The Delta Flyers - Alter Ego

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

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 Alter Ego. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Alter Ego:Kim is jealous of Tuvok when a holodeck character to whom he has become attracted tries to seduce the Vulcan officer.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, PJ Tomas, Nicholaus Russell, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, and ArianaAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Elaine Ferguson, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, John Espinosa, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Liz Lowe, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Justin Weir, Simon Inman, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michelle Maroney, Rickard Fahlander, and Meg JohnsonThank 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, everyone, welcome 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. Rob it. That's a tonight show theme. Yeah, not everyone knows that, right? Yeah, because they don't do that anymore. That was the old Johnny Carson version. The new one doesn't have that, background music? I don't know if they have that song.

You know, I'm an older gentleman these days, Karen, so I don't stay up for the Tonight Show. Do you remember Johnny, Ethan Phillips, and I? So, Neelix and myself, while filming Voyager, we would do our dueling Johnny Carson's. Oh, yes, you did. You remember that? I remember that, yes, yes, yes. Because one of the things that Johnny Carson would always say, he would say, I did not know that when he was talking to Ed. And so I would walk up to Ethan Phillips, and I would say,

I did not know that. And so he would do his version and he would go, I did not know that. And so we would go back and forth and you are dueling Johnny Carson. Mine just kind of sounded like Casey Kasem a little bit, but that's okay. It's good. It was good. I heard it.

I heard exactly who it was. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. I've been adjusting my microphone. I'm hoping that I have better sound. I've been told by the technical engineering department. of the Delta Flyers, that my sound has been a little lacking in quality. So I'm hoping for those of

you out there listening to this, that the quality is better. Speaking of technical things, we've switched sides. Do you want to explain that here? Yeah, okay. So depending on who sends the Zoom invite, that person is always going to be on one side of the screen. And typically, Robbie has always sent me to Zoom invite, but now that he's in Salt Lake, sorry, in the Utah area, he has not the best internet service right now. Yes, I'm kind of in a rural place that doesn't have great internet. Yeah. So we're, we're depending on you, Garrett, to come through with the fast internet. Right. You're the one hosting. So we switch sides. Yeah, it's basically a matter of making the upload reasonable. Because if Robbie tried to upload this, it would literally take

take probably five days to upgrade this. It's really, my internet is so slow. I think I'm going to go to the, I don't know if I mentioned this to you. You mentioned Tesla, right? You mentioned that Tesla has some type of internet. They're launching satellites with SpaceX, I guess, and all these rockets they're sending up. And they're creating their own satellite based internet. If you're in a rural situation where you don't have great internet, you can have very high

quality internet. But I also read yesterday that Amazon is now launching their version of this internet. Wow. So they're going to have satellites so you can get your internet through Amazon soon. And that will be satellite based as well. Has the Tesla option been rolled out already? It's been rolled out, but it's kind of in a beta form. Oh, it's in beta.

Beta testing form, yeah. Yeah, so you can buy the equipment and you can get the service if you qualify for their beta testing or whatever, which we did. So I'm thinking about doing it. Most of all, don't get confused because we're on different sides for those watching the video. You may think that Garrett is me and I am Garrett, but that is not the case. We are still different people. Yeah, we wear the same hat, but we have the same hat on right now.

There's a lot of things that could confuse you, but we are still different people, even though we switch to say. Yes. So please don't be alarmed. There's nothing to worry about. There's not been body swapping. There's no body snatching going on here. It's just we switch sides. Although every now and then I should just break into a quick,

Yes, ma'am. That would really confuse people. Yes, it would. Maybe I shouldn't do that. Do you have a go-to impersonation of any celebrity in your life when you were younger? Did you impersonate anybody? No, I was never in a person. Nothing.

No. Okay. Your sister, can you impersonate your sister? No. I don't, I wish I, I just never have done impersonations. I know, I wish I did. Well, you did one, probably, very young. I did this, I did the, uh,

Kerry McCluggage. Oh, I did carry McCluggage. Yeah, and the Slingblade, yes. The Paramount thing. I just sling blade. Yeah, it's not, it's not my comfort zone. I'll tell you, actually now that you bring this up. Yeah.

When I was young, I remember, um, and young like six or seven years old. Yes. Mine did a Daffy Duck impersonation, you know, like, yeah. whatever that thing and I remember I was so impressed and I tried to do it and I was horrible and everybody made fun of me when I did it and so I didn't do it anymore I was like oh I can't do the gaffy duck and I would practice I would try to practice at home and I couldn't it was bad and so I was like I'm not going to do that then I'm not going to I don't want people to make fun of me so I think I have a bit of a block about it you do have a block you had a traumatic childhood experience so

the minute time machines are invented, I'm going to go back in time and I'm just going to like push that kid and knock them to the kids. And then run away. There is a syndrome known as traumatic impersonation syndrome. Well, the thing is, but you will acknowledge this. There's a lot of actors, because we're actors, that have a pocket go-to impersonation. You know what I'm saying? Yes, yes, absolutely. This is an actor thing. But now I know the truth of the matter. As a child, that Daffy Duck friend, the friend that could impersonate Dachy Duffy Duck made you also try to do that. And when you got laughed at, it was game over for you. You said, never again.

Never again. Well, my goal is to pull that out of you. My duck impersonation. Well, not only just, you don't have to do the duck. Obviously, that's a sore subject with you. Let's just pick something else. I have TIS around us. Yes, let's pick Elmer Fudd.

Let's pick any other cartoon character or anyone else. Okay, find one. Thank you. Okay, I'll work on that. All right. So this week's episode. Yes. Alter ego. Alter ego.

Interesting. Alter ego. Yeah, so let's go watch this. Okay, and we'll come back and tell everyone what we think of this. Thank you, Patreon, patrons for being our patrons. Please stay tuned for your bonus segment. What do we remember? All right, guys, we are back.

from watching ultra ego. Hmm. Mm-hmm. It was filled with lots of alter ego. Egoes. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah? I really, really did.

All right. Let's start off with our poetry synopsis. Let's go with the haiku first. Hiku first, here we go, synopsis for alter ego. Go. In haiku form, here we go. Harry is in love. She has her eyes on Tuvok, a stalker from space. She has her eyes on Tuvac. Yeah, that's it. Harry is in love. She has her eyes on Tuvac. Oh, nice. A stalker in space.

I like you. A stalker in space would be another title for alter ego. It could be. Stocker in space. Okay. And here is my limerick for alter ego. Okay. A nebula full of mystery and beauty. An ensign preoccupied with love so moody. Tuvok to Harry meditate, retreat. Only with Tuvok, Morena feels complete. Loneliness is real. So go forth and be happy. Wow. You get a lot into that limerick. I squeezed a lot in. You squeezed a lot in. That was a lot of limerick words there. It's very poetic. too. It was more of a poetic limerick than a regular limerick, I think. So, there you go. Well,

I love it. Good synopsis. Why, thank you so much. Ultra ego is written by Joe Manoski, directed by Robert Picardo, his directorial debut. I can't believe I didn't remember that. I know. At first, I was like, because it was very interesting directing. Like, there was a lot of shots that were, I noticed that before the credits came up. I was like oh god who directed this because there's some really interesting stuff already yeah so uh i can't believe i forgot he when he directed he directed two episodes i think for us i don't think so i think he did one i think he did this one and it was one and done he just he just realized the amount of time you had to put in as a director was just too much i couldn't remember are you sure i think he directed

another one really okay i think so maybe maybe um i feel like you were the only one that directed multiple Trek episodes. I felt like other than, well, Roxanne, right? Didn't she do? She only did one for us. She only did one for Voyager. She did a ton of enterprise. She was like probably their busiest director. Okay. A lot of those. Okay. Gotcha. Um, so we start off on the bridge and we are investigating an inversion nebula, never seen before in the alpha quadrant. very unstable supposed to burn out in a few years but this one appears to be centuries old but right off the bat we see harry is very very preoccupied you know he's just off in another world and that interesting that everyone sort of pokes fun a little bit of at tuvok in this beginning scene

where where you and and chokote and janeway kind of share a look yeah well janeway even has a line that i felt like oh this is such a foreshadowing she says beauty and they're looking at this beautiful nebula just they've never seen this in the alpha quadrant um they even say something like this kind of inversion nebula doesn't last long because it burns itself out correct you know it eats itself right right so she's looking at this beauty it's so gorgeous and she says beauty and mystery a tantalizing combination yeah sort of looks at everybody and that's that and then there's a cut to Tuvok kind of he says something about you know I can't relate to your feelings about beauty or something I knew immediately with that that line and the way that it was cut it's like oh

this is going to be about Vulcan feelings and yeah anyway yeah and you you were right on the money on that and Harry is distracted in the very first scene and in the next scene we see Harry show up in Tuvok's quarters. And Tuvok is playing Calto. And I love Tuvok's line in this scene. Harry says, you know, something about Calto is really hard, right? And Tuvok says, Calto is to chess as chess is to tick-tac-toe. I love it. Oh my gosh. It's it's funny when I heard that line, I just, I always think about my first trip to Tokyo, Japan and riding the subway in Tokyo compared to riding the subway in Tokyo compared to riding the subway in Manhattan. And I always tell people, I say the Manhattan, the New York subway

system is like grade school. The Tokyo subway system is like getting a PhD. So it's such, oh, it's so complex. Yeah. Because if you imagine a subway system that has multiple levels, it's like multiple levels of subway. So it's just one level, but multiple. And also on certain levels, you can find an entire mall with a high end stores like, oh, there's Farragamo. and there's Fendi, and it's like inside the subway station. Wow, the subway station, wow. Unbelievable, yeah. And I got lost for an hour in the subway. I couldn't find where I was going, me and two friends. And after an hour, we just kind of just, we just sat down against the wall. We were so lost. These two Japanese girls that spoke English came up and they said,

you guys American? We were like, yes. You guys are lost? We go, yes. And so they told us how to get out of there. It was crazy. Yeah. Well, that's how, you know, sitting down in the Tokyo subway, is like how Harry felt when he walked into Tuvok's quarters. And he says that Tuvac, you know what? I'm in love and I don't want to be in love. Yeah. And it's Morena, this Holladette character. And Tuvac, again, I love some of the lines in this episode.

Oh, they're great. You're in love with a computer subroutine? I wrote that in, too. Great line. Did you notice, it sounds like I have a cold. It sounds like I have a cold this entire episode. It does. Yeah, you sounded amazing.

sort of yeah yeah low energy low energy that all worked for this episode really well yeah clearly he was distracted and his mind was elsewhere and it was I was very different game yeah yeah definitely off my game and my hair very James Deanish rebel without a cause very James Deanish I noticed your makeup looked a little different too yes around your eyes I don't almost look like you had eye shadow or different, I don't know. Yeah, something was different. I can't put a finger on it either, but I do, I do see that. Okay, so now we're in the corridor after the request to Tuvac that I help.

Help me. Help me get over. I'm in love of this computer subroutine. We have our opening credits. And then that's when I realized that Bob Picardo had directed this episode. Sandra Nelson is the guest star. playing marina in this episode yeah um i i completely thought that bob's episode came in season four i didn't think it was even in the season yeah yeah there you go um but you're in the hallway talking

with tuvac and he's explaining how you need logical deconstruction and there's vulcan ways to deal with this but i'm going to say why is tuvok yelling at you in the hallway you guys are walking down the hall and he's talking so loud and people are passing i'm like it seems seems like he could be a little more sensitive to the conversation you're having in public here. Yeah. I'm going to say because those lines, I'm guessing they were all looped, right? Those were all, we were all, you know, those were all voiceover lines. Typically, our corridor walk and talks are voiceover lines. Yeah. So maybe. Rick Berman did not like the sound of footsteps on carpet. He did, he thought it didn't sound like a spaceship. Yeah. So he, we took out all the

dialogue that we recorded when we filmed, and we re-recorded it as looping lines or ADR lines. It was very tedious to do. So maybe you're right. Maybe that's why. And just like Harry was off his game in this episode, Tim Russ might have been off his game at looping, where he just gave this really extra volume voiceover, which they recorded and didn't say anything about it. It didn't seem to match to me.

Yeah. It was a little lost. Yeah. For sure. For sure. But yes, he says, you know, you are experiencing the Shan Ha-Loc. I wrote down Shantal Lack. I didn't know what he said, but I was like, love at first sight in Vulcan is

Shantal-Lock, I guess, or something, whatever I wrote down. Which reminds me that comedian from the 90s, Dennis Wolfberg, when he talks about how, you know, he's Jewish and he talks about when he was in the South, someone's tried to say happy Hanukkah to him, but they said happy Shaka Khan. instead which is kind of like what you got out of that yeah he was experienced the shan ha look the engulfment which i love that the love at first sights that sort of puppy love thing and that logical deconstruction like you said is the cure followed by a regimen of meditative suppression so this is the vulcan way to get rid of those feelings of love or emotion and he'll

continue as in the in the next few scenes to tell you about all of these Vulcan names that he has for the different people, the way that Neelix interacts with you. Oh, he was, you know, putting down, he was diminishing things. He was a vulcan work. The Seulok, yeah. The word for that. And then we also talk about the arrival of Kess precipitated the Konar, the feeling of being completely exposed.

So he's, yeah, he's explaining all this stuff. But before that explanation, which is later in the corridor and the turbo lift, we do go into the resort hollow program, right? So we're actually in there for the first time. And it's Tuvok, it's Kim, it's Neelix, it's Kess and Morena. And my goodness, we see Kess in a bathing

suit for the first time. I know. What? Everybody. This whole episode has lots of different looks for everybody. Everybody. And on the holodeck, Neelix is there preparing for this big luau that everyone is supposed to attend that's right. That night.

That's right. And Marina's not around. She's out with Kess, we start the scene, she's been giving Kess hydrosale lessons, which I guess is like wind surfing lessons or something. I guess, yeah. Something like windsurfing, maybe, or wind surfing, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And Morena comes up and she asked Tuvok if he wants hydro sale lessons and he says, no, I'd prefer a

discussion, please. Yes. So, yeah, they have a discussion. And he gets to meet Morena for the first time. We see Harry and Morena together. And you mentioned earlier when we were talking that you thought this character was old, like 10 years older than you

and a strange love interest that you remembered, you know, to choose for Harry. And I agree, you know, at first when I saw her, I'm like, boy, that's a strange love interest. Makes much more sense seeing where the story goes, that Tuvok also falls for her. So it needed to be an actress that could appear on both sides of this to work for both characters and also play later on,

as we reveal the alien side of things. Anyway, so, yeah, he wants to talk. A good line, another great, because we talk about how many great one-liners are in this episode. Another great line is when Morena grabs Harry's hand and puts it on her her pulled tendon or whatever it is. Yes, and her calf. Yeah, her calf.

And Harry just, it's like a knot. Just the way he said it was just, the way I said it, I acted. I like that, that react. Oh, nice. There was some funny moments in this episode. Yeah. Funny moments from you, funny from Tuvok, funny from Janeway, funny from Paris and Bolana.

Yeah. And there's a lot of setups here because the setup here is when Morena asks Tuvok and Harry, are you guys friends, right? Yeah. And then Harry says, yes, and Tuvac answers, no. Right. Basically, I respect him. I admire him, whatever, but we're work.

Yes. He says something like, we have, I have fellowships. Yes. I have fellowship with people. I have other kinds of connections, but not in the emotional dynamic that you're describing. Correct. I don't have friends.

Yes. But foreshadowing here because that, that whole, you know, yes, no thing comes up again and again. Yeah. Right. Then we head to the corridor turbo lift. Tuvok and Kim are still talking. That's when we learned that Nelix is the Sulac in this story. Kess is, causes the Konar to happen.

And then Tuvok basically tells Harry, hey, this relationship will either end in conversion to a more balanced, stable relationship or it will end in tragic circumstances. And logic dictates a single course of action, according to Tuvok, and that action is retreat. No, leave. Bye. See ya. Now we jump over to the bridge. We have located a plasma strand that is that is seconds away from igniting. We're all very excited. A subatomic cascade reaction begins. But guess what? That plasma strand completely burns out without causing any chain reaction in the nebula. Chacote is basically intrigued. Everybody's intrigued. He says if we investigate this, we may understand what to do or we may understand a process. Yeah, a warp core breach from how to

warp core breach or plasma explosions, plasma reactions, things like that. Janeway actually, she says at one point in there, she says, after this strand sort of ignites and then burns itself out, she says, oh, that's interesting. It's almost like it's the nebula's creating a firebreak. And I love that she put it in sort of relatable terms when she said it's something that Paris does a lot, you know, that putting it in, oh, she said that it's like a fire, a fire break in space or whatever. Yeah, fire break in space, exactly. And I love when our characters can do that sort of, you know, take these complicated, you know, sci-fi concepts and sort of put it into

20th century. Laman's terms. Yes, exactly. So they're going to study this nebula. They're going to, so everybody's excited. This nebula seems awesome right now. We'll see about that. Janeway's leaving the bridge, and she just throws that comment that she's sure everyone will be attending. Everyone, right? And yeah, pushes in on Tuvok. And he does not look happy. And then it cuts around to like to Chocote sort of laughing and Paris laughing. It's very lighthearted and, you know, ha, ha, ha, two buck kind of a thing, right?

So now we leave the bridge and we see another corridor. There's a lot of corridor scenes in this. There are so many corridor scenes. This one was a really interesting choice by Bob Picardo because he chose to reveal Torres. We see Paris. We see Paris. And the camera is over Torres' shoulder.

But she's completely out of focus. But because of what she's wearing, it looks like she's nude. Right. You see just her shoulders. Oh, yeah. She's got like a spaghetti strap, you know, Lou-out dress. Right. But you only see her bear shoulders.

Right. Because there's no focus on her. The focus is on you. on Paris and you see the bare shoulders and then all of a sudden now there's the reveal on Torres that it's actually Torres there. Yeah. And, you know, Harry is not there. So guess what?

Paris is the one. Well, Torres knows where he's at. She says he's not coming. So that shows once again how close Harry and. Yeah. Balana R. She knows everything about what's going on with Harry. And she looks great.

You know, we rarely see Balana not in some, you know, attire for work or something, anything like that. We've never seen her in anything like this. She looks great in her luau dress. Tom talks about he's replicated at 1960s, you know, authentic luau Hawaiian shirt and gives all the details, which I didn't write down, but it was very specific. And there's a nice scene between those two. You start to feel like, oh, that's interesting.

Not that they were going on a date, but it ended. actually with uh balana saying something like well you seem pretty sure of yourself tom or something like that he says yes i am and there's sort of about coming to get me out of uh yeah about it's the quarters is what you're yeah yeah tom when you're not there tom says i'm going to go get him i'll talk him into it i'll get him to the party and she's like oh you seem very sure of yourself yeah but there was sort of a flirtatious foreshadowing to me i didn't yeah i didn't see the flirt i saw it as more innocent than a flirtation, flirtatious foreshadow. I definitely think that it established that there is more camarader, or at least more banter, interesting banter between Paris and Torres.

But in terms of like love, you know, connection, I don't think that's yet. That hasn't happened yet, really. I don't even think they're aware of it. I don't even think they're conscious of it. But I think the writers were starting to play with it a little and see how we responded. Would we give it a extra spin now and then. I think in this episode, just to jump ahead a little bit, when Paris and Balana are in at the Luau later that night. And what's his name? Vorek is there? Is it Vorek? It's Vorek and she's really going to meet Vorek. You know what I'm saying? Because she said, let's go pick up Vorek. And you're like, well, whoa, what about Harry? What about Harry? I thought it was kind of, yeah, all of us were going together. That's true. It was, yeah, as a group.

We were all going together. But there's a moment later on when Tom sort of caught in the middle of Vork talking about this beautiful spot to go have a nice dinner meal just with her and he feels a little awkward like the third wheel there and so I don't know there's some interesting moments I thought there was a lot of fun fun little interesting moments anyway so yes Harry's not there to meet them so Paris goes down to his quarters and uh and Harry is meditating in the dark He is trying to deconstruct the emotional complex by meditation. And, you know, what I took out of this scene was your one line, which Tom says, we've all fallen for a holiday character.

It happens. At this point, I'm like, really? I know. It does happen to everybody else? I didn't know what happens to everybody else. Okay, well, thanks. I'm glad. So, yeah.

Well, it's funny because you've got Tuvok on one hand going, this is horrible. You've got to retreat. You've got to do this very formal, you know, process Vulcan process and then you got Tom on the other hand going whatever it happens just stick with your routine dude he's like he's like it'll it'll pass you know stop stressing over this it's almost like if you were to add more lines Tom would have been what would have said yeah we've all fallen for a holiday character it happens it's not the first time and it ain't the last harry it's going to happen again to you I mean and it's it's now there's a bit of normalcy to it really and the more

I thought about this. I sat there and I thought, okay, is Harry just bizarre and crazy for falling for a holodeck character? And I started thinking, hmm, if this really was the 24th century and the Hala program was that advanced, where you could see, touch, feel here, a holodeck character, you could really blur the lines between reality. Oh, absolutely. And the holodeck, right? I think so, because you know the holodeck's always there. You can go back and continue this relationship. It's not like, oh, this is a game that will end at some point. Yeah. This is a, this is a never-ending sort of, you know, a story that you can participate in absolutely realistically. And but the hard part is if you did, I would think if you develop a relationship

with a holodeck character, then you can't integrate that into your, the rest of your life. No. I was about to say real life, but correct. The holodeck is very real, you know, it's, It's, it's, it's very real. So, anyway, okay. Yeah, that's my takeaway, too. We've all fallen for a holiday character, Harry. It happens. Yep, see, awesome line number three so far.

All right. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh, my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane. Trip after trip. You've been doing your impersonation of me. Yes. You know what doesn't belong in everyone's epic summer plans, though?

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deliver the nation's largest 5G network. So this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash TDF. That's mintmobile.com slash TDF. Up front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So now we're back in the resort holodeck program. And there's a doc moment. The doc moment. Yes. There's Bob Picard, our director, with a moment in the show. That's it. That's it. I think. That's his only moment. That is it. He's getting a lay, the flowers from the Polynesian lady on one side.

She kisses him on the cheek. Yeah. And then he turns to the next girl. He goes, your turn. She gives another leg. He's got a woman on both arms. And then he kisses the next one on the mouth. lips. And I went, oh my gosh, when I saw that, I went, whoa, what? I don't remember that. He looked like curious about the kiss. I thought it was fun for the doc because, you know, here he is. Why not try out some of these experiences he's never had? Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, he's got two dates, gets a kiss on the mouth, not a bad night for the doc. And speaking of dates, Janeway and Chakotay run into Tuvok. And Janeway says, you know, Tuvok, come on. you didn't have to come here this was like you seem miserable you didn't have to come it was it wasn't

an order it was just an invitation like relax have some fun yeah but i gotta say janeway and chakote looked like they were on a date yeah they did janeway takes chocote's arm at the end of the scene yeah it's you know haven't we dealt with this uh you know the janeway chocote romance didn't they put put a you know a nail in that coffin and janeway said, nope, we can't do that. Yes, they did. Here she is. Here she is taking his arm and out, you know, it seems professionally inappropriate. Yeah, but, you know, for all the fans that are people who want Janeway and Chakotay to be together, this is the perfect moment for them. They're just

watching this going, yes. See, I knew it. I was right. I was right. They do belong together. So, yes, we do see that. We also see that Tuvac is now, his attention is drawn to a solitary marina who's by herself playing calto so of course he's interested he's you know what's going on very clever of morena by the way because that's what he's doing is being isolated yeah and playing calto and yeah she's like me he thinks yeah he goes over sits with her she psychoanalyzes him she takes him to the mat there she's good she's as good as he is basically yes yeah you're to set yourself apart. You're not, you're not wearing the flowers, the lay around your neck. Right.

Try to isolate yourself. She completely psychoanalyzes him. And then that very simple move of taking off her lay to show the solidarity with him. Like, look, I'm also an outsider like you, a loner, you know. And I also like the fact that we learn a little bit about Calto. Calto is not about striving for balance but about finding the seeds of order even in the midst of profound chaos in the words of Tuvok. So now we know a little bit more about the Calto game. So that's great. But at this point, we have no clue that who she is, what she is. We just know that now she's interacting with Tuvok. You know, what happens to the whole. Very flirtatiously. Very flirty. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We also cut over to Balana and Tom.

And Vorek there surveilling the place. And then Vork steals Bologna away. He's reserved a lake view table. Right. And I get dumped. Yeah, but hold on. But the funny thing is when he says, I reserved a spot for us,

remember with that conversation we had in your perfect view, Balana has no clue what Vorek is talking about. She's like, what? I know. When did, oh, sure, okay. So I love that little scene because I was, was the way it was staged, Paris was in the middle of these two. Right. And my head kept going. Like a tennis match. Yeah, like back and forth. And my, my face, I was really happy with Tom

Paris generally in this episode. I mean, I didn't have a ton to do, but I was, you know, sprinkled throughout. And I love the scenes. They were fun. They were. Yeah. You know, spicy. They were, they were, you know, yeah, it was, it was a light touch. Yeah. You know, to play against the, the down hairy and the Vulcan who's, you know, isolating himself and struggling. And it was, yeah, the tennis match moment with the, with Fork and Bologna was fun. And then they walk off, and I had this like, what just happened? There goes your future wife with the Vulcan. See ya. Okay. That's right. So then we flash forward to the resort program much later, because now the only

people left are Tuvok and Morena. And that's when she makes her move on Tuvac who repels her advances. She doesn't make any progress. Well, you missed a moment where Harry comes in and talks to Paris for a moment.

And Paris is like, yes. And Paris is like, yeah, so Balana just dumped me and Vorik. So I get dumped. And then you come in. Or you walk to me, I think. Or I walk to you, but we see each other. And I'm like, hey, let's go get some food or a drink or something. And you're like, no, you see Morena and Tuvok.

No, I've got to go take care of something. And you dump me too. I do. You got double dumped. I got double dumped at the luau, dude. And the doctor got double kissed and I got double dumped. It was not a good night for Barrett. This is an episode of people liking other people and not getting any response from it.

So basically, Vorik, Vorik in love with Torres, but not really getting anything from Torres. Morena, or Harry in love with Morena, and not really getting anything from Morena, and Morena in love with Tuvok and not getting, so it's unrequited, is it unrequited or unrequited? Unrequited love. But the doctor got all the requiting. He got double-kid. As the director of the episode, he's like, no love for you, Tuvok, no love for you. Morena, no love for you, Vorick, and no love for you, Harry Kim, but for the doctor, love number one, love

number two. That's right. Oh, my goodness, yes. Yeah. The perks of being the director. The perks. Yes, so Harry goes over and is not happy. No.

Not at all. No. And he leaves. He just kind of storms out, takes off the lay. You know, he's gone. Yeah. And Tuvok and Morena stay. They're the last ones at the party.

and they have this moment you were just talking about and they have a moment where I thought they were going to kiss like I've never seen Tuvok so so you know infatuated as this episode he really really is affected by this attracted to this woman he's the last one to leave the party because he walks out and he says a computer you know shut down

a holodeck so he stayed till the end long after everybody else which is funny because he didn't even want to go in the beginning oh yeah That's right. Yeah, I remember I had a similar parallel in my life. I remember going to some UPN party or some event. And I took somebody, I invited some woman to come with me. But by the end of the party, she was piggybacked on somebody else's back kind of like joking around. Like I didn't leave with her. Basically, I brought her to the party. But yet, you know, something happened. And the next thing you know, she was off with somebody. else. So, you know, I, I had a parallel in my own life, pretty much. Of Morena. We've all had our Marines moments. We've all fallen on love with the holiday character, Harry. Okay. All right. We go back to the bridge. Now, we're figuring out the dampening field that we have noticed

occurring in this nebula, this evidently naturally occurring dampening field. It's still so beautiful. Everybody thinks it's gorgeous and it's stable. It's long lasting this thing. And then, and then we want to get a little closer to a part of it. I can't remember what Janeway wants to go. I think we're leaving now. I think she says we're done. We've seen this enough. We've got to get away from it.

Oh, okay. So she's like, let's get out of here. She changed to Paris, you know, warp three or whatever she says. Right. Harris can't get any propulsion. No, propulsion. No. So she sends Harry down to engineering to help Boulana because she asked Bala what's going on, right?

So Harry goes down there. But again, he is so preoccupied. So Bala basically. Bala and Vorek. They figure it out, those two, those nutty kids. That's not a good coupling. You know why, Robbie? Because, like, you know, how we do the hybrid name, right?

So Bala and Vorek becomes Borek, which is close to boring. Okay. Boring, Borek, you don't want that. No. Or Vorana, that doesn't sound right? No. Right? No. No. Okay.

All right. So, yes, in engineering, they discover that there's a failure in the computer pathways and they have all this tech talk and then they and then harry pipes in and he's like hey i think there's a failure in the computer pathway she's like yeah i just that's what i see yeah erry just go home yeah so that's what he cannot get her off his mind he said i cannot stop thinking about her nope um so he heads to his quarters he's in the in the turbo lift headed to his quarters tells the computer take me up to wherever deck whatever and he's like computer pause uh No, take me to the holiday.

Changes his mind. Yeah. Heads down to the resort. Yeah. And the holiday, well, let's just also say the holiday program is running, which is a little. He tries to start it. He says computer, start the holiday program. And the computer says that program is already running.

It's already running. What? What, Harry? Yeah, he finds Marina playing Calto. And I like how I like how Bob shot that because you see Marina playing the Kelto, you don't see Tuvok sitting there because of that high, high back chair that he's or that sofa thing that he's on, whatever he's sitting on. You don't see that he's there. And the reveal when Harry comes over, then he sees Tuvok there. And that's the, you know, that's the,

that's the moment where Harry loses it, you know, because he does, that's exactly what I wrote him. Harry loses it. He does. He's really hurt. Yeah. He's angry. He's, he really lets loose on Tuvok. He does. And Tuvok feels very apologetic. Like I, you rarely see Tuvok. He got emotional. He got emotional. He got emotional. He got emotional. Like he got, he got wrapped up in my emotion. So the vulcan, I'm sorry. I'm really not what I was doing. And yeah. And, you know, he sprung to his feet, right? I mean, the minute I started walking, he chases me out of there. It's very unvolcan-like, you know, which then made leads me to think that he does consider Harry his friend. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. If you don't care about somebody, would you really chase after them and say, like,

wait, wait, wait, wait. And he's, and he kind of, you know, sidestepped his, his typical vulcan stoicness and becomes so emotional in that little, like, no, no, no, you're not, you're not reading this right. This is not what you think it is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And Harry just feels disrespect that, you know, the respect and the trust. Well, Tuvok even, he even says, you know, computer delete Morena, delete this character, get rid of her.

he doesn't say shut her down he didn't say shut her down he'd delete her kill her right he's literally in that moment like yeah yeah get rid of this character for good right so he's basically doing that thing like look you know no woman's coming between our friendship where we're the we're guys we're buds you know and i'm going to show you i'm going to completely eliminate this character from existence right yeah um and harry doesn't buy it harry's like you know yeah that's that's great that you did that but it doesn't help. It doesn't help. The damage has been done.

That's right. Sorry, but you have disappointed me. Bye-bye, Tuvok. So he leaves. We'll go back on the bridge now. Still no propulsion. And I love the cuts, the close-ups between Tuvok and Harry, giving each other the stink eye on the bridge.

Oh, it was so funny that they both were, like, barely paying attention. And finally, Boulana says something like, oh, I got the aft thrusters to respond. Yeah. It's going to be slow, but we can get away from here really slowly. Like, you know, I might take us till tomorrow. Yeah. Um, and yeah, the stink eye shots were funny. The stink eye shots. They were great. Um, we jumped from the bridge to Tuvok's quarters. Tuvok walks in and lo and behold, Morena is there wearing the same color uniform as Tuvok and the mobile emitter from the doctor, right? Yeah. Yeah. And she says she downloaded her program into, into sickbay. And then

took the doctor's hollow emitter, mobile emitter. And that's how she got there. And she's talking about, she says something like, you know, you're, you've opened up a whole new world to me, or you are a whole new world. She's caressing this tapestry on the wall. It's like, why is she caressing a tap? Like, go caress Tuvok, but I don't know, you've seen a tapestry before, probably. Maybe not that tapestry. Maybe that was a Vulcan tapestry. So she was very intrigued. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Tuvac. And she gets right up there again. You feel like they're going to kiss. And her hand is up when it's just a knee. Pulls her hand away and hits his combat and calls a security team and intruder alert. And she freaks out. Like why did you do this? She's very hurt. Very, very hurt about it. And the security team walks in, phasers drawn. And she's, and she's, just as they enter, she disappears and the hollow emitter drops down. Yeah. Yeah.

So now we jump to the conference room where we are just trying to figure out who on earth is Morena or what is Morena. We talk about the fact that in Next Generation, Picard deals with a holiday character. And he lost control of his ship to a holiday character. Took over the ship. Yeah. And Chocote puts it well. He says, she's a sentient computer program.

Yeah, that's what he calls her, a sentient computer program. And then Harry says, yeah, we studied that Enterprise D case at the Academy. Yeah, yeah. So she basically is manipulating everything, the entire ship computer from inside the holodeck, that this sentient character is able to access the ship's computers and control all of these things. And so Janeway's still kind of perplexed. She's like, so what's the purpose of what's, you know, how did this happen, blah, blah, blah. And then that's when Tuvok sort of reveals his side of the story, which is, well, it all

has to do with me and Morena's feelings towards me. And that's when Harry gives the best look of all when he's just like, you put your head in my hand. You were like so defeated. Oh, God. Oh, it was great. It was like great. Yeah, she's in love with you. Thanks a lot. I went to you for help and now she falls in love with you. My mentor. It was a good moment. It was a good moment. It was a good moment. And Bob Picardo captured that moment brilliantly. So that was good. And Harry also says at the end of the scene, he says, you know, she appeared.

She first appeared the day that we got to the nebula. So this nebula has something to do with it. I love how I picked my background as a bit of a nebula. And I had no clue that there was a nebula involved in this episode before. I know. And I've sort of got a bulbous little nebula light. Like thing, even though it's the caretaker. But it looks nebula like.

Yes. So now we go back to Holodeck 1, where it's Tuvok, Paris, and Torres, who have been sent there by Janeway to figure out what the heck's going on. Yes, phasers drawn. They enter the program.

That's so quiet and creepy. And Torres discovers there's a subspace signal coming from somewhere off the ship serving as an uplink. So this is what's going on. Someone's tapping into the ship from outside of Voyager. And that's when the Luao characters attack.

And I don't know if it was written into script, they were all scary was that they were so creepy smiling she's like smiling as i like as i strangle you and yes yes and you got your ass kicked basically by i got i got knocked down by a fruit bowl a got yeah the guy took a fruit a bowl of fruit and uh you know smacks you cross the face right socked me in the yeah i thought in the chest like knocked the wind out of me right because i basically was down on the ground for most of this fight and the hula lady just kicks you while you're down she kind of like you know, kicked you. Yes, I get kicked by the girl. Yeah, you get kicked by the smiley girl.

Right. But then someone else, another girl comes to you and tries to kick you and you grab her and you flip her. Yeah. Yeah. Flip her. Yeah. Flip her by her foot. Yeah, you fired the control panel because I got to do something heroic there. Did you feel bad that you actually hit a girl or flip a girl? Did that make you? It's funny when I saw that. I did remember some of this fight and I do remember like, yeah, it felt, it felt strange to be like, because they're smiley and they're, you know, they just look so friendly. And here I'm like flipping. I'm sure it was a stunt woman that we flipped. But I do remember feeling a little bit like, this is a weird fight.

It was not a, it was not a normal, normal fight. And I also think it's extra creepy because if you think about the collective consciousness of anybody who watches this show, most Americans have made a trip to Honolulu. They've experienced Hawaii, a lot of, a lot of Americans. have and they know what the luau is like and they know how how pleasant and kind and smiling and relaxed the hawaiian people are how gracious they are and that really feeds into this creepiness of this scene because never in your life would you expect a Hawaiian luau hula woman or or fire dancer guy to go crazy and try to kill you right so yeah i definitely felt a little creeped out watching

this whole thing yeah so i fired the control panel to try to shut it and then we retreat back to the bridge and we realize that, yeah, Morena must be on a hidden ship or something. And she's using the holodeck controls to invade the ship's computers. And she wants Tuvok on the holodeck alone. Yeah.

Now, our inertial dampeners are offline when we're on the bridge. And another, I think, amazing line number four comes in this scene on the bridge from Chikote, where there's a, huge close-up on him and he's like, she's been using the morayna character like a puppet

is what he says, right? Yes, yes. I love that sign. I love that line. I love that line. I love that line. Okay, so then, yes, come to the holodeck alone or I will destroy your ship.

Yes, yes. Dun-dun-da. Yes, and then he gets Tuvac, you know, very cautiously comes under the holodeck and they're all alone. And basically she's like, this is our world. like you know i want you and i need you and it's you and me here on this holodeck like this will be our world like that's how it's going to be yeah and uh and uh two bucks trying to you know reason with

her and they go back and forth but then eventually we realize balana finds the source of this uplink so we know where whoever is off on some hidden ship or something who's been creating all of this problem. Balana finds the source of that uplink and we transport Tuvok to the source of it. So he appears in this hallway, this mysterious hallway on some ship. Clearly it's some kind of tech ship, you know, it's a station or something. Yes, let me just rewind it back in the resort program before we get to Marina Station. Another great line when Tuvok says, any attempt to generate intimacy between us will not be successful. And I just kept thinking, what if people were to use Vulcan-like lines in real life where, you know, if someone was at a bar and someone was trying to make

an advance, an unwanted advance, and the person said, I'm sorry, but any attempt to generate intimacy between us will not be successful. I mean, if to use these Vulcan-like ways of saying things in real world would be funnier than half, like that would be a great candid camera, sort of a hidden camera thing where you had an actor at a social situation where everything that came out of his mouth was spoken like a Vulcan

and they had no clue what the heck this guy was doing it would be really I think it would be a funny scene so all right so let's jump back to the station Morena Station inside the Nebula

they're on the station and he's kind of creeping down and no one's around on the stage it feels like an empty ghost ship and then he comes into sort of this control control area and sees from behind a lone figure sitting in front of the controls of the station

and just then the nebula outside explodes again and on the bridge they say the shields are gone shields are down yeah not down they're gone they have no more shields yeah if there is another explosion Voyager will be toast toast exactly but i also find it so interesting that the whole purpose of why she's there is to maintain that nebula so it doesn't explode in order to keep it intact so the people from her home planet can look at this and say it's like a park beautiful it yeah it's like a park ranger that's what i said she's basically like a park ranger who's stuck in this in this like you know look out yeah and she's lonely she's very lonely and she look the makeup when we see her finally when tuvok walks around and we see the look of this woman

she looks lonely it was a great makeup i thought by mike westmore it yeah it looked very sad it kind of looked lizard like i also noticed did you see her fingers she had prosthetics on her fingers so they were longer which we've talked about in the past sometimes they never do you know they might put some makeup on the fingers but they don't do prosthetic hands correct but they did for her They did for her. She had like these 10-inch fingers. Yeah. And, you know, my recollection was that when we did reveal her, that she was in,

I remember her being much, like, if you look at her color scheme of the makeup, it's light, it's light in the teeth. It's very white. It's white here. But my memory was she was almost entirely very dark, complected. You know, I didn't remember any lightness. Now, when I look at her makeup, her makeup now, now that I see. see it, you know, 25 years later, I look at the makeup and I think, huh, kind of looks like the face of a horogen, which we haven't seen. Yeah. They haven't been introduced yet, but it looks like

a Horogen warrior face. But then the rest of it with all the hair kind of looks like, I don't know if you remember Battlefield Earth. Oh, yeah. That movie with John Travolta. It looks like John Travolta. Like the dreadlocky's, yeah, his dreadlocky hair going on mixed with a Horogen from Voyager. So that's what I saw. And she's, you know, her whole. thing is I want you and I want you and I want you. I want you yesterday. I want you today. I want you to tomorrow. She says you're like nothing I've ever encountered before. I can't live without you. Yeah. Yeah. And she also says you have to want to be with me. Like that's part of part of what she, you know, what she what she needs is to be wanted and cared about. Yeah. And he says to her,

you know if you really understood what I am meaning a Vulcan then you'll you would know I can that can never happen correct I can never want to be with I can never feel what you want me to feel but she doesn't care it's very interesting but she doesn't care marina doesn't care not until he says if you truly care for me you would not pursue this course of action yeah that is the moment when she sits there and thinks he's right I do care about him I do love Tuvac. If I truly love him, why would I cause this havoc and craziness and up, you know, upheaval in his life just because of my love for him. If I really love him, I'm going to let him go.

And so she does do that. And that's, you know, thank goodness for all of us. And I think that when we come back to the bridge, the only person who really played that moment was invested in that moment was Torres. Torres is the only one that. She's like, oh, because she's, you know, breathing that sigh of relief because we had no shields. We were one step away from annihilation, right? But I felt that, you know, the way I played, everyone else's reaction was very kind of flippant or almost like, oh, we're alive. You know, it wasn't, there wasn't that gravitas there.

And I felt like you could track it with Torres's reaction. Yeah. I wish I had reacted a little bit differently. So that's kind of a bit of a do-over for me. Yeah. sure yeah so Tuvok goes back to you know he convinces her to let the ship go and he goes back to his routine playing Calto and we're back on the holodeck and we see Tuvac inviting Harry to learn Calto and and he apologizing this says I fail to respect the complexity of your emotions right

they sit down to to play Calto and then and then a cute holodeck girl comes over as they The two of them sit there. The two friends sit down. She says, hi, may I join you? And they both in unison go, no. Right. It shows everything is copacetic. It's all good.

We're now both saying the same word at the same time. Because earlier, it was me saying yes, Tuvok saying no. Then are you guys coming to the luau? Garrett saying, sorry, Harry saying yes. Tubac saying no. And now it's Tuvac and Harry in unison saying no together. So all is good on Voyager. There you go.

What is your theme for this episode? Wow. I'll tell you my theme. You go first. The theme, the lesson, the thing to remember, the takeaway for this episode for me is loneliness can be very dangerous. That the loneliness that she felt, you know, moved her to do very bad things.

She said to Tuvac it's not the first time. She is so lonely that she's you know breaking into people's computers and and you know doing things that are not kind that are not

you know that don't have integrity that yeah loneliness can just be very dangerous. Loneliness you know for for even for Harry or Tuvok there you know the lack of sort of feeling the support and connection of friendship or of romance in their lives or whatever. So to me, my takeaway is like be cautious, you know, if you see signs, if I see signs of

loneliness, that I should be cautious because, you know, I don't want to get too far down that hole because, you know, bad things can happen, I guess. That's my theme. Yeah, I also think that the other theme is just really to have open communication with your friends to be able to explain like two bucks should have come up and said hey by the way i'm playing calto with morena you know if he'd come if he'd kind of come clean instead of because it did seem a little underhanded you know what i'm saying so yeah and and of course from his standpoint he's not trying to get with morena he's just he's just intrigued and he has somebody to to sort of um um sort of match his wits in a way you know so that's it's interesting because he talks when he

convinced her to free the ship and not not do bad things yeah he talks about you know i have a wife and a family you know back on vulcan i i have a mission to complete i have family and so on one level i was like oh it's interesting i wonder if because we saw um two of a playing calto alone in his quarters on some level he exposed himself to loneliness that he wasn't playing calto with you no with harry He wasn't hanging out. You know, he had sort of isolated himself, just like she said in that scene. Tuvok had put himself, whether or not the Vulcans can feel loneliness. Yeah.

It was a similar state of being where he was isolated and disconnected from people. And he exposed himself to, you know, to falling for her in a way too. So really, this is kind of character development for Tuvok, because now he's kind of realizing, hey I need some interaction I should include people in my activities and so he brings Harry into it right so it's a nice piece of of character development for Tuvac really well that was a fun episode I really actually really enjoyed that episode really did I thought Bob did a great job I thought the performances were good it was spread out and included all of our cast yeah for the most part you know cast and the doctor probably had the least to do we didn't see much of them

but for the most part, everybody was involved in this, I thought. Yeah, yeah. In a nice way. Yeah. So what's your rating? What's your rating on this? I would give this an eight out of ten. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm going to go a little lower. I'm probably going to go around seven, maybe. Okay. Yeah, just a little bit. But yeah, overall, everyone got to do something in this episode.

You know, they utilized everybody, which is what we'd like to see. We'd like to see utilization of all the series regulars in each episode. episode, if possible. They all have something to contribute. I think all these characters bring a different flavor and a different point of view that's great to see in every episode. So, yeah, excellent. Awesome. Well, that was fun. What's next week? Next week, guys, join us as Robbie and I will be reviewing the episode Coda. Have a great week, guys. Thanks, guys. Thank you.