The Delta Flyers - Fascination

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.This week’s episode, Fascination, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, & Armin Shimerman. Fascination: An unexpected burst of passion sweeps through the station during a Bajoran festival, resulting in odd combinations of couples.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Tom Paynter, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Lisa Robinson, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Roxane Ray, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Tim Neumark, Randy Hawke, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Matt Norris, Izzy Jaffer, Francesca Garibaldi, Thomas Irvin, Jonathan Capps, & Sean T.Our Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Mary Burch, Sandra Stengel, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Tae Phoenix, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Steve Lugo, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, Stephanie Lee, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Heath K., Andrew Cano, Kevin Harlow, Hailey L., & Mariette KarrAnd our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Jake Barrett, Ann Harding, Trip Lives, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Jocelyn Pina, Mike Fillmon, Chad Awkerman, AJ Provance, Claire Deans, Maxine Soloway, Barbara Beck, Heidi McLellan, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Cindy Ring, Alicia Kulp, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Shanyn Behn, Renee Wiley, Maria Rosell, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Justin Weir, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, Heather Selig, Rachel Shapiro, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Annie Davey, Mark Lacey, Jeremy Gaskin, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Eddie Dawson, Klee Wiggins, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Robert Allen Stiffler, PJ Pick, Preston M, Rebecca Leary, Ryan Mahieu, Karen Galleski, Jeremy Conoley-Mayes, Jan Hanford, Loretta Reyes, Timothy McMichens, Dawn Colleen Smith, Cassandra Girard, Robby Hill, Andrea Wilson, Willow Whitcomb, Mo, Leslie Ford, Bethany Grace Howe, Daniel Chu, Scott Bowling, Ed Jarot, James Vanhaerent, Nick Cook-West, & Oscar FernandezThank you for your support!This Podcast is recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.“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, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] 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

Greetings, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers' Journey Through the Wormhole with Quark, Dax, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we make our way through episodes of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. Your hosts for today are my fellow track actors, Armand Shimmerman, Garrett Wong, and myself, Robert Duncan McNeil. Hello, everyone. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. For the complete and amazing and incredibly entertaining and educational version of this podcast, please check out patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers.

Sign up to become a patron today and get all that exciting bonus material. There you go. Hey, guys. Hey. Hi, Armin. Hey. How are you? How are you guys doing?

You all right? Good, good. We're all right. I'd like to show everybody something. Uh-oh. Yes. Oh, that's the new sweatshirt shirts. Lovely.

Wow. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Overgun and overpower. Yeah, she's a tough little ship. Yes. Yeah, we feel like we may have missed out on that. It might have, maybe we should have had a tough little ship or she's a tough little ship, but I like this one still. That was the introduction.

Then she's a tough little ship came on later. Yeah, we hadn't seen those episodes. We hadn't seen that yet before we designed the. design. So before Rebecca designed the design. Let's get into birthdays, first of all. Oh, my goodness. Let's talk about some birthdays.

We've got Liz Scott on January 22nd. Happy birthday, Liz. Happy birthday, Liz. Congratulations. We also have Alex Medniss, our Australian Patreon patron on January 25th. Happy birthday, Alex. Happy birthday, Alex. Many happy returns.

Happy birthday, Alex. That was sort of a weird cockney mashup. It was a little cockney of that. Birthday, Alex. I love it. We also have Jameson, Eisenberg on January 26th. Happy birthday, Jameson. Happy birthday, Jameson.

Happy birthday to Jameson on January 26. Happy birthday, buddy. Jameson, you probably know that you have the same first name as Jonathan Frakes' son. Oh, yes. Okay. And here's the other thing, though. Armin, if you ever get a chance to see Jameson on a Zoom call, he is a dead ringer for Will Wheaton.

Really? Yeah, it's freaky. It's sort of like, oh my gosh. Yeah, and he has the same name as Frakes' son. It's Franks' son. Now, Frakes calls his son Jamo. Jamo. I wonder if Jameson, we're going to check in with you, see if you like it.

Maybe we'll give you the same name. I don't know that you can't have two Jamos. Why don't we use the end of his word? He could be Mesao instead of J-Mo. Hey, Mesa. Yes. Hey, Mesa. Eisenberg.

I like that. Excellent. Let's start into our Limerick and then haiku synopsis of this episode. Yes, sir. Here we go. I've got a little poem, a little creative art. I'd like to call my poems art. Oh, all right.

Yes, they're very, yeah, very. I call them Frank, but you can call them Ardage. Show us. Show us your newest artwork, Robbie McKeown. Here's my newest artwork. It's the Bajoran gratitude fest, and relationships are put to the test. There's some super awkward couples. Thank God there weren't throuples.

These latent feelings should probably stay repressed. Well said. That sounds like how Armin feels about this episode. basically. Yeah, the whole episode should have been repressed. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. All right.

Here's my haiku for fascination. My haiku synopsis for fascination. Luoxana returns. Everyone is amorous. Cause zanthi fever. Excellent. Nice. Thank you.

Excellent. You captured it. I felt like saying it. And you did sing it. And you did sing it. you are a singer Garrett before we started recording Garrett was talking about how he can't sing

I know some actors can sing Garrett can sing well yes to be specific I had a cameo request for me to sing a wedding song of a couple for their anniversary and you spent like an hour hour working on it

well I was trying to I was trying to mimic because I do impersonations right so I was trying to impersonate Christoburg singing Lady in Red but the actual chorus of Lady and Red which you did earlier very well it's very it's up there just getting through that whole chorus is very difficult i think so thank you i appreciate we need to practice we're going to give you some voice lessons we're going to

get you ready for your next cameo i know so you can just sing it i want to be i want to rock it i want to be when they do star trek the musical they'll need you to sing thank you you're right exactly i think we should just write that the delta flyer should put on a production of star trick the musical i think we should do it we should all sing in it and because you have a singing voice too arman yes Yes. No. No, that's why I live in L.A. and not in New York anymore. Well, Armin did a musical. He did a musical. I remember. I did several music. Oh, so then you have a singing voice then. No, I did several musicals. I don't sing. You sound like Bob Picardo. Bob always says, oh, I can't sing. And then he comes out with, no, no, it's like Mr. Opera. Yeah. His Italian opera. Yeah. Do you know, Armin, I just thought of something. I was this close.

to making my Broadway debut with Renee. Oh, in City of Angels? No, Big River. Big River. Big River. I went in for that original production for Desmackenough, the director, six or eight times. Oh, Lord. And I heard at the very end, it was me and I can't remember the guy that got the part.

And I wasn't in for Huck Finn. I was in for a very small part. But I was this close, and I wanted to do that so bad. But so I would have worked with Renee. Yeah. Wow. You would have known Renee before you knew Renee, basically. That's cool.

I never saw Big River. I did see his next. City of Angels. I saw two, actually, of his Broadway musicals after Big River. One was City of Angels, which he was brilliant and brilliant. Great show. What is that one about? It's a gum shoe.

It's a gum shoe noir show. And a brilliantly conceived. I had a number of friends. in the show. I didn't know Renee then, but I went to see my other friends, but I did see Renee because he was in it. Yeah. And he was quite, quite good in it. I love that show. What year was that? Sorry, guys. What year did he do that? 88, 89? Something like that. Oh, no. Seven? Maybe. I know I saw it and I left New York in 82. So, um, but maybe I went back to

visit. You must have gone back because I was definitely, I came to New York in 82 and it was post 82 i think when i was on the soap opera i think it was in those years i'm almost yes absolutely it was because who's the actress that did uh one of the star trek movies a theater actress oh well anyway this actress was on the soap that i was doing and that's one reason i went to go see it is because she was she was doing it and so that that was between 85 and 88 i think or 86 somewhere in there anyway what do you have etymology yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah Enough about our favorite musicals. Yeah.

Here we go. So the word fascination comes from the Latin. Fascination. Fascination. Fascination. Fassination. I'm Jewish. I never learned that.

And it means the casting of a spell, sorcery or enchantment. It also means the state of being under a spell, which I think is applicable to this episode. And three, a fascinating quality, irresistibly attracted influence, which again, refers to this episode. You know what I find interesting? So these writers were writing back before the internet was the internet.

They couldn't go on and do a quick search. AI couldn't give them an answer. They had to know this or they had to go to the OED or something. Well, that's where I go. I go to the OED. But yes, and they're writers. Writers are wordsmiths. Knowing about words is what they do.

True, true. It's the perfect title. It's more perfect than I expected with your etymology. It is one of the few things that is perfection in this. All right. So full disclosure, Armand, this is not Armand's favorite. No, no. This is not his favorite.

It's not, but I just, okay, can I just read two things very quickly? Yes, please. two of you. All right. Iris Stephen Bear says this show originated insofar as the writers felt we needed a light show because we were coming up on past tense part one and then part two, very, very heavy shows. He describes the finished episode as dangerously wacky and says in some ways it works very nicely and in some ways, you know, end quote. Now it says the plot of this episode bears a striking resemblance to Shakespeare's play a midsummer night's dream. That's what I said.

And so, and I know that Armand loves Shakespeare. Let me finish reading this. Indeed, the writing and production staff all watched the 1935 film version of the play starring James Cagney as Bottom, Mickey Rooney as Puck, and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia during the early development stages of writing the teleplay. So that was what they had in mind. Does that change your thought process about this a little bit? No, to quote my friend, Wally Sean.

They failed miserably. I mean, yeah, we should get through the thing and then we'll talk about our summaries, but I agree with you, Armin, yet I had fun on the ride. I think the idea, the midsummer night's dream transporting that story into deep space nine could have been one of your greatest episodes ever, in my opinion. It could have been, but I don't think it's quite structured in the way that, would amplify that and elevate the idea, it just sort of tumbles out sloppily. But I still enjoyed it. And if I may make a little disclaimer as well, of all my, of all the plays Shakespeare

wrote, the one I'm least happy with is midsummer night's dream. Wow. It's one of my favorites. So there you go. It's everyone's favorite. But I have, if I never see that show again, My goodness. I can die happy. What is your favorite? What's your favorite Shakespeare play? Yes. Tell us the other. Tempest.

Usually my answer to that is whatever play I'm doing at the time, whichever what I'm doing at the time is the one of my favorite. But if I had to really choose, if there was a gun to my hand, I think I would say Richard the second, which many people don't know about and beautifully written play with a central character that is gorgeous. So this episode is directed by Avery Brooks, and it seems like he's getting a lot of episodes very quickly. It seems like this is his fourth one maybe.

I don't know at this point, but it seems like he's doing a lot of directing. Well, Avery is a director, has directed not so much TV, but had directed a great deal of plays, was a teacher at Rutgers, is a teacher at Rutgers, and where he taught theater. So it seemed like a natural transition. And when you're number one on the call sheet, you get to go ahead of the line. Yes, yes, exactly. But it is quick. It is very quick. All right, story.

Story by Iris Stephen Bear and James Crocker, teleplay by Philip Lezebnik. And of course, I already said, Avery Brooks directed this. We have all the regular players plus guest stars Major Barrett as Luxona Troy. Philip Anglom is back as Vedic Bariol and Rosalin Chal as Kako. So those are our guest stars. Molly. Yeah. Oh, sorry.

Molly is a co-star. And not a guest star, yeah, a co-star credit. Hanahate. Hanahate. Yeah, we start off in Cisco's quarters. Jake's lying on the couch kind of upside down, which I thought was an interesting way to open. Yes, it was. It's kind of twirling a necklace or earring.

No, earring. But you're an earring. That's right. He's very sad. Marta left for school. She's left. His girlfriend's left. So he's heartbroken.

Cisco tells him to come join the gratitude festival. That's the whole point. He's put the past behind you, have a new start. Jake agrees reluctantly, but he says he's not going to have any fun. Whenever a character says, I'm never going to fill in the blank, you know they're going to do that. They're going to flip flop. The flip flop will happen.

I do have to say that upside down opening shot. But after Cisco came in, I was confused where we were until Jake sat up. Because I guess Jake was facing away from him. It just stayed in these tight shots. And I was like, wait, where are people in the world in space? Yeah. See, I didn't have that. I immediately recognized it as the Cisco quarters.

It made me out of this because I was familiar with that. But yeah. Yeah, I was a little confused. I've got to be honest. It was all so tight. And it was unconventional because he was upside down. and then he rolled over, but he's facing away. I didn't know.

In this episode, a lot of people face away. I noticed that as I was watching. In this episode, there's a lot of people who don't, where the actors don't look at each other. I think I understand why. But there's a lot of that in this episode where people are not looking at each other. I think I had the same thought.

I think because, as you said, Avery is a theater director. He came from the theater. Even when Avery is in a scene with Jake, you know, he goes up, he sort of turns open to the camera as if it were on stage. And on stage, that's, that makes total sense to do it. Absolutely. But to kind of compromise reality for the camera,

I felt that a lot in this episode. Yeah, it felt theatrical, I guess. Robbie, I want to quiz you. Yes, sir. This is the question I have for you, Lord McNeil. You have directed countless hours. of television in Hollywood. Do you recall which scene you yourself

used an upside down character to begin the shot? Yeah. I've done it quite a few times. Oh, okay. In the sci-fi world? In the sci-fi world? I don't know. The first thing that came to mind was on Dawson's Creek. Oh, yeah, it's where you cut your teeth over there.

Dawson, yeah, the first episode I did of that, I think Dawson was, his father had just died at the end of the previous episode. And so this episode I directed was all about grief and resisting feeling the grief. He wasn't feeling. He just was numb until the very end of the episode. Anyway, he's lying in bed at one point. And I decided just to put the camera above him and start with his head upside down in the frame.

And then as we sort of pulled out, we corkscrewed up. Oh, you sort of did. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember that was a tricky shot because to get, get a crane, you know, the, the crane, if you just boom up, actually starts to pull back. I see.

You have to boom up and Dolly in. I see. To keep it so it doesn't pull back. Center point. Yeah. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a tricky move. That was tough to do. But yeah.

Well, I'm actually referring to an episode of the Orville and that you had Seth McFarland upside down in that show. Did I? I don't remember. Didn't you do the zoo episode where they were like, yeah, yeah, that was the one. You came up on him. Was the episode? down? Yes, he was. I remember because I was looking at him upside down. I said, oh, he looks Asian upside down for some reason. I can say that being Asian, but I, yeah, I just thought it was a cool shot then. And you don't recall it at all. I'm sorry. Well, we go to the repliment next. Bashir is teasing Miles about being nervous, seeing Keiko and Mali are going to come back after being gone for three months. And Miles is, doesn't he say something like you've had 25 cups of coffee or something?

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a shot that the scene starts with a coffee being removed. There's no face. It's just a cup of coffee. That's right. Being removed from the replicator. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's very anxious and Bashir picks up on that. And Miles does mention that they're only going to be here for two days. They came back just for the festival. They're going to be here two days. And then she's got to go back for four months. So he wants to make the most of it. He's really, you know, this is really important to him.

So, yeah, they have a nice talk. Talk about their racquetball in this scene. Bashir says they've played 150 games of racquetball. They play a lot of racquetball when she's gone. Nothing else to do, I guess. Yeah, yeah, the medical officer and the head engineer, they had nothing to do but play racquetball. You play racquetball all the time.

Yeah. This episode is important in the development of the O'Brien-Bashir friendship. The writers originally wrote Kako out. of the show so they could develop this friendship. And at the conclusion of this episode, as Keiko leaves the station, Bashir throws O'Brien a racket symbolically replacing O'Brien's wife. Indeed, the notion of competition between Keiko and Bashir for O'Brien would become a comic threat upon Keiko's return in the fourth season.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. The show suffered from the loss of Rosal and Chao. She's a wonderful performer, and in my humble opinion, gave the best performance in this episode. Oh. She's far and a way better than everybody else's. Yeah, we all need a little Ross Chow in her life.

Well, she was the, she was kind of the darker side of this episode. No, I would disagree. I wouldn't say darker. For me, it was the shining light in this episode. Oh, wow. Oh, interesting. Yeah, but her story of just being exhausted and. But that was real.

Those scenes, but I'm getting ahead of myself, those scenes with the O'Brien's just, you know, quibbling about, you know, I'll do whatever you need. No, don't do that. That was so real for me. Forgive me. And now I'm giving me something away. That is my married relationship, is trying to figure out how to, how for me to please my spouse and my spouse trying to figure out how to please me. And those scenes, those moments struck, struck chords.

I mean, yeah, yeah, that's married life. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love the, and we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, I love the way that. It was almost like they were walking on eggshells with each other. Well, wait, are you saying, are you saying you want to do this? No, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. And, you know, it is a reality of a long-term relationship.

And an insight, and I think all of us have been there, when we go off to work, whether it's us or our spouses or our girlfriends, or our boyfriends, when there's been a separation and you come back together, there is a day or two. to of walking on eggshells because, you know, while I was away, I got used to putting my toothpaste over here. Yeah, exactly. And the other person says, but we always kept it over there. Right. And there's a readjustment, re-alignment that has to take place, which I thought they nailed in this episode.

Yeah, I used to call it re-entry when I'd come back from being away, working or something. Re-entry is what you called? Re-entry, like I had gone out to space. somewhere and it's coming back in the landing module or something. Yeah. I love it. All right. We go out to the promenade next.

Odo approaches Kira. She's doing some I guess some preparing preparations for the festival. But he approaches and he says, he tells her he's decided to join her this year in the festival. She seems really happy. She says she'll see him later.

she says look for me with beryl oh that that was just straight a shot to the heart even though he has no heart as a changeling but still let's say he had a heart yeah straight to that goo heart of his painful yeah it was very sad yeah she says look for me with beryl i'm going to meet him he's on the next shuttle and i thought poor odo a couple things in the scene though at one point some background actors are carrying a gong behind. Did you see the gong? I found it so distracting. I'm like, really? Why? Why isn't there a gong, right? I mean, I get it. It just seemed distracting to me. I remember in some episode, maybe it was this one. I remember we hired some Cirque to Soleil. It was this one. Performances. This one. Yeah. So Avery was showing off as he should some of the Cirque de Soleil performers. And we

actually on Voyager hired probably the same Cirque du Soleil for the episode of the Thaw. Yeah. Michael McKeene. I have some thoughts about the Cirque to Solet when we got there. Okay. All right. There are definitely some. Did you have another comment on this scene though? I did. So at the end of the scene, we

see the musicians getting ready behind Odo. Correct. And I If you have forgotten, I'll remind you how much I hate Star Trek music. When they play alien music, I just find it dreadful. I love the score underneath. But whenever they compose Bajoran music or Vulcan music or whatever, Klingon music, it's horrible.

It's just horrible music. I don't find it that bad, but okay. Isn't it likely that when they were shooting this, Of course, they were not playing that the music is added later on in order. I mean, that's what usually happens in my recollection is if music is needed and you're supposed to be playing, that they don't play. They look like they're playing, but there's nothing coming from the instruments. Yeah. Yeah, there's interesting with music on screen, with union rules, you cannot hire just a background actor to play an instrument.

What? have to hire a union musician who knows how to play that instrument. You're kidding me. I had no clue. So when you see a band or even this group of musicians, because later on, Odo's dancing and Waxana comes in. I can't say her name. Waxana.

Waxana comes in. And they're playing these odd instruments, these sci-fi instruments, but they're clearly musicians. You can see that they know what they're doing because they're union musicians. They have to hire real, the rule that's been around, is this a rule that's been around for decades then? Been around for a long time. I would say it's been around for longer than the camera has, because there's a similar

rule in equity and in the musicians union for musicals and straight plays actually as well. As well, in regular plays. Yeah, in straight plays, you have to hire musicians. I, again, did not know that. You play cards down below in the dressing rooms, and then they get paid once a week. Yeah. Yeah. What a great job for them.

Yeah. We go to a corridor next. O'Brien's pacing outside the airlock. I love this shot through the glass of that gear door, that big round door. Well, Miles is waiting. Kira walks up and they're both, you know, excited about their loves arriving. Beryl arrives. Kira and Beryl head off arm in arm.

Haco arrives. Not so happy. She's exhausted. Oh, my gosh. She's annoyed. Yeah. Molly doesn't feel good either. Suddenly Molly vomits off camera.

You hear it and see Miles's reaction. Doesn't it hit Miles? He gets vomit on himself. Did we see it though? Or we just saw him look? We never saw it. We know what happened. It better to keep that off camera.

Yeah. But Molly throws up and then immediately after that, Lwaxana arrives, and Loxana apologizes for, you know, giving her all that candy. Has that happened to you as a daddy? Lord McNeil. Have one of your brethren? Yes. Have one of your children?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. As baby babies, there's the spit up. Right. There's that typical stuff. But then, yeah, oh, yeah. When they were little Molly's age, one of them threw up on you, right? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that happens. All righty. Let's continue. Those darn kids. Yeah. And I just realized, like, Lwaxana is starting problems for everyone as soon as she arrives. Like, you know, we'll learn later on about the Xanthi fever or whatever.

But she's always been a figure of chaos. Yes. And all of Star Trek. Yes. She's always been a figure of chaos. She always, things start to happen because of her arrival. Right. She's the catalyst.

She is. The chaos catalyst. Exactly. And I want to thank her character because her character was responsible for my first appearance on Next Generation. Oh. Oh, nice.

I was a messenger that she had sent. Interesting. Thanks, Majel. Thanks for Armin. Let us say this right now. Majel Barrett was the glue when I started on Star Trek that brought all of the casts of all.

There were only two at that time, but the castes together. One of Majel's purposes in life was to make everybody on Star Trek comfortable and into a huge big family. And I, for one, was enormously grateful for that. She always was, she threw parties all the time. Parties, yeah.

And we all got to know each other, unlike at convention, well, like at conventions, we got to know each other because of the parties that Majel threw. I still regret. Robbie went to one. I never went to one party. I never went to one.

I was invited to all of them and I should have. You should have. You should have. You really should have. Deadgum it. I went up to that house when Rod was basically auctioning, not auctioning off, but giving away. Yeah, he was giving away a lot of his parents stuff. Like he had already sold all the things of valid.

Then there was other things. So I went up and I saw the house, but it was at that point, it's too late. She's gone, you know. But I did, I do have Majel's golf putter. I have that with me. She was an avid golfer, yes. I have Gene Roddenberry's golf. golf shoes and I have a few of their books actually about the house was on a golf course it was in

belair it was the golf course it was right oh I don't know if it was on it was okay it's close I'm very yeah yeah but Rod sold that house of course oh yeah it's a bummer okay all right well Majel shows up agent of chaos shows up and we know we're we're in for an adventure in the security office Odo is briefing his it's Randy again it's Randy his stand right yes and you know with that it's a it's a it's a it's a regular scene of the of the normal length and they couldn't give randy one word thank you thank you thank you he's talking to him for so long we're all as the audience we're all on baited breath say something anything one word and it's he deserved it but he deserved it now they did do it later on later on many years later they gave randy some lines really

Yeah, like the final season? I mean, this is, this is the time that they should have put it in. Oh, that's upsetting. And Randy could have done it easily. I just thought, really? Yeah. It isn't like you got a ton. You do have actually quite a few expensive guest stars, but you could have, because you could have

up in salary if you say something. Yeah, it would have been a few hundred dollars. It would not have been broken. And it would have generated residuals for him as well. Oh, totally. And it would have made the scene better. That's right. It makes the scene awkward when you've got someone who's just standing there nodding

without saying, okay, or I, sir, copy that, whatever, anything. And why is he sitting in Odo's chair? Yeah, it's odd. Why? I think it's because he was going to be, Odo was about to walk out. But didn't Odo say in the previous scene, says to Kira, says all of my deputies, Well, he's not Bajoran. Randy's character is not Bajorn, so I guess that makes sense.

Okay, he's the only deputy left. Because Odo does, says, all my Bajoran deputies are going to take the holiday off. I'm going to take the day off, yeah. Yeah. Yes, he's basically giving him security instructions while Odo's going to be at the festival. He wants his officer to know what to do. To monitor quarks at all times. Yes, exactly.

Yes, three or four times a day at random intervals, just to let him know. know that I'm thinking about him. Yeah. Yeah, very funny. Lwaxona enters. Hugs a stunned Odo. He is not expecting this. I love how she tells the security officer to please have some manners.

Skiddle out of here, please. And he doesn't say, yes, ma'am, or anything. That's what I'm saying. Even there, we could have used something. Well, Randy leaves. She informs Odo. She came to see him because she's worried. he must be in pain after finding his people and learning that they're leaders of this awful

dominion it must be so hard she wants to go relax right now just alone with him she she gets right to it yeah she wants to help him but he's like no i want to go to the festival i'm going to go to the festival i do like uh the fact that loksana in one of her lines of dialogue says uh when odo says what kind of helped you mean loxana says a sympathetic ear a shoulder to cry on a lap to melt in, which is a reference to the prior episode, which I love about DS9 because things are tracking here. They literally refer to something that happened that we, you know, we've seen Roxana and Odo trapped in that turbo lift and him having to regenerate or revert to his liquid state and

into her lab. So she's referring to that. And that's something we didn't have on Voyager, which I wish we did. I know. We didn't really track. Very rarely. It's the nature of the difference between the two shows. yes it is we boldly stayed in one place and so um we boldly stayed in one

you really did you were very bold and so you you couldn't get away from the fact that things you know you were stuck there so you had to remember what happened before was you guys gleefully moved on from planet to planets can we make a ravi can we make a t-shirt that has the station and said boldly staying in one place please yes it's very funny let's do that It is funny. Okay. Yep. We'll write that time. All right.

She agrees to go to the festival with him. And again, says, well, after the festival, we can relax in private. And she ends the scene by basically saying, you're never going to be alone again. Aw. And his face, his reaction to that was great. Well, they get into a turbo lift. We do see here, as they get in the turbo lift, Loxana kind of has a headache, a stabbing pain in her head. And so we know, yeah, whenever a character in a show says, I'm not going to have fun, they have fun.

Whenever they have a headache, you know that's a problem. And the other thing I always notice is whenever a character coughs, they're going to die. Really? I will look for that in scripts from now. Whenever I see a character, you know, coming up and going, yeah, I just want to ask you a few. questions they're dying like you don't cough on because the if it happened by accident the editors would cut it out it's intentional the cough means they've got some deadly disease of some there's like I love that Robbie because in yeah me too

yeah in uh doctor who there's there are these angels that make you anyway it's don't blink is what the the the thing that you hear a lot in doctor who and in Star Trek it could be don't cough shirt that's the don't cough shirt don't cough yeah you're going to die if you cough uh we go to cares quarters next she's stretched out on the chaise lounge very seductive very seductive but my first notes are um awkward chemistry question mark now i'm going to step on some toes yeah please Please, I'll step one. Are you stepping or stomping?

I'm stomping. Okay, thank you. I've now watched several episodes, and of course, in the past, watched all the episodes of the relationship between Kira and Bahrain. And to my mind, there is no chemistry between those two actors at all. Terry agrees with you. She said it on other episodes. Terry is like, oh, my gosh.

There's nothing there. There's nothing there, right? No. I'm going to go even further I'm going to say this is the worst coupling on any Star Trek series That's pretty bad There's nothing worse than this one

If we remember Kira's look to Freik's to Riker in the past episode Yeah that's my note That's my note It's exponentially She doesn't care about Burial

Oh my God Well that was just the previous episode Right Yeah in this scene At the very end When she So basically he's trying to have sexy time in the scene.

She gets up in the middle of being seductive when he comes over. She suddenly is like, oh, no, I got to go to the festival. She does this thing with Dax where she sets out the scrolls. He does comment so that we set up his point of view about Dax. He's like, you are so

different, you too. Oh my gosh. Yes. You know, it's not a coincidence that both boreal and boring begin with B. Okay. And by the way, I saw Philip Anglom in The Elephant Man on Broadway. He was amazing.

Phenomenal. Yes. Like, life-changing play. And he was phenomenal. So, yeah, I find this puzzling. As the elephant man, he had no romance that I was going to. There you go. There you go.

As the elephant man, he had no romance. And I'm not critiquing him as an actor. I'm just saying the character of Brile and the character of Nunah Visitor are just not destined to be together. there is absolutely zero spark between those two. I'm sorry. Well, as she leaves to go meet Dax and put the scrolls out, she gives him another kiss. And that's where I wrote,

Armin, she gives him another awkwardly short kiss goodbye. They barely even, like their mouths barely met. Oh, wow. And I thought, oh, that's not the same kiss as Riker in the last episode. No. Exactly. Exactly. Like, Franks grabbed her

and she fell into. it and yeah yeah this was maybe that's why it's so awkward for her for kira now is because she just had this no hiker no no we know what it is there's just no chemistry there's no corbriol okay we go to o'brien's quarters next keko comes to sit with miles she's exhausted but she does say molly's feeling better but she's medicine's working and miles says great um they've got a babysitter we can go to the festival or he he also starts talking sexy time maybe we can just stay locked inside together and she's like she doesn't want to do any of that she wants to go to sleep and then he gets annoyed and then she gets annoyed and it's a little of this like they're misinterpreting or you know

getting defensive with each other they're walking on eggshells as we talked about earlier he finally just says tell me what you want and she says no I want you to decide so he says okay let's go to the festival and wear that great red dress that I love and she says the red dress really it's so tight and he then he gets mad again because she just said tell me what you want and he did and now she's going no so yeah it's it's a classic welcome to married life it's exactly it's exactly right on it's exactly right yeah the the dialogue here is it's it's fabulous it's good right yeah she does She does an extraordinary job of selling it as well. In this episode, I am all in favor of Rosalind Shaw.

Yeah. And this storyline absolutely has a clear. Yes. Yes, it does. Can I read? Iris Stephen Bear commented that the episode was the show that now and then runs the risk of pissing everyone off. It was a show that we had developed for the second season

and never got around to doing it. What I liked about the episode is that I thought that Avery Brose, did some nice work with the direction. Another nice thing was that Keiko, another nice thing was the Keiko slash O'Brien relationship. I think it was one of the most interesting threads we've ever done on the series and some of the most real dialogue between two married people who have expectations, but at the same time can't quite sync up with each other. I remember when we were watching dailies, everyone was uncomfortable because it really did

strike close to home. Everyone had something in their lives they could relate it to, how a relationship could seemed to be bad over such small things, what seemed to be small things, but are not really. I thought it was a nice human story. I thought Jake was very sweet with Kira, wanting to go out with her. Dax going after Cisco was kind of fun. I didn't think the Bariol stuff worked that well. The show was better than it had any right to be.

That's Cyrus comments on that. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but clearly he also, like you, Armin, really liked the Kiko and Miles story. Yeah. It's the best part of this episode. Oh, by far. Yeah.

You know who does like this show? Jonathan West. This is one of DP, Jonathan West, favorite episodes due to the fact that director Avery Brooks allowed West to try some new cinematography techniques. They did. Yep, there was more light on the set than usual. Color was emphasized much more so than in a standard show. All the characters were bathed in a subtle pink light to enhance the mood.

Balloon foil was used in the background of many shots to get random sparkle. and purple, a color forbidden from the Star Trek color palette due to its association with old science fiction artificiality was allowed to be used, the color purple. Who knew that was a... I didn't know that. Fairboughton color, what? Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, there's no Starfleet rank that has purple. There's red, there's green, there's yellow, but there's no purple. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Just purple pros. Just purple pros. we go outside into the promenade again outside the shrine that gong that i saw being carried by

is is is being hit by this young child oh awkward the kid looked terrified he looked terrified to be shooting a shot it didn't look like part of a story it just looked like yeah it was weird after the gong moment we kind of go through some Cirque de Soleil people to eventually arrive at this podium, this stage. Yeah. But the Cirque de Soleil felt very forced to me. It felt like, it felt like a play. It felt like, oh, presentational, I guess, is what I mean.

You know, it didn't feel like, oh, this Cirque de Soleil is part of this, the energy of a celebration. It felt like the Cirque de Soleil is part of a shot. What I thought Avery was doing was that they'd hired these people, talented performers, and he was going to show them off. And here, look at what we hired. And you're right. It has nothing to do with the story, really. It's just, we've hired them, and now we're going to show them off.

Yeah. Kira's on stage. She does this fancy ceremony, which is very reverent at this moment. She pours these liquids together into this vial that has a nice blue color, and then the fire comes up. up, and now they're going to burn all these scrolls to let go with the past. Start a new chapter. So that's how we start. Then you see Luoxana get another headache.

You see Bariol get a headache because he's near her. Uh-huh. He walks by. Brile gets a headache. And then you see him look at Dax and has kind of a creepy smile. And Dax sees it. There's a quick response back and forth. Yeah.

And then it pans over to Jake. And Jake also, we saw him so morose and so sad before. Suddenly Jake seems to brighten up and, yeah, he has his headache and then suddenly he's super happy. So what we know from the end of the episode, are they saying that Jake has a latent itch for Kira? Is that what was meant to believe at the end of this episode? Okay. Oh, yeah. I think that is a tricky part of this episode to me.

Oh, yeah. It would be different if you just said, these are random. It's the first person you see after this projection of a... Right. And that's mid-Summer-night stream. That's mid-Summer-night stream. The first person you see. Yeah.

That feels like that would have been cleaner because at the end when they say, well, there has to be some latent attraction. And Cisco, I think, and we're jumping to the end, but Cisco's like, wait a minute, what? He goes, yes, subconscious, very subconscious, not even aware. But yeah, I think Jake's got to have some crush on some level, even subconsciously. With all the people that are on the promenade celebrating, why Kira for Jake? I can understand Kira for a lot of people, and we've never seen anything like this.

There's no, we've never seen that I know of. We've never seen any looks between Jake and Kira. No, and you're right. He got affected by the fever. and the second he did, the first person he laid eyes on was Kira. That's why I see. Well, we don't know for sure that's the first person. I don't know.

Oh, we don't know that. Because later on when Bashir says there has to be a latent attraction for it to work, he could have looked at 10 other people that he didn't know and wouldn't have felt it until he landed on someone where there was his subconscious attraction. Then it's going to go. Okay. Well, yeah, after Jake gets happy, Kira, you know, catches up to Bariahel who's looking around for something. And she asks him, what are you looking for? Yeah.

And he says, oh, I'm just looking. And then Jake finds Kira, wants to talk to her in private, he says. So they sit on a bench. Beryl seems distracted in the background wanders off. Yeah. Jake tells Kira he loves her. Well, at first he says, doesn't he say, I'm in love with an older woman? but I don't know how she feels

and Chero thinks it's Marta yeah he's like just tell her tell Marta so he does Jake he says he broke up the Marta so she's gone he broke her yeah but he said yeah exactly but he does say I love you Norese

man those three words and I'm not sure what's more surprising hear him say I love you or using the name Norese exactly what doesn't Cisco later on even say You're like, please don't call her, Norese. It's making me uncomfortable.

I like how he says, I love you, Norese, in a very adult, very mature way. Yeah, yeah. Want to go out with me? Want to go out with me? Like a kid. Like a kid. I love it. We go back outside the Shrine Dax's reading Morns Scroll and giving him some advice.

Again, awkward. That one I understand. Excuse me. I'm going to step on some toes here. But even, but. That one I understand. But even if he said, thanks or something, one word, it would have been nice. But at this point, at this point, the gag was that everyone talked about how much he talks

and that the audience never hears him talk. So that one, I get. I get that. Yeah. But on the heels of the other one, to me, this one stuck out. Yeah. If this had just been the only one, I would have. Yeah.

If it hadn't been a two shot, if maybe if, and I'm no director, but if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, they had just, you know, stuck with, if we got Morn for a second and then we got a close up on Dax, then it would have been less uncomfortable. Well, it's a funny, it's, the dialogue's hilarious. Morn, I can't believe a handsome, fun-loving guy like you could have so many problems. Does that the whole fun-loving guy? Because all he does is sit in the same spot. He doesn't do anything other than that.

So it's very funny. I like how she says, my advice is to burn this as quickly as possible. Yeah, don't look back. yeah oh beryl arrives though mr charisma and i mean the character not the actor as i said philip england was brilliant uh i've seen an elephant man but this this character is not no so dynamic or anyway he arrives compliments dax on the advice she just gave yeah he says i wish i had a friend like you and she says well we are friends and he and he goes i wish we were more than friends and I like how I don't know if this was Avery or if it was scripted but you're in

these close-ups as they're getting you know he's getting more and more intimate yeah and then she looks down in her close-up and it cuts to the wide shot where you see that his somewhere off camera his hand has gotten on flag I thought that was fun good can I just read armin's quote this is arman's least favorite episode of all ds9 episodes that's Published on the interweb? It says, yeah, on memory alpha. Shimmerman, who teaches Shakespeare, has said of the show, quote, I thought it was embarrassing, end quote.

I haven't changed my mind. Alexander Siddig was also unimpressed with the episode saying it is memorable for not quite pulling off what it attempted to do, end quote. I didn't remember. I don't remember saying that. Obviously, I did say it, but I don't remember. And I'm glad to see I haven't changed my mind. You're consistent. I'm consistent.

Yeah, you are. It's just, it's atrocious. Okay. But I'm going to say, I have all the same criticisms. Okay. But I laughed and I had fun. Thank you. At the end, I'm probably going to be much higher than you.

Okay. Probably you are. Ditto. Robbie, the musicians are back. Your favorite people. Oh, geez. Well, there was a nice, so off of Dax walking away after the hands on the way, they're on a crane. And the crane sort of follows her.

Yeah. And then goes up to the next level where we find Odo dancing to these three union musicians. Yes. Playing music. The union musicians. Probably not playing anything. Although to get it in sync with, they probably pre-recorded this music. So they probably played it on set, play back as the camera move goes.

And then once it got to the dialogue, that's one reason they move away from. the musicians so that you can not have to sync up the miming of playing a song with dialogue because you wouldn't be able to have the playback. I will give Renee kudos here. He looks incredibly awkward dancing. He's a very good dancer. So kudos to Renee for looking as awkward as possible to this music. Armand, did I hear you say that right? You said he's an incredibly good dancer in real life is what you were saying? Okay. Wow. Well, I love how she grabs Odo, pulls him away from the musicians. And he's enjoying this music.

She pulls him away. And they dance. They dance while they're talking, which is part of the fun of it. And he runs off, he tries to escape the dancing. She follows. They run into Dax here. Odo asks if she's having fun. She goes, nope, I am not.

Then Odo exits. Neither am I, by the way. Odo unlocks on an exit, and you see Dax, have a head. Oh, oh, oh, no. Another headache. Armand, you mentioning Renee being such a good dancer, now it just reminds me of when Christopher Walken did that music video where he broke out and danced.

Everyone was watching this going, what? We had no clue that Christopher Walken had that. He had been a Broadway dance. I think it was a Broadway dancer. He certainly was a dancer, a tap dancer, in fact. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's amazing what, you know, we are amazed when we find out that the people we've been watching have other attributes that we are to wear. Of course, for sure. Did you know that I was a tap dancer? I did not know that. I will send you a link for a video of me tap dancing at a theme park, at amusement park, the summer of 1980, I think it was. Yeah. I would have loved. I was a big tap dancer.

I loved, like Christopher Walken, loved a tap dance. Prior to Kitty, all I dated was tap dancers. They were, they were, I dated at least two tap dancers, important romances in my life. Oh, wow. I was a very young man, very young man, yeah. Yeah, who knew that we could have had a tap-off between Robbie McNeil and Renee Obergin-Wa? And I got one of my ex-friends to teach me to shuffle off to Buffalo, but I can only do it one way. I can't do it both ways.

I can only do it to the left. To the left, not to the right. That's all right. One of my first auditions when I moved to New York in 1982 was an open call for 42nd Street that was running on Broadway for the chorus, chorus call. And I got through the first cut, which was the first thing was they just had everybody do

shuffle off to Buffalo, basically a time step. You know, time step with a shuffle off to Buffalo kind of thing. And I got through the first round. I'm like, oh, God. And quickly cut. when it got more complicated. Thank you. Thank you. We'll let you know. Thank you. Exactly. But I was on the stage at the Majestic Theater. Oh. Yeah. You know, just, it was an open call at the theater.

Yeah. And I was, yeah. Well, you were excited. The first time I stood on a Broadway stage was that where Second Street open call. Right. And I'm going to brag. I did six months on the Majestic Theater. Wow. I remember Mama was there, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh. that was a main stage play at UCLA when I was there I remember really yeah I remember and I was I played the two small minor roles they were trying to rainbow cast where everybody was going to be a different ethnicity

but I you know was very close to playing the son but I ended up being like a couple of other Lars no yes no Lars Lars is the father of the son I think Lars is the son I should know this Lars it's been a while though it's been a while yeah yeah all right Well, next time we get together, I'll bring my tap shoes and we can tap away. Now, Quark makes, I think, is this your first appearance? Yeah, yeah. Basically, Quark is a carnival barker out on the prom. Wearing a pejorine earring.

I remember it had to be enormous to fit on the ears. Yeah, I bet. I bet. Yeah, he's all in on this festival. Well, he's trying to sell the renewal scroll inscription pens. This is a very important thing for Cork to get done. Exactly. Rob, you want to talk about those pens?

Oh, yes. Well, the pens are latinum-plated. They are blessed by Vedic Radab, Redab, shortly before he passed away. So, coincidentally, no one can verify if they were actually blessed by Vedic from Radab. Yes, but I've got Rom in the back room. It's just making them as fast as it can. Yes. He does say each pen is engraved with the words of Deep Space Nine's third annual gratitude festival,

today's date, and a lovely portrait of the station by Hermit Zim. I love this, because it's Herman's, it's short for Herman Zimmon. Yes. Look at that Easter egg. Love it. We see Odo and Luoxana are sitting at a table. They're looking at jugglers and acrobats. Again, this, the Cirque de Soleil to me felt very presentational, the way the camera.

Like, I think one of the Cirque de Soleil guys was walking backwards, almost looking at the camera. juggling or something or doing a ball or something yeah yeah now we have to remember there's a reason why they hire us uh to perform on camera yeah it's because we know how to work be natural yes be natural in front of can you know not everybody has that quality it's it's what it's what we study it's what we require and if we do it well they use us yeah yeah some of these these performers and i'm sure they're circus people yeah and they're used to they're To be performing in the theater. That's what they do.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this sequence of Cirque de Soleil people take us to another cool crane shop up from this juggler. We see the O'Brien's. They're sitting at their regular table, which I love. Miles asked her about her work. She says it's hard, but she loves it. But she does mention it's taken a little longer than the original plan.

He says, how much longer? She says seven. Well, she says three more months for a total of seven more months that she'll be on. So we're to assume she's been away for two months already. Because originally it was going to be six months. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So she's going to be gone almost twice as long on this next leg than he expected.

And he's not happy about it at all. And then she gets defensive. She mentions this guy, Sabar. Yeah, that's Sabar. This is like a conversation that I think all of us have had in our youth when we were dating somebody. And when she goes, Sabar was right, I never should have mentioned it. And bing, bing, bing, that's when the jealousy, the green jealous monster overtakes O'Brien, Sabar.

What? Who's Sabar? No. Yeah. Yeah, he gets jealous. Oh, my gosh. And he assumes, you know, what else is going on? What else are you talking about?

And he tells her, you know what? I don't want you to go back. I want you to stay here. Yeah. And she says she doesn't even want to sit at the. this table with him, which I thought that was a harsh thing. Oh, very harsh. Again, I've heard that in my past as well. And then O'Brien says, fine. Go on, lead. Go back to Bejor and your plants and Sabar. See if I care. Which is the last thing that he should have said. That's right. Because that made

her even more pissed clearly. Don't go there. And he did. And I've done that as well. But one of the things that I liked about Rosalind. Cullum, of course, was upset and, and, you know, getting frustrated and you can see the flames coming out of his ears and eyes. But Rosalind was upset, but never went over the line. To me, she walked the line perfectly of trying to stay in control and being upset with her husband. I love the way she played that scene.

I agree 1,000 percent I wonder I was just thinking about Roz and I want to look up when we get to the scene where later on Miles goes to talk to her and she's in the room and doesn't want to come out and talk to them

I want to look on the original script and see if that was scripted that way or if Avery chose to put her behind the door and not ever see her I mean we're a little ahead of herself but I had the same question was she not available that day yeah

yeah it seems like because as an audience member I wanted to see her side of that right yeah yeah yeah when we get there I'll take a look at the original script and see how it's described right don't forget that please yeah okay um so yeah go back to Sabar so O'Brien and Keiko are yeah they're not in a good place Sabar but they're at the bar go back to Sabar we're at the bar

we're at the bar we see Cisco finds Jake on the promenade Cisco says he needs his help with this festival dinner that he's hosting later that day and Jake says you know dad you were right about meeting someone and Cisco says I didn't mean Kira he says you know it's just a crush you're you're vulnerable right now because of Marta that's you know he's assuming that it's that he's kind of acting strange because he was so despondent about MARTA.

Every now and then, there's something of value in this episode. And this little TED-A-Tep between father and son, I thought, also resonated as something that, yes, that is what happens. But I went, yeah, that's a nice father and son moment. I did like when Cisco says, you know, Kira's in love with Bariol, Jake. And Jake says, well, it won't last. And I was like, I'm on team Jake for this. I hope he's right. I hope it won't last.

I think we all rejoiced at that comment. Thank you, Jake. And perhaps the writers were injecting something there that they already thought about. Jake runs off to, yeah, he runs off to find Kira and Laxana has purchased a souvenir pen. Of course. Yes. She gives Odo this pen. pen and odo really doesn't want to accept it but she insists it's her gift and a lovely shot

going from that to finding a quark at the bard dealing with o'brien o'brien yeah yeah it was it was it was unusually kind of long and quiet there was no dialogue it just sort of let them go it went into a window i think yeah yeah slowly pushed in and then went down a level uh to the bar itself. It was a nice shot. That was a nice shot. I think that's probably what Jonathan West is talking about. There's a lot of that kind of stuff,

these very cinematic sort of handoffs. But because of shots like that, they're very pretty to look at. But the whole sense of energy gets dissipated as we're looking at beautiful shots, but you go, okay, I'll wait for something to happen. Something to happen for someone. This, yeah, and it was a very pretty shot,

but this was a particular moment where I was like, is somebody going to talk? Is something going to happen? Because we're just kind of getting a pan through quarks and, yeah. It's as though that the script was short or something, and we had time, you know. If you're following Midsummer's Night's Dream, midsummer's night's dream,

are you going to then say that when O'Brien has a headache in this scene, the first person he lays eyes on is Quark at that point? So they should, something should have happened there then, right? Yeah, he says that. He says he's got a headache. Except, and now we are jumping ahead, we know that that headache that he has is not the same headache. Yeah. But we don't know that now, though.

No, we don't know that. So when we're watching, I thought, oh, my gosh, he's going to jump. He's going to jump cork. He's going to dive over the bar and kiss cork. Yeah, it was a bit of a misdirect, I thought, in a good way. Yeah. Because they had kept repeating that same bit. Right.

That it was a nice misdirect. You expect something to happen. but then it doesn't happen. But it depends on, again, latent attraction. I don't think there was a latent attraction between O'Brien and Quarka. I don't think so. Okay, fine.

I mean, there are a lot of bromances that happened on our show. Oh, yeah. At the end of this episode, we have Bashir and O'Brien going off to play tennis. We have the Quarko-Odo relationship. You know, in a sense, we have the Cisco Dax relationship, which is, if we remember, remember the decks was a man there's that as well so and it calls him the old man all the time all the

time yeah armond who invented or who came up with the whole fringy women are at home without holding it was me it was your it was your thing really absolutely no of course no i was like wow i've got i've got a pen for you that i could sell it's blessed by vedic radma or radum or whatever that They was, okay. O'Brien's at the bar. Quark is talking to him. Quark says, yeah, humans let their women have too much freedom. That's why their marriages fall apart.

He goes through all the things that human women are allowed to do that would never happen on Ferengi. This kind of makes Miles realized, like, wait a minute, I got to do something. Like, in this moment, he's like, I'm not going to let him go back. And I have very few scenes. Cork has very few scenes with O'Brien. This is why just what I was saying about latent relationships. And I really enjoyed this. I really thought, oh, I wish I'd had more scenes with O'Brien.

Because I really good. And I don't remember at all. But I have to hope that Avery sort of directed us in this scene a little. Again, here's a situation where there's a little eye contact. I'm rarely looking at O'Brien. Yeah, you're counting the latinum. You're cleaning up. Yeah, you're doing things at the bar.

Love of business. All right. Next scene is we're in the corridor. Kira's alone looking at the scroll fire, which I thought was very odd. Again, I'm not sure what this festival is. Do you remember this tableau? She's standing in front of a bowl of fire by herself. No one's around her.

Right. It just seemed odd to me. I couldn't figure out how she's burning her love letters from Burial is what it was. So I guess so. That's what it was. Well, he walks by. She grabs him, tries to kiss him. Yeah.

She's really going heavy with the PDA in public in this hallway. Oh, he wants nothing of that. Is something wrong, she says? And he goes, no, not at all. Do you know where she is, though? So he's very obsessed with Dax right now. And then he leaves by saying, I just want to thank you, Kira, for being such a good friend. She's like, friend.

Well, he's probably seen the defiant the episode before. this one and realized with Reiker ban writing on the wall. Yes, yes, yes. He's in a screening and watching daily. Exactly. Hey, my character's done.

I have nothing left. This romance is going nowhere. Yeah. No. Well, now we go into the wardroom. Dax is setting the table. Cisco shows up for this party they're planning. Yeah.

She tells Cisco she's trying to avoid braille because he won't keep his hands off of her. Cisco says he'll tell Kira You know, Dax doesn't want to tell Kira Break the news about beryl But Cisco says he'll do it And Dax sits down next to him Thanks him

Says it's for the best Because it's always been you, Cisco She starts to cuddle him And rub his chest So many awkward pairings Yeah So Cisco does a really good job Holding his own though

He's trying to get away from her He realizes something's happening, so it's... Oh, yeah. Garrett, if we're ever, like, at a convention or something and you suddenly lean over and start cuddling me and rubbing my chest... I definitely will know something. Look for Major Bear. Look for Majel.

Is she around anywhere? My goodness. Let me just interject real quickly. Costume designer Robert Blackman, Bob Blackman, and composer Dennis McCarthy, also loved this episode because of the freedom they got to experiment and try things, they would never have been allowed to try normally. According to Blackman, it was a nice opportunity we hardly ever get.

Everybody gets nice dress-up stuff. Similarly, McCarthy enthuses it gave me the chance to compose a little bit of humorous music. On Star Trek shows, we're normally leery of doing comic music. So some of these, yeah, below the line, people had a great time on this episode doing things they couldn't do before. Well, we come back from a commercial. In the old days, there would have been a commercial. Dax is still rubbing Sisko's chest sitting in his lap. She's cuddling him, says he smells wonderful.

Then she giggles, and he starts laughing. And he's like, oh, you had me. I thought this, you know, it's all a joke. Yeah. And she's like, no, nope, it's not a joke. So Cisco calls Bashir, doctor. Meet me in the infirmary. Yeah.

So I have a question for you, Robbie. Yes, yes, sir. Mr. McNeil. Yes. How easy or difficult is it when you're directing an episode that you're in? You obviously have a stand-in when you're setting up the shots from the camera. Yeah. How do you do that?

How do you sit in Video Village and appear on set at the same time? How do you do it? You can't. You watch it, you watch the scene, the technical side of the scene get set up with second team with a stand-ins. But once you're filming, you either need to have a writer, producer there who knows the script as well as you and can give you some thoughts and some notes. Or what I did on Star Trek was I had a Marvin Rush, the DP. I turned to Marvin and just said,

hey, Marvin, I need you when I'm acting to keep an eye out. Here's what I want to accomplish. And so I'd let Marvin know. Like, I want to make sure that my character switches gears at this moment. I want to make sure that that lands. It's important to see this turn happen. And so I'd ask Marvin to keep an eye out for that. And if he said, yeah, I think you got it, and we'd move on. Is he the only one? Is he the only crew member that you could have asked to do that? You couldn't ask Cosmo?

Cosmo? I mean, I would assume that Judy Brown might have been involved in this discussion as well on Deep Space Nine. Judy, script supervisors are really like more continuity technical stuff. What about Jerry Fleck? What about the first AD? The first AD? The first AD, maybe?

you watch your performance. Yes. Yes. Okay. You could ask the first AD because they prepped with you, so they know this good pretty well. Yeah. The best thing to do is to have a writer producer there, which we did not have. Right. So do you think, do you think that Mr. Brooks asked Jonathan West to watch him? Probably, because I don't remember our writer producers spending much time on our set. Right. Yeah, he probably collaborated with Jonathan West the most. Yes, okay. But it's up to Avery to say whether he wants feedback on performance or whether he just wants technical feedback. He may say, I don't know. And at this time in the mid-90s,

there wasn't the ability to play back immediately and decide whether or not we should do another take or not. Correct. Yeah, it was film. It wasn't. You'd have to hire another department called video playback. And a lot of feature films have that. And when I did the series

Las Vegas with James Kahn, because James Kahn had come from features, he demanded that they have playback for him. So when Jimmy would do a scene, he would go over as you do on a feature, if you're a star of the movie. He'd go over and ask playback to play it back for him. Even though they shot him film,

they also recorded. But that was James Kahn. That was because of him. Right. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And it's an expensive department.

You know, you're hiring a couple of people there. Yeah. Because I thought sometimes while watching Avery would perform in this episode, I get the feeling there's just a little eye outside of his head. I agree. Watching what's happening as he's acting. As a director.

Yes, the director. Yeah. I saw that too. Yeah. I saw it in the way he stood, in the way he was sort of watching the actor he was in a scene with. It was like he was watching their performance to see how, as opposed to playing his intention.

Right, exactly. His character's experience. Well, Cisco calls Bashir. They go to the infirmary. Bashir says everything. He's run some tests. He says, you know, she looks fine. She looks perfectly normal.

Dax in the background kind of laughs. See, I told you so. Bashir and Cisco think it might just be a practical joke. But it's not clear from Dax if it was a joke or not. You can't quite tell in this scene. Yeah. And then she grabs Cisco's hand and sort of drags him out. There's still arm in arm on the promenade.

Cisco still thinks it's a joke. She's really playing this joke, taking it pretty far. And then she says, well, if I didn't love you so much, you know, I'd be angry at you. And she kisses him and leaves, and he's confused again. We go to the repliment next. Kira is destroying some kind of decoration on the table. She's pulling apart the streamers or something. Jake joins her.

she says leave me alone which I loved he's unfazed he smiles not a big scene but you know just resetting their attitudes that Jake is relentless in his love for Kira and that she's miserable from burial calling her a friend such a good friend

this is the scene I wanted to look up next is O'Brien's quarters when he comes in he sees Molly playing with her little stuffed A little pig, he makes a wink. Yeah, he makes an wink sound. I love that little stuff. It says it's a targ.

A targ. Yeah. Oh, there you know. The Klingon dog, basically. Well, he sees Molly. Molly says, Mommy's really sad. And he says, well, why don't you go play in your room? I'm going to go make her feel better.

And he goes to see her, but the door is shut. This is what I wanted to look up. And I'm going to find it. I'm going to find it. Yeah, please do. Because I saw that and thought, really no coverage of Rosalind. at all. And I thought, well, maybe she just wasn't there. Maybe he was, you know, Judy was feeding him the lines for Kiko. Unless it was stylistic. He did it on purpose. If she was there.

And maybe in the editorial process, maybe in order for what comes later, maybe it's just as well not to see her hear that apology and what she thinks of it. So that it's a surprise later. Okay. What'd you find? Well, in the original script, after the Molly conversation, Molly leaves with her targ, it says, New Angle, O'Brien walks over to the closed door of his and Keiko's room. He starts talking through the door. O'Brien, Keiko, it's me.

Can I come in? Keiko off stage. Off stage. And her lines are all scripted offstage through the door. So it was never meant for her to be seen. No. But I wonder, it depends on the day, it's very possible she had more to do that day than just this scene. Yeah, that's very possible.

But if she didn't, if it was just this scene to do, then they probably would have given her the day off. The script coordinator, Judy Brown, would have said the lines. And then in ADR, they would have replaced the lines with Rosam. I have a few odd rules as a director. One of them is if a character is holding something and looking at it or talking about it, I always shoot an insert of the thing. Okay. Not everybody does.

The other rule is if there's a phone call and the other character has more than two lines, shoot it and shoot the other side of it. Two lines you can get away with. Hey, is he, he there yet? You hear him say, yeah, he's here. Okay, well tell him I'm coming over. Okay, bye. That's enough.

I could deal with that. But three or more? Or more, you would... Yeah, more than two, shoot the other side of it. Anyway, those are odd, weird rules. But this scene, she's got so much. It's far more than two phone call lines. Correct.

You've got a lot of dialogue and a lot of... Whether we see her reaction at the end and know what she's thinking, it would be interesting to me to see the wheels turning and to see her absorbing it. and going through some... Yes, and she's quite capable of doing that without giving anything away.

Yeah. Well, he says the whole thing he apologizes through a closed door. And makes an astonishing request or a statement, I'm willing to give up my job and be with you in Bejure. Oh, yeah.

I certainly have forgotten that before I saw it the first time this week. And I thought, wow, that's quite a commitment. That's quite a commitment. Yeah, he said he left a resignation letter. He's done it. He's left the letter at Sisco's desk.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a big move. Massive. But even though it was a big move, it doesn't get her to open the door and come outside. She says, I still need time. I need time to think about this. Yeah. So she says, go to Sisco's time.

And that's realistic. Yeah. That I went, yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. It's not some quick fix to somebody makes a bold heroic move and suddenly everything's fine. She comes out. Oh, I forgive you. I forgive you.

Oh, my God. That would have been. horrible. It's best to say, I need to think about it. Yeah, it's realistic. You're right. All right. We go to the out to a corridor next. We've got Loaxana and Odo with Odo on one side and Bashir on the other side. And the shot is behind them. It is the slowest walking I've ever seen in my life. It is so unrealistic. And again, I'm thinking, where's the pace? Come on, Avery. Where's the pace? In mid-term or extreme, there's a great deal of pace. Yes.

But where's the, and why were they interlinked in arms? What was that about? Let me see if that scripted, since I have the script pulled up here. The same corridor that Beryl and Kira were previously, Kira's walking down the corner when she runs into Odo, Laxana, and Bashir going the other way. It doesn't say interlinked, linked in arms. In fact, the way it's described,

same corridor where Beryl and Kira were previously. Kira is walking down the corridor. I would have liked preferred the way it's scripted that we were with Kira and she's in the, you know, maybe even pauses in the place where she last saw Burial and then rounds a corner and runs into it. There they are, yeah. That would have been more interesting than being on the back

of the slowest walkers I've ever seen. Wasn't it? Am I the only worst? No, it was very slow? bizarre. But it's true what Armid said. Why are they holding each other's arms, right? It's clearly the Xanthi fever. That's what's happening, right?

Okay. So now what's happened is now instead of twosoms and we now have threesomes? Is that? Oh, it's a thruple. There's our thruple. It's a truffle. There's our thruple. They see Kara, Kira says, I'm not going to the party. Burial's in love with Dax. I don't want to be there.

But Scher says Dax has convinced Cisco that she was in love with him. And he thought it was a joke, but maybe he needs to go back, look at all these tests again. You know, this is too much of a coincidence. Yeah. Odo leaves with Laxana, who has another headache, and Bashir's going to head back to the infirmary, but just as Loxana leaves, you know, passes him with a headache.

Now he's got a headache. Kira has a headache. She goes with Bashir. We know where this is going. Oh, yeah. They both just have a headache. Yeah, and he does say maybe he should examine Bariol and Jake, too. So all of these, he's starting to put this together, but it's a little late because he's got a headache now.

I've got a headache. I do feel this kiss is what began there off-camera romance. You know, I wanted to think that's why I did some research. Yes. It's not likely that their relationship started around this episode. It's possible because nobody shared anything with me. But their relationship became obvious. to me a couple years later.

So it doesn't seem like this is the beginning. Kira and Bashir walk into the infirmary. Big kiss. Oh my gosh. The hands are flying. The kissing's happening. We cut back to the wardroom. Basically, this is a farce.

This whole scene is a farce with all the couples having their comedy moments. I wrote very Midsummer Night's Dream in here. this scene feels the most midsummer to me where you've got otto irritated by laxana stalking him you've got dax irritated by beryl getting hansy you've got jake telling cisco he promised nerees would be here this is where cisco goes stop calling her nerees

made me laugh you got dax pinching cisco's butt cisco calls bishir he's not answering it's just a farce everything it's all spinning out of control He sends Odo to get Bashir, who walks on a follow us, of course. In the infirmary, they're still kissing. This is very dynamic kissing, unlike the bile kissing. Yeah, there's, I'm sorry, to me, there's spark happening right here.

Yeah, yeah, there's sparks happening. I just don't know if it was real. Yeah, it looks real. Okay, so Odo heads down to the infirmary. The hot date is continuing. dynamic kissing all around. Odo and Loxana walk in and Odo insists that Bashir go see

Cisco. Bashir very reluctantly ends his athletic kissing. Athletic kissing is that what you just said. I don't know how to describe it. It seemed like a workout what they were doing. It was more than kissing. It was aerobics.

You know what? I'm going to go with whatever you say because you are the Cupid detective. So if you say athletic kissing, I'm going to go with that. It's true. Does Renee play Odo dismayed over seeing his true love kissing Bashir? Does he play that in the scene at all? A little bit.

There is a little bit of uncomfortability that he didn't. A little bit, but. Very little. Okay. Very little. Okay. I think he's just, he's playing more like stunned, as I recall. Okay.

More like stunned and uncomfortable as anyone would be with that athletic kissing. Yes. Athletic kissing is very, very uncomfortable. You know, it's too athletic. I'm sorry. It's just too much. It's not realistic. Director Avery Brooks gave his evaluation of this episode.

I guess it was over the top. But what is over the top after all? If you're having a pint of Guinness and you see the foam pouring over the top, you think that's great. But in a television episode, there's this concern about action being too large. It all comes down to rhythm and whether a scene has it or not. there you go thank you mr brooks yeah thank you mr brooks yeah interesting we are in the ward room next dax is uh hiding behind cisco although i didn't know that at the beginning you see beryl's just

talking to cisco yeah when i thought was funny a little bit even though it's stagey and not realistic you think he's barrails talk begging cisco to let him see dax and then suddenly um he mentions uh he mentions a bracelet or something and you see her hand pop up Hold on. And then she, I thought that was funny. It was clever. It was clever. Yeah, very clever.

It was a bit stagey, but it was clever. Yeah. She pops up once to see this thing, snatches the bracelet. Can you imagine the contortions that Dax had to do to not be seen behind? Oh, gosh, I know. I like Bryle's first comment. His first dialogue is, please step aside, Commander.

I need to talk to Jedsy. Yeah. Oh, on a B-line for her. Yes, well, Bashir and Kira walk in, still athletically kissing, hands flying all over each other's bodies. They cannot stop. Odo is stunned. This is where I think I saw Odo being a little jealous or hurt or something. I think you're right.

It was this scene more than the other. Right here. I did sort of like, I don't know who came up with this bit, when Majel takes Renee's hands and puts one here and puts one around. She's like, look at all this love. I want that. And she literally puppets his hands. Oh, yeah. That's very funny.

Miles is sitting alone off in a corner. He doesn't know what Keiko's going to do. Jake joins him. Jake's heartbroken seeing Bashir and Kira. Miles is just about to give up on love when Keiko enters. She's in the red dress. The lady in red. Yeah, yeah.

She looked great. Very sweet moment. Very nice. moment. They kind of embrace. I did like the 50-50. When they came together, Avery shot this very symmetrical, beautifully framed 50-50 of them. And he shot coverage, of course. But I like the way this moment was directed and acted. It was nice. And she thanks him for being willing to resign, but she says, take it back. You should take that letter back. And they kiss. And Keiko says, I love you so much. Oh, God bless Rosalind Chow.

She is phenomenal. And off of that beautiful tender moment, the door opens and quark has pudding for everyone. Bajoran banana pudding. It's not Bajoran. No, it's idanian. Idanian. Idanian spice pudding. It's not Idanian.

It's something like that. I thought this pudding, I thought there was going to be some reveal that, oh, that's the pudding that everyone ate earlier. and that's why we're all because I didn't know anything about Xanthi. Oh, so you thought it was the pudding, the I Danian pudding. I thought it was,

yeah, I have no idea. Like food poisoning. I mean, I know the headache thing seemed to be started with Majel, but, yeah.

But I don't know. Yeah, my, come on, it's always Quark's fault. Come on. Exactly. That's why I went to,

Quark did it. Yeah. Yes, Dax does offer for Cisco, the bracelet that she stole from Brile. This is when Brile says he'll fight Cisco for Dax, punches Cisco. This is another very unrealistic moment.

Oh, my God. This is why, this goes back to my question about, you know, to somebody watching. Yes. Because Avery's response to the punch was very Avery, but so wrong. So, yes. it was it was as if like someone had bumped into him

but yeah but you saw beryl throw a real solid punch and Cisco just sort of Superman just in flinch it just glances off of his chin basically and then beryl throws a barrage of punches and cisco's just going like blocking every one of them almost smiling as he does it it was a little ridiculous it was a little ridiculous And let's also remember,

Barial is a man of peace. So it's antithetical completely to his character. To his character, yes, yes. Yeah, true. And Quirk, your motivation in this scene is to give pudding to everybody. It's over and over again. Yes.

Well, if you weren't so generous with your pudding and going over to Laxana, then you wouldn't have gotten a headache. You know, Cork, you give good pudding. You really do. I do give good pudding. You give such good pudding that it just, you fall mad at.

I'm happily in love with Keiko. Keiko. Layton, latent desires? I don't know. He hardly ever sees Keiko. Not to mention she's been off the station for four months. Arvin, has Keiko spoken a single word to Cork in any episode? No, I don't think so.

No. Not even a, hey, cork. Now the midsummer X stream, this is the first person quark sees. Yeah. Then, okay. That would make sense. But, well, he, Quirk asks Kekko to marry him. Cisco and Bashir see this.

You can see Cisco and Bashir simultaneously kind of having an aha moment over there. But Miles, then we cut back, Miles grabs cork by his ears. That's very painful. That's like grabbing somebody by the package. By the Gagones. Yes. Quark screams out in pain. Cisco says, take it easy, Miles.

He doesn't know what he's doing. And then Cisco and Bashir look over to Luoxano, and she's like, what are you looking at me for? Zanthi fever. Yeah. But she doesn't believe it. She doesn't think she has it. Because only mature betazoids get this disease.

Yeah, she's far too young. She doesn't consider herself mature that I suppose. That's what it is. Okay. Yeah, she just can't be old enough to have. Is it like menopause? Is that the implication that the Xanthi fever? Hey, yeah.

Like that? Yeah, maybe. Well, her amorous feelings for Odo are the cause of all these projections. The Xanthi fever kind of projects her feelings for Odo onto people who are in close proximity. Yeah. But Bashir, this is where he says there would have to be a pre-existing latent attraction. And then he says, best not to think about it, Captain. Oh my goodness

Yeah I wish they'd cut that part out the latent part I wish it had just been a simple The first person you see And why not that is midsummer at 9th Street Right first person you see Yeah I don't think Shakespeare's going to sue them for plagiarism I think I don't think he's going to sue him

He's not very litigious He was actually Was he? Really? He was very litigious Oh He did not know that Interesting He was involved in many suits

Wow Oh, I didn't know that either. Talk to Professor Shemiman. Bashir wants to go meet Kira. Cisco says, maybe you should hold off. Just wait a few days to this nancy fever passes, which is funny. Or until 1997. Yes, or until you get married in a few years.

Commander's log happens here. Cisco says, I'm happy to report that Dr. Bashir's diagnosis is. proven correct. My son and all the others affected by Mrs. Troy's condition have made full recoveries. And then we have this sweet goodbye with Loxana and Odo. It is sweet. I mean, she acknowledges Odo's love of Cura or attraction to Cura and says, like, you know what? If it doesn't work out, I'm always here. Good luck with your relationship. It's nice. This is a very sweet moment. And is this the first time Odo's been kissed? Like, it's a real...

He certainly played it that way. Yeah. Yeah. He's very affected by that. You can see. He's very moved by her honesty. He was probably looking for something to play in this episode besides this comfort. That last...

You know, there's something. There's something. Another goodbye with Keiko and Miles and Molly. Keiko kisses Miles. And then when the kiss is over, I'm thinking, she got lipstick all over his lips and it's still there oh really i didn't see it oh it's not it's not a lot of red but but his lips are redder than i remember and i'm going i think she really did kiss him and he's got the lipstick still on his lips oh that's funny what is your theme lessen moral of the

episode don't let your desires get you in trouble um whether it's It's desire for a person, desire for, you know, sometimes our desires are wanting or craving something. Similar to letting it, don't let your emotions rule you as well, right, in a way? Because it's desires. Yeah, I guess in this episode, because it's all about amorous love and the athletic kissing and things like that, there's a sense of like wanting, craving, love, affection, attention. relationship so yeah i like that arm arm what's your lesson because i was very much taken with the o'brien part of this story my theme is the quality of true love is so much more noble than the itch of desire oh look at that i like that i love that i love that um mine is

beware of engaging in athletic kissing because it will lead to nothing good. No, it never does. No. Or it may lead to a... Soor muscle, it may lead to... Zor muscles, yes. It may lead to...

It may lead to Django. Yeah, it may lead to Django. All right. Let's go with this Patreon poll, the lesson moral of this episode, submitted by Tim Newmark, and that theme slash moral slash lesson is writing a script where two actors

makeout could lead to a child in future seasons. Hey, the Django one. There you go. Okay. I love it. Well, yeah, thanks everyone for tuning in to our recap and discussion of fascination. This is the end of our podcast. For all of our Patreon patrons, we still got a little bit more.

Yes, the episodes get better, ladies and gentlemen. For all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. But for everyone else, first of all, we want to thank Armand for joining us and co-hosting with us yet again. And everyone, please join us next time. And we will be recapping and discussing the episode Past Tense Part 1 with Terry Barrow and also a very special guest, writer Robert Hewitt Wolf himself. Very excited about that.

Thanks, everybody. Telder Joy. Tell door joy. Tell door joy. I don't know.