The Delta Flyers - Cathexis

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

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 Cathexis. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Cathexis:After confronting a black nebula while on an expedition, Tuvok is inhabited by aliens, and Chakotay appears to be brain dead.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise, and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Ann Marie Segal, Philipp Havrilla, Jason M Okun, Kelton Rochelle, Stephanie Baker, Stephen Smith, Sarah A Gubbins, John Tufarella, Brian Barrow - The Destination in Louisville KY, Chris Knapp, Daniel Adam, Eve Mercer, James Hildebrand, Matthew Gravens, Mary Jac Greer, Marie Burgoyne, Michelle Zamanian, Jason Self, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, and, Shannyn Bourke.And our Producers: Col Ord, Aithne Loeblich, AJ Provance, Ann Harding, Barbara Beck, Breana Harris, Captain Nancy Stout, Catherine Goods, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Chris Tribuzio, Claire Deans, Craig Sweaton, Crystal Komenda, Dave Grad, Deborah Schander, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Gay Kleven-Lundstrom, Gregory Kinstetter, Heidi McLellan, James Amey, James G. Jones, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Josh Johnson, Karel Hartlieb, Katherine Hedrick, Katie Johnson, Katherine Puterbaugh, Kelley Smelser, Laura Swanson, Liz Scott, Maggie, Mary O'Neal, Matthew Cutler, Mike Schaible, Máia W, Nathanial Moon, Nevyn Cross, Rich Gross, Richard Banaski, Ryan, Steph Dawe Holland, Terence Thang, Thomas Melfi, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Warren Stine, York Lee, Dat Cao, Debra Defelice, Evette Rowley, Louis P, Oliver Campbell, and, Stephen Riegner. Thank 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, everybody. Welcome to the Delta Flyers. We are a weekly podcast that discusses episodes of Star Trek Voyager in chronological order. Your two hosts along this podcast journey are myself, Garrick Wang, aka Ensen Harry Kim, and Robert Duncan McNeil, who portrayed Lieutenant Tom Paris. If you are interested in either an extended version of this podcast or the extended video version of this podcast, both of which include added bonus segments. Please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers and sign up to become a patron. Hey, Robbie. Hey, buddy. How are you? I'm okay. Yeah. We just got, we just got done with our little interview with trekmovie.com with Lori. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. That was a long in-depth, emotionally draining interview. do you think i do you think i crossed some boundaries there did i did i go too far you know here's the here's always the funny thing i think the fans of star trek and and voyager yeah

they want to know like the juicy stuff right i mean yeah natural for people to want to know but it's always hard to tell these stories because sometimes when you tell part of the juicy story it's not giving the whole picture and that's not fair yeah you know what i mean it's not fair to like the people that are involved. So it's tricky. Like we want to give the everything we can remember, but we've got to be careful that we're not just giving part of the story that's going to embarrass somebody or not really give their side of it, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah, because she had done an interview with Kate probably a couple weeks ago, and people were quickly sending me messages like, oh my gosh, you know, I think Kate's really mad at you or this and that. And again, anytime you do an interview, it's little snippets, and it's not the whole picture. And when you don't get the whole picture, you can then start to assume. And when you make assumptions, that's when everything hits the fan.

So you've got to be careful with that. Yeah, it's funny sometimes. That sort of thing is like gossip, right? Like in life, any kind of gossip is not really good. So it's tricky for us, like even on this podcast, to tell the story, to really give everybody a fuller picture of what was going on. but to be careful that we're not gossiping or, you know, or embarrassing somebody, I guess.

It's tricky. It's definitely tricky, but sometimes we're going to go a little, dip our toes in those waters, and we're going to try to be careful. And most of all, I love and respect all of our cast and crew. Like, I would never want to embarrass or disrespect any of them with any of the stories that we say, even if we may disagree about storylines or how people did things, like I still respect their choices. And that's, I think it's even trickier for me because I'm, I'm very blunt. I mean, I tell it like it is and I just, I say things that I don't really censor beforehand, you know, and sometimes that gets me into trouble. So I need to be a little bit more cognizant of what comes out of my mouth. So, um, all right, I'll, I'll, I'll have your back on this, Garrett. I'll keep you safe. You got to be my bodyguard on this one. Audio bodyguard. Will you, will you be my Kevin Costner to my Whitney Houston? Yes. Is that what you? you're going to say.

Okay. What's that song from that movie? I don't know. Whitney Houston sang that song. And I will owe and love you. Something like that. Is that from that movie? Yeah.

Yeah. Whenever you start getting into like territory where I'm like, oh, God, don't say that. I'm just going to start singing. And I. I will always love you. Okay. So that'll be our secret.

Thank you. That'll be our really subtle secret sign of like Garrett. Yeah. I mean, other people do things like tug on the ear or like I'm going to brush my nose or I'm going to say a code word like Rudebaga. But then you are going to sing.

I went out of a Whitney Houston song. And I'll know exactly what you mean by that. Ease it back when I hear that. So this week's, episode. Yes, sir. Cthexis. And, um, Cthexus. What a great name, Cthexus. What does Cacxas mean? I don't know, but who comes up with these names. Did you ever find out who? I have a dictionary app on my phone. I'm going to, I'm going to look up Cthexis while you chat away for a minute. Yeah. I've always wondered, was there someone in the office whose job, what, whose only job was to name

episodes? Because if you think about the sheer number of episodes that we have through seven seasons, And that's a lot of names that you got to come up with. You know, and Catexas is something, do you find anything? I did. Okay, Cthexus is a noun. It is from psychoanalysis. And the first definition is the investment of emotional significance in an activity, object, or idea. Wow.

The second definition is the charge of psychic energy so invested. Wow. It's from the 20s. So it's from early psychology, I guess, kind of early. fessaurus says synonyms for cathexis are catharsis narthex narthexis catharsis calixus calixus catharsis though i know i'm familiar with catharsis yes which is to have a breakthrough right like an emotional sort of breakthrough so a cathexis is probably kind of the opposite like to be stuck or attached to emotionally something interesting okay so for our um patreon patrons we're about to play a little game that we call

what do we remember for everybody else listening to our podcast robby and i will be watching rewatching the episode it will be right back with our discussion of cathexis yes we will it'll be a catharsis wow we are back that was a very fast-paced There's a lot of stuff going on in that episode in Catexas, right? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't my favorite episode. I'll just go on the record right away and say, for a number of reasons.

That's fine. We're going to go ahead and do our quick synopsis. I'm going to let you do it, but I'm going to set you up with the very, very beginning part of it, so then you can just follow in after that. Okay, go. Tuvok and Chukotay complete a trade mission in a shuttle, and they are on their way to the rendezvous point with Voyager. with Voyager, when they encounter a dark matter nebula. Go.

Yes, they do. And some kind of energy force freaking blows through their shuttle. They get beam back to the sick bay. But when they get beam back, Janeway is playing around in some romance novel, Harlequin romance novel in the holodeck. She's playing around with all these British people in a fancy mansion. And they're like, hey, captain, you've got to come to sick bay because these guys are knocked down. Chocote's brain dead. Nothing gone. Brain dead. Tuvac I can save, says the doc. So they bring

them back. Anyway, long story short, it's very mysterious what happened to their brains. And all of a sudden people start acting weird. Slowly, people start doing very suspicious things. And Janeway thinks, hmm, maybe there's like an invisible alien flying around taking over people's brains. She's right. There is. So as they start to figure this out, all of a sudden, Tuvok becomes suspicious, and then Janeway takes it even a step further. She's like, wait, there's two invisible aliens on this ship. Good guy and bad guy, and they're kind of fighting each other, and they're messing, they're confusing us. Tuvok ends up looking like a bad guy on the bridge like he's going to win, and then we pull a little fast one, and we knock him out, and the bad alien runs away, and we realize that, uh,

the good alien was Chocote in his spirit. We thought he was brain dead, but no, he became an invisible alien and was floating around fighting off the bad invisible alien. And somehow the doctor puts his brain back together and we never go back to the hollow novel in the Harlequin Romance department. So that's my synopsis. I got a lot of questions, opinions, and confusion about this one. But let us start with the very beginning, teleplay by Brandon Braga,

story by Brandon Braga, and Joe Monoski. And I just want to make this point right now. At this point, Joe Monoski is not it at the actual writer offices on Paramount Studios. Oh, yeah, that's right. Not there. Guess where he's at. Spain. He is in Spain.

That's right. I thought it was Italy, but he was in Spain. He was far away. It was amazing. Like, he was on the writing. staff, but he was in Europe. He was living there. So he would get his, he would type his revisions and whatever, just send him by email. And he pretty much just lived in Spain. I think Joe also had an issue with flying, like literally he could not get on a plane. Yeah, so he would take a,

he took a boat to get to Europe and then he lived there for a while. So I thought that was really interesting, that Mr. Bernaski was in Spain this entire time. This episode is directed by Kim Friedman. This would be her second episode, season one, I'm guessing, that she did, right? We spoke a little bit on what we remembered about her and how she and Kate were kind of bonded female empowerment. They were like the original Thelma and Louise, I guess. They did. They drove a spaceship over a cliff instead of a car at the end. They drive a space shuttle. They drive a shuttle. They drive a shuttle, perfect.

Now, yes, so we're in the hollow novel in the very beginning, and it was me that Kim that notifies Janeway. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. Can we talk about this hollow novel for a minute? Let's talk about this hollow novel. I just want to, my first, my only reaction about this fall novel is that even though she's playing this, this is in her free time, she's still quintessential Janeway,

how she tells off that other lady, you know, the governess. A little bit, although she fell into this British accent, and I found that for me a bit of a problem because I'm like, wait, is Catherine Janeway an aspiring classical actress? Like, it's just, you know, it's like when I see movies or TV shows where someone who's supposed to be a civilian-type person, all of a sudden has the skills of a trained actor

or a musician or something. Like, they should just be the character they are And Janeway is a, you know, a Starfleet captain. I found it confusing, like, wait, am I watching Kate Mulgrew, the actress doing this hollow novel story? Or am I watching Janeway? So I felt a little differently. I wasn't clear on, am I still watching Janeway?

It felt confusing to me. Well, I'm a little annoyed because when we did the Irish Town episodes, which were coming up later, Fair Haven and Spirit Folk, I requested, I asked to do an Irish accent. I said, I want to do, because, you know, I'm big into impersonations and accents. I said, this is my chance to do an Irish accent. I'm going to do a northern Irish accent. And I remember, I got vetoed on that. They were like, no, absolutely not.

I agree, by the way. I get why you want to do it, but I get why they would say no, because I agree. Harry Kim would not, like, and that's Gary Wong. And not Harry Kim. Yeah, that's Garrett Wong wanting to do an Irish accent. That's not Harry Kim. But if you're going to set those rules down for me, it should be the same for Cape Mowgru as well. She shouldn't be allowed to do a somewhat, you know, serviceable British accent.

Yeah, and another thing that bothers me, this is not Voyager, but just in general, Hollywood. Anytime we see a TV movie, feature film, television show set somewhere in Europe, everyone speaks with a freaking... British accent. You never noticed that? Like, you know, that movie, I'm just, for instance, ever after with Drew Barrymore was set in France, but yet she was speaking with a British accent. And everyone, that's just the go-to accent that Hollywood has decided. We are going to, and I don't know if that's a result of the fact that we are in a colony, a former British colony that we have this preoccupation with or obsession with the Brits and British accents. You know, what is that? Why does Hollywood do that? Have you noticed that as?

well? Does that bother you at all? For this hollow novel, I'm not sure what the hollow novel was exactly. Although Michael Comstey, who played the male, I don't recall the character, but the man of the house. The man of the house. Michael Comstey is a brilliant, classical theater actor. I saw him on stage many times before Star Trek and since.

He's very, very talented. And I remember talking with Michael about some mutual friends we knew from theater days and things. You know, Michael's talent is strong. Kate's talent is strong. The other female, the other lady in the house, was very good. My problem is with why did they have this weird harlequin romance novel opening that had nothing to do with the story or with character? Like, there was absolutely nothing that I could find where you would go, oh, that's why. And by the way, it went on a long time.

Like, it was long. It was very long. We could ask Brandon this. You know, when we get Brandon Braga in as a guest or maybe Joe Manoski, we could say like, hey, what the heck? It was way too long. It was beautifully done. Like the set, by the way, I made a note, like the old school scenic work on that set, that was built on stage. That was built by the Paramount Construction Department.

and the props department, it was a beautiful set. And the onset effects of rain and lightning and wind, the iron windows, every detail was beautiful. So I think the execution was great. I don't know why they did it. Like there was nothing about Voyager, even metaphor wise. I couldn't make sense of like, what is this supposed

to be a metaphor for the ship or? Anyway, I'm baffled by the opening because it just seemed disconnected from anything else. And you could have had two lines and Harry calls, hey, Captain, you've got to come out. Like, that could have communicated almost as much important information as a seven-minute long scene that went on to another. And this is also the episode where my friend Brian Markinson gets introduced.

Yeah, I noticed that. They show, they introduce Durst now. It's just so that we start to sort of feel for him and root for him. him, you know, or cheer for him. So it doesn't just pop up in the next episode. I'm excited to have him join us for that. I got to be careful. We have to be careful about saying rooting for people because as Americans,

when we say rooting for people, that's cheering for somebody. But in England, Australia, that means a whole other follow wax. Yeah, that's that's the, that's the, that's the, that's doing the nasty basically. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to root for Brian Markinson that way. I'm just going to cheer for him.

Okay. Did you notice in sick bay how on top of it Kess was? Like the doctor asks for a cardio stimulator and Kess is already handing it to him like she already knew she's good this is what yes she's already you know she's one step ahead of the doctor and I just I'm just so impressed with Kess I really am I am and this is something that I did not notice while filming right until I watch this I'm like hey all right she's good but the doctor says that Chakotay's brain dead to Janeway. All I could think of was classic, you know, Dr. McCoy from the original series when he said, he's dead Jim. He's dead Jim. But in this case, he's brain dead Jim is what I was thinking of McCoy saying. So that, you know, made me think of the original series. Yeah. I was

about to say that as they talk about this mebula that killed, nearly killed both of her crew members and seems to have, you know, killed Chukotay at this point, Janeway makes another questionable decision to go back to the nebula that almost killed the two of them. Because she says, oh, well, we can't, the doctor suggests, maybe we need to analyze, if I can analyze the source, then maybe I could. Yes, the weapon. Then maybe I could, I could figure out how to cure it. So without exploring any other options of how you might get that information for the doctor,

she's like, let's go back to the scene of the crime. Let's go back and expose my entire crew to the jeopardy of this thing that killed already two of them. Yeah. I feel like I'm noticing a lot of questionable decisions by Janeway. Does Janeway have a death wish? Does she have a death wish? Does she sit there and think, you know what? There's danger.

Let's not go away from danger. Let's head towards danger every chance we get. You're right. She puts everybody at risk. I mean, it does end up complicating things. And I've noticed this the last couple episodes, like, early on, if she did not make the decision she made, we would not have been in the position for the, for the jeopardy that we, you know, the danger. And this is one where I'm like, seriously?

Like, can't we try to solve these guys without exposing the entire crew? So I don't know. And it's funny because she's got this reputation for like, oh, yeah, Janeway, the way Kate played Janeway was so, she took care of her crew and love them so much. I'm like, dude, she's just going to take the whole ship back to this danger place. Like, that's not smart. No. If she really loved this crew, she'd solved problem another way.

While high-tailing it away from the danger, we would solve the problem. Yes, yes. Yeah. At this point, I would like to bring up Tuvok, Tim Russ specifically, Tuvok, his pronunciation of the word S-E-N-S-O-R he always says he says censor right like a sore I noticed that too yeah and I said the entire seven years Harry Kim always says censors sensors and even Janeway says censors I think Tom Perr says censors only Tuvac is the one that says censors he says

censors maybe that's just the Vulcan way I think he was learning yeah maybe he was yeah that's just the way he learned sensors in the Vulcan Academy or whatever he went to. Vulcan prep school, you know, wherever he went. And also, on the show, did you say I'm going to analyze the data or did you say data? Because that's another word that sort of...

I don't know. Renowned tomatoes, something tomato. I think I said data. Yeah, I say data. I think this is the data. And then I remember someone telling me on set, well, that's the character from TNG. So that's why it should be data.

I'm like, no, no, I'm going to say data. I don't, that's, that's, we're not on TNG, you know, so I, and I'm, I'm, I'm just shocked that there's, these two schools, it's really tomato tomato, right? Yeah, it's the same thing for data or data, sensor, I just find it interesting, the two models, sensors, sensors are, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to ask him that when we have him as a guest, I really want to know. In Kess's quarters, what, who does, who decorated that place? By the way, I made a note to myself, why is Kess's quarters twice as big as mine? It's huge. Dynormous. She got the suite.

And it's almost like Janeway was like, you know what? As an accomplice, she suffered so much. We're going to go ahead and give her the sweet. I mean, and it's massive. It's the same bed. Do you notice that? It's that same bed that I have. I don't know if your bed is like that too with that neon tubes or whatever.

But then she's got the foyer and the sitting area. She's a dining table. Twice as big. Twice as big. She has that bronze, you know, bust of, I don't know if that's a Tibetan monk or Buddha or who are. Alien Buddha. It's an Al-Compan Buddha. But it didn't have O'Compin ears.

That's what was so weird. Yeah. It's not a O'Compin. I love that you're the first person to get accused of, like, messing with the controls. Yeah. And you are so defensive. You're just like, I didn't do it. I mean, you were so angry.

You wanted to, and then Janeway, she almost laughs at you in response. She's like, no, now, now. It's not a mutiny. I'm not implying an a mutiny. Come on, Tommy. Yeah, you know, I freed you from prison, remember. Well, it's funny because, I mean, on one hand, I get why, maybe why they gave my character, gave Tom Paris that first suspicious beat.

Because he's the guy that was the bat. supposedly the bad, you know, had the bad past and things like that. Yeah. But as I saw it, I was like, God, again, they keep going to the same, the same note. They keep playing the same song with him because ex post facto, he was the bad, you know, has the baggage of doing bad things, you know, oh, he's a womanizer, oh, he does bad things. Oh, it's just the same thing over and over. And I found it, like, why couldn't I be someone who was the hero accusing someone else of

doing bad things, you know, and I know there were twists and turns, but it's just, I wish they could have protected that character a little better. You know what? It's actually, that actually validates your, your reaction being as big as it was, because you have been dealing with the prior episodes of being the guy that's the bad guy. And I think in this episode, it's like, come on, enough. It's enough already. I'm not the bad egg. I'm the good guy. You know what I'm saying, I save Mr. Kim from the freaking lobeye crystals and cork in the bar. Okay, I'm a good guy. I'm not a bad guy. So, yeah, so that makes sense. I like that. Torres gets accused later of shutting down that warp core. Tuvok, did you notice how forcefully

Tuvok grabbed Torres? I was expecting Balana to like, just to, you know, flail or knock him back. And Tubac just manhandled her. Like, she was, you know, like he was the kindergarten teacher. and she was like a little child who was like grabbed her and pulled her away. By the way, I think early on in the episode Janeway says something to me

and I say eye captain and then later on Janeway says something and I say yes ma'am and Rebecca turns to me Rebecca goes Rebecca said how do you know

when to say what like how do you choose a yes ma'am or eye captain do you like do you feel it somewhere and you're like is it oh my ears tingle

and I know it's a yes ma'am or she's like you flip a coin you're like head heads yes captain yes ma'am I don't know that was very funny it is very funny um I uh that walk and talk scene that I have with Brian I honestly do not recall that at all oh yeah I don't remember Brian on that set at all I feel bad I should remember that but um Durst and I, we just, I, this is one of the things that typically have a very good memory, but that, I have no recollection of shooting that scene whatsoever. That could have been, I vaguely remember Brian being in this episode, to be honest. I know that they just did it to establish him.

By the way, in the sick bay, when Balana, sort of Balana takes the stone and kind of puts it up like this and, like, turns and puts it behind. Yeah, the medicine wheel. First of all, I was like, again, and maybe I'm just overly sensitive about this Native American stuff. I don't know why I'm overly sensitive about it. But I thought, God, not only have they minimized it with Chukotay's character, but now they've got Bala doing a sacred native ceremony that she is not a native. And then she even says to the doctor later, like, yeah, well, he showed this to me once.

So, like, how can you become, you know, it's like saying, oh, well, I saw a priest once perform a wedding, so now I'm going to marry people. Like, you know what I mean? Like, how do you learn it? It's minimizing the sacred nature of whatever the thing is. And I also found, like, the whole prop, it looked like a bad souvenir from a theme park or something. Like, like, the rocks are magnet and they're click. You can hear them clicking up on the wall. I'm like, that is not a native, authentic, sacred thing.

Like, I don't know. It just, it felt like a, like a kid's toy from a theme park. I'm going to agree with you at that. I also noticed, if you look at the detailing of not the rocks, but the actual pictographs on the drawings, yeah, the wheel. They were like Mayan or Incan, like designs. And I was like, wow, they're just, going everywhere with this all over what i'm saying yeah just like i because i don't recall medicine

wheel being part of myan culture but maybe it was maybe it wasn't but it just to me it just someone just said okay um let's go with you know not not not not a not apache or navajo let's let's go with myan symbolism now you know it was like they remember when you were working at chuck for lunch you guys had a wheel and you would spin it and then whatever restaurant whatever restaurant it would land on and that's what you guys ordered for lunch. That's what they might have done in the Voyager office when it came to like, okay, for this episode, which you go today,

and it's not a, yeah, it's Aztec wins this town. Maori from New Zealand. Every Aboriginal, indigenous people, cultural thing, they seem to just co-opt and mash it all up. They just mashed it all up. They mashed the whole thing together. Did you notice I just made the sound of the Will of Fortune Wheel? Oh, nice.

Yeah. That's what the doo-doo was. Oh, okay. I'm going to throw that in there. Janeway's hair in the briefing room from certain angles. What is going on in this episode? It looks like a mushroom. It's a mushroom.

It looks like a mushroom. It was so weird. It was a weird. It's so crazy how many times Janeway's hair changes throughout this season alone. I thought that it uniformly, I, you know, I seem to recall the entire, first season was one way. But no, the first season alone, we're only in, you know, we're not even done with season one. It's changed four times or five. Every week. Almost every week. Every week. Yeah. New heritage. It's crazy. By the way, did you notice how triggered Neelix got in

sick bay when the doctor said something about a spirit? And he's like, who was in there? There was someone in there in her, in his room? That was in, not in Sigbe. That was while he was cooking in the mess hall and Cass came up to tell him what she had heard oh that's what it was another thing yeah she said i had a spirit yeah he got all paranoid and jealous he's like who who was in your room you know he was yeah yeah right and then later later neelix is now talking to um chikote i sorry neelix is now talking to the doctor the doctor and and the line is yeah the line is neelix says um at insin parsons ordered his pajuta cold and the doc goes so and then neelix says he always drinks it hot, hot with lemon, like that.

And the outburst made me think of, does Neelix have Tourette's? It's almost like he has these explosions of dialogue, just come out, and it's like somebody's with Tourette's syndrome. And it's like really crazy. I mean, he's like, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's to me. Well, then the doctor says in that scene, like, calm down, he literally said, like, you've got to calm down, she's going to be fine.

And then, and then I loved it at the end when Neil Alex hugged him. Like Bob's face, Bob's face. It was like just such a, was it a non-poost sort of like, great, yeah. Did he roll his eyes? Maybe a little bit. It was funny. Whatever it was so subtle. It really, it made me laugh out loud when Neelix hugged him. And by the way, I noticed at this point a lot of scenes where there wasn't coverage, you know, often in a scene, there'll be individual shots of all of each of the characters. There'll be singles, you know, a close-up of Harry and a close-up of the captain. Not in this episode.

In this episode, there's a lot of scenes where there's like two shots and there's people just, you know, facing each other and talking. Yeah. It's interesting this first season to see all the different directing styles. Yeah, yeah. This is definitely more kind of sit back and just look at the, at the action play out remember that four shot that four shot on the bridge it was it was it was you me durst and janeway and we're all crammed into that one we're all we're all like hi

i mean that's definitely not you know coronavirus uh approved end up 19 approved distancing we were so close to each other it was nuts and also during that scene like she's janeway's whispering to us the entire time and then all of a sudden she gets really loud. Computer. Who authorized the ejection of the warp core? And then the computer's like, that would be commander. Ticote. Ticote, exactly. And so I just kept thinking, why are you now announcing that? Tuvac is now totally possessed by the alien. He doesn't hear any of the other dialogue. We're all whispering. Paris is whispering. Kim is whispering. Durs is whispering. And then all of a sudden she goes, hmm, computer. And she's loud as hell.

It's like, okay, just telegraph everything to Tuvok, right? And did you find that that Tuvok, his reaction time was horrible when Janeway goes underneath that railing to hit that button on her public console, it's like Tuvok's already holding the phaser at us. Yeah, all he's going to do is hit a button. Yeah, just beep. And they said it's on wide dispersal. Yeah, wide dispersal, so he doesn't have to aim.

All he has to do is hit the button. And Janeway takes forever to navigate awkwardly to get underneath that console. You know, I just thought, what the heck? And I know that he said he set it on kill, whatever, right? But then if you think about it, those aliens, the Comar, I think was their names. Those aliens, yeah, they needed us to live, to survive. They were going to basically vampire suck our energy out. So he wasn't really going to kill us.

Maybe, you know, if I was writing that episode, I wouldn't have said that these are set to kill. Maybe I would have actually had one crew member rush him. Tuvok then stuns him with the phaser, that first crew member, which gives Janeway time to go underneath to undo the, you know, to push the button for the magneton scan. It comes out. But so that was a little awkward how that worked. I just think it took way too long for her to get underneath there. Do you remember when, so they thought I was a bad guy, so they took control of the con and they moved it to your station? Do you remember that?

Yeah, yeah. They moved it to your station. So I couldn't control the ship. It turned around on its own or whatever. And then it goes to your place and you're like, and we turned around again. And she's like, Mr. Kim, what's going on? And you're like, I didn't do that.

So obviously you can't control the ship any better than me. No, I couldn't. So I just want to make that point. Both of us lost control of the ship, even though we had all the power to do it. You just had to bring that up, didn't you? Yeah. That was important.

Well, later on, by the way, once Tuvok's down and we're like, you know, working everybody's back to work, you and I are back at your station. Did you know what? You were never at my station. Never. I was the only, did you notice I even looked at you? I'm like, hmm? There's Paris. Like, what are you doing here?

And you got, you got, you know, no social distancing once again. You were all up in your business, punching buttons. You were up in my junk. And I was like, what is he doing? Why is he there? But that is probably one of the very few times in seven years. So Tom Harris stood at the operation station with Harry, right? I totally noticed that.

I was like, wow, that's. I don't even remember that shooting that scene, but that was crazy. Let's go back to the sick bay when we're there examining you, right? The first time, because you're the first one. Is it like my look when he's like. Yeah, you look. And then what do you? Then you start reaching your hand back.

Are you about to scratch yourself? What was going on there? I realized that he's got a line where he's like, Mr. Paris, would you please hold still? Stop moving, yes. I have to be moving. Correct. You know, I could have sat there and just been like boring,

but I was adorable. Come on. It was very cute. So I'm wondering, was that a Kim Friedman direction? Or was that you being just you? I'm going to just, I can't help it. Okay, Garrett. It's adorable and I can't help it.

I just, you know, as a straight man, even I thought that was adorable. straight man. I was like, that's adorable. I actually was looking at it kind of proud, like, oh, well, he's just scanning my head. Like, I could have just done nothing. But I was like, I turned it into just a light little, like, you know, light comedy sort of, what are you doing, Doc? You were towing the comedy life. Yeah. I was kind of pulling one of those. It was. And it was, and it was an innocence about it. Like you were a kid. You were like a little kid on the, and you then reminisced

about as a kid with your doctor, right? And then the doctor has that crazy line. Dr. Brown. Well, that's a throwback to, back to the future, Doc Brown? Yeah, Doc Brown. Because it literally, I thought, nice work writers. I was like, Doc Brown. Doc Brown. But when you started reaching back to scratch your head, that reminded me of the episode where we had the things stuck in the back of our, remember when we're on the alien prison ship, right? And so we had those little things in the back of our head and we kept scratching them. It just reminded me of that scene. Remember they had the analysis of Tom's brain, of Balama's brain. And I just want to say that the analysis of my brain was really beautiful.

Like, that was so much amazing intelligence you could literally see on the brain analysis of my brain, which I thought was cool. That would have been funny if the doctor said that. there is so much intelligence going on here, Mr. Paris. I can't even understand it. You could be the chess champion of the world. The thing I always loved about Star Trek, though, when you look at those little cutaways to like the brain analysis or whatever,

they always made them so clear, like, what the story was. You know, the little graph where they said, well, here's an unusual pattern in Tom Parris's, and then here's an unusual pattern in Balanas. And look, they look identical. Like, it was easy, easy to follow the story. Yeah, they did a good job with the graphics. The graphics department, yeah.

Is that Dan's department? Did Dan do that? No, it was Denise and Mike Okuda. Yeah, sorry, they were doing that one. So they always do a good job, though. Those guys have been around forever. They're amazing. They're really, really, really good at what they do.

Well, in that scene in the sick, I think it was in the sick bay, the doctor had a line that I have to say, say is very difficult to pull off with a straight face. His line was, well, one possible explanation, and the only one that I can think of at the moment, is that an alien entity momentarily took control of their minds. Yes, I remember that line. I just was like, wow, Bob. Momentarily, an alien entity, yeah, it's a tongue twister, for sure. An alien entity momentarily took control with their mind. It's just a hard line to pull. off with a straight face and I thought he did a very good job so he he did he handled that well yeah um

and in that scene by the way the captain's talking to him and then she kind of walks around in front of tom paris and did I look at her butt like like she walked in front of me and my eyes go like that like you know a little elevator eyes like down and then I actually rewinded it I was like Did I just check her out? And then I realized, you know how they put our marks on the floor, like tape? Oh, is that what it was? I think I just looked down and glanced down to see, like, did she hit her mark? So when we're staging scenes and filming, they put little kind of tape, different colored tape on the floor.

Like an X, an X or a T or something. So that as you walk around, you know where to stand so that the camera and all of the elements, the lighting, the camera, the lens, gets the shot that they're planning to get. If you miss the mark, if you don't hit that mark, then the lighting won't be right, the framing won't be right, things like that. So we can't, and you guys never see that because it's below the frame. That's right. And we can't look at it as an actor.

You can't walk up to the mark and look down like this and then look up. It looks ridiculous. It is. So sometimes when we were having problems with gauging where that mark was, they would put down like a little sandbag right there so that our feet would hit up against it so you would know that's where the mark is right but I remember very early on

when we were shooting the pilot we got to choose what color mark that we had I think did you recall doing that at all I can't remember because I feel like I had blue did I have blue? No no I had a light blue

They originally gave yellow, and I was like, and I said, don't give me yellow, you know, don't, like being, you know, just yellow, no, I'm not going to go with yellow. I'm already, I'm already wearing the yellow freaking costume. You know, I'm going to go with, you know, give me another color. So I'll take, I asked for like powder blue because I went to UCLA, which is blue and gold. So I thought that would be good for me. But I thought you had a red mark. I'm not, that's not maybe. I don't remember. I'm shocked. I don't remember the color I had there, but I don't remember. Okay. Yeah, everybody, yeah, so the characters, each of the characters usually have a different color, and the camera assistants usually carry a dozen different colors of tape, you know, to lay down marks. I'm glad to know you didn't check out Janeway's butt. No, I think it was just checking the mark out. But when I first saw it happen, I was like, did I just look at her butt? I got to go back and look at that.

By the way, I think my butt also looked good in this episode, too. When I walk out of sick bay, I was like, yeah, all right. I'm in shape. It's good. Nice. Good. Good. I'm glad you're happy with that.

Thank you. Thank you. The captain gives, decides to give the doctor because he's not a humanoid and the aliens can't go into his brain. She decides to give the doctor all of the ship's codes, command codes. And I was like, boy, she was ready to kill him a few episodes ago. She was ready to like, well, let's just delete his program. And now she's given a command of the ship. I was like, wow, he really, he really turned around fast.

And I just love the reaction of the doctor. Does that mean I'm captain? And she's like, no, you're not the captain. You're just, you get the codes in case I get debilitated. That's it. So that was true. He did make a huge turnaround. He really did.

Boy, also. So that Tuvok offers up another Vulcan mind meld with Kess. And I'm like, dude, that's two Vulcan mind melds already. And we're only like halfway through season one. Neelik should have been jealous of that too. He should have been like, why are you getting mine melded with that Vulcan guy? Yeah. And then he screams and has his Tourette's, you know, thing again.

So why is the briefing room so dark in this episode? So we go in the briefing room because we're now all puzzled and we're trying to figure this out and everyone's kind of we're losing power didn't we have some type of like power interruption like something happened that uh no no not for this moment yeah yeah that was a little i didn't even think about yeah was it just dramatic to make things feel dark and scary and paramed maybe the music was definitely kind of like horror movieish kind of music i noticed it's just it's stuck out to me because the rest of the episode seemed like normal, relatively normal lighting.

And then we go in the briefing room and everybody's in the dark. It was like, it was very, very dark. Mm-hmm. And I don't, I don't normally remember seeing that briefing room anywhere close to that. After we disabled Tuvok and he's on the ground and that alien energy presence leaves his body, how the hell did it escape? Because our shields were already up at that point. I'm saying. So because I make a comment, well, he just rejoined his friends and then they were

trying to get back in at us. And I just don't, how did he get out of the shield? But how did he get out? Yeah, but yeah, exactly. Does it, is it the shield only work one way? I mean, stop coming in and then anybody who wants to go out can just go out easily. Maybe that's what it is. That's probably what the technology is, I'm guessing. I mean, sure. It was just a random, random question. The device on Chocote's chest with the red and blue lights, every time I saw that, I just kept thinking of Optimus Prime from Transformers. I just couldn't get away from that.

I was waiting for that thing to transform into Optimus Prime when Chocote was lying on that bio bed. By the way, Jacote, my God, what a great episode for him to just... No kidding. He just got to lie there and be catatonic for the entire episode, except for the last scene. Balana asked the doctor, how did you manage to reintegrate his consciousness? The doctor says, it involved three neurotransivers, two cortical stimulators, and 50 quads of computer

memory. I would be happy to take you through the process, but it would take at least 10 hours to explain it all to you. Now, if you notice, I don't know if you caught this, but when he said gigacquads, he actually stumbled a little bit over that, like he was a little unsure of that. Because if you think about what year this is, we don't even have any a gigabyte of memory at this point. You know what I'm saying? So this, so the word giga is new to anybody saying it. That's true. Whenever we shot this. And now, if you talk about a gig of memory, it's just so commonplace, you know, like a gigabyte, terabyte. It's a very exotic word back then. It's exotic word. So, so even Papacardo, the king of, you know, Technobabal and medical language, had a little bit

of issue pronouncing something that was very unfamiliar with him. And all of us at that time. You know, when Bologna says, how did you get his memory back? Yeah. I felt like that was a big cheat, honestly. Like, just because the doctor says, well, it was a lot of technology and a lot more technology and it'll be really hard to explain. And we're supposed to just go, oh. Okay.

But you said he was brain dead before. Right. It just felt like a cheat to me. Like it was a huge cheat. You're right. The whole episode was built on Chakote is in a coma and there is no neural activity. he's dead. And I'm a doctor who can't do anything. Right. So then how do he, and all of a sudden use, you know, three neurotransceivers and a cortical stimulator to boom, all of a sudden put his

his neural, you know, energy back in. It just felt like a cheat to me. I wish if they had said something, if the doctor had said, well, I could only have done it if once, you know, once we were back here in this nebula and I was able to analyze things, I realized, like there should have been a little more explanation, like just to go, oh, well, I did this and this. Well, why didn't you do that way back there? So we didn't have to come near this. I don't know. I agree with you. I agree with you. It was just such a, such a compact and quick answer. It was easy out. Yeah, it was an easy out because if you think about that, to actually reintegrate somebody's consciousness, good Lord. You'd have to have a shaman or, you know, you'd have to have all kinds of craziness thing going on to have this

thing really work. And for the doctor to come up with that so quickly, it was just like, yep, yep, I did like that. I'm amazing. So, yeah, that was a bit of a cheat. I agree with you on that. And I kept waiting for the, uh, the hollow novel to come back. Like I was thinking near the end, like, oh, well, they'll come back to the hollow novel. And that's why now we'll learn why that was there in the first place. And it didn't. And I was like, oh, my God, that's the end. Do you think they filmed something? And that ended up on the cutting room floor that we never even saw no i don't think so okay i don't think if it if they had filmed something that really integrated that hollow novel story wise into this story then i think it would have kept it

they wouldn't have just thrown it out okay i don't know i don't know why that hollow novels there i don't yeah i don't know this was not my favorite episode i found right i found the whole zombie like like every time somebody got taken with a spirit they'd pop up and turn like a zombie and it was just weird and it was a really interesting choice acting choice or blocking choice in the part of kate at the very end when she puts both hands on chakotay yeah while he's on the bio bed and i thought wow and this is like sort of the beginnings of some type of chokote janeway romance or something because right before she says you know jacote has come back to consciousness and and right before she says good job commander and welcome back

is what she says. She leans in, and I honestly thought, is she about to kiss him? I mean, it looked like it was about to happen. It was about to go down right there in sickbay. Wow. And I just thought it was a very interesting choice of her to have both hands touching his shirtless body,

you know, while he was lying on the Bible. That was a little odd to me. Another thing I wanted to bring up was that, you know how with Star Trek, we have a full symphony orchestra that does our, music, okay? And there have been so many times I've been in a convention and people will tell me, you know, Voyager has helped me with my insomnia. Like I will put on Voyager in the background

to help me fall asleep. And, you know, at first I was taking offense to that thinking, wow, so are we that boring that we indulged that we actually put you to sleep? But now it really makes sense because I recall there was a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles. Angeles that always played classical music on loudspeakers right in front. And I went in and I asked the guys, you know, the clerk, I said, why do you guys? And the music's not even in the store. It's right in front at the door. But why is it there? He's like, well, we have a lot of vagrants here. We've been, you know, we've had a lot of crime, a lot of violence. And the owner decided that in order to calm down the craziness is we put classical music on. And I thought, oh my God,

you know classical music is used to sort of defuse the violence or to calm to relax people and we have this full orchestra going on and maybe this is also causing people that are having this in the background to relax and fall asleep so that's something that I just oh interesting watching this episode yeah random yeah all right anything else to say about a recap the underlying meaning, the message for humanity on this episode. To kind of sum it all up. I guess for me, this was a hard one to find the theme or the meaning or the thing to relate to. The closest I could come, because it's not my favorite episode.

I got to be honest. This idea of paranoia. Yeah. And it comes from, you know, as soon as we start, it's like January said in the briefing at one point, like, you know, if we start pointing fingers, we're just going to go crazy. It's going to be chaos here. Yes. So for me, I guess the theme is, is about that idea of fear, of paranoia.

It breeds such a toxic mixture for people, you know, that you could see on our ship people out of fear and the unknown and looking for answers. And so you just start blaming people or suspecting people, and it's very dangerous. I guess that's what I would say. I saw, you know, the behaviors in this episode, you saw people that you thought you knew, acting very strange and all of a sudden not trusting each other. So to me, that would be the theme of like, stop pointing fingers for a minute. Just like step back and think about this a little clearer because it's, there might be a reasonable explanation.

That would be my takeaway. I had the same note. It was basically about the paranoia, you know, the caveat, the beware of paranoia taking over, you know, your rational mind, you know, because when you're, when you're not paranoid and you're just thinking logically and rationally, things don't get underneath your skin. you don't start freaking out but the minute you allow that to really and neelix is a perfect example of that you know yeah but he let that um the fact that that that one crew member ordered his drink differently yeah hot instead of cold made him flip out because he thought okay this guy is being

controlled by the alien entity you know and it's true um paranoia and and fear of the unknown is just is something that that i think we all go through and and really the lesson is is to guard against that or be aware of that, be cognizant of that. Keep your awareness. Yeah, step outside of your body for a second, like Chocote was, right? Step outside of your body and just observe yourself for a second. Do I sound crazy?

Yes or no? You know, yes, you can sometimes be objective about yourself if you take a second and don't, you know, react so quickly and stay on that treadmill of craziness, right? Just stop the treadmill. So I agree with you on that. Okay, awesome. All right. So that is our recap.

Yes, it is. Yes. So thank you for everyone for listening into our podcast. Next week, we'll be reviewing faces, and we will have a very special guest star who will be, or guest host that will be here with us. Shall we tell them? Should we just say who it is? Yes, we can. Yeah, yeah. Brian. Brian Markinson, who played Durst and the Vidyan. I forget the name of the Vidyan.

Yeah, he's going to be, he's going to recap with us, which is really super cool. And I think we should make this a regular part of our podcast and bringing somebody in for the entire, you know, podcast. One thing that I talked about in that interview that we did with Trek movie before we did this recap was that listening to Office Ladies, which is the, you know, the office recap. They brought in Rain Wilson and they called Rain Wilson up at home and they talked to him for like, two minutes max and it was done and it was like yeah you just teased me with that and then you don't have him for the entire episode you know right that that bugged me so i think that that we are doing a bit of a disservice to the fans if we literally called brian markinson at home for a minute and a half and hung up on him and said oh no i think brian i'll have some good things to say and he

will he's a friend of mine and he's uh we became uh good friends on a on a show many years after Star Trek. When I did Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, I produced and directed that show, and Brian came on as a recurring character. Oh, sweet. So he was on that show with you. Yeah. Yeah, he did. I think he did all five seasons of that show. Wow. But were you friends with him before he did Girlfriend's Guide to Biazzi? Okay. No. Did he remind you that he was durst? Is that how he reminded me. He reminded me. I didn't even put it together. It's like, You know, we were together. I was on Star Trek.

And then he was like, I was like, which one? And he goes, faces. I was the Vidian and that was Durst at first. And I did two episodes. He should have did charades with you where he like, he like grabbed it towards his face and you know, ripped it off and then moved it to the side. He said, does that remind you of anything? Maybe that would have been kind of funny.

But that's interesting that he worked with you so much later in life, not even, you know, you guys weren't friends during Voyager, obviously. But you became friends later. Yeah, we became friends later. And then we started working together on the other show. And I ride motorcycles for a hobby. I love riding bikes and going out for, you know, motorcycle days. And it turned out Brian also rides.

And so we ended up riding together and taking some day trips. And in fact, I think Brian's off on a motorcycle trip this week. That's right. So, yeah, a big trip to Montana or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And when he gets back, we're going to be able to, he's going to join us. Yeah. we review this. So this is going to be wonderful. So thanks again for everybody for listening

into this episode. And for those of you who are our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for our bonus content. Yeah. See you next week, guys.