The Delta Flyers - Coda
Episode Date: May 31, 2021The 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 Coda. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Coda:After Janeway and Chakotay's shuttlecraft crashes, an injured Capt Janeway has a near-death experience in which she sees her father.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, PJ Tomas, Nicholaus Russell, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, and ArianaAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Elaine Ferguson, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, John Espinosa, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Liz Lowe, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Justin Weir, Simon Inman, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michelle Maroney, Rickard Fahlander, and Meg JohnsonThank 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Delta Flyers.
I am your host, Gerrit Wong.
And of course, as always, my co-host is Mr. Robbie, Duncan McNeio.
Hey, Robbie.
Hello, sir.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
I just want to bring up one thing, first of all.
A couple of episodes, we reviewed Macrocosm.
And we talked about how we were at the halfway point.
A lot of our fans went ahead and posted on.
on Patreon saying that we are not at the halfway point.
Halfway point would be all of season three and then half of season four because we were
thinking three and, yeah, we're not, we're not even at the halfway point.
I know, I think I saw something about that.
Yeah, oh my God, how stupid.
I know, of course.
Of course, our math is completely off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, thinking the other way.
So that is not right.
Okay.
Good.
So we have more.
We have, yeah.
What to do.
Exactly.
We have more to do.
So that's a good thing.
So this week's episode.
we're going to be talking
we're going to be talking and reviewing Coda
Cota is the episode
Coda
I feel like I had a lot of these scripts
for years like I had a collection
of scripts, you know, of our show
that I kept for years, I don't know where that is now
I feel like I had a lot of extra copies of Cota
for some reason
in my mind I see it on the cover
I'm like I feel like there was a ton of Cota scripts
I don't know why I got
Yeah. I don't know if that means, you know, I was in it a lot. I doubt it. It's just random. Anyway. Well, you know, it's funny because I always recall, you know how Johnny Phillips, John Ethan Phillips is always joking around, right? The guy's always joking around. I used to remember he would name off just episode titles talking about, you know, something about how important. Making a joke. Yeah, making a joke. And he was like, he would say, well, you know, and Coda would be one of them. Well, what about Coda? Coda is a really fabulous. He would make this thing.
I'm sure he doesn't remember anything about it.
No, this is always off camera and he's always joking, right?
So Coda is one of those names.
Well, let's go watch Cota.
Yes, let's go watch this episode and we'll be right back, guys.
And for all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for What Do We Remember?
Hey, guys, we're back from watching Coda.
Yes, we are.
Huh.
This feels like a repeat.
like this feels like groundhog day it's like groundhog day starting a recap right now feels like a repeat
i get you all right i feel like we've been here before we have been here before oh my
wait a minute and what we're talking about a talent show was there a talent show what okay what did you
do in that talent show we didn't we didn't even talk about this what do you what do you think tom paris
did it in the talent show i'm going to say go ahead go ahead
I don't know, what were you going to say?
Oh, I was going to say you did a slide presentation on 20th century vehicles.
Yes, that sounds good.
That sounds good.
All right.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's start with our poetry.
Oh, yes, yes.
Did you have more talent for Tom Perez?
Well, yeah, I did.
I was going to say that you.
Tom Parrish shows us how to do 20th, popular 21st century dances, like the macarena,
and you know things like that maybe tom let everyone i think you're right i think i think tom is a dancer
okay for sure all right good let's hear my haiku here's for coda my haiku you ready yes i'm ready
lots of mouth to mouth janeway caught in a death loop resist space daddy yeah there you go i'd try not
There was lots of mouth to mouth.
And she caught a death loop and never trust the space, daddy.
That's all I'm going to say.
Did Rebecca help you with that one?
Or did you?
Was that all yours?
I will not reveal if I get assistance.
I will never.
Oh, okay.
You're not going to give up, give up your source.
Give up your contact, your secret.
Okay, fine.
All right.
Here's my limerick.
Here we go.
Yes.
My limerick for Coda.
there once was a captain named Janeway who was caught in a time loop highway she continued to die
fake dad tried to pry her away from her normal workday oh I like it that's one of my favorite ones
thank you that that's a good limerick it was worth the extra time I know that took 40 minutes to
come up with it was worth it thank you I felt like my last few limericks have just been
kind of rambly, and I thought, well, let me just stick to the typical limerick structure that people
are really used to hearing. It was right in the pocket. I thought that was a good one. Very good work.
Thank you. Good work. I feel so justified and validated now. Thank you. All right, written by Jerry Taylor,
directed by Nancy Malone. I don't even remember. You don't remember Nancy? Please tell me who,
explain who Nancy. Nancy was very good friends with Kate, very dear friends, honestly. And I
don't know if they were friends before. I don't remember if Voyager was the thing that brought
them together, but they stayed very dear friends until Nancy Malone passed away. And I think
about six or eight years ago, they were very close. I think they spent time in Ireland
together after Voyager was done. Nancy was, I don't know how many episodes she directed, but I
remember her vividly. And she's, let's talk about Nancy for a minute. She was one of the
pioneers of female directors. She started as an actress, I remember. Um,
She was from New York, started as a model.
She was beautiful and talented actress and model.
And by the time I think she got in her 40s,
she realized that the roles for women at that point were not very good or challenging.
And so she sort of led the way.
She was one of the first female executive producers and directors.
And she founded something, I think, called Women in Film,
which is still a very powerful and important organization.
Yeah, Nancy was a groundbreaker in terms of female directors and producers and executives.
She was awesome. I love Nancy. I thought she was great. A true pioneer. Yeah. Wow. I feel bad now because I really don't, you know, I was watching the credits. And I just sat there and I thought, why do I have no recollection of this person? I just don't, I don't remember speaking to her, meeting her, having her give me any direction on anything. You know what I'm saying? Like usually I remember. I remember.
remember a tidbit, or at least some type of interaction or a personal story about a director
that we've had. But this director, I plead the fifth. I don't, I don't, I can't remember anything
about her, unfortunately. I don't know how many episodes she direct. I'm sure we could easily find
that out, but I don't think it was many. Okay. And, you know, you and I didn't have much to do
in this episode. So we weren't, we weren't involved with Nancy very much. Okay.
If she directed other episodes, I'd be curious to know what those stories were.
Maybe she directed one where I had a little more to do.
Or maybe, I don't know, or maybe because Kate has talked about her over the years quite a bit.
So I feel like I remember her maybe even more than, you know, than I actually do.
Yeah, I think I do remember Kate talking about her.
That sort of starts to ring a bell now and spending time with her in Ireland.
I remember that as well.
Yeah.
How did you feel about this episode?
But from 1 to 10, 10 being the best.
I'm going to give it probably about a 6.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Maybe 7, maybe a little bit more.
Yeah, I was going to go 7 or 8.
I was going to go to 7 or 8.
Okay.
A little higher, which is, you know, sometimes we flip-a-roo.
Yeah.
I feel like typically I'm a little lower than your score.
You usually are.
I think I went a little higher.
I guess I would go 7 or 8 because I thought,
the direction was really good. I think Nancy did a great job. I noticed that before the credits. I thought
it was very well staged and shot. And I also thought Kate did a phenomenal job. I mean, it was a bit
of a tour to force for her. I thought Robert Beltran gave it his all. We'll talk about some of those
moments. Sure. Sure. And I thought overall it was a way that a sci-fi show like ours can
deal with kind of spiritual things in a way. It was a great, it was really well written by Jerry
Taylor, I thought, to deal with spiritual afterlife issues and consciousness and what happens
when we die. And I thought it was a really interesting premise that in death, there's a,
there's a sci-fi explanation for it, you know, a version of that that I thought was interesting.
Because later on, when we get to the end of this, you know, this episode, we'll talk about it.
but, you know, there is sort of a sci-fi answer to what happens to our consciousness
when we go to a different place and one possible answer for that.
Right.
And I think maybe my score on this episode is lower because I feel like we've already
visited this theme in season one, Harry Kim's episode Eminations,
where he dies and comes back to life.
And he has to go to another dimension, basically, or he experiences the afterlife.
You know? So there's those questions there. They were already asked by that episode. So I felt I felt like this is sort of a rehash, you know, like this is Janeway's version of afterlife, whereas Harriet had it. And so I enjoyed it for what it was, but that's why I rated it a little bit lower than you did. And then we start out, let's start out just with our recap. We're in the corridor. And Neelix is with Janeway. And Neelix asked Janeway at the end of this conversation to keep Tuvok busy on the bridge that evening. What is going on? What are they referring?
I am so confused.
I was so confused in that first scene.
I think intentionally the first scene they're talking about last night was great.
And yeah, you were really great, Captain.
She's like, I don't know.
I'm like, what are they talking about?
Well, that's the talent show.
That's the talent show part.
But then I'm assuming they're talking about the talent show now that I filled in the blanks.
They haven't talked about the talent show.
We don't know.
No.
The first scene, we don't know what they're talking about.
No, no, no, no.
But I'm filling in the blank after I've seen the whole episode.
but I still can't fill in the blank of that question
or that request from Neelix
and keep Tuvok busy on some evening coming up.
Like, what's going on?
I think it was just kind of a jab at whatever.
Tuvok did a reading of something.
Oh, that's right.
The Vulcan poetry readings.
That's probably what it was.
I think it was literally like keep Tuvok busy
because that Vulcan poetry reading was painful.
That makes sense.
I think it was a jab at him.
Yeah.
Okay. Gotcha.
So, yeah.
So we don't know in this first scene,
what the heck they're talking about.
And then we go on to a shuttle and Chikote and the captain are off exploring and they're
talking about the talent show.
That's when we realized, oh, that's what they were talking about.
Correct.
That's what Nelix and Janeway were talking about.
There was a talent show.
Yeah.
Janeway admits that she did a ballet, an interpretive dance called The Dying Swan.
And Chacotay is very complimentary.
I mean, he's like, oh, yeah, that's just a ballet I learned when I was six years old.
Right.
I'm thinking, how good could this ballet be if it was a six-year-old ballet dance about a dying swan?
Right.
I don't know.
I don't care what Chacote says.
It could not have been that amazing, but maybe Janeway's got talents.
I don't know.
I was dying to, I wish I could have seen.
I wanted to see the dying swan once you talked about it.
Because, you know, you're not going to peg Janeway for the dancing.
type, right? I mean, she's not talked about dancing before. There's been a couple of instances where
she paints something, but not dancing. And definitely not ballet. So it would have, I would have loved
to see her plie. I would have loved to have seen this. And arabesque or whatever these names are
from the ballet world. Good. Good. Good. Good work. Guessing. Yeah. You pulled it off.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. All right. So they're in the shuttle. And all of a sudden, they have some
some turbulence.
Yeah.
There's kind of a rough entry.
Ion lightning, they say.
There's some ion lightning, and there's a hydrazine gas leak.
Yes.
And they're very, you know, in a lot of danger.
So they have to make an emergency landing on this planet.
Right.
And I got to say, it was very dramatic suddenly with this ion lightning.
And there was a lot of shaking and stuff.
I'm going to say, I rate their shaking.
Chacote and Janeway is shaking in this scene as a one out of ten.
Wow.
They need to go back to basics on the shaking.
Are you telling me they need a remedial course and shaking 101?
Oh my goodness.
It was not great shaking.
I got to say.
I'm sorry.
I did not get pulled out by the substandard shaking.
I didn't notice that.
It was zero shaking.
They did no interactive.
Like the cameras were shaken, but there was zero interactive.
They were just.
Wow.
And I was like,
man we're in season three and we've learned we should know about how to shake on the on the shuttle
with this kind of turbulence for sure we should know that and and the directors got to the point
i think we might have already talked about this but how they would call out numbers like um the severity
of the shake so if it was a one it wasn't it wasn't a big shake people just move a little bit and if he's like
10 and there was people were like going all over the place right yeah um yeah so we were we were becoming
really professional shakers, all of us.
I thought we were much better than this.
I was very disappointed in Beltran and Kate Mulgrew.
Beltrane and Mulgrew need to go back to shake class
because that was not great shaking.
We'll leave it there.
Well, maybe Nancy Malone needed to speak with Kim Friedman,
who sent the video of how to shake to us, right?
The other female director we had on Voyager could have debriefed Miss Malone
and had her, you know, know about the shaking properly.
I also think, I think if Paris was flying that shuttle,
they would have landed fine.
They would have been fine.
I agree.
You know, Chocote did not have the moves,
and I think he was responsible for this crash on the planet.
Paris could have easily gotten out of that ion lightning.
Oh, okay.
I'm just saying.
You're not going to blame it on the fire or the lightning,
the fire of no phasers from the Videans or the lightning.
No, Paris could have been.
Oh, you could have avoided all that.
All right.
I see.
although I will say there is that little bit of foreshadowing
where Janeway jokes about the next talent show
you know having Chikote do something at the next talent show
she says maybe I can put an apple on my head
and you can shoot it off with a facer
and then he says he goes he goes yeah and if I miss
I get to be captain and that's the foreshadowing
that basically if she dies if she dies he's the guy
yeah and that she ends up dying multiple times
over and over so there is that little foreshadowing moment
which I thought was humorous.
But I like the banter between those two, you know?
Unlike the banter we saw in the shuttle between Chacote and Torres
that didn't really kind of move us.
It didn't move the needle for us, you know, when we were watching that.
We were a little bit like, but definitely you can see how well Chacote and the captain get along, you know, more.
Yeah, and I got to say, and we're getting ahead of ourselves again,
but this episode, like, they literally,
have written multiple episodes now
where it's clearly
a Janeway Chacote
connection.
There's more than just buddy buds.
Oh yeah. And they've written
and then I heard one comment
in this episode where Janeway says
deep into the episode she's like, I can't
leave. I want to see if
Paris and Torres
can get over there. Stop fighting
and become friends and I'm like
what do you talk? They haven't written anything
for Paris and Balana really.
yeah. I mean, we're, you know, as we recap, we're looking into every moment, but there's really
nothing there. Yeah. But yet there's totally something there with Janeway and Chacote and they just
never, never followed through. So I'm with the shippers on this one. I, uh, yeah, I think, uh, you know,
they've laid a foundation for Chacote and Janeway. It's, it's, uh, strong. And sorry to play
devil's advocate. There is one little something there between, uh, Paris and Torres. We saw that when
you guys were inspecting the food replicators.
Remember that?
She came to fix those food replicators.
And there was that little,
little kind of like cynical or sharp wit
that was thrown back and forth a little bit, right?
So I think that's the very first inklings of a possibility.
And then for Janeway...
It is subtle.
Compared to what...
Compared to Chacote and Janeway so far in the series,
right.
They have a lot more relationship.
Of course. Of course.
In comparison, in comparison.
But I do think Janeway's...
line when she says, oh, I want to see if Tom and Bilan, I can finally have a real friendship.
I felt like that was a little bit of foreshadowing. I think this is the point where the writers
thought, yep, we're going to make those guys a couple. I feel like this is something that
maybe, you know, the beginnings of that at least, right? Yeah, yeah, I think so too.
So we find them on the planet surface. Janeway is unresponsive and not breathing. Chikote
revives her. And I got to tell you, there's a couple of times that I thought Chikote
was just going to lean over and kiss Janeway
at that point after he revived her,
there was just this kind of connection or bond.
Yeah, well, a couple things there.
One is Beltran carried Cape Mulgrew
from the shuttle into the cave.
And we've talked about this before.
It's not as easy to carry another human being.
Another adult human being.
Yes, as often when we're filming,
that's something that you get stump people to do or you.
So I was very impressed.
that Beltran carried her, picked her up, carried her across to the caves, and set her down.
I know they did that in peace as he probably, they broke it up, so he didn't ever have to do that
full carry. But that was impressive, but, you know, that he did that.
Yeah. And that was them. That was not doubles or faked in any way.
Right. And then when he's giving her CPR, she's knocked out, he got so passionate.
Yes, he did. He was like, you know, Catherine.
you know trying to revive her again it's like you see he's got strong feelings this is not just
a colleague yeah you know very much help out another colleague did you get that sense that he was
going to lean over and kiss her at all yes yes just checking there was a there was a moment after
yeah after he revives and he says you set up a homing signal and then they sit there for like a long
beat and just sort of look at each other's eyes and then he gets up and go
What? Really?
After they talk about the homing beacon, and then they stare into each other's.
I don't remember.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
He says, okay, you set up a homing beacon.
Yeah.
And then there's this very long look where he's still, she's laying down, and he's just
kneeled over her, looking at her.
It was very strange.
And then he walks back to the shuttle, and she's adjusted her calm badge.
She's going to turn into the thing.
Okay.
And then she's like, he comes back.
He kind of scans the outside of the shuttle.
And she's like, what were you looking at?
And he goes, oh, it's phaser burns on the hall.
I think we were shot down.
This wasn't eye on lightning.
This was an attack.
Yeah.
There's a Vedean signature.
That's right.
On these things.
And so he says, kill the homing beacon.
Yeah, they're going to find us.
Yeah, they could find us.
So she goes to turn off the homing beacon.
And sure enough, there's life signs.
And they're surrounded.
They got to go into a cave.
They run into the cave, and just as they get in the cave, they're surrounded by Vidyans,
and there's a Vidyan attack.
They shoot Chakote, down he goes, and then one of the Videans comes over and grabs Janeway by the neck,
and he's choking and choking and choking her, and she's dying very dramatically.
You know, I know there's, I know there must be self-defense courses when you're going through Starfleet.
It just looked like Janeway and Chacote just had no skill.
to even try to defend themselves.
They seem to be overrun too quickly.
Very quickly.
Well, there were a lot of Vdians.
There were a lot.
They were in all sides of the cave, all around.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, she goes down and she's like,
you know, choked out,
dies.
Yes.
And all of a sudden, boom,
the same shot back in the shuttle
where we see them start to talk about the talent show again.
Yeah.
What the heck they're talking about the talent show for a second,
And then all of a sudden they went, wait, wait, we've been here before.
Like they remember, they remember that this is a reset.
And they're like, okay, let's avoid, we're not going to take the same steps.
Let's not, you know, land on that planet.
And they're trying to change their choices so that they don't repeat the same moves.
Yeah.
But this Vitean ship approaches.
Right.
And there's a Videan ship.
And their shots fired and the shuttle explodes.
Yeah.
You know, so she died, she died in the cave, and she died for the second time.
Yeah, yeah.
They were, just to mention, they were about to eject the warp core, but they didn't have time to, and the entire shuttle explodes.
So that's how she died the second time.
Exactly.
So they tried again.
Yep.
They try it again.
They're back in the same situation, and this time they try a tackion burst.
And now that does something, because the Vodian ships all of a sudden disappear.
Yeah.
So now the shuttle heads back to Voyager.
So they get back to Voyager.
They're on the bridge.
By the way, let's go back to Tachian burst.
Let's get rid of this shuttle.
And Rebecca reminded me when Beltran is saying Tachian burst, there is a blooper reel.
There's a blooper reel that's like five minutes long of Voyager stuff.
And there's a whole section, a big section of it where Beltran and Kate keep cracking up in the shuttle because he can't say Tachian burst.
It's this scene.
This is the scene.
This is the scene where he just keeps screwing up his line over, Beltran over.
And you remember when he screwed up a line, he would get so mad.
He would.
I mean, this is a guy who, you know, his preferred way of acting is Shakespearean plays, right?
So when he's doing sci-fi, which is not his cup of tea, it's hard to remember the techno-bables.
I'm really standing up for Beltran.
I mean, if you're doing something you really don't care much for.
a genre that's not your favorite.
You're going to not get lines right.
Yeah, this is the blooper reel.
You can Google it.
It's on YouTube or somewhere.
Look for the taggers.
Oh, my God, very funny.
Okay, let's continue.
So now they're on the bridge.
And Janeway realizes when she starts talking about the time loop,
nobody knows what she's talking about.
She's like, not even Chikote.
Not even Chikote.
So she's like, she is the only person that experienced this time loop.
Okay, so now she has to go to the sick bay.
The doctor runs a micro-sule.
but but important detail she's she's describing this and chikote says i remember the first part that you
described when we crashed on the planet okay but i don't remember anything else so that's important detail
yes you're right so that little detail to me was a clue of like okay the first part but she went off on her
own journey after that yeah you know and to me okay yep so she took this other path and so now
she's in sickbay. And the doctor has run a microcellular scan, which shows that Janeway has
actually contracted a disease. And guess which disease? The Videon phage. The disease that nobody wants.
Yeah, she has the phage. Or we could say it phagee. Yes, the fagee. The fagee. So the faget happens.
And basically, the doctor explains to her. And also hallucinations are part of the early symptoms of
Faget. So this is what's going on. You've been having hallucinations.
And that's that whole thing with being attacked. She's also like, how did I get this?
How could I possibly gotten this? And he said, well, you had physical contact when she was
choked in the in the cave. She had some physical contact and so she might have contracted
it there. But she also argues. She goes, we've had close physical contact with Vdians before.
Nothing happened. So the doctor says, well, maybe the virus.
has mutated or something.
Mutated into another strain of that virus, right?
And he quarantines her, he quarantines her.
Poor Janeway.
Just like all of us have been quarantined for the last year.
Yes, yes. Shades of pandemic that we're dealing with while watching this episode.
That is for sure.
And she sleeps for 40 hours.
And that sounds like people after their vaccination shot sleeping for being really
tired and just out of it.
So she sleeps for 40 hours behind this bioforce field.
And she wakes up. The disease is spreading. And she's got the phages. You see it already. She's
got the lesions and the marks of the phage. And it's happening very quickly. And the doctor explains,
you're going to have a lingering painful, painful death. And the only solution the doctor says is
euthanasia. Which is so shocking. What? Yeah. Well, I think it's really interesting the way
Nancy directed this because she really brought the tone and the volume down in terms of the
speaking, you know, the dialogue between Janeway and the doctor. It's the lowest I've ever heard
Janeway talk, you know, it's almost in a whisper at times. And so everything's very quiet.
And so when the doctor, and even the doctor's like that, he matches her level. And he's like,
there's only one suggestion, Captain, euthanasia. And it's just coming from that line delivery,
the audience is like, what? Excuse me? I know. I mean, it was like a record scratch moment. Yeah.
Yes. And back to her direction, it was, it was beautifully staged and lit. I thought Marvin did a great job because it was very dark.
The lighting was wonderful, yes. Yeah. I agree. It would look great. So he fills the space, he fills the space with between the force filled with a neural toxin. That's what he tells her in the middle of the conversation. And she's starting to freak out now. She's like, no, wait a minute, stop. Yeah, she can't.
none of her authorization, her captain's authorization codes are working. So now she is
basically dying from this neural toxin. And we can see her die yet again. Again. She dies better
than she did in the cave. The cave death bothered me. It was too, I don't know, it didn't,
it didn't sound painful. It's, yeah, but it sounded, it sounded pleasurable. It sounds like she might
be enjoying it. Yes. So I like, I like this death. This death was really asphyxiation.
And she really, and she played that well.
And I think it's always impressive to watch actors, you know, do a death scene because, let's face it, we have no experience of death for real.
So we have to really come up with what we think is going to happen, how to things shut down in us.
And I think Janeway does a good job in that, or Kate does it a good job.
Yeah.
Well, she died in many different ways in this episode.
So very challenging.
Yeah.
She dies.
She dies big in that scene.
Bam.
She's out.
She's done.
And suddenly we're back in the shuttle.
One more time.
I'm back in the show.
And it's like, what the heck?
But this time there's this bright anomaly outside.
That's the difference.
They see the anomaly, right?
And they're trying to get away.
I'm sorry.
One person is, Janeway's like, get away, get away.
Chikote is like, no, go towards it.
Maybe we're doing the wrong thing.
Maybe we need to fly into it.
She disagrees.
And of course, fighting against it is the wrong thing because, you know,
she basically now has an out-of-body experience where she's seeing Chikote
trying to revive her from this shuttle grass.
We go back to that first version of the story where they're down on the planet and he's performing CPR, but she's watching it all standing over herself in Chakotay.
And he cries so hard when she dies in that scene.
He cries and I thought Beltran did a, again, like deeply emotional.
Great acting, but also just from a Chukotay Jainway Shipper perspective, like really personal and emotional.
I don't know how you come back from, you know, and don't have a relationship with these guys. Anyway, crying was great. She even tries to touch him. Janeway tries to touch him and her hand goes right through. So. Oh, right, right. Ghost. Let's call her ghost to Janeway from now on. So then we follow, you know, unresponsive dead Janeway body back up to sickbay where she was literally pronounced dead by the doctor at 0.320 hours of massive cerebral vascular collapse.
That's a ton twister for you right there.
Massive cerebral vascular collapse.
Okay.
And Chacote, you can even see it.
He has no lines, but when he realized she's dead, I mean, he's just, he can't even take it.
He leaves in silence.
And, and Janeway, this whole time is trying to talk telepathically with Kess.
She's trying to, she's like, in sickbay.
Like Kess is in there helping the doctor.
Yeah.
The doctor snapping at Kess while he's trying to save Janeway, but, but Janeway dies.
and the ghost Janeway is trying to talk telepathic.
She's going, Kess, you can hear me.
You have to, you know, you've talked telepathic before.
Nope, nothing.
Kess heads down the hall.
And Janeway is following her.
And Janeway is like, you've got to hear me.
And she literally stands in front of Kess as she continues to walk down the hall.
And Kess walks right through her.
And suddenly Kess stops.
And she turns around.
She did feel something.
Yeah.
Janeway didn't want to give up.
and it worked for a second.
Kess felt something.
So he jumped to the briefing room.
Yeah.
And they decide, you know, they're talking about Kess's experience.
And Chikote says, you know, I think Paris says, you know,
it might be some kind of alternate dimension in subspace or something is where she might be.
Yep.
And Chikote says, let's do this.
Alana's going to run a full subspace sweep.
Right.
Try to find this, anything in this subspace alternate dimension.
Right.
And off they go.
And they're in engineering.
And now we finally see Harry Kim.
This is literally, this is about the halfway point of the episode that Harry pops his face into a scene.
And they're doing a scan.
And Harry has a really nice, a little bit of techno babble there.
He says, while Torres and Kim are scanning subspace, you hear Harry says,
the forward array is ready to scan for temporal phase shifting, chronotone particles or field fly.
and I'm watching me say this line and I'm like I don't know where I just I'm just trying to
understand what I was you know what you were playing yeah I wasn't sure if I was playing like I would
ask all business yeah just business I feel like what you were playing is like all business like
I'm on this I'm all business yeah and I don't you know it felt realistic it felt organic right
it felt organic it you know this is what I'm saying like because of
Chakotay's emotional investment.
Like, if this were just colleagues, then it would just be all business.
Yeah, that's true.
There would be some emotional connection.
But the fact that his response to this event is so emotional.
Yeah.
And I think Harry's response is all business.
It kind of shows the difference between his, you know, Chacote's personal connection.
Most definitely.
Yeah.
And then later on, not to jump too far ahead, but later on,
Harry has a moment where he is emotional.
at the appropriate time.
But right now he's all business.
Right.
Well, the anomaly appears now, right?
So the anomaly appears at a door,
the entranceway of engineering.
This light kind of this.
Light, yeah.
But nobody sees it, by the way.
No, but Ghost Janeway does, right?
Ghost Janeway sees it.
And as he's walking out, I thought,
Admiral Paris, like that's what,
that's funny.
Out of there.
Another silver-haired Starfleet, you know,
officer, it walks out.
Yeah. And it turns out...
Well, Len Carreyu is the actor.
Yes.
Len Carrey walks out of this bright light
and only Janeway can see him.
And I got to pause about Len Carrey you for a minute.
Yes.
I am a huge fan of Len Carreyu.
I knew you.
I saw him in the original production of Sweeney Todd on Broadway.
Oh my goodness.
The musical opera about the, you know, the barber.
Demon Barber, yes.
demon barbara that kills people yeah and they turn him into pies but i saw him in very early days of that
of that musical on broadway and it was profound that experience he was so good the whole the whole
production was phenomenal see i'm getting goosebumps now by you telling me this yeah i i was uh you know
having len carry you on our show was huge to me yeah i've worked with lyn again i've directed him a few
times on Blue Bloods, where he's the patriarch on that show.
And I've told him, every time I get to work with him, I tell him about that Sweeney Todd's story.
And I had, I got his autograph.
I bought the program.
Oh, nice.
And I got his autograph and Angel Landsberg's autograph from that cast.
And it was up on my wall, like, you know, pinned up on my wall.
When I was a teenager and was a big, very.
valuable souvenir for me.
I was a huge fan.
Anyway, yeah.
You know, we should...
That's Len Carey.
We should do a deep dive of all the actors that we kind of look up to at some point, you know?
I'd like to hear everyone else because you definitely have a lot of people that you've,
you know, admired over the years and you got a chance to work with them again, which is...
I know.
It's crazy.
He talks about the fact that, you know, that he...
Janeway's dad drowned under the polar ice.
He walks out and she goes, daddy?
Yeah.
That was the first moment.
I was like, she's daddy?
Yeah, I was like, what?
He goes, yes, it's me.
And she goes, you can't be you.
Yeah, you drowned under a polar ice cap.
She said you died 15 years ago.
And he goes, that's right, drowned under a polar ice cap on tau.
Now, here's a thing.
He pronounced it tau C-T prime, where it's spelled C-E-T-I.
It should be T-Seti prime, right?
Or maybe that is the correct pronunciation.
But I always thought it was Talcetti Prime, but...
Yeah, that makes...
I think you're correct on that one.
Yeah, he drowned and she's very skeptical.
And he says to her, Catherine, you're dead.
Yeah.
And this is just your consciousness.
This is your consciousness not wanting to let go.
Right.
Not wanting to cross over.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's right.
And he says, you know, eventually you will cross over to this,
to another state of consciousness.
and it's beautiful. It's wonderful. You have to let go. And he reminds her of, yeah, of her grief when
he died and how she felt like his presence. And he even described some moments in her memory.
She's because she's skeptical at first. Like it's not you. And he remembers all this detail.
And he said, I was like you. I didn't want to cross over. And I remember watching your grief for weeks.
And you didn't want to let go until finally you did. And I was able to cross over. And it's beautiful. Come with me.
Yeah, the words that they wrote for him were it's full of joy and indescribable wonder.
Like that, those words are lush and rich, and it makes me think of Willie Wonka in the chocolate factory.
And it makes me think of, you know, something that everybody wants to go check out, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's like still, she's like, I'm not quite ready.
Yeah, right.
Tuvok's quarters, he's trying to mind meld with cats.
And Janeway's watching, observing all of this.
And she's like, you know, Tuvok, you must hear.
me. You know, you're one of my closest friends. And they try really hard. Tuvok goes through a lot of Vulcan
steps to clear Kess's mind and hear something and they hear nothing. And so basically
the end of the scene, they accept that she is dead. Yeah. And Kess leaves. And Tuvok has a wonderful
moment where he leaves a log, officer's log. Yeah. And he just has a very tender, sweet moment where he
says she was a good friend that I will never replace. And Janeway hears this. And I thought that
was a very tender moment. Yeah, it was. Most definitely. Now we're in the mess hall where the memorial
service is taking place. Torres speaks first. And you see Harry sitting oddly in a single chair,
like a family portrait. Yes. He was. He was kind of sitting off by the windows and, you know,
people behind him.
Yeah.
In a formation behind him.
Yes.
In a really random formation.
Yeah, exactly.
And I'm starting to remember when we were filming that, yeah, we were all given these
directions like, okay, you two, you sit, you stand, you stand this way, you stand a little
forward.
Like there was no order.
No, you know, it was all jumbled up kind of random how people were placed in that memorial service, right?
There wasn't official lines of chairs where everyone was seated orderly like that.
that. It was just very, very informal. So she talks about how, you know, she didn't get along with
Janeway in the beginning. But it was really Janeway that saw something in her that she didn't even
see. She saw the worthiness of Bolana Torres and that she should be the chief engineer. She's
worthy of that and that she had faith in Belana Torres. And so Belana talks about that the fact
that Janeway had faith in her made it so that she had faith in her.
herself. So really, it helped her grow as a person or as a half human person and half
Klingon person. And the gift that Janeway gave to Torres and a lot of us is the knowledge
that we are better and stronger than we think. Yeah. Okay. Then Harry speaks next. He tells
of a story of eating ripe fruit on an away mission and how his hands and mouth were stained purple
and how Janeway sat down next to him and he looks over and her mouth is stained purple too. And at that
point the interesting camera angle i'm harry's completely out of focus and it's just on jane way and
janeway and janeway is listening to harry's story and this is this is something that i don't recall i
don't remember her crying um but then again right it was yeah i wasn't looking at her
like a a quiet tear rolling down her face it was more than one she had both if you look
careful oh yeah she had one to begin with and then it was then it filled it was really it really welled up
which is now the second time that I've cried now watching Voyager episodes up until this point
was watching her cry made me cry in a way yeah and I also wonder well it was very sweet
because Harry goes you know she would want us to she wouldn't want us to be sad that's right you know
yeah she'd want us to have good memories and you tell this story about the you know your mouth
yeah and and I do think Robbie that I got to a point where I had more tear
showing where she because remember that shot is of her reaction of me right and i'm out of focus but
i think that i might have gotten a little bit more teary-eyed at that moment but you don't see that
though right because they didn't take that that that angle that view um of harry talking it was on janeway
and he says you know these are the yeah yeah harry gets very emotional when he says these are
the times we have to remember yeah and then he he can't finish stumbles and paris comes over quickly
and comforts hairy and kind of pulls him off, puts his arm on him and pulls my arm a lot, actually.
You're a pretty good patter, you know that?
Yeah, I remember that.
You remember patting me?
I used to, that reminds me.
I used to like.
It's better than off camera where you would shove me.
Yeah, Robbie would actually like shove me or push me in a really weird, like, sinister older brother way.
Like the kind of thing where the older brother looks to see, but the older brother looks to see if the mom and dad are looking, they're not looking and then does the deed.
That's kind of what Robbie would do.
I did.
But on camera, Robbie's very caring.
Robbie would not roughhouse.
Tom doesn't roughhouse Harry.
Robbie does roughhouse Garrett.
Let's make that delineation between the two.
And then Chacote says, release the pod.
Yes.
And Richard.
Starshet.
Richard Starshet, who is Robert Beltran's stand-in, actually.
Yeah.
Is the one who does the book.
He blows the.
Wilson's whistle is what it's called.
Whatever that little noises.
Yeah.
And then Len Careyue, her dad, Janeway's dad, comes over and says it's over, Catherine.
Yeah.
There is nothing left for you here.
Come with me.
Let's go.
Right.
This is at the post reception later on in the mess hall.
Yeah.
A little time has passed, right?
Yeah, a little time has passed.
Just trying to convince her leave this reality.
This isn't for her.
She needs to accept this and move on.
And Janeway doesn't want to leave because that's when she says she wants to see what
happens with her crew, where the Tom and Balano ever stops sparring with each other and develop a
real friendship? And we're all going, huh? They're going to develop more than a friendship.
That's what I, you know, was thinking actually in my head. But it was just an odd statement for her
to have. Yeah. Yeah, they're starting to, you know, the writers were starting to figure out,
okay, let's start laying some foundations here. Okay. Down the road. Gotcha.
Janeway gets suspicious. Janeway gets suspicious. Yeah, they basically argue. Like, she's really
suspicious he's pushing hard the part where he's pushing is like i want to save you from this pain and then
janeway's like well my dad always made me learn by my mistakes he didn't hide me from life and he's
definitely not going to hide me from death so who are you so she knows at that point this is not yeah
that's right very suspicious they argue and then she has another flash where it's her her point of view
back to that very first story where she was unconscious on the planet now it's yeah now it's her
point of view. And Tuvok and the doctor, they're trying to revive her with Chikote this time.
Yeah. She realizes that that's, that's point of view is, is the real part. All the rest is hallucinations.
Yeah. And she knows that, you know, this daddy, space daddy is not her real dad.
Mm-hmm. So she, yeah, we see that that, that she, that very first death, that that's probably
the real story here. Right. And that they say something in that point of view, you hear them talk about
an alien presence in her injured body.
I think the doctor.
Yeah. Space Daddy,
Len Carey, says at one point, he says, I've done this many times,
but I've never encountered someone so resistant.
And so you start to realize he's admitting he's not, he's not,
the daddy thing is a hallucination.
He gives up the ruse. He gives it up. He's like, okay, fine, you're right.
You know, my species help people who die with crossing over, right?
Yeah. That's it. Your conscience will live in this matrix. And she's going like,
okay, that thing is where I'm going to be.
And she just refuses.
She's like, nope, she's too strong.
Her will is too strong.
And then, of course, his evil voice comes out at the end, right?
Yeah, he does a really good job.
He does a really good job.
He says, you're in a dangerous profession, captain.
You face death every day.
There will be another time, and I'll be waiting.
Eventually, you'll come into my matrix, and you will nourish me for a long, long time.
And then Janeway says,
go back to hell coward that's right and off he goes back into his light ball do you remember when
we were kids robbie hell was a bad word like you didn't see that on tv like we would always call
hell hE double hockey sticks you know when i was a kid oh yeah that was clever right but
primetime television didn't have any characters really the word hell even that word was
kind of censored right um but here we go it's common go back to hell coward yeah
Was that your impersonation?
Yeah, that was pretty good.
You're getting it.
See, that's all I get?
All right.
So she says, go back to hell, and we go back to the planet crash site, and she, she recovers.
Yes, the entity is gone from her cerebral cortex.
The entity is gone.
And, yes, the alien presence within her cerebral cortex is gone.
And they say a number of times, we thought we lost you.
So that's kind of making sense now.
Yeah.
And she says to them, well, from what I saw, it's certainly not.
where I'd like to spend eternity.
Right.
Yeah, that's her feelings about what this guy offered.
When they get out, after she's regained consciousness from the planet surface,
they all get up and they start walking away.
And Chacote puts his hand on the small of her back as they're walking out, right?
Yeah.
Gensel's sort of, you're more than a captain to me kind of move.
Yes.
There's something there.
And so we jump ahead and she's got a captain.
Captain's log. She talks about the emotional impact of this experience. And in her ready room,
the door opens. Chiquote comes in. He brings a rose to her. Single rose. A single rose.
And he says after going head to head with Captain Janeway, he must have realized he'd met his match.
A little smooth talker. And also he says, I'm right. Yes, he says, I'm reminding you that the doctor
told you to take it easy. And she's like, you know what? I'd rather stay busy, which is
is a very Janeway answer, I think, for sure. But then she says that, you know, maybe they should
celebrate, you know, this win from not being taken by this alien. And she says, a bottle of
champagne and a moonlight sale on Lake George. Again, this is not something that Harry suggests
to Paris ever. And we're just friends. You know what I'm saying? Harry doesn't feel like,
hey, Tom, what about a moonlight sale with me on Blake George? Like, I would never.
ask you for that.
And look at the, look on her face.
What's the look on her face when she comes out, when she, she passes camera.
She's got this beaming smile on her face.
Like she's nine years old.
Like she just opened up presents on Christmas, basically.
No, there's definitely something there.
Something's happening.
Oh, gosh.
Gosh, yeah.
Yeah, so off they go for their romantic moonlight sale.
And the very last line, I think, of the episode, Chikote says, that sounds like living.
Ah.
There you go.
What's your theme?
I wrote down, trust your instincts, that things aren't always what they appear.
That's the lesson I got from this, because Janeway could have given up a bunch of times.
But somewhere deep down in her gut, she knew that she wasn't dead, that this wasn't right.
And she kept fighting.
so I would say
trust your instincts
things aren't always what they appear
question things
that would be my theme what about you
I'm going to go with I mean that is I agree
that is part of that is a theme
or that is a lesson to be learned
from this episode
but I also for me
what stood out was Torres's speech
about what Janeway gave to her
and a lot of the crew
and that is the knowledge that we are better
and stronger
than we think.
And this is a message, this is a lesson that all of us need to repeat to ourselves.
You know what I'm saying?
This is something that will erase self-doubt because that is something that we all deal with as human beings is self-doubt.
You know, we sit here and think, oh, God, I'm not good enough.
I just got hired for that job.
Maybe they're going to really fire me on the first day because they'll realize I'm not good enough.
I'm not good enough for that.
You know, so this is something that creeps into every human being's mind, I think, you know,
whether you're young, old, middle-aged.
And so that is my lesson to be learned is that you need to believe in yourself, you know, and that you are worthy.
That's it.
I like it.
Good.
All right.
Well, that was great.
Great episode.
I'm going to go up to an eight.
You're still going to eight.
Okay.
I will raise mine.
I'm going to raise mine.
I'm going to go to seven, actually.
I'm not going to stick it at six.
So I'm going to go to seven.
So it is a good episode for sure.
All right.
Well, join us next week, guys, as Robbie and I will be reviewing.
blood fever and should we say we have a special guest? I just said it. Well, we may have a
special guest. We'll see. Yeah. Okay. We will see. And for everyone else who happens to be
one of our beloved Patreon patrons, we love you. Please stay tuned for your bonus segments.
See you guys. See ya.