The Delta Flyers - Equinox Part I

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Equinox, Part I. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Equinox, Part I:Voyager encounters the Equinox, a Starfleet science vessel also stranded in the Delta Quadrant; hostile aliens attack both ships as Janeway tries to figure out Equinox captain Rudy Ransom.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, & Bryan FullerAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Daniel de Rooy, Chris Knapp, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Lori Tharpe, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Shambhavi Kadam, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Brandon May, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Jeremy Mcgraw, Jason Bonnett, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Jack Fine, & Susan V. GrunerAnd our Producers:James Amey, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Chloe E, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Liza Albright, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, John Mann, Holly Schmitt, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Craig M. Nakashian, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Carmen Puente-Garza, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Jordan Marie Benko, & Nicholas Vasilakes Thank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers, Tom and Harry, as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Trek actor, who also starred in the 1992 episode First Duty for Star Trek the next generation. As Nick Licarno, some people think that this is the origin. story for Tom Paris. It may or may not be Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil and myself, your favorite eternal ensign, Garrett Wong. Remember, you can get the full

version of this podcast by signing up at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. You can become a patron. Hello. Well, hello there. Hello, how are you? Good. Hey, thank you for taking care of the Tim Russ interview. That was good. Oh, it was great. It was great. It definitely

made me realize, like, when the two of us they're interviewing, we can kind of like piggyback and, you know, you say something that inspires me and then I say something. It definitely like doing it by myself. I was like, it's harder. Yeah. It's harder. It really is. I think we dig a little deeper when it's the two of us. So yeah. Yeah. So there you go. But yet it's, it was nice because you have a lot of similarities with Tim Russ. I couldn't believe how many things we had in common. That kind of blew me away. I was like, wait a minute. They both did Twilight Zone very early in their career. First season, yeah.

Yes, and then what was the other thing? You have three things. The PBS show was our first job. Yes. Now, that's really weird. That's weird. PBS, then Twilight, then what was the third thing? There's another thing.

Oh, we both did the same season of TNG. The exact same season, 19, which I just mentioned just now as your other, you know, big credit. Yeah, he had been trying to get on that Star Trek show for a few years. Ages, yeah. Couldn't get it, couldn't get it, and then finally got it. right around the same time, like we could have met. I have no idea. We might have crossed paths. Yeah. That was a great interview. If you're not a Patreon patron, you should sign up because that was a Tim Russ interview was phenomenal. That's all there on the Patreon site. Yes,

at commander level and above. You can, you can tune in on all these wonderful extra interviews and bonus content that we have that really, it's, it really kind of gives you the full picture. So when you have a chance, folks, jump in there and, uh, and, uh, and subscribe. Yeah. You won't, you won't be sorry. No, you won't be sorry. I'm not sorry. All these conversations like with Tim or stuff that, you know, I've known him for almost 30 years now. Yeah. And I never, never knew any of this. So I mean, the amount of if I was to actually sit there and count the number of wows that came out of you, you're like, wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. What? And what's and I didn't know that. There was a lot of that in there.

Yeah. That's super cool because, again, we've known Tim for decades, but yet there were definitely facts that came out in that interview. So much new stuff. That was just like, excuse us? Come again? How did that happen again? So, yeah, I mean, it's tremendous.

Okay, so are you ready for this week's episode? Yes, I am. Yeah, me too. It's called Equinox, part one. So this is a two-parter. Oh, yeah. I like two-parters. I think they're fun.

It's going to be big. It will be. I'm excited. Let's go watch it. Let's go watch it. We'll be right back and with our review, recap, and discussion of Equinox, part one. Thank you, everyone. Robbie and I are back from watching.

Yes, we are. From the age of Equinox. The Age of Equinox. Is that what you're going with? Yeah, I was going with sort of the, you know, it's the equinox. It's the hippie thing. I'm still, I still think my idea. Is it a better idea?

Okay. It was a pretty cool idea. But anyway, I wonder if the gym chain, Equinox, was established because the founder was a huge fan of Voyager and he loved this episode. Maybe. Well, it's funny because when I put Equinox in my notes for the first time, it auto-corrected with a capital. So as if it's the gym. So maybe my phone already was thinking I kept typing Equinox Gym. And for those of you that don't live in America, I don't know if there's Equinox.

Equinox is a chain of very fancy workout gyms. Yeah. And I actually don't even pronounce it, Equinox. I say Equinox is how I say the word. So tomato, tomato, I guess. I don't know. Or maybe I'm just flat out wrong. I say Aquinox.

Because I like horses. Equinox is another way to pronounce it. Let's get into this Equinox part one, teleplay by Brennan, Braga, and Joe Monosky. Was I right? or was I right? Totally right. Yeah. Story by Rick Berman, Brandon and Joe. So Rick was a part of breaking down the story.

David Livingston was our director. Two for two for me. I could have sworn it was Alan Crake. Well, maybe he did part two. Yeah. Jinks, Yomi, Coke. Yeah. I just, again, it just seems like whenever it's a two-parter,

it's a Brandon Braga and Joe Monoski production, typically. Yeah. Guest stars. Let's go through our actors real quick. John Savage. is in this episode. We had talked about that earlier. John Savage's very first film.

This is a not safe for work alert for those. What? As I read the title. Oh, no. His very first film was an indie horror film in 1969. Back when, like, you know, anybody that had a camera could make a movie and try to find a distributor or do it themselves.

When you were five and I was one, Yes. This is 1969 John Savage's first job in an indie hard, low budget horror film. The title was The Master Beater. The Master Beater. So I guess he was like, he would torture people is, I think, part of the plot. That was him. Yes. You would torture people using self erotica. I don't know. What's happening here? Master Beater. I think he was the. get it the master it was like a he was like a sadistic master would torture and tie people up he was the master of beating it's yes master of beating the master beater i told you it's not safe for work okay fine that's john savage's first film i'd forgotten he was in hair i totally got

reminded the onion field like he was he was a movie star when we were young people Heck yeah, he was. Huge movie star. Classy. So that's John Savage. Titus Welliver. Love Titus. See him from, yeah, he's all over the place. And I talked about him recently. I talked about how it's so funny how you watch different TV shows and all of a sudden you start seeing guest stars of actors that you knew when you were young. And then now they're playing dads and they're playing grandfathers. And it's just like, oh, my goodness. But yeah, good old Titus. Titus, great actor. His first job was a movie called Navy SEALs.

And it was in 1991. I remember that film. Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen. That's right. Olivia Berkaland, Berkland, who played Gilmore. Ensign Gilmore, yeah. Ensign Gilmore. Her first job, also in 1991, the soap opera, One Life to Live.

Oh, wow. And she's one year older than you. She was born in 63. Oh, okay. That's Olivia Berkland. and then our, of course, one of our favorites, Rick Worthy. Yeah. Appearing on our show again, this time not as a robot.

Not as a robot. Exactly. They allowed him to show his mug on camera. Finally. His first job was a TV show called Missing Persons with Daniel J. Travante. Okay. I didn't write down the year, though. So that's a big mistake I made.

That's all right. But I'm going to guess since, you know, it was in the 90s. that's what it would have been. Because the first episode of Voyager that he was on was... I think it was like 92 or something. Yeah. I just didn't write it down. But that's Rick Worthy.

We probably mentioned it before. I forgot one last guest star, Scarlet Palmer's, who plays Naomi Wildman. She has one scene. She pops in. But you're missing one other person. The person who's yelling incomprehensible, you know, just going, and he's shooting the phaser, that guy?

Who is that guy? I don't know. He's the guy on the echonox that Nelix finds. Oh, he jumps up. He's probably a stunt man. Really? They probably hired a stunt man. Well, he had lines.

He did speak and he fires, but he speaks, like I said, incomprehensible baby talk. Let me see. He's like, is that Steve Dennis maybe? I don't know. Was that, that was the one that went crazy and they said he's got mental problems. I think it was Steve, green medical, he's wearing the medical.

Stephen Dennis is the actor's name. He was on Voyager more than once, I think. What? He was in night, the episode night. He was a night alien. Oh, he was the poop alien? No. Yeah, he was a poop alien.

Wow. He was also in Think Tank playing Phenom. What? He was also in Warhead. playing uncanny. Okay. Okay. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. That's who it was. Yeah, he's kind of like the, the Jeffrey Combs of Voyager in a way. Yeah. Doing all the... What? I forgot to mention him.

I think we need to have him on as a guest. I really feel like he's got a lot of talk about. His first job was pro the TV series Profiler in 1997. Yeah. Remember that show too? That was Stephen Dennis. Interesting. There's our cast.

We got everybody, Scarlett and Rick Worthy and Olivia and Titus and John and you and me. We were in it. Let's do our poetry synopsis. All right. Okay. Here we go. My haiku for Equinox. Part one.

Yes. Equinox needs help. Turkey platter, Tom, jealous. An EMH spy. There you go. Nice. You've got a lot of ground cover. there, especially the Tom and Balana.

Tom, I like that. I'm going to talk about that. I think we need a T-shirt. Tom, turkey platter, Paris, T-shirt is what we need. Okay. Let's hear this. For some more poetry, we're going to have a limerick for Equinox Part 1. It goes a little something like this.

Lay it on me. Voyager meets another victim of the caretaker at war with an interspatial fissure, horrific noise maker. Everyone is acting super nice, but, Seven discovers the spice. The Equinox crew is led by a prime directive rule breaker. Oh, yeah. Right?

That's good. I like it. That's good. Some complicated rhymes in there. It was complicated. Yeah. You know what? I don't know.

I think maybe we might have to be, we might have to transition into rap music. Yes. I think we should wrap some synopsies. Yeah. Just a little hip hop synopsies. cool hip hop synopsises of life is what we can do all right okay i like that idea all right let's get into our episode lots to talk about all right it's our first first thing is we see a star fleet vessel flying through space it's got some kind of weird force field around it that's kind of that's just

frithing in and fritz and shimmery and very very confusing it because it looked a lot like voyager this ship it had similar pedigree you know but it was this we we're going to going to come to learn it's a science vessel and blah, blah, blah. But we, what the heck is this Sarfley thing doing in our show? Correct. We're confused. First shot, we see the captain on the bridge of that ship. John Savage

rocks into a close-up, and he says, stay the course! Yes. We cut down to our pilot. At the con, we see Titus Welliver is revealed. I didn't know who his character was, but I was like, Titus Welliver, I forgot he's in this too. He's helm, but he's also

the FO. We learned later, but But, you know, in this shot, he's, he's a helm. Yeah. He's the helm. But I said the same thing. I go, oh, it's Titus. Titus. I forgot he was in this.

Yeah. We learned that their deflector shields are at 29% and these aliens are attacking them, whatever's happening or these weapons. We didn't even know that it's aliens yet. Yeah. Could be weapons fire. We don't know what's happening. He says, drop the shields and allow them to recharge.

It's going to need 45 seconds. Yeah. So they lower these shields. all of a sudden, these portals start opening. Yeah. And they start to fire at them. They're firing at the portals and they're closing. It's like a video game.

Other portals are popping up over here. They begin to get overwhelmed by all these portals opening. And then a creature comes out of one and goes and attacks some officer on their bridge. As he sort of attacked by the alien, suddenly he collapses and he starts to mummify. It was very cool. basically turns into like a mummy of a human in seconds.

It was very horrifying. It was and it kind of looks a lot like what happened to the character of Taman on the planet of women that were leering me. Oh yeah. Remember that? Like I found him and he was completely designated. Yeah, he was a mummy.

So I was thinking maybe maybe they have some relationship. These aliens might to their planet of women. Yeah, they might be cousins of of those aliens so ladies are mad and they're coming through portals now um okay so he he fires at this thing but uh but he gets overwhelmed and he's dead and i want to say very cool shots in this opening lots of like super wide angle close-ups weird high angles looking down on people or

it was just classic like you know wide lens livingston david livingston all over the It did look cool. It did look cool. And the other thing to note is that that bridge is just a mess. It's not like it's pristine like an hour bridge. Like they have been clearly dealing with this foe, this enemy for quite some time because they are in shambles. I mean, it looks like they've been dealing with this for months or maybe longer. The next thing we see after I think our opening credits is astrometrics. We go into astrometrics. Janeway 7, Chacote are looking at this, some, message and it's john savage and uh we have seen what's going on on their ship but now they're getting this message yes it's a distress call they they rewind it listen to it and she picks up ransom and equinox yeah and she remembers ransom she knows the name yes and also this message was transmitted 14 hours ago yeah and the distance was 3.2 light years away so not that far no And you're right. Janeway does remember the name. She doesn't know him. She knows. Yeah, you can tell she goes ransom. Ransom. Yes. And then they decide, okay, it's 3.2 light ears. Let's go Maximum War. Go to Red alert. Let's get over there. Yeah. Help him out. And then we cut out into the hall because Seven says, well, did you know him?

Yeah. And Janeway says, well, by reputation only. I didn't. I didn't know him personally. But he was a, you know, well-known science officer. And he actually proved the Borg and Starfleet wrong. about this extinct species that even the Borg thought was extinct. Yeah, the Eurydians, a species 6291 is the designation from the Borg. And everyone thought they were extinct. You're right. And because he was an exobiologist and proved everybody wrong, that's how he got promoted to captain. That's how he became the captain of this Nova-class starship, the Equinoxas science vessel. Both of them are kind of jazzed about meeting him.

They're like, well, I really want to meet this guy, you know? He's a groundbreakinger in a way. Yeah. Even though from the distress call, they're probably dying, but they're like, cool, we're going to meet this guy who might be dead when we get there, but yeah, yeah, exactly. Now we go to a space shot, Voyager's going at warp. We come back onto the bridge, come out of warp, and they have found them. Yeah. But everybody's on the bridge now, I noticed.

Neelix is there. Polona's working off to the side. Yeah. It's very unusual. So obviously, this is a big deal to find the Starfleet vessel near us in the Delta Quadrant. Definitely. Or clearly, everyone is excited to meet Captain Ransom. This is what is.

Well, when the view screen, we see on the view screen, we see the Equinox. And Neelix is the one who asks, hey, what's happening to their shields? And Torres says, well, they're being disrupted by some kind of energy surges. And Janeway hails the Equinox. And Ransom starts to bark out orders. He's like, extend your shields around the Equinox. We need this now. And Janeway's like,

well, okay, do it, do it. She hails ransom again, no response. So she tells Chacote to assemble rescue teams to secure the equinox and figure out what's going on. So they do, they do extend their shields. Yeah. Around and Paris moves the ship into kind of Voyager right above it. So that they're in kind of this, this one on top of the other situation. And then the shields do extend and hold, but they hear these.

interspatial fissures just before the shields kind of wrap around both of them. They hear these noises. And they're creepy. They're creepy horror movie type noises. Screechy kind of noises. Yes. But they kind of disappear. There's no more sign of these fissures.

And so, yeah, Janeway says, Tuvok, you're with me. We need to assemble rescue crews and she's on a mission. So next thing we see is on the Equinox ship. We're in the engineering room. It's Chacote, Paris, Torres. I made a note, Bologna's fluffy hair. She's got special. Did she notice her hair in this episode? She went to the salon again because like there's all kinds of. Because she knew that her ex-boyfriend was going to be there. That's what's going on. She had no clue. Not at this point. Well, the hair department knew that was in the script.

Oh, they got her. They got her all dolled up, didn't they? I mean, it was almost like she got a perm or a body wave or something happening. I feel like they honestly, like that's what they looked at the script. and went, oh, this is a story where she, you know, reconnects with an X, so we should go back to her more Klingon look, which had the kind of wavyer hair, like the old day, but it makes no sense. No, I may be, yeah. Why else would they do it then?

Why else would they kind of have a whole different look than she has? That's true. Had since the pilot. It's confusing. It really, it makes no sense. It should not have been there, to be perfectly honest. Fluffy hair. Fluffy hair is a little weird.

down on the fluffy hair. So Ticote asked Bologna to try and bring this main power back online. Restore the power. They come across a desiccated body. It's Tom, good old Tommy boy, scans this desiccated body. And he says it's some kind of thermolytic reaction. Every single cell is desiccated. And Torres kind of hollers, hey, I can't figure out this injector manifold.

And the dilithium matrix has been completely redesigned. There's a bunch of attachments to their warp core that are completely alien looking, or they look, you know, kind of not hastily constructed, but just makeshift constructed, sort of like, okay, we'll grab this part, attach it to this little valve, and we'll figure something out. So it's a very strange setup that we see in their engineering room. Yeah. And Chikote, you know, he's scanning, he's looking around with his flashlight, and then he sees somebody under a bunch of debris, like beams and big chunks of debris. And I made a note, boy is Chukote strong. He single-handedly literally lifts beams of

listen, you know, metal compounds that, you know, I can barely lift a bag of groceries. And he's lifting beam. You know what? That's because he can summon the power of a Kuchimoya. And you did not do that. That's what it is. That's what it is. It's clearly that. But he does find, does find Gilmore and she is terrified she's got PTSD clearly she is yeah she's shaken to the bone for sure yep she doesn't know what's up or down and she's very confused she's like i thought we were the only humans in yeah and he said yes so did we so do we we thought the same thing we have something in common my dear and i thought oh here comes another storyline for chocote to fall another chikore another chokote love story yeah all the j c shippers are getting angry yeah yeah

I felt the same thing. We go to, we see a ladder. I don't know, where, where was this? That I wrote down as the Equinox Jeffries Tube. Yeah. So a section of the Equinox, Equinox Jeffries tubes with Harry and Seven in there. Harry's leading the way there. He says, over here.

And they find someone else. And it's Rick worthy. Good old Rick. I forgot he was in this too. So I was like, oh, I know. Me too. Rick. He's stuck.

He's pinned under another beam. He's pinned under a thing. And then Harry tells seven. Stay here with him. Keep him calm, Harry says. Yes. So seven turns to Rick's character and seven after she's instructed. Keep him calm.

Be nice. Because Harry has to cut him loose with a plasma torch. Get him out of there. And she turns to him, this terrified man, and says, state your name. I was like, that's not. Why are you yelling at him? That's her. It's not very calming.

But it's so funny. is that Rick Worthy is playing Noah Lessing so calm. Like, he doesn't need any more calmness. He's speaking with, like, just. I thought he was like, delirious and he's in shock. Because he says, do I still have my legs? She's like, you have all your limbs. But I just thought it was so funny.

Like, she has no bedside manner. No, she doesn't. But he's clearly in shock. And I wrote down what was most interesting is that Seven says, do not be frightened. And then his response is too late for that. And now you know something weird is happening in this ship

and you're not understanding what we don't know as to the audience what's been going on. The next team we see is Neelix and his team and he's scanning it looks like bunk beds or something. Yeah, I said Equinox crew quarters is what I wrote down. He's scanning this bunk bed area

and suddenly this guy gets up one of the Equinox crew members. There's a brief fire fight that goes on in here they they shoot this terrified survivor stun him and neelix calls to sick bay that he's in mental distress and uh yeah needs to go to sick bay uh next thing is on the equinox bridge we see janeway with tuvok uh they find some more mummy corpses and then they find some survivors, including the captain who's in his chair still. And Burke.

And Burke. And Burke is there. Yeah. Janeway, you know, gently speaks with ransom. She learns that they've been battling for weeks with these aliens. He asks about Earth. She says, I don't know. I haven't been there in a while.

And they have a nice conversation where they realized that the caretaker brought both of them, grabbed both of them out of the Alpha Quadrant. Yeah. It was a jinx. You owe me a Coke moment. She said, we've been in the Delta Quadron for five years. We were pulled here by the care. And right when she says caretaker, he says at the same time.

And she looks at them and she thinks, okay, we got to compare some notes here. And we now know that's how they got there. Just the same way we did. But she says, first, we got to deal with your injuries and you need to get to our ship. And so he basically argues in the beginning. He's like, I'm not leaving my ship. I can't do it. Stay here.

And she insists. And so he ultimately gives in and is going to go. over there. So next thing is we jump to the mess hall. There's a little bit of a time cut. And Ransom is now leading a memorial for his dead crewmen. So there's survivors from

the Equinox on one side of the mess hall and then a big Voyager crew including all of us on the other side. I made a note it looks like West Side Story. It looks like there's going to be a rumble. It was like they're both on either side.

I felt like it was a musical number was about the start we were going to like my notes no that's a good that's a good call you're right you're right it did have that that sort of west side story feel but but i was making the count in the in the commemoration of all these fallen equinox crew members he lists five that have passed away that's it and standing there including ransom are six so that's 11 crew members that are there and i thought that's not a lot of crew left that's probably had more in sickbay and, you know, who was in, uh, Lessing. Uh, our, our friend Rick Worthy was in sick pay. That's one, right? And there must have been others. There must have been others. And they

probably have had memorials on their own ship. Yeah. For people that have been killed before. Right. And when we see later, I don't know how many are left on this equinox show. There were more faces when we see later in the episode when they've been confined to quarters when, um, EMH, Equinox EMH comes in to kind of save the day for his crew. We do see more crew members there. But I was thinking, boy, this is worse than a skeleton crew. There's very, there's, then no one left. Yeah, practically. Janeway welcomes them aboard.

Basically, like we're all on the same side now. Looks like the two, both of these crews are going to have to work together and fight these aliens. She assigns Kim and Torres to lead the repairs on the ship. She says top priority and seven and two Vok are going to work with Ransom's first officer, Burke, and analyze these attacks. figure out what what that was about and we see burke look over at balana and you can tell immediately that they have a history and he when everyone's dismissed burke kind of walks over to paris and balana and harry are all there and gives her a hug and it's a little extra long hug clearly kind of flirty and

a little awkward for tom yeah but he also says BLT before the house he calls yeah which now you near you realize there's a nickname involved so there's obviously some type of intimacy that has happened between these two and yeah Tom is not excited Tom is a little he's a little jealous and and Burke invites balana to out for a dinner meal yeah let's get dinner together she says well we can all have dinner which i think was very cute but not you know uh she was she was not forthcoming she was a little friendly and what is what's torres supposed to say uh sorry this is my boyfriend i mean she i mean she i mean i mean you know i know it is even later on when it finally comes out she doesn't really say it he says it yeah later on oh yeah i thought was an interesting

observation it is it is but uh anyway she says yeah let's all go and he says okay well i'll see you later and he kind of touches her as he leaves he touches her belly or something yeah like her just for something yeah i was like wow that's quite forward yeah and i love that i came up with turkey platter i love that yeah that was very funny that was well turkey platter what he was what do you say we get to work yeah turkey platter and you're like i'm not jealous i like when she says uh no need for red alert we you know yeah yeah yeah yeah broke up 10 years ago no need for red alert you're like well what about what about yellow alert that's right my yellow alert for like stop smiling so flirty at this ex-boyfriend what about off-white alert what about that what about beige alert uh yeah it was very funny i love

that scene really it was very cute all right so now we're in the corridor and gilmore sort of catches up at chicote and she basically says that she wants to be reassigned she doesn't want to be on a work detail that's working on the equinox and she comes for she you know she's very forthright and then she tells chikote i'm dealing with a little bit of PTSD and chikote was like okay i get that their conversation continues until they get to the turbo lift the turbo lift the turbo lift doors open chokote enters and guiltmore just hesitate she's standing at the threshold and she's like uh and then chokote says well it's so it's a long way to where we got to go yeah the jeffreys tube is uh it's a lot faster than the Jeffries do.

Sure. To deck 11. Yep. And so she gets in and she says, yeah, the fissure opened inside a turbo lift on my ship. Yep. And, you know, it was a very traumatic thing. And then suddenly she starts to hear that. I was confused here.

I don't know if it was the real sound because he didn't react or if it was just. No, he did. Oh, yeah, he did. Yeah, he said, he said, yeah, he said, oh, that's just the, and he gave the response of what it was. Yeah, but then it sort of. of pushed in and got really loud. So that was more her point of view, her experience of like amplifying it or something.

Oh. It was a little confusing to me because they pushed in on her face, tighter, tighter, tighter. And then she's like, no, emergency stop. And she has to get out. He says it's only a graviton relay, nothing to worry about. She says, do I look worried?

And then she hears more of the noise. And then it, yeah, I think what it does is it then kind of transfers into It goes from like a real relay, just normal, no, into her like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, pushes in and she's like, stop, emergency stop. And she gets out, she's like, I think I'm going to take the Jeffers too. Yeah. And he's very kind. And there's, you know, again, I still felt like, oh, this is going to be the alien of the week for Chukote.

We've seen this before with him because he's sort of charming and very empathetic. Yeah. You know, doing his Cucci-Moya thing. Next, we go to astrometrics, Janeway, Ransom, Tuvok, Seven. Seven has run a thermographic analysis of our shields. There are multiple stress points from fissures opening of these aliens trying to get through. And Janeway says, we have less than two days to mount a defense. Seven says, well, these aliens can only survive for several seconds in our realm.

They are like fish out of water. Tuvok then chimes in saying that, it's a tactical weakness that can be exploited and seven says well if we can hold them here for longer than the several seconds then they will think twice before attacking us again so then janeway asked the most important question how do we catch these fish burke suggests a net a multifacic force field as a net and he brings us up because he says they had to see what they were up against so they built a small chamber to trap one alien for several minutes and jameway says well maybe we can expand on this technology and surround both of our ships with this multi-phasic force field.

And she wants to examine that stasis chamber that Burke talks about. But Ransom says, no, no, no, no, it's not possible. Don't go in our, don't go in our chamber. Don't go there. It's filled with thermionic radiation. Yes. And that's over in our lethal. So, yeah, anyone who steps foot in our research lab is going to die.

So don't even think about it. But Burke says, you know, you can look at our schematics. You'll see everything. you don't need to go there. Yeah, we've got it over in our data core. You can just look at that. And Ransom says that he will try to download the schematics, and he asked Janeway to give him a hand.

So we leave from this scene to the Equinox Bridge, and now we get a little bit more backstory about what really happened. Yeah, they have a nice long scene here. She talks about how his crew calls him by his first name. Which is weird, by the way. I mean, that was kind of like, what? And he said, well, when things, you know,

have been as desperate as they are, you know, let down some of the formalities and Janeway's responses, well, actually, I think sticking with protocols reassuring. It reminds them of where they came from and where they're going to, hopefully. So she's got the opposite kind of perspective on, you know, the rules and all of that. Yeah. She's sort of the glasses half full and he's sort of the glass is half empty kind of guy right now. She says she shares with him about warp core breaches, ion storms, run-ins with dangerous aliens, including the Borg. Yeah, which he has not.

He said that they never. Yeah, he says, we've never encountered the Borg. And January says, you're pretty lucky. He says their first encounter was with the Crotonin Guard. Yes. Crotonin Guard. He set course towards Earth. And the Crotonin Guard warned them that they had violated their territory and told them to

leave immediately. And he ordered the course maintained. And over the following week, 39 crew members were killed. Half of his crew. So that means he had about 80 or so on the ship, originally. And she says at one point, she's like, you know, this is a science vessel. Like it's maximum warp eight, all kinds of limitations.

I can't believe you've made it this for it. Like, she's kind of surprised how far they've come. But I guess because they haven't met the board, maybe in some ways they haven't had some of the challenges we've had. And so maybe that would explain how they. they could be this far. Yeah, but his dialogue is very telling. He says, after a couple of years, we forgot we were explorers. And at times, we forgot we were human beings.

So he's kind of slowly letting it out because he's, you know, he's testing Janeway. He's trying to see where she sits on this fence, right? And that's when he asked her that the big question. He says, from captain to captain, how often have you broken the prime directive? Because he wants to know if she's more of a maverick captain or not being in the Delta quadrant. and she says, well, never. Has she had to make compromises, like, he knows what he's done.

Yeah. Yeah. So she says, I've never, I've never broken the prime directive, but I've definitely bent it on occasion. Yeah. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh, my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane. Trip after trip.

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And Jan Lee says, let's put this back where it belongs. Yeah, head off to put the plaque back. They're going to try to help them repair the ship. And everything seems good so far. Sure does. So we go to the mess hall and there's Burke eating and ransom approaches. He says, you know, I'm so tired of eating these emergency rations. This is incredible.

This food here. ransom leans in and has now we think everything we thought everything was good with janeway but now we realize ransom saying be careful janeway and this crew will never understand the truth yeah and burke's like they're going to find out eventually and he says not if we keep him out of the research lab i keep him out as a lab and don't tell your girlfriend yeah don't tell your ex-girlfriend be Careful of what you say around them, especially ex-girlfriends, yeah. Yeah. So this is our first indication.

And then Ransom sort of takes a bite of food. Yeah, yeah. He takes a bite. He reaches down on his plate and needs some food. And he's like, mm, that's good. That's not bad. Yeah. But this scene is really our first indication that something is afoot here.

They're hiding something. Yeah, yeah, completely. They seem really nice and friendly on the outside, but they've got some secrets. They got a secret. So now we're in Astromatrix, and we see 7-9 and the doors open at Noah Lessing. Noah Lessing are very calm, calm, Rickworthy enters. He's got his legs. He's got his legs.

They're working. And he tells Seven that he's been assigned to help her sort through the Equinox's bio data. And all of a sudden, they hear the fissure sound. And they both draw their phasers, which takes us to the bridge. And on the bridge, Tuvacchicote and Harry pick up these multiple fissures on multiple decks. They're opening. and then suddenly they're gone.

And Tuvok says something about they all decided to focus their attention together on one fissure. So instead of opening a bunch of fissures, they're going to maybe work together and get through a bunch of them through one fissure. So maybe they're changing tactics, we realize. Another wrinkle in the plot. And then we go out to space and we see the ships flying by again. and that takes us into briefing room. Briefing room, yes.

So we're in the briefing room, and we have basically 14 hours are needed to improve our shields to be effective against these new attacks where the aliens are focusing on one shield. That's it, a single shield vector. And everybody's in there, by the way. Janeway, Chacote, Ransomberg, Gilmore, 7, Tuvok. They're all in there trying to assess.

All the players and all the guest players. We're all there. And Janeway says, you know, we should combine both crews to work on Voyager and this way we can get the shield improvements done faster because it was Gilmore who says 14 hours we not we may not even be alive by that time so Janeway says well let's combine both crews and ransom is very hesitant about that he's like well I think both ships are important we should probably try to save both ships and of course we now know after watching it is because he's got technology to get him back home that's why but he's like yeah let's

Let's keep them separate. Two is better than one, right? Yeah. And then Janeway quotes a Starfleet regulation. She says, well, regulation 191, Article 14, which states that a combat situation involving more than one ship, command falls to the vessel with tactical superiority. And there's kind of an awkward pause. And she said, he says, are you ordering me now? And she says, no, I'm not ordering you. Ultimately, he is kind of forced to agree with her because it is the rules. He defers to Janeway. And yeah, and that whole conversation was about who outranks who in this situation. Who is the superior captain? Captain. Yeah. And when she pulls out that regulation, he complies. He's like, okay, you know.

And he has to comply in front of everybody else because he's, you know, he can't look like the rebel that he has been in real life. So he's got to look like he respects the rules. He's hiding the fact that he totally broke the rules. He wanted to say, stick it up your wormhole, but he did not. He was just ready to comply for this scene only. But he does say that he wants to get a few mementos from his quarters. Yeah, I just want to grab a couple of things. A couple of things.

Evidence. Yeah, let the criminal go back to the scene of the crime. But he says he wants to go back to his quarters. For mementos. Personal items, yes. But he needed to go encrypt things. That's what he probably had to go do. Yes.

Next we go to engineering, and we see Burke in there walking around the engine core. Where's everyone else, by the way? I wrote there's nobody else. I literally wrote, where is everyone else? He's by himself, and he goes and he hits some buttons and puts his tricorder up on the counter, and then Bologna comes in from the back. Yeah. She's like, hey, that console's off limits to you.

You shouldn't be there. He's all flirty with him, and then he goes. up onto the platform so she can't see the computer saying download and process. But I said to myself, great, he can distract her with his flirtiness and BLTs and all that stuff. But why aren't there like half a dozen other people working in engineering? Well, clearly it was taco night in the mess hall. And everybody had to be there for taco night. It was BLT night. But he asks her to dinner to dinner again again again and she's kind of flirty about it and then she really is he ultimately says tom she's like well i don't know and he goes tom paris yeah she goes yeah tom paris and then burke goes

you could do worse and i was like oh that was yeah that was a compliment it was a compliment but but not really not really i guess you could do worse it's not great but you could do far worse i guess you could do far worse, I guess. Yes, it was funny. And then he tries again. He goes and gets his tricorder, which was downloading a league. Gets his tricorder. Yeah. And then he pushes a button that he clearly cannot see from that perspective where he's at. But he, but, you know, he's he's also magical. He knows where it is. He's Burke. He's Burke. He tries one more time, just the two of us. And she says, keep going or I'll throw you in the brig. So she's still flirty with him to the very end. I'm really upset that I never saw these interactions.

I know. It's pretty crazy. All right. So now we're in, we're in mess hall. And we've got Gilmore, Chikote, and Harry. And I got to be perfectly honest with you. It was so hard for me to focus on this scene because I could only focus on my acne. Really? I haven't. Okay, because you have two types of acne. The one that sits on the surface of your skin and one that's really deep, deep in your skin called cystic acne. Sistic acne causes a huge bump, basically. So on my right cheek, my jaw line is a massive, massive cystic acne that I was staring at the entire time. You didn't catch it, which is good. I did not catch it at all. I saw it for sure. Their conversation is all about salvaging Equinox's equipment and supplies. And, you know, the conversation talks about

different items that they can grab. Mercurium. And she offers something called a synaptic stimulator. Yes. A poor man's holiday. And I'm like, oh, it's like the Oculus. It's like the Oculus. It's just, it's a VR headset.

Like, it's not, we've got that now. Yeah, we do have that. Naomi Wildman comes in. She sort of interrupts the big party here, talking about salvaging supplies. and she arrives to welcome Ensign Gilmore. She introduces herself as the captain's assistant. And it's a very cute scene.

I think it was good to have her in there. It was great. I love when she leaves. She's like, okay, as you were. Yes. Trots off. She trots off. I love it.

At the end of that scene, she gets a call from ransom, says, I need you back over here on the bridge. On our ship. So we go to the Equinox Bridge and there's Ransom and all those lieutenants conspiring together. Berks basically says once they get the field generator transported off of Voyager, that's what they need, and they'll get out of there.

And Gilmore's like, hey, what about Voyager? He says, oh, they've got weapons. They've got. They've got shields. They've got a full crew. They'll, they can handle it. They'll be fine. But then Lessing even throws up a little bit of resistance.

He's sort of like, yeah. He's like, maybe we should. What if we just join them? And then, yeah. And of course, you know, we have a, we have ransom saying, yeah, well, is that all it takes, a shower and hot food and Lessing finally in the end complies. He's like, no, I'll do it. I'll do it. Ransom says, no, I want to go home. Want to get out of here. We're so close. Nothing can stop us. And Burke's like, well, this is not going to be easy. They've got a plan.

They've got a plan. It's their, it's their Oceans 11, right? It's their heist. It's their heist plan. All right. So now we're in astrometrics again. And we have Tuvok and seven. Seven has detected a minor fluctuation in the security grid. It's coming from Equinox's research lab. Seven then discovers that it is still oddly filled with thermionic radiation, which it should have dissipated by now. Two bucks like that should be gone. Yeah, it's very, very, very surprised about that. After further inspection, Seven finds out that the source of the never-ending radiation are three, three EPS conduits that have been rerouted to the research lab that are in So now they know. It's intentional. It's intentional. Yep. So they go to the ready room.

Janeway is very suspicious getting all this news from Tuvok and seven. What are they hiding? How long will it take to vent this radioactive plasma? Three hours. She's like, wait a minute. Nope. Let's send the doctor because he's immune to this radiation. And don't tell ransom. Right. Let's go over and figure, you know, see what we can see first. So we cut to a space shot. and then science lab on the equinox. And it's the doctor. He is looking around. Yeah, he beams in.

Now he's kind of like looking around. He does find the chamber, the chamber that Burke was talking about. He scans inside and realizes that there is organic mass inside this multifacic chamber. After further scans, he realizes it's one of the aliens. And this stasis chambers is equipped with matter. conversion technology used to convert the alien cell structures to a crystalline compound or crystalline compound, however you want to pronounce that. And this compound contains nucleogenic energy. So in essence, the aliens were being converted into a source of power

to propel this starship back towards the Alpha Quadrant. So now we know their nefarious plans. and clearly this is something that Starfleet would not approve of. I mean, it's not, it's very, it's horrible. You're killing, you're killing a life form. Yeah. An innocent life form in order to use them as power. It's horrible. Yeah, he basically figures out that they've been lying that they, you know,

what they had in the science lab was not used to defend themselves, but it was used to harvest energy from these aliens. Yeah, horrible. So the next thing we see is, in the hallway, Burke and Ransom are walking down the hall and they're ready to pull the trigger on their plan. They're going to transport this field generator. Their Ocean's 11 plan is about to start and they turn a corner and a turbo lift door opens and their security weapons drawn, they turn, they start to run the other way. Tuvok cuts them off. I love Tuvok's line here where he says

with the weapons on them, the captain wishes to speak to you. Yeah. I do want to bring one thing up. When at the very beginning of the scene, they're walking and Burke says, boy, I sure am going to miss this ship. And it's because of the interaction where the background actor walks past him and she smiles at him and he smiles back, this very tall, attractive background actor. Now, that is the exact same background actor that was in your episode that you directed someone to watch over me where, Scott Thompson's character, Tomen, was in the mess hall staring over at a woman going, oh, she sure is.

Yeah, she sure. Yeah. It was her. It's the same person. Because when we reviewed that episode, I brought that up. I said, that's somebody I've never seen before, that background actor. And now we've seen him twice. And now we've seen this person twice. Yeah.

So now we're in the briefing room and it's just Janeway and Ransom. Nobody else there. Janeway confronts Ransom. And, you know, he has The beans are spilled now. He doesn't have to spill. She lays it all out. She lays it all out. We know everything. And, you know, Ransom is the one that's kind of argues it's, we need them to get back home. Just 63 more alien sacrificed. Yeah. She's like, well, Janeway goes, how many is it going to take? How many people are you going to have to kill and harvest energy from? Yeah. And he ultimately says 63. Yes. And there. Yes. And this is where ransom quotes Starfleet Regulation 3, paragraph 12. In the event of. imminent destruction, a captain is authorized to preserve the lives of his crew by any justifiable means. And Janeway says, I doubt that protocol covers mass murder. And Ransom says

that in his judgment, it did. And Janeway says, unacceptable. And then he goes on to talk about the story about how they were down to nothing. They had Zippo. They had only thrusters. They had no warp power. They had zero dilithium left and they were barely able to make it to this M-class planet. Now we have a flashback scene on the Ankari home planet. Yes, they're very lovely and kind and generous. Yes, they gave them food. They gave them, you know, they gave them some tech. They gave them a few dilithium crystals as well. And then they even performed a sacred ritual to invoke the spirits of good fortune from another realm to bless their journey. And Ransom goes on to say, but they were not spirits, because in this flashback, we do see Burke open up his tricorder and scan these spirits.

They were not spirits. They were nucleogenic life forms emitting high levels of antimatter. And then they decided to trade a little bit later in the evening for one of these summoning devices because clearly they realized this could be something that can help us get home. I mean, if there's antimatter that these life forms are emitting and they're nucleogenic, let's see. So they get one of these machines. that summons the anti-matter aliens. And they build a chamber in their lab to hold this antimatter alien. And it's a multifasic force field chamber that they build.

And they summon one to try to study it. But then it dies suddenly because they didn't know that the things could only exist for a few seconds on the ship. And they tried to send it back, but it didn't work. Yeah, they did try. So it's the slippery slope of like, well, if we. break this one rule and we're going to be nice about it then they end up killing that guy and so this led them to begin summoning aliens intentionally to use their bodies and for this energy and he

he insists with janeway that you know we didn't have any choice but janeway's like nope because relieved of command yeah and just to give a few specs here he said it enhanced their propulsion systems to the point that they traveled 10,000 light years in less than two weeks. So if we're 70,000 light years away from home, really, it's, it's going to be a very short amount of time before you're back in the Alpha Quadrant if you can harvest these aliens, clearly. It's just horrible even to hear you say it. Harvest these aliens. Harvest these aliens is bad. But she relieves him of his command and she confines he and all of the crew members to quarters. So they're going to end up being kind of guarded in some crew quarters there. We'll find them later. So the next place we go is

on to the bridge and she orders the doctor to return to the lab and retrieve all the data that he can find. Find something about these aliens. Because she wants to communicate with them. Is that right? She wants to talk to them. She's like, yeah, let's make first contact the way we should. Let's try to do it the right way. Yeah. She tells seven to go back to the Equinox engine room and take all the modifications offline. She explains to them that they're going to be punished to her crew. She says, ransom and that crew is going to be punished for what they did.

And so she's going to try to make things right. We go to the hallway now and Gilmore says something like, she's with Chukote. And Gilmore says, you know, I'm glad that you stopped us. But Chacote is mad. He's like, you should have stopped yourself. Yeah. He's not happy with it. He's not happy at all.

But J.C. Shippers are very happy with this moment. Yeah, because he's not flirting with Gilmore anymore. No. Even though she felt guilty, she should have done something, is Chukotay's attitude. They go into astrometrics, and they want the decryption codes for all the modifications so seven can go turn them off. Yep. And Chikote says to Gilmore, like, maybe,

if you do this, you could live with yourself a little better. So she does. She's kind of torn, but she does input the decryption codes for the engine modification schematics into the astromax computer. Yeah. And then we go to Sick Bay on the Equinox. And there's the doctor trying to do with the captain ordered, you know, find out more information. And he's frustrated because he's like, you know, it's decrypted. The files he's trying to access are decrypted. He can't access them. The computer says it needs an EMH authorization. And the doctor says, oh, you've got an EMH. And he realizes the Mark 1 EMH, same as me.

Awesome. So he says, computer, initiate the emergency medical hologram. Equinox EMH says, please state the nature of the medical emergency. Yeah. And by the way, I love these kind of scenes are tricky as a director because you had Bob Picardo walking away from the panel, standing in the middle, activating the image. EMH came on and then walked over. So you have to have when you're filming this kind of a lock off, the camera has to move into a position to lock. So you can have that split screen for Bob playing

both roles. But you also need an eye line. So Bob had to, you know, make the movement for the first part of the shot and then act to somebody else over there. Right. And then they cut. And then Bob had to go do the other part with the camera locked off where he comes around. So it was a, and the timing, those shots are tricky, but I thought it was really well done. It was great. David did a really nice job. The eyeline looked great and the timing was great too. I mean, there was no flaws in this scene, I felt.

Yeah. So our doctor, good doctor, tells the equinox EMH that the crew there has broken a lot of rules and had these horrible experiments. And he's shocked to learn that the bad EMH designed these, helped design these experiments. and just then the bad AMH says, well, that's because the crew here deleted my ethical subroutines.

And he suddenly hits the doctor on the arm, deactivating his mobile emitter. Doctor, our good doctor, goes offline. And the bad doctor looks down at the emitter with a creepy evil look on his face. It was good. I have to say that this is not the first time that the doctor's mobile emitter has been compromised.

It's been hit before. There's got to be some way to protect this mobile. glitter to keep him from getting fritzed out again. It's just like, come on, guys, this is the most important thing on him. Like, hide it or something. Don't put it on his shoulder where he's going to bump it off or somebody's going to knock it off. Exactly. It should be attached to the back of his neck or something where it's just, it's not vulnerable

to getting bumped. So that was my own note here. Next thing is we go to the bridge. Fissures are opening now. These aliens have hundreds of them. Hundreds of fissures. Janway calls Tuvac and Balana and Astromatrix. And Janeway says, get ready to bring on this multifacic shielding.

Yeah. Janway calls the doctor. And she says, did you find anything? We cut to the doctor. Now, we know it's the bad doctor. And the doctor says, can you be more a little more specific? Which I thought was very funny. Which if I was January, I would have been like, wait a minute.

Yeah. Why did you not know what we're trying to do? Remember your orders. That should have tipped her off. right there for sure yes and then the doctor does ask the computer at this point for ransom's location because he knows he's got to save bad doctor has to save bad crew and the computer says crew quarters deck whatever and so the bad doctor deck nine section 22 yeah and bad doctor goes over grabs a case opens it up and then we see another evil look a lot of evil looks from bob

Picard on this in this section. Yes. Bob is king of evil looks in this episode. Okay, so next we go out to space where we see the shields are weakening. So we have a shot out in space of these shields weakening. We see evil doctors heading down a hallway with that case that we saw and pick up.

And he tells the guards that they have, this crew has been exposed to some sort of mutagenic virus. He says, I need to treat them immediately. And he goes inside where the whole equinox crew is huddled up in a big crew quarters holding tank. And he opens up the case and there are weapons in there. A couple phasers. A couple hypo sprays in there. And evil doc says, it's me captain. He says to ransom. And then he gives him some sort of shot. Next, we see Tuvac and Bolana are attempting to activate the shield grid they were working on, but it's not working. And so they try to find out

what's wrong. We cut to a guard outside of those crew quarters hearing a door open and the door opens. Suddenly he pulls this gun up, but he's shot, falls to the ground. And we cut on the bridge and Harry says, I'm reading phaser fire. Sensors are reading an unauthorized phaser fire on deck nine crew quarters. So we know stuff is starting. Yeah. And Janeway, yeah, the stuff is starting. And Janeway quickly says seal off that deck, seal off deck nine. Chikote says shields are weakening, but down to 84%. We jump to astrometrics lab. They discover that Burke, while he was engineering, had stole the multifacic field generator schematics and also reconfigured power couplings to the device.

He also reconfigured sensors, so none of this would be detected. And Tuvok and Taurus worked to try to fix this while ransom outside with his crew over power guards. They take their weapons heading down a quarter, and an evil doctor tells you. them that he rerouted transporter controls so they could beam out from nearby. So they don't even have to go to the transport. Look at that. Yes. It's like a red carpet from evil doctor. Evil doctor's a big part of this. Yeah, yeah. Shields are continuing to degrade. We're back on the bridge. Kim says there's an unauthorized transport. Janeway orders him to lock it out, but he says he can't do it.

They bypassed ops controls. Yep. And back on their bridge. Equinox crew's gone. They did it. They're off. So it's not looking good for our Voyager. No. And our shields are now down to 40%, which is bad. And, you know, Janeway, then she tries to call seven. Yes. And we cut over to Equinox engineering. Yes.

And Seven's lying unconscious on the room. Gilmore. Gilmore knocked her off. Yeah, Gilmore's got a phaser. So she knocked her stund her or something. Yeah. So Gilmore, even though Chakote liked her, she's playing with the bad team still. She really is.

Yeah. She really is. With all her PTSD, she's still a bad, bad person right now. We go to the Equinox Bridge now, and Burke reports that Torres has erected a force field over the multifasic force field generator. And he can't get a lock. Burke says, I can't get a lock on it. I can't beam it off Voyager.

And he says, I'm going to try to override the command codes there. So he finally does, he does beam the multifasic field generator onto the equinox. Right. But there is that one scene with Torres saying that someone's disrupting this force field, and she knows it's max. He's using one of these algorithms that she taught him to use 10 years ago. Exactly. And then she kind of blocks that, but then he has something else up his sleeve. And that's, he goes, okay, BLT, let's see if you could remember this trick. And that's when he physically is able to do the job or he's able to figure out how to be able to board. Next week, go to the bridge. Shields are failing. Things are getting bad here for Voyager, less than a minute until we lose our shields. And Janeway decides to call ransom.

And she hails the Equinox. And she says to ransom, if you don't stop what you're doing, both of our ships are going to be destroyed. And he says, well, that'd be better than 30 years in your brig, which I see his point. Yeah. He's, he's, it's valid. Yeah, it's, it's logical what he's saying. She threatens to open fire on him. And she does.

She targets their weapons, their powers. He's not phased. He still won't give up. So he ends the communication. She does. And Torres now tells Janeway that they have taken the field generator. And Voyager is defenseless against these aliens. Yeah.

Back on the equinox, ransom. This is all intercutting. This is great energy, by the way. And this whole, this whole last section just goes bouncing around all over. Everywhere. Between Equinoch, Equinox Bridge, Astrometrics Lab, our bridge, their engineering, it's just everywhere. Everybody's working. And that's another thing I liked about this episode.

Everybody's got something to do, you know, the whole crew is involved. Yeah. So we go back to the Equinox Bridge and ransom orders them to go to warp. But in engineering, Gilmore says that Seven's attempt to dismantle the warp engines has stalled them so she can't go to warp right away. Gilmore's got to try to figure out how to get their warp engines back online. And Burke does integrate the multifacic field generator into their ship's computer. So now they've got this field generator. It's online.

They're protected. They're protected. They're protected. Voyager has no protection. The shields are starting to fail. immediately we start hearing these fissures, that sound, that horror movie sound of the fissures. Harry says fissures are opening on every deck,

all decks, like it's a massive attack. Yeah, and Jemway says, arm yourselves, arm yourselves. And once everything's in place on the equinox, they're gone. They're gone, and they leave us to deal with these aliens that really, we didn't cause this, but now we have to deal with it. on the equinox, they do have a fissure open there. Yeah. But Burke has gotten this field generator up and running.

And so as soon as the alien comes through, it's trapped in this force field and it bounces around, you know, side to side collapses and dies. And ransom says, take that alien to the lab. Yeah. Yeah. And then Lessing reports their engines are back online. Yeah. He says, set course for the Alpha Quadrant.

And boom. maximum warp engage see ya so they're gone so they pull away and by the way that means seven's on board with them the doctor is still on board with them like they've stole you know kidnapped two of our good doctors still on board with them two of our crew members yeah by the way when when uh the bad doctor beamed back over from the hallway earlier didn't the mobile emitter fall down on the ground? He threw it down, I thought. Or he threw it.

He took it and threw it or something. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I do remember that. But is our doctor still on their ship, though? Well, he was downloaded. He was using the mobile letter to travel there. So wouldn't he just go right back into our database?

Yeah. So I think he still might be. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if he would have been sucked into their hollow emitters. that were in their sick bay? I don't know, but I would think that seven's definitely on the ship. Seven is definitely there.

And this is now, now we have the very final scene of this episode, which is the last episode of season five, and this is the cliffhanger. And it's of all the main crew on the bridge, defending themselves against these aliens coming through to do harm to us. And we see one alien focusing in on Janeway. Janeway's not really looking, and Chikote sees,

you know he says watch out he says captain did that sound like him captain yeah it did it's very Coochimora thank you I Cucci moya did and he stares at his love oh I shouldn't say that should I he stared at Janeway yeah it's true love his true love and uh we go we have a POV it's almost like a POV

of the alien coming right at the lanes yeah to be continued TBC yeah we got BLT and now TBC so to be continued. And that's the end of this part one. Things do not look good for us. No, not at all. What is your rating of this episode? My rating, I, you know, this was a, it was a tricky one to make notes on because it was so dense, but ultimately, and you know how sometimes when we're watching these episodes, we're pausing, stopping and going. Yeah.

So I have to take that in consideration. I felt like I was doing a lot of stopping and going. Yes. But ultimately, I thought this was a really good episode, good guest stars. everybody was involved i'm going to give it an 8.0 okay now also give me your lesson from this episode so i've got your rating 8.0 what are you going to give you yeah what's your lesson my lesson is i wrote down nice is different than good which which is a quote from uh the musical into the woods which i was a cast member of yes um nice is different than good because this crew of the equinox seemed very nice in the beginning.

But you always have to remember that nice doesn't mean good. So that's my thing. So sort of watch your back kind of a thing, right? Well, people can be nice and that's great. But it doesn't mean, yes, like verify that good is action, nice is words. Their words were really good in the beginning. But when you see their actions, like there were a lot of red flags. I think multiple people should have caught that, hey, they're not being honest.

we finally realize that they were putting the radioactive conduits or whatever. Like, there were red flags before that. We should have seen it. Yeah. I guess mine would be beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah. Right? Kind of like yours in a way.

My rating is going to be, I'm going to give this a 7.8. I'm going to go a lower. So we're pretty close. We're close. We're close. What do we have? Okay. I give it an 8.

You give it a 7.8. our Admiral and Captain average rating for Equinox part one is bam you called it right on the money 8.0 average wow

good for you but we were both we were both yeah we were both in the same thing 7.8 okay I like it I like it okay well thank you everyone for tuning in for this week's episode Equinox part one

join Robbie and I next week when we will be talking about the conclusion of this two-parter and the, I guess, it would have been the first episode of season six. I can't even believe we're at season six now. My goodness. I can't believe it.

Wow. We've done the podcast a lot quicker than we did the episodes. We have. Probably twice as fast. Twice as fast, exactly. It's been quite a journey. And we've kept up the steam this whole time.

We've been able to deliver every week. I know. Yeah. So join us next week, everyone, when we talk about Equinox Part 2. Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. See you later, everyone.