The Delta Flyers - Blood Fever

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Blood Fever. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Blood Fever:The onset of Vulcan mating season throws the away team into turmoil when a Vulcan crew member's advances trigger Torres' involuntary mating instincts.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, PJ Tomas, Nicholaus Russell, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Ariana, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, and Shambhavi KadamAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Crystal Komenda, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Elaine Ferguson, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, John Espinosa, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Liz Lowe, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Justin Weir, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Peter Lucas, Michelle Maroney, Rickard Fahlander, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, and Scott J. MarkThank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey guys, welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duck and McNeil. Robbie. Hello there, Garrett. How are you today? I'm okay. How are you today? Good. We're wearing matching hats. Yes. Yes. We're doing the hat twins. thing. If we were wearing the same shirts, then I would, I would worry. I'm not, I'm not worried.

I'm not worried. Because, you know, this is the official Delta Flyers hat. This is the uniform. We have to wear this hat. That's just part of it. Exactly. Exactly. It's kind of like the Starfleet uniform. It's like, when you're a Delta Flyer, you have to wear the trucker cap with the logo. Okay. So this cap is basically like our com badge. We always have it on. Yes. Right. For those of you listening, we are now touching the logo on our baseball caps, the dental players logo, as if it's our communicator. That's what we're doing and looking like idiots right now. Okay, so blood fever.

This is the episode that we're... Oh, blood fever. Now I'm getting a little hot. You feeling a little? Yeah, I got the fever. Got the fever? Yeah. What's that song?

I got the fever. Who sings that? I don't know who sings that fever song. Nancy Sinatra. Fiva. Yeah. Viva in your home in time. You get me fever.

That's the one. Boodoo. Yeah. I got it. I thought you were going to keep going. I was ready to riff with you. Okay. I'm, no.

No? No, because I'm very focused on this. Let's not delay. Let's go right ahead and head to the couches to watch this episode. This hot episode. This hot fever episode. We'll be right back. Patreon, patrons.

please stay tuned for bonus segment what do we remember all right everybody we are back from watching blood fever yes we are goodness it was a fever wasn't it let's just jump right into it let's just jump right into it let's start with our our synopsis our poetry synopsis so let's hear your haiku and then i'm going to come up i feel i feel particularly inspired this episode yeah with the romance all the love in the air yeah yeah for some poetry some lovers poetry let's hear it okay here we go here's my haiku for blood fever yeah wow this is awkward balana has the pan far paris is the cure there you go there you go yeah look you got all coy at the end you did your little coy shoulder

or shrug thing. All right. Nice. It's the ponfar. Very short and to the point. And yeah. Okay, here we go. Limerick for blood fever. Vorik begins his panfar journey. It's Torah's he's chosen to marry. Although he pleads his case, she bites Paris's face, fever purged by duel filled with fury. Oh, nice. That would be. That was good. You like that one?

Yeah, it was good. All right. I love our poetry. I think we captured some of the true essence. I just think that there's a theme in this season three episodic recap stretch of episodes. Macrocosm against that virus. Ponfar is arguably a disease or contagious type of fever, you know? So it's just all these things that remind us of the current.

state that we're in in the world i think everything reminds us of the covid this year everything connects yeah pretty much so andrew robinson directed this episode i did remember that i remembered that yeah i thought he did a great job too so andrew robinson directed and who wrote it um Lisa clink Lisa clink did yeah Lisa clink writer and

Andrew Robinson director great duo both did a great job I thought the script for this episode was super strong I thought Andrew's and he's directing

was great so yeah score to 1 to 10 let's start right there just out of the gate one to 10 I'll go first go

I'm going to give this and I said this to Rebecca before we came back to record i was like i don't know if i'm biased because i had more to do in this episode or if i'm really seeing things clearly because i thought it was a really good episode like i really did i thought i thought uh the direction was really solid like it was clean and amplified moments and the camera moved nicely and it was action with a rock climbing and all the cave stuff it was comedy involved our mostly our cast i mean the uh the guest stars

were minimal, which normally I think is better. I like it when our cast is kind of really featured and it spread out. I thought it was spread out nicely. I would call this a solid eight, maybe even close to a nine for me. I thought this was really good. Wow. Yeah, I'll give it a, I'll give it a seven. Okay.

Seven and a half. I do think you're a little bit biased. Yeah. I think that Andy Robinson definitely did a good job because there's some very interesting camera angles used throughout this episode yeah um where he didn't do the typical you know what a typical person would come in and that a director that's phoning it in all right he would he didn't phone it in he definitely did his homework he prepared meticulously and um it shows you know some of those camera angles are are definitely very unique so very unique yeah i thought it was a great job for sure very

memorable and the things that i didn't like uh they're going to be talked about in in the do over section of the bonus material. Okay. I'm out of that, yes. All right. All right. All right. So, first dive right in.

Diving right in. So we're on the bridge. Yep. And we pick up some readings of gallocite, which is a very rare substance that could help us refit our warp coils. Everybody's very excited about that. And this reading of the galacite, you know, Chocote says, are there any people there? You know, could this belong before we go in grabbing, you know, precious minerals, like,

make sure we're not stealing from anybody. Nobody's there. They do get some readings of an abandoned mining colony, maybe some tunnels or something. Some ruins. They see some ruins, right? Some tunnels, right. Exactly. But not enough to make us ignore this nearly kill a ton of gala site that we have located.

So we go down there. But before we go down there, we go to engineering. And oh my goodness, right off the bat, Evorick and Torres are working. and uh they're working upstairs yes so in engineering but they're upstairs which i thought was a really interesting choice i realized later that it's a private place yeah very smart to stage the scene up there but the way the scene evolves but we don't normally shoot up there it's very rare that we would take the cameras all the way up it it was not easy to get equipment up there agreed uh because it was just a ladder or that tiny elevator thing but it was tricky so um we

You know, that was a strong choice to shoot upstairs, I thought. Right. Yeah, but they're checking some readings. And Bologna says it looks like, you know, these tunnels are there. And some other people were interested in mining this stuff, the collapsed tunnels. She says, you know, Tom has a lot of rock climbing experience. So we should bring Tom. I was like, as soon as I heard that, I was like, really?

When did Tom ever have rock climbing experience? Like, what? Okay. I mean, sure. I guess so. But I, you know, maybe I was climbing, trying to climb out of prison in New Zealand penal colony or something. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I have, I have a theory on this that I'm going to talk about later, also in the bonus material that I'm not going to talk about here. But that's, Savoric then declares Kunant Solic, which is basically his desire to mate with Balana. And I just love Balana's reaction. He's like, what?

She's completely broadsided by this, right? Yes, he says, let me, I wrote the line to, let me take this opportunity to declare, to declare Kuna Solik, my desire to become your mate. It's like, what? And he says, in human terms, I'm proposing marriage. Her response is, this is quite sudden, isn't it? I thought that was a very clever exchange. It was?

And he thinks their differences would complement each other. he says and ultimately she's like nope no thank you and he gets really mad uh you you start to see yes this is the pawnfar happening yeah and uh he gets really mad he grabs her actually grabs her by the throat at one point won't let go right right and uh she punches him well it's not a punch it's it's it's the old the old palm of the yes the palm of the hand right up to the chin which ended up dislocating his jaw, actually. So, you know, but that's what he gets when he grabs somebody that obviously is not interested in being grabbed by him.

That's what you get. Don't grab people. You don't just grab random people just to say, look, you're going to marry me and if the other person doesn't want to marry you, then you're going to get a hand palm to your chin, you know, so that's what. Yep.

That's what Vort gets, a little hand palm present. That's what he gets, ends up in sickbay. Mm-hmm. he ends up down in sick bay dislocated jaw like you said and uh and um and uh so balana's down there to check on him and then and then the doctor asked them if uh you know he could have some privacy right and uh he starts to ask you know vorg some questions and uh he says that you know this pomfar is a severe imbalance in his brain chemistry that's what's going on right and that You could die from this, if he doesn't deal with it, if he doesn't somehow figure out a way to

let this run its course in a healthy way, an outlet for this. We'll find out later some solutions, but he's got to deal with it or he could die. And it's interesting that, you know, they talk about how private the Vulcans are about this whole thing. Like, they just don't even want to talk about this to anybody. Like, they just want to keep this to themselves. And everything the doctor tries to suggest to Voris, you know, he kind of just shrugs it off and doesn't want to have any of it. And he eventually just, he raises his voice and clearly this is the effects of Ponfar.

And Vulcans don't scream and yell like that unless something's going on with them. And it's usually Ponfar that causes the type of emotional outbursts that we see. So Vorick finally convinces the doctor that he is going to try to use meditative techniques to deal with the Ponfar. because, you know, option number one, finding a person to be the mate did not work. So option two would be to use these meditative techniques. So the doctor agrees. He puts a cortical, what does he put on him? He puts a cortical monitor.

A monitor. A monitor. A monitor. Cortical monitor and that you're confined to quarters. Right. And one thing that happens in the scene I love is when Vorik says to the doctor, you know, I hope Lieutenant Torres is not too upset with me. And the doctor's response was, well, with Lieutenant Torres upset as a relative term.

Yeah, that was a good line. Yeah. Good job, Lisa Klink. Good job. Yeah, good lines in this episode. Yeah, for sure. So then the doctor asked Tuvok. He consults with Tuvok.

Right. This is after work is left. Of course, work is gone. Now he's in the office portion of the sick bay, right? Mm-hmm. A little time jump, and Doc has asked Tuvok to come down. And Tuvok says, you know, he cannot. talk about this. He can't divulge Vulcan secrets and he doesn't know specifically what's

happened with Vorik so far. So for multiple reasons, he can't talk about it. And the doctor is getting frustrated and he says, you know, you Vulcans are almost Victorian in your attitudes about sex. You know, you're super uptight about this. And this is a natural biological function. Like, why can't you talk about it? That it's logical to talk about it. So the doctor even uses his Vulcan terminology, he's saying it's logical to talk about something that's natural. And then that's when Tuvok says there is nothing logical about the Ponfar. It is a time when instinct and emotion dominate over reason. It cannot be analyzed by the rational mind, nor cured by conventional medicine.

Anyone who has experienced it understands that it must simply be followed to its natural resolution. Three options. Number one, taking a mate. Number two, ritual combat. Number three, intensive meditation. So meditation is the path. That's what he's chosen.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And Tuvok says, you know, please don't interfere with this doctor. Right. Please, you know. Let them do is, yeah. Let it run its course, basically.

Yeah. Right. Then we jump to the transporter room. We have Neelix, Tom, and Bologna, ready to go. And boy, is Bala ready to go. It's like she had a whole pot of coffee and ran in here. Yeah. And by the way, you know, all of them are in these fancy silver.

shiny spandexy kind of climbing suits these adventure suits right what did those remind you of i don't know what that episode where tuvok had to train the maquis recruits and they were wearing those kind of similar that's what you guys are wearing you guys got repurposed i mean they're not exactly the same but i'm sure they use those and just kind of add a little that that extra stitching or whatever yeah it's i didn't recognize that that's interesting yeah yeah we're all in our climbing suits. We've got some ropes with us. You know, Neelix is there with us. Why? Because he worked in the mining, a mining colony? Is that what she said? She said something like Neelix, you know, and Lieutenant Torres talked to Neelix. He may have some experience with us or something like that.

Felix is along. Right. He looks along. I don't know about his climbing ability. Clearly, Tom Pagrest has a lot of climbing ability, you know, that we've all, we all know about how A climber he is. I cannot wait to talk about bonus material stuff right now. I have so much to talk about this. My goodness. So we talked to Johnny Phillips a couple weeks ago. And he, I think I, maybe I had talked to him.

I don't know if it was when we were talking, but recently, anyway, Johnny had said to me that he was a big climber. Before Voyager, he actually was seriously into rock climbing. Wow. That was his main hobby, is he would go out when he lived back east and do all this rock climbing. And he had gotten very advanced in that. And then he took a fall and got quite hurt. And he stopped, like full stop.

He decided, you know, this is something I could die doing. And so that's interesting. I didn't put that together. But yeah, Neelix is part of the climbing team, which is probably, he was probably the most, in real life, the most experienced with climbing of all of us. because I'd never done any of that. Speaking of real life and Ethan Phillips, did you know that when he was in seventh and eighth grade, so middle school, he was on the football team?

I think I remember that, yeah. Yeah. And he, you know, my thought would have been, all right, maybe he was running back, right, or something like that because of his stature. No, he was an offensive guard. Was he really? He was offensive linemen, and he told me that he loved it.

And the problem was, because when you're in seventh and eighth grade, everyone's about the same size, right? But then once high school came around, everyone else on the offensive line got bigger, and he remained the same size. He didn't get any bigger. And so, therefore, he couldn't continue his football playing career, but he told me he loved it so much. That's funny. He's a hobby guy, Ethan Phillips. He, he, during Voyager, sorry to sidebars. here a bit. During Voyager, he played saxophone. He started playing saxophone, took saxophone lessons and

became very, very good at it and played, uh, you know, um, like open mic nights or something jazz nights at a club in town eventually. He did hang gliding with Tim, he and Tim, did, uh, all the hang gliding. That was a big thing for them and the rock climbing and yeah, yeah. Ethan has always been a he'll get, he'll get into some hobby and he will really obsess about it. He hang glided with Tuvok? Yeah. Those guys were hanged with him. You don't remember that?

No, Tuvok and Neelik's hang gliding. I'm a little bit jealous of that pairing. You know, I think that we need to, actually, we have done something athletic together. What do we do? We skied together. Oh, we did. That's right. Yeah.

We've been skiing together. We've skied together. In Utah, we skied together. That's right. during Sundance film festival we did. Yes, slam dance when you used, yeah. And in Utah, we took a day to go skiing.

I remember this. Yeah, yeah. All right, we digress. Yeah, we digress. Okay, let's go. Let's get back. Okay, so. Planet surface, Planet surface.

Neelix. Planet surface, yeah. Torres and, let's see, Neelix, Tom and Belana are now beamed onto the surface, and they see the ruins of the colony, which obviously, Greeks Paris. Paris is like, whoa, look at this. And then Bala's like, that's not our mission. Let's go. Yeah, she's still high on coffee. Caffeine. Yeah, she's just all looking. Yeah. But they do notice, they say, you know, these ruins are only 50 or 60 years old, but it's strange how fast they've decayed. That seems

unusual. Yes. Not natural in some way. Anyway, so now we go into a climbing sequence where they repel into a tunnel or some hole and you know collapse tunnel or something and then the tunnel opens up to a giant deep cavern yes and uh i do remember practicing this repelling i do remember we had to do this ahead of time and go do some lessons on stage come in on on days off and you know work on some of the repelling and things i remember that that sounds fun i would have loved to do that yeah it was it was it was fun yeah it kind of pinches and squeezes here and there but you know know but it's fun yeah anyway so they're climbing down this big cavern neelix's peton breaks and he falls which takes torres down with him and they both hit the ground pretty hard neelix is definitely hurt

she's bruised but okay and she pops up and she is furious with him yeah blaming neelix and she's like oh all of a sudden just and i'm like calm down like it's not his fault you know you're overreacting you're overreacting something malfunctioned and i go to to you know to hold her by the arms or something and calm her down and all of a sudden she bites me right on the face bites paris on the face and he's like what are you doing after she bites bites paris she disappeared she's gone she heads off on her own right so then that's when um paris calls up to the bridge yep and we see jane way and chakotay there and that's when they learn about what happen.

And Tom says, then she bit me. And he bit me. She bit you? And there's looks all around the bridge. Everybody's like, what? I'm sorry, but those are just three words. But Beltran played that just perfectly.

I mean, just the way he said that, that the pacing, the tone was right on the money. Yeah, it was very funny. Yeah, I loved it. It was so good. All the reactions were great. And Paris even says she, she seemed to be enjoying it in a Klingon sort of way. And then it cuts to Tuvok and he's like, he knows what's going on. We got to start using that on our real life.

You know, I should start asking you. Wait a minute. Are you enjoying this in a Klingon sort of way? You're like, no, no, no, no, I'm definitely not enjoying this in a Klingon sort of way. In a regular sort of way. Just a regular. Yeah, just regularly. All right.

Now, we're in Vorik's quarters. Yep. Okay? So the first thing that I noticed, I don't know if you caught this, but at one point, pretty early in the scene, Vorick says, I believe I approached her and then turns the left away from Tuvok. As he turns to the left, you can see his eyebrow is coming off. And they didn't touch that.

Yeah. And I've seen that before on Tuvok, too. The top of the right eyebrow for Vorick was just kind of peels up. It's peeled off completely, which. is not how it's supposed to look, right? It was to be part of your skin. So a little bit of a under sight on the part of the, I guess, who would that be?

Yeah, would that be the makeup department? Yeah. But it is so dark in there. You know, it's so dark in that set. It's very dark. There's a lot of dark scenes, by the way. Very much so. There's a lot of dark scenes in this episode,

too dark sometimes, I think. You couldn't see people. Yeah, well, you definitely couldn't see Tuvok later in the caves because of his darker skin. right i mean he was literally just in the shadows yeah he disappeared you couldn't even see him um so i as as uh tuvac basically um is talking to vorek and he says to him i apologize for interrupting it's mindful you know he's very tuvok totally gets what vork is going through wants to give him

the space and the privacy he says i you know i apologize but i need to ask you um some A couple of questions. And he says, was there any physical contact? And I need you to describe exactly what happened. And as Vork goes through it, he realized he did touch her face. And then he touched, he held on tightly and he felt like he couldn't let go. Yeah. Like he needed to not let go and he didn't know why.

He just had that impulse. Duvac says it was a telepathic mating bomb. Yeah. A Vulcan telepathic mating bomb. He was initiating a telepathic mating bomb. He was initiating a telepathic mating bond. Yes. It didn't get completed because of the palm to the chin, right? So that stopped it, but at least the beginnings of it were happening. Yeah. And then, you know, we jumped to the cave

interior after that scene. And now Chacote and Tuvac joined Paris. Neelix is sent back up to the planet surface to then be sent up to Voyager to be worked on by the doctor. And Tuvok and Chacote are in those sexy little shiny silver suits. Yeah, they got this. I guess you can't come to the planet unless you got your shiny silver suit on. Very important. Very important because it's dark in there.

And how will you see each other unless you got a shiny suit? Right. So Tuvacchicote joined Paris on the search for Torres, who's run off on her own. And they do find her. They find her. And she has discovered an active power system that was built by the colonists.

And she's so excited. And still on caffeine. Very proud of it, too. Very proud. I found it. Oh, yeah. I did this. Very territorial and very, you know, just emotional about it, right?

So Tuvok informs Torres that she is experiencing a condition known as Ponfar. And I love her reaction. She said, what? But what? She doesn't even finish it, which I almost feel like, uh, she would know, she would know what Ponfar is. Shouldn't she? I mean, I would think so.

Yeah, it was almost like, you know, it's maybe she was a little delirious from the, you know, the effects of the Ponfar could be. Yeah, because later on she's losing her memory completely, you know, it's really affecting her brain function. So maybe, maybe that's what was going on. Okay. All right. Yes. And she's like, as she hears this news, she's just like, you know what? I just want to be left alone. I just want to be left alone, which is part of the Ponfire instinctual experience. Just as that happens, the rock people appear. You call them the rock people?

I called them the rock people because I didn't know who they were yet. I call them camouflaged alien is what I call them. They look like rocks. They look like they do. Well, they're looking rocks. Yeah, because of the coloring of their uniform. Their uniform, their skin tones and facial features almost look like rocks. They blended right in.

Yeah, the rock people appear and they've got weapons and they even have. ask Chakote. They're like, well, why are you armed? You know, if you came here in peace, why are you armed? And he says, it's, it's, you know, standard protocol for us. And they said, can we look at the phaser? And he looks at it. Yeah. And he asks about the tricorder. And then, and then he hands it back. And they seem to trust us for a minute. And some seismic activity starts. Some of the caves start shaking. Yeah, they have an alert. They have a little thing on they're about the aliens and it makes a sound when there's some seismic activity is about to happen close by. And very calmly, the alien says that wall is unstable. You know, be careful.

Be careful. And so there's an alien who kind of jumps down and realizes that a wall is about to collapse near or maybe on Balana. So he tries to move her out of harm's way. But she takes that as an aggressive act and starts fighting him, like just out of the blue. It's not. knocking him basically unconscious, it seems. Yeah, knocks him down, grabs his weapon. Yeah, it just goes crazy. She's a berserker. But this is where I got a little foggy.

I was like, well, what the heck happened? Because you start grabbing her saying, no, no, Balana. And then you push her and that guy out of the way. He knocks her down on the ground. You're on the ground. And then she looks down and that guy's gone. He's disappeared. And so has Chakotay and Tuvok.

And everybody's gone. Why are you still with her? Because you pushed her out of the way. You should be the only person segregated from everybody else, I thought. There was definitely some confusion in that moment. I think that was intentional because the rock people, the camouflage rock people just sort of disappear suddenly. Yeah.

And they've taken wherever they went to, they've taken to Vaghan Gicote. Right. So now it's just Paris and Bologna alone. Yeah. But it bothered me because I couldn't make out. I just didn't understand the action. you know the series it felt like it felt like there was a back a rock person near balana yeah paris and balana go to deal with him so that rock person's down yeah and then the other rock

people take chukotay and tuvok off to wherever they live in the rock and because i i feel like because balana and paris were dealing with this one rock guy who got knocked out that that's why they weren't taken that's why they weren't um okay you know they just disappeared Bilanah's fighting them, got a weapon. They got to get out of there and take the two guys that they have. So that's kind of how I, it was definitely chaos, a bit of confusion, but, but I bought it. I bought it. Yeah, I bought that.

Yeah, you justified it. It's, it's okay for you. Yeah, I think so. All right. Let's move on then. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane.

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very public and he does not he's not happy um then the doctor in the next scene, they're at the resort program, the doctor... Well, the doctor in sickbay actually pleaded to... He says, please, just trust me. I have a... I think I have a solution. Please trust me. And so then we cut into the resort program and you see... Vorik decided to listen to him and see what he's talking about.

Yes. And the doctor says, this is Topel. This is... It's not Tepelle. What did he say? He said, well, the first... It sounded like Tepelle. Listen, the first time I listened to it, it sounded like he said, here is Teblah.

Oh, really? It sounded like he said, he sounded like he said, here's Teblah. Like, he just didn't even finish it. But then I reround it, it's Tepperah is what it is. Oh, I thought it was. Aposophy, P-E-R-A, T-Para. Topal is actually Tuvok's wife, I think, in the show. Oh.

But it sounded like T-Pol, T-Pol is on Enterprise. Yeah. So there's T-Pel, T-T-P-P-L, and T-Pra, which. is the holographic Vulcan mate that the doctor has programmed. But it really, the first listening of this, watching of this scene, I heard Tablo. What he said. Here's Tablo, but it was to Perra, actually. To Perra, yes. She is a holographic Vulcan female. Yes. And the doctor says, She's clearly mute. She's clearly mute as well. She doesn't speak anything. Yeah. And the doc says, look, she can help you solve your immediate problem. Yes. Give it a shot.

and and uh and uh well vork's not vork vork is is definitely against this idea right off the outside he's like he's like how can this work it's not going to work she's not real and you don't know about this because you're you're also a holograms you don't understand the matters of the physical is what he's trying to explain to the doctor right and the doctor's like you know what don't knock it till you try it is what he's trying to say so we basically think that he does try it we don't know we leave that scene we leave that scene but he seems to agree yeah he seems to agree and then the doctor says uh when when he says okay um the doctor is standing close to tepera between tepera and and uh vorek yeah and um and he goes oh good good and he's smiling then he's looking at them both awkward awkward pause

and he goes well then i'll leave the two of you alone and he steps away but it was It was a wonderful moment of the doctor not realizing that they can't continue if you're standing there, Doc. So step away, please. It was fun. It was fun. We go to the tunnels after this and Paris says to Balana, he says, you know, I know what that biting the face means. He lets her know that that's something that that clean.

on's due as part of a mating ritual and um and i thought it was interesting i noticed a pattern in this episode with tom getting close to bala to try to talk to her persuade her over and over multiple times but i started noticing you know this happening and i was like is he flirting is he testing her was he competitive with vorek or something like why is he trying to get so intimate it physically. And I don't know if it was the staging of Andy Robinson or what? I think it was the staging of Andy Robinson. And I like this entire episode, I kept thinking, hmm, I hope Roxanne and Robbie had breathmints or brush their teeth before this. Very close. Good Lord. They're practically inhaling each other's air. You know, that's how close you

are. But basically, yes, we talked about this before. This is anti-Paris. You were repelling the advances of a woman, which is, you know, very honorable of you. But I want to say, though, this is just a random observation. With the Sims beacons, it really lights up how many dust particles are on stage 16 in the air to the point where it looks like it's raining. You know what I'm saying? It looks like it's rain. That's how much dust and debris is just floating around on stage 16. I'm just wondering how compromised all the actor's lungs are after working on that set.

My goodness. Those tunnels in that stage was a very dusty. stage and the dirt they put on the ground in the tunnels was almost like powder. It was very, very fine. So it would kick up into the air. You're right. My favorite part of this scene was when

Balana like turns your face to the side like that and says, I've picked up your scent. I've tasted your blood and your faces to camera and you just look like she's just manipulating you like a little rag doll. It's just like she's having her way with you in a way. Paris did have a line in this scene

which I was like, oh my God, I can't believe. I don't believe I had to say this line, where I say, Palana, this isn't about the gun. This is about sex. And I was like, oh, oh, man. I can't believe I had to say that out loud. Oh, it was good. Yeah. It was good.

I will say your sideburns looked very good in this episode. No, thank you. They were very well cropped and whoever did you make up that day. Put those on. Yeah. Well, I like the scene because it was. was it was a side of Paris that I was I'd been waiting for for a couple of years where he's you know he's not the womanizer he's making very noble and heroic choices here and he says look I'm your friend

and your judgment's been impaired yeah and I'm not going to do this yes season one Paris would have been naked already by now yeah yeah and he's definitely grown and changed and and I think it's this is really who he is all that other stuff was very much of a show yeah And he says, I'm not going to do this with you. And she says, you know, this is just so hard to fight this feeling. The urges. The urges are too strong. Yes.

And it's so hard to fight. And Paris goes, so are you telling me I'm impossible to resist? Yeah, that line. I like that was a good one. There's a good line. Lisa Clink. Good job. I know.

I know. So that was a nice scene where it seems like Paris is definitely drawing a boundary. And he's saying no matter what. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to do this with you. I don't, you know, I know what you're dealing with, and we've got to get you back to the ship. Let's get out of here. That's what we have to. Right.

Anyway, we cut to the rock people now in their little lair. They've got our hostages. And they're asking a lot of questions. They want to know about everything. They want to know about Voyager, the propulsion systems, the weapons, sensors, medical technology, scientific advances, artificial intelligence. And that's when they scan Tuvok's arm. And this is great trivia, guys, all you Voyager, fans that have trivia nights, you could say, what type of artificial implant does Tuvah have in his arm?

And guess what? He has a fake elbow joint. We don't know that until now that he has a fake elbow joint. I didn't know that. Replaced after being injured in a combat simulation. But we also learned that the invaders attacked the colonists. This is where the ruins came from. The head alien rock person wasn't even born when this attack happened on these colonists. Some of the colonists were lucky to escape into the mines and that's who these rock people are the descendants of the escapees basically. We also learned the name of these people. The Sakari. That's correct. Yes, we didn't know that. We've been called them rock people. Now we know they're called the Sakari. So we will stop calling them rock people now. I'll try. I may still call them rock

and so basically Chakote does make some progress in diplomacy with the Sakari because everything that they say, Chakotay sort of has a little something to come back with, but not in an aggressive way in a helpful way. Chikote just says, look, we can help you hide yourself better. We detected your gala site. I'm going to show you how we detected your gala site so you can prevent that from happening the next time somebody else comes around. And so the guy goes, okay, you're going to be monitored the entire time that you're helping us do this, but we're game to hear what you're going to show us. So there seems to be some. And I like these aliens because they seem, you know, so often we come to a planet and there's always some.

bad guy or something you know somebody pretending to be nice but they're not really nice yeah and this feels like some aliens i got to say on this planet that are that are fundamentally good people and nice people yes you know they're just scared because they right have been attacked by some invaders yeah which those details will come up later in the episode but but uh they're scared to be attacked again but they're good people so i thought that was uh i thought that was really really uh cool to see these kind of aliens. Refreshing. Yeah, refreshing.

Normal aliens who are out to dominate the world, kind of a thing, or galaxy. Back in the tunnels, we see Paris and Balana again. And there's another seismic activity, and the tunnel collapses. Yeah, the wall collapses. And the weapon that they had gotten from that one Sakari rock person is now buried under the rubble. Yeah, the weapon that you wrestled away from Torres earlier that you were carrying somehow you dropped it or something in the tunnel yeah in the

tunnel collapse yeah it was lost in the tunnel right and she kind of freaks out about that freaks out and she sort of pounces on me yeah pounces on tom and uh she says you've never been hard to get tom as well i'm making an exception yeah oh lisa clink keep on going with your lines we love him. Okay. But she goes on and on to really reveal what seems like a lot of truth and honesty. And she says she's noticed all of his looks and his, you know, jealousy when other people gave her attention and his invitations to do things together. And so it sort of fills in some things that may have happened off screen where these two have noticed each other and have Tom's even asked her out a few times. And.

Well, we haven't seen that before, except for the one, we, there was the one question you said, you asked her to do something and she turned you down. That was in a shuttle. Do you remember that in one of the early episodes? But that's it. And also earlier when you're in the, in the scene with, my gosh, we just reviewed this episode, the one with Morena in it. And Vorick is there saying, oh, I found this. Yes, I found a nice little place for us to sit. You didn't look jealous there, you know, when she walked away with him. So maybe a little bit. maybe a little bit, but yeah, this is, this is all new information, all this stuff that's happened off screen that she talks about. And she admits finally, she says, I have wanted this for so long. Yeah. Which I'm like, what? What? Yeah. And then she starts kissing you and you kiss her back. Yeah. So your very first kiss when you pulled away, there was a saliva, there was a saliva string. Did you say? Oh, interesting. No, I did. Just again, that the way it was lit and how the Sims beacon showed every particle of, um, dust. Well, that doesn't sound very well antics, saliva string.

But it just, I'm just saying that that's what I noticed. This is the random stuff that I notice, right? The one little, but that was the first kiss. The second kiss didn't have any saliva. Okay, good. We got cleaned up after that. It was better. I did like Tom's line at the end of the scene where they do start to kiss.

And then he pulled away and he says, I hope after she's revealed all of this stuff, he says, I hope someday that you'll say all of that to me. and mean it because he doesn't believe it right now. He thinks she's just trying to manipulate him and then she's in this one far and he's like, no. Which pisses are off too because she's like, get away from me, leave me alone, you know? So that's the end of that scene.

We're back to the resort program where the doctor comes in. Vorik has obviously called the doctor over. We don't know it yet, but Vorick is basically manipulating the doctor and telling him. Yeah, what it seems like, he seems calm and he seems relaxed.

He says, I'm fine now. Thank you. That seems to work. And please, he says, please don't make a record, any kind of medical record. Because the doctor says, oh, I can't wait to put this in a report and put this into the medical record of this new treatment for Palm Farron. And forks, like, please, no. It's my privacy. Please don't.

So he doesn't. We jumped to sick bay where the doctor is talking to Janeway. And he's saying that the treatment is working, Vork's biochemical rebuttal. are stabilizing. Janeway asks if this treatment will help Bolana as well. And the doctor agrees he has to come up with a certain, you know, formulation for Balana's treatment. But yes, he believes it can.

He says, you know, there's not much that I could learn about the Ponfar and Vulcan mating rituals, but he says, there's copious amounts of Klingon mating data. Copious amounts, which I thought was funny. Yes. And we learn one fact that fracturing a clavicle on the way. wedding night is considered a blessing in a Klingon marriage. Yes, yes. One of the fun facts about Klingon maiden rituals.

So now we go back to the tunnels and Bologna is, she's in bad shape. She's very weak. She can't even remember what's happening. Well, she's, it looks like she's been passed out or something because she kind of wakes up. She's very disoriented. She doesn't remember anything that happened before. And then all of a sudden, Chacote breaks through the rubble to rescue Tom. and uh torres and um so upon reaching the surface the team is trying to uh hail voyager but there's no

response so we're a little perplexed by this and that's when tuvac turns to paris and says that he must help and i say help in quotations balana resolve the pawn can you see that you must help now mr parris you must help now mr parris you must take one for the team by disrobing all of your clothing and right here in the woods in the jungle in front of chikote and i and we will rate you like the olympics with little signs you know 8.5 um and they and they step and paris agrees yeah right well because he only agrees for one reason because he says to her tuvac says if you don't do this she's going to die that's plain and simple we can't get back to voyager she's going to die on this planet surface right now yeah and um tuvac agrees to take one for the team and and

Tuvok does, Paris does. Yeah, sorry, Paris agrees to take one for the team. The busy planet. Bilana. Balana goes over to Balana, and Belana goes, and Tom's going to explain, you know, hey, I'm doing this to save her, like, he's going to go into the whole spiel. Like, this is just doesn't, you know, this doesn't count. And she goes, she should have put her finger on your lips.

You know how they do that always? Yes, but she put it on her own. she leads you a little private area right yeah and i i one of the funniest moments for me in this is when you know you're unsure what to do right now you're just sure it's a it's a cling on an upon far situation i don't know what you don't know and we haven't even dated yet she turned me down right but she you know she's already revved up and ready to go so she starts she initiates she begins and you hear her growling and so you're like maybe i should do and so you growl too a little bit? Was that you growling, right?

That's a little bit. Okay, that, yeah. You're like, Arr. I mean, that, that really, that did it for me, for sure. It's funny. But before you really get down to the nitty-gritty, you are interrupted and rudely tossed off of Balana by Vorick, right? I mean, he throws you with amazing strength. He's a Vulcan. He's a Vulcan. They have really,

really powerful arms, I guess. So he calls for Tuvaq. He doesn't call. He screams for Tuvac. Lutata Tuvac! Yes. And he declares what I guess it's Kuna Kalafay is what I wrote down. Kuna Kalafei.

Kalafei, yes. Which I thought it would sound like Hakuna Matata, but it's Kuna Kalafe. Yeah, Kovac explains it's a ritual challenge in order to win Torres' hand in marriage. Yes. And he wants to fight Paris to the dead. Yeah, that is what it is. Yeah. And of course, Paris is going to lose this.

Right. Like, he's fighting a Vulcan. Of course, you know, the Volkete stops this. Chukotay goes, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you disable communications? He starts putting pieces of this puzzle together. And Vorik comes clean. He's like, yeah, I had a, you know, I had a disabled communications, everything,

transporters, shuttles, you name it, in order for me. Nothing is coming between me and my mate. And at that point, Roxanne, with some of the most emotion I've seen coming out of her. She's, I am not your mate. And she is just chomping at the bit, you know. And I love her line. And she chooses herself to fight. Yes, yes, yes. And she says, if anyone is going to smash your arrogant little face in, I will. You voc. And remember, she called him a Vulcan patac earlier in the caves when she's, you know, when you mentioned to her, if we, you know, we can go back to sick bay or there's also Vorik. And she says, she calls him a patok. But now she accepts the challenge. And

Tuvok says, well, she does have the right to choose her defender, even if it's herself. So then they fight. And you guys just sit there and watch as they're rolling around. That was a big fight, by the way. I remember shooting that fight. I think it was almost all, you know, Roxanne and Alex. Except for when they rolled down the steps. I think those were the stunt doubles there. Yeah, I think they may have used the doubles a couple of times, but mostly it was them. And I remember filming this. It was a long fight. And fights are hard to film, you know, because the punches and the hits and things don't always look good from the same angle. So you got to keep switching the angles around. Yeah. And I thought they did a great job. It was very intense,

really good fight. Yeah. A lot of the fights that were choreographed for Voyager, they're very specific because they have to look good on camera. You know what I'm saying? And that, you know, a lot of times when you're fighting, there's certain moves that just don't play well. They don't read well on camera. And so that's always an interesting thing for fans to know that Hollywood fights are definitely staged to look good on camera. But really, they wouldn't work that well in real life, I think. No, probably not. Yeah.

The blood fever is purged after Torres is victorious and Knox, Vorick unconscious. And she falls right into Paris's arms. if you noticed at the end. Yes, I did see that. Like, she needed some comfort with someone that she trusts. Oh, yes, she does. And it's you.

Paris's arms, yeah. It's you. We jumped to the turbo lift. Paris and Torres. Yes, we do. Very, very, feeling very awkward, standing there, talking. And basically, Paris says,

you know what, I wouldn't mind seeing your cling-eyed. You're cling-eyed. Paris basically says I wouldn't mind seeing your Klingon site again and she says the immortal words be careful what you wish for lieutenant and you're just closed on and I want to say something

you would mention in a prior episode I think it was the last one we reviewed and you said that in the turbo left it looked like I was wearing eye shadow remember that? Oh yeah well you look like you had makeup on extra makeup yes I said

I think it's the I think it's the turbo Yes, something in the turbo lift makes Paris and Torres look like they're in drag, basically. So anytime we walk-up or something, yes, anytime we walk in there. Well, it's got those lights all around and they're low, they're from the floor, too. So maybe, yeah, maybe that was it. One thing I want to say about the turbo lift, though, is it, to me, it kind of felt like when we were in the tunnels, Torres had a moment of truth where she really expressed to Tom her feelings. was in Ponfar and you know he thought it was manipulative but I think it was very much the truth

which he said yeah he said it very passionately and emotionally and then uh and then here in the turbo lift Harris gets a chance to kind of spill his truth and he's very very sober and very real about it and he says you know I I really basically he's he opens up his heart and says I got some feelings for you too and I like what I see and that doesn't scare me and and like you said you know he ends his much longer speech with you know i wouldn't mind seeing that cling on side again basically yeah um so i thought it was a nice kind of echo that they both had moments of for the for the relationship for them to both sort of express all this stuff that's happened off camera that we've never seen until now yeah the now of that foundation it's it's kind of

like what we talked about you know with some of the janeway and chakote stuff like that's there's been a lot of stuff on camera that we've seen, you know, oh, let's go drink champagne and take a sunset cruise on Lake George or let's go, you know, going to the, to the resort program together and hanging, you just see a lot of it, a lot of their chemistry and their, their attraction to each other on screen, but you didn't see any of Tom and Boulonnas until this episode. So, yeah, yeah, anyway, I thought that, I really like that, that turbo lift scene. And it was I realized the second awkward conversation after a situation like this, because he had it, Paris had it with the captain after, in threshold at the end, after he had kidnapped her and

take her to the plan and they wake up in sickbay. And he had a little awkward conversation there. There you go. And he's having another awkward conversation. You are the king of awkward conversations, Tom Paris. Yeah. And then we have a nice little scene, a moment at the very end. We go back to the planet and they're helping the Sikarians, you know, hide from these invaders,

and they come upon a skeleton, and they realize it's a borg. Yeah, yeah. So they're clearing away the ruins, and Chakotay shows Janeway. Look, while we're clearing away the ruins, we found the remains of one of the invaders who destroyed the colony. And then, of course, we see it's a borg skeleton. Yep. Then, then, da.

Yeah. So this is the first introduction. of the Borg into our part of space. Yeah. Yeah. Well, from what I understand, the Borg originate in the Delta Quadrant. So this is their home quadrant. But this is our first.

First time seeing them. First time on our series of that word coming up, I think. I don't think we've even talked about them. No, no. But we, I mean, we know who they are. Yeah. We just haven't spoken about them until now. So this is the very first time.

Yes, this is the beginning of some new things. Bum, bum, yeah. It was good. Yeah. what was your theme what was your theme for this episode i want to hear your theme first and then here's my theme yeah um i i i came away with you can't fight natural instinct that that you can't fight your nature things that are that are just a part of who you are whether it's ponfar whether it's the feelings that tom and boulana have for each other you can't fight it you have to let

nature take its course i'm going to encapsulate that into even a more simpler statement and a theme or lesson, and that would be true to your heart. Yeah, I like it. Nice. All right. Well, that was fun. Blood fever.

Yes. All right. Thanks, guys. Yeah, for tuning in. Join us next week when Robbie and I will talk about the episode, Unity. Unity. Yeah. I like that name.

I like one name episodes. Unity. I know the director of that episode. Really? Okay. That's me. Oh, that's for you. My director.

Awesome. Thanks, guys. See you.