The Delta Flyers - Ex Post Facto

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Ex Post Facto. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise, and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers Ann Marie Segal, Philipp Havrilla, Jason M Okun, Kelton Rochelle, Stephanie Baker, Stephen Smith, Sarah A Gubbins, John Tufarella, Brian Barrow, Chris Knapp, Daniel Adam, Eve Mercer, James Hildebrand, Matthew Gravens, Mary Jac Greer, Marie Burgoyne, Michelle Zamanian.And our Producers  Col Ord, Aithne Loeblich, AJ Provance, Ann Harding, Barbara Beck, Breana Harris, Captain Nancy Stout, Catherine Goods, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Chris Tribuzio, Claire Deans, Craig Sweaton, Crystal Komenda, Dave Grad, Deborah Schander, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Gay Kleven-Lundstrom, Gregory Kinstetter, Heidi McLellan, James Amey, James Cooper, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Josh Johnson, Karel Hartlieb, Katherine Hedrick, Katie Johnson, Katherine Puterbaugh, Kelley Smelser, Laura Swanson, Liz Scott, Maggie, Mary O'Neal, Matthew Cutler, Mike Schaible, Máia W, Nathanial Moon, Nevyn Cross, Rich Gross, Richard Banaski, Ryan, Steph Dawe Holland, Terence Thang, Thomas Melfi, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Warren Stine, York Lee. Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey guys. Welcome to the Delta Flyers. We are a weekly podcast that discusses episodes of Star Trek Voyager in chronological order. Your two hosts along this podcast journey are myself, Garrett Wang, aka Ensign Harry Kim, and Robert Duncan McNeil, who portrayed Lieutenant Tom Paris. If you're interested in either an extended version of this podcast or the extended video version of this podcast, or the extended video version of this, podcast, both of which include added bonus segments. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers and sign up to become a patron. All right. Here we are. Hello. How are you?

I'm good. I'm good. Anything new on the home front? All good? Let's see. What's the latest on the home front? The dog, Walter needs his shots. Oh.

And it's very difficult to get. veterinarians to to let you come in their office like we have to go drive up to the vet's office call the vet and say we're outside then they come out in the parking lot get the dog take them in do their business

bring them back yeah this whole COVID-19 is changing even even vet care so that's the latest excitement in my neck of the woods oh my god I'm just you know I'm just still wondering how are they going to do conventions?

How is a land-based convention going to happen to do social? I know. I mean, if even the vet is so difficult to see the vet, it just, I'm at a loss of words how this is going to continue. I don't know. I mean, obviously, the answer for the entire world is have enough tests to test the entire population of every country. And then you're good.

Then you know, right? That's the key. Well, I mean, the world has been through these kind of pandemics before. The Spanish flu, the polio virus. Like, you know, once they find a, what do you call it, a vaccine. Once they get a vaccine, then I think we'll go back a lot more to a lot more normal kind of situation. And I bet we'll get to, we'll get to conventions and things for sure. I really hope so.

I do, too. I do too. Okay. Let's go ahead and play a game called. What do we remember? So for those of you who happen to be Patreon patrons, we're going to go ahead and play that game. For the rest of you, hang in there.

We'll be right back with our recap. All right, guys. So we're back. We just watched ex post facto. Yes, we did. I'd like to first say there's a little bit of, you know, some people say Beninian, some say Benayan. So tomato, tomato.

A little inconsistency in the show. Yeah. And Neelix referred to it as the Benayas, and then Benin is something that we said in the very beginning, so who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a made-up planet anyway, so the Benian, Benian, Bonan, tomato, yes, I agree.

Banan's. Yes. Crazy, man. You're convicted to relive the victim's death for every 14 hours for the rest of your natural life. I know. you know that actually what an if that was how our judicial system worked can you imagine that yeah every murderer had to i think that would probably i think it's a great yeah crime wouldn't it i think it's a great idea although i think that you know part of the theme is the is the is in my opinion

the the big idea of this this episode is the imperfections in that like sure in theory that would be awesome if not awesome but if you know if that were a way to punish the the the criminal is to relive the victim's experience sure then that would definitely be a deterrent but it's so imperfect as this episode shows you know yeah that's not a perfect technology out there which yeah yeah i thought it was very interesting the you know starting in the black and white sort of flashback and the, like, the whole story structure in this episode was the first time, we did it many more times in the series, it was the first time that we sort of told a story out of sequence, you know, there was a lot of, we started with the crime in black and white, it opened there, and then

you, you know, as a viewer, you're kind of going, wait a minute, what's happening, where am I? And it was in on my eyeball, and we started at the end where I had already been convicted. And they sit me up and they say, okay, you're going off to. prison and reliving this for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's, it was story structure was very unconventional for us, at least at that point. We hadn't done anything like that. And I like that unconventional story structure. I found it kind of odd that, you know, when they are convicting you, the alien courthouse and they, they pull back and it looks more like a psychologist or a therapist office with the shes lounge there. And I said, where's the jury? Where's the, he's very

comfortable for a president. I felt that way in the whole, the whole, the whole, whole planet. It felt very sort of apartment living room like we were in somebody's condo from the 80s or something. You know, you didn't you didn't get a sense. It went from those shots of the planet with all the city structure, which kind of felt a little film noir like we were talking about. It felt a little little Southern California, you know, Chinatown looking. Yeah, it went from that to the condo and that was about it. There was no sense of what this, this planet was like, you know the courthouse the science lab any of that stuff yeah and you had talked about earlier we were talking about how michael pillar um it was his idea uh that he wanted to do you know sort of an homage

to uh the black and white detective you know shows and movies that film noir look and it looked great i know i had forgotten when i said that in in our what do we remember section earlier when we were talking about it, I didn't remember that part of this was in black and white. So it's so funny that that they literally made it like a black and white, the old detective movies. Yeah. Yeah, I do remember one of the things in that very opening shot of the black and white flashback of the crime, I remember that that was all choreographed. Every little move, because it became part of the crime solving, like the height, you know, every little where my head was, where my hand was, where her head was. All of that was very

Lovar Burton and Marvin Rush and everybody sort of choreographed that. It was very mechanical, put it that way. It was like, make sure you don't raise up too high or your height will be too high and it'll ruin the story. And we did versions of all of that. We had to do a version of one memory and then a version of a different memory. So it was slightly altered depending on where

in the story, all the flashbacks came up. The teleplay is by my Michael Pillar and Evan Carlos Summers. This story was by Evan Carlos Summers. And I just want to take this moment to bring up the fact that Star Trek was one of probably the only shows to have an open submission policy from writers around the world. You could actually send in your script that you've written or request a meeting to pitch. So this is something that was very unusual in the world of Hollywood.

Yeah, and I think Michael Pillar had a lot to do with that. You know, Michael, may he rest in peace, he's been gone a while now. Michael was such an important man in so many writer's lives, for sure. I know Michael went to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I'm from the South. I'm from North Carolina. Michael was a very loyal alumni of that school, and there was a scholarship there in his name. for writers, for people that wanted to become Hollywood film and television writers.

So he really supported mentoring writers, and he loved writing. He loved film history. He loved television. He was, yeah, and that open submission policy, I know he was a big advocate of that. So, yeah, I think Michael did an amazing job in this, you know, for what he set out to do. whether you like or hate the episode, I think it achieved what Michael wanted to do creatively, which was to kind of play in that genre of detective story.

And I thought it was very well done. And you know Renee Eschavaria, the writer that was over on DS9, he was the first guy who sent in a spec script from home, and they hired him on the spot. They're like, can you fly to Los Angeles like next week? And he's like, okay. And he actually became a big time, you know, his whole career began because of Star Trek. Wow.

Amazing. So, Deva. LeVar. LeVar directed. I thought there was a lot of things I noticed, a lot of much tighter close-ups in different angles than we had done on the show at that point so far. There was one moment in Sick Bay when Kess is taking the learning how to be a nurse and sitting at the desk with a doctor. and it was this sort of silhouette shot with the kind of shadowed frame

of the glass window. One of the reasons they shot it that way was because we had not finished the set on the other side. There was no, it wasn't complete. It was nothing there. So on the day, I remember, because I was shadowing,

ha ha, ha. I was up there watching a lot of the scenes. Even when I wasn't in them, I would go to work and watch the directors because I really wanted to direct. And I remember in that scene, they had not finished the set completely. I think the walls were painted, but it just looked, I remember them taking it down and going,

okay, it'll fit the style of this film noir, and we'll keep things shadowy, and the set's not finished. Like, we were still at that phase in the series. There were walls and parts of the set that weren't quite, you know, especially in Sickbay. That Sickbay sort of expanded. I think they were adding the Hydroponics Bay over there at one point, so. Yeah. I'd like to add real quickly, in that sick base scene, that opening scene, it was really nice to watch the doctor, you know, kind of tutoring Kess, putting her through those quiz of the medical quiz, because it really shows that lighter side of the doctor.

He, because he's not ornery with Kess at all. He's very gentle with her. And so I think it was an excellent acting choice on the part of Bob Ricardo to choose to be that lighter guy with Kess. Yeah, it was very, it was very well. I mean, it's funny, going back to the beginning of this show and seeing how certain stories allowed certain characters to enter into the series, like The Doctor, in a very relatable, in a very inviting way. He was funny. He was, he was, he kind of stuck out early on, as you say. He was very warm with Cass, very good choices.

You know, yeah, yeah, I agree. Not a big fan of Kessa's wig. And this is something that really just kind of, it made me so upset throughout shooting the seven years of episodes that a lot of times, if it wasn't a series regular, it was also a guest star. You know, as human beings, we have hair and why don't we use, unless you're the doctor, but we have hair and why don't we use their real hair? But they had to put a wig on Kess who is actually blonde underneath there. That's her natural color. So they really could have kind of gotten away from that. But I don't know why we had this preoccupation with utilizing wigs over and over again on everybody.

Janeway had a wig. So did Torres. Torres had to wear a wig. You wore a wig. I wore a wig. The whole seven years, I wore a wig. It's funny, I did notice in this episode, by the way, my hair got very, like, fluffy and, you know, it was very kendallie. and yeah very fluffy it was yeah um okay so then we're in the scene in the bridge where the

incoming shuttle there's an injured crew member janeway doesn't know who it is and it's very eerie and i remember feeling kind of goose bumpy watching that going oh who could it be i didn't yeah i didn't remember who it was either i'm looking i'm going wait is that is that tom paris coming back i don't remember i didn't remember and then it comes back and it's you and you left me I said, you left me on the planet. I'm like, I was like, I wrote it down. I'm like, what? Harry just, we go down as a team.

We're best buddies. And you left me. Well, let's take it. Yes. Let's give credit, because the next scene in sick bay, when you have Kim on the sick bay bed, what does he say? Is he say he repeats it twice. He goes, they made me leave him.

They made me leave him. So he does say. that. But I want to bring up this close up of myself there. Okay. Now you see very closely that I have a mole on my lip right here. And that mole I eventually got taken off by a plastic surgeon. And I am proud to say, you know, of all the Los Angeles actors out there, the only time I visited a plastic surgeon was to get that one mole reboot. I don't remember that. That's funny. And they would, yeah, they would cover. They usually cover that mole with it with makeup, you know, but that one, that close up, you could see it so closely.

And you can see my sideburns. Remember, we talked about that you didn't, you had them applied with just with hair, but mine was a lace. You wore a wig. I wore a sideburn wig. Sideburn wig. And you could see the little edges of it kind of coming up.

Like it wasn't, maybe it was pasted down really well. And then from my natural sweat, it just started raising. So in that close up, it's very, very obvious. Oh, my teeth. I don't know if you know to this, but they made me go to a dentist to whiten my teeth after the first screen test that I had.

They were saying that they was discolored. But what it was was actually my two front teeth, one of them was a crown, and the crown was placed a little bit further out a little bit because it was not a good job by the dentist that entered in. I had shattered one of my front teeth skiing while I was in college. and I remember my college buddy's father was a dentist and he put it in and I said well why is it not in line with the other one why is it not flush he said oh well that's in case he made this up he goes that's in case you if you eat an apple it's not going to you know compromise it and break off and this was his excuse to not redo it because he put the post in wrong that hits the light first so any light that's on me is going to catch that one tooth and every other tooth is going to look darker right so this whole time mary Howard the producer's like you really need to get your teeth whitened because the screen test shows, you know, your teeth are kind of darker. And in reality, it was because of my college fraternity buddies father's shoddy workmanship.

Now people know. The alien home, when we see the flashback. Yeah, we go to get a drink right away. We start drinking cocktails on the job. Well, she says, would you like a drink? And she doesn't even, she goes, help yourself. As if, like, we know what these alien liquors are. I mean, like, hello, help us.

And then before that, she says, I have some leftover rope from yesterday. It sounded like she said rope. I'll throw it in the stew. I know it's not rope, but it sounded like she said rope. Right. That or not. And then your great, funny line, when you look at me, what are you looking at? And then you look at the dog and you turn into De Niro.

What do you look at? What are you looking at? You become more than me. Hey, you're talking to me? You're talking to me? Yeah. I like how you're so aggressive toward the tiny little dog, you know. Who are you looking at?

You know, your Nick LaCarno is coming out right there. It's great. And then I mentioned, Robbie, at dinner, Lieutenant Paris is our best pilot. Again, another reference to how great of a pilot you are. Well, I must have been pretty good because I go into an explanation of how I got past the Numeri, right? And I talk about how I snuck in and did all these fancy maneuvers.

Yeah. So, so clearly I must be a pretty good pilot, because they were impressed. and I clearly had to sneak in there. By the way, I was confused as to why we were even there in the first place. Like, I know that you were doing some engineering, that we had a broken Nesel or something. I don't know, but I'm like, what? They were supposed to try to help us with getting back home faster.

That was the whole thing. But yeah, it is a little, that's sort of thrown off to the side, you know. Yeah, the whole reason that we're there, that we came to this place with people, we don't know and we're sort of left alone on our own by the ship because clearly when the shuttle comes back they haven't talked to us in like they left us on our own on some you know dangerous planet where there's a war and I have to sneak past the new mary on a shuttle so like why did we do all that to get home faster right to help us get home faster and and I have a note here I was as I was making notes on my iPhone I to type lieutenant Paris is our best pilot it automatically

auto-corrected to pirate, which is actually even funnier if I had said in real life, Lieutenant Paris is our best pirate. That would have been. Arr. By the way, I thought you had very good suffering in sick bay. I thought you were very... Wow! Really? I'm not clear as to why you were suffering so hard.

That's my question too. Were you... They said I was dehydrated. That's all they said. I assume they stuck you in a cell. I think they just stuck you in a cell. Or maybe it was that cocktail. cocktail, the alcohol that they offered, and we didn't know what we were drinking and it dehydrated

you. I don't know. Either way, you were suffering good. I don't know. So Janeway says, Janeway says, well, Lieutenant Paris has gotten himself into some trouble. Now, why is she assuming that I did something wrong? Why is she, you know what I mean? Why, aren't we innocent till proven guilty? No, man. No, this is your prisoner background coming back into played. This is the prejudice. Yeah, she assumed right away, she literally says to Chocote, Lieutenant Paris has gotten himself into trouble. So it's prisoner prejudice.

Yeah, it's prisoner prejudice. All right. The Prime Minister, Minister, Minister Cray, Benean Minister Cray, played by Francis Gynan in the pinstripe outfit. Did he not look like John Lithgow? To me, I kept going, that's John Lithgow in the alien garb in a way. I don't know. A little bit, yeah. Let's go quality about that.

And I loved your line, which was just when you're doing the recounting and you're telling Janeway, you're like, I was bored. You know how it is when two science guys get together. You're talking about me and the Benin physicist, right? I'm like, really, really? Is this a continuation of Sandrine when you're talking about, you know, I'm playing the Indian, you know, and it's two science guys. It was a little, you know.

Yeah. Oh, and now, because of this episode, we know the Vulcan word for lie detector. What was that? He goes, Tubal goes, when he wakes up, I will require an autonomic response analysis while I question him again, doctor. So autonomic response analysis is a, you know, fancy vulcan way of saying lie detector. Lie detector. Exactly. I also love when Tuvac goes back on the Pinet Service

to interrogate Mrs. Wren played by Robin McKee. Basically, is she flirting with Tuvok? She's trying to get a little something out of Tuvok. I'm like, you're getting nothing out of that. It's that classic gum shoe film noir thing of like a dangerous femme fatale, you know. Yes.

I thought Michael Pillar did a great job. I mean, there's a line. it's a little later on, but Michael Pillar had a line he wrote that I wrote that I copied down that I thought was classic film noir kind of stuff. And the line was, Paris says at one point he goes, you know, her eyes were a million kilometers away staring at the stars that I'd flown by the day before. I mean, that's great, you know. Yeah.

Great Michael Pillar work there. It was in a later scene, but I thought, yeah, it was that classic character of that femme fatale. sort of dangerous to all men. Yeah, and kudos to Michael Pillar. I mean, obviously he consulted with LeVar Burton before LeVar began directing this, because even some of the dialogue from DeLenn, from both Mrs. Wren and Mr. Wren, was very film noir sort of just the way they delivered that. Yeah, very stylistic.

I liked it, though. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, so Tuvok suggests a mind meld with Paris. You're in sick bay. Now, Robbie, here comes, do you remember the camera angle coming up on you? This is when, after I saw this episode when it aired, I walked up to Robbie and I said, Robbie, man, there's boogers in your nose.

And you, Robbie, the look on Robbie's face was like, oh, God. And sure enough, in your left nostril, there's definitely some booger action. The right one has lighter booger action. And so as a joke, Robbie and I actually had one of the makeup guys, fabricated. a fake booger to put like a really big one like it was a size of a marble and we shoved it in his nose and we he painted the colors of what a booger would be and we walked around because the the joke was a lot of times when you talk to people and if you have food in your teeth sometimes they just don't tell you so we wanted to see how many crew members we could mess with so ravi and i walk on set

and ravi walks up to um he walks up to craft service he's like hey chacho how you doing man And I remember every person we walked up to and Robbie said hi, too, it was always the same reaction. I'm doing pretty good. And they would be just staring at this huge booger that was like hanging out of your nose. Do you recall this? Yeah, Kate was finally the one that said like she grabbed a tissue from somebody. She goes, here, you need this. Finally, but yeah, nobody would say anything. Blow your nose, Mr. Paris. Blow your nose. By the way, when Tuvok goes over to, when goes over to, when goes, over to interrogate Mrs. Wren.

Yeah. He knocks on a door and she opens a door like a real door. Like it wasn't a sci-fi. It wasn't like a... It was just like on hinges. It was, that was part of what made some of this feel strange to me.

I never thought about that. She opened a real door and then when he walked in, by the way, he did not shut that door behind him because he still used to, you know, doors automatically going... So if you watch him walk in, he just walks past an open door. She's on the other, she's gone inside.

So they just left the door to the hallway, I guess, wide open. That's crazy. Oh, my God. He just left it open. She offered Tuvac a drink. And he's like, no, we don't drink. Right. Are these guys the Benin's alcoholics?

What is going on? Everybody's got a drink in their hand. I'm going to also talk about the set design for the Beninian for that household, the Red household. If you notice, the sconces are very reminiscent of female anatomy. And this is something that kind of starts recurring throughout episodes of Voyager, that there are a lot of, oh my gosh, not only is it with lighting sconces, but just general set design and different things, elements.

There's a lot of, it's either male or female anatomy or the alien prosthetics on their heads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's also a lot of, again, anatomy. me, I don't know what this preoccupation is with that, but there's everywhere. It's very inspiring. Yeah, it's suppose so. The new Mary battle scene, when the New Mary start firing on us, Chocote's piloting. I don't remember him piloting very often, if ever.

That's the first time. And then he says, oh, let's do that fancy marquee trick. It's basically playing dead. It's like not a fancy marquee trick. Okay. like basically let's pretend to play dead for a second and then they're going to come over and then we're going to like okay you you maquis are so smart with your playing dead this fancy trick you invented and balana's on the bridge i never see you never see her on the bridge yeah that's a rare balana appearance very rare he turns to balana he's like hey let's do that fancy machi trick we did remember right you know the playing dead yep yep yes And also I have a note that we see Neelix on the bridge and he's sitting. And I just want to, I want the fans to know, he's not sitting in a chair next to Janeway.

That's just part of the, you know, the bridge that he just found a little nook that he sat down in. Yeah, it kind of looks like it's a seat, but it's not. It's not a seat. I did notice in that scene on the bridge after Chukote does his fancy Maki trick that Janeway says to him, she puts her hand. on his shoulder and says, well, that's one trick you won't be able to use when we get back, Chacote. Right.

And he looks at her very seductively and says, I have more tricks. Oh. Very flirty. So there's a little, yeah, Chocote and Janeway have a little moment there. A little moment. I like that. Okay, so let's talk about the mind melds.

We got to talk about the mind meld. Yes, go ahead. So do you remember when Tim Russ film this scene. He came over to me and he said, hey, Baba, when they get to my, when they get to my close-up, I'm going to do a take, a joke take, okay? So just, you know, just wait, you'll see. And so they had pushed in, as he's doing his mind-meld, they'd push the camera in very close on his face. He's doing all of these faces, you know, he's scrunching his eyes together and doing his mind-melt face and the camera's in very close. And the sound,

man has also brought the microphone in very close and they're all because it's in a real tight shot and then all of a sudden in the silence with the face all scrunched up tim rusk goes wow like really loud i didn't want to do it so loud he yells so loud wow i feel good do do do do and he starts them like i knew that i would he starts dancing well oh my god the cameraman and the sound man freaked out like the camera jumps and the sound man jumps and throws his headphones off his ears and he's like oh my god nobody knew that was coming and ting thought it was very funny i don't know that the crew thought it was very funny because it it was loud did he wait did he tell you did exactly what he was doing or he just

surprised you. No, he just said, I'm going to do a joke. I'm going to do. I got a special one once. Once we get all the other one, I got a special. So when they jump back, maybe your boogers flew out at the same time. They just in shock from that. That's hilarious. But that's so indicative of Tim Russ. He's always been this, this premeditated jokester. Like he thinks about it. He's like, what am I going to, how am I going to plan this? So I'm going to go ahead and do this. And he's great like that. So I wasn't there that day. That's great. That's what he did. So in the shuttle when Tom Harry coming back and you're kind of telling me about dangerous women and Harry, watch out, you know, you should have warned me, this is your fault, blah, blah, blah.

That's a nice little moment between the two of us. And then the Numeri come in. What's interesting about that is right in the scene before, Janeway says, oh, we can't possibly transport him. He's so sick. He can't be transported. And we're going to have to fly a shuttle down to bring him. And then when it got to that scene, I was like, I'm not.

sick? Why did she say that? And then I realized, oh, it was all a trick. She was lying to them so she could get the New Mary. But my first thought was like, oh, my God, why did I do the scene like this? I should have been sick. I should have been, but it was a... Oh, okay. Okay, I hear you. Yes, I do. So now the New Mary come in and, first of all, their wardrobe were basically, because I asked Wardrop about that, I go, is that, is that a scuba, is that a wetsuit? They're like, yeah, it's a modified wetsuit. So they were wearing wetsuits actually, which they put a little extra fabric on there. And then why the hell do we look at each other before the beam out?

What was that? Like we just, was that a direction from LeVar? Do we end up going like, hey, let me look at you. Well, I think it's all part of, yeah, I think it was probably a direction that, you know, this was all Tuvac saying, hey, If we head back, the new Mary are trying to get Tom, because he's the courier of this information in his brain. So if they show up and try to take him,

then we know that my whole analysis is correct. So, yeah, I think as soon as they walk in, we look at each other like Tuvok was right. Oh, it was one of those things. Yeah, the murder she wrote scene. It was a classic murder she wrote, which, by the way, I did a murder she wrote episode. when Tuvok's figuring out the whole, the whole crime.

And I thought it was, I thought it was a really smart, like, stacking of details and the way he laid it all out and the, you know, the height difference. And wait a minute, oh, yeah, they're not the same height. But in the memory, they are the same height. And how would he know exactly where to stab him to get the heart unless he was somebody else? So it all started adding up really nicely. I thought that was great. And I thought his line when he said

there is not a technology that is entirely safe from tampering. To me, that is the theme of the episode. It's like it's a great episode to sort of say, yeah, even though there may be this very tempting technology that gives the criminal punishment that seems well deserved and appropriate and all, it's a technology.

We can't trust technology to be perfect. We just can't, you know, especially in something like crime and punishment and things like that. Like you would never want to risk, you know, someone suffering from a punishment that could be imperfect. Okay. I'll go with that then. Because I was kind of at a loss, honestly, to think about like, what is the essence? And what's the underlying message here? So, and off of that one line, I love.

like that. The other thing that just occurs to me, yeah, it's off of that one line, not a technology that's entirely safe from tampering. And if we think about this was filmed in probably 94, maybe 95, probably still 94, late, late 94, DNA testing and DNA technology was brand new. Okay. You know, nowadays, we think about, oh, testing DNA for a crime. Like, if you have the DNA, you can test and you can see if someone's innocent or guilty. But in 1994-95, DNA testing was still very experimental. So I think this episode was very appropriate to that time of, well, can we trust DNA testing in convicting criminals?

Can we trust this memory technology in convicting criminals? Similar. It was a timely story, I think. Yeah, I'll buy that. I just want to add one more thing. I know you referred to it as the murder she wrote scene. And this just shows you from more of my standpoint, being Asian American. I said, well, this is the Charlie Chan resolution scene.

Like, yeah, when Charlie Chan solves everything. Or if you want to go even, you know, more younger, we can talk about this is the end of Scooby-Doo episode. Where they prove who is the culprit. It's the classic crime episode, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I thought, by the way, the dog did an awesome job jumping on the actor because I have, as a director, I've worked with a lot of animals. It's hard. And that little dog, when it came in the door, he was the final clue in that scene. And he started jumping at the one actor. That's hard to do. Like, I don't know if he had, you know, sausage in his hand or what, but something. But it's also, I just want to bring it out that, you know, whenever we, like, for instance, in the asshole, whenever Neelix is cooking food, they try to find the most alien-esque-looking vegetables and fruits that they can find. And typically, they would go to like an Asian market and find

some random Asian fruit to use it as an exotic alien fruit. And in this case, for this dog, they try to find an exotic breed that could look like an alien type of dog. And they chose this Chinese crested terrier, which I had never seen that breed before. And it's just kind of funny how they both used an Asian dog and Asian food and Star Trek to represent the look the future finally for me that last scene with Tuvac I thought was great and I loved his his line when he said what what do you humans call it short talk short talk yes yes very funny and he prefers reading yes and I and I liked my line um I liked my line when I said uh well like it or not Tuvok You've made a friend today.

I wrote that down, too. Yeah, that was a nice line. Yeah, I like that moment. Yeah, that was good. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to our discussion of ex post facto. Tune in next week when we will be covering a Harry Kim-centric episode, the first Harry Kim episode of Season 1, Eminations. See you then.

You know, Thank you.