that was similar to that. When did Braveheart come out? I wonder. Because so often, you know, on TV shows,

just a little sidebar, like episodes of television will often um, parallel some great, wonderful movie. And, uh, When did it come out? 1995, exactly. There you go. They were, well, they were watching Braveheart, influenced by Braveheart.

A lot of times the big movies come out and the episodes, all those writing staffs on shows are like, oh, if we did a Braveheart episode of Voyager, maybe it would be like this. Yeah, that's funny that it came out. I just had a feeling. Because writers can't do that. They can take one idea and then write around that idea of like the meeting of the conference. I used to have this book on my little reference book on my reference shelf that said, I forget the number, but it was something like 13 dramatic situations or something. And there's other books, other numbers, but this book basically boiled down all stories into like 13 model or 20, whatever the number was.

It was much less than you would think. You don't remember the name of the book, though. Basically, I can't remember. I want to see 13 dramatic situations or something like that. Yeah. But it boiled down all stories to the core of there's only a handful of stories. There's boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. There's boy has it all, boy loses it all, or girl, whatever.

You can replace the boy girl, you can replace and you can move it around a little, but it fundamentally is the same few stories. stories. Yeah. Kind of like Joseph Campbell writes a lot about the heroes. That's what I was going to say. The hero's journey. The hero's journey is one.

It's the same story told over and over again. Yeah. So I'm not surprised that the Braveheart came out in 95 while we were making this particular episode and they might have been influenced by it because there's only a handful of stories. The only other note I have for this episode, I pretty much talked about everything I need to talk about. The only other note I have is when Janeway sees the Kazan Armada. which turns out to be a Trayb Armada.

She does the left eyebrow, Vulcan eyebrow raise, you know, the spot does. She does the little, like that. She's amazing. There's something about Kate Mulgrew's performance in this episode in particular for me, but I'm sure it's consistent with every episode.

She can make every moment so intense. It's like the drama. She can take something that just could be like, you know, you know, I don't know. how much power left in the engines how much power left in it like she she does so many amazing powerful twists and turns to the simplest it's pretty it's pretty amazing and she pulls it off it's that's her thing though that's how she is in real life right she's totally how she's super uh she gets very deep and very intense very quickly so that's good no i thought it was a lot of fun i really

enjoyed this episode and was happy about some of the mythology that Kay's on. That to me was a total winner. So yeah, that's my thoughts on this episode. I do have a theme and I tried to articulate it concisely. The theme for me is guiding principles are often more reliable than shifting personalities. Mike drop. Wow. I think to me the theme is people can be unreliable. people can shift and change and we may not judge them correctly, good or bad, but if we have strong principles, if I have strong principles, and I stick to those strong principles, that those will keep me centered and grounded, and I can rely on those. And so I think, you know, Janeway realizing in the end that, you know, Starfleet is our best ally, Starfleet principles

are our best allies. Yeah, that was her quote. The principles and ideas of the federation are the best as we can have. So, yeah. I think for me, the theme, or at least the message to be learned from this episode came from the briefing, not briefing room, but the captain's ready room scene between her and Tuvok. Tuvok is breaking off wisdom about the Vulcan plant, you know, and he said that in the beginning, the plant was weaker, but in time it grew to be stronger than if they

were just alone. You know what I'm saying? So that to me, yes, that theme to me relates to now. post-election, you know, Republican Party, Democratic Party needs to graft together like the orchid and the Vulcan plant. Well, our whole world needs to do it. Our whole world, exactly. Countries need to do it because our planet, we can debate the details of the science

of, you know, global warming or pollution or, you know, whatever. But we need to pull together as a planet. Yes. For all of our own interests. It needs to be a global movement. it starts, you know, grassroots locally, right? So you have to have that unity and that that camaraderie that help the helping attitude instead of that judging attitude, right?

You really have to sit there and say, how can we help this other person? I may not agree with this other person in terms of what they believe in their everything, but how can I help this person succeed in life or do better in life? And how can that person help me succeed in life and do better? And how can I be curious about the thing? things I don't know. I'm going to be curious about what what they believe in, what they stand for that I may not understand. Yeah. You know, so yes. Yeah. So down some very timely thing. Down with all of it. Good good wisdom from Star Trek again. Yes, it is. Learn it to be a better human.

Exactly. Well, thank you guys for for tuning in. Join us next week when we will be reviewing none other than threshold. Threshold. And don't forget about our contest. We got three contest, check out our Instagram, our Twitter, and our Facebook page. We're going to have an announcement about that real soon. Three, one-of-a-kind, special prizes, three contests. You can enter all three of them if you want for better odds, but we're going to be giving away some stuff. So check out our social media and visit us at our Patreon site and stay involved. It's been the community of the Delta Flyers is growing. every day and I love you guys it's been really exciting this year to to reconnect

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