The Delta Flyers - Bliss

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Bliss. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Bliss:After five years, the Voyager crew finally finds a wormhole that will bring it back to the Alpha Quadrant; Seven suspects there is something wrong with how quickly and easily the crew accepts the appearance of the phenomenon.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, & Bryan FullerAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Brandon May, Jeremy Mcgraw, & Jason BonnettAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Katherine Hendrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Liza Albright, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Mike Chow, John Mann, Holly R. Schmitt, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Craig M. Nakashian, Julie McCain, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Estelle Keller, & Russell NemhauserThank 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

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Trek actor and director of the acclaimed and award-winning short film, nine millimeters of love. What? for Mr. Robert Duncan McDowell. Oh my God. The award winning. Yes, that was my first short film.

It was actually my second short film. My first one was so bad. I was going to say battery, but I went to the film festival with you for nine millimeters of love, not the battery. Sorry, I messed it up. I messed it up. What?

Battery was my first short film, and then nine millimeter was my second. It was a second. But I actually did one before. Oh, you did? One before that, yes. Oh. that is called the Book of Logic

based on a joke that Ethan told me one time and I literally wrote a five minutes short based on this joke. I'm like, oh my gosh, I should just, that'll be my short film. And I shot it and it was horrible. Wait, wait, why was it horrible? Because of the bad. It was like a bad, it wasn't much of a story.

So you took his joke and you just filled it out. You scripted the joke. Right. As a story. like a narrative as a narrative as a narrative okay yeah it was about this guy i can't even remember a lot of it he's like riding his bike and then he falls over okay he scrapes his knee and then somebody comes he sees a friend and they're like what happened to you and he tells him like you know well this happened and this happened the book of logic and so it was a whole like

it was a joke on logic oh all right talks him through his day of like well this happened so of course I had to do this and then yeah it was just in and uh who'd you cast in that is this where you cast josh jackson in no he was in the battery my buddy david burke who was in the episode someone to watch over me okay uh david and i did a play in new york city um and so i called david and he was the bicycle rider and i think i may have put ethan in because it was his joke i think he was in in it too oh great but we literally shot it in a day yeah we stole located we didn't have permits for anything. It was like really guerrilla filmmaking.

Film school, student film. Yeah. And it was bad. Okay. But then anyway, yes, the battery was next. And that was a real legit. That was a almost a 25 minute short film. Really amazing actors, including Joshua Jackson.

Jackson. And Larry Joshua and a bunch of people. And Ethan was in that as well. He played the baseball coach in the battery. Ethan was in all my short films. Oh. He played the little league coach for Josh Jackson. Okay.

And then my last film was 9mm of love. And Ethan was in that as well. He plays this guy on the street that runs into the hero. Yes. All righty. Are you ready for this week's episode? I am totally ready. What's the second?

What's the name? It's called bliss. Bliss got a good name. I'm totally ready. See how ready I am? See, you're blissfully ready. This is part of the fun of this is we, this is in real time. We experienced this.

We respond to. to what we've seen, and it's exciting. So bliss, I can't wait. Okay. We will be right back with our recap and discussion of bliss. It will be a blissful recap. Robbie and I are back from watching bliss. Yes, we are.

And it was blissful. So blissful. No spitting, though. I mean, I was looking for the spitting aliens and they didn't show up. Well, you know, here's how I interpret my. my my uh synopsis yes the giant alien life form yes a weird way was sort of like digesting right the ship and eventually spit it out he did it just out like that like so you so you kind of were on point there i feel like i was close at the overall theme of this episode yes

okay i'm going to start with uh my haiku for bliss sir wormhole straight to earth. Crew deceived. Lose consciousness. Pitcher plant throws up. Good, very good. That was solid. Yeah, thank you.

This was a tough one for me, this limerick. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. Here we go. Limerick for bliss. A wormhole to take the crew home at last. All their wildest dreams seem to be surpassed. Seven and Naomi don't take the best.

bait. The beast has Voyager on its plate. Awaken to reality, thanks to an antimatter blast. That's good. What are you worried about? Robbie is like talking to me before we start up this recording. He's like, this is not the good one. I like that one. Okay, good. I'm glad you do. Where's your criticism? Where's your criticism? What made you think this was a poopy one? This episode made me hungry because of all the digestion. So I'm going to be eating my almonds okay as we talk all right on theme with the digestion a oh what i'm going to be calling it so you're just going to everybody as you listen to this podcast i hope you're eating a snack digesting something oh kind of like the alien life form tried to digest our

ship oh i see so you're you know you're so into this episode that you're actually mimicking the i'm participating yes digesting almonds exactly okay okay I love it. I love it. Teleplay is by Robert Doherty, who I have mentioned. I love his teleplays. They're very good. They've got good humor in there. And I like his teleplays. Yes. Yeah. The story is by Bill Prady. Now, how do we know this name? We know this name. Because he is the co-creator of the Big Bank theory. Yes, he is. And the minute I saw that I was shocked. I did not remember that Bill Prady had pit. the story and obviously they purchased the story. I have a quick anecdote about Bill Prady. Please. Bill Prady and I, many years back before the Bing Bang Theory, Bill Prady and I had the same agent. And I had this idea for a TV show. My agent said, hey, you should go have lunch with this writer that we represent. His name is Bill Prady. And my agent said, you know, he's got this pilot that they made, but they're going to reshoot it. I don't know if anything's going to

happen with it. But if it doesn't go, you know, if his pilot doesn't go, I know he's a big Star Trek fan and he'd love to talk to you about your idea. So Bill and I went to lunch and I told him my idea. We talked about Star Trek. I had forgotten just till now that he actually said to me at that lunch. He said, oh yeah, I sold a story to Voyager. And anyway, we had a great lunch. I pitched him my idea. He goes, I love it. It sounds great. I'd love to do this show with you and develop it. We have to reshoot this, you know, sitcom that I wrote. And we have to reshoot the pilot. They didn't like the first version. Yeah. So, uh, once I know about that, you know, I'll let you know. Okay. Well, cut to that was the Big Bang Theory pilot. That was it. So, so he was too busy. Oh, my God. Needless to say,

he did not, uh, develop my, my show, your idea with me. But that's Bill Prady. Yeah. Anyway, love it. Cliff Boll directed this episode. Oh, we were both wrong. Both wrong. We played the Vegas odds and lost. That's a lesson to all of you. Be careful in Vegas. Never bet against the house, a line used by Robert J. Doherty in this script, actually.

That's right. Okay. Guest stars, we've got Scarlet Palmer's, who we've talked about endlessly, how much we love her. Yes. She was awesome in this episode. Our other guest star was W. Morgan Shepard playing Katai. the only guest star in the episode. W. Morgan Shepard was born in London, England,

and he passed away, sad to say, he passed away in 2019. Oh, no! He did. In Los Angeles, he died. W. Morgan Shepard's first job that I could find was in 1961. He did a series called Theater Night for the BBC.

And I don't know exactly what the content of that was, but it was probably he was a, theater trained. He went to the Royal Shakespeare School. He was a theater actor. He probably was performing in some play that they broadcast on theater night in 1961. So his very first TV credit was theater night. But here's another fascinating fact. He is the father of the actor Mark Shepard. Now, Mark Shepard. A lot of people know Mark Shepard from, yeah, no, Mark from Supernatural. I remember working with Mark. He was on Star Trek Voyager. He guest starred on our show. He also did a guest start on Chuck that I produced and directed. So I know Mark very well. And I directed Mark on

Supernatural. So I know Mark very well. And that was his dad that played this role. So I just thought that was awesome. No clue that Mark Shepard and Morgan Shepard were related. No clue. I know both Mark and Morgan. Morgan I met at a convention. Morgan was also in Star Trek, the reboot film. the one that J.J. Abrams did in 2008. He played the the head of the Vulcan Science Academy. And he's sort of, you know, he's telling, he's sort of dressing down Spock, a young Spock, basically. But he did a great job there. But I had no idea he had passed away. I'm a little bit bummed to hear that. January 2019. All right. So there's our guest sir. So let's get into our episode. Let's do.

First thing that happens is in our teaser in the episode, we see this strange ship. And by the way, Morgan Shepherd as Katai looked like, to me, looked like the beast. Look like from Beauty and the Beast. Oh. His makeup looked like, I was like, oh, it's the bee. He had the kind of the long hair and the kind of quaff top and then the scary looking face. I feel like Michael Westmore did some sort of, you know, inspiration from Beauty and the Beast. I don't know.

That was what I took away. But one thing I noticed, when you see inside his shit, Does it remind you of Nelix's cluttered ship a little bit? Oh, yeah. There's stuff hanging around, moving and everything. Well, the stuff hanging around and moving, you know, our sets didn't move. They weren't built up on platforms that rocked around. So everything that looks like a shake or like the ship's moving is the camera moving, the actor moving.

And then if there are hanging things, they would often put a little monofilament, like fishing line. And they would sort of pull it and shake it around. So between the actor shaking, the camera shaking, and those things getting moved in the way that they would move if they were hanging and gravity was, you know, momentum was pushing them around. So all of that was being manipulated by our special effects department. So the things that were hanging were doing. Yeah, I noticed that too. So the question for you is the monofilament, the fishing line, is not detected by the camera at all. You don't see it.

Often it's not. And if it is, it's a very easy cleanup in post. in post-production. Yeah, easily clean that up and just kind of... Gotcha. Now, did you know what was happening? I had no idea. You didn't know what he was heading into.

I don't think I either of us yet. Who is this guy? Who is this guy? First line of my... Yeah. I was going to make that the first line of my limerick goes, who is this guy? I was like, because the whole teaser, I'm like, who is this guy? I kept saying, who is that?

What's happening? Who is this guy? Well, he never even says his name. No, never says his name. Yeah. And so we have to figure that out on our own. And he's heading into what looks like an ion storm or some clouds that are opening up. I don't know what that was running away from something and hiding. That was my interpretation. Oh, this is a bad guy. Right. He's running away from somebody chasing him. And he's going to hide out in this. Yeah, it looks like an ion storm. Right. You can't tell what it is. Similar to the pilot of Voyager in Caretaker. We're trying to hide in that storm to get away from the Cardassians, I think. So similar, but we don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. So we go to our opening credits.

We come back and the turbo lift door opens on the bridge. And the first thought I have is Kate Mulgrews got her arm up on the side, one hand on a hip. Yeah. And she's like, what does she say? Wormhole. And then she struts over to the station. So funny. It reminded me of, you know, often we would start scenes where we were inside these turbo lifts.

Yes. And I don't know if you remember, but we would goof off all the time. Yeah. Like the doors would shut and we didn't know, you couldn't really hear outside. You'd be like, wait, are they rolling yet? You know, you're standing inside and you're telling some story or some joke or something. So there was always, when I saw Kate with her arm up there, I was like, I wonder if that just happened in rehearsal. Like she accidentally got caught and was like, oh, I'm going to do that. Anyway, wormhole, she says. And she's heads over to Tuvok station where they've discovered, it seems like we have discovered that there is a wormhole that seems to lead directly back to Earth. Yes. And Janeway is very suspicious. She's like, what? That's super convenient. And everybody, Tuvok, Chukote, they all agree that it's suspicious. And I think Chakotay says, let's send a probe in there and check this out. Like,

yeah, actually, Janeway orders that Janeway orders to prepare class. five pro because there's a lot of massive bioplasmic activity going on in this wormhole so they're not sure what's going on she calls for yellow alert uh does lighting change for yellow alert or is that just sort of like i think panels change or so maybe panels but i didn't see a noticeable change on the set when she said that so wasn't sure they she even says by the way she goes you know this could be a possible deception so she's very suspicious at the start which is going to be important because the change in attitude for everyone is quite dramatic after this. Yeah.

We go to the Delta Flyer, actually. Yes. We go to the Delta Flyer. There's seven, Paris and Naomi, heading back from some kind of mission. They were looking for Deuterium, I think, but they can find any. And Naomi really wants to help. She wants to be a part of the crew. She's trying really hard.

And Seven is just not having it. Seven's like nothing for you to do here. And so Paris goes, hey, come on down. come on over here fly the ship which i can't believe were you shocked to see naomi though in this scene i was like wait a minute she's on a mission with you guys like i was a little a little bit like oh that's different which is it's fine it's i don't have a problem with it but i was like oh that's different i i kind of liked it honestly that there's a kid you know that the that the whole crew is sort of adopting Naomi in a way and that she's a you know it fits her personality i love you know

Scarlet Palmer's energy and her enthusiasm is really good. So I enjoyed it. So the whole, it takes a village to raise a child. Yes, exactly. That was, I loved it. All right. I love that Paris lets her fly the ship. And then we cut to the hallway.

We see Seven and Paris walking around. But Tom's carrying Naomi now. Yeah, she's falling asleep. It's just like kids do on any road trip. They're falling asleep when you get back. I love that. And Tom's like, you know what? I'll go tell Samantha Wildman why her daughter's two hours late for bedtime if you go, you know, do our mission report.

So seven's like, okay, fine, which I thought was very cute. We go to astrometrics and seven walks in and she's suddenly surprised and kind of pissed off when she walks in the door. She's like, she's a little pissed because Janeway, Chakote, Tuvok, Harry are all there. Like, it's her office. and everybody's just kind of taken over. Tuvok there? Oh. Yeah, Tuvok's there.

I only wrote Janeway Chikote and Harry, but all right. Yeah, Tuvok's off to the side. He kind of joins them. It's an oddly shot scene, I'll have to say. Yeah. Cliff Bowl normally does a really great job. But this one, I was like, there was kind of weird singles of Tuvok standing by himself.

And then he ends up joining at the end. And I didn't know Chikote was there at the start. It was a little bumpy for me. I got to go on the scene. But anyway, they all seem very. happy. But seven is very suspicious about this. They fill seven in on. We may have found this wormhole. And seven's like the odds are infinitesimal that there would be a wormhole. Coincidentally right here that goes straight to earth. What are the odds? Yeah. Yeah.

But they're very happy about it, different than the bridge. So already they're starting to be much more optimistic. Yeah. We have the never bet against the house line from Janeway here as well. but it is strange you're you're seeing this optimism from the crew and seven is not buying it at all she feels her you know her spidey senses are tingling she doesn't know what's going on but she knows something's wrong that's it yeah one thing i noticed in this episode i don't know if you did is there's a lot of scenes where people are talking and then at the end of the scene the camera's pushing in on seven but people keep talking off yes yes it happened like three or four times and i was like We never do that.

We never, like, have these strange off-camera conversations. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it happened in here as they're walking out the door or cameras pushing it on seven left alone. And they're all chattering away in the background. And it's, and the volume gets dimmer and dimmer on their conversation. Yeah. It's sort of just, yeah. So it's an interesting choice for sure.

It was, and it was an unusual technique because we don't normally do that. Our dialogue is either on camera and important and clean. Yeah. And you hear everything. The volume is where it's supposed to be at. There's no type of fade to black kind of a sound thing. It's very clear. So yeah, you're right.

I also got to say, by the way, and we're going to get to a couple of places where I noticed this, but I thought the score in this episode was phenomenal. Yes. The score was, and we always have a great score. It's always composed. It's performed by an entire, you know, 40-piece symphony or whatever the number is. every episode has great music but this one in particular to me just felt a little bigger and more cinematic and kind of classic than I normally notice you know it didn't have the

same kind of little sounds and qualities this one seemed different for some reason I agree we're in Janeway's ready room right now and seven reports that she has finished running her diagnostic and she says the neutrino levels are extremely erratic And then Janeway's like, oh, no, wait a minute, it's okay. You know, those like faint, faint transmissions that we heard or faint signals. Guess what? Those are Starfleet transmissions to us. And they have told us that the neutrino flux is nothing to worry about.

So Janeway is clearly convinced that this is the real deal. Or at least she's feeling more confident that this is the real deal. This wormhole will leave back to Earth. Now, Seven starts bringing up some old adage that the doctor taught her, look before you leap and then Janeway comes back with her little old you know saying which is he who hesitates is lost and I thought oh my goodness these all these little sayings are popping in popping up and that's when Chacote enters and he has a letter a second letter from Mark and he says he's jealous so now the J.C. shippers are happy. Yeah. They're like this was an odd little exchange

because it was like she was she got a second letter and she started smiling. filing like a little, you know, like, oh, this is exciting. And she even turned away. Like, it's a secret letter. Yeah. And she says something about apparently Mark's engagement was broken off. Right. And so now he's back on the market.

She's happy about that. Yeah. Which is like, okay, that's anti-JC shipper. It's anti-JC. Exactly. And then, but then at the end, they had one of those off-camera conversations where she's like, how could I possibly, what did she say? Go on without you kind of a guy.

Yeah. How am I supposed to run a starship without you? Yeah. And he's like, you'll do fine. Yeah. It was just a, it was a bit of a yo-yo. It was a yo-yo conversation. By the way, my last thing on this scene is, the very top of the scene when we walk in,

Janeway's bringing some coffee around to her desk, and you see that she's got pads on the desk. Okay. She had more pads than I've ever seen any character ever have. And she had this box where she was like filing the pads, which I've never seen. she had a pad filing system um she had a pad filing system how many how many pads are on the table i don't know i felt like 10 12 pads wow with a lot usually somebody's got one pad one pad or maybe like two you know

maybe two but she had a bunch of pads i'm just going to point that out and the and the pad filing system which was pretty cool hmm i love office supplies so when i see that many pads and nice to organize they love office supplies. They love post-its and highlighters and staplers, all that stuff. I didn't know that. Now I know what to get you for Christmas. Office supplies. Yeah.

I'm a big fan of them. I wonder if there's like an office supply closet on Voyager. You know? Yes, it's just off the bridge, actually. Yeah. Go get another pack of paper. Go get another, I don't know. Go get another pad to replace.

Yeah, exactly. A post-it pad. A post-a-pad. A post-pad. we go to a ship shot next and then we're we're in the borgalcove yeah cargo bay one cargo bay one and uh we see that seven is trying to access janeway's personal logs her log entries and she's denied by the computer access denied yeah and suddenly she walks over across the room pulls a panel off the wall does some borg board stuff borg stuff to it whatever she's

does. Yep. She borgifies it. Yeah. And now she goes back access granted. If she could do that, she could take over the ship. She could totally take over. Like, does Janeway know that she could do that? Well, clearly. Yeah. No, that was, that was surprising to me too. I thought, my goodness, look at this. She just hacked right into it with just like pulls a panel off the wall. Anyway, she does access them and looks at, I think three different entries. The first entry, tons of skepticism, very skeptical. The second one, a little more optimistic. And the third one, very optimistic.

And it happens very quickly. So this concerns seven. Seven thinks that this is just too coincidental and that they would have read some of this information scientifically. The data should be there. And there's no data to support what's happening right now. We find seven coming down a hallway from Carlin. Margo Bay 1.

And Neelix catches up. Neelix calls from behind. He says, Anika. Anika Hansen? She says, there's no one here by that name. Which is appropriate for this episode. She has no emotional connection to Earth. Therefore, that's why we learned that she's not being given these fantasies, these hallucinations.

Right. She has no. And neither does Naomi. Naomi doesn't either. Because she was born on Voyager. So therefore, she doesn't even know her. So the two individuals that have never stepped foot on Earth and also the doctor, because he's a hologram. They have no, there's no influence by this organism on their brain patterns.

Right. So, yeah. But Neelix catches up with seven. And he's got a letter for her. It's from her aunt, I get, who she also has no connection to. And her aunt's very looking forward to meeting her on earth. And she's like, that's cool. but I don't care.

She doesn't really care. No. Neelik shares that he's been appointed the ambassador to the, I think he said, Lantorian sector. Yeah, I turned on the subtitles to see what that said. It sounded like Lanturian, but then it was spelled L-A-N-T-A-N-T-A-N. So Lantuan sector is what they wrote down.

Okay. Interesting. Might be wrong too. The only reason it matters is because he says that, that he was appointed the ambassadors to Lantorian or Lantoon section, whatever. And then his punchline is, well, I guess they'd thought that I'd have a flare for quadrupeds. And then there's this awkward moment in seven leaves. And I was like, was that supposed to be a punchline?

I couldn't quite tell. I don't know. It was an odd little celebration of his ambassadorship. Yeah. It was kind of like comedy adjacent. but not really. It was like charming, but not funny. Yes.

And usually Ethan will squeeze out any kind of laugh he can, but he could not squeeze a laugh out of that dialogue. There's nothing to be out there. We go to the mess hall and seven enters the mess hall. And I noticed in this scene that the background is super animated. They're like all excited in there. Everybody's talking. You can hear little parts of conversations.

They all have letters from Earth. Yes. And I said to myself, When we filmed those scenes where it was supposed to be lots of chatter, the actors couldn't talk. The background actors could not say anything. Yeah, they were just mowing their conversation. It was all miming. So it was literally all of that animated energy that you see when Jerry Ryan walked into that set on action, everybody was just going.

Yeah, it was totally silent. And the loop group adds in the dialogue. Yeah, the loop group in post, they add all that chatter and all. all those conversations. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was just, I was recalling those moments where you have this lively, you know, room where everybody's supposed to be making noise, but there's nothing. There's no sound at all.

Not even a pin dropping, yes. It was funny. It is funny. But she comes in. Paris is making himself a turkey sandwich or something. Yeah, you're actually eating. You're chewing a little bit. So I was, I was eating.

I pulled something off with some tongs. Yeah. You had your business. I waved to somebody. coming by. I said, I wrote down a note. I think I was trying to keep up with Bob Picardo. Yeah, it is.

And his prop acting. He always has a million props. And I was like, you were a run for his money. Oh, yes, you were. Very impressed. Working the props really hard in the background. But it was smooth, man.

My note was like, Robbie's physicality is seamless. There's no, there's no jerkiness. It was very smooth and very believable. And I thought, oh, cool. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, you're welcome.

Yeah, so Seven asks him if he's gotten any messages and heard about this. And he goes, oh, yeah, I've got, I got a letter. I got a letter and invitation for a job as a test pilot in Australia. In Australia, adjacent to New Zealand. It's New Zealand adjacent. And Seven is hopeful for a minute, like, oh, Tom must be skeptical. He seems a little skeptical. Yeah.

He's like, so, you know, do you believe this? And he goes, oh, yeah. are you kidding i've already accepted this job believe it i already wrote back and accepted it so yeah so she's like he's drinking the kool-aid as well so she realizes she doesn't have a ally in tom paris unfortunately so she goes looking for one in sick bay mm-hmm goes into sick bay and activates the emh yeah tells the doctor that she thinks the crew's being deceived about this wormhole and he doesn't even know what he's like what wormhole yeah she goes you know I think you need to investigate.

So he says he's going to try to bring some of the crew in for some physicals as a cover to try to see what's going on. If there's any physiological explanation. And then Chikote calls at seven. We need you on the bridge. Right. But she finds an ally, which is good. She has one person on her side. And that is the doctor.

But he's not much help at this point because he's like, there's a wormhole. Yeah. He still has to, he needs time to catch up to get up the speech. here. Now we're on the bridge and there is considerable interference in the images that we're getting. Harry clears it up and now we see a beautiful image of Earth on the view screen

and we are about 53 minutes away from this wormhole. So Oh my gosh, yeah. Very close. Yeah, they get an image from the other side. Yeah, Harry clears it up and they basically say, I think Janeway says let's prepare to go to the Northern Hemisphere

Starfleet headquarters. is our destiny. They're going to head right in. Like, the writers are writing this like, oh, my gosh. This is when it's happening. She should have said, destination, San Francisco, Starfleet headquarters, specifically Admiral Paris's office. We're going to fly right in there.

Right into it. It was very specific. So as we prepare, we think we're 53 minutes away. We go to astrometrics. And seven is running a gravimetric scan of this wormhole. She magnifies a grid, one of the grids of the wormhole. the grids of the wormhole. And she sees the outline of something that looks like a vessel.

So she hails it. She hails it again. Kattai shows up. Katai shows. He's on screen for a second. And he says, look, you've been deceived, turn around, go back. And then the last thing he says before everything fritzes out is a very cryptic line. He says, he knows what you want.

And then fritz is out. Tuvok enters. Seven is trying to deal with the power loss. She does not understand what has happened. And Tuvok says, oh, all the power to astrometrics has been rerouted to the navigational array per Captain Janeway until we get through this wormhole. And then she tells him what's been going on in terms of this vessel that she found and this conversation. Tuvok hits a couple buttons and says, hey, I have no record of the transmission with this alien ship. And Seven says, well, sensors are clearly malfunctioning.

And then she tells Tuvok, you are being manipulated. He doesn't really agree with what she's saying. And he says, I think your thinking is flawed or something. He says, the data must be flawed. And he says, no, your logic must be flawed. And then he says to her, your access to astrometrics is now restricted. So he's basically told her you can't even come in here anymore. So everything that she's trying to do, she's, she gets hit with this roadblock that she has to get around.

And next we go to cargo pay. And she's now in there trying to access from a station and cargo bag. Yeah, anything. And she hears this noise. Yes. And so we think, oh, this is going to be the cause of all this problem. So she sneaks over. So there's kind of a creepy, you know, scary movie suspense thing.

She comes over. Good music from our symphony orchestra. Great music from the symphony. Yeah. And she finds Naomi behind one of these cargo things. Yeah. And she's got her. Flotterdoll, by the way.

She's going to flotterdoll. And seven is like, state your intentions. I love the way that she talks to Naomi. It's hilarious. I love it. Naomi says, I'm hiding in here because everybody's acting weird. They're smiling all the time.

Yes. I love that she said that because we did. Everybody, everybody's like, hey. Yeah, we're going to Earth. Everybody's so happy. But Naomi's hiding because everybody's acting weird. And she says, you know, everybody's acting. like Earth is the greatest place in the universe.

I love for like kid like attitude near. Earth is stupid. Yeah. So dumb. She's like, Voyager is my home, not Earth. By the way, I made a note here. I was like, wait, season five, Naomi was born season two. I was like trying to do the math.

Like, I want a cheat sheet. I know that she's half alien and there was a gestation period that was long. I want, basically, I want a cheat sheet on Naomi Wildman's aging cycle. like with her alien, what? Like, how long was Sam pregnant? Two years? Yeah. But then she had the baby and then the baby grew up in two years.

Now she looks like he's 10. I don't know. I just want to cheat, cheat so I know about Naomi, you know. Well, maybe, yes, three years in human years is actually 10 in Qatar, half guitarian half human years, right? The guitarian dad provided the quick, quick advancement in her matrient. process is my only guess yeah but she was pregnant but sam sam sam samantha wildman was pregnant for a long time because it was season two before it was well over a year before anyway you get what i'm saying i do we do need a little yeah all the numbers i want the math i want the data you want i want to know about

katarin human combo yes hybrids i need to know that agreed anyway so basically seven says to Naomi, like, you and I seem to be the only ones that are not affected by this. You're not smiling all the time. Everybody's actually weird. You're right. Naomi, stay here. Yeah. Which is important that she has Naomi stay right there.

Don't move. Stay right there. Don't move. Stay here. Hide until I return. Anyway, we go to sick bay, seven walks in. No doctor. No doctor.

She activates the EMH, but we hear off camera, please state the nature of your medical emergency. And Tom enters, which I love me, boy. I'm now the new EMH. You are. And Tom explains to seven that, yeah, we've taken the doctor offline to protect his program from being damaged. Her Starfleet's orders. Her Starfleet's orders, exactly. Yes. And Tom also says to her, oh, you know, I can handle any medical emergency that the doctor can. What? He prefaced it by saying, I know this is difficult to believe, but I can handle any. medical program and I started thinking any medical problem you know that much about medicine did you like what something's off wow yeah that's amazing we don't even need the doctor we just have

tom paris we don't even need the doctor by the way I love I catch now and then people saying to Tom Paris ensign that's right you're you're still insin every time I hear and I'm like wait what oh yeah I'm an ensign right you're still an insin okay okay so we go out into the corridor and seven's waiting for a turbo lift, the doors open, and it's Chikote and a security team. With phasers. Yeah, with phasers. And they basically say they are there to deactivate her board implants. And then she says, well, you can't do that without the doctor.

You need the doctor to do that. And he's offline. And they say, no, we just need to put you into stasis until we're home. It's too dangerous, this trip through the wormhole. Yeah, they mentioned something about the trip to the wormhole. wormhole will pass through Borg territory or something and that your implants may, may, you know, be alert them to our presence. Yeah.

So again, more weird responses and answers. And she knows it. She knows it. But she's trying to figure out what is going on here. But I like at the end of the scene where he basically goes, resistance is futile. Yeah. He says to her, like flip the tables there. I would have loved the reaction shot of seven just rolling her eyes.

to that comment. Just like, oh, God. And then that's the, that's how we get out of that scene. I think we're in the bridge next. We go to the bridge. Everybody's just excited to be wrong. All I wrote was happy crew.

Happy crew. I wrote, it's a super smile festival on the bridge. It was literally, everybody was just like, oh my gosh. Everybody had too much coffee or laughing gas or something.

Oh, happy. The other thing I wrote here that I, do not want to miss is tom paris's bangs what when did top how did i ever agree i have did you those are bangs are you kidding me i have to go watch it again now to see that in this scene and it's in a couple of scenes it's it's bang adjacent but these are full-on bangs like in this scene with this big super smile festival going on i'm like i got the super small and the bangs happen Well, I'm going to say, I mean, if you're super happy, your hair becomes super happy and bangs just show up.

Bangs are happy hair. Bangs are happy here for Tom Harris, at least. I guess so. I don't know. It was a tragedy. It was a phase, I guess. I don't know. I have no idea what.

I think maybe I just cut my hair. I got my hair cut real short and they didn't know. It wasn't enough hair to do the normal. So is it only in this scene? Are all the other scenes your hair in hair is normal? bangs a bit, but this is just a, this is a disaster. This is hardcore banging. Well, I'm sorry, you're

extra banging in that scene. I apologize. But we go to the Borgalcove off the Super Smile Fest. Yes. We go to the Borgalcove and she's pretending, so she's been taken, you know, detained by Chikote and the security team, and she pretends to adjust her regeneration parameters

in a console there, punches some buttons, and then heads into her alcove area and suddenly a force field erects and chikote a borg force field and chakotay and the security team can't get to her no they're trapped in this force field that she's created around them and then seven calls for naomi who's yeah smart move she told her to stay there now she's gonna need her yeah and she tells naomi if they try to do anything if there's if the console alerts her or something yeah She basically, okay, so she basically tells Naomi, if this portion of this console starts flashing, you need to enter this combination of buttons that I'm going to push. Let me show you this. Do you get this? Because on the, on the bridge, Janeway has told Harry, can you get through this force field? Can you, you know, eliminate the force field? He's working. Yeah, I should be able to do this. I should be able to do this. Yes. And by the way, she shows, she shows Naomi this combination. It's like, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

bum, bum, bum, like six or eight, ten buttons. Yeah. I watched it two or three times. I'm like, I can't remember that sequence. Yeah. It was like, how did this two-year-old Katarian human hybrid who, God knows how fast they grow up, maybe the brain function is also extra fast because I couldn't remember it. I agree.

And I'm going to say, you know, that game, Simon, they should have called it Naomi is what they should have called that game. And yes, well, so Harry does try to do a few things, and that makes the little sensor start flashing. So Naomi enters the little Simon code, and that basically locks out, Harry, and it keeps the force filled up. Seven says, I'm going to, I'm going to now perform a site-to-site transport. She grabs a phaser rifle, and she transports over to engineering, where we see Seven materialize and quickly take out your beloved Tor. It's a blood bath in there. She's like, she shoots Balana and Roxanne Dawson falls to the ground in slow motion. Yeah.

She turns over to two other engineers, bam, slow motion they go to slow motion. And they're doing their own stunts. So this was our extras. That was them. That's right. That was extras. That was Roxanne. Yeah. All doing good crashes into walls and falls.

But it was shot slow motion. One thing I made a note of is if you're having actors do this kind of stunt work, It's a really smart idea to do a slow motion because it makes it look cool. Yes. If you saw Roxanne or those extras falling in real time, it would not look. Not so cool. True. And I'm going to, I would like to say, I would like to say instead of bloodbath, I want to call it a stun bath because they were stunned.

It was a stun bath. Yeah, exactly. Okay. But yes, down they go. Yeah. erects the force field around engineering. We go to the bridge. Paris says she's trying to shut down the impulse drive.

So she's trying to shut this down. Tuvok comes in. He can't get into engineering because this force field is up. Janeway says, what does she say? She says, send an EM surge to the station where she's working at. And that is what just Fritz is seven and she falls backward. I think that she should have fell backwards, slow-mo, too. I made that note.

They didn't have her fall in slow-mo, and I was like, oh, the other guys fall. The other guys fell. Yes. Engineering is the place where everyone falls slow-mo. They should fall in slow-motion. They should have. But she did get that e-m pulse sent through. I felt bad for her because that's a big shock.

And you could see it on her nanoprobes or her implants. Do you remember the last time an EM-surge was sent through a console station? Who got the, okay. Is that you? No, the Herogen. Remember the Hirogy? That was seeing there. You must leave our...

And he falls back. That's right. There we go. So the ship enters the wormhole at this point. And from the angle that we see from the view screen, it still looks beautiful. It's kind of a light thing. And we're like entering into the light tunnel when you pass away. You're heading through this beautiful little wormhole of light.

But then for the reverse angle, once we're in, it clearly looks like the jaws of some type. of large creature closing on Voyager after it gets a wormhole not a wormhole at all no nope no um and as we're going into this wormhole aka a monster creature yeah we cut to Naomi hiding behind the boxes and the boxes are falling over which later on we see a cut on her head so that was great continuity tracking there and and i love that you got Naomi in a stunt really you know little scarlet They put her in a safe distance away from those falling crates, but it felt like she was in jeopardy. I thought that was really cool. And I wrote down here, that doesn't look like any wormhole I've ever seen before.

Anyway, we go to a little commercial break at that point, and then we come back and we're in the hall, and it's very dreamy looking. Yeah, dream sequence looking, yes. Here's our dream sequence montage. Neelix is meeting Starfleet admirals in the place. hallway we cut to the bridge and everyone is looking at at earth and it's beautiful crystal clear now not a distorted you know and it's everyone's elated to jane way harry and the smile festival continues exactly smile fest is still going on i remember shooting this by the way they had to bring in

a special light that was really bright and because i sat down front whenever it was you got the brunt of it i could feel the heat i mean when that light went on it was like it was hot like it was burning uh the hot light it was really i don't know what kind of light they used but it was um i remember when i saw the scene i'm like oh that's the scene yeah i do remember this and i remember being happy that i was at operations further yeah you were in the back so you didn't feel the heat no the light spilled on you but they had that light right up by the edge of the set yeah yeah and pooh it was hot yeah and a nice transition though from from from dream sequence to pulling back to see everyone

unconscious. I did like that little segue. Agreed. And also the music, really what the music immediately changes when you pull back to see. Well, this is where I wrote it down. The music in here is awesome for this whole montage. It's great, great score. Yeah. Extraordinary. It was wonderful. Because all of that was MOS though, right? I mean,

there's no, I mean, there's no dialogue. There's no dialogue. It's just music. It's a music montage. Right. We see Tuvac meet his wife. But each of these fantasies that shot with some kind of filter on the lens and looking extra bright and extra beautiful is transitioned into it's a fantasy because each of us is lying on the floor. I wish I had been drooling. I wanted when I saw the episode, I was like, oh, why didn't I drool? Hey, when you were on the ground, were the bangs gone? Just wondering if they saw your hair back up.

They weren't quite as noticeable. Okay. All right. Oh, the bangs, the bangs. Naomi appears, right? Naomi is fine. You see the carnage. Yeah.

She goes and sees the carnage. She goes into engineering and she hits the force field as she walks in. Love her reaction. I know. It was great. Such a good little actress she was. And she calls to seven, seven, wake up. Seven, wake up.

And she does. She turns off the force field. I love seven's line when Naomi walks over. You're damaged. She's got the scrape on her head. That's right. Naomi's like, no, it's just a scrape. I'm fine.

I'm not damaged. We find out that the hull of the ship is demolecularizing. And I was like, wait, what? But it's just giving us the image that, or giving us the idea that the Voyager ship is being devoured. Okay. So it's being broken down. Just like anything, any food in a human stomach is being broken down by the amino, by the acids. This is what's happening to the ship.

Yeah. And they even Naomi goes, wait, do wormholes do that? And Seven's goes, no, they don't. Naomi says she wants to help. And Naomi says two heads are better than one. Isn't that the board philosophy? Yeah. And Seven's busted. She's like, simplistic but accurate. Yes. Yes. Two heads are better than one. And Naomi does not want to be alone here. So seven takes her out. They're in the corridor. Bring her along. I love the cute run. Seven marches off in her strong Borgway. And then there's Naomi trying to keep up running behind her. It's very cute. They come upon an unconscious Nelix. Naomi is very distraught overseeing Nelix, not conscious. And she actually reaches up with both hands out. Yeah, to seven who then picks her up. Hold me. Hold me now, mommy. And T-7. And seven carries her out. The very cute image. They walk past a down a corridor that has windows along the side. Okay, that's clearly our mess hall, but then it's dressed without any of the tables.

So where is this? I don't think it's a mess hall. So on the other side of the mess hall, is the same window set. And it's not a corridor. It's like where they put two box quarters sometimes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So they use that. They use that set.

I think they did. But I made a note here. I wish we had done more walk-and-talks down the corridor with the windows. With the windows, yes. It reminds us we're on a spaceship, and space is right outside. We're always in these interior corridors where you don't see anything. Darn those budgetary restraints. I wish we would mix it up sometimes.

It would have been nice. Yeah. But they walk past, they look out the windows, and they see what looks like the inside of this creature, this giant monster. and it's scary looking. We go into astrometrics. Things are powers flickering. The hull is still demolecularizing.

And on the astrometrics screen, view screen, we see Voyager is inside. We see an outline of Voyager inside this giant organic organism. Right. And Seven does some scans. She realizes that there are neural pathways with bioplasmic discharges, that this is a life form. and that it's 200 kilometers in diameter. It's huge. It's massive.

Massive. It's essentially the size of a whale. Bigger than a whale. It's a massive whale. Yes. This is our Moby Dick reference. We're starting to come in. So she looks for the alien vessel again, the one she saw in her earlier scans.

That's right. She finds him. She reaches this alien. His name is Katai. Yeah. This is who we were talking about before. Yeah. And it's interesting.

He's very skeptical. Katai is so skeptical. He doesn't even think seven's real. He's like, you think they would send in a whole starship to save me. And she's just, and so she says to him, look, he thinks it's a deception. She says, you need to lower your shields for me to beam you aboard our vessel. Or you can just stay there and die, you know, when your shields fail. And he sits there and he goes, fine. So he does it. He does it. He tries it. She beams him into astramatrics. He looks around. He walks over to Naomi.

Very slowly. And he kind of pinches her. She's like, oh, ah, it's very cute. Yes. And then he kind of touches seven.

No, no, he comes to touch seven, but then stops. He doesn't do the full touch. Oh, I thought he touched her, like the side of her neck or something.

No, he came close, but he didn't actually touch. He stopped. But he says, he says, you're real. Okay,

you're real. Yeah. And he says that this, this organism is, uh, uses psychogenic manipulation or telepathy. Yeah. To trick people.

And, he basically says that this organism tricks them with telepathy and they see what whatever they want most their deepest desires that they will see and it will draw them in and then basically this organism eats them for their energy yeah and and we we learn about his plan his plan is to be swallowed by this entity or this this this this organ this life form and then once swallowed his plan was to travel to the neuroplexus of this organism, which kind of controls everything, and destroy that so that this organism will be destroyed from the inside out. But again, this organism is a very smart being. It tricked him. And instead of being anywhere close to the

neuroplexus, he was definitely in the very center of the digestive tract of this organism. So he's been, he's been duped by the organism. And he does say in this scene, he says, the only solution here is to destroy this. The only way out. There is no other way out. We must kill it. You have to kill it. So they go into sick bay and they activate the MH.

They fill in the doctor with everything that's going on. I love the doctor's line. He goes, who are you? The local monster experts? It made me laugh. There was a lot of tension between Ketai and the doctor. Like, Katai would give the doctor a lot of, and I kept thinking this is sort of a win for Paris because the doctor was always messing with Paris. And now Katai comes aboard and messes with the doctor. So he's kind of aligned with you in a way. And to helping you out. But yeah, the doc now knows that this is being has been creating false sensor readings using neurogenic telepathy to lower everyone's guard. So he's filled in on, he has been filled in on what's been happening. And the doctor ultimately says, well, let's try and wake up some of the crew.

Yeah. So a little time passes, we're over in the surgical bay. And the doctors put a cortical inhibitor onto Balana. That's right. And Katai says, this isn't going to work. The doctor's very confident. Yeah, been there, done that. Yeah.

Doctors like, no, no, no, this is going to work. This is going to work. And Balana does wake up. Yes. But when she sits up, she starts hallucinating that there are marquee all around her. All the dead Machi are now alive. Yes, they're alive. And he tries adjusting the cortical inhibitor, you know, levels, but nothing works.

And I do love Roxanne's acting here. Yeah, she's just like, oh, my God. I mean, she's, which is so weird coming from her. From that character. Yeah, because, you know, she's a little abrasive. So now you see sweet as sugar, Balana Torres. It's like, my goodness, very funny. Yeah, she's on the happy gas.

But it didn't work. She's back out. We cut to the bridge to see that everybody is still asleep there. Conscious Janeway, Paris, and Kim. I made a note, I wish I was drooling. I wish I'd done that. I probably was in real life. I don't even remember shooting that part where we're all lying down on the floor.

Well, you're, actually, you're slumped over your console, correct? Yeah, that's. Janeway's on the floor, on the carpet, and I'm on the carpet. So, and you're the only one slumped over your console, but I don't recall that lying on the ground like that. But we had a break from acting. It's nice. Easy job.

Easy job. We go into the science lab and Katai is studying Voyager's weapons manifest. He's trying to see if there's any weapons that maybe could be used and talking with the doctor. He kind of tells the doctor the story of his family and how his family. encountered this creature. Right. And he basically came to try to save them and was too late. Yeah, they were actually, his family was on a ship called the Nicaro. And that ship had about 3,000 crew members, mostly families, including his when he responded to the distress call. He said that nothing was left except for some fading engine emissions. And this took place 39 years ago. And he has been

hunting, hunting this guy, uh, just like exists. exactly like Moby Dick, basically. And we see all the similarities, all the parallels with the Moby Dick novel. This organism, according to the doctor, is estimated it being 200,000 years old. So clearly, this organism has been rocking the starship diet for quite a while now. The ship rocks a little bit, which scares Naomi awake. She's in, she's lying on a bio bed. Seven comforts her. And this is when Katai sees that there are class nine torpedoes that could do the job and possibly destroy this organism. But the doctor quickly says, now, wait a minute, this is not the Starfleet way. We're not all about just killing things that we don't understand. There's an alternate

way to solve this problem that we have. What if we make Voyager less tasty? And the organism expels us from its digestive track. Seven quickly suggests that using the aliens tetrion-based weapons to fire at a pocket of antimatter that is released from Voyager's warp core, that would then produce an electrolytic reaction, which little Naomi says, would that be, would that be enough to make him, you know, get us out of its system? And she says, maybe. Would that make us taste bad?

Taste bad. Yeah. Love that scene. We go into the transporter room where Katai is headed back to his ship. And Katai offers the doctor a chance to come join him, which I thought was funny. And the doctor's response is, I'm a doctor, not a dragon slayer. Right. And he says, you want me to be your Ishmael to your Ahab?

So your first mate to your captain? And so another Moby Dick reference. I have a question for you, Robbie. Now, at one point, when you have the single on the doctor, he's standing at the transomile. It's not the transporter pad. It's not the transporter pad, the transported station. And you can see the rocking and whatever that's going on because we're inside the digestive track of this organism. But then when you cut back to Katai, it's locked off. There's no shaking whatsoever. So Megan said, well, maybe because it was more of a close up on Bob and not more of a wide shot on Katai, that's why you don't notice the shaking. But I kept thinking, oh, it should have matched. But was he trying to show something different? I don't think so. I think it was just maybe an oversight or the shot on Katai also turns into his beam out, right? Yes.

And so they probably had to shoot that more stabilized. They had to lock it off. It would work. But you can do that. You can shoot that way. And then you can add in post a little. A little movement to the frame. Yeah, to the frame.

You can make an optical shake, but they didn't do that. So just a little continuity. being oversight. All right. Thank you for answering that. You might guess. Okay. We go to NJ, he beams in back, uh, beams could tie back to his ship. And then we go to engineering, uh, the doctor in seven now are working on getting ready to release the antimatter. Yeah. He's rerouted all bridge controls to engineering for seven. And seven's like, oh, thank you. How convenient of you. Um, on Katai's ship, his ship is shaking from being digested again. Right. And his targeting sensor.

are destabilizing. Yeah. So, uh-oh, maybe this plan, this genius plan may not work. I also made a note, there was a ton of smoke in that set. I was like, wow, poor actor. Like, that smoke is not fun to shoot in. And you could see, like, the clouds of smoke they had added to the set. Yes, yes.

My note was that Katai is kind of like an alien Fonzie from Happy Days, because he clearly fixes everything by just hit me, hit, he says, don't worry, I can take care of it. And something happens and it's back to normal again. So he's okay. So we go out to space next. So both sides are ready. We go out to space. They're ready to release the gas. They do it. Yes. And they release. You see this, the antimatter gas coming out. We see Katai's ship fire on it. It kind of explodes in this beautiful blue flame. Yeah. And we cut back into engineering. And seven is looking at data. And she goes, yeah, it worked. We're free. We're good. We're good. So it's Katai. And Katai's like, what about the second burst? And they're like, but we're already free.

And Katai says, no, you're not. You are now under the illusion. Yes, the deception begins for seven. Because her desire, he says to her, because you wanted to escape so badly, he's, he's, he's, he's, he'd into that and he's tricking you. He's trying to give you what you think, you know, make you think that you've got what you wanted. Right. So she doesn't initiate the second burst. They do the second burst. He does. He does. fires again and now they truly are out we see outside in space we see them exit this organism this giant could you do the reaction can you do the sound effect of being with the word bliss though remember yes that's it they get blissed out of the organism yes so they are they're out finally the crew the safe voyager is safe we're on the bridge Janeway and company are now waking up

just disoriented and doesn't know what's going on. She calls down to to engineering because we now know all bridge control has been rerouted to engineering seven answers and says, you know what, we are good to go. Just talk to the doctor. I'm going to go regenerate. I need to regenerate. I need to take a nap. Yeah, I'm exhausted. I'll write my full report later. Talk to the doctor. See you. So she takes off. We have a captain's log. I have a captain's log. I have a captain's log. that we have deployed a series of beacons to warn others of this bioplasmic creature. So a little safety net, I guess, to help other people to avoid being digested by the bliss alien whale. We jump to astrometrics.

And we have this scene with Naomi and Seven looking at Earth on the screen. And they're both, you know, kind of back to this idea that neither one of them really has a personal connection with Earth. or not yeah and uh basically naomi's looking at seven comes in like oh you're checking out earth and we learned that they don't care about her neither one of them they're like ms like i don't really care but my mom cares so i guess i guess it's cool i guess it's all right yeah yeah that's a nice it's a sweet little scene with the two space orphans out there yeah and then we go back to katai's ship yeah and ah just goes right back into the mouth of the whale right back in he's determined determined to fight this thing.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, there you go. There's bliss. What is your theme? What is your lesson from this episode? My theme, my lesson is, don't be fooled by your fantasies. That's, you know, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Okay.

Yeah. What about you? My lesson is a lesson from the doctor, which is you don't always need to resort to violence. I like it. Good. Okay. What is your rating of this episode? I enjoyed this episode a lot.

I'm going to give it a 7.8. Okay. I'm not going to explain all the math that I did. I did a lot of research, calculations, numbers, data was involved, and I came up with 7.8. What about you? I'm going to give it a 7.3. 7.3.

Okay. Please tell us. What do we have? Our captain and admiral Patreon member's average rating of bliss, the vote is in. the number is 7.2. Oh, I am closer. I'm the highest. You are the highest.

What the heck. I know. You would not be selected for the showcase showdown on Price's Right being that high. It was a little thin on the ensemble quality that's always a big go-to for me. But there was some real relatable emotional stakes here and the classic sort of Ahab story that that was going on. I thought was really cool. Nice character development for Naomi Wildman, a little bit

for seven. So, yeah. Okay. That's, there you go. All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining Robbie and I for our recap and discussion of the episode Bliss. Join us next week. Bluce. Join us next week when Robbie and I will tackle Dark Frontier, Part 1.

Ooh. I like the name of that. It'll be a smile fest. Maybe. Will you have bangs we don't know we'll see i'm going to wear bangs for one of these i think you these delta flyers i think you should i'm going to just kind of comb it down just bang it out man bang it out product in there and give a nice i love it bang look i love that'll be cool all right next week let's do that mhm patreon patrons please stay tuned for your bonus material You know,

I'm going to be The B. B. B. B. B. Bhopal,

B. B B B, B B, B, B,

B, B, B, B, Thank you.