The Delta Flyers - Caretaker Part 1

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Robert and Garrett Recap the first episode of Star Trek Voyager, CaretakerWe want to thank everyone who maked this podcast possible, starting with Megan Elise, Rebecca Sims, and Jessey Miller. Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers Ann Marie, Philipp Havrilla, Jason M Okun, Stephanie Baker, Stephen Smith, Sarah A Gubbins, Kelton Rochelle, and John Tufarella. And our Producers Breana Harris, NCC-1701, Máia, Steph Dawe Holland, Richard Banaski, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Gregory Kinstetter, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Laura Swanson, Chris, Thomas Melfi, Liz Scott, Chloe E., and Deborah Schander. Thank you all 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

Take it away. Hey guys, welcome to the Delta Flyers. I am your host, Garrett Wong, and with me is my co-host, Robbie McNeil. We just wanted to let you know that as we got into this very first pilot episode caretaker, we realized there's so much to talk about. It's a super-sized pilot episode of the Delta Flyers. We hope you enjoy it. We'll be watching all the Voyager episodes, starting from number one caretaker, the pilot episode,

all the way to the very end and discussing our views about each episode, talking about insights that only we would have because we were there. I don't remember much of anything at all. You're going to have to remind me. I really, I don't understand why I don't understand why. have no memory function in my brain. Like, I, you know, this is going to be great for me because, uh, you're going to remind me of things and then I'm going to, I'm going to sit back.

I'm going to watch these episodes and I need this kind of practice for me to remember anything. Wait, what's your name again? Henry Kim is the character though. I play, do you remember that? Yes, good old Henry. So just to give you guys a bit about the format of this show, we will be, providing this podcast and all the standard areas that you can get your podcasts from, such as iTunes and Spotify. But we will also have a second version, which we will be adding extra

bonus material and extra interviews and other fun things that will be available through our Patreon page. So please check out Patreon and the Delta Flyers there to subscribe and get in on the inside info. Anything to add to that, Mr. McNeil? No, I don't think so. We're going to have some cool t-shirts and mugs and hats and underpants, maybe some underpants. You know, we could put that in the merch store. Underwear.

Tidy Whitey's with the logo on it. Tidy Whitey's would be good. Maybe some boxers, right, for those that want to kind of, yeah. Yeah, whatever you like. Okay. That sounds good. No, I think it's going to be fun. We're going to, yeah, the podcast, the short podcast.

will be the free one out to everybody on on those sites as you said that'll be our recap it'll just focus really on the episode but we've got some ideas for having fun with us playing around with things like winners and losers on each episode and uh maybe scenes we'd like to do over we may give you a little sample of how we might do things over and if we had a second chance and uh in our wisdom of our old age here yep and also fan reviews will be reading some of those and discussing those. We will be right back with our recap after this break. Hey guys, welcome back to the Delta Flyers.

We are now back from re-watching the pilot episode. Do you have synapses firing? Yeah, so many things to say about re-watching that. I forget things like Neelix had a super cool coat that he wore like that when he was in his little you know junk ship or whatever and he had that cool coat

and we'll get there in the recap but like that was a cool coat why didn't he just stay in that cool coat he looked like a badass that was awesome he looked like it had an edge to him you know and he saved us he's out on the planet he grabbed the gun and oh man there's so much

that I didn't remember. So, okay. That's a good thing. I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that recap. All right. Just to start it off, I kind of wanted to revisit a little bit. I know in our prior sort of intro episode, part one and two, about who we are.

We talked about a lot, but I just wanted to be a little bit more precise about the casting process that I went through as Kim, because it was really just crazy. And I just want to share this with the fans out. there who haven't heard this. When I initially got the call for that, I had just finished going to the callback audition for a film by a producer named Rich Wilkes. And it was a true story of the writers' experience, collegiate experience at University of California in Santa Cruz. And so I was one of the roommates, right? And the actual callback audition was me singing or lip-sync this punk rock song called Now We Are 21.

It was insane because I started out lip-sinking. I didn't know you had musical tendencies, Garrett. I have none. You should have been, instead of the clarinet on this on Voyager, you should have been like a punk rock musician. That would have been cool, right? Yeah, that would have been. That would have been cool.

But I remember going from that final callback audition where I'm screaming the lyrics. And it's just, at the end, I'm throwing like the chair around. So it looks like somebody's getting killed or sounds like somebody's getting killed. And I remember walking up the door and the entire room of, it's probably over a hundred actors waiting to go in on Tide and Colgate. And they look out, they're just looking at me wide-eyed, like, what the hell happened? And I walk past, I go, I think I got the role. And what happened was they were filming.

And after I threw the last chair against the wall. And the last refrain of that song was, my character singing 21 and I made this 21 originally I was going to go 21 but in the audition I went 21 and I flipped off the producer and the director and everybody and when that was done the director comes up and he hugs bear hugged me and he goes I love you man and at that point I thought I think I have that role and I had to run straight from there to Paramount studios and as I'm at paramount right about to audition for nan dutton I get a page remember the pagers we had back So I pick, I answer my page and I call my agent and he's like, guess what? You book, you book the film. And I said, yeah, I think I already know that because the director was bear hugging me at the end. And right when I'm saying that, the director, Rich Wilkes, walk past the phone booth on Paramount Studio lot with Brandon Braga. So I run out. I go, Rich, Rich, thanks for casting me. And he goes like, hey, Garrett, what are you doing here? I said, what are you doing here? He says, oh, I'm just here with my buddy who went to UC Santa Cruz with. me Brandon Braga and he's giving me a tour of the Voyager set and I said oh that's pretty funny because I'm actually auditioning for the Voyager series and and then Brandon in his you know in his sort of cryptic way looks at me and he says hope to see you in the second round as always said very kind of and then they walked away and now years later I found out that Rich Wilkes turned to Brandon and he says

don't you dare steal my effing actor from me from underneath me okay and then that's exactly what ended up happening right because because of why because when jeanvia bujold quit because after we were filming the pilot we're supposed to have a break before we film this the next episode that break was when i was going to film this movie in santa cruz and it got all trashed because of the whole re-as the captain and everything the debacle yeah so i walk so i walk he's like, good luck on the audition. I walk into Nan Dutton's office. I walk in to see this ashtray, the size of like a frisbee,

and it's just a mound of cigarettes, and she's just puffing away. And she goes, oh, yeah, yeah, sit down, sit down. And as we do the audition, she stops me after two lines. She goes, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm looking at my, you don't have it memorized? I said, well, no, I'm still on book. It's my first audition.

I thought maybe it's okay to be on book. Well, what made you think that? I said, well, I just literally. just got back from a callback audition to, I drove over here very quickly, and now I'm here auditioning for this. And I booked the role. I booked the film. She goes, oh, what's the film called? And I named the film. She never heard of it. I mean, she was really just abrupt with me. And so she looked at me and she says, you know what? Get out of my office. Get out of my office. Go look at the lines until you know them and then come back. Wow. Just come back at that

point. And I said, are you serious? She goes, yeah, get out. And so I walked out. And I looked at the casting director's assistant Libby. And I said, Libby, Libby Goldstein. I said, Libby I said, I think Nan Dutton hates my guts. And she goes, what happened? I said, she kicked me out. She kicked you out. And I explained her the whole thing. And she says, and then what did she say? I said, then she tells me to go memorize the lines and then come back later. She said, oh, she told you to come back. I said, yeah. Oh, that means she loves you. And I go, what? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. And she's, okay, I looked at it and I said, honestly, I've never, ever had anyone sort of like, you know, treat me like that in terms of talking to me so abruptly

and frankly, rudely, I think I need some time to, and especially since I booked that other role, I was prepared for that. I'd like to prepare for this a little bit better. Can you ask her to reschedule me? And she just, her eyes opened up and she says, you want me to do what? I said, I want you to see if I can be rescheduled. And she says, I don't think I can do that. I said, what do you, because even her assistants were kind of afraid of her, right? And she says, well, If I do this, Garrett, you don't know what could happen. I said, well, what do you want me to do? She says, I need you to leave the building.

So the casting assistant Libby told me to leave the building, go around the corner to the alley, and hide behind the dumpster and read my lines in the meantime if I wasn't going to get the chance to be rescheduled. So about 10 minutes later, Libby comes into the alley and finds me. And she's like, she goes, I can't believe it. Nan, this is the first time she's done this in all the years I've worked for her. She's going to reschedule you. I cannot believe it. So I got to come back and do it again.

One of the scenes that I had to read was from the stairwell of the pilot, where Harry and Boulana are trying to get out of the O'Compin Underground, and they've been diseased. You know, they have the disease from a caretaker, and they're very weak, right? And so there's a big speech that I can't believe it, you know, my very first mission and I'm going to die. You know, that's the Harry Kim speech. So I'm actually, before my fifth audition in front of network,

I'm talking with Nan and we're going over this scene and she cuts me short and she says, what is it with you damn actors? And I said, what now? And she says, you're supposed to be dying in this scene. You're supposed to be experiencing pain. Do you understand what that means? Pain? I said, yeah, of course. I don't think you do. I think you need to come over here. So I walked around her desk. She goes, roll up your sleeve. So I rolled up my sleeve. And she says, give me your arm. I go, okay. And then she grabs my forearm and starts twisting. it in opposite directions and that sort of like that what we would as Americans called Indian burn or whatever we would say yeah yeah and I'm going ah oh and she said okay

now do the audition while I'm doing this and so I'm going I can't believe that on my very first mission I'm gonna die and so I'm sitting there in pain literally and she goes and that's how you do pain and so I was sitting there in pain she must have really liked you, honestly, to invest that kind of time. And, you know, it's very unusual for them to get involved in that way. Big time. Big time. So I have all the thanks in the world to give Dan Dutton for literally putting me through the ringer, the ringer and getting me to that point where I was able to get this role. And the crazy thing, I was seeing every Asian person on the planet, I saw a short round walking out of the building from Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom,

right and also goonies data he was data in goonies i saw him walking out and i was like it's short round he's a he's auditioning for insin kim i actually robie i saw the actor his name is jonathan k k kwan i saw the actor at a convention about a year ago and we were talking he's like wait a minute you're the one that booked the voyager role so he still remembers that yeah wow he still remembers that and then yeah megan said you guys should do a show together about two asian actors that have been know big in the past and now you're life and I thought this could be funny right but um that that audition process was just just is so surreal you know for me um and it I just I just I just remember the day that I I got the call that I booked the role they was like my agent

was very very very low key and he says guess what you booked it I go what I booked the role he's like yep I said so are you joking with me? No. Why would I be? He was like Stephen Wright, the comedian that has no emotion. He goes, why would I be joking? Why would I be joking? I said, because you don't sound like you're excited. He goes, I'm very excited for you. And then I was like, okay. And he says, you need to get down to Paramount Studios and they need a fitting with you today. And I was filming all-American girl, Margaret Cho's sitcom that lasted for one season. I was the guest guest star for that week. And so I hauled ass from Warner Brothers over the hill to get to Paramount during rush hour.

And as I'm driving in to the Paramount Guard Shack, the guard and I had made friends. Remember, I've been there six times for all these auditions. This guard and I were friends, and we had a bet going. Whoever the winner was, the other guy, a 24 case of beer. And the bet was, I said, I'm not getting this role. And he said, you're going to get it. And you're going to own me a lot of beer. and I was like, okay.

So I drove up and he's there. And he goes, you got it, didn't you? I said, yes, I owe you beer. And he said, and I said, I'm, I said it for him. I did, I did. I said to him, I'm late. I'm really, really late because I'm supposed to be here like 20 minutes ago. And I came from the valley.

Where do I park? He says, in the blue tank, anywhere in the blue tank. And so I drive down there and I'm cruising around. I'm actually speeding around the parking lot. And I come around this one bend and this guy in a suit. walks between two cars, right in front of my car. So I slam on my brakes, and I'm like, and you know, when you almost have an accident, your heart is beating a thousand miles a minute.

And I lock eyes at this dude in the suit, and it's Harrison Ford, okay? And I look at him, and I go, I go, oh, my God. I almost killed Hans Solo, Indiana Jones. I would have been hated by nerds everywhere. Like, I would have been like this pariah. And I kept thinking, holy crap. And I remember reading the variety paper. There are our Hollywood sort of trade paper the next day.

And on the front page was a photo. It says Harrison Ford at Paramount Studios for the clear and present danger screening. So he was there for that job, you know. Wow. Yes. So the Tom Clancy novel, right? So he was there for that wearing that same suit that I almost maimed him in, right? So he could have been a cripple because of me.

And lo of behold, I made it. You had a lot of adventures. just getting to starting shooting this series. Exactly. I did. You barely survived. All right. So on that note,

let's start talking about the episode. Let's start talking about the episode. I'm sorry. I just wanted to fill everyone in, just get better now than later, talk about Harrison Ford later, right? Okay. So as we start up,

we see the opening credits. We see the crawl, sort of like in a la Star Wars, the crawl. Yeah, I'd totally forgotten about that. You didn't remember that? I didn't remember the crawl. I do remember once I saw it, I flashed back to sitting in that big Paramount Theater, the movie theater, when we had the screening, and I remember when that crawl came up at the screening, I was like, yeah, I had flashes of Star Wars and it was just, it felt epic.

It felt like iconic. Yeah. And the music and everything, because we hadn't seen the pilot. We didn't shooting for a few months. That's right. Saw anything. And the first time that I remember seeing it was in that, that, that, that, uh, theater screening.

What people don't realize is that, um, typically we shoot one episode in seven days. Every now and then, we would take eight days to film an episode. And because this was a two-parter, um, it should have taken 14 days. Yeah. By the way, I forgot it was a two-parter. I literally, you got to like an hour and I, and I, and I paused it for a second. And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe there's another half hour. I can't remember.

Oh, my God. An hour and a half pile. I didn't remember that. Didn't remember. That's so funny. Yeah. So typically, if it would take seven days to film one, you would think that it would take 14 days to film this one. But in reality, it was a 31-day shoot.

And, you know, which they spent extra time primarily because we went on so many different locations. And you referred to earlier how you would thought that this is how it's always going to be. But in reality, as we've started filming the regular episodes, we had a lot of bottle. shows. We stayed on the ship. We didn't go anywhere, right? And part of the reason why when people ask me, what is your favorite episode? I say it's, well, it's a tie between timeless, the 100th episode and Caretaker. And specifically Caretaker, the pilot episode, because of all the locations we went on, it felt like this grand journey. Yeah, like a movie. Oh, like a movie. We were filming this awesome epic feature and we were all over the place. And so that to me was one of the reasons why I loved

filming the pilot episode. Yeah, the pilot was fun. Yeah. Do you remember this? Both Tom Paris and Harry Kim were scheduled 30 of the 31 shoot days. I didn't remember that, but I do remember that I worked a lot of days. And other people, you know, like I think Bob Picardo came in like week three or four of the shoot or something.

Bob Ricardo worked, I think, two days maybe. Yeah, I think he worked two days. Yeah. Janeway, do you know how many days she worked? Here's a little bit of trivia. Okay. 16 of the 31. Wow.

Yeah. We worked more than Janeway did, right? Yeah, we were just scattered around in so many scenes. We started the very first day of filming that pilot was, I think, on the DS9 set. Wasn't the Quarks bar the first scene we did? Quarks bar was the first scene. Oh, no, I think it was, if it wasn't corks bar, it was in the mess hall when you're ordering tomato soup.

Again, back to the whole 16 days only for Janeway. That's nuts because on the call sheet. She was number one. And the call sheet for those of you that don't know Hollywood jargon is basically sort of a, it shows you who's working the next day, what scenes that you're filming, you know,

and it shows crew lists and everyone that's, everyone that's part of the production is listed on this call sheet. And it shows you what time you're supposed to be there. And we were given numbers from day one according to how often they thought we would work. So number one was Janeway. Robbie, number two was? It was me.

That was number two. Robbie was number two because the rumor was they were going to make you kind of like like Janeway's boy toy or something. Something was going to happen there. I thought that it was initially there was, I think one of the descriptions casting that pilot was a Han Solo type character that they wanted that sort of, I think they looked at older actors. I think they looked at, you know, yeah, whatever.

I think the intention was possibly that Janeway and Paris would be a romantic a couple or combat, you know, combative all the time or something, a moonlighting, something like that. So Paris was number two. Who was number three? I don't remember. I know I'm awesome. I'm quizzing you. Who do you think three was? I would say Chacote. Correct. Who's four? Tuva? Correct. Good. Who's five? Roxanne? No. You were five? You were five? Yes. I was right in the middle, buddy. I'm five. I can't believe you just. So it was six. I'm not going to be too hurt. Who you just named who wasn't five. Roxanne. Yes, Roxanne was six. Number seven. Neelix? Correct. Number eight. Bob? Doc. Nope. Kess. Kess. Number nine. The doctor, yeah. Because literally Bob was, Bob Picardo was supposed to be the least used of the entire show. Yeah, he was supposed to come in. Yeah.

one day at most each episode, right? But to his, to his credit, to his talent, he really put in his own flair or his own style. Because let's think about this. What is he? The emergency medical hologram. He's a computer program. So there really shouldn't be any reaction to anything or this and that.

You definitely see reaction to him, which we were talking about. Oh, yeah. He had an attitude already right from the beginning. Well, let's keep going in order. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could be here for a week. if we could. We could talk about this. We could talk about this for 31 days. The length that it took us to film that we could keep talking. Okay. So the crawl, let's talk, let's get back to the show.

So the crawl, we find out that there's this group called the Maquis, they're a federation colonists. They're not, they're not happy with the treaty with the Kardashians. The Kardashians. I know. I got it. It's so funny because Cardassians have been around. around way before Kardashians became, you know, a thing. Yeah, a thing. I guess it just takes a sex tape and then now that's everything, right? So, yes, the Kardashians, the Federation colonists were not happy with the treaty, with Cardassian.

By the way, I forgot about that, too. I forgot what, you didn't know what that. I totally forgot. Yep. The Maki were colonists who didn't agree with the treaty. Yeah, yeah. And it felt like certainly wasn't, I didn't remember their motivation, which I think, you know, and that's another thing. I think the fact that I forgot that, to me, says that I think we dropped that in the story.

I was reminded of that in watching the pilot, you know, and I was like, oh, that's a bummer that we didn't explore that more, like, just the, you know, that it seemed like we put everybody together and we got along pretty quickly. and we just sort of forgot about the fact that that, you know, half our crew. Well, they were outlaws, right? They were outlaws from the Federation. And in fact, Paris had spent time with the marquee with, because there's that tension between Paris and two and not two bucks, but Chakotay. So we have that. So after the, the craw, we see that Chiquet is piloting his marquee ship.

By the way, let me talk about that marquee ship for a minute. Here's one thing I noticed. The camera was shaking and there was sparks and everything, and none of the actors were moving. None of the actors were doing the old classic. And it reminded me that when, and I forget the director's name, but someone gave us a shaking tape. Because she said, she came into episode like three or something.

Kim Friedman, Kim Friedman. And she said, you know, I looked at some episodes, cuts, and you guys haven't been shaking, and you need to learn how to shake. And I got really offended. Some of us got offended. Like, how dare you come in here? We've been doing this for a month or two. And now you're telling us, well, when I looked at the marquee ship, she was right.

Yeah, she's right. And she's right. And she's just sitting there and Robert and like nobody told the actors, you got to do this. You got to do. So. But, but, but, you know, to the credit of the producers, which would be Berman and Pillar and Taylor, they were so busy with everything. So many things were happening at that time,

like the end of TNG, the beginning of our show, the movie they were filming. So that it's almost like they weren't ready to film Voyager because they didn't give us that tutorial. And when we got that package from Kim Friedman, that was on her own, you know, that was her saying, I'm going to go ahead and send this to all the actors.

So all nine of us received this package in the mail and we're reading it. And literally, just like Robbie said, It says, hi, my name is Kim Friedman. I will be the director of the first episode when you come back from your pilot break. And I have directed many episodes of D-Space-9. And although you guys all did an excellent job as actors,

none of you know how to shake correctly. Not a single one of you. And she's, I've included scenes of shaking from DS-9 where all the DS-9 actors are shaking properly. And then I have scenes, and she showed us scenes from Voyager where you guys aren't doing anything correctly. So then she went on. And so you may have took a,

fence to it. I laughed and I actually said, okay, because after that, she asked us to practice this. She's like, okay, you need to, she told us the technique. She said, you must shake from your center and then allow your extremities to follow. So she says, please practice this in the mirror at home. And I was again laughing at that part. And then she says, this is the best part. At the very end of this letter, she says, if after practicing in the mirror, you still cannot get the hang of it. Please feel free. to go knock on any deep space nine actor's trailer door and ask for a demonstration. And I started laughing.

Wow, I don't remember. So hard. I'm just thinking I'm knocking on Avery Brooks trailer. And he opens up. He's like, yes, what is it? I said, yes, can you show me how to shake? And he's like, get out of mine. You know what I mean?

I can just see him just kicking me in the head. That's funny. Classic, yeah. Well, the other thing I remembered is watching this. I forgot how much Chocote's character hated Tom Paris. He hated you. Like, he wanted literally to kill you. I mean, you could just, it was venomous.

I forgot that. But we never really, like, followed that through or let that come back as like a, you know, and a crunch. I wish we had because there was some, there was some sparks there between Paris and Chiquote. Oh, yeah. The pilot Paris taunted Chucote. Oh, yeah. Sure.

You know, those. For sure. Those two hated each other. So that was a surprise memory. And I liked that, you know. I like that conflict and the messiness of that stuff. I agree. I forgot in the, I'm just going to jump around.

I forgot. I saved you money, dude. We were at the bar and you were about to buy all those. Low buy crystals. The crystals. Yeah, the crystals. That's what I meant, the little crystals. And I was like, dude, these are not real.

They aren't worth anything. You were about to, like, open up your wallet and pay that man anything he asked for. So, yeah, I saved your ass. I was going to give him my unborn son. Yeah, you were. You saved the day. You did. Okay, so back to the ship.

So this is the first time we see Chakotay, the first time we see Tuvok, and the first time that we see Tori. Right? So they're the first time. first series regularism, we get a glimpse of. And so when you see Tuvok, it's interesting because up until that point, I don't think we've ever seen an African-American Vulcan or, you know, a black Vulcan. You haven't seen that, right? Not as a lead. I mean, I didn't, I don't think ever, to be honest, okay? And I remember people were asking me interviews about that, Robbie. Like, there were reporters saying, so what's up with the Tuvok character? Why is there,

you know, a black Vulcan? Yes, I got these questions. And I sat there and I made crap up. I said, well, you know the planet where Vulcan's come from. It does have two suns. So because of the extra solar rays, there tends to be more darker, complexed volk. I was making all this crap up. I had no clue.

I would buy that. Yeah, you could buy that one. But the crazy thing with Tim is that if you look at Tuvok, he had to shave his fore. He had to shave his hairline. So he had this perfectly round, sort of like a bulk, you know, modified bulb cut, basically. so he really didn't have the front part of his hair for the first seven years or the back half of his eyebrows were gone because you had to make that little Vulcan go up so he never never got to see his end of his eyebrows until he was done seven years later you imagine that if they say hey hey you know your eyebrows Robbie yeah guess what you're not going to see the end of them for seven years you know what's funny about Tim though I remember as as we got into the series he had such a

cool quality about him. I always thought that he, like he seemed like he had been on Star Trek his entire career already. Like he knew the show, he knew the mythology really well. I always had a sense from Tim that he

just had more of a history and a connection with Star Trek than our show. I always, I look to him for like a lot of answers on the mythology of the show. I don't know. I don't know if he was bullshitting me or, you know. Oh, man, he knew it.

I mean, he's definitely, he's definitely a nerd at heart for, for one. And secondly, he'd already guest start on TNG and on DS9. And, like, you guest starred on the first duty of TNG, you had that one, you know, episode. But Tim had already done a few. That's what I thought. I thought he, yeah. And generations, I think he was in the feature. I mean, he was all over the place, right?

So he's, he'd done a lot of it. And now that comes to the point of the topic of sideburns, which I want to talk about right now. It's very interesting because if you look at Tuvok, if you look at Chacote, if you look at Tom Paris, and you look at Terry Kim, all four of these characters, we all had to have custom-made sideburns that were put on lace and they tied in human hair for each little hair of our sideburn and they pasted them on each side of our faces. every single day at the beginning of the day. There were many times in the seven years that maybe we're sweating or this or that where a bit of the sideburn would be peeling off or the whole thing would be flopping in the wind where they'd have to say cut, bring in, you know, bring in the makeup department, fix the sideburns. You had lace sideburns, right? They were lace.

Oh, yours weren't lace? No, they would actually cut trim hair. They put some glue. They'd take the hair, mat it down, and then trim it and then do some more glue. and so they would sort of build a sideburn on me. That's why a lot of times by the end of the day, I don't know why they did that. Maybe the lace just showed up more for my color hair or less or I don't know. But the downside to them building it was if I got sweaty at the end of the day, as I sweated throughout the day, this beautiful, you know,

it was very inconsistent. The continuity was not good because I would have a really, nice beautiful sideburn side side side burn at eight in the morning yeah midnight when we were 17 hours i had sweated and the little hairs had fallen off and so that's crazy i almost think that's a budgetary thing like they were like okay because those i remember those sideburns were very expensive to make and i think that maybe they felt my god of all of all the actors on our show the asian guy can't grow them the white guy can't grow them the black guy can't grow them the Latino guy can't grow them the only person that can't Oh, actual sideburns, was the bald guy, Bob Picardo, the doctor.

He could grow full mutton chops, you know, which to me was hilarious. You probably got new shoes. I didn't get new shoes. I got used shoes day one, Robbie. The shoes that I put on, my Starfleet. I got used shoes. Did you get used as well? They went through a bunch of shoes that were in the stock and I got used shoes.

Oh, my God. Extra shoes or, okay. I feel bad for you too then. I mean, that's, that to me. was just shocking. Me being in my early 20s, I took great offense to that. And I just thought, how dare you. And I remember examining the shoes the first day. And I found a name tag inside my shoes. And the name tag was B, period, Spiner. So I realized that I was wearing Brent Spiner's hand-me-downs. Oh, wow.

Oh, yeah. And I literally... You got a big actor's hand-me-downs. I think mine were extras. I think it was literally from the background supply. Okay. So just random background. Yeah, yeah. And instead of getting mad, I really should have just taken those shoes home and sold them on eBay. I don't know why I got so angry. You know, there's two sides of the coin always. And you can choose to be, you can choose to be zen about it and let it go or you can get all reactionary. And in that point, I got all reactionary. I was pretty upset. And I remember I made a big stink about it. And they brought in Kate's Italian shoemaker that made her shoes. So Captain Jane went, yeah. So this guy comes into my trailer. And he looks at my, looks at my feet. And he says, okay, I got it. I go, you got what? He goes, I know your size. And I said, sir, would you like to trace the outline of my foot so you actually have an exact size of my foot? He's no, no, no, no, it's good. I got it. And so this guy takes off three weeks later, this beautiful pair of craftsmen boots were brought to my trailer that were just gorgeous made by this old school Italian guy. I put them on. They are way too tight, way

too tight. And so, again, because he didn't measure him, right? So I ended up just, I talked to wardrobe. I talked to Mary Howard, and I said, look, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to Nordstrom. I used to work for Nordstrom men's shoes when I was in college. Norstrom has the best selection. I'm going to Nordstrom. I will pick out a pair of three-quarter-length boots. I will bring you the receipt and you will reimburse me. And then Mary goes, that's fine. Because at that point, you know, we've gone through all this stuff. Garrett, you just mentioned Nordstrom, who happened to be one of our sponsors. No, they're not.

Okay, we're going to move on to the, okay, so after you see, you see the maquis ship, and they're being blasted by the displacement wave and they disappear, and that's when you see the opening credits for Voyager for the very first time. And I want your opinion, Robbie. What are your thoughts of the graphics, the music of Voyager's opening scene? I think it's beautiful. I really do. I thought it was, I thought it was, when we saw it in the, the screening room, the big theater, and on the big screen, I was blown away by all of the textures and the different, you know, kind of photography that they used for the different types of space and the rocks, the meteors or whatever, and the clouds of color and all of that.

And I thought it was beautiful and I thought it was a perfect fit for our show because we were going to be in the Delta Quadrant and sort of, you know, exploring very different kinds of unknown space. I just thought it was, I thought it was the right kind of opening title. I love the song. I thought it was beautiful. And it was a full orchestra that did the music not only for. Star Trek was one of the last shows that would have a full orchestral recording session. Correct, for every episode. For every episode, for every piece of music that was in.

Each episode was composed by a few different composers that worked on the show. But yeah, it was scored like an old movie. It was done old school. When I worked on the Orville, Seth MacFarlane's show, I directed first and second season on that. But when I was directing the first season, first early episode, they were scoring the Orville with a full orchestra. Nice. I talked to Seth about that. And he said, yeah, Fox wanted to not do that because it was so much cheaper.

Yeah. And he insisted. In fact, I think he said, you know what, if you guys won't pay for it, I'll write the check and I'll pay for the orchestra because that's how important it is. And, of course, they're not going to take his money and, you know, make him pay for it. But he won that battle and they got a full orchestra. And it was beautiful. It makes a difference. It really does.

It does. So you sat in on a few of those orchestral sessions. Is that correct? You saw them? On Voyager, yeah, I did. I sat in on a few of them and particularly the ones when I had directed an episode. I'd love to go over and listen to them. I would see when they would break or they would call it a day and I'd see this procession of

musicians walking, yeah, the past our set wearing they're all. black and what all their instruments and I just remember I the main thing I remember from that is just that wow we have a full orchestra number one and number two wow the cellist whoever that woman is is gorgeous I remember that was something that I noticed in my early 20s and singleness I was like funny maybe I should ask the or the cellist out on a date do you remember how visual effects would give us a actual copy of our nameplate and depending on what you had in the background some of it was cooler than others. But in the beginning, when we had Jennifer Lean,

it was Jennifer Lean that had the blank space, which was just the stars and nothing else. No planets, no kind of gaseous anomalies. And then when Jennifer Lean left and was replaced by Jerry Ryan, Bob Picardo got that screen. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry. It was Ethan Phillips that had at first. And then Bob Picardo got the screen that was just the stars alone.

And I remember him complaining about that. He was not happy. he was like and now my background is just the stars and he was not happy and I and I just realized from watching all these TNGs that every single actor their name card is with just stars then every time they show planets they don't have an actor name on it but so it's funny I don't know which is better like without without the distraction of you know rocks or planets or something name pops out more or less the very first scene is of you with Janeway right so you and Janeway are now having a conversation and my question was was this Griffith Park and I was right it was

Griffith Park the zoo specifically and as we're watching this and you're doing this whole scene I'm watching the rewatch with Megan and also with Keely and Keely who was 11 and you've met Keely after we watch part of the scene and we say you know Megan says you know that's Robbie and she goes that was Robbie like I mean literally she's like that was And then we go, yeah, she goes, are you sure? And we're like, yes, we're sure. She goes, no, that's Robbie? Like, she literally, for the next, you know, 25 minutes kept saying, I can't believe

that's Robbie. That's not Robbie, because she knows you. Well, you know, she's never, she's never seen you. I think one of the things that I think about when I watched the pilot, when I came on the show, I had, I knew that there was a, connection to the Nicolacarno role that I had done on NextGen. I knew that there had been some thought about, you know, me having done that character, about maybe even making this character in Voyager, Nicola Carno, perhaps, or something. There had been, you know, at least in my mind,

I had a real connection to this, they want the same kind of guy that was on Next Gen, the same kind of character, whatever. And my thought about Nick LaCarno when I did that NextGen episode was he was a pretty rotten guy. He was not a, he was a, you know, in his core, he was a bad guy. And, and he pretended to be nice. He pretended to be a good guy on NextGen. But deep down, he was a pretty rotten guy. But you did the right thing at the end, though.

At the end, he did the right thing. Yeah, he did come through in the end. But my point is, I think I amplified that in my mind. And so everything I did, I mean, I, I, I. In looking at it after 25 years, I feel like I leaned in really hard to, like, he's the, he's the guy that everybody hates. So he's just going to be like, screw you. I got an attitude and, you know, combative with everybody. And I think I amplified that in hindsight, probably a little too much. Okay.

I think he could have been a bit more relaxed. And the only way I say that is because I think Keeley knows me, as a human being and I don't have that sort of combat that edge. That's not who I am if anything I'm too much of a people pleaser probably if anything or that's right and also now you have facial hair and the glasses and so I mean I look different

but also there's something about that attitude that was so amplified and I think in hindsight I probably would have just had him relax a little more and not be so combative but not take it so I think he could have been a I don't know just a little more relaxed and I think where he where he ended up developing years later could have been there a little more in those early episodes you know I think personally you became less like that as the time went on but did you actually writing him less less combative and less of a jerk but also I think I started looking for opportunities to even in reactions to things just to a little more, yeah, relaxed or empathetic to other people or, you know, invested in not so selfish or whatever. A lot of the negative qualities that I think I probably dialed up a little bit early on because

I thought that's what they wanted. You know, I thought that was what they were looking for. Okay. And then, you know, what was funny while we're watching, for some reason, Megan, who loves the Broadway play Hamilton, started using. using your character as Alexander Hamilton. And she started to say yes. So she was like, how does a bastard pilot,

son of a Starfleet Admiral dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in an island prison? I mean, so she started making lyrics for Tom Perce. So if anyone out there wants to make. I was, I had dreams and goals and aspirations. I was on Broadway, not in, you were. Not in a musical, but I was on Broadway. I was on Broadway in a play, dramatically, but I did a lot of musicals.

So if someone wants to turn Tom Paris's life into a rap musical, I'd be happy to go back and revive this character on the stage in a rap. Yeah, or even just for, you know, if a fan out there wants to substitute the lyrics in the Alexander Hamilton for Thomas Eugene Paris instead, whatever, that would be super cool if you guys tweet us that and we could actually perform. that as a you know a little side bonus material that would be fun i'd like to see that right yeah um one thing annoyed me about that scene with you talking with janeway that walk that walk and talk janeway has her hands behind her back the entire time that you guys are walking down that hill

and she just looks like a pogo stick going thine and to it just for me just watching that i was like as a director i would have been like okay um let's see it with your hands down by your side you know I mean, to me, I don't know if that bothered you or if you noticed that. I was something I've always seen. I was looking at my goofy long arms swinging and yeah, it was, we were walking down a hill. Yes. It's pretty, you know, that was steep. But the way he shot it on that long lens, that telephoto lens, you can't really tell

that it's a hill. And so the way that, you know, when you're walking down a hill, your body sort of compensates for that, for gravity going down. but you couldn't really see that. So it made both of us look a little bit like, you know, we're kind of clumping, you know, it almost looked like flatter land than it was. And so, yeah, I was too busy looking at my goofy walk to notice.

Okay. As we're watching it, Megan was like, did you notice that he's totally sweaty here on his chest, but his face is totally dry? Like, that's one thing that you saw in that scene that was a little like, hey, why is that doing? Why is it like that? I remember that scene.

They were spraying, you know, when you do scenes where I was supposed to be doing manual labor and so I think in the first scene where I'm drilling or something and I turn around I noticed that they had put some glycerin like sweat in here but yeah my my whole face was dry and I find that to be not not uncommon I find it it happens a lot in TV and film stuff where it's hard to maintain continuity for sweat to look real. You know, they put a little like circle of sweat under your arm

and they put like a little sweat line right there, but then it doesn't seem to match. Oh, yeah. Yeah, or you'll see an actor playing basketball in a scene, and the sweat just looks so fake because it was, you know, the wardrobe department or somebody putting, taking a spray bottle and spraying it to make you ready.

So I didn't notice it on that, but I've noticed that before in some episodes that, you know, our sweat or our, you know, that kind of thing you can sometimes look a little manufactured and not natural. Oh, yeah. And I manufactured a lot of my own sweat on the topic of sweat. Yes, you did. I was probably number two sweater on the show, but you were.

Do you think so? You were the one. You were number two? I think I was number two after you. Wow, I never would have said that about you. I never, no, because like with you, and I'm going to go, I'm going to jump forward to, you know, whatever an episode it was, I don't know the name of it,

but we were filming and it was your coverage and it was hot on the bridge or wherever we were. No, we weren't on the bridge. And so the camera's on your right side of your face, and I'm standing off camera and I'm watching you, and it's hot and you're sweating, but you're only sweating on your left side of your face away from camera. And I remember when they yelled cut, I said, Robbie, you are so professional.

You're amazing. Holy crap. The side of your face that's on camera, it's not sweating at all. It's so hot in here. You're just only allowing the sweat to come off of the left side of your face. So I thought that you didn't sweat that much. I, on the other hand. Professional actor.

Yeah, you did a good job. I sweat so much that I had a white salt sweat stain on my black Starfleet uniform all the time to the point where they had to manufacture a different garment from me. So the underneath, we had that sort of like grayish blue, whatever tank top. That was manufactured where they put in these huge pads underneath both of my underarms to collect all this sweat so that I wasn't sweating through the bottom. Yeah, I remember. I had that. I had a totally different setup.

And then I talked to wardrobe. I said, I'm so sorry. And they said to me, you know what, Garrett? Every Star Trek series has a sweater. And in Voyager, you are the sweater. I said, really? I said, so what about, what about TNG? Who's a sweater on that?

Lovar Burton. So they literally had an person like they knew from every series. And I've since found out that after Voyager Enterprise, it was Flock's. So the character of the Dr. Flock's played by Billingsley, John Billingsley, he was a sweater on that one. So we had a lot of sweat going on. Yes, so Megan always said you were the most well-groomed prisoner that she had ever seen. Yes. And your hair was perfect.

Perfect, right? Yeah. And if you guys, if you remember, Robbie, Carrie McCluggage was the president of Paramount television group at the time. And one of Carrie McCluggages, one of the things that he would say to all showrunners is like, you know what? If you can't get the script right, if you can't get this right, just make sure one thing, one thing, the hair.

Make sure the hair is right. That was one of his big, big things, right? So hair it was and there you were. There I was. I had perfect hair. All right. So the next scene, the next scene, we are on the whole reason why Janeway is there because she needs you to help find the maquis ship.

She asks you to come help find it as an observer and you tell her how dare you. I'm the best pilot ever and I, you should have me as a pilot. So that we have a scene where both you and Stoddy, the character of Stoddy who is a Betazoid are sitting in that shuttle and you're heading over to you're basically flying towards D-Space 9 and you see Voyager kind of docked onto D-Space 9. And this is where your infamous, you know, your swash, your Han Solo swash-buckling kind of comes into your dialogue because you have that beautiful line, which is where you're kind of coming on to her.

And she says to you, she goes, Mr. Parris, do you always fly at women at warp speed? and then you say only when they're in visual range. Yeah. So it was like, you little stud muffins. Yeah, I didn't write it. I know.

But that was very, you know, that to me, you know, was so quintessential beginning of Tom Paris being sort of the ladies man, being the, you know,

kind of, you know, that guy. But we learn that from that speech, that Voyager has bio-neural circuitry. Okay. And so this is a new concept in Trek at the time.

because now you're saying that the ship has basically living material. It's like it's alive in a sense. And I find that we, I think that we also then influenced the series Farscape. I don't know if you've watched any Farscape at all in your, in your lifetime, but Farscape was produced by the Jim Henson, the Muppet Company in 1999.

And their ship, which is, you know, used in every episode, is alive. It's completely alive. So I think that our show, sort of took precedent and I think other sci-fi writers or other sci-fi creators took some of our

ideas and incorporated it into their shows. So that's just one point that I realized. Yeah, it's funny. The show that I'm, the show that I'm doing right now is called Resident Alien. Alan Tudick is the star and I'm producing that show and directing some episodes. But his spaceship, Alan Tudik, spaceship that he comes and crashes into Earth with, and get stuck on Earth, his spaceship is bio-neural in a way, like the whole concept of that ship is that it's connected to him. So even if he's not, you know, it's, yeah, it's kind of like some telepathic, biological and almost a combination of like minority report, like virtual controls that he's able to control. and it's all connected to kind of his own internal biological, you know, makeup. And so, yeah, I think that's interesting.

I don't know what shows did it before. But, yeah, that was very new for Star Trek. We were groundbreakingers. Yeah, most definitely. So the next scene we come upon Cork and Kim. You know, I start this confrontation with Cork when I said, well, we were warned about the Ferengi at the Academy. And that sort of started the whole quark and Kim altercation or whatever that was,

which you end up saving the day and pulling me away, like you said earlier. And then we ended up... It's funny, though, like what your comment, you know, we were warned about the Ferengiath Academy. I mean, sure, that's, I guess, offensive on some level. But he would have tried to scam you no matter what you said. That's true. Oh, it's a beautiful, you know, space station here at Deep Space Nine.

you could have said something, you know, anything, I think that he would have, he would have tried to scam you and hustle you. You're right about that. And it was a good scene. I was less nervous at that scene, obviously. Then after that, the pilot goes to the sick bay where we find the original doctor. Do you remember that? We had the original doctor played by Jeff McCarthy.

That is the original doctor who ends up dying later when we're hit by the phase, the displacement wave that pulls us to the Delta Quadrant. So we're in that scene and this is the first time you glimpse on the clamshell bed of the sick bay is a crew member

and that crew member was John Tampoya my Filipino stand-in okay so you remember John Tampoya okay so John Tampoya is on there and as we're watching Megan goes, is that you on the bed? I'm like no, it's me walking into

the scene, but yes, it's John Tempoya who looks like in a recline prone position that it could be me. And one of the funny things is that for me that I just never could understand was when they put him in a Starfleet uniform, they put him in the same color as mine. And it's like, why would you put the Asian extra in the same color as give them the red or the green? Why the gold? Now people are going to be watching the scene. Oh, there's Harry again. Oh, Harry must have cloned himself, you know, because certain people who think, oh, Asians look alike. They're going to be. like, there's Harry again and again and again. And in reality, it was John Tampoya over and over again. That scene was my first actual ADR was from that scene. Oh, really? Yes, because

remember, the doctor, that doctor does not like Tom Paris. There was issue, you guys had nobody liked me. He hated you. I mean, he hated you probably more than Chakotay did, it seemed. He hated me. And so did the first officer. He hated your. officer hated me. They were talking to you in the mess hall about after spring. And yeah, everybody was trying to convince you to, uh, to not like me. But I saved money. I saved you money in Quarks Bar. You did. So you were, you were vindicated there. I do owe you. But I just wanted to say, because in order to break up the tension between you and Jeff McCarthy's character, the original doctor, I say, I said, um, uh, I haven't paid my respects to the captain yet either. Now, when you

listen to this. When you watch the pilot, there's a distinct difference in the tone of my voice in other parts of the episode and here, because again, this was my first time doing voiceover. And for those of you out there that don't realize this, but Voyager, specifically Voyager and Star Trek, we do more ADR work than any other show on the planet, I think. I mean, like, we would have hours and hours and pages of voiceover that we would have to do in a studio after the fact. And this is my first big gig and then my first time doing voice over for ADR, I was, I was so nervous and I have to, and you have to, you have to time it because they give you these beeps before your line, so you're sitting there in a soundstage, you watch the actual episode, and then right before

you're the line that you're supposed to redo, and you're redoing this mainly so they have a clear copy of it, basically. Is that right, Robbie? Is that the right way to say it, you know? Yeah, they're, yeah, they're, the reason it's called looping is because they used to put a clip of the film that had the lines that you were replacing, the additional dialogue or the replacement dialogue, they would literally loop that piece of film so that you'd get in a rhythm and you'd say, you know, whatever the line is. What was the line that you loop? I said, uh, I haven't paid my respects to the captain yet either or either. Yeah, so it would be like, uh, I haven't paid my respects to the captain yet either.

Be be, beep, beep, uh, I haven't paid my respects to the captain yet either. Beep, be. So they do it in a loop and you do a few, you do a few recordings and then they would stick it in and hopefully it would sync up. But they keep the same sort of, you know, the beeps and the flash. You'd see the, you'd see the kind of flat things on the screen. Yep. But the thing was it was, it was three beeps and you went on the on the supposed fourth beat if there was a fourth beat. So it was like, beep, beep, beep, beep, go. And so for me, I couldn't get the timing down. I was sweating in there. I was flipping out. We were doing that just that first, that's just the first line of dialogue. We spent probably 25 minutes on that. And I literally,

honestly, Robbie, I almost thought, I can't do this. I'm going to have to call up Berman and say, I got to quit. I can't do this job. I can't, I cannot do the looping. And I was flipping out so much that I could not match the tone, the acting that I put in that day in the sick bay, the actually, you know, the work that I did. So, so honestly, from just an objective observer who doesn't know me, doesn't know anything about me or doesn't know anything about Voyager, if you're watching this first scene, it's going to come off as crappy acting. I think it's sort of like, wow, that's, that's a really bad delivery of the line. And it's because I was so uncomfortable with doing voiceover. I think, I think looping, even for good actors, it's, I always feel like it's so much

better to have the real dialogue in there that you're doing. Definitely. Because even people that are good at looping and ADR work, you can feel the disconnect. It's very, very hard to get the sound and the sync with the lips and all of it. Yeah. They don't teach you looping class or they have, you know, they don't teach you these things that you need to learn in the real world as a professional actor that everyone has to do, but you never learn this when you're, you're doing your stuff in college, right? And that continues into the next scene. We walk out in the hallway.

Again, my lines are very kind of stilted and kind of really kind of abrupt. And again, again, the looping kind of was, that was another scene that I couldn't get the looping down very well. And then while we're watching that, Megan says, why does Robbie's V come lower than yours? And this is something I never ever really noticed, but now I notice, if you look at your V on your uniform, it comes below the black line. It goes below. Mine stops at the black line. So you and Janeway, it goes below. Chacote goes below. Balana Torres goes below. But to look and I, I don't understand that. I don't know what that, you know, what the history behind that is, what it means, you know? Or is it just a choice when you join Starfleet. It could just be Bob Blackman and the wardrobe department just making an

aesthetic choice on what looks better on different people. You know what I mean? Right. But I just think that's really funny. Like, as you joined Starfleet, their question is low V or high V? And you're like, I'll take a low V and then you get a low V for the rest of your life as a Starfleet officer. Take a break now? Or should we? Take a break. I think for those of you watching and listening, this pilot is is longer than I remembered. It's not a regular episode. It's an hour and a half long. We're going to really dive in deep to this one. So let's take a break. And we'll see you soon for part two of our recap of Caretaker.