The Delta Flyers - Extreme Risk

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Extreme Risk. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Extreme Risk:Torres's associates are troubled by her increasingly reckless behaviour, such as orbital skydiving, and Lt Paris launches a new type of shuttle.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 BragaAdditionally 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, 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, Mike Devlin, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Amber Eason, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, John Mann, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Bronwen Duffield, Elly Post, Brandon May, Jeremy Mcgraw, & Jason BonnettAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, 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, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michael "Klink" Klinckhardt, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Robert Picard, Craig M. Nakashian, Julie McCain, & Will ForgThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode contains conversations of mental health and self-harm. Listener discretion is advised. 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 myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. And remember, you can get the full version of this book. podcast by signing up to become a patron at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. Robbie McNeil. Hello.

Hey, buddy. How are you? I'm good. Are you still basking in the glow of the Georgia win? I will bask in the glow of the Georgia win for 40 more years if that's what it takes, because that's what I did the last time, 1980 to 2021. It took 41 years for us to get another one. So I will, hopefully we don't have to wait that long, but it was. Yeah, I think you will bask at least through the off season. You will bask through the off season for sure and through training camp and then you'll be, you'll be, you'll be jazzed when the new season begins. So. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sort of thinking that maybe this should be a ritual.

Maybe you and I should be watching these games and we should be live streaming or at least recording our reactions to this and putting it up on, you know, if it's not on the Delta Flyers, this could be a whole. another site or a whole other thing that we do. I would make people nervous because I'd walk around and pace and I start yelling at the television. So your manic, your manic behavior would scare people away. Maybe. Is that what you're saying?

Maybe. Or they might think it's adorable. They might think, look, Tom Paris is pacing. He never paces, but he does for Georgia games. I know. But see, then that would be the true odd couple. I would be sitting in the chair and you would be pacing back and forth near me like that. You would be the call.

I would be the calm one finally. Yes, we would. So this is why I think this would be premium entertainment for people to see. All right. That was fun. Yeah, it was a good one. It was a good one. Okay, dope.

So this week's episode. Season five, we're, we're often running now in season five. We really are. And it is now episode three. So we are at extreme risk is the name. of the episode. Oh, okay. And I just want to say, I think it's really exciting that the last episode, Dron,

drone was where the conversation, the seed of the Delta Flyer is born. Do you remember that? Yeah, there was a little conversation in the shuttle with Seven and the doctor and Torres and well, seven suggested. Seven is the one that suggests. He's the one that suggests to me. Yeah, Torana's like, come on. And Balana affirmed it. Usually Balana and seven kind of butt heads.

But in this episode, they were on the same page. They're on the same page. And you were like, hey, we do need a bigger shuttle, a faster shuttle, a better shuttle. So I'm really wondering when that comes into play. Maybe, maybe in the, this, it's got to be this season. I'm guessing at some point. Oh, it'll be this season for sure. It's got to be.

Yes. But I don't know if it's just this. right away in this next episode, but maybe. Maybe. Yeah, so we'll see. Let's go watch it. Let's go watch this episode. Okay. All right, everyone, we will be right back with our discussion recap of Extreme Risk. Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. Okay, Robbie and I are back from watching Extreme Risk. Yes, we are. Yes, this was so much to talk about. Yeah, let's just, let's start. off with the poetry synopsis right off the bat our poetry synopsis and get right into it let's not waste

any time here we go my haiku for extreme risk yes the maylon are thieves a race to build the flyer torres works through grief mm hmm the haiku is just so clean so clean and concise and I love it. Very good job. Thank you. Our Limerick poetry synopsis of extreme risk. Here we go. Balana's depression is dire. When asked, she's just one big old liar. The probe is retrieved. Defeat of the Malon achieved. And it's all thanks to the new Delta Flyer. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Good job, Rebecca. Okay. Let's talk about guest stars in this episode. What have you done in your research? What do you have? Okay. Let me get to my guest star research. Hamilton Camp. What a name. Hamilton. Well, here's what's interesting I found out about Hamilton. So Hamilton is his actor name. Oh. But he also outside of acting was a very successful folk singer. What? And he went by the name Bob Camp. He was part of a duo with Bob Gibson. I don't know the name. Maybe it was Bob and Bob, or I don't know, Bob Camp and Bob Gibson. Bob Squared. But, yeah, during the late 50s and throughout the 60s, he started as Bob Gibson, then went to

Hamilton. He passed away, sadly, in 2005. Darn it. He also had played in other Star Trek shows. He played Leck on Deep Space Nine in the episode Ferengi Love Songs and the magnificent Ferengi episode. Alex Inberg appears as Vorik again on the show. Although very briefly, he didn't have a lot to do, but it was nice to see the continuity.

We've talked about Alex Enberg and that he is Jerry Taylor's sons. We've talked about him before. And our last co-star is Daniel Betances or Bettences. I don't know how to you pronounce it. He was the pilot in the first scene with Balana when she was in a shuttle. and she was going to skydive. That's right. He played a pilot.

Yeah, he played Starfleet. He was a Starfleet character. He was a Holladeck character, exactly. There you go. Okay, let's talk about the writer and director real quick. This was written by Ken Biller, which he was. Look at that. Look at that.

I thought he directed it. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because we were talking about maybe this was one of our old school directors. Yeah, I mentioned that. And it was. I was, I was right. I thought it was Alexville.

singer wrong about that but cliff ball also one of the old school directors that we've used in the past that we haven't seen in a while so okay so we got a little bit right yeah kind of right with cliff yeah but again a ken biller writing a balana episode not surprising that seems to be a pattern here that is a pattern he loves balana he clearly loves the other thing that i find interesting is that the doctor barely appears in this episode and Nelix. They have very little to do. The doctor only comes in, 26 minutes into the show. Yeah.

Nelix has one scene. But Nelix has more than the doctor. The Nelix has more to say, definitely. And more acting to do. The doctor was in under five. He delivered one line and he left. That was it. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's interesting because usually when I feel like when characters don't have much to do. It goes back to my rule of we all have to be involved. This felt like we were all involved, even though the doctor wasn't. I didn't feel like the episode was lacking in kind of the full cast chemistry, even though we were missing because the doctor didn't have much to do, but everybody else was really involved. Okay. All right. Let's start it off. Let's go. Start off on the Bologna is on a shuttle. And by the way, I wrote out, I am jealous that she has a different pilot. I didn't realize this was a holodeck. We realized she's on the holodeck.

she's got this crazy costume that looks like it's got bathroom tiles on it yeah yeah it's got weird sort of bathroom right square tiles all over it we've never seen that outfit yeah and we've never seen that modified motorcycle helmet that she puts on either that's what i said why ruin a great motorcycle helmet they ruined a perfectly good motorcycle helmet i knew you would catch that tubes and the weird stuff but you being the motorcycle enthusiast that you are i knew you would catch that immediately. Well, I used to ride motorcycles with Roxanne's husband, Eric Dawson. That's right. We both were riding Harley Davidson motorcycles back then. We both had Harleys and we did quite a few rides together. I think Eric now has like a dozen bikes. He's a big bike collector. Really? Yeah,

I stayed in touch with Eric a little bit. It's interesting. You have bought and sold bikes throughout your life. Yeah. Because I keep asking, oh, what about that bike? Oh, I sold that one. Oh, okay. And then recently when I was at your house, I saw your newer bike that you just got. You just got a whole brand new bike. So you don't keep them for long where evidently it seems that with Eric, if he gets one, he keeps it forever. He doesn't toss it. That thing just goes into his little museum, his bike museum.

Yeah, I have two bikes right now. I have a vintage 1980, custom kind of cafe racer. And then I've got the new triumph that you saw. so yeah it's it's it's it's pretty it's yes it is pretty little pretty little vehicle yeah but yeah I saw that motorcycle helmet I was like oh yeah ruined a great little motorcycle helmet yeah anyway she goes to the door to get the force field ready to jump out of the door and she turns the safety protocols off right but before she does that she says higher right they're there at a certain altitude and she goes no And that's when Betoncée, the actor, Betoncée, says to her, hey, this is not recommended.

She's like higher. So they go to 300,000 in the altitude. And then that's when she turns the safety protocols off. And she hops out. Yeah. Middle of the free fall and she gets a call from Chiquet. Yeah. And he says, you got a report to engineering on the double.

And she's like, great. So she leaves. Right. She's in the corridor and Torres is. Hang right there for one second. because I want to put a little personal note in here. So when I'm watching this, I'm often using the dictation on my phone

as I'm watching and pausing and kind of going, okay, you know, safety protocols are turned off, B'lana jumps, Chakote calls. I'm dictating. And then Walter, my dog, jumps up on the couch and he's all over me. And I forgot to turn my dictation off. So here's what my notes say.

Yeah, read it. Safety protocols off. period. She jumps, period. Chiquotay calls. Lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down right here. Lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down. Oh, my God. Period. I kept dictating. That's how many times I said lay down. Oh, my God. oh my god lay down lay down that's my notes that is so funny i didn't even do you always dictate

the notes you've been doing do a combo i i didn't in the past now now i'm dictating because i find i can stay in it a bit more and i can but i do i do a combo of typing and dictating i oh my god because i've only typed so you telling me that you're doing the dictation as well it's kind of like you know the first time i realized i could tape my lines to the console yeah yeah this is a this is a game changer for me so so you actually dictating but while you're dictating do you pause the um do you pause the episode and then dictate or do you let it run and dictate the same time no i pause and i'll dictate something and but that's why i forgot to yeah turn it off and lay down lay down lay lay down oh my god lay down lay down it's just over and over and

and over and over. Anyway, okay, so we finish Chikote calls. And I just want to say, good thing that you and Rebecca are on good terms, that you have a pretty good relationship. Otherwise, that would be in there, too. Like, what do you mean? I did do the laundry. Damn you. I mean, you know, he see that going back and forth too. You never know what's going to be in the notes. All right. Corridor. So now we're in the corridor and Torres is joined by seven. The probe is ready to launch. And Torres says, she's not feeling well. And maybe. seven can take care of this probe launch and so she's shocked seven's like you're putting me in charge she says that is unexpected yeah completely completely unexpected very surprised and then she says

should I call the doctor because balana says she's not feeling well right and she said no please don't tell the doctor yeah which also gets a sideways glance from seven seven is confused like what is happening to this. What is happening? We have an exterior space shot of our probe being tractored in. How big do you think this probe is? I would say the size of, well, you think it's as big as a shuttle? No. Well, here's why I asked. I'm going to say it's probably the size, I don't know, like three feet long is my guess. Size of a desk or something like that. Yeah, you think it's bigger than that, huh? I thought it was much bigger. That's why I asked because later on we do, spoiler alert, but we do say beam it into the shuttle cargo hole.

So it's got to be small. And I was like, what? Okay. Maybe it's smaller. I just kept picturing this big giant, like bigger than a shuttle. Right. At least as big as a shuttle, if not bigger. But maybe I was wrong.

It's hard to tell in the space shot. Yeah. Because you see the tractor beam grab it and then the camera pans over to the Malon ship. Yeah. And it looks pretty big. The probe looks big in the foreground. So I don't know, hard to tell. Let's say it's a desk.

So the line should have been, use the Delta Flyer shrinking beam and then beam it into the shuttle. Yeah, I think so. All right. We need a shrinking beam. Yeah, we need a shrinking beam. A miniaturization beam is what we need. That would be a great, by the way, a great accessory to have

because then we could just shrink things and just fit them wherever. Like, yeah, if we don't have room, just shrink it when you beam it in, like make it one one hundredth of that side. Just beam that ship into my closet. Exactly. You know those clunky phaser rifles that we have? We could shrink those down and just keep them in our little, you know, well, we don't have pockets, but we could just keep them in our hands in the palm of our hand like that.

We should have a shrinking beam on Voyager. Oh, well. All right. All right. So we have this exterior space shot of our probe being tractored in by a vessel. And then we jump to the Voyager Bridge where Harry has to. detected a Malon vessel. It's the Malon vessel that's locked onto our probe with this tractor beam. Janeway asked the Malon to be nice, release our probe. They don't even respond. Paris says,

you know what? It's going to take two hours to get there, right? Because Janeway asked, well, what if we go retrieve it ourselves? And by that time, two hours is going to be long gone. So Tuvok recommends instructing the probe to emit a Polaron burst to disrupt the tractor beam. It works. Janeway then tells Harry to redirect the probe's course. I didn't even know you can you can just steer the probe like, you know, it's like a remote control car. Yeah, yeah. And so the Maylon pursue.

Janeway says, all right, we can hide this probe because Paris says like, you know, this probe is not going to be able to. Yeah, it'll never outrun this mailon best. Malone's going to catch it eventually. So Janeway says we can hide it. And everyone's like, huh, hide it. So Harry says, yeah, I remember that we passed a, class six gas giant and we can hide it in there where it should be crushed but then Jamie says

well not if the borg shielding does its job so now we know that there's borg shielding on this probe well the mainland vessel just follows the probe blindly not even caring about their own well-being and of course they get crushed like an aluminum soda can just on they're done And I have to say this bridge scene, there was a lot going on. My notes, you covered it all, but it was quite extensive what was discussed on the bridge. There's a lot, yes. There's a lot of dense information in the scene. But I thought Cliff Bull did a phenomenal job of covering the bridge.

It was really elegant, the way that, you know, like Paris down front would slide over and then Harry's line would be in the background. And then, you know, it just his, the way that he covered that bridge, Janeway gets up and walks around to Harry Station. and we had a reverse bridge angle, which we don't normally do. But it was very elegant how just every line sort of had a little movement and hand it off to someone else. I thought Cliff did a great job. He did. It flowed very well. Yes, definitely. All right, we jump to the briefing room and the probe is now stuck in a deep layer of liquid hydrogen and methane, approximately 10,000 kilometers below the outer atmosphere. It's not responding to commands.

And then Torres just shows up late. Chiquotay asks if there's any possibility of transporting it out. Torres is so short with that answer. She just says, no, no, no. And he says, well, can we boost the transporter range? Same, no, not really. Not through that interference. Tom says, well, if we can't transport it out, then we would just have to fly in and grab it.

Tuvok makes some little smart comment. Snarky comment. You know how we talked about before, how we thought there would be a lot of tension between Tom and Bolana? Well, the tension really is between Tom and Tuvok and Chikote and Balana in this episode, right? So there's more tension between Tom and Tuvok than there is between Tom and Torres for sure. And by the way, I, a couple of things, I felt like in this scene, Balana is so different than we've ever seen her before. Completely.

I don't know why the whole room just didn't go, hold on a minute, everybody. Yeah. Balana, what the heck is going on? like it was so unusual and unsettling because it really I mean we're like strangers to her in a way in this episode she doesn't even and especially to Paris it's like what the that's what I mean it was like what the heck's what's going on yeah yes yeah I was surprised that and maybe it's because in this episode Paris needed to be focused on building the Delta flyer yeah I was available to have these conversations but I really wish because of their relationship relationship. I wish he could have been a more important part of helping her heal some of the stuff. I agree. And again, we're stuck with the constraints of a 43-minute episode. So I feel that this could have easily been a two-parter just to deal with her trauma. You know, so that's that's one downside of not having enough time to address the problem, to address the issues. So Tom says,

you know, class two shuttles just don't cut it. And Paris then gets up and displays the specs for the Delta flyer. By the way, when he, when he, when I got up, I noticed my sideburns. Oh, I didn't notice that. They were good side. They were like thick, really sharp, pointy sideburn. I was like, those are good sideburns this year. Like, I feel like, I feel like we've, we've really upped our game in the sideburn game. Well, all right. I didn't notice your sideburns, but I did notice at the beginning of the scene, you get progressively redder. Like, at the very end of the scene, it looks like your sunburnt. Did you notice that? Oh, yes. I was like, wait a minute. First, when you get up to go look at, to tap on the, the view screen, you got a big red splotch on the back of your neck, like a rash. And then, and then as the scene goes, yes, and as the scene goes on, your face is normal colored in the very beginning. But then towards the very end, when you, when you say your last couple of lines, it's red. It's like either, I'm wondering, did somebody say something really funny that you got embarrassed about, you know how you, when you blush, you know, I'm just wondering what happened to this blush response. It was very strange. Or makeup came in to do a touch-up and they put all this freaking blush on you. Like it, you look really red like you're burnt. And so, and then my only other question is you're listing, you're listing the specs of the Delta Flyer. It's really cool stuff. Ultra aerodynamic contours, retractable nacelles, parametallic hull plating, utomatric shielding, Borg inspired weapon system. Why haven't you told Harry?

about this to begin with. Harry's sitting there looking and I going, where did this come from? Uh-huh. Yeah, it's a little bizarre, but. Yeah, it's kind of, it's, well, Tuvok does say in the scene, he goes, not again, you know.

Yeah, yeah. You've talked about this. It's not going to work. And Harry says it too. Harry's like, oh, geez, Tom. You know, it's the same thing between Harry, Tom. And then all sudden you pull this out of your back pocket. Like you've been working.

The whole schematics. I've got it all figured out. It's like, when did you do this? And you do it. I did notice that, you. that, you know, Paris, as everybody starts offering up some ideas, well, maybe we can reinforce the whole plating with this or that, or maybe we can, Paris has a sarcastic comment for everybody. He was basically like, okay, now you guys are, oh, great, thanks a lot for, you've been, everybody's

been pooping on this. Right. All the other times I've brought it up. And now everybody's, now, yeah, I mean, everyone does chime in with their, their kind of affirmation, seven of nine, basic design elements are adequate, you know. So she approves, Harry approves, Tuvac approves, everyone approves. And then, you know,

Janeway says we can help. Yeah, let's do it. Let's get it to work. Get to work. And Janeway takes a look to Bala at the very end of the scene. She's the only one that acknowledges how weird Bala is that. Oh, I didn't see that. I see I missed that.

I was probably too busy typing. Typing. If I was dictating, I would catch that. Yes. Yeah, that's my fault. All right. We go to the holodeck. Yeah.

There's no program. except for a holodeck model or a hologram model of this delta flyer. Of the delta flyer, yeah. And I like the add-on that you threw in there, the dynametric tail fins. I thought that was pretty cool. And then, of course, Tuvok, the party pooper. He goes, it is not a hot rod. Yeah, he pronounced the hot rod.

Okay, because you and I know, you say hot rod, right? But the Vulcan emphasis or the Tim Russ, Tuvok. Yeah, hot rod, like a hot dog. I was like, what the, what's a hot rod? I mean, come on. But it was funny. I love it. Computer, delete Mr. Paris's editions.

Yeah. It is not a hot rod. We are not designing a hot rod, lieutenant. Yeah, so excellent choice. And Paris says, I think they look cool. And he says, they serve no purpose. And Paris is like, no, they do. They look so scary that, that, you know, our enemies.

People think twice about messing with this. Yeah. They won't mess with us. if we have cool tail fins on our shuttle. He's such a boy. He is, but that's the key to intimidating aliens. Have really cool

tail fins off of your missiles. That's what I'm going. Well, then you know, Seven mentions that Lieutenant Torres' whole design is flawed. We should be using tetraberium alloys instead of titanium. And of course, immediately

Harry is like, Harry bristles because he knows, you know, Typical Torres would just snap back and say, you know, start arguing with you. Yeah. But there is absolutely not a peep out Torres. She's not even paying attention, really. She's like, fine. And she goes, I'm leaving.

I got to finish up the thruster specs. She's out of there. And every, but so, yes, Janeway did notice Torres in the prior scene, but clearly everyone in this scene now is staring at. Yeah, they're starting to notice. Yeah, because there's some moments where we cut to Tuvok and he, He's looking at her kind of curiously, like something's off. Harry notices.

Yeah. Everyone's, everyone's starting to notice. Yeah. The next scene, we go to Paris's quarters. Mm-hmm. And I did notice Paris is looking at a pad. I did notice the orange lights in Paris's quarters. And I remember.

Why? Well, orange is my favorite color. Yes, I know that. Yeah. Like, all my phone cases are orange, my glasses cases. And I think, did you tell them that? Is that what you said? Yeah. Yeah.

Because they asked you. Do you remember, they would ask us. Yeah. What color lights do you want over your bed? And you said orange. Uh-huh. Marvin, Marvin would ask, because the lighting department would have to pre-rig that stuff. Yeah.

So Marvin used to come up and say, hey, we're putting lights in your quarters for the first time. Right. And, you know, is there a color that you would like? Yeah. He might say, Marvin might have said to us, like, well, we were thinking about purple or something. Does that sound good? But if you said a different color and no one else had taken it, you got it. You got it.

So I asked for the orange. I remember that. Okay. Well, initially you said when you were describing this scene, you said, Tom is on his pad. I'm going to talk about some other pads now. I'm going to talk about your boob pads. You can see the boob pads in this shot. No, I didn't have boob pads in the shot.

What? No. There's two lumpy, because you showed me what, okay, you recently showed me what they look like. Because I thought they were wide and plastic and hard, but they're thin and narrow that they go over. are you positive about that? No, not in this. I only wore that under the big space suit. I didn't have the girdle with the built-in chest pads and shoulder pads in this scene.

I noticed, by the way, that I was kind of on the skinnier side in this episode. Yeah, you're more trim, but I'm still seeing. And I remembered around season five, I discovered spinning. And I got obsessed for a few years. In fact, I still have a spinning bike at my house. You started spinning. In Utah, I started spinning like a madman. I was going to spinning classes.

Okay. On the bike, and I started riding on the road again around season five. Yeah. So you're definitely in better shape. That continued through most of the rest of the series. Around season five is when I discovered that. And I loved it. So I think that's what was going on.

I was biking a lot. Okay. But if you have a chance to relook at that scene, I would like you to. Because the weird thing about it is, Did it look like I had the pad? Because it almost looks like, you know how, like it's kind of like a cushion, like a sofa or, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's some irregularities to each side of like little indentation. So I said, oh, that's the pad doing that because it's a thin strip on each peck and it has a little, you know, modeling to it or a little pompiness to it. Unless that, unless that's just your chest hair plumping out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, could be. It might have been.

As you can see, with my face, I tend to get a little bushy. Yeah, you do get a little bushy chest here then. I might have. Yeah. Okay. Well, my bad. It just, I thought how crazy that they put that into the T-shirt. Yeah, I don't think they did.

I really don't. In fact, I was, when I saw that T-shirt, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that. It was really form-fitting. Like, it was skin-tight, that shirt. So I don't think that there was a, I can't imagine. that that would have been, because you would have really seen it if that thing that I wore under the spacesuit, you would have seen a lot more of the structure of that thing. Well, that's the thing. I see the outline of it. If you're looking at that shot,

it's really, I think you were not staring at your chest at all. I think you were looking at your sideburn, how trim your stomach was and you weren't paying attention to your chest, your pants. Maybe. Okay. So I'm going to say that you should look at it again. I'll look at that again. Okay. But Balana shows up with some specs on a pad and Paris is like, hey, why don't we open up a bottle of wine and, uh, you know, we can go over this together. And she's like, no, not tonight. Yeah. And so this is the only scene where Paris really confronts her and tries to talk to her. And he's like, what is going on? Like this is our dream. This is what we've talked about doing, collaborating with something together.

that's really meaningful, really important. And it's a nice scene. I like this scene. It wasn't a super long scene, but it was nuanced and had a good stuff in their relationship, good stuff for Paris. But ultimately, she shuts him down and leaves and says she's got to go. Yeah, she just completely repelled your affection. And you had your hands on her on her shoulders.

On her shoulders. And she just takes them off. She's like, no, not tonight. Nope. I've got a headache. I'm sorry. I can't let you even touch me. So something's definitely off.

And you didn't really, and Paris doesn't really, you know, fight her on it. He's just like, wow, I'm shocked and I'll just let her go. And she leaves. And guess where she goes? She has right back to the holodeck for more safety protocol disengaged fun is what I've done. She's walking down the hall and someone's walking past her the other way. And she kind of walks past the holodeck for a second until they're gone. And then she goes back.

She sneaks like she doesn't want to be seen going into the holodeck again. No, no. And she pushes some buttons and disengages the safety protocols and heads inside. And as she walks in the door, we see that there's some rocks in the foreground as she's walking into the holodeck. And she starts to take her spacesuit jacket off. Did you remember this? Yes.

Yes. So she starts to pull it off. Now, here's to me, these little things bug me so much. Uh-oh. She starts walking the holodeck, zipping the thing, pulling it off. And she's got a turtleneck on like we always do, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then as she, we cut to the next moment, as she comes around the corner,

she's finishing that jacket coming off, but she's magically got a tank top on. The turtleneck disappears? The turtle neck just disappeared in the heart of a second, and it became a tank top in the cut. So I know they wanted her in the tank top. but to me that's a big whoops. It's like if you're going to match,

if you're going to literally start pulling the jacket off. Yeah, you better match it. It can't change. No, it has to stay the same. The turtleneck has to be there. Yeah. Or don't pull the jacket off. Or pull the jacket off and pull the turtleneck over

and you've got a tank top underneath or something. Or pull the exterior garment off and then rip the turtleneck off to make it into a. That would work anything. Tank top. But what they did, to me, that was a big whoopsie. That's a continuity. Moody fo'paw right there. So, okay, good catch, man.

I had no clue. She ends up fighting hand-to-hand combat with a Cardassian holodeck character with the safety protocols off. And again, we're all questioning as the audience, what is she going through? He's into this big fight. She's getting, you know, injured,

but she's deep into the fight. There doesn't seem to be a clear winner. And at the end of the scene, she sort of throws him, he flips on the ground and then he starts approaching her in a really threatening way. And I need to ask. So I thought this fight was pretty good. But the last time we see Balana, she's got her hands up like in a claw fashion.

And I was like, is that a cling on, is that a cling on technique, like the sort of claws? Or would you be like, I feel like you'd be sort of ready for a punch. Yeah. Not a scratch. I don't know. That, to me, didn't seem as threatening as it could have been. Unless you're well-versed in Chinese Kung-Fu, and that would be Tiger Kung-Fu that she's utilizing. That's what it looked like. There you go. Then she was doing that. That's what I'm justifying as. She was using, yeah, Chinese martial arts.

Yeah, Tiger Kung-Fu. Okay. There you go. All right. Now we go on to the bridge, and Janeway comes down to your vacated station where somebody else is sitting there. And did you notice this? She gives a command to that ensign at Kahn. And that ensign responds with, I, ma'am, which is so different because it's either I, captain or yes, ma'am, but this person said, I, ma'am, which I thought. Did that person say it, or was it like loop group that did it? Was it back or something?

I think it was, yeah, I think it was loop group. I bet it was the, because a lot of those. She should know better than that, though. Come on. I, ma'am. I'm. Come on. Just wrong. Well, I've trademarked the yes ma'am. Yeah, so they were afraid to use their trademark comment. They said, no, we don't want to, we don't want to be sued by Robbie McNeil. Okay. That makes sense. All right. The Malon freighter, Captain Hales Voyager, and he says, you know, you're the reason why my fellow compatriots have died. And she says, no, no, no, no. They chased after our probe. That was our

property. They kind of, you know, they died on their own accord. That's the, yeah, he's, he's, He's like, we lost a ship and we lost nine crew members, and we're going to take this probe to make it, yeah, to make up for that loss of the freighter and the nine lives. And the crew, yeah. And I thought, wow, that's a pretty good deal. I mean, you lost a whole ship and nine people and we're just going to give you a probe in return. And we've decided this probe is pretty small.

Like, at least when I was thinking it was the size of a shuttle, that's, you know, significant. And now it's like the size of a Coke bottle. So that's kind of like losing a Winnebago and a whole family. And in return, we say, here's a matchbox car to give to you. You can have this in return. Yeah. Yeah, it was a funny little interaction between the mainland freighter captain and Janeway. Janeway says, you know, I'm going to warn you.

Anytime you see anything that says Voyager on it, you better you better turn around and high tail it. Just get out of it. Don't even touch it. pretty cowboy of her. Very cowboy. I thought, my gosh, she's just, she's brandishing her six shooters. And she's, look at her.

Well, I feel like something was a little spicy with her, a little different with Janeway, because her hair is always a dead giveaway. Today, she had the fluffy hair combo with the bedhead. So it was a little fluffy and it was a little bedhead. So that's why she was a little extra cowboy spice there. She woke up on the wrong side of the bed. And she hung up with the guy. She was like, end transmission, boom, done.

She normally doesn't do that. No. And then she says to Chocote or she says to the room, she's like, why do these trash collectors want these probes so badly, basically? She doesn't actually call them trash collectors. But I did when I was dictating. She wonders why the trash collectors want the probe. Chukote says, well, it contains multis spatial technology and they could be after that.

Right. Are you sure Chacote, are you sure Chacote didn't say, lay down, lay down. Oh, my God. Lay down, Janeway. No, that wasn't the first thing. Okay, just checking, just checking. So what were you telling me? The probe contains what?

Chocote says it contains multi-spatial technology. Okay, so that's probably what they want. That's what they want. They want that, right? Yeah, so we go in Bala's quarters. Yeah. And then Balana comes in and she's looking, you know, so we last saw her with a Cardassian and Tiger Claws.

Yeah. And Balana comes in looking like she was in a bar fight. Like she's beat up. She's got serious wounds, by the way. Like her arms are gouges and cuts and. Isn't there inventory in sick bay? Wouldn't the doctor have been saying, hey, for some reason, someone took a dermal regenerator. It's gone.

Yeah. She's got this dermal regenerator with her. And she says, neat, neat, neat. she's running it across her wound she's trying to heal her open wounds so nobody will see it and then there's a moment where she's it was a great shot in the mirror yeah she's sitting there and and we see her off in the distance on her image yeah and then she stands up and walks to the mirror and looks at her wounds and things how did you decipher that stare pushes in yeah it's a great deciphered angst, like shock, PTSD or numbness or something like that.

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for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. Yeah. What I wrote down was it seemed to me like she caught her reflection in the mirror, and she was not sure who she was. She's like, who am I? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Exactly. Have I gone cuckoo for cocoa puff? Like, what's going on? Like, why am I engaging in this extremely risky behavior right now? Yeah. And she's kind of just... Well, I think that's what drives her to the next scene in the mess hall where she goes... So we go to the mess hall. She comes in and Nelix is about to close up. It's dark. And... And he goes, oh, Balano, what a nice surprise.

I was about to close up. And he says business is slow because everybody's working on the Delta Flyer shuttle. Kind of cool. And she says, I just want to catch up. Which is so uncharacteristic of her. She doesn't say that. She doesn't say that ever. And he goes, and his response is, okay, well, let's get you something to, you know,

something to eat or drink. Name your poison. What's your poison? Yeah. And he waits. And he goes, I set you up. he says usually you insult me you've got really witty insults and she has nothing and i see i you know set you up there and you didn't you didn't say anything and she goes well i'd love some banana

pancakes right and he goes banana pancakes never heard of those and she says her grandmother made him and it always put a smile on her face right and i loved his response well then one smile coming up yeah i love i love great writing great writing ken biller yeah um and then uh you know she's making small talk by asking me, Alex, how things are going. She's not really listening to him. She takes one bite and says she has to go back to work. So she's still so preoccupied. But the other note that I made.

It didn't make her smile here. Yeah, she didn't make her smile. The other note that I had is before she orders the banana pancakes, the close-up on her, her coverage, her forehead looks like it's sunburned. So I'm thinking like, wait a minute, did Tom Paris have poison ivy, a poison oak? And he just transferred that to Torres when she came home? It can't be real on her, because that's all. prosthetics. So it's got to be makeup.

But the makeup was just like, maybe you're right. Maybe they were using a little extra red in makeup, touchups or something. I think that's what happened. Somebody was there that was filling in for someone who was sick, did not know how much color needs to go on Tom Paris or Bala's face and just added extra color. When extra red. It went extra red. Yeah.

So it's so funny. In this episode, you've noticed things I had no clue about and I have noticed things that you did not notice more. So that's why we're so good together. All right, we're on the bridge, right? We are, well, we have a space shot real quick. Ah, space shot. Has the Malam freighter next to Voyager.

So we see now they're both sitting next to each other, orbiting this planet. And Janeway wonders on the bridge. She goes, why are they there? Tuvok thinks that they're waiting for us to get the probe so they can steal it again. From us, right? And she's like, that doesn't make sense. They would call in reinforcements if they were going to fight with us again. And then we get a call from seven.

Yeah. She says, I'm in astrometrics. Janeway, you've got to come. down here. I have important information on the mail-on vessel. Come on down, Captain. James contestant on the price is right. Yeah, she goes down. Goes down and seven says, she has been using coherent neutrino beams to document

the activity on the Malon vessel. I was like coherent neutrino. Coherent neutrino beams. Okay. Does this mean these are neutrino beams that are sentient that have awareness? Like, what? Okay. Yeah.

Janeway goes, okay, in other words, you're spying on them. Yeah. And then we realize these coherent neutrino beams, which I don't know why we don't use these all the time. So we know what the, of the bad guys are doing. Exactly. Because it brings up this like thermal image movie. Right.

Of what exactly what they're doing. It's so CIAs, you know, and it's like, come on. If this, if we've had this technology for this long, boy, this could have helped out in season one, two, three, four. Well, no, exactly what they're doing. doing we can watch it like a movie but we see they're working on a secret shuttle themselves right yeah and seven says based on what i've seen so far they should finish in about 36 hours right which is quicker than our estimates we won't be done they'll be first janeway's line is well then

i'd say we have an old-fashioned space race on our hands yeah which is funny that janeway so far in the future pulls that reference out yes like that's still a meaningful reference. This is a Tom Paris reference. This Tom Paris would say this, not Jamie. That's a 20th century reference for sure. And then we have another space shot with the captain's log where she says they're speeding up the pace of construction.

And then we cut to a shot of the shuttle bay. And we see the Delta Flyer for the first time being fixed or built. Yeah. And I wrote down, this is a very interesting shot. Because there's a lot of CGI animation mixed in with real elements in this shot. And it's hard to tell even if the crew members, we see some figures. It's basically a big wide shot in the shuttle bay. And you see the Delta Flyer kind of partially finished, mostly finished.

Mostly, most 90% finished. Some panels are open. Some people are working like underneath. Some people are walking around the side. But I couldn't tell. I feel like what they did was they shot some extras. They filmed extras just standing on full green stage. okay at a certain angle and then they shrunk them down and put them into an animated environment

oh because it felt like it was sort of hand painted in many ways it didn't feel something about it that felt very yeah i i just assumed that all the starfleet tiny little starfleet personnel were all cg i that's what i thought i don't know if they were i don't know if they were and the one on the stairs looked like me i thought the one on the stairs I was like, hey, is that me on the outside? So I don't know. I do remember Dan Curry doing shots with background in our second unit green screen days. Okay.

Where he would film them so that he could shrink them down into these big wide shots. Sometimes it will be a space shot. Okay. And he wanted people walking by the windows and things like that. So he would shrink them down and then put their, the background people inside the ship. So you saw people through the windows. Okay, when earlier when you said it, I thought you were just making a guess, but you have physically actually seen him do this during second unit.

So, well, that's probably what happened. So I bet that's what he did on this shot. I think you're right. But so much of the shot looked kind of hand vis effects, like physically painted as a 2D, you know, animation mixed with some real live action. So it was interesting, though. First time we see the shot of wide. That's most important.

So in essence, you've been describing Dan Curry's shrinking beam in the way, right? His little miniaturization beam. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's move on. Now, we're in the Delta Flyer, where the Delta Flyer interior and Harry, yeah, first time. And Harry says, look, we need to reinforce the hole with Kellanite. And, you know, everyone's like, well, that's, you know, Tuvok says something like, well, that's just, you know, coming up with the same answer for the same problem.

And it's still not going to work. Yes, he says, repeating the same flawed strategy over and over won't make it more effective. Exactly. I laughed out loud. So he digs into me a little bit. And then Torres just snaps at Vorek and just like, get to stop. Well, because Vorek is welding with some hand tool and it's loud. It is loud.

It's not that loud. It's not like, you know, I mean, she made it sound like it was a, like a, what do you call it? When you're drilling, when you're knocking through cement, you know, it's like a jackhammer. It's like a jackhammer sound. I'm like, it's not a jackhammer sound. No. It's just like a, yeah. It's like me laughing, you know.

Exactly. It's like your B, your bumblebee laugh. Yeah, yeah. She should have said like, you know, Vorik, stop. It sounds like Harry's real laugh when he's not clean, being Harry, you know, kind of a thing.

Yeah, exactly. Then Paris, Paris at one point says, well, you know what, let's just launch. We might as well just launch now. And hope for the best. And hope for the best. And two bucks says, Mr. Paris. That is perhaps the most illogical statement you have ever made.

made. Look at this. Look at this jousting, the verbal jousting between Tuvok and Tom. It's happening. And they argue over the useless captain proton knobs. The useless design elements is what he calls but I thought, come on, man, how cool is that? And Paris is like, I forgot about those that we had the like the balls. Yeah, yeah, all this stuff and the switches and the knobs. I forgot. I remember when we came in the set the first time, I was like, that's cool. Yeah, I did too. That's really. When we walked in, we were both. like, what? You guys put the Captain Proton knobs in here.

So we were both, as actors, we were both surprised and also impressed that they had done that. They really made this Paris's creation. And Paris tells Tuvok, look, I'm just tired of tapping on panels. I want to be able to feel the ship that I'm piloting. And Torres just kind of, again, Taurus very, very distracted, just leaves to head to the holiday. Well, they're talking about the biggest problem here is. is these micro fractures of the hull that's right that they can't seem to solve this micro fracture problem right and it's very dangerous too luck says and balana's eaves dropping she hears all of this and

she's like i'll be right back and she takes off harry stops her like we do it hey where you going and she goes i'm going to the holodeck see if this micro fracture issue is a fatal flaw and that's it yeah she leaves so we go to the holodeck she's in the holodeck version of the delta flyer now by herself right and i realized she's the first one to actually be filmed piloting our new delta flyer show yeah in this simulation she's that we we're stuck on the one we're building she's actually flying it for the first time on film on the show yeah um she did you feel jealous about i did i felt a little jealous i thought so i had forgotten about the um moon roof that we had built into to the delta flyer. I thought the moon roof is cool. And one reason it's super cool is they can light from above. They can use

the stage lights to light us. In the old shuttle, it was a windshield in the front. Yeah. And so they were often really struggling to get lights in there. Much more limited. Much more limited. Yeah. Well, Torres is now on the holodeck. She turns off the safety protocols in the simulated delta flyer. She's heading down into the gas giant. And of course, turbulence starts happening. And One huge jolt knocks her into the panel and knocks her out, basically. She's on the ground. And the microfactors are beginning at this point. They're starting.

And it's shaking and bumping. And then she's thrown to the ground. We don't know. She disappears. We don't know what's happened. We don't know what happened. But she gets jilted. Bumped, a big, big bump to the ground.

And then we cut to the bridge. Yeah. We see out in space, the Malam vessel is venting this giant theta radiation cloud. And she's passing gas is what it is. It's farting. It's a space part. It's space farts and Jane was like, hey, let's back off a little bit. Yeah, because it affects us.

Our shields actually, our shield effectiveness goes down, right? Yeah. We have less shielding because of this space fart. And now we know the name of this guy because Chikote says, Vrelk is hailing us. Well, wait, he told us his name earlier. Did he? Yes, because I dictated it. I dictated it.

Yes. He says, lay down, Vrolk, lay down. It's Breelk with a B. Breelk is what I wrote. Well, then I went to the Voyager script for this episode, and it's spelled V in that one. Really? Okay, Vrelk. All right.

I thought he said, Breelk. See, that's the thing. With these alien names, everything sounds the same. B sound like V's, you know, everything is just kind of, it mushes together. All right. controller Vralk. Yes. But they do back off.

And Janeway, I love some of the little stuff that Kate did in this episode. She was really funny to me. She was. When she was annoyed, she'd be like rolling our eyes or, you know, at one point, she's like, oh, it's in the scene. Okay. So he says, he says, sorry, that was rude, wasn't it? And he admits in this conversation with Janeway that they are building a vessel.

And he knows that Voyager is building a vessel just like them. So they must have the same coherent, whatever it's called. Whatever special magic sauce that seven used that we've never seen before, they must have the same sauce. They have the same tech. And they say they're going to launch in two days, less than two days, right? She's like, why are you telling me this? And he goes, well, I'm just trying to save you the embarrassment of losing.

Janeway at that point goes, and I literally dictated that down because I was like, oh so funny her little her little like little mannerisms her little facial mugging going on here funny but she does say at this point she cuts them off and she's like we need to speed up this construction yeah where's balana they can't reach balana well actually no that's what what prompts that is chokote says well we need to figure out how to shore up our shields in case vrelk decides to do more space farts and so then janeways calls for torres to shore up the shields and that's when there's no response. They locate her, they locate Bala in Holladick 1 and Janeway sends Chacote

to go fetch Bala because she's not answering. And we go back inside the Holodec Delta Flyer simulation and it's still descending and shaking and the door opens and Chacote sees Bala lying on the floor. Unconscious. And he freezes the program and goes down and checks her vital signs. and calls immediately to sickbay medical emergency, he says. Yeah, I almost feel like it was a long time from when she got knocked out to when Chacote actually found her.

I feel like that that thing should have been blown up. She should have been dead. She would have been dead if he hadn't come in. There would be no more Bala. Yeah, yeah. So we go to sick bay. This is the first doctor appearance in 26 minutes, very rare. Well, you know, Bob must have loved it.

He had all this time off. He only had one day to work and probably. two hours of work. Yeah, very, very short work, work commitment on this episode for him. I noticed in this first shot that the focus was way off, that it correct suddenly, it jumps in that first shot when the doctor says, the captain's asked me to keep you here. And I was thinking, you know, this was back when we shot film. And now we shoot on digital, HG, digital video. So we can play things back if we think the focus wasn't right we have much bigger better monitors that everyone's looking at so does any does any show still shoot in film i don't know about television i i don't think so

i cannot imagine that a tv show shoots on film but okay but some features still do some features still do all right but this was a moment you know our our camera assistance were looking at monitors that were, you know, five inches wide or four inches wide. And they were trying to guess with tape marks on the ground. This is a scene where I thought, wow, something's weird about this first shot in Sickbay. Yeah. This two shot. And then all of a sudden I saw the, I saw the focus correct itself at like jumps.

Last second. And it reminded me of like, oh, yeah, we didn't know back then. Like you sort of had to guess, I think we've got the focus. And maybe you did, maybe. Yeah. And that was Chris Ishi correcting at the last second, pulling that focus. Yeah, probably. But Janeway enters, she says the doctor found evidence. She tells Bala of lots of internal injuries. And many of them, not recent injuries, months old. And Janeway wants to know why. What is she doing? She says they were treated by someone untrained like a first year nurse or something, nursing student. Janeway's concerned. And Torres is not giving anything up. Torres says there's nothing wrong. And then Janeway plays. places her under the doctor's supervision and takes her off the shuttle project and says, I'm sorry that I have to do this, to which Bologna replies, I'm not.

And then Janeway touches her chin, gently brings her face up to look at her eye to eye and says, now I know there's something wrong, which again, I love the writing here. It was just so well done by Biller. Good job, Ken. We go to the ready room and Paris and Chikote are there talking about the shuttle. Everything's working. They just need to solve this microfracture problem. Right.

And Janeway asked Tom first. He says, do you know what's going on with Balana? That's after he gives his progress report, right? Yeah, yeah. You do give that report there. Okay, go ahead. Progress report first, and then she asks about Balana. And Tom goes, you know, she's hardly speaking to me lately.

I don't know what's going on. And you didn't get defensive either because Janeway sort of says, in the beginning, she says, how do you not have any idea about these injuries or how she got them? And you just kind of, you don't really, you know, I mean, you're pretty calm about it. I thought maybe this was an area where you would kind of fight her a little bit, but you didn't. You're like, I just haven't even seen her myself. No, I think it's, I think it's just, he's concerned like she is. Everybody's confused and concerned.

They decide to look at her personal logs, though, and her holodeck history, and that's kind of where they leave it. And Tom and Chakotay go to look into this a bit. And now we're in Bologna's quarters. The doorbell keeps ringing, and she yells, I'm sleeping. And then Chacote comes in and she's like, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were the doctor. He thinks that I'm suffering from clinical depression, she says.

Right. Chikote says, you know, look, let's go look at your holodec history and show me what you've, what programs you've been running. And maybe that'll help me convince the captain that you're fine. Like, I want to help you. Yeah. So we cut into the hall and they're approaching the holodec console and she's trying to get over there first and he grabs her. Yeah.

He does. No, no, no, no, no. Computer initiate Bologna holodeck program 801, and she panics. Yes, she does. She panics. Yeah. And she's like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And he grabs her, grabs her inside the holodeck.

Oh, she's struggling. She's fighting her. Yeah. Yeah, she does not want to go into this holiday program 801. She knows what it is. Yeah. And Chakotay, basically, he drags her inside of this cave set, which looks a lot like the Cardassian set that we saw before. But now there's all these dead people on the ground.

And he rolls over a couple of them. And we realize that this is their dead friends from the marquee, that this is a program that has recreated when they lost all of their friends, all of their fellow marquee. in a battle. And Chacote actually says you only ran this program once and only for 48 seconds right after they all died. Right. And then you stopped it, didn't go back to it again and started running the most dangerous holiday programs that you could find. Yeah. And you turn off all the safety protocols. Why? Why are you doing that? Yeah. He asked her, why are you harming yourself? Are you trying to kill yourself? Are you trying to commit suicide? She says, Oh, I'm just trying to feel something. I'm just trying to see if I'm still alive.

And, you know, she asked Chacote what he felt when he looked at those corpses, the marquee corpses. And he says, I felt sad, angry, maybe a little guilty that I wasn't there to die with them. And Blana says, well, guess what? When I look at these corpses, I don't feel anything at all. I don't feel anything for Tom. I don't feel anything for my job. feel anything for anything going on in my life right now. She's completely numb, completely numb. And Chacote says, maybe you are afraid that if you let yourself feel something,

you might not be able to stop it. And so Chacote continues with, you can't just shut off your emotions. Sooner or later, you're going to have to let yourself grieve. And Torres says, well, I mean, why? Just so that I can go through it all over again. And Chacote says, well, what, what are you talking about? And Torres then goes into this monologue about, Her backstory here. She says when I was six, my dad left me. And when I was 19, I got kicked out of Starfleet. Yep.

And all of our marquee friends, she says, I always lose family. And I just want to pause here for one second and say, this sequence, I was very conflicted about this because in our story, I think it's at the heart of the message of this episode, which is you've got to let yourself feel your feeling. in order to grow and heal and move on. But at the same time, I was really not in agreement with what Chakotay did. Oh, how physical he was with her?

I'm not an agreement with that at all. I think it's a very dangerous way to force someone to relive a trauma in an unsupervised, like Chikote is not a trained psychiatrist. He's not a mental health professional. Correct. It was really unprofessional and dangerous. And I would not recommend that anyone in real life act like Chakotay and force someone

To relive trauma without being prepared and trained and having safety protocols in place for Because it's just anyway, I was not in agreement at all. Sure, there should have been some advisory message at the beginning, you know? I mean, any, please do not try this at home, you know, on your own because you're right. you do need a professional to deal with this kind of this type of PTSD, this type of stress that she's having to deal with. And yeah, it was a little brusque. And Chikote basically says that you have a new family here on Voyager.

And you're going to have to find another way to deal with this than putting your life. Than hurting yourself. Herting yourself. Yes. And Torres says, I don't know how. I don't know how. And Chikote says, you know what? We'll figure this out together.

which is really how it should have began instead of like, you know, yanking her into that, into that holiday program. He should have said, we need to figure this out together and had a conversation with that. Yeah, I think for something like this, and I'm not a professional either, but my instinct is that there's a more professional and gentle approach that probably would be healthier than this kind of tough love that Chiquotay practiced in this scene. And by the way, as they're getting into, you know, Chichote saying, you're your family now you're not going to lose us and we're not going to let you hurt yourself

and then Janeway calls they're under attack right and Balana goes you better go and he leaves her so he's re-traumatized he dragged her into this traumatic thing and leaves her to yes and just when she's the most vulnerable he's like okay he's just said we're not we're your family we're not leaving you. Yeah. And he leaves her. I'm like, what?

Are you kidding me? Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Anyway. I hear you. He heads to, he reports to the bridge.

And now we kind of have, it jumps back and forth between the bridge and the interior of the Delta Flyer. And the Malon are now firing more spatial charges slash fireworks. Remember? Yeah. Like the look at those. I love those.

Yes. Yeah. And they're firing at us to distract us from their launch. So Janeway then hails Paris and says, it's now or never. And so Paris is ready to go. And he's like, okay. So then we jump to the corridor and we see Balana chasing down Chakotay. Because Chakotay is going to be part of the mission, right?

Chiquet is headed to the new Delta Flyer. They're going to launch it, even though they haven't done all the tests. And Chikote is carrying a briefcase. And I was like, what? I've never seen someone going to a shuttle mission. anyone going on a shuttle mission just happen to we don't carry briefcases like he's got tools in there though

it's a tool case it's not a brief case but aren't the tools already in the shuttle bay where we've been working on this thing for days these are extra special tools that he's bringing in I understand I feel like it was just a symbol of Chocote is going and then he's going and then he's going to hand off this thing like yes okay the magical suitcase

yeah the magic suitcase that we never carry anywhere else but today we need it. And, yeah, Bologna catches them. She says, I've got to do this myself. I've got to need to. And they exchange the suitcase. Now she's got the suitcase and heads off. And he smiles.

We go to the Delta Flyer and she's walking in with the briefcase. And she says that she can help keep this thing from falling apart is where she's. And then she kicks Vorek out, which I wrote down, poor Vorek. I mean, he's just been abused. he got yelled at her before in the earlier scene he's ready to go on the mission balana comes in boots him out of her seat and vorek just like an obedient puppy you know sort of turns tail and takes off he's like okay so poor vorek not a lot of do not a lot not a lot not a lot to do for alexander emberg in this no no much to do but still more than the doctor and that's true i wrote

down that the very first flight crew of the delta flyer's very first mission yeah is seven hairy Torres and Tom Seven Harry Torres Tom Oh my gosh Look at the acronym 7 S Harry H Torres T

Tom T It's Shht Yeah it's not It's what it is So team That's us Team team

Is ready to go Team shit Yeah We take our very first Space flight And it looks cool We see it Take off from Voyager

And start to head into the gas giant planet. And I did notice that the moon roof looked really cool. I did see that we race toward the Malon vessel. Boy, we caught it pretty quick. It's clearly fast because on the bridge, we jumped to the bridge, Janeway asked Tubac how long it will take to overtake the Malon shuttle. And he's like approximately three minutes.

Like they left a while ago. They left like 20 minutes ago. No. And clearly you've put some supersonic boosters on this. Yes, we have. we have um as we're approaching the mail on shuttle fires at us yeah and tom says oh they want to play dirty yeah let's show them what a little borg inspired weaponry can do do you think they only have fireworks it's only spatial charges yeah it's only spatial charges yeah even their shuttle

flew through fireworks spatial charges yeah i like the fireworks i like them too but i would think they would have you know they're an advanced society i would think they would have more than one type of weapon, yes. Phasers or something like that. Like a theta radiation torpedo, you know, it would be pretty killer, but they don't have that. Okay. Seven fires the torpedo at them, and they pull out.

They pull out pretty quick. They give up pretty quickly. So clearly our Borg inspired. Yeah, she fired photonic missiles to be clear, to be. Oh, I thought she fired a Borg. No, no, she says, because we lose secondary systems from the spatial charges, and she, you know, Paris says, oh, you're going to play. tough, rough with us. And so that's when she says

loading photonic missiles and three direct hits. So we actually hit them three times. They pull up to kind of get away because they're losing structural integrity and at the same time we are losing structural integrity. Yes. At this point that when they bail out

our whole integrity is only a 25%. It's low. It's low. It's very low. Harry gets a lock on the probe and beams it into the shuttle. This is when you realize that the probe is not as big as it is. I was like Harry beams the probe into cargo hold what cargo hold we have one on the shuttle I wrote

or the ship I don't understand I don't ever remember a cargo hold Delta flyer shuttle yeah it got beamed into the shuttle so okay and trunk I hope in the trunk Harry should have said I'm beaming the probe into our trunk is what he should have said okay yeah that's yeah Tom would have put a trunk in this one of course of course yeah Balana sees this panel

starting to fail part of our hall yeah and I remember like a bag of popcorn, you know, in a microwave. They put sort of this rubber. It was either rubber or some soft metal like lead. And I remember they were literally just putting their fingers up on it to push little bumps in it. It was the most low-tech insert shot.

I remember watching it. It was so low-tech. So these are the fingers of a crew person that are pushed into. Our onset effects guy. So there's visual effects does the computer. computer stuff. And then there's onset effects, does fire, smoke, things that break, anything like that. This is Dick Brownfields.

This is big Dick Brownfield's guys pushing against like a rubber or lead panel or something. It wouldn't have been lead. It would have been too thick. It was some type of malleable material. Yeah. Fingers are going to push through there. Yeah. But she goes to fix it.

She grabs another panel from the inside and welds it sideways like it's real cattywampus. It's like crooked and she just starts welding. And everyone looks at her and says like, well, that's not going to work. And then she says, seven, finish my job. She runs off and she grabs an EPS relay. And then rigs some set up with her phaser on there. So I wrote she MacGyvered it is what I wrote. I wrote the same thing.

McGiver's it. She Legos these two things together, the APS relay and some other thing. And then she asked for a phaser. and MacGyver's this whole thing together so that she can turn it on and create an internal force field a containment field just as that whole before it fails.

Yeah, it blows off and it holds off. Look at that. And Harry says, glad you decided to come along. I like that line. We go to the bridge, the mail on shuttle. We find out it's stuck in the atmosphere. They can't seem to get out.

Jerry sort of smiles and she's like, get us out of her. too. So we take off leaving them with their, the trash men stuck in the, uh, the gaseous giant, which is appropriate. Yeah. Um, we go to the hallway and Torres and Chacote are talking. She thanks him for what he did in the holodex. She says. And interesting, she chased, he chases her down right before. It was Bala chasing Chacote down and say, let me go on the mission. And now Chacote is chasing Balana down. Yes. And so he asks how she's doing. She says, she doesn't know. He says, well, give it time. And she thanks him for what he did.

the holodeck earlier and says if he does anything like that again that she will break his neck so now you have a little glimmer of oh it's oh there's a little salty balana she's back she's back a little bit uh we go to mess hall she's now replicating a stack of banana pancakes with maple syrup and i wrote down stack of pancakes in starfleet uh replicator language really means three it means three pancakes there's only three on there or it looked like two and then i noticed there's actually a third one covered. But a stack to me is five or more. Do you agree? I mean, a stack of pancakes is a lot. Yeah, it should be more. It should be more. I saw some bananas in there, though. Is that good? Okay. What was that laugh at the end? What do you think?

Well, because she said my grandmother used to make these for me and always put a smile on my face. Okay. That's what it is. Because now she, before, when she tastes it, she's like, this isn't putting a smile on my face. I got to go back to work. She didn't feel it. She couldn't feel anything. Right. But this is the idea that now she's, starting to really face her feeling she goes to eat the pancakes she takes a bite and she's like oh i'm feeling my feelings again i'm remembering grandma and that this is delicious i love the smile at the end yeah well it wasn't a but here's the thing do you think it was a conscious it was yeah do you think it was a conscious choice that she knew as an actress that the script

said it puts a smile on my face but because she kind of made a breakthrough she went above and beyond the smile and she made it a laugh you see what i'm saying where she said i'm going to go even more as an actress because a smile is not going to be laughed there's a difference yeah definitely throws a big ha ha ha into the end of it so i feel yeah i thought it was a happy laugh like yes this is yes i did it on the right track now yeah okay all right excellent so your lesson from this episode my lesson is it's it's super important to feel your true feelings and that's the only way that you can move on and heal and grow so that's my lesson yeah give yourself time to grieve. I also wrote down another lesson is don't forget to look at the big

picture. And that's in reference to the initial Malon vessel that just follows that probe in blindly into the gas giant. It's like, dude, you have one focus. And that one focus is so microscopic. It's for that damn probe. You don't even realize you're about to die. So just look at the big picture, people. Don't be so obsessed with the small detail or one. small detail so that you ignore everything else that's going on. So that's the other lesson that I found from this episode. Good. What would you give this at a one out of ten? I'm going to give it a I'm going to give it an eight point two. Yeah. I'm going to give it more than a mainly because it's it's the Delta Flyer. Yeah. We we now have it. We have the darn shuttle. It's finally here.

Yeah. I am going to surprise you and go at a nine. I want to give this a nine You pushing it up there Yeah Look at you No I thought this involved the cast I mean we've talked about the doctor Didn't have much to do

But is this you or this is this just you avoiding any criticism Is this really your feeling nine I really enjoyed this episode Wow I thought it was really really good I mean there's a couple of flaws That's why I won't give it a 10 Yeah

But I would give this a nine I think this is one of our best episodes It was it had heart it had sci-fi elements it had humor as well humor yeah it had some big moves with the delta flyer mythology being

created and tying in the captain proton stuff yeah major tension relationships yeah yeah okay cool I'm gonna give it a nine that's that's probably one of your highest ratings it is it is there's only a handful that have gotten up above an eight it's tough to please McNeil

but he's pleased today I was very pleased happy to see Roxanne back in the game. There you go. In a big way. There you go. All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining Robbie and I during our discussion, recap of Extreme Risk. Join us next week when we jump into In the Flesh. That's the name of it. I don't, I don't even remember that title. In the flesh. I remember that title. I remember, yes, I do remember that title. Okay. I remember signing. You know, people bring scripts by at conventions all the time. You remember signing an in the flesh title.

Yes, I do. Okay. All right, everyone. And for our Patreon, patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. Thanks, everybody.