The Delta Flyers - Equinox Part II
Episode Date: August 22, 2022The 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 II. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Equinox, Part II:While trying to run down the Equinox and retrieve its captain, Chakotay fears Janeway is becoming equally as unethical and corrupt, challenging his loyalty.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 thedeltaflyers@gmail.com.”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)
Hey everyone.
Welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager.
Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow track actor, 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 to become a patron at patreon.com
forward slash the Delta Flyers. Hello, Robbie. Hello, sir. How are they? Good. You just came back from a
post office trip. I ran to the post office. We had to delay this just a few minutes because I am
resupplying my stereo set up. Yes. Vintage turntable and Morantz,
6150B, I think is the model number. Is it gold colored? Is it Moran's into that sort of what
is it? Moran's had a little gold flare.
I haven't even opened the box yet.
I just got back from it.
But it's a nice turntable.
I've got a Morantz amplifier from the 70s as well.
Nice.
And some advent speakers from the late 70s.
So it's a nice little setup.
I like it.
Do you have a lot of vinyl?
I mean, I don't know how many albums you have.
I had lost all my vinyl over the years.
I just kind of, you know, given it away or in moves or in life.
I didn't listen to vinyl for a long, long time.
And then a few years ago,
about five, six years ago, my father gave me the amplifier as a Christmas school.
Because when he was, when my dad was in college, he worked in electronic store.
Oh, wow.
And Morantz was the top of the line.
He always wanted a Morantz, but he couldn't.
He got a much cheaper one when I was a kid.
And so he got himself a Morantz finally when he was older.
And then he decided I needed a Morantz and my boys needed a Morantz.
And my nephew needed a Morantz.
And so he found Morant's Santa Claus.
Yes, exactly.
Wow.
But this is the new and improved turntable.
Is Morantz an American brand?
It was a California.
It was designed and engineered or whatever in California.
I want to say Morpark or somewhere.
It was out in the valley.
Okay.
So this is Southern California, Los Angeles area.
Yeah.
And maybe Marantz is the name of the guy who invented.
I can't remember.
That's an interesting question.
I don't know.
Okay.
But I do know, because when I was shopping around for some of these,
I noticed that it did say Moran's from California, you know.
Interesting.
But I don't know where they manufactured it,
if they manufactured it in the valley,
or if they manufactured out of the country or I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, high end, you know, or vintage kind of turntable stuff.
It's pretty interesting to have that stuff now.
Yeah.
You know, the new generation, they don't really listen to vinyl.
So everything's digital these days.
We just got back from Confederation Park.
We had a nice little walk around the park, kind of a Pokemon Go event day.
And I had stopped playing Pokemon about two years ago.
And then Megan's still into it.
So she got me back into it now.
So I'm starting to play a little bit more Pokemon, catch some more Pokemon.
So it was fun.
What was not fun, yeah, what was not fun.
was that I think I was lapped by a group of grandmothers.
There was, in terms of they, they were walking so briskly.
We had, I had to move out of the way so they could walk past me the one time.
And they lapped me.
Like, they walked the park twice before I could even walk in once.
But they weren't distracted by trying to catch Pokemon.
But they were on a power walk.
And all of these were octogenarians, I'm pretty sure.
And I was very surprised with that pace.
and also slightly embarrassed, and Megan was laughing.
And she goes, you should tell Robbie that you got laughed by the gray crew,
by the silver gang.
So, yeah.
That's funny.
This morning, Rebecca and I took a hike up our trail.
We do about four or five miles of a hike every, just about every morning.
Right.
We're coming back down.
We ran into a neighbor who's an older, I don't know, 70, maybe.
Yeah, 70s-80s-ish.
Not 80s, but this woman is like 70s.
And she's on her mountain bike coming up.
the hill and she stops to chat with us and she said oh yeah my husband and i already went out and
did our walk this morning and i'm just uh doing another she'd already done a walk this is her second
thing it's like eight in the morning nine in the morning and she's out climbing the mountain
on my gosh where was hubby we were both but he already did his mountain bike before their hike
so he did his mountain bike then a hike now she did the hike and she's doing a mountain bike so it's kind
of like you getting laughed. I feel like we both were put to shame. We were. By much older
playful today. Yes. Oh, my goodness. All right. So we'll be watching Equinox part two today.
So finally we get to see the ending. And remember, what did we leave it off with? The last thing we saw.
There was a fissure opening and a life form coming right at Janeway.
So what we do not know is, does Janeway get mummified or not?
does she get the mummification treatment?
So scared.
This is very scary because it looks like she was looking the other way
when that thing was coming right at her.
Chocote, her true love was yelling,
Captain, Captain!
That sounds like him.
Captain!
That's pretty good.
I can imitate.
The only thing that, it's tough to imitate Beltran,
the thing that I always would go to
was that one line in the episode when he goes,
Any luck yet Duvok.
Any look yet, Duvok.
And so any luck yet, Tuvok would get me into it.
But I couldn't say anything else in the, in the Chikote voice, but yelling, Captain is, I can get
closer to this voice, actually.
Yeah, thank you.
You should be working on some of your impersonations.
I know, I should.
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, and also that actor who I was wondering what he looked like, the guy that gets up and he's all
kind of disoriented, he's firing at Nielix, Sean Waylon, Sean Whalen, the actor.
I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but the way his hair is.
and everything. Yeah. Same same. Okay. Okay. There you go. All right. Good call. Okay. You ready?
Let's go watch it. Go watch it. Patreon patrons. Please stay tuned for your bonus material.
Robbie and I are back from watching Equinox Part 2. Boy, that was a action-packed.
It was dense. Very dense. There was so much happening in terms of like the battle logic.
Yeah.
whose side was who on with all the switcheroo's and the Janeway's descent into darkness.
Oh my goodness.
And then the other thing that surprised me is that they let David do both back to back.
I know.
I wonder, why did that happen, Robbie?
This was a season opener, right?
Did they shoot part one at the end of a season and part two at the beginning?
I don't think so.
I feel like they were shot back to back is what you're thinking.
Yeah, back to back.
But if they separated them, that would give him time to do prep for the second.
Or he just prepped both of them as like a two-hour movie.
Probably that's what happened.
Because I don't think they would have gotten these actors to hold over a hiatus until we came back.
You know, the guest starts.
Yeah, that's true.
Okay.
So basically, this was filmed at the end of season five and is what both parts.
And they just aired.
And then they split it into part two.
Yeah, to two.
Part two is the beginning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that, you know, spoiler alert, you know, at the end, there's a lot of weighty,
very heavy stuff with Janeway.
Oh, very much so.
This sense of like, I've gone to a very dark place.
And they probably didn't want to go out of, maybe they shot them as a two-parter finale,
but then went, oh, we don't want to finish our season.
Like on this, on this note.
No, no. So we'll, but if we make it a two. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like maybe. I totally know what you mean. Yeah, maybe they, after they saw the delays, they're like, wow, that's where this is going. Let's, let's, let's make it a two-parter because at least the cliffhanger feels like a cliffhanger and then we come back. But I was just thinking like that's a tough way to start a season too. Oh, totally. Definitely. Definitely. It's a drain, man. After you watch this, your your whole soul feels like it's been.
stepped on in a way, you know? It's just like, oh my goodness. And so much of that comes from like
the divisions that happen in relationships that you think are strong, whether it's our guest
art division, you know, the mutiny there, you know, the Janeway Chocote thing. Yeah. The doctor
behaving in really ways that we've never seen him behave. Oh, yeah. Very scary. Yeah, a lot of stuff.
And then just Janeway, like throwing everything out like this is her Moby Dick moment. This is,
I'm going to get this guy. This is like,
she feels this righteous you know kind of she turned into the alien captain who was dealing with
the pitcher plant yes yes yeah oh my goodness um let's do our let's do our hikoo and limerick for
this part two let's do let's have a little right into this let's have a little levity with our
fancy poetic synopsies okay here's my haiku for equinox part two yes sir janeway doesn't die
She is obsessed with ransom.
One last ocean view.
Oh, nice.
Nice.
Okay, let's hear the limerick.
Okay, our limerick.
And by the way, I want to say,
I thought this was all going to be about the love triangle, part two.
The love triangle with it.
With Burke.
With Burke and Balana.
And I'm very disappointed.
I really thought this was going to all cover that.
But anyway, here's a.
our limerick. Okay.
Janeway's anger with Equinox was really obsessive.
Letting aliens torture someone was definitely excessive.
J.C., have a really big fight.
Ransom finally comes to the light.
But ex-boyfriends are what make this episode extra depressive.
Not depressing, but depressive to match the other rhyme.
I just had to throw a shot at Burke there.
I'm trying to come after my.
my lady. Hey, you got to do what you got to do. That's right. Oh my goodness. This episode was
written by, as we talked about before, Brandon and Joe. Yeah. Brandon Braga, Joe Manoski. Story was
by Rick Berman, Brandon and Joe. Yeah. Directed by David Livingston, we said, all of our guest cast
was the same, except we didn't have Naomi Wildman. No. We added the Ankari Captain.
The uncari captain. His name, the actor's name is Eric Steinberg, is his
name. What? His Eric Steinberg. Do you know him? Eric Steinberg. Yes. He was under all of that
makeup. I did not know that was him. Eric Steinberg. His very first job was in a martial arts
independent film in 1993 called Rage of Vengeance. Okay. So you do not remember Eric Steinberg then,
do you know who's eric steinberg eric steinberg initially you know i had six auditions right so the
sixth audition was between somebody who was basically 30s an older ensign kim and then myself
so eric steinberg was the final final person left between yes it was him or me to be ensign harry
kim and i talked about this before but you're probably not going to be i didn't remember the name
yeah but that's it's eric and part of the reasoning why i got the role
was because I evidently look more Asian than Eric,
who's half Korean and half Jewish.
So because he's not 100% Asian,
I think that's what kind of, that's him.
That's Eric Steinberg.
That's Eric.
Wow.
Yeah.
And he was also utilized because Burman,
you would never know because he was under so much makeup.
No clue.
But you do see him in first contact.
He's one of the first people to be sort of like,
the first Starfleet people to be
killed by the alien, you know,
whoever the bad guys are in that film.
So he's in there as a human,
so he's not in prosthetics.
And clearly, Berman took a liking to him
because now he's, you know, he was in first contact.
He was in this episode.
I had no idea that was him in this episode.
You'd never know.
Oh, my gosh.
You know what?
I need to reach out to Eric.
I really do.
Eric was born in Washington, D.C.
His first job was 93.
in the martial arts film,
Rage of Vengeance.
And then he,
I guess he did Babylon 5.
Yeah,
he's done a bunch of sci-fi.
His resume is long.
He's done a lot.
Wow.
Well, that's Eric.
Wow.
On Kari Captain.
Thank you for bringing up that little factoid.
You are welcome.
So at the very beginning of this episode,
we have a recap of episode one,
just shows all the bullet points of episode one.
And then we begin with that scene on the bridge.
And Janeway gets knocked down as well as Chocote after he yells, Captain, he also gets knocked down by an alien.
But why aren't they completely mummified?
I don't know.
I feel like she just gets grazed by them or something.
Oh, come on.
I don't, okay.
I have a few come-ons in this episode.
Okay.
So this is our first.
You do agree with me, right?
Because on the Equinox Bridge, when those crew members were touched, like, I mean, a middle of
second by the alien. They were completely mummified. They were dead. They were
they were done. But our bridge, thermionic radiation is what they're dying from.
Right. Yes. Yes. So this thermionic radiation should, if you're in contact with it
even a little bit, should kill you. You're right. It's just weird. It just made no sense.
But I will say throughout the episode, now let's think through the episode, not everybody died.
Like remember in the sick bay, there were people laying on the,
floor who were injured that's our ship everyone on the equinox who came into contact with one of those
aliens didn't make it pretty much everything that at least what we saw so maybe there were some
others in sick bay in their sick bay but it's still it seemed a little inconsistent for me i was like
wait a minute you know i don't know about this so that was my first i did notice you know when janeway
standing and the thing goes at her she has no she's obviously not injured and then when
she falls down we cut to an angle that's a close-up where you see immediately this a little bit of
a sudden radiation burn or whatever it was so that was obviously applied uh those were shot at
different times because she had to go in and get her makeup on and all that yeah yeah i also noticed as
they're attacking that tom paris uh is hiding behind the con firing he's holding on to it for dear
life. A. Why is he such a scary cat? And B, who's flying the ship now? He got up from his chair.
He goes and hides behind the con shooting. And then he goes over to help. Paris goes over to
help Chacote calls the doctor. Yeah. And still, who's flying the ship? Clearly, you put it on
autopilot. It's very, very clear to me. Yeah. That's the only way you can validate that. You're right.
like nobody's flying it any longer.
After Janeway gets up from being hit by the alien,
she seems pretty good.
She's not too bad.
She says, let's have a deflector pulse to reinforce these shields.
Harry says, no, Harry gives the casualty count.
There are two dead and 13 wounded.
And Equinox has gone to warp.
So they're gone.
They've left us to deal with this mess.
And this is the great scene on the Equinox Bridge.
Lessing is sitting there.
saying, oh, it looks like Voyager is under attack, and the close-up is on Ransom's face,
who thinks for a millisecond, and then immediately he says, maintain course.
Like, he's like, we're not going to help him.
See ya.
He's gone.
And he's obsessed with getting his crew home.
So that's his obsession.
And it's just, I don't know.
It just, to me, I'm still bugged by the fact that Janeway and Chiquet just had that
little boop and that was it.
Also, when Chucote is injured and Paris calls to sickbay, there's no response from the doctor.
So we did touch on that, right, the doctor who was downloaded onto the other ship.
Right. And then we find out later in the next scene. It starts, oh, it starts in the turbo lift, right? And it's a cool wide angle shot of Janeway walking out with a phaser rifle flanked by two armed crewmen. She comes around a corner.
Looking like the Terminator or something. Looking like the Terminator. She's a very cool shot. She walks around a corner.
She finds a dead alien. Now, did you think that was practical or VFX? I think that was a VFX. I think that was a
on the floor.
You think it was?
Yeah.
I don't think they would have made a giant practical alien to lay on the floor.
Too expensive.
Yeah, definitely the ones we are moving around are VFX.
But when I saw that one on the floor, I was like, is that real?
I couldn't tell.
Yeah.
When you look, also look at the eye line for Nelix, like he's looking a little differently
towards the end from where the alien actually was.
So then that would make even more sense that it was.
That would totally.
Yeah, Viz effects.
but this this alien like what does it look like to you a tadpole a giant tadpole that's what i
wrote down they look like giant tadpoles like with piranha with a piranha mouth with a piranha mouth
yeah yeah giant tadpole okay neelick shows up and says that uh he's found the doctor's mobile emitter
on deck nine and hands it to janeway and says you should probably take this back to sick bay and she
right um now tom is there because now we have no doctor and we have no pilot we just have
tom standing by somebody and by doctor with a crewman and they raise the the the
blanket over the just dies or he just died yeah and there's um a bunch of crewman on the floor
laying on the floor who've been injured with blankets on them and i thought why would you put
blanket like blankets are weird
Like, how does that help treat them?
It just covers them up more so you can't see if there's more radiation burns.
I just thought that blankets were weird.
I think they did that to give the idea of they also were injured.
Because if you have a bunch of crewmen laying down on the floor with no blankets,
it looks like everyone's engaged in nap time or something.
We never had any, like, portable beds for, you know, like,
Cots or no. No, no, we did. We have had Cots. Yes, we've had Cots before. Like, why didn't they put
where are the dead gum cots? Yeah, we needed those Cots. I'm sure there, those Cots are somewhere.
Neelix knows where the way. Where does the name Cot come from? I've never thought about it,
but it just now that we've said the word caught a bunch of times, it starts to sound like a weird
word. You know when you repeat a word too many times? You're right. Loses its meaning and it just
sounds like weird sound. And it's funny you mention that. There's another word later.
that comes up that I also had the same thought
about it. I'll bring it up when we get there. A weird word.
Yeah. Okay. This is the weird word episode.
Okay. Anyway, Deb Khruman
in the bed, injured
people on the floor. Chikote
gets the fancy bed.
I guess. He gets, well, he's the commander.
He gets the clamshell.
Okay. He's extra special.
Yeah, but if he was a man of the people,
he would have laid in a cot. Or on the
floor. Or on the floor.
I'm just saying. With a blanket.
Yeah. But he got the fancy
He did. Okay. He did. Yeah. And you go over and you administer a hypospray. You give him a hypo spray. I do. Janeway comes in. She reactivates the doctor. Yes. And here's where I went. Wait a minute. She reactivated. So the mobile emitter was on the ground. And she went over and reactivated the mobile emitter on a console and hit a few buttons and reactivated the EMH. That's what happened. So here's the thing.
Okay, there's a disconnect for you, isn't there?
There's a disconnect.
What is it?
So if the doctor is one program.
Yes.
Right.
And we're going to get to the copy of the doctor later on.
But anyway, if he's a program, does he have to get completely downloaded into the mobile emitter every time he goes away?
So let me keep talking.
So if it's one program that gets downloaded to the mobile emitter, that means every time he's off the ship with a mobile emitter, we don't have a doctor.
we don't have a doctor on the ship we can't activate correct that's right okay that's true
let's keep let's follow let's follow let's follow the mobile emitter for a minute yeah okay so now he's in
the mobile emitter he goes over his program's there he's being projected by a mobile emitter
there's no other doctor on the ship right he goes to the alien ship and the guy just takes a pad and
hits the mobile emitter and it falls to the ground so where did the doctor suck back into the mobile
emitter? Yes. Okay, now he's in the mobile emitter with a bad doctor. Yeah. Bad doctor then
downloads him into their computer. Correct. And puts the mobile emitter on, puts him,
bad doctor goes into the mobile emitter. Correct. And our doctor goes into their database, basically, right?
So now, now later on, so now we've got bad doctor over on our ship with a mobile emitter. Yeah. Which he
tricked everybody by falling down, right?
He, he just, he tapped something and he just goes back into the emitter and falls.
Now, bad doctors in the mobile emitter, good doctors over on the bad ship.
Right.
That is correct.
Okay.
Now when they reactivates, so she reactivates the doctor out of the mobile emitter.
Now I've got bad doc on there.
I didn't think the mobile emitter, it was an emitter.
It's not a mobile computer.
It's a mobile emitter.
It's a hologram emitter.
So I thought the mobile emitter was always tied into the mainframe of us.
Yeah.
The doctor was always back there just being emitted.
Right.
I didn't know he was in this loop.
Okay.
So what you're basically what you're saying is the minute bad doctor slaps that pad onto his mobile emitter.
He should have went back into our database immediately.
That's what I would say.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like that's an emitter.
It's not like a.
Yes.
It's not a main.
It's not a storage device.
No.
not a it's yeah exactly okay i just felt like there was a lot of uh you know loose and and freewheeling
with the doctor's yeah technical you know how that works yeah you're right it's a little it's a little
loosey goosey and and his ethical subroutines like oh we could just do that what yeah that seems like
a big problem that should have come up long ago if people knew they could do that anyway yeah it's not
that's stuff in the doctor.
Janeway does reactivate who she thinks is the doctor.
And we think it's the doctor at this point.
You know, everybody thinks it is.
Yeah, and he says he was taken hostage by the Equinox crew,
and he deactivated himself to escape.
And, you know, everyone believes it immediately.
Janeway basically tells Chikote that Harry has been analyzing this sound that we hear
when the fishers are opening up.
And Harry thinks it's some form of community.
communication and Janeway wants to find the equinox and Chocote wants to stop the attacks. And so this is the
beginning of the the battle between our commander and our captain in terms of what is the priority
for Voyager at this point. And at that point, the alien sound does start up and everyone's a little
bit nervous. Do you have any other? What Chacote says in the scene, he goes, he goes, I think it's their
way of communicating. And he says, I want to figure out how to communicate. He doesn't say that.
She says, Harry thinks it's some form.
That's right.
Harry thinks it's their way of communicating.
He's analyzing it.
And then Chocote says, well, you know, I once figured out how to communicate with a Terrellian seapod.
Yes, he does say that.
He goes, it can't be much harder than that.
What?
Well, yeah, since these are just tadpoles, a tadpole, a seapod, you know, pretty similar.
Maybe.
All right.
So we hear the sounds again.
And then we go to this weird ocean POV.
Yes, the seaside POV, the waves, everything.
Yeah, just kind of panning.
The camera sort of pans across this Malibu beach scene.
Not Malibu.
That water is definitely Caribbean or somewhere else.
Like I would, or Mexico, I wouldn't put that as Malibu.
I think it's too turquoisey blue.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, they went out to Malibu and then they just color time.
All they do is vis effects.
Oh, yeah.
And they can make it more turquoisey.
And that's it has to be Malibu or somewhere like that because,
seven shows up later on.
So Jerry Ryan had to physically be there.
They didn't send her down.
They didn't go down to the Bahamas.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think that was just Malibu would say off of the California coastline is what it was.
Yeah.
Okay.
But we hear, we hear, you know, someone calling in his room, his eyes open,
and we realize he's got this synaptic stimulator on.
And he pulls it off his neck, this thing.
It's basically, yeah, it's like an oculus.
He basically pulls the oculus off his neck.
Yeah.
He's been looking at it.
a beautiful scene and uh burke brings seven into his quarter yes and and ransom basically says hey you know
stick stay here with us you can use this thing i was i was looking at the beautiful ocean you can take
a vacation on the beach so this is where she knows what this is so later on you know i guess that's
the connection of her being there that some right in his mind he's connecting this i don't know something
I'm like, or did she get into the synapse?
See, it's a little foggy because it seems like she somehow accessed it, you know,
if you want to look at it from that angle.
But he does give her two choices.
You can stay in the brig or you can join this crew.
You know, that's you can.
And she's immediately, she doesn't even think about it.
She's just like, no, I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and join the brig instead of this crew.
That's where you get up of me.
Ransom orders Burke to go take care of her wound and does some really weird hand gesture across her place.
Yes, I wrote that.
down too. He gestures to her wound and have this looked at or something. It was, it was very bizarre. I was
like, what is happening here? But, you know, it was creepy. It was creepy. Yeah. creepy is a good way.
We go out to space. There's a Equinox flyby here. Then we go into their sick bay.
Yes, that's what I remember. I said, Equinox sickbay. Let's go with that. Berkscan 7,
and he tries to have a little bit of witty banter with her. He's so funny, the ex-boyfriend.
I knew you would say something about this.
He says, yes, it looks like we're going to have to amputate it.
And she doesn't respond.
He goes, oh, come on.
It was a joke.
She's like, no, your sense of humor is crude.
And I wrote down, Paris would agree.
Yeah.
Is crude.
He's a crude man.
And by the way, there was an extra there that was part of their crew, who I feel like we
used in Voyager.
Oh.
I've seen him.
Really?
Yeah, one of the extras.
In the background when she's being scanned?
Can he be on our ship and on the equinox?
It doesn't make sense.
But they had the uniform fit for him.
Oh, wow.
Good catch.
I did not notice that at all.
Yeah.
Okay.
So while, you know, after seven shuts down, Burke, which you're so happy about,
he taps a few controls and he notices that their EMH has left them with a little present,
which is our EMH.
And so he activates him.
and now we have our doctor noticing exactly what the situation is.
And he says, go ahead, treat, treat, uh, treat seven, treat your, your crew member.
And he's still good doctor, by the way.
Yeah, he's still good, yeah, he hasn't, still good doctor.
He's like, they're both stuck there.
They realize they're stuck together.
And next we go to the engine room, I think.
Yes, it's Equinox engineering room.
And again, this is, this is so freaky because Gilmore, she says,
She says, Marla to Bridge, we're ready.
And I'm like, oh, God, you know, she's using her first name.
When she talked about that in the other episode, everybody, everybody's using their first
names.
Yeah, I know we talked about how they've been using first names before, but that's usually
face-to-face.
Like, once you're in the ship and you're in the midst of battle or whatever, I would
assume that they'd fall back into military sort of, you know, you would think.
Yeah, you'd think, but it's like, it's, hey, it's Becky to the bridge.
Uh, we're already.
It's like a little, uh, it just pulled me out a little bit.
That's all.
But they do say, uh, they're ready to activate the enhanced warp drive.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, using these aliens as fuel.
20 isograms of the compound.
The compound.
Yeah.
Dead alien is what it is.
They should have said that 20 isograms of the dead alien, please.
Uh, but, you know, it's, it's just absolutely horrifying that they're doing this.
Yeah.
But it look, it's looking good for them.
They're just about to hit this enhanced warp drive.
when the ship shutters and nothing happens.
They realize that power relays are offline,
that they've been encoded with some kind of encryption code.
Encryption code, yes.
Ransom realized back on the bridge,
he realizes it's got to be seven of nine.
She's the one that did this.
So we go to Sick Bay and Ransom comes in and he's like,
I want these codes.
She refuses.
Yeah.
And then they say,
oh, well, you can just get the codes out of her.
she's bored. You can just, you know, extract them. Extract the codes. And the doctor,
a good doctor still. He says, nope, I am not going to do it. Yeah. He says that seven's cranial
infrastructure is highly complex. So, you know, good luck trying to figure out what she even had for
breakfast. Like, it'll take forever. And then the burke, uh, the Burke, I just called him the
Burke. The Burke. And the Burke, he's the Burke. He's the Burke. He asked the doctor to
extract this information and the doctor refuses and burke threatens to delete his program and the doc
goes mono a mono and says go ahead go right ahead and then seven sort of like no no calm down and
the doctor says no they're not going to delete my program I'm too important they need me and
basically they just going back and forth back and forth but before the doctor can say another word
Ransom has removed his ethical subroutines.
And at this point, he goes from good doctor to creepy is just like the creeper on the other.
On the other guy.
Exactly.
And in a very, very non-threatening voice, the doctor says that she will resist and I will have to restrain her.
And it's just, it's so creepy.
So he takes seven away to start beginning this extraction.
And seven's totally just, she's.
confused and she's also scared, I don't know about scared, but she's not excited about what's
about to happen. No, I'm sure. No. The next thing is a Voyager flyby in space. We're going to run back
over to Voyager and Janeway's reading Chukotay's translated message that he's going to send.
Yes. I left wood, she says, well, it's not exactly Shakespeare. It'll do. Yeah. So she hands this,
they hand the pad or whatever they, is it a pad that they're holding with the message? Yeah, it looks like a
Yeah, something like that over to Harry.
And so Chikote says, why don't we just lower weapons?
And Janeway says, no, we need to draw weapons.
They lower the shields and one alien comes out of the fissure.
And instead of heading to the closest person, which would be Tom, but are you even on the bridge at this point?
Are you here?
Yeah, so it should go to you because you're right there, but it goes to Harry instead.
I think because you sent the message maybe.
Oh, that makes more sense, yes.
Because they handed you the page.
had. It came from your station. Maybe they knew that somehow.
Yes. And it comes right up to Harry.
Comes right up to your face. I thought, I thought you guys were going to have a romantic moment of
some kind of thing. Did you think that it would be tadpole love at that point?
I thought it might be. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, clearly, Harry is the tadpole whisperer because
he doesn't mummify Harry. And it turns around and just shoots back into that little fisher.
And unfortunately, there is no response.
from the aliens the message there's another shake ship shake because they're still trying to get in
and janeway's like well guess that didn't work so she orders another deflector pulse which kind of
holds them off for a second and choket says look you know give me another shot at this message thing
i think we can try to alter the message a little bit and janeway disagrees she goes listen you know
we don't have time for that she says stop tinkering with adverbs i love that line though it was a really
well i just think that that was really cool i was like whoa she's getting harsh
She is very harsh.
Yeah, she goes in the ready room here.
He follows her in.
And he says, hey, you think maybe you're holding a grudge here?
Yeah.
She basically says, yeah, I am.
I'm angry because he abandoned everything that Starfleet stands for.
Oh, yeah.
And she says, I'm going to hunt him down no matter what.
Yeah, all right, Captain Ahab Janeway.
Yeah, they're not being very J.C.
Lovy.
No.
There's not a lot of J.C. love going on.
Not one bit.
This could be the end of it right here.
Oh, my goodness.
It's painful watching this.
So now we have an exterior space shot of Equinox in orbit of some random planets.
So now we're thinking, where the heck are they?
We jump over to the Equinox Bridge, and Burke asks Ransom why he's brought them there.
And he says, look, this planet has a pathogenic atmosphere.
It's going to keep us from being detected so that we can make repairs.
Lessing also chimes in and says, hey, I've discovered some deuterium deposits on the planet.
So ransom orders, Noah Lessing, to take an away team, down to the planet to harvest some of this deuterium.
Then we go to the sick bay of Equinox and we see the doctor singing.
And my first thought was, I bet Bob pitched this.
Do you think so?
I don't know why.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
So the song went a little something like this.
The ocular nodes connected to the sensory node.
The sensory nodes connected to the cortical.
node the cortical nodes connected to the particular node and then then seven says something yeah i was
like but then later on there is some singing so maybe not maybe yeah but when i first saw it i was
like oh i bet he pitched this that sounds like something he would do but i got to say that's just so
creepy the how that scene started up just hearing him sing that it's just like a little nursery song
yeah while he's doing brain surgery on her painful brain surgery
that you turn her into a vegetable yeah she's going to be a she's going to be a carrot and he's
and he says like don't be so gloomy why are you so sad we're going to see earth yeah and and then
she says if you let me i'll i'll restore your ethical subroutines he's like nope i need your help
ransom comes in then yeah um and the doctor even though it's the good doctor he's lost his ethical
subroutine so it's like the altered doctor yeah ransom comes in though and and the doctor
says, you know, she's going to be severely damaged after I'm done.
Yeah.
And then, wait, he says her higher brain functions, which control language, cognitive skills.
So basically just moving and talking will be severely damaged.
She's, yeah, not good, not good.
But ransom is very, you can tell he's very troubled by this.
Yeah.
And he says, yeah, and he says to her, please give me the codes.
Like we don't have to do this.
and and he says you don't understand i i had no choice yeah and seven sort of calls him on
there she's like oh you say that a lot you said that things were so bad you know so your
your story is things were so bad that this was the only option you had and she goes does that logic
comfort you she really because this is important the scene because it's the beginnings of him really
the potential for guilt and responsibility was there,
but this is the scene that really, I think, turns in.
Now he's facing it.
He's facing it.
He's really, really thinking about it, exactly.
And for seven to even come up with that,
it gets so deep at this point, you know?
You're just thinking, oh, my goodness.
But she refuses.
She goes, nope, not going to do it.
So he leaves and the doctor goes back to work,
singing his as he goes.
Spooky singing continues.
We have a captain's log,
supplemental and she's yeah janeway says the warp drive is back online but sensor sweeps have failed to
locate the equinox we can't find them okay so we're back in the captain's ready room on voyager
chokote enters he has submitted his recommendation in writing which is extremely rare
janeway even says that you never do this and he basically says well you know you weren't really up
to listening to what i was saying before so i'm going to submit it in writing and he says that we need to be
able to find the Ankari, the race that gave the Equinox crew, this summoning device, which brought
the aliens, you know, brought the aliens from their realm to our realm. And he says that maybe if we can
find the Ankari, they will be able to communicate with these aliens and they can tell these
aliens to please just call off these attacks and explain everything and, you know, set the record
straight. And Janeway basically says, you know, that's not going to be. She's like, that'd take us 50 years
off our course, 50 light years, sorry, off our course.
Yeah.
No, absolutely not.
And she's, but she says she studied Ransom's service record.
Right.
And the, the, she found that he has a tendency to hide.
That's right.
When he's being pursued.
And she goes through a couple of stories about how he used sort of hiding as a strategy.
Yeah.
So she says, you know, Chukota, you need to go to astrometrics and find the likely
hiding places, you know, if there's planets or nebulas, do a big, do a big,
yeah, basically, where would you hide if you were being pursued? And she basically negates
the entire recommendation to find the Ankari. She's like, no, yeah, not even, you're not
interested. She's trying to find like a strategic, peaceful solution. She just wants to find.
She's obsessed. No, completely. Completely. We have a cool space shot. Do you remember the
space, uh, the, the, the equinox going over the planet? And it was like overhead. It was a
really cool shot.
Really nice, yeah.
Yeah, flying over the planet, which we don't normally see that angle on our show from any ships.
But I thought that was cool.
I agree.
I agree.
We go inside Ransom's quarters again.
He puts on this synaptics simulator.
And it's an Oculus.
I just want to be clear.
He put it on an Oculus.
This time he's looking out of the ocean and there's a blonde woman.
Yeah.
Basing away from us.
We don't know who it is, but there's a woman standing there.
Yeah.
Far away.
So you can't tell.
who it is. I thought maybe it was Gilmore or something. I was like, really? I knew a seven immediately.
Did you really think it was? Oh, no. I did not. No, I did not know it was seven. You thought it was
Marla? Okay. I don't know. I was so it was small. So I don't know. Um, we go to the engine room on
the equinox. Oh, it's not the engine room. They actually go, okay, so what happens is after he sees the
woman in the dress, he kind of freaks out. So he takes off the synaptic simulator.
And he exits, he exits his quarters.
And the next shot is him entering the bridge, the Equinoff's bridge.
Oh, that's the bridge. Oh, he's talking to Gilmore, right?
Yeah, and Gilmore.
Oh, I thought it was the engine.
But some of this set, to see, this is part of the thing is they created the Equinox out of, I think, a bridge that they built for the Equinox or a repurpose something.
Yeah.
But then they used other places like certain hallways or I think Ransom's Quarters was probably that, that utility room.
across from the mess hall we used a lot.
Like I sometimes was like, wait, am I on Voyager?
Am I on the Equinox?
Am I on the bridge?
And there was so much damage, it was hard to tell.
It's hard to tell.
And my notes, I thought it was Ransom's Ready Room, like the captain's ready room, like the
captain's ready room right off the bridge.
Off the bat.
Yeah.
And he takes off the synaptic simulator, walks out of the ready room.
And that's where Gilmore is on the bridge saying, and Gilmore says, how is the beach?
And Ransom says, hey, how was, uh,
You know, these programs on the simulator, are people in there?
Are they supposed to have people in there?
She's like, no.
No people, just landscapes.
Yeah.
And then she asks why, and he goes, yeah, forget it.
It doesn't even bring.
He doesn't, like, I would bring this up with my crew member.
Like, hey, I'm seeing people on here.
What is this?
But he doesn't do it.
He doesn't do it at all.
Next, we go to a planet surface.
And there's Lessing with his away team that includes one person.
Of one person.
Remember, a skeleton crew, your away team is only one other person.
All right. Lessing's walking through the Malibu Hills.
Is that Los Virginis Canyon?
I feel like it's Malibu Canyon or Las Virginus.
But they probably shot that the same day.
They did the ocean shots with seven of nine.
That would make, yeah, like so somewhere Topanga, maybe, Topanga Canyon.
So they're walking down a hillside.
Walking down a hillside.
He says, this reminds me of McKinley Park back home.
And then he starts telling a story, like multiple stories.
And I was like, this is, he's a talker lessing.
He just went, but he doesn't, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He never talked like that before.
And all of a sudden, he's so verbose with his, yeah.
Well, because the crewman can't talk.
Yeah, that's right.
If they give him lines, they've got to pay him like a lot more money.
So, so basically it's one long lessing monologue as well.
It's a long monologue and he's just babbling, babba-da-bub-da-bub-a-boy, boy, he talks a lot.
And it's important to mention, he does at the very beginning of the scene on his tricorder,
he does detect a vein of ore that they have to go in mind for us and then he goes into his monologue
about McKinley Parker yeah yes they split up a little bit and the other half of the away team
gets gets basically cold cocked with a phaser rifle and then my notes I write down is that Paris
yeah that was Tom is that is Tom oh yeah it is that's me so you do remember that doing that
I don't remember it because I kept rewinding it and I was like
Yeah, but his hair is darker than Robbie's.
So I thought that maybe it wasn't you.
No, it was me.
All right.
It was me.
Me and Chikote.
And then Chikote comes out and stuns Lessing, the monologist.
Yeah.
And then he says, four to beam up.
So we've got some hostages.
So we take these guys up.
Yeah.
We go back to the Equinox Bridge.
Yeah.
And Gilmore is getting some kind of subspace message.
Yeah.
It's the doctor.
And basically the doctor.
spills the beans. He's like, hey, it's evil EMH, evil equinox EMH. Evil doc. And he's sending a subspace
message saying, hey, Voyager, you know, has found you. They found you. They polarized their hole to mask
their approach is what evil doctor tells, uh, ransom. And that Janeway has also ordered an ambush of the
away team. And then the transmission becomes garbled and then completely ends. Ransom says,
bring them back up again, can't bring up the doctor, evil doctor. So then he calls to the away team
to see if Noah will respond, no response, Gilmore scans, scans the planet's surface and realizes
that they're not down there longer. They're gone. Yep. So ransom calls all hands to battle stations.
He's ready to battle stations. Yeah, here we go for our first battle of this episode.
Voyager's coming in, 30,000 kilometers in range. She says target their power core. Yes.
Going to go after their engines first and their power core.
We go back to space and we see Voyager kind of coming in
in a cool, like, twisty move as they fire from behind.
This is their ambush.
Ransom returns, fire.
Chikote asked Torres for a status report.
She can't locate their shield grid generator
and ask Chikote if more power can be diverted to the sensors.
He says, stand by.
And at that point, another hit from the Equinox damage is our deflector.
Tuvok tells Janeway, hey, if this goes offline,
and we're going to be vulnerable to the alien attacks
because that's how Janeway has been repelling these attacks
by boostering our shields with the deflector pulses.
So Janeway says to target their weapons array,
we jump back onto the Equinox Bridge.
Their phasers are now offline.
So ransom orders a full array of photon torpedoes.
But Burke says, Bala's trying to bypass their security protocols.
So your girlfriend is trying to hack into their system.
Yeah, she's doing really well.
Ransom orders Burke to stop her.
So then she opens up a com link directly to Burke Station.
Let's pause here for a moment.
Sure.
Belaw opens a com link.
She says, computer, open a private comlink or something, secure comlink to workstation 33 beta.
How does she know?
How does she know where his workstation is?
Have they been talking behind my back?
I hate to tell you this.
She's a creeper or a stalker or something.
Or they know.
know each other so well she knows she just consents what workstation he's that that was creepy i have to
paul you know i have to say that this is this is uh not good for tom paris it's not looking good when she
when she knows where his workstation is yes anyway she's pleading with him to stop she's like look
this is not a game people are dying over here and he says well i wish you weren't one of the people
dying he's so casual about it he calls her bLT again bLT yeah yeah yeah yeah and transmission
so he just shuts her out.
He's a bad guy.
He's bad news.
I don't know why she ever dated him.
I don't understand.
So we're back on the Voyager bridge.
Janeway says to keep targeting their weapons array.
One more photon torpedo will probably do the trick.
And their weapons are down.
And Janeway orders ransom to surrender his vessel.
And we cut back into the Equinox Bridge.
And he says to, he asks if they still have thrusters, which they do.
And he says, lay in a course for the planet's action.
atmosphere. So he figures this is the way to evade Janeway. So Janeway, back on the Voyager
bridge, says, what the hell is he doing? And she orders Tom to follow him. Our shields are weakening
as we're going through this planetary surface. It's just kind of buffeting our shields. Chkote
says that we will be attacked by the aliens if we lose our shields. And Janeway doesn't even listen.
She doesn't respond. He stands up. He goes, Captain, Captain. He yells at her.
Um, you could, yeah, this is a suicide mission.
Captain.
Can I hear you?
That's pretty good.
Captain.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a suicide mission.
There, but by the way, a couple things come to mind.
This was a very, I love the, had the camera work.
They must have put those motors that vibrated because it was doing the really fast.
Yes.
And there was so much, uh, liquid nitrogen and smoke and sparks and things.
It was really quite cool.
And the long lenses that sort of compressed all of that action was very.
cool yeah um very much so eventually janeway's like we're going to die she pulls us out by the way
she breaks off the pursuit i thought we were the most modern ship around how can this science ship
that should barely be able to make it janeway says earlier like i don't even know how you've made it
this far and how can they go into this dangerous atmosphere and they're fine they can survive it i guess
they had the shielding enhancers or whatever maybe i don't know yeah it's a special
Nova class science starship. I guess. It has extra shields for descending through
down to the planet surface. That's what it has to be. Clearly. So she breaks off her pursuit.
And once that happens, we're back on the Equinox Bridge. Ransom is informed that Voyagers
pulled up and they have suffered major damages. And so then he says, okay, let's pull up as well.
And now let's go to warp. Let's go to warp. Let's go to
warp, which they do go on the run again. They go on the run. So we're back onto the Voyager Bridge.
After they've gone to warp, Janeway wants to pursue, but Harry says, look, we cannot until we restore
primary systems. We must restore the primary systems. And this will take a few hours of work.
Janeway's not happy, but she says, well, at least we came away with something. And so now we go to cargo
bay, and there's lessing in handcuffs. Yeah. And they basically have the standoff.
scene where yeah you know it's just a great stand-up scene i thought rick and kate both played it
very grounded and real and intense and tension was palpable yeah but she basically says if you
don't help us out i'm going to drop the uh shields in this cargo bay in this room yeah and then
those aliens are going to come in and kill you want you want to die yeah the aliens will pay your
friends will pay you a visit yeah she's willing to let him die he still won't do it no and uh and so
she leaves. She starts to walk out and Chacote
follows her out in the hallway.
But she does tell Noah. She says, guess
what? The calm is active.
So we'll be right outside. If you change
your mind. Yeah, you have a change of heart. Just say
something. We'll stop it immediately.
Yeah. And he just, he's,
he remains steadfast. He doesn't want to do anything.
Yep. And Chacote runs out in the hall
with her and he was,
Geltram was mad. He was so angry. He was really
angry. Oh my gosh. And he should be
angry. He should be angry. Yeah, he's
defending this guy saying, you're going to
kill him and he's he was just a loyal officer he doesn't want to let jane way kill him yeah he says
don't do this don't do this and she keeps saying he'll break he'll break like she doesn't in her mind
she's not going to kill him because she feels like he's going to go ahead and say okay i'll tell you
what's going on and but chikote sees differently he sees that she has this crazy look in her eye
just this obsessed look and there's not it's almost as if she's possessed that's what it is it's
possession it's a numbness it's like a cold oh my goodness you start to hear those noise those
fissures are yeah about to and chikote runs over and opens up the cargo bay door runs inside grabs lessing
brings him back so he saves him and he says he tries to reactivate the shields first right and then it says
you need a level nine authorization so janeway's already encrypted it yeah so that at that point
he's like i can't take this anymore that's when he runs in there with his phaser
shoots at the fisher pulls lessing out and then basically throws him up against the wall and says okay
you have demonstrated your loyalty to your captain now let's talk about the anchari he's basically
like undermined the captain's plan and he's he's brought him out and said no let's do my plan let's
do my plan exactly and the look and janeway gives oh and then she steps between them in silence
look at death look at walks away walks away that was very
intense. Very intense scene. We go to the briefing room and Janeway is off by the window by
herself. You don't see her yet. You don't see her. Yeah, the shot is on Torres. Hands. Hands from
Balana. It's a great. It's a great shot. It's a great shot. Yeah, Tori's asking if there's an
Ankari vessel less than, if there's an Akari vessel less than two light years away,
how come we haven't detected it? Chkotay says, apparently they use a type of propulsion that makes
them difficult to find. And that's when the camera lands on Janeway.
And she's still, the look at death is still there.
It's still there.
She hasn't let go of that, that feeling and that anger and that numbness.
And it's just, it's, it's really scary to see her like that.
Well, it also was weird to see Chakotay running the room.
Yeah.
It seemed like he was taking over.
Yeah.
He gives everybody their orders of what to do.
And then he says, okay, he does.
He does.
You're all dismissed.
Yeah.
It's almost like he, it was an unspoken mutiny in a way.
You know, it's kind of like, well, I'm going to just.
take my plan and you're too you're too crazed right now with your hunt for ransom that I need
to take control and even talks about taken over yeah yeah he says lessing has also agreed to
adjust our sensors to help find the Ankari and at that point we have equinox EMH no one knows
it's him but you know clearly the audience knows it's him he asks has our prisoner disclosed
any other information at which point someone says that he has not and so everyone is
dismissed. Everyone has to work on repairs. Janeway stays to tell Chacote that she will try it his way
and that even though they have had disagreements in the past, he has never openly defied her.
And that's when he says, you almost killed a man today. And she comes back and says, well, you know,
they go back and forth until finally says, it's not about, yeah, he says it isn't about rules and
regulations. It's about right and wrong. And then he warns her that if she crosses the line
again like that he's not going to allow it so basically he's threatening her yeah and she she takes
that threat it's very real and she walks up and relieves him of duty which i was absolutely shocked i
was like what what just happened holy moly yeah oh my goodness so so much drama at this
lots of jancy shippers are just crying they're crying right now there all of them are so sad to see
this and let's face every couple has arguments but boy this was this was a i don't know how you
go past this how do you how do you get past this type of craziness um exterior space shot a voyager
pursuing a vessel we don't know but we assume it's the uncari um we're on the voyage bridge
there's no response from the uncari ship so janeway just orders a tractor beam tuvok actually protest
Two of us. Yeah, he says, they've done nothing to it. And then she cuts them off.
Just do it. Just do it.
She's mad still. They cut over, camera cuts over to Harry's reaction. Even Harry's shocked by how harsh Janeway has become.
And now we have the Ankari on the view screen. And unbeknownst to me, it's Eric Steinberg,
almost insin Kim, Eric Steinberg, who's on screen. And he basically says that he wants nothing to do with them.
Yeah, he says, Starfleet.
Leave us alone. There's nothing of value here. Get out of here, Starfleet.
Yeah. He thinks they're all the same. Right. And she's basically, she's like, you know, it's not us. It's the equinox. And you need to summon those spirits. You need to call them in here and tell them what's going on. And he goes, I'll call them. But you're going to have to tell them and convince them. You're going to have to convince them. Exactly. So then we go to cargo bay. Okay. Why do we go there? Why didn't we just call them on the bridge? Why do we have to go to cargo bay to do this? It makes no. It makes no.
sense made no sense and also this scene i did not like the scene no no the way it was staged and
just the how it looked it was just annoying it was a weird three shot that just it was and the the tadpoles
just kept flying in circles yeah i don't know yeah here we go this is a weird scene but they do
they summon the alien spirits the huge tadpoles yeah uh they keep flying in circles they basically
try to talk to them um also i got to say i didn't love the makeup on this uncari it's not my favorite
makeup because it didn't move with Eric's face.
It didn't, it was just a big rubber.
But they were, did you see there was a gap for where the mouth was and his actual
mouth was recessed from the hole inside?
So that, it was a very ambitious design that maybe just did not translate as well
on camera, I think.
Well, it's funny because we do on Resident Alien, we do a full head prosthetic on Alan Tudor.
Correct.
But we try to leave a little bit around here.
And then we also spend a lot of money in time doing facial enhancements in post-production.
So we'll do VFX eyebrows raising because the rubber mask can't do anything.
Oh, okay.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And so a little bit of that goes a long way.
But I don't ever remember us doing that kind of facial enhancement on our prosthetics,
where we would make the rubber kind of move in ways that felt more animated.
We didn't do that.
No.
It could have used it in this scene.
definitely it was the whole the shot was static the makeup was kind of you know static it wasn't
really expressive yeah i agree they go back and forth the aliens kind of don't agree don't believe
jane way and the funny thing is the janeway says do they understand us and the incari captain's like
yep sure enough so the the tadpoles don't need a universal translator they can understand janeway
and her english very clearly but yet we don't understand their screeches but
after going back and forth.
They go back and forth.
Tuvok says, look, we will punish them.
They've done this wrong.
And we will punish them, we promise.
But the tadpoles don't believe it.
Even Janeway says, you know, we have rules.
We have federation rules that they have broken.
They've disregarded these rules.
And if they can, if these aliens, the tadpoles will just stop attacking them, they are going
to take care of this.
Right.
And the tadpoles don't want it.
They say, listen, we just want Equinox.
We want you to deliver us Equinox.
And basically Janeway, she agrees.
She's like, sure.
And Tuvok protests.
Tuvost's like, wait a minute.
You're going to give them the Equinox and the crew.
They're going to be killed immediately.
And at that point, Janeway pulls rank again.
And she says, hey, if you'd like to join Chikote in the brig, keep at it.
You know, and it's just like, oh, my gosh, look how harsh she's.
So finally, finally, the aliens are like, yep, we'll take it.
We'll take the deal.
We will stop attacking you if you give us a.
Equinox. And that is, again, another stunning turn of events.
She's going to a dark place. Yeah, so dark. We go out to space. Equinox flies by. We cut into
the Equinox bridge. Yeah. Burks tells ransom that they only have enough fuel for another 500
light years. They're going to need some more fuel. Right. And this is an important scene because
it shows us how far down the dark side Burke has.
gone, that he's actually gone past ransom. And now ransom is heading back towards the light.
Yeah. Ransom says, by fuel, do you mean? Yeah. The dead aliens? Yeah. Yeah. More dead aliens. That's what we
need. Yeah. Yes. And Burke says, yeah, the dead aliens. And we're going to need to, you know,
murder some more. We're going to need to kill some more because we need some fuel. So yeah,
that's that scene. We go into Sick Bay. Equinox, Sea. Yeah, Equinox Sick Bay. And, uh,
our doctor, our altered doctor, who's lost, our real doctor, who's lost his ethical protocols,
is doing this detailed brain surgery.
And he's singing, oh, my darling, Clementine.
But then when he's touching different parts of her brain, she's finishing the sentences.
She has a beautiful voice, by the way.
Her voice is really pretty.
She does.
And then, you know, she talks about that her voice isn't that good.
And I'm like, come on, Jerry, you have a great singing voice.
Yeah. She's going to agree. Yeah. Yeah. It was very cute. Ransom enters and he's feeling really guilty. And again, says, I didn't have a choice. He asked how much longer the doctor says about an hour, maybe less. And the doctor does offer to teach him for songs. Yeah, that's what he's at the very end. He's like, you know, I can teach you these old chestnuts. Yeah, I'm going to need somebody. Yeah, I'm going to need somebody to duet with because she's going to be a vegetable. She's going to be a zucchini and that's it.
So, yeah, I need your help.
Ransom doesn't respond to that.
He's feeling a little of guilt and he leaves.
I love that shadow on the wall, by the way, as he's leaving.
There was this, oh, yeah, you can see this really hard shadow of him
as he's sort of, you know, torn between his dark side.
And it was a nice little metaphor for a lot of things.
We go to what I think is Ransom's quarters, but you might be right.
It might be the ready room.
I don't know.
Yeah.
He goes and picks up this synaptic simulator.
I thought it was a cool rack focus.
It, you know, kind of racks, rack focus.
The focus goes to the synaptic simulator in the front, in the foreground.
Yeah.
And then we go back to the ocean.
Yeah.
But this time, there's the blonde woman, but it pushes in and we realize she turns around.
It is seven.
Yeah.
Did you notice she was barefoot out there?
And I was thinking, oh, like she's standing out in Malibu.
Those rocks can be rough out there.
And she's standing out there barefoot.
so and her cadence was much more human like she wasn't she didn't have her her seven her borg stuff yeah she
didn't she was like human state your name she didn't she wasn't state your name it was nice to see it was
nice to see a little more she still had some formality to her but it was yeah much more relaxed than
usual yeah and he asks her what she's doing there she says hiding just like you I'm hiding
just like you and um you know and he's like well I'm not hiding she's like well I'm not hiding she's
Yes, you are.
And a little bit more dialogue between the two and then seven eventually morphs into one of the tadpole aliens.
Turns into a tad, giant evil tadpole.
Mm-hmm.
The bridge calls for him.
Yes, that's right.
At this point.
At this point.
Byrück.
Mm-hmm.
Burke says Janeways found them again.
That's right.
We go onto the Equinox Bridge.
And Voyager is 58,000 kilometers away, closing in fast.
Burke says, hey, we can hide in this class two nebula.
Yeah.
It's not that far away.
Ransom's like, nope.
Nope.
He says, I want to cooperate with Janeway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What?
He's beginning to see the light.
And then, of course, he says,
we need to find another way, which is exactly what Seven said.
Find another way.
Yeah.
And the minute he says that he wants to cooperate with Janeway,
Burke sort of does a Scooby-Doo.
He doesn't understand what's happening.
And he says, wait, is it Ransom who hails Janeway?
Yeah.
Ransom says Hale Janeway.
Burke says, belay that order.
Raise shields.
Yeah.
Belay that order, raise shields.
He takes command.
Yeah.
He grabs ransom.
Well, actually, ransom relieves Burke of duty first, right?
So then that's when Burke pulls his phaser and says that he's taking commands.
So he doesn't want to be relieved of duty.
He orders ransom to be taken to the brig.
Gilmore apologizes.
Marla says sorry and escorts him off the bridge.
Burke now orders a secure channel to be open to Voyager's sick bay.
He wants to do a doctor.
Yeah, he wants to talk to the doctor.
Secret channel.
We cut to sick bay docs.
Evil docs treating some evil docs treating someone.
And I love how when he gets the, you know, the secure line call, he leaves the dying guy
and takes his tool and just sort of tosses it.
He's just like, oh, I got to answer the phone.
And he tosses.
And my first thought was, how many tricorders did I break just tossing them?
I don't know if it was a tricorder or something else, but I was like, I hope we talk to talk
to props about that.
You can't just throw these things around.
No, they're delicate, for sure.
And the whole reason why Burke has reached out to evil doctor is because he wants Voyager's current shield frequency,
which will help in terms of the battle, the fight that is about to happen.
And we're in the equinox engineering room.
Ransom says, hey, this isn't the brick.
And Gilmore, Marla, says, I know, I'm with you, sir.
Let's figure out a way to end this.
So they both see the light and Ransom.
and says, okay, let's figure out how to access transporter control.
We jump back to the bridge, the Voyager Bridge, and Paris says they are dropping out of warp.
And Sick Bay, the doctor gives Burke the Voyager shield frequency, evil doctor, that is.
We're back on the Voyager bridge.
And they get through our shields, which causes some major damage.
Janeway says, you know, let's get us out of range and let's remodulate shields.
Remodulate these shields.
What's going on?
That's weird.
Burke is relentless.
Burke says pursue, maintain fire.
He doesn't want to let Voyager out of his sight.
So he's still coming at Voyager.
Well, he's got the spy on board.
Yeah, we get the deadgum spy.
So, yeah, he knows everything, right?
He keeps penetrating the shields.
We keep having these big blast.
I did notice that Kate had really big hair because she kept like,
when Kate does her shakes, she sort of like rocks forward.
Yeah, she does 80s metal rocker.
Yeah, she does the hair flip back.
So her hair kept getting bigger and bigger.
bigger. It was just all over the place. Our weapons have been taken out. Tuvok says he's been
rotating the shield frequency every 10 seconds. He doesn't understand what's happening. Paris then
tells us we've lost impulse engine. So the Voyager is taking so much damage. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we get
interrupted with an incoming transmission from ransom. Ransom. What? He's there. He's there,
finally. He tells us on the bridge that Burke has mutinied. Yeah. And basically, Janeway trusts him.
Like he lays it all on the table.
She thinks for a minute.
And then she says, okay, I believe you.
Right.
And I think she says something like, he may have forgotten that he's a captain for a little while.
Yeah.
But now he's remembering or something.
Yeah.
So he's willing to give up the Equinox, basically.
Yeah.
And he can beam everyone under Voyager is what he's going to do.
We jumped to the Equinox Bridge.
Burke realizes that someone is trying to beam them off of the Equinox.
And so he calls for Force Fields.
And we jumped to Equinox.
He puts force fields, I think, just around the bridge.
Around the bridge. Just around the bridge.
Just around the bridge.
Forrefield's around the bridge.
Ransom orders Gilmore to transport herself and a couple of crew members along with seven of nine.
Right.
And that he will take care of Max.
He's going to stay there and take care of the ship's shield grid.
So we cut to the transporter room.
And in the transporter room, we see them beam in and there's seven on the ground.
Seven's back on our ship.
Now, the assumption is when she beams in, so does the doctor.
correct like he must our good doctor is also beamed over i would think so yes well he he does come back
on our ship so exactly so they don't show that scene of what happened in terms of putting his
this is another part of the doctor like where is his program living i i don't was it in sick bay
on the bad ship and that he was being haul projected in sick bay he doesn't have the mobile
emitter anymore so because evil doctor has that yeah you know what so he wouldn't been able to
been this is what I'm saying. Okay. So next scene. Let's go in the next scene.
Okay. Doc has returned. Yeah. So now evil doctor's still working trying to give the codes away.
Yeah. But good doctor walks in. Confronts evil doctor. Yeah, he says my ethical subroutines have been
restored. And the evil doctor threatens to blow out all of the hollow emitters in the room because
he's planted these charges. But I don't understand. He said he made a copy of himself. Or he says that later on.
Okay.
Who said that?
Not in this scene.
Good doctor.
Maybe it's in another scene.
Not in this scene.
Because right when he says, I'm going to blow up the entire and I'll ruin your,
you know, I'll destroy your program.
He says computer delete the Equinox.
M.H.
And I thought, boy, that was easy.
You know, that was so quick and easy to just to end his existence, basically.
He deleted him.
He's done.
He's finished.
And then he does say to the.
Unless he's in the trash file.
He could be in the trash file.
You could recover him.
You could probably recover him.
That's true.
He does.
And then he calls the Equinox Bridge.
Good doctor does.
And he says, I'm afraid your doctor is no longer on call.
Another funny line there.
I love that line.
Ransom tells Burke that he's dropped the shields around the ship.
Except for the everywhere, except for the bridge in his location, basically.
And he suggests that he and the rest of the bridge crew beam to Voyager.
Burke and the bridge crew, well, Burke basically says now, why?
I bring him over there so I could be in the brig for the next 30 years.
So his F.O., his first officer basically says, look, what are we going to do?
And Burke says, we're going to go to a shuttle.
We're going to run to a shuttle because we're not going to make it.
He's like, yeah, we're going to make it.
So they leave the bridge, and now we see a shot of Equinox engineering.
The aliens are coming through, and they're buffeting their warp core and, you know, doing damage there.
Yeah, now we're out in the hallway of the Equinox, which I think is that hallway.
because they round a corner, but it looks like the hallway between the mess hall
and that other room that looks like the mess hall on the other side.
It was our hallway redress.
Redressed.
And Burke is leading the remaining bridge crew down our redressed hallway.
They're headed to the shuttle bay.
They've got phaser rifles with them.
The fissures start opening up everywhere.
They're firing left and right.
And eventually they all turn to mummies.
Like they can't, they're just overwhelmed.
there's no there's no and once again burke is just barely touched by one alien he's completely
he's a mummy yeah so are you happy are you happy that burke mummified i'm very happy you didn't have
to deal with them anymore ex-boyfriends should be mummies um okay the bridge now voyager bridge
harry says there's only one life sign left on the ship so yeah these aliens have gotten
everybody except for ransom yeah ransom comes on the view screen comes on the he says
things didn't work out as he planned, he says.
He basically says he's going to fly away and his ship's about to explode.
He's got to get a safe distance away from a Voyager so it doesn't damage their ship.
But Janeway does offer to be moving board.
Yeah, she says, get off the ship.
You just set it to auto navigation and he refuses.
He says, no time.
Hey, there you go.
Another time reference.
He does tell Janeway, you've got a good crew, get them home, which was a nice.
little tagline. I mean, he's come back to the light. He's redeemed his character
finally. And he attaches that synaptic simulator one last time. He sees the ocean without seven
bothering him. And he ends up basically being vaporized once his ship explodes. And we do
see an exterior space shot of the equinox exploding. I had a, I had some confusion about
this synaptic simulator because at first it was just landscapes. And then he saw seven in there,
which was never quite explained
if that was a hallucination
or if she had tapped in somehow.
Right.
And then in the last scene,
he's actually in it.
How did that happen?
How did he was standing on the beach?
Like, what are the rules?
I don't know.
There was a lot of rules.
There's no rules.
But he does explode.
We cut back to Janeway, by the way.
Did you notice she had her hands like this?
Oh, and he had his hands like that too.
Yeah.
Right.
So they both did a similar hand thing.
Okay.
Interesting.
I don't know if that was directed like that.
but very interesting, yes.
We have a captain's log supplemental.
Jamie says the aliens have withdrawn to their realm
and that she has reinstated Chikote.
He's back as the commander again.
So now we're in sick bay
and the doctor has finished repairing seven.
He expresses a little bit of remorse
for his actions on the Equinox.
Seven says she understands that his program was altered
and she suggests enhancing his program
with security protocols to prevent any future tampering.
And she says that she can assist him with that.
And he says, well, I appreciate that.
And she starts walking out of Sick Bay.
And she says, oh, also, by the way, you were off key when they were singing Clementine.
And she says that she can also assist him with that as well.
I will assist that with you.
Yes, I'll assist you with that, too.
It felt like a date.
It did because he makes an appointment.
And I said date slash appointment in Holidayk 2 with her and a tuning fork.
And so.
Yes, he says, just you, me and a tuning fork.
It was very kind of flirty and dainty.
Most definitely.
But I do think that Seven helping enhance his safety protocols
and fix this inconsistency with his program
that he can be here, there, everywhere.
The whole doctor logic to me was a little...
It's very confusing.
We're in the briefing room now,
and Janeway is just dressing down the Equinox remaining crew.
she is basically telling them that they will be stripped of rank,
that privileges will be limited,
and they will be under constant supervision.
They will have to earn our trust
since they took advantage of our trust
when they first were on the Voyager ship.
Yes, and she goes down the line, by the way.
She lists everything.
Noah Lessing, Marla Gilmore,
James Morrow, our admiral, his name,
and a couple of other names as well.
Brian Sofam, Angelo, Desmond.
sony exactly but i was like james morrow that's he had mentioned that to us our admiral our admiral level
patron uh had mentioned this to us that there was a comp you serve group yeah compserve star trick yes
yeah it was their and that bulletin board that they chat board chat room or whatever yes but
this is what he said if you recall that the writers of voyager would often enter this room to sort of you know
listen to their ideas and like they would ban you know they would they would bring up
crazy yeah they would sit there and say here here's a pitch for you here's a so they were a really
valuable resource for the writers evidently and as an homage to them as a thank you for their their
collaboration or their ideas they included their some of the names of the people that were in this
compi serve that were in the compi serve search group james morrel was one of them actually yeah
Brian Sofam and Angela DeSoney.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
I loved it.
I remember, I've forgotten that he had said it happened in this episode.
I was really happy to hear it.
By the way, so all these people were stripped of rank and kept on our ship.
Why didn't we see Rick Worthy anymore?
We never saw them again.
Never saw them again.
I guess they replaced some of our dead crew because we did lose a few people in this episode.
Yeah, but then they're in the lower decks at this point.
So if they're in the lower decks, we just don't see them anymore, you know, we don't.
That's crazy.
Which I think would be funny if Lower Decks, the show, actually included these people.
Yeah, that'd be pretty funny.
The Equinox crew.
Yeah.
We go to the bridge.
They walk out of the briefing room.
Yes.
So they dismiss the Equinox guys.
And it's just Chukote and Janeway.
Awkward.
Very awkward.
They walk off onto the bridge, which is being repaired.
So not a lot of people out there right now.
No.
Janeway asked, Janeway asked how the crew is, and Chakotay says, frayed nerves.
Nelix is organizing a potluck to help boost him around.
Janeway asked if he's going.
Chikote says, yes, he's replicating the salad.
Janeway says, I'll bring the croutons.
So this is her way of breaking the ice a little bit, sort of.
Getting back together, yeah.
And she says, you know, then she gets serious.
She says that basically he could have staged a mutiny of his very own.
And then Chocote says that the thought,
had crossed his mind, but that it would have crossed the line if he had done that.
And then, you know, Janeway looks over and says, oh, there's Voyager ship plaque on the ground.
Which is just like what happened in the first, the part one episode on the equinox.
Yes.
So our plaque is falling just like the equinox plaque.
And she's a little, she's perplexed because we've had years of battles and it's never
fallen down before.
But clearly it has fallen down here.
And my takeaway is that it fell because the captain basically both captains went to cross the line.
And they went to the dark side.
So when you go to the dark side, your ship plaque just pops right off the wall.
That's what happens.
That's what happens.
The ship will let you know if you're going too far.
Yes.
The plaque will just eject itself.
And Jacote, the voice of reason, says, let's put it back where it belongs.
Which is exactly what she said, to ransom.
To ransom.
And we end the episode with a close-up of.
Janeway's face and she's very pensive and she's probably probably wrestling.
Yeah, it was not a satisfying ending to me.
I felt like she's changed, but it felt like she changed, but yet I bet next week when we watch
the next episode that she's not going to be that changed.
She's going to be, it's the same thing that happens.
I bet we never, Tom and Bolana never talk about her ex-boyfriend ever again.
No, no.
Like we just let these episodes happen in the,
in a bubble and then it goes away.
Okay, what's your theme?
Do you have a theme for this?
Yeah, my theme is,
don't let your emotions get the best of you.
Because that is pretty much what Janeway did
and also what Ransom did before Janeway.
And I almost feel like Ransom's journey to the dark side was contagious.
It just immediately affected Janeway and she became exactly the same thing.
Interesting.
Yeah.
How about you?
My theme is some version of,
listen to people around you.
You know, Janeway had listened a little more.
Yeah.
Which is,
starts with she let her emotions get the best of her.
But then she was unable to listen to anybody.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Yeah, I guess my other thing would just be to build on that,
what you just said is just don't have a one track mind.
You know,
it's so easy to be so focused on one thing that you don't even,
you don't even step back.
Yeah, you're not even smelling the roses.
You've got to let you step back for a second.
And look at the big picture.
You're so myopic that you see.
one solution and one solution only which is hunt down ransom and end him you know and it's just like
come on you know it's just too much it's too much okay you need balance in your life right you do you can't
we all need balance yeah yes we do what what is your rating for this episode oh um I am going to give it
uh I'm going to give it a 7.4 oh I'm going to give it yeah just because I was so confused with what
what happened with the doctor and why Janeway and Chacote didn't die immediately from being touched by
so those issues kind of pulled me back to me in this more as as we talked it through yeah there
were more than I realized so maybe my rating is too high yeah but it's still a very exciting episode
I mean it's the way it was shot and and the acting from all the guest stars I still think it was
an entertaining episode a two episodes at least I think part two was a little better I think I gave
part one and eight point zero i gave part two an eight point two okay i actually thought it was better it
was more satisfying even even with all the logic bumps okay our admiral and captain average rating
for equinox part two is seven point seven point seven i was almost going to revise my seven point four
to seven point seven i really i'm not i'm not josh and i would have been right on the money
because the minute you went eight point two i said oh my seven point four is too low it should be a little bit
higher and I was going to go seven point seven point four eight point that's almost right oh it's
almost right in the middle there so there you go so we we ended up together right around where they
there you go okay everybody that was uh a big two partner in a very dark place let's get out of it
hopefully the next one's a comedy I hope I you want a comedy is that what you want right now
Robbie McNeil what's more comedy it's more levity you know that would be nice it would be nice
okay well thank you to everyone who tuned in for this week's episode and as robbie said hopefully next
week's episode will be a comedy the name of that episode is survival instinct which probably is
not too comedic doesn't sound funny to me that's not a funny title no not a funny title but once again
thank you for tuning in or if if the if the title was instead of survival instinct yeah
If it was survival stinks, that would be the comedy version.
Survival stinks is the comedy version or survival instinct is the action version.
All right, for all the Patreon patrons out there, please stay tuned for your bonus material.