The Delta Flyers - Babel

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

The Delta Flyers is a weekly podcast hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This week’s episode is Babel.Babel: A virus infects the station's residents, making almost everyone unable to speak coherently. Aboard Deep Space 9, Chief O'Brien is feeling both overworked and underappreciated.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Janet K Harlow, Brian Barrow, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Vikki Williams, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Lisa Robinson, Alex Mednis, James H. Morrow, Roxane Ray, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Gemma Laidler, Matt Norris, & Izzy JafferOur Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Luz R., Chris Knapp, Dannielle Kaminski, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Mary Jac Greer, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Tom Paynter, Jenna Appleton, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Mary Burch, Sandra Stengel, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Holly Schmitt, Christopher Arzeberger, Tae Phoenix, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Steven Lugo, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, Mars DeVore, Stephanie Lee, & David SmithAnd our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Patrick Carlin, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Meredith Hudes-Lowder, Trip Lives, Ann Marie Segal, Samantha Weddle, Chloe E, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carl Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Mike Fillmon, Chad Awkerman, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Maxine Soloway, Barbara Beck, Species 2571, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Cindy Ring, Alicia Kulp, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Samantha Hunter, Jamason Isenburg, Ashley Stokey, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Jennifer Jelf, Louise Storer, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Marc McCallum, Ryan Benoit, John Richardson, Rachel Shapiro, Clark Ochikubo, David J Manske, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Tim Neumark, Will Forg, Ryan Tomei-Siguroarson, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, James Lyszczek, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lisa Gunn, Lauren Rivers, Shane Pike, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Akash Patel, Linda Daireaux, Jennifer Vaughn, Cameron Wilkins, Ken McCleskey, Walkerius Logos, PJ Pick, Preston Meyer, Lisa Hill, Stacy Davis, Ryan Mahieu, Andrew Cook-Feltz, Karen Galleski, Pamela Miller, & Rik MoranThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”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

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers Journey Through the Wormhole with Quark, Dext, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your hosts along this journey are Terry Farrell, our favorite science officer, Armin Shimmerman, our favorite entrepreneur, Garrett Wong, our Forever Ensign and myself, your favorite helmsman, Robert Duncan McNeil. Today we have Armin Sherman with us for Babel.

Welcome, Armin. Thank you. Glad to be here. Entrepreneur, that's a very good word. Yes, it's a good word indeed. That's the same comment I have. I was trying to find the right word. It's a positive spin.

It is. It is a very positive spin. The glass is half full on that, the way you said entrepreneur i i'm very i'm impressed ravi i was like wow look at him okay this is so exciting i feel i feel now four episodes in or three episodes in that we are however you count the pilot i feel like i'm getting hooked on your show armin yeah good good it's it's uh that's very gratifying to hear uh i've heard over the years many people who uh just didn't watch it for whatever reason and just stumbled upon it and said, you know, this is, this is better than I thought it would be.

So I'm grateful for that, Robbie. Thank you very much. I'm serious. I'm very proud of it. I am falling. I have great affection for the characters already and the relationships are compelling. I will admit, and I said this to Terry, I am Team Bashir right now. Yes, Sid has got me. I had no idea how funny he was. Oh, Sid is very funny. Very dry and very funny. Okay. I'm like Robbie. I'm in the same boat as Robbie. I'm all. I love this show. I love this show. I love the way it shot. I love the way. I love how quirky. And I'm team everybody. I don't have any specific person. I'm team Cisco. I'm team cork. I'm team all of the characters. I'm team all of them. What? All the characters? Yeah, I am. You know, it's funny, Armin? I was telling Rebecca this last night. I said, these characters are something about the relationships, I think, are stronger and more compelling than our Voyager characters. I honestly mean this. Because a lot of times on Voyager, there was a lot of, like, conflicts. And I know people say you've got a lot of conflicts and drama and darkness on your show.

But what I see is family and heart and love and humor and positivity. I actually think your characters are, if we're scoring, if we're keeping score here, so far more connected than our Voyager characters were at this point in our series. I really think that. Well, if I may, perhaps our cast tended to be a little bit older than your cast, so there's that. And certainly you've touched upon a point that I made last time. It is about family. Yeah. It's family in many different ways. and we don't really get that in the Berman years so much on the various shows of the Berman years.

We see a lot of that in Picard. Family becomes enormously important. And I think they learned that that was something that was compelling for an audience to watch. So I think you've hit upon the secret to our show. I feel it already. And like I said, a few episodes in, I feel it already. Before we get to our recap, we're going to talk about some birthdays here.

We've got some of our birthdays from our Patreon subscribers. Our first birthday is Jenna Appleton, December 31st. Happy birthday, Jenna. Happy birthday, Jenna. Happy birthday, Jenna. All right. Next up, we have none other than Mike Gou. January 4th.

Happy birthday to Mike Goo, do the goo. Happy birthday, Mike. All right. We've watched this episode. We're going to come right back with a recap after this. Okay, just before we start with our poetry synopsis and before the definition of this title of this episode, I just wanted to say, I forgot to say this in the intro, when we decided to go into DS9, my hope was the one actor I want over anyone else to do this recap discussion is Armand Shemberman. That was always my hope. You're the brains of the operation over there, Armin. You were my intro into Star Trek and the Voyager.

I mean, you showed me the ropes. You really were my Trek mentor in a way. And I feel like I'm going to start crying right now, but I don't want to go there. But I just feel that I'm so, so excited. And I guess in the UK, they would say chuffed. I'm so chuffed that you are part of this podcast. So thank you. And the fact that we got one other person is icing on the cake.

It's amazing that we have Terry. Thank you. Thank you. That's very kind. That's very kind. Jesus. Now I'm Jeff. Okay.

Thank you. All right. That's all. Well, I'm just, I'm thrilled to watch Bashir, Dr. Bashir. Keep saying it. I love Dr. Bashir. He's funny. Do you know that Sid was a possibility for Cisco?

What? Was he really? Mm-hmm. How did the... Berman saw him in a movie and thought, oh, that's an actor that we could use for Cisco. But you see, Sid was in makeup when he did the movie. And so when they got... a headshot i believe when they got a headshot of sid we all call him sidg el fiddil yes uh or

alexander sidg now yes he went always much too young for cisco but he's so like the performance in the movie that he kept him in mind for boucher do you know the name of that film i'm just curious i don't know okay i said would know this right he would certainly would know that and and uh while we're talking about sid very quickly yeah because i am a shakespeare scholar yes sid is hamlet sid is hamlet wow really here's here's why sid's father was the king of sudan uh his his uncle uh overtook his father's regime um and and became the new king of sudan uh is still the name the still he's still the king of sudan wow but sid had to vacate uh his father sent his son and his wife away to England where his wife was from. And so Sid avoided all that turmoil. And ironically, the character

Bashir, whether it's coincidence or whether it was meant to be this, I don't know. But the present king of Sudan is Bashir. And so whether he's named after his uncle or not, that I don't know. Wow. Oh, my goodness. I had no idea. I thought when you started that story, it was going to be like, oh, metaphorically, he is. No. It's the same story. It's exactly. the same story. Wow. He was the crown prince of Saddam, is what you're telling me. Yes. And I have met, I have met Sudanese with Sid and they bow. They refused to look in his face because he is royalty to them, especially if they don't like Bashir, King Bashir. They look away. I had a, I was at dinner with Sid in Anah once and there were people that Sid's mom had brought to the dinner who were

Sudanese and it was obvious they were in the presence of royalty. Wow. I have no idea. That's insane. Yeah. And he would never say that. That's just how humble he is. You know what I'm saying? Sid's never like, do you know who I am? I'm the crown prince of citizen. As I understand it, he's been asked once or twice to, would he come back to be the new king? And he said, no, no, I am. Oh, my God. I get that. I can't imagine being in that role anywhere. And you know, he's not the only royal we had in our cast. Who else is royal? Renée. Renée is royal. Renée's mom was a prince. Yeah. Of what? Oh, my. Where?

She was of a royal family out of Italy. Understand that the Italians, for many for centuries, there was no Italy. It was various city states. Small futile. Yeah, kind of states. And so one of those states, Renee's maternal side of his family comes from the Royals in those city states. I had no idea.

This is insane. This is, I know. This is the kind of thing. stuff that I've known you for 30 years. And I had no idea about these things about your cast. Just to let you know, I'm the son of an immigrant, so it doesn't apply to me. Yes. I'm the grandson of a watermelon farmer.

So, yeah, let's get to our poetry. I'm feeling the need for some poetry. My limerick was inspired by this story. I loved how this virus on the ship kind of made everyone. speak in an unusual way. I'm inspired by that. So here's my limerick. There's a virus on board DS9.

And it's waffled when topsy and kind. But Jorans fly true under ankle blue. Station City breaks everything is fine. There you go. That's awesome. Well done. Thank you. That must have been one of the easier ones to write.

I was like, I don't have to have it make sense. It's going to be just like this show. I'm going to say right now, Robbie rejoiced when he realized he was genius. But it was so genius. I don't want to give my haiku. I don't even want to do it. It was Rebecca's idea to do the gibberish. She's like, oh, you should do a limerick and gibberish.

I'm like, yeah. And I got to say, just as you know, Armin, in the past, Rebecca has helped out with his normal limericks. And Rebecca is a limerick master. I don't know anyone who can pull stuff out of no, out of thin air like Rebecca does. It's pretty good. So it's a great idea, great idea for Rebecca to have you do that. All right.

So here is my haiku for Babel. Chiefs a busy man. Virus spreads. No one makes sense. Sirmac, half the cure. Nice. Thank you. Nice.

Nice. But Shear did the first half of the cure, right? So, yeah. You know what I realized is, is haikus generally are a lot like this episode. Kind of gibberish. Kind of, yes. Is it surmack or surmock, guys? What's the doctor's name?

So I said it okay, hopefully? Yeah. All right. Matthew Phazon. Uh-huh. Oh. The actor's name was Matthew Phaser. He used to run a theater here in Los Angeles.

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. The only phazon I know is the one on, You know, Sandy, Sandy, Faison? No, Donald Faison, the actor on... Oh, yes, clueless. Clueless, yes, exactly.

And then later, the medical show, the funny medical show with... Scrubs. Thank you. Yes. It's like a game show between Robbie and I. When I can't think of something, he'll come up with it for me. Okay. I want to hear the etymology of this title.

Yes, let's hear. So it's a very simple definition. Babel, which is the American pronunciation. Babel is the English pronunciation of the word. It is a scene of confusion or a confused assemblage. The etymology of it comes from the Genesis story of the city of Babel that built a tower too high, too close to heaven, and therefore God destroyed it. And when it was destroyed, the same thing that happens in this episode happened in the Bible.

No one is capable of talking to each other because they're all talking different languages. got it that makes sense that's what i was kind of guessing it had something to do with the biblical story and i imagine uh our word that we use all the time techno babble uh is also derived to some extent from the word babble nice okay thank you for that well thank you for that all right our our teleplay for this episode was uh by michael mcgrie and naren shankar they wrote it the story came from Sally Caves and Ira Stephen Baer. And this episode was directed by Paul Lynch.

This is his second episode of DS9. So he did a back-to-back rotation basically on the show. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And Armin, I don't know if I told you, but Paul Lynch is the director that gave me my sag card. I mentioned this. Oh.

Yeah, on the Twilight Zone series. Yeah. Well, I like Paul a lot. He tended to leave everybody alone with them do their work. yes that's good yeah he made you feel like he were doing good work and he had confidence in you and i liked that about him our guest stars are jack keller as jeal matthew phazon we mentioned as surmock ren and gillespie as jabara and geraldine feral as gaelis gales yeah great guest cast but this was really mostly focused on our series regulars this episode so it aired january 25th 1993

not that long ago not that long ago uh oh my god i just feel old thank you so much why did you say not that long go twice in a row was that in purpose you wanted to reassure me but the truth is numbers don't lie you're a ferengue you know numbers yeah all right our first scene is in the airlock we see an airlock with the door stuck o'brien's trying to repair this Airlock. He's very frustrated. They've been there for over an hour, this team. So O'Brien goes to work on some stuff. He talks to his team. And then this alien appears. And I thought this alien looked like a dog. I'm going to call it the dog alien for this episode. His name's Jehiel. Why does he look like a dog to you? He's got fur coming down. He looked like that.

It's a beard. Why would you say that? But it's on his face and everything. People have beards on their face. I don't. What did you think, Carmen? If I, yeah. thank you for asking all I can tell you is what I assume and I and some of it is based on knowledge which is that Mike Westmore who designed all these makeups yes had if you guys remember on in his office he had several insect books and several animal books for inspiration yes and he would go to those books and look for inspiration indeed and so it's very possible Robbie that he was looking at dogs when he created. I think he was. I think it was. I just, I'm going to call him the dog alien. It's not

disparaging. I love dogs. But it looks like with the fur on the face or something like that. Anyway, his name's Jihil. He shows up, tells O'Brien he wants his anti-matter flow converter fixed. You can tell already that O'Brien is overwhelmed. And then he gets a call from Dax to join him in the lab. And that's the end of that first scene. The impression I was left with was there's a dog alien on this. That's the biggest take. I love it. And I would add to that, a short dog alien. Okay.

Compared to Cullen. For me, he was a hairy alien. That's it. I didn't get dog, but that's fine. And as one actor to other actors, I felt badly for him because in the editing, a lot of that first scene is just the back of his head, which is a ton of hair. And I thought, really, they couldn't give him a little coverage, a little bit more coverage. They gave him some, but not sufficient.

I mean, he is one of the guest stars. They should give him a little more. And to showcase the makeup job, too, right? It's funny you mention that. I forgot about that, but I had the same feeling. Like, why are they avoiding this actor? I thought maybe it was story-wise, but it didn't turn out to be any story. No.

At first, I even thought that maybe he was loops, but second watching, I watched real carefully. And I went, no, that's, he's not looped. So I thought maybe that's why they avoided his face. But he wasn't loop. Well, we go from overwhelmed O'Brien and dog alien demanding some service to outside of the lab where Dax had called him. He's walking down the hall, but Dax isn't in the lab. She's out in the hallway. And he's confused why she's outside.

And she says, look. And then she goes to open the door to the lab. And as he enters, it is this high-pitched noise, a horrible sound, and he thinks he can fix it really quick. He goes in, does a little something, and it does. It goes away. But then after he's sort of smugly sort of, you know, happy with himself for fixing it so easily, the lights go off. So everything is a mess. And he's got, you know, a lot of work to do.

been in the lab before this point this may be the first time in the lab am i right maybe i i feel like i have no memory of there being any other scenes in something called the lab see that's what i was going to say i mean this is like a such a obscure location like we didn't see it in the pilot i don't think we ever see it again i don't think so so in fact it didn't even occur to me i just thought it might have been her living quarters but but i'm surprised when you say it's the lab because that went over my head. Yeah. Yeah, it would have made, it would have made more sense just to say,

hey, can you come down to my quarters? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we go to Ops next. Yeah. And Ops has all kinds of problems too. Things are broken. Kira's very upset.

I was delighted that they changed Kira's hairdo. Oh, yes. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yes. That's the hairdo that basically she had for the rest of the show. No nonsense. And that's her natural hair, right? Yes, yes.

that's styled but it's her natural hair she's not wearing a wig or anything i think lots of wigs but i don't i'm unless i'm very much mistaken i don't think uh nana ever wore a wig yeah yeah and about this time by the way is when we started calling her nana as opposed to nana right the incorrect pronunciation yeah nana is somebody's grandmother nana is her name abri books asked her how do you want it pronounced and she said well my grandmother called me called me nana and uh nana excuse me and uh so after that thanks to mr brooks uh we all called her nana wow i i didn't know you ever called her anything but nana so when we first met her it was nana nana visitor nana visitor yeah i bet i i would have assumed that when i first

saw her name yeah yeah i think that's the natural assumption yeah the natural assumption well miles is working care's upset he i love how he pops up behind a below the console like he's coming out of his coffin or something as well yeah it was a great it was a great I love those kind of comedic that kind of staging when things like that just pop into frame yeah and then Cisco replicates some coffee and he thinks it's disgusting and asked miles why he hasn't fixed the replicators yet and uh Brian has a kind of a sarcastic response uh where he says he says you're absolutely right sure I knew I'd forgotten something can't have the operations chief sitting around daydreaming when there's work to be done can we i'll get right on it yeah it's great

reading of that line so sarcastic not the first but one of the many examples of what a phenomenal actor columbini is oh yeah cullum is so easy with what he's doing so inventive so real so so down to earth strange for a star trek show it is exemplary of the incredible talent that that man has i was always in awe of his performances and his ability to memorize lines uh really ordinary he memorizes them in a in a manner of a minute or two what that's incredible it's incredible maybe he has a photographic memory or something maybe i don't know he and sid both uh had an extraordinary ability to memorize very quickly oh wow not me no did not not not you god gonna hammer that in

Oh, my goodness. Well, we go to an access tunnel next where O'Brien's working inside what looks like a Jeffrey's Tubes-type tunnel. He's laying on his back, repairing the replicator, you know, kind of mumbling to himself. And then we cut outside of that Jeffrey's tube, and he comes out, punches the replicator panel a little. There's an energy discharge, and then it seems to be back to normal. I just want to say, while he's in that excess tunnel, his monologue, he goes, He goes, fix replicator's chief. But then he does that falsetto female voice.

He goes, my console's offline, chief. And I was thinking, if I did that on Voyager, they would have said, cut, that's way too much. You can't, you can't add that much to it. Yeah, they had us being very stiff and formal. They kept dealing that into us. It was delightful watching Columini do this thing, you know. And he walked the fine line between it being too much and being right on. Wow, he did.

And it's a tribute to Colum's, uh, uh, talent yeah he's a genius he really yeah well he makes a little coffee you know the replicator's working again and tastes just right to him and then uh he walks away and we cut back inside the replicator that tube that jeffre's tube and the camera has a great move i love i love great camera camera move yeah yeah i love shots inside jeffre's tubes on all star trek shows because they're just they feel so sci-fi i just loved it and the camera move was great it reveals this little little hidden device sort of wired in. Yes.

It's blinking. But it looks like it gets activated right at that moment. Yeah. Isn't that what you got from that scene? Yeah, it looks like it turns on here. Right after he fixes it, it turns on. To start doing whatever it's supposed to do, but clearly it's sort of hidden. Yeah.

And it's, it looks like a bomb to me. It looks like, you know, the classic when you put the C4 under the thing or, you know, and the red light starts blinking. It felt in that sort of trash. Like, uh-oh, this is a bomb, something bad. It also kind of looks like that thing, those splitters that you used to split cable signals from. You could take the main one. Oh, your cable box at home?

Well, kind of. I mean, you can take your main wire and you plug it into this splitter and then you'd have two wires that come out. Yeah. And I know that because in college, that's how we stole cable from the Philippines. So everybody shared one account. Oh, yeah, everyone shared that one account. There you go.

Yeah. I watched that scene. and all the things that you said are absolutely true and kudos to they're doing it but what is a replicator doing in the hallway of living quarters because it was obviously living quarters and i thought why is there a replicator in that hallway that doesn't make any sense whatsoever no um none whatsoever and i thought oh they had that set and they decided to put the replicator there it just doesn't make any sense for a replicator to be where it was we could do an episode on replicators because I have some questions about where the food comes

from. Yeah. And what happens with the poop? And I'll just leave it at that. But replicators also manufacture, you know, tools or other things as well. So maybe, I'm not trying to, you've got a great point, but maybe that was for tools or other things. In living quarters? It just doesn't make sense. But he makes coffee in it. You're right. No, that's a food replicator. There are quarters that have replicators, not to be outside as though it was a water fountain in the hallway.

You're right. You're absolutely right. Oh, my God. Just to rewind a little bit, when Cisco takes a sip of that coffee, it's in ops, correct? He's an ops. Yeah, he's an ops. They have a replicator on the bridge. That's my point.

I mean, Robbie and I are amazed. They've got the transport. They've got a transporter on the bridge. They've got the replicator on the bridge. There's so many, it's all there. You need to go anywhere. You know what? Yeah, it's self-contained.

On your op station, oh, my gosh. You don't need to go anywhere. You got food. You got the elevator. Ah, yes. And we had a working elevator. An elevator that actually went somewhere. Went somewhere.

Now, it made a hell of a lot of noise. Yeah. But it actually did go somewhere. Was it a hydraulic? Was there like an motor on it or something? I don't know how it worked, but you took your life in your hands when you got in the elevator. I agree. One of the episodes we talked about with Terry,

the whole group of Bajorans, like 12 of them get on this thing. It felt like way too many people. Like, isn't there an occupancy max or something on this thing? Max occupancy. And it's built by, you know, Hollywood construction guys. Exactly. This is not like, you know. And the sound that it made when it operated,

you thought, oh, my God, it's going to break down or I'm going to be stuck in the middle of stuff. Was it that loud? It wasn't that loud. but it was loud enough when you were inside of it. You thought, okay, here we go. Wow. All right, we go to Quarks next. Quarks is empty.

Nobody's there. That's so weird to see it that way, by the way. I know. It was very weird. And Quirk did not like it one bit. Odo and Quark basically have a conversation where they just complain about each other. And there is one customer over there who's eating, and he's disgusted by the food. and he calls quark over quirk he forces quark to eat this food he's a bully this this guy was a bully

and odo comes over and saves quark basically makes him stop he's like i'm gonna you know you want to deal with me but he doesn't save him right away by no he doesn't he let you he lets you take another second mouthful right good friend good friend odo allows me to be have food shoved down my mouth one more time No, I think he enjoyed that secretly, seeing you do that one more time. Your thoughts about this scene? It's indicative of the Quark-Odo relationship. The two of them sitting there just carping at each other. We're going to do that for the next seven years.

But you can already sense the reciprocity between the two characters. You can sense that there's something more than antipathy between them. Otherwise, why would Odo be there? Why would he take time? he says he's on a mission to do something, and yet he stops by to have a chat with Quark. There is a friendship there that will grow and blossom and become, in my opinion, one of the highlights of the show.

What I love about those two characters is they're burying the subtext totally all the time. They're talking about one thing, but you know underneath it they're meaning something else. And this may be a, I can't remember so many years ago, So this may have been a scene that Renee and I rehearsed at my house on the weekend. So indeed, we may have been talking about subtexts at that time and how to get around it or to indicate it, actually. Yeah.

I know we'll talk about this more in the podcast, but I've heard about your rehearsals at your house that you invited actors over and a lot of them. Well, we heard about the Frangy rehearsals. We didn't hear that you invited, you know, Renee as well. René was the primary other person besides the Ferengi who would come over, but only in the first year or so, maybe the second year, but mostly in the first year, because we were both theater actors and we both wanted to rehearse. I love it.

Good for you. I love it. Yeah, because there's not time on a set when the clock is ticking and there's lots of work to do. There's not time to dig into these scenes deeply. You just get it on its feet and start setting up the lights and go, go, go. This scene was really uncomfortable for me to watch. It was triggering for me because of the bullying because it just, it, you know,

it just harkened back to my own experiences. And it just, I, it was hard for me to watch. I really wanted to. I didn't like watching you get bullied. No, I wanted to reach through that screen and punch that guy for you. I was so upset. And then at the end, Odo, but what, was he doing the Vulcan neck pinch at the end? He sure looks like that, yeah.

And it almost looked like he was testing it. It didn't work as well. And then at one point, he finds the right point. And then that makes that guy, the alien back off. Yeah. Uh, his name is ass off. I thought his name should be basically, um, but anyway, that's, there we go.

Yeah, well, Odo gets rid of him and Quark, uh, says, you know, he really needs these replicators repaired. And Odo leaves and then Quark goes over, ask the computer to pull up a layout of the replicators that have already been done. Which it doesn't do. No? Which it doesn't do. If you look at the screen, it doesn't change.

Oh, no. He asks for something. it doesn't change I think I think Quark says thank you or so acknowledges the change that never occurs oh god I wonder because sometimes

they would shoot those scenes and they'd say oh this is going to be a burn in yeah and so as an actor you go oh they're going to do something in post-production so I don't have to pretend yeah I don't have to worry about it but maybe they just ran out of money or they just said hey it's so quick

nobody's going to notice we'll save a few hundred bucks or whatever Oh, I'm sorry. That's frustrating. Well, he does ask for the layout. I didn't notice that. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't catch it either.

But you played as if you got the layout of where the replicators were that were repaired. So we know you're going to. You played it so well, no, but no one noticed it didn't change. Is that what I'm going to say? There you go. That's acting for you. You also, it asked for a security clearance. And you pull out these keys, which I've,

never seen what are the yes what master key what is that it is obviously stuff that quark has stolen and and keeps in a fairly secret place i don't know how secret it was but yeah and uh he uses it to bypass security protocols oh i see okay i love that again indicative of the fact that if you haven't watched the first couple of episodes that uh that that he is uh he is indeed a thief or he is he works around the rules of the station and he has his ways he has his ways yeah not all of them legal and this certainly not legal yeah well that was a cool there was a cool idea to pull out these little keys you put a couple of them in there did you do that again in the show or do you remember is that that something that was like a runner i have in one of these drawers i have um you have one of those

props one of those things here oh good i must have done it more than once i when i saw it i thought Oh, I think I did that several times. It was, again, to bypass the security protocols. Next we go to Ops. Miles is back in Ops repairing that replicator for Cisco. And he's kind of sweating at the top of the scenes. At this point, I thought, oh, he's just tired. He's overworked and he's exhausted.

He fixes the replicator. And then as he starts to talk a little more, he starts to misspeak when he's talking to Cisco. So we know something's up. Sisko says, Jake tells me that Mrs. O'Brien's a wonderful teacher. And O'Brien says, well, that's nice to hear, sir. She's flower units about the lad herself. And Cisco goes, I'm sorry?

Excuse me? O'Brien clearly knows he misspoke. I don't think he knows that or not. I don't think he does. But it doesn't acknowledge it. He just doesn't know why it happened, but it's a brief little misspeak. And then. But he's able to correct himself?

Wouldn't he already? he corrects himself because he continues you know uh cisco says what's that you just said and o'brien responds well she's quite fond of of the lad herself sir so he corrects he goes back to normal speech but it's a little it's a little short-circuiting that happens for a moment yeah but but but then later on everyone no one does that where they go back to normal again the minute they start doing random speech they're they're gone they're over the side of the cliff right this is the danger about sci-fi shows like your world building right

so as soon as you build a world or build a rule yeah it's hard to stay consistent it is it is it's like the replicator in the hallway you're saying the food replicators are in quarters then don't put it in a hallway but yeah okay

we go to the promenade next Dax and Kira walking down the promenade they're getting lots of male attention in this walk they're taking Dax's comments about how she forgot what it's like to be a female, but she kind of likes it. Dax, she thinks it's fun for now, harmless.

As they approach Quarks, quark comes out. He invites them into a celebration party for these magically repaired replicators he has now. Kira's passes. She says, no thanks, but Dax agrees. And I love your victory smile at the end there, Armin.

You've got this, yes. You've got the, new pretty girl that everybody's giving attention to and one of the main people who are now in charge as well so it's good to have an end with the higher-ups there you go yeah yeah and the constant antipathy from kira is obvious in evidence yes yeah this is uh this was an interesting scene to me because i had forgotten you know uh you just accept harry feral is is dax is that but But it's great to be reminded, especially early in the series, that she has a symbiont inside, that she has had other lives and things like that.

So I really like, I like this scene. It was fun. And a great button at the end again with your, uh, thank you. Your fist pump or whatever. It was a big smile. It wasn't that big, but it was great. Lots of teeth. Lots of teeth.

How did you eat with the teeth? You took the teeth out. That's what you did. In real life. But what if you had to eat him? What would you do? Yeah. It was messy?

Yeah. It was messy. Yeah. It was messy. But I was always grateful that I didn't have Renee's makeup because his makeup came down to his lips and every time he ate, the makeup would come up. So for many reasons I was grateful for the teeth and that my makeup didn't come down that far. How long was the total makeup application time for you?

Oh my God, you're not going to ask that question. I want to know that. I don't know it. I'm a fan now. I know you've answered five billion times. I walk on stage and I say two hours. I don't even introduce myself. I just go two hours.

Two hours. Yeah, two hours. And Renee also two hours or longer? A little less. I don't know exactly, but certainly I would arrive earlier than he would. Wow. And we would be finished about the same time. So I don't know exactly.

And whenever I hear Michael Dorn complain about his makeup, I'd just roll my eyes. I think I'm. Michael's down to like 25 minutes or something. Yeah, I think at the most, it's 40 minutes. I think it's 40 minutes. Anyway, that's for a later season. Yes. All right.

Well, we go back to ops, and Miles is now slurring his words, you know. The little short circuit has expanded. It's gotten much worse. He's exhausted. Kira makes a joke in this scene. A really ugly joke for a man who's really tired. Yes. you know, you know, sort of giving him more angst than he needs.

That's, to me, that's really, really ugly of curate. Yes. Yeah, she's like, oh, there's more work for you to do. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it was a little, it was a little rough. What I noticed at the end, he's slurring his speech a lot. Clearly, this man has some issue going on. Yeah.

And as he runs out of, off, out of ops, everyone just stands there looking at each other. And I was like, isn't everybody going to go help this? Stop him? Like, stop him? Or call? Like, even in their close-ups after he left, they just stood there as opposed to exiting the close-up or, you know, Cisco to, you know, Bashir. I don't want to fault Paul Lynch, but there are too many of those in this episode.

There's too many reaction shots at the end of a scene where people just look at each other because they have nothing else to do. The script is ended. scene. The words have ended and there's nothing to do. Paul could have done a better job, I think, of figuring out what happens when the written word was over. Yeah, where are you going next? What's the next? Yeah, there's action here. You've got to take care of business. Yeah, that bumped me a little at the end of the scene. Yeah, instead of having the reaction shots, I would have followed O'Brien out. You know what I'm saying? Just having his, just follow him.

He runs out the entire time and not have a reaction shot. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, just finish on him as he's going down down in the elevator or something that that one bumped me a little because i was like they would do something and especially the extras there were a couple of extras that were in front of he was getting on the elevator background background people not background yeah background performers i know i'm old school yeah there were a couple of background performers that were standing at a console five feet away as he goes down the elevator and they just sort of look at each other they're not even doing it yeah it's like okay yeah yeah yeah somebody should have been coordinating choreographing the um what was happening after the words were over like that last two lines there

is o'brien going when question mark and he's running off when he's saying when right but when we watch this episode it's from kira's perspective pretty much when he's running away and then it goes to her when she says chief and it stays on her but if he if the camera was set on him as he's running out of the room he's running towards camera and he's like when he runs off frame and then she's chasing after him chief that would have been way better yeah that would have been more energy and more appropriate for the circumstances yeah absolutely okay next see go to the infirmary next o'brien is having his eyesight checked maybe at the top um he's examining miles and it appears Bashir the doctor says it appears he has

aphasia um his auditory function is impaired but his thinking still works is how Bashir describes it. He's checking his hearing as well. He puts on these headphones, it looks like. What was that? I think what that is, is to check for the electrical responses in the brain. Okay.

When I saw that, that's what that said to me. It was a cool prop. It was a very cool prop, but it kind of looked like... Headphones. Cool headphones you'd get from, you know, sharper image or something. It gets a sharper image.

It might have been. It might have been. It might have been. Or something put out, by bang and Olufson, you know, that very, very, yeah, love it. Yeah. O'Brien tries to write his message in the scene, but the message he writes is flame the dark, true, salt, way, link, complete strike.

It's still a gibberish. It would make for a good limerick, actually. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's very poetic what he writes. Yeah, I can see O'Brien's a poet. He's an Irishman.

I could see that. Yeah. He's got some poetry. Yes. At the very end, O'Brien and his frustration about trying to communicate, he yells his last line with Bashir and Kira in the foreground. And this, I give Paul Lynch, you know, two thumbs up for this. Because the comedy of O'Brien in the background out of focus, yelling his victory strikes, limit frosted wakes, simple hesitation. He's yelling in the background as Bashir and Kira looking at each other. That was a nice button on the scene. You know what? I feel like all these, all these, O'Brien, anyone speaking the gibberish,

this must have been difficult to remember these lines because there's nothing that, there's no through line. There's no, there's no logic to any of this. This is probably the most difficult episode for all the actors to get their lines down, other than that Armin, because he never got affected. So what I hear you saying, Garrett, is my limerick today with its gibberish

was maybe the hardest limerick I've ever done. I'm not going to go that far. I agree with you. I agree with you. I just want to point out, as you said, about O'Brien being out of focus in the back. Paul liked to do this all through the episode. He would focus on two, three people. And then there would be another person in the background out of focus.

This happened quite often in this episode. And I thought this was something he was interested in doing or something that Marvin was interested in doing. Who was the DP at the time? The other time that I can think of is Bashir calling to his nurse. and the nurse is completely blurred out in the background answering him with lines. So yeah, you're right. Do you like that?

I'm curious, because I like that. I like that style where you stack the frame with multiple pieces of information and the focus, the camera focus, is on kind of the point of view of the scene, even though there might be important information in the background. The point of view narratively is in focus,

but the frame is filled with other things. Do you like that? I like it, but I do have a problem with it. And the problem is an actor's problem. Anne Gillespie played the nurse. And she had relatively little to do in this show. She was good, though, I liked it. She was good, yes.

But one of the few times that she was on camera, she's out of focus. It's like we talked about the captain in the opening scene. We're getting the back of his head. We're not seeing his face. I, as an actor, feel for the actors who are not getting. the focus that perhaps they deserve, especially they have less to do in this episode than the series regulars. So give them some camera time, you know? Let them be seen. It isn't just about collecting a paycheck. It's about trying to show what you can do as an actor.

Yeah. I mean, think about, is it Anne, Anne Gillespie? Is that her name? Think about Anne Gillespie's agent or manager saying, hey, can we get a couple of clips of you from DS9? And she's filmed like these few episodes. Yes, I have my dialogue. but I'm completely out of focus. So, yeah, it's kind of, yeah. Well, now I feel bad because I've done that a lot as a director. There you go, Robbie. Those reals suck now.

I mean, you can do it to the series regulars. They've got plenty of camera time. Yeah, that's right. But for the day players, you know, be a little kind. Yeah, be a little nicer, Rob. I hear you. Okay, good. Noted, noted.

Yay. Okay, we go to Ops next, and the team is sitting at this briefing table, which is right in the middle of Ops. again, they've got a replicator, they got an elevator, they got a transfer pad, and they've got a briefing room right there. It's awesome. But there's no privacy though. That's the one thing I was thinking like, okay, now all the lower deckers, everyone around you gets to hear your private, you know, your conversation. That to me was, that's what I didn't like about that. Maybe is his office close to that ops room? Yes, yes. It's right up the steps. So he could have the meeting up there then

if you wanted to. Yes, he could. Yes. It depends on the director. in the DP of where they're going to set the scene. But yes, he could. And a lot of times, the private conversations are in the office in Cisco's office. Okay. Well, they're all sitting around this briefing table trying to solve this mystery of what's going on with O'Brien. There's no hit injury.

Cisco thinks maybe if we retrace all of his steps, we can figure it out. So he assigns Dax to O'Brien's duties to take over for O'Brien would normally do. And as she responds, she starts to slur and. talk gibberish too and she's aware of it you can see that when that happens i like how she played that too you know what i'm saying you you could see that it's it's she's got the realization that it's hitting her and then yeah she's gone you know yeah she says i'm sorry benjamin she's realizing and i'm sorry benjamin i'm unable to foolish assembled regal controlled weather yeah she's got it he has it she's got it too uh we go to the infirmary next and bashear is explaining to cisco that he ran this

full synaptic comparison and he's at this point figured out there is a virus in both of them in O'Brien and Daxe. They both have this virus. We're just figuring out about the virus when two more crew members walk in speaking gibberish

and they're frazzled. They're kind of freaking out. In fact, I noticed the crew woman, she had like a big clump of hair in the middle of her head and I felt bad. I felt like sometimes hair and makeup departments will do things

that are just so on the nose and you're like why did you do that to that poor woman like she can act frazzled you don't need to pull a clump of hair to show to indicate that this crew member is frazzled

just let her look like a normal person precisely let the actor act let the actor act yeah I found that that clump of hair very distracting and I felt bad for the actor if I'm ever frazzled with something that you're saying podcast i'm just gonna pull my hair right down the middle and then i'll know yeah that's then i'll know know and speaking about not being frazzled uh i felt i great empathy for sidig because in this

episode he has nothing but medical techno babb oh my god we were we were talking about memorizing lines and luckily he is he is he's good at some rare gene about being able to memorize the stuff that came out of his mouth was just as aphasia as some of the things coming out of the patients. I mean, the science was like everywhere. I'm going, how did you memorize all that stuff? Yeah. Yeah. True. I think the actors they cast for doctors have to be good with that. Like, Bob Picardo was equally very good with the techno babble. John Billingsley, really good. John Billingsley. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God I was not a doctor. I was a nurse, though, on our show. But I would, that's why I was state a nurse. Part-time nurse. Part-time nurse. Because I could not say all the

medical stuff. Anyway, we go to Quarks next. Odo comes out of his office to an empty promenade at the top of the scene, but a very noisy bar. And Odo enters the bar. He and Quark basically argue in this scene about the place being open. Bicker. Bicker. Bicker. Bicker. Exactly. The Bickersons. We are the Bickersons. I love it. Odo wants this place shut down during quarantine and Quark wants to keep it open for, you know, Essential reasons. Essential reasons. Yes.

Essentially, he needs to make a profit, essentially. He needs to make a profit. I have a question about quarks. I've never thought this before, but in this scene, the stained glass that's in there, it reminded me of that famous cathedral in Spain, and I can't think of the name of it. But there's a cathedral with the kind of abstract colors. I wonder if the production designer, and it's a very famous cathedral, I'm spacing out. The Sacra is, it's in Barcelona, right?

Yes, yes. It's Sacra, I've been there. Sacra something, yes. And you know the glass I'm talking about? It's kind of abstract shapes and kind of overlapping stuff. This, I just had an image. I wonder if the production designer, was it Herman? Is that who did this?

Herman was, Herman Zimmerman was the designer. So one would assume that it was his idea. But, yeah, I remember that piece of scenery. It's in my dream sometimes. It's quite beautiful. It's beautiful, yeah. I wondered where that inspiration came from. Certainly not from Westmore's books of animals.

A lot of times when designers are designing like quarks or whatever, they might look at books of cathedrals or something like that to get inspired. So I bet he could have done that with this. He could have been the cathedral as an inspiration. It's possible. You have to ask, Carmen. Yeah. Oda wants to know how Quark has all this food.

When the replicators are broken and Quark says, well, fortunately, my assistant, Rom, was able to fix. My assistant, my assistant, not my brother. My assistant. And I wondered, and I have to go back and look at the intervening episodes. How long did it take for us to actually admit that Rom is Quark's brother? I feel like we've talked about it, so yeah. But I don't know if it's been said on the episodes that I've seen so far.

Well, no, don't you say, my brother's kid. This is my, my, yeah. But do we, did we say Rom and my brother's kid in the sentence? Do you know that. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I think you've actually had a scene where you, the two of you have,

or either of you have referenced specifically Quark or Rom. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. That could have been anything. Fortunately, my assistant ROM, fortunately my indentured servant ROM, fortunately my slave rom, fortunately my valet, my butler ROM, you could have thrown anything in there. And in a moment, one of the epithets that I used for seven years, I think is mentioned for the first time about ROM.

Really? Let you finish, and then I'll bring it up if you don't. Yeah, I think that's all I had for that scene. Is it in this scene? Yeah, it's in this scene. What do you say? So this is where Odo turns to quark and says, your brother, your brother, your brother's an idiot. And I said, yes, he's an idiot.

He doesn't say your brother. He says, Rahm is an idiot. And yes, I said, yes, he's an idiot. Now, for the next seven years, I would say, Rom, you idiot. Rom, you idiot. Oh, wow. And I'm wondering if that, this. this episode is the first time that epithet is used yeah uh for the relationship between the two

brothers it's the first time i've heard it it's definitely the first time i've heard it coming from uh odo though yeah right yes it's amazing it comes from odo first exactly and you latch onto that and that becomes your your your vocabulary that you use as we go through these programs you'll see how many thousands of times i call him you wow oh yeah and that was all scripted obviously yeah yeah of Of course. Right. Wow. Adlib?

We never heard of Adlimb. That's aphasia. Adlim is aphasia. Max is like, can you please not Adlib calling me an idiot every time? Please. He's actually written one of the songs, you know, for the rat pack. Yeah, yeah.

He references where I call him an idiot. Oh, that's funny. That's great. All right. The next scene we're in the promenade upper level, Jake is looking down. He's by himself, looking down. down at this empty promenade. Everybody's in quarantine. Everybody, it's a ghost down. Cisco appears, and Jake is very worried about this quarantine. And Cisco reassures him, his dad reassures him,

then sends him off to his quarters. The dog alien, Jehiel, arrives. Isn't that what you say to a dog? Heal? Jehiel, it's Jill. Now it makes sense. You're so right, Robbie. Now I'm going to come to your side now. His name is Jahil. So there you go. He is the dog alien. Great. Jahil wants permission to leave from Cisco. He's very worried he's going to get sick.

Cisco says no. When Cisco and Jake are talking, Cisco says something. He says, I thought you were going to be home an hour ago. And Jake says, oh, sorry, I was at Nogs. And Cisco doesn't make a comment. Now, in the last episode, Cisco and Rom had the same attitude about each other's kids. They're like, stay away from that kid. I don't want you anywhere near that kid.

Do not sit near that kid. Do not talk to that kid. And Jake just says, oh, sorry, I was at Nogs. And Cisco blows right past it. There's no reaction at all. I was shocked that he didn't say, I told you not to go to Nogs. You know, don't go. I don't know.

I just, it bumped me a little bit because your show does track. Connect a lot of things. And that was one thing. I was like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Good catch, though. Good catch, Robbie. Good catch.

Yeah. That relationship between. I mean, Nog and Jake is going to flourish, is going to grow. And I'm, for one, very grateful because of Jake's relationship with Nog, I think the audience got a better idea that there was something of value in the Ferengi, at least in Nog, and then eventually Rom and then eventually Quark. Yeah, that makes total sense. And I did sense that they were going to become good friends. but the father's attitudes were stay away from that one. So that's why I was surprised that he just blew by it

and didn't say something about, I told you not to go over there or some version of that. Unless the passage of time has been long since between episodes. Maybe. Yeah, maybe they've gotten. Yeah. But here's already one of the first instances of recurring characters don't have to be seen, that their names are familiar enough

so that, oh, we know who they are. Jake says, Nog, and we know who that is. You know, we, you know, how many shows could you do that where your recurring characters were so familiar that you could just say their name. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think on our show, we always had to recap, you know, Cessca, the bad one from, you know, we have to define that person for the new audience.

Okay, we go to some empty quarters next. Quark is coming into this empty room with a food trolley looking around. he uses the crew this quarter's replicator to make a pink drink a starduster for rangy starduster rengi starduster i was on that name is that a popular drink it is and will be used in in several episodes okay makes a star duster which look delicious by the way and then suddenly the the cart this trolley morphs into odo and odo is p-oed he is mad He's P-Oed. I should be P-Oed.

There's no sense of privacy on this station. This guy just more sent to anything he wants to do. You never, you know, you could go to the bathroom and the toilet seat could be Odo. It's ridiculous to have him around. Yeah. I love your line, though. I thought the front wheels were sticking a bit. It's like, okay, this is great.

He could be anything, literally. photo was P-Oed, Quark's trying to cover here, but he does sort of admit. He's like, you know, there's a phrygy saying, never ask when you can take. What's interesting to me about that line, never ask when you can take. It's not in my book, anyway, a rule of acquisition. And yet soon after this, I will always preface the rules of acquisition. And if people don't know what that is, you'll find out later. It's interesting to me that they haven't yet set up.

the rules of acquisition that will become intrinsic, very much intrinsic to my character and the other Ferengi on the show. So this one is a more generic version of that where there's an old Ferengi saying as opposed to. A rule of acquisition. After that, I never said there's a Ferengi saying. It was always a rule of acquisition.

There you go. So even you guys are finding your legs. But this is the scene where Ram's an idiot comes out of Odo's mouth. That's right. This is the beginning. It starts at all right here. Yeah.

Yes. On the exit, there was like a shove at the end. I think Renee shoved you or something. Yeah. Which seemed to indicate that I was being arrested. Yeah. And it, you know, as Armin, I'm surprised that Quark wasn't arrested. Is Quark, I'm happy that he, I wasn't arrested.

But it seems to me, I've just broken the rules, the law. and I should be incarcerated or something for having done something nefarious. But there's no reaction to that. There's nothing follows from that. I feel like Odo has shown at least what I've seen so far. He's shown his hand, two things. He liked some things about the Cardassian time on this station because he could do what he wanted. He was kind of the sheriff.

He could, you know, now Cisco is saying, nope, that's not the rules. You have to follow the rules. You can't just be a one-man, you know, army and do whatever you want. So I feel like in this situation, Odo may have decided, I'm not going to arrest him because I also have noticed that that subtext is clear that there is some affection underneath all of the bickering that goes on. So I buy it that he doesn't arrest him. My take on it is after a while, the writers and the producers realized, I can't be doing obvious, nefarious things, otherwise they would have to arrest me. And if they arrested me, that would put the k-bosh on one of their series regulars.

Yeah. So as the shows go by, yes, I will start to do more entrepreneurial things, as my friend Robbie says, but less breaking of the law per se yeah so that we don't get into the conflict if uh if he's doing bad things he should be arrested but that starfleet isn't capable of catching him or of doing the right thing yeah it's bad for everybody so it's for everybody yeah we go to ops next the doctor is explaining to um Cisco uh that the virus is being ingested through food so now all these pieces of the puzzle coming together the replicators and why people are getting sick. Kira explains the replicators should be screening out viruses.

Bashir does say in the scene that it's so far the command level replicators is where it's coming from. But it doesn't make sense how other people are getting this virus. If it's only the command level replicators, when people down on the promenade and that quirks, for example, they're getting the virus. That's when Otto arrives. Rats me out. Yes, he rats quark out, explains that he's been feeding everyone from an empty command level replicator that he was using illegally.

And then Bashir scans the air, the atmosphere on in the off station. And Bashir says at the end of the scene that the virus is now airborne. So the stakes are elevated a lot of this. Two things. I need to rewind a little bit in the prior scene because I had a question for Armand that I now remembered. Did you and Odo rehearse that scene where he's, the Brahms an idiot, and then as you're walking out the shove, was that blocking that you came up with during rehearsal, or was that more of an imprompt to sort of? We never rehearsed blocking. Okay.

Because we always assumed the director would give us blocking. And it's possible that Renee just decided to shove me. But we never rehearsed blocking in my house. Okay. We just rehearsed lines. lines and interpretation about what things might have meant table work as we call it

right yeah okay I used to slap you on the back or slap your chest or my character would get very in the way that like I felt like my character on Voyager was a lot like with Harry

we were like buddies on the football team or something so there was a lot of that kind of fraternity sort of behavior and the younger guy on the ship and yeah I would smack him and but he would smack me when we weren't filming on at all we would be a craft service and he would smack me so that's the difference I'm going to ask a question that has nothing to do with this show but is something that I've

been interested all my life then forgive me for not remembering which of the two of you is taller oh Robbie is yeah so that just proves what I always think which is it's usually the taller pleat person slapping the shorter person yeah it's really the other way around. I am so sorry. You know, Armin, you and I can commiserate. We were both bullied. You were bullied by Odo. I was bullied by Robbie.

Yeah, the shorter ones. It was like a little brother thing for me. I was like, come on, buddy. Of course, it's done out of love, but just physically speaking, it's usually the taller person who does it to the shorter person. I will say this, Armin, at most conventions, when I stand up to do a photo op with somebody from my table,

they're always like, oh, you're taller than we thought because Pierce and Teal on our show I'm not in in the world I'm not a shorty right I'm not I'm I'm I'm 511 but in the voyage in the voyager world all the guys were super tall so it looks like I'm a I'm a shrimp you know in comparison to the rest of them but everyone else is super tall so other than Neelix right that was the thing Robbie back to this scene here is the elephant in the room when Bashir says it's mutated into an airborne variety at that point all of us have now been through the pandemic i was thinking where are the masks for god's sakes like no one's putting on a god's darn no one didn't i make a note i made a note later i'm sure you must have

all of you saw that right you thought that's right that's exactly right oh my i had the same thought but i didn't blame them here because he's only discovering it but from this point on if you know it's an airborne virus why especially in this infirmary and all this go is there he's the commander he should have said, he's already said, you know, we're on quarantine. Now that he knows it's airborne, he should have said, from this point on. From this point on, and he doesn't do that. And the thing is, back then, when you film this, none of you had lived through the Spanish flu. So none of you understood the whole worldwide pandemic. No one knew. But now we all know, I think anybody watching DS9 for the first time in this episode would be like, oh, no one's wearing a mask. And everyone's touching everybody. If you

film the scene now. Yeah. Post pandemic. Oh, my God. Yeah. That would be a big part of this story. Big time. Okay. Yeah. Totally agree. So we've got a station log where Cisco reveals that nearly 60% of the station's population now has contracted the virus. So it's spreading like wildfire. They've got quarantine procedures going and they're advising all incoming ships to stay away until further notice, we cut down to this access tunnel again, and Kira's down there,

and she finds that little splitter device, that secret device. I just, again, love tunnel shots. I love these Jeffrey's tube scenes. Something about all that foreground elements, the gag in the foreground and tight shots. I just, I love tubes. So, Robbie, if they come out with a new Star Trek show and it's called Star Trek Jeffries' tube, you would be all into that shot, right? You're watching every episode.

Okay. Yes. Yes. Or maybe you get to direct every episode of Star Trek Jeffries. Take my money. I would watch the tube show. It just look cool. They just look.

I don't know why I like it. Okay, but they're uncomfortable to be in. I don't know about your Jeffries Tubes. Have you been crawling around? Are there episodes where you crawl around in there? Yes. You guys have that really corrigate, really tough stuff, that material that really hurts your knees when you're crawling through it?

Yes. And I was always crawling through it with somebody else. So it was tight quarters, yeah. Okay, so next we're in the commander's office, and Cisco and Kira are talking. Kira has shown this thing she just found in the tube, this device, and they realized that there was some kind of sabotage, and maybe it was Kardassian. They don't know. But she's pretty sure. She doesn't say maybe. She's like Kardassian sabotage. Yeah, she thinks it's for sure. Yeah.

She's always going to blame the Kardashians and everything. Everything is a reason, though. Either the Kradisians or the Ferengi, one or the other. It's the power source that tips it away for her, the dibyboridium core for power source, Cardassian technology. But that's how you frame somebody, isn't it? That's right. All right. We go to the infirmary next.

And Casisco got a call while he was talking to Kira. He comes down to the infirmary and there's Jake. It's a short scene, but really, again, so much heart and really moving. Avery's best work in this episode is with Sirak, with Jake. Oh, yeah. It is, you can see the warmth, the love that he has for the character of Jake and for the boy, Surak. Yeah. Yeah, in the very end when he says, you're going to be all right.

It's so connected. It's so reassuring and warm. It's great. As he leaves to take Jake to the hospital ward, the infirmary area, Bashir says, hey, when you're done, come back. So we know that Bashir maybe has some thoughts or advice, but we're going to have to wait for that we go to the hospital ward this is where i felt like everybody should be wearing a mask this is where i wrote down like now they know it's airborne this why isn't anybody wearing a mask but uh yeah cork is there and he's speaking in this gibberish at first i thought oh no cork has it too

then you realize he's trying to speak gibberish to get his money that he's owed and which is a very funny concept that. And I want to thank you for not shying away from the scene. You dove in. Oh, yeah. You dove into the deep end of the pool. That's it. Thank you. I also want to point out that over the course of the seven episodes, you will, excuse me, seven seasons, you will discover how many great things the Ferengi body has. This being one of the first, that we, not susceptible disease that much, you know? Over the course of, of time, you'll see how many things that Ferengi have to protect themselves.

Wow. Yeah, he's immune. Cork says his immune system stronger than you realize. You know, we live forever. You'll find out in a later episode. We live forever. How long do you live?

I believe that we live for hundreds of years. Wow. That's incredible. So you and Dax, Dax is 350 years old or something. So Ferengi Symbion? Is it Symbians? That's what's called. Symbion. Yeah, Symbion. Symbians are 350. We didn't have anybody. We had Tuvok on our show.

Tuvok was the oldest. Yeah, he was the oldest, but he wasn't 350 years old. No, he was old was he? Was he like 180 or something? Maybe by the end. And Tuvac doesn't look a day over 40 in the show. No, he doesn't. He looks young. Well, Cisco brings Jake down to bed near Daxon O'Brien. And he says he'll be right back as soon as he can. We cut to the infirmary. And Bashir's explaining the virus, the virus doesn't appear to be Cardassian, like Kirrotha.

He thinks it's Bajoran terrorists, basically, and that they'd set this virus to sabotage the Cardassians when they were there. So this complicated web is starting to come together a little bit. Bashir kind of explains that this is probably Bajoran. And one thing I noticed in the scene, Armin, maybe you can answer. or does the space station rotate? Is it, in theory, kind of rotating around? I don't think so.

It's a good question. I really don't know for sure. But I have the opinion that it doesn't rotate, that it just hangs in space outside the wormhole, which it moved to the wormhole in the pilot episode. Right. And then it stays kind of static. Because whenever we're in Cisco's office,

I keep seeing that Starfield behind Avery moving. and it's a little inconsistent because you go in other sets and it's just a static star field but in his office for some reason it seems to always be floating by so i i was confused i'm like well it would make sense that it could rotate and that's why the stars are moving i don't think his office is spinning on its own or anything it was a little it was a little inconsistent maybe they're trying maybe they'll notice it at some point and and be more consistent with the the stars outside. But yeah, we often struggle the same way on Voyager. Like, should the stars be moving if we're, if we're, you know, does it have to be a green screen out there? Could it

be that moving star field? So that was something in that office scene. I know. I think we just hung there. That's what I thought too. And I don't, I didn't do that many scenes in ops, this episode being one of the few. So I don't remember the starfield ever moving. Certainly. Not on the promenade anyway. Yeah, not on the promenade. That would be a giant moving star field. Yeah. So the next scene is in the commander's office.

Cisco assigns Kira to find out what is going on. She's their best hope that because she's Bajoran, she knows all about this war that took place and the Kardashians. You know, Kira even says maybe the Bajorans forgot it was there. They talk about how there may not have even been an antidote created, you know, even if they do find out where it came from. There may not be an antidote there. So, you know, she says it's been a long time, I think 18 years. So, uh, so this is not a very reassuring scene. No. You know, they're going to try. Kira's going to try. So next we go to ops. Kira is trying to figure out what's going on.

She calls, uh, this Bajoran named Gaylis, who is a female, I guess an old friend of her, maybe from the war, from the resistance. But she asked if, she knows anything about it and gaelis thinks maybe it's this sounds like something this decon eleg character would have thought up and uh kira asked where he's at she hasn't heard you know for 18 years or something nine years i think that he was in a prison and that's the last she's heard about him at the very end of the scene though when gailis uh says i'm sorry kira the way she says sorry. Canadian.

It's so Canadian. It's like, that's a Canadian actress. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry, Kira. Sorry.

So Canadian. But it was great. She was great. But she, her Canadian came out there and it was nice. She's a Canadian Bajoran. Yes. They also settled in Canada.

In the northern part of Bajun. Yeah. Way up. Far, far, We go back to the hospital ward, and this scene starts with Jake running over to the nurse, Nurse Jabbarra, drags the nurse over to O'Brien, and Dax is trying to talk, but takes the nurse's hand to feel that Miles is very hot now.

He's getting worse. And the nurse calls Bashir for an emergency. So we time cut to the infirmary. O'Brien looks bad. He's pale, sweaty. The virus is attacking his nervous system. is what Bashir says. And if we don't find a cure for this virus,

he's going to be dead in 12 hours. So there's ticking clock now. 12 hours is all he's got. I thought it was interesting that Bashir comments, this virus is a work of genius. He thinks whatever doctor, you know, invented this thing has made it. He's impressed.

Yeah, he's totally impressed by this work. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I did not particularly like about this opening show, shot it started on miles on the bed then went up to bashear lost miles then went over to the two shot and then it dropped down back to miles in the foreground i would describe that as a yo-yo shot meaning it starts one place and it ends up at the same place okay typically camera operators

avoid that because it's a bit of a whiplash that you know and sometimes it can be a very subtle whiplash i like the framing when he got to the the miles in the foreground but To me, that shot was a little, it was a little bumpy. So when you direct, Robbie, you never start and then come back to the exact same position again, like that you never yo-yo. You try to not, not that quickly. Like, if you're going to start on something in the foreground and then go to another part of the story, if it eventually ended, if you want to book-end it. Right. A scene with a, you know, kind of go back to one.

Yes. But to start at first position, number one, then go to a brief moment and then back to one, I would call that a yo-ie. shot. That one, that one I will give a deduct points. Okay. Okay. There is a deduction for that. Yeah, but he's going to be dead in 12 hours. Bad news. We go up to ops. Kira asked the computer about DeConnelleg. She's doing some research up there. Computer says he's dead. Cisco comes in, says, you got to hurry up. People are starting to die. She looks at the records and she pulls up photos. Do you know who DeConnellig was, I think? Dan Curry. It was a photo of Dan Curry, our visual effects supervisor.

I think you're right. I think it was. I stopped it and I went back and I was like, well, that's an old photo, but I think it's Dan. Good catch. Yeah. I'm going to go back home and watch that now. Yeah. She's looking at these records.

She sees Dan Curry, our visual effects supervisor. Yeah. Dead Deacon E. Connellig. She asked who witnessed this death and the name Sermak Ren comes up, a Bajorn medical assistant. She asked for information about Sermak Ren. She finds out he repatriated to Bejor, and yeah, so she's got a lead. She's got a lead. She does a little more research about this Sermak-Ren guy, that he was in the underground,

and the computer says current status unknown. So don't know where to go from here. We go to Quarks. Thank God we're off of this sad story. You know what I was just thinking? Like, I'm just the Deacon Elick, if that really is Dan Curry, they could have put another Easter egg in there. Instead of calling him Deacon Elig, they should have just reversed his name.

And it would have been Nod-Iraq. So, Dan Curry backwards, nod-I-Roc is the guy. So there you go. They did occasionally put some of our crew in these, like, you know, records files and things like that. That's true. That's true.

All right. It was always fun to say. We're in quirks. It's empty. Cork is playing Dabo all by himself. I don't understand the game of Dabo. Is it craps? Is that what it is?

No, that's like roulette, right? Dabo is. Yeah, Dabo is roulette. Okay. Actually, I was educated watching this episode, but to this day, I was never sure whether Dabo meant I won or I lost. But watching this episode, I come to believe it means I lost. Lost, yeah.

When you say Dabo means you lost, I think, right? But when people yell Dabo, it means... It sounds like they're celebrating. But they won something, yeah. Dabo! But really, for seven years, never sure whether Dabo meant I won or I lost. You know what? Maybe it's how you say it's.

That's what I was going to say. It could be like a Hawaiian alohas, hello, and alohas goodbye, the way you say it. So, daubo, you lost. Daubo, you won. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Okay. That could work.

I would buy that. I suppose if you lost and you yell, and the Ferengi yelled dabbo, that's a good thing. You lost. We lost it. Otto shows up in Quarks. He's by himself. Quark says he's lost every hand that he's been playing here. He invites Odo to play, but Odo doesn't.

ultimately we realize Otto doesn't know the rules even though he's been you know enforcing he's been there every night for 18 years

he still doesn't know the rules I like when he says he does admit to Quirk that the whole security staff has been infected with the virus so he can't stay anyway even if he did know the rules he couldn't play

but he warns Quark not to steal anything don't take advantage of this because my staff is all infected. His staff, that's one person, I think. Yeah, exactly. For years, people have said to me, so were the double wheels crooked, where they rigged? And watching this scene, I'm going, well, if even Quark can't win at the double wheel, then they must not be rigged. They must not be rigged. That's interesting. That was an education for me as I was watching that scene. Yeah. I wonder if they're, but the Frangie would be clever enough to say like, oh, if we'd

make this little adjustment it'll rig in our favor but because he's by himself he's just playing it without any advantage he's playing a pure game well there goes my assumption and right now at the window thank you very much because i like the idea that they rigged them i like the idea that they i don't because then i think about real life casinos and if they were to rig something well here's a thing real life casinos they don't rig the games but they do employ coolers did you have a cooler in Quarks? No. That's a classic move with a casino to, yeah, to distract, interrupt, somehow interrupt the

flow of the game. I'm sure if Quark was aware of coolers, he would have sent his brother over. He would say, Rom, oh, yes. Ron would have a cooler. I would totally buy it. He's an idiot. He's a cooler as well. Okay.

We go to the infirmary next. Bashir's running tests, simulations on his computer, no luck. and then Bashir starts talking gibberish. And so does the computer read out. So this is really bad, bad, bad. I had a question about the infirmary. Well, an impression more than a question. So much of the space station feels Cardassian,

but that infirmary feels very Starfleet to me. Like the color palette. We didn't go back to the infirmary very often, more often than not when someone was sick they went to Bashir's office which seems very Cardassian so you may be right

this may be left over from TNG days yeah maybe it was it just felt it felt more Starfleet than the rest of the station to me at this point watching the series and as a side note

I have no problem with Cardassian aesthetics their design aesthetics I like it I like it I do I like it too that's why this sort of jumped out at me a bit

because it was not the same yeah it felt more like TNGG to me Makes sense. Yeah. The computer and Bashir are talking gibberish. So things are bad. We go to Ops.

Kira tracks down the doctor who is now, you know, the chief, Sermak, the one she was looking for, he's now the chief administrator. And she calls him up, asks if he helped plant this virus with Deacon Eleg. And he quickly denies it and hangs up. Yeah, it's funny because he's very friendly at the beginning of this conversation. And then as soon as she mentions the virus, he says, I have no idea what you're talking about. Click. So suspicious.

Already in the, we're in, what, the third, fourth episode? People hang up on people all the time in this show. That's something that I notice all the time. Just, nah, I don't want to talk to you anymore, which is awesome. Different from ours. Okay. Yeah. Odo doesn't want to help Cisco run command.

The whole command, you know, staff is gone. Cisco's there by himself and he wants Odo to help him. Odo does not want to, he doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't want to be up in command. But Cisco says there's nobody else. And Kira shows up, fills Cisco in on that she found this doctor, Sir Mock. And she thinks that he knows what happened because he hung up so quickly. As soon as she mentioned the virus, she wants to go see him.

But Cisco says, I don't want you to break quarantine. You know, we've got this virus floating around. And Odo reminds him that she is all they've got to save this entire station. He actually does that by repeating Cisco's own words. You're my only choice. He says to Odo and Odo says to Cisco, she is your only choice. Yeah. Okay.

Did either of you notice when Odo says that to Cisco, how he says it, better let her go. Cisco, not commander Cisco, not there was, where's the title? I was like, wow, I guess he can, he's, he's on a, a last name basis where he doesn't have to throw the title on that? He's got a lot of, he's got a lot of hootsba, as we say. It would be like me saying to Captain Janeway, anyway, Janeway, like that. I would never say that.

I'd say Captain or, you know, Captain Janeway. So I thought, wow. Odo is not Starfleet, so he doesn't have to follow the protocols. Okay, well, then that makes sense then. I mean, he never called me anything but quark. He never called me Sir Quark or bartender quark. What does he call Kira? Doesn't he say major?

He says major too. He doesn't call her anything. He just kisses her. Um, uh, sometimes he calls her major Kira. Yes. But most of the time he calls her Kira. Just Kira. Okay.

All right. I just think Odo doesn't. I think Odo has a big ego. And he's, so for him. him to not indulge those formalities, I think, fits his character to me. And it's interesting that Odo and Ego rhyme. Yes. That's why.

That's how he came up with that part of his character. He's like, what rhymes with Odo? Ego. I'll play him like that. That's how I do research. Man. And speaking of playing Odo, I was impressed. Impressed is the wrong word.

I was fascinated by early choices of Renéo Bergen-Wa to play Odo that he played him as an alien. His neck was constantly, I can't even do it because he has a longer neck. And he was doing that as though he was doing alien behavior. I think we all learned pretty quickly, obviously not yet for either one of us, but that we didn't need to do that. The makeup itself did it. We didn't need to add anything. Right. I'm so glad that you brought that up because I was going to bring that up later and you refer specifically in the scene later when he's helping Cisco. He's doing a lot of the, yeah, he's doing a lot of the thing. And to me, it looked like he was imitating primate behavior, like chimpanzee behavior almost. Like it was very, it was very much like that to me. Or reptilian or something.

A hunchback of Notre Dame, something. It was just, it was something that he was going off of. And I didn't know what was happening. I was like, that's hard to sustain in 26 episodes of season. I thought he was going through some type of medical condition. I didn't get it, right? But then again... It was the virus. No, it's not the virus. But it's the actor trying to try something. And then he realizes, I don't need to do this.

This is going to play it already. It's good enough, right? Yeah. That's right. Okay, cool. Well, we've got a space shot. We see Kira's shuttle flying off. So clearly, Cisco let her leave.

We cut back to the hospital ward. Cisco again, reassuring Jake. He says, I'm not going to lose you. that's a promise you hear me i'm not going to lose you so another these i agree with you arm and these some of these best moments in this episode with these moments between jake and cisco absolutely really authentic heartfelt we go to ops jehiel's ship is preparing to depart the dog alien my my favorite dog alien is decided he's just going to leave and cisco comes on screen and you know uh brings him up on on screen and tells him he can't leave but he starts his engines anyway um he insists he's going

to leave Cisco cuts him off Cisco's like I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you which I loved you know he goes into a back and forth for a moment and then he's like forget it he just cuts him off and he prepares to release him but dog aliens engines have locked these docking clamps so they can't release and he's you know going full thrusters so his ship is going to blow out and destroy the station if he doesn't stop. He falls into that guest star tendency of pushing way too many buttons. If you watch him on the news screen,

oh my God, Robbie. He's just, he's talking to Cisco and he's doing it and the way he's pushing it is a weird, it's almost like he's petting a dog or something, you know, because there's nothing on those panels. Right, but the way he's doing it is awkward and it's repetitive to the point of like, okay, there's not that many buttons, dude.

But that's what happens when guest stars come on. They don't have the fine, you know, the balance of how many... Right, we should tell everyone out there that there was no instructor to tell us what to do with the props or the scenery. That's up to the acts of themselves. Exactly. Oh, I remember seeing props, you know, these made-up devices that the props guys would hand

me right before we rolled. And I'd be like, how does this work? And they're like, I don't know. I guess you could push this or maybe... Have fun. They didn't know. They didn't know themselves, exactly. So there you go.

We cut to the runabout, Kira arrives at this medical complex where Dr. Sermak locates where he's at. That's why she wants to make the call, make sure he's there. And then she beams him over to her ship. So tell me, is that kidnapping or is it not kidnapping? Oh, it's totally kidnapping. I know it's surmacking is what it is. It's, yeah, she kidnaps him. She can naps him. But I think this is justified. I think this is justified. Well, because she has no time. But O'Brien's about to die. I mean, she has to do this. There's no time to even explain it, right?

We go to ops, and they're still, Cisco and Odo are there, still trying to reason with Jehiel. His ship appears, when they bring it back up on the screen, the view screen, his ship appears to be on fire. And you don't see dog alien anymore. You don't see the Jehiel guy. This thing is going to blow up if they can't release it from the docking clamps, but then Cisco starts talking gibberish. by the way it occurred to me in the scene when I saw the fire and everything

and I just saw the previous scene where Kira kidnapped or beamed over the doctor I was like why didn't they just beam the dog alien off of his ship before all this stuff happened that's what I was thinking too I was like hey

because his whole solution was they'll break free and once he breaks free we'll tractor him back just beam him off the ship he's the only guy on the ship pushing the engine buttons there's no one

you stop from him from doing this. Yes. Oh, my gosh. This is that world building that's always tricky. It was helpful to use that trick with Kira, but here it doesn't help their story. It bites you in the ass, just like what a dog would do, right? Exactly.

The next scene is back on the runabout. Sermak is demanding to be taken back. Kira says, after you cure the people in the station, and he says he doesn't have the antidote. He didn't create it. He was just an assistant. Kira says, well, maybe you can figure it out to save yourself. Now you're infected. And she's standing really close to him.

And we know how this virus works. Yes. So smart. So we go back to ops. Odo is panicking, calling for help. Cork arrives and says that he will help for a price. I think what did you say something like? We can negotiate the hazard pay later.

The hazard pay later. Exactly. It's great. Huge conversations I've had with Michael Dorn for years who insisted there was no money in outer space. Hazard pay is money. No, yeah. That's right.

That's right. I loved how you played this scene, though. You were cool as a cucumber. I wasn't actually. When I watched that scene for the first time this week, I had a vague memory of there was in some episode, this was the one, where I realized that Jesus Christ, I'm in Star Trek.

I had been a huge Star Trek fan. And being in ops, which is similar to being on the bridge. And there I was alone, some of the scene was, I was alone. I was alone on the bridge commanding, yes, it's a space station, but you can metaphor into a space show. And I remember thinking, this is it. I'm in Star Trek. And you can see it in all through the scene.

I am elated. You are. I am totally elated because I'm, this is, this was on a bucket list for an actor. This was one of the top things. And I had achieved it in that day on that set. And I was ecstatic. ecstatic a childhood dream was coming true although i'd done a number of episodes before this but being in ops yeah and being on on the bridge yeah um there i was and it was very clear to me and i was in seventh

heaven that whole day that's well i love that that's the the behind the story version but that enthusiasm and that joy came through in the story as well and the character and i loved that choice i love that i'm not sure was a choice i think it was just simply an epiphany but i think i feel like quark would have in a way felt the same way i don't know if quark had ever i don't i don't know probably not he never no god knows how many i'm sure he wasn't invited to the to the ops on a regular basis no so except maybe to be called on the carpet but um so yes to be alone in ops. I'm sure Quark was

as elated as Armin was. And that worked for me. It felt authentic and I think all of those, all of that, that the coloring that your real life experience brought to the story,

I thought was great. We got a little backstory too. I love that, right? I'll beam you over. And Odo says, you? And Quark says, relax.

I served on a frangue freighter for eight years. So now we know he's not just the purveyor of the bar in the gambling institution. He actually has experienced. He's traveled through space. Yes. But I like that he did that Quark teases him in the end when Quirk says, well, I must have

witnessed this procedure, this transporter thing of hundreds of toys. And Odo's like, wait, witness? Do you mean you've never handled the controls yourself? Energizing. It is great, great, great, great. The writers were kind enough to give me the last word. Oh, yeah. Oh, it was beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Great scene. Kira's runabout arrives at the docking station. She calls Ops. Quark answers. Now, Kira in this scene says quark. Yeah, she pronounces it the way that Sid does.

The British way. Yeah, she said, Quark, Quark, quark. She can't believe that quark is, is. In arms, running the whole, he's running the whole scene is what he's doing. Where the elevator is and the replicator is. Yeah. And everything else is. Everything you need is in ops.

It's in ops. Unbelievable. And I think she probably needs his help to dock as well. Yes. Yes. Yes, exactly. We cut. So she docks.

She shocked the corks on the bridge, basically. We cut to the infirmary. And now Sermak is helping. He's looking at the doctor's research and database and all the notes. The unfinished. unfinished work that he's doing on finding that the antidote is what he's looking at too.

So we see he's helping and we cut back to the dog alien Jehiel's ship interior. Odo is there with a fire this raging fire in the background of that set. And Odo hauls him through for safety.

I just want to talk about the fire on stage for a moment. Do you remember at Paramount Studios they had their own little fire station? down yeah it was like a miniature fire station i think it had like a fancy golf cart painted red with paramount fire on the side or something but those guys would always come down to our set whenever we had explosions on stage or anything there'd be one of those guys close by that fire in the dog aliens ship when odo is bringing jahil out that was a huge fire that made me nervous

30 years later watching it. Looking at the script right here because when he picks Jahil off the surface because he's been compromised by the smoke, as Jihil and Odoer are walking out, do you get this dialogue? Look at this dialogue.

He's speaking in virus right now, right? Jahil says dog fellow distance. He says dog. Oh, that's funny. I'm like, what? That's funny. Oh, my gosh. I knew it.

I knew it. You were right the whole time, McNeil. Exactly. Up at Ops, Cork says it's going to explode in one minute. We go back to the infirmary. Sermak is running some programs and voila, he found the antidote. That was the quickest solution to a virus that Bashir called a work of genius. It was a little fast for me.

I got to be honest. It was fine. But yeah, it's a little rapid. I get it, but it was a little fast. I wish there had been one more secret thing that could have added to. to Sermak's presence that would have been, you know, the key because it felt like he just showed up, looked at some research and said, oh, yeah, here's the antidote. But he was good, that actor.

Did you know him, Aramond? I did. Matthew, yes, I did know him very well, but I did know him. And with all due respect to all the actors on the show, I believe Matthew gave the best performance continually through the episode of anybody. I thought Matthew was superb. There are moments when I believe Cisco matches that performance when he's talking to Jake.

The rest of us do fine. But I think those were the two superior performances. He was really good. I would not, you know, discredit you or any of the other actors. There were some great moments with everybody. But I agree with you. Matthew was great. I liked him.

He was consistent. He was believable. He was grounded. You believed everything he was doing. He didn't, you know, it was just perfect. It was perfect. I was really happy with it. So from this point, it sort of intercuts back and forth between ops and docking port five

with you giving a countdown, right? It's exploding in one minute. And then as you were going through 40 seconds, 30 seconds, at 20 seconds, when you scream 20 seconds, you do this thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you touch your face. I do remember. No, not my face.

Yes, I touch my face. Your face and your head. What I'm trying to do is no. No, what I'm trying to do is. protect my ears. Oh. Oh, my gosh. I don't remember this moment, but I love that description.

It's a great idea. Yeah. All right. As you watch more of this show, you will understand why I protect my ears. I get it. But I'm going to say, I remember the whole thing where I was watching Odo do the thing, that alien thing he was doing, and it looked very primatey, very chimpanzee to me. Then you did that. I go, chimpanzees do that too.

Maybe he's in a theme where he's him, he and. That's their connection. Yeah, he and Renee says, hey, we're both going to ask the connections. Because it looked like that. I was like, oh, my God. I want to know why you have to protect your ears, but I'm going to have to keep watching. Yeah, you'll have to keep watching. Oh, we'll save that for the secrets today.

Their ears are very sensitive. I have all kinds of ideas right now. And they're all right. And they're all right. Your ears are good. We cut back and forth. And Docking Port 5, I really loved the physical. set pieces, those giant

clamps that he has to release and all that, yeah, they look great. Those looked great. And so often in Star Trek, we have, you know, a backlit panel with some buttons that's supposed to be the thing or something that we scan that we say is doing something, but to physically see these giant tubes moving back and forth. We didn't have that so much. We didn't often do that in Star Trek. It was just,

it was, I guess, costly and easier to you know, wave something over it and say that it was working. Well, it was early days on the show, so I'm imagining they weren't looking at the budget as scrupulously as they were at the end of the season. So I think they may have thought we can afford this, and they probably paid for it later on. I thought it was worth it because I think those kind of things, really physical set pieces that are moving, that are interacting in a way like that makes a huge difference. Thank you, Herman Zimmerman.

Yes. They do jettison this ship and it flies far away to a safe distance and kaboom it explodes. Now, I'm trying to remember because I don't because it just occurred to me. Does it explode in fire when it explodes? Yeah. Yeah, it sort of blows up and then it seems to almost like it gets sucked into the vacuum. But is there fire? Is there fire? Do you remember there was? I think there was. I remember watching Picard and it exploded into fire and I thought, I thought, no, it's outer space. I know, I know. But that doesn't look good the other way.

The physics way, it doesn't look as good. So I get it. Funny. Yeah. I feel like so often on track things explode in space and there's fire. I wonder if someone's ever put their foot down and said, no, we have to, what would it really look like? Because I don't know, what would that look like?

It would just turn to debris, I guess. Well, like you said, there's no air out there. So how is the fire going to stay fiery? you know i mean there's going to be some like initial spark but it'll be contained almost immediately you know instantaneously if you're talking about the laws of physics and yeah physics would almost have it imploding like as the vacuum of space hit it instead of fire going expanding it would almost contract i wouldn't know but we did i'm sure your show had one as well we had a science officer uh not an officer but a science expert who yeah consultant who should have been able to

answer those questions. Yeah. Yeah. We had the same one probably, right? Andre Bormonis. Yeah, Andre. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Andre's great. Yes. Cork brings up the hazard pay. And I made a note, Odo looks like he's going to explode now. It's like it's not like Odo was a half to pay. It wouldn't be feel. No, it's not coming out of his pocket. Exactly. Jeez. We have a captain's log here. Station log. Station log. Yes. Station log. Dr. Sermak was able to find the antidote for the ephasia virus and they're continuing to administer it throughout the station. Things are slowly returning to normal. And we come back to ops.

Cisco says to O'Brien, good to have you back. O'Brien as well, back at work. And Cisco has some of the coffee or gets some coffee from the replicator. And then he says, O'Brien. And I didn't know if it was, is that still broken? It is. It's like it's it is broken and that's the bookend. That's the book end. It starts like that. It ends like that.

It's still broken. See, that's what was so awesome about this ending scene. It was like, ha, ha, O'Brien. It's the same thing that we saw in the beginning. It's, okay. I don't know why I was like confused. Oh, you thought he, you thought he was that it was good, that he enjoyed it?

Or I, I thought he, if O'Brien was back and I guess I expected, I assume that, Oh, Miles is healthy and everything's working and everything's fixed and there's no more problems. Happy ending. But that's not life. No. And that's why DS9 is so damn awesome is because it shows it like it is. I feel. So there you go.

Did Cisco drink a lot of coffee? I don't know because I didn't do that many scenes with him and I don't remember. Because I was thinking about Janeway. He certainly didn't drink tea. That's for sure. Right. Yeah. Janeway was coffee.

Janeway was coffee black. It was a big thing. It was a running thing. She couldn't even talk to the crew until she had her coffee. That was so important in her life. As a character. Yeah. So when I saw this episode and I saw Cisco being so particular about his coffee,

it was like, oh, I wonder if that's just a Star Trek thing. We wrote from all the captains. Where Janeway had coffee and Picard had tea, if I make the suggestion, is that Cisco had a baseball. Okay. Yeah. There you go. And that was his personal prop.

Yes. That makes sense. That totally makes sense. All right. Well, great. There you go. That is Babel. Or Babel.

Or Babel or Babel. If you live in England. Or parts of Canada for that matter. That was a great episode. I'll tell you my theme first, what I think. I actually have two or lessons. The first one is how. dangers from the past or issues from the past can come back to haunt us if we don't clean up

our messes and that means metaphorically like emotional stuff from the past if you don't clean it up those viruses those things are going to eat away at you until you clean it up so like the pejorans didn't clean up that virus they didn't clean up the weapon that they left and it came back to create some problems i think you know clean up your past or it's going to affect your present. That's the lesson. Oh, and I have a second lesson. My second lesson, I'm going to read it,

wear a mask so you don't spread germs. That's my other lesson. That's funny. So my lesson is that it's not always smooth sailing. It's always going to be rough patches that you're going to hit. If something... Things break. Things aren't perfect.

Things are not perfect, yeah. And that this is something, the sooner you can acknowledge that, the better off you will be in dealing with life because so many people let that one malfunction or whatever ruin their day and sometimes ruin their month and sometimes ruin their year when they turn into the curmudgeon, a really, really grumpy person, right? After all these things that life hands them. So replicators are going to break. Yes, lemon locks are going to get stuck. You're going to get lemons. Just figure out how to turn it into lemonade. That's it. Yeah. Docking clamps.

are going to get stuck and you may have to eject the ship yes there you go so my lesson there you go do you have i mean what about you do you have a lesson i'm hard pressed to have a lesson per se um for me it's not so much a lesson but a stitch of thread in the tapestry of the history of the station it is a way of reminding the viewers that this is indeed a once cardassian station and that they have been through a war with two opposing sides and um this little device again remembering that our show was based on the uh the the Serbian war um this is i think i have the right initials forgive me if i have it wrong this is an iED um left behind uh and and is causing havoc with the people that are retrieving it so it's it's not so much a lesson but rather

another stitch in the tapestry of the history of the space station. That's very well put. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us. That was really fun. And just a reminder, we will have a new episode in two weeks. We're only doing four new episodes a month now.

So have a great, great holiday, and we'll see you in two weeks. For our Patreon, patrons, stick around for your extras and all your bonus material for everyone else. we'll see it for captive pursuit. That is an excellent episode. That is an excellent episode. Oh, good. Yeah, we're getting very excited. Thank you.

Thank you.