The Delta Flyers - Flashback

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at ...the very beginning. This week’s episode is Flashback. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Flashback:To help Tuvok battle a debilitating childhood memory, Capt. Janeway enters a mind-meld with him, which transports them to the U.S.S. Excelsior with Capt. Sulu in command.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Ann Marie Segal, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Holly Smith, Jesse Noriega, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, PJ Tomas, and Nicholaus RussellAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Thomas Melfi, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Luz R, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, York Lee, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Robert Hess, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, William McEvoy, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, Heather Chappelle, Heather Choe, Kelly Havlik, Richard Sandnesaunet, Justin Weir, and Joseph Michael Kuhlmann Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Robbie, Duncan McNeil. Hi, Robbie. Well, hello, sir. How are you? I need to draw notice to what's going on, what I'm wearing here. If you recall, you got a gift of a Heinz Ward jersey. I did. From a certain Bill U, one of our, one of our followers on Delta Flyers,
Starting point is 00:00:44 well, he also sent me this. What do you have there? Let me see. Well, I'm going to read the, can I read the, I'm going to read the little message here. It says, because I said, I'm jealous. I remember on the podcast. I said, I'm jealous and Robbie got that. And then he wrote, jealous, Garrett.
Starting point is 00:00:58 That will not do. never wanted that for the two of you. It's all rhyming, by the way. What you don't know is that I always had plans to honor you both as huge football fans. But Robbie came first and I had quite some trouble figuring out which team you'd like during this COVID bubble. Megan at least tried to help. Oh, yes, she did. With Twitter DMs, we sneakily hid. But watching your podcast, I now have a sense of what I could send you to make things less tense. Chosen from my collection with thought and with care. Though not your favorite, I hope with pride you will wear. So that's on the outside and on the inside. Oh, ensign my ensign, a raider owed to Garrett Wong and
Starting point is 00:01:38 Harry Kim. A raider never thinks about ranks, nor promotions, praise, or did someone say thanks? He does his job, although sometimes it's rough, but even without coffee, a raider is tough. Las Vegas or California with Oakland and L.A., just like you growing up, then moving away. You made your name proud no matter the town just like the silver and black legend hall of famer tim brown so go wear your black as you are likely to do mcgan alice can wear white to look as beautiful as you don't take my word for it people made it clear oh and my asian brother happy lunar new year much love and respect df commander bill you station markham ontario canada february 2021 wow very nice so this is a tim brown Jersey, Tim Brown for the people who don't know football, was born raised in Dallas, Texas. He then
Starting point is 00:02:29 went to Notre Dame for his college, and he won the Heisman trophy, which is rare for a wide receiver. Yeah, I didn't know that. Not a lot of wide receivers win the Heisman, right? So, he won it as a wide receiver at Notre Dame. He was the first round pick. He was a sixth pick in 1988 to the Oakland Raiders, and which, of course, they've moved around so much now. they're the Las Vegas Raiders. They were in L.A. at one point. And he played almost his entire career with the Raiders. He did play a very short stint with the Bucks.
Starting point is 00:03:01 But I'm flattered because, you know, my hometown is Las Vegas now. So this is probably the reason why he chose this. Oh, yeah. And what I really like about this guy, and by the way, Tim Brown did make the National Football League Hall of Fame in 2015. That was his induction year. And what I love about Tim Brown is Tim Brown's one of those players. that, and you'll agree with me, some of the most showboaty players in the NFL are wide receivers,
Starting point is 00:03:29 the ones that are really, you know, they've got the crazy hair. They're the most Tom Paris like. They're the more, yes, the most Tom Paris. But this guy is truly humble, which I really love. I don't, you know, he doesn't wear all the flashy earrings. And that really, really kind of pisses me off when I see players wearing earrings while they're playing the game. It's like, take your damn jewelry off, you know, you don't need to be show,
Starting point is 00:03:53 boating like that. So he's a humble, wide receiver, and that's one of the, the most admirable qualities of this guy. So thank you, Bill, you for your gift. Now I can feel like I'm matching Robbie. And he's a very good poet. I think, you know, the Delta Flyers is a podcast. We have inspired a lot of poetry in the world these days. Our haikus, our limericks, all of that. It's, yeah. I'm so excited. Now Bill is writing a beautiful poem about football jerseys and and metaphors of the Raiders and your life. And it's wonderful. I love,
Starting point is 00:04:29 see all of this football and sci-fi and poetry. It can all belong together. It can all coexist. And I do think that we have inspired this poetry, not a revolution, but a revival almost, a revival of poetry, which is wonderful.
Starting point is 00:04:46 Yes. Do you know Ethan Phillips sent me a poem just the other day? Really? Because he, yeah, known that we were doing poetry on our show and you want to read it to us it's a long one I don't oh it's a long it was a very long poem but it was beautiful yeah and um and I just thought oh wow that's really interesting that like people are noticing our poetry on the podcast yeah they're
Starting point is 00:05:09 starting to notice our you know we're paying attention I've been writing some poems in my free time and my journaling and things like that so and I've been commenting yes to your whenever you post on Instagram. There's been a couple times I comment via haiku is what I'll do. That's the way that we should communicate with each other from now on. I think everyone should speak in poems. We should now on.
Starting point is 00:05:33 Okay, so this week's episode, Robbie, is flashback. So I think we should go and watch this episode and let's give everybody our thoughts after we watch it. And everyone who happens to be a Patreon patron, please
Starting point is 00:05:48 stay tuned for your bonus material. Hey, guys, we are back from viewing flashback. Yes, we are. I had a lot of flashbacks during that reviewing. Go ahead. I was going to say exactly what you were going to say, because we're having a mind meld you and I right now. Brian and Braga was the writer of this episode.
Starting point is 00:06:14 See, we were mind-melting. You were mind-melting. You were going to say it. I was going to say it. We're like, we're mind-melting. Brandon Bragan wrote Brandon Braga my dear friend wrote it
Starting point is 00:06:25 David Livingston was the director I actually knew that before his credit even came up I was like oh this is a David Livingston episode I can tell I can tell because of the lenses he was the one director who would order special lenses
Starting point is 00:06:41 that we didn't normally carry on the show usually the wide angle lens it was a 10 millimeter or 12 millimeter lens or something almost a 1,000 fish eye lens he would always order that lens up i remember marvin talking about a lot because he would shoot david livingson was a big the director a big fan of um alfred hitchcock and so this episode i could see so many moments that were inspired by slash borrowed from slash copied from
Starting point is 00:07:13 Alfred Hitchcock moments in Psycho, in Vertigo, in North by Northwest. Like, great moments that David Livingston would use, you know, we talked to Marvin Rush, who directed The Thaw,
Starting point is 00:07:28 and Marvin talked about his inspiration from Frederico Fellini, the visuals and the ideas. But David Livingston always used Alfred Hitchcock as a role model, and I could see it from the get-go in this episode. You're saying from the teaser scene in the mess hall, you already saw that he was using. Literally, literally there was some strange angles like, you know, the juice in front of Tuvok and the wide angle lens or that high angle over Neelix cooking the eggs behind him.
Starting point is 00:08:02 You know, it's just unusual angles that I'm always a fan of unusual angles, but sometimes I feel like when David Livingston directed it, you were. aware you were you were you know outside of the story a little bit and aware of oh that's a weird angle that's an unusual angle we don't normally do that so i was i was aware very quickly anyway let's do our synopsis synopsis poetic synopsis yeah so you can start off with i will start off with my haiku you know a hykoo is a very it's just an impressionistic rendering this is a hard one to capture in a in a haiku and and probably a limerick always hard but here's my haiku so the haiku goes five syllables seven syllables five syllables here we go two vox scary thoughts bad gaseous anomaly janeway gets no tea
Starting point is 00:09:12 Oh, God. Nice. I had to get Gashes Anomily in there because that's good. We're going to have a whole conversation about gaseous anomalies during this. I love it. I love it. And I found myself, as I was watching this episode, I was thinking of the haiku, which is incorrect. I have to do the limerick now.
Starting point is 00:09:32 So I was still in haiku mindset, unfortunately. All right. Here we go. So here's my limerick. Here we go. my limerick for flashback a nebula is encountered by the ship
Starting point is 00:09:47 Tuvok gets dizzy and starts to flip he ends up in sick bay must mine meld with Jane Way the doctor saves his mind from a one-way trip nice you like it you got it you didn't have gase his anomaly in there
Starting point is 00:10:05 no you did get a very good very meaningful very appropriate and encapsulating limerick. That was very good. Yeah. I wanted to utilize Sulu somehow in there, but I couldn't. I just couldn't squeeze it in there. But you had the tea. You had the tea part. Yeah, Janeway gets no tea. Yeah. Which made me laugh, by the way, when she stopped, she was like, you never brought me tea. Yeah, that's because you only drink coffee, lady. But yeah, that was good. That was a laughable line for all of us, myself included. Okay. So we start out. The teaser scene is in the mess hall with Tuvok and Neelix.
Starting point is 00:10:46 Poor Neelix, by the way. Still, everybody, all, every writer makes fun of his cooking. And I don't know why. I don't know why he can't be a great cook. Why would, you know. But anyway, he's not. Well, he burns the food in this one. He's trying to. Right. It's not his fault, though. No, no. There's an energy surge. And the, there is. Like that, really. There is. There is. But Tuvok is impressive. with the juice. After complaining for a long time, he drinks it and he says, impressive.
Starting point is 00:11:16 So that's a compliment. Yes. Yes, that's a win for Neelix there. Right? Yes. That's a good thing. So then, you know, we get called to the bridge and guess what? We see Tom Paris only once in this episode. The whole episode, you see me once in the foreground. I have zero lines. No, you have a line. You have a line. It's off camera, though. What?
Starting point is 00:11:46 Did you realize that? Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the shot is basically, we look at the nebula, and we see the nebula on the view screen. And then the shot, it starts on you, but it's moving immediately. So it pans past you, and as it pans past you, you hear, your only off-camera line. You say, I'm picking up a lot of plasmatic turbulence in there.
Starting point is 00:12:10 It might be a bumpy ride, but it's so subtle and so lowered in volume that you can miss it. And evidently, you did miss it. I missed your own line. I miss my own line. Your one sentence line and your one shot that you have. And, of course, the camera keeps panning until it reaches Tuvok's face at the tactical station. And that's it. And he's, he's dizzy.
Starting point is 00:12:33 That's always, that's always see of paris. The whole episode. Oh, my God. Tuvok gets dizzy. He's experiencing this memory of flashback as a child where he's holding onto this little girl and they're at the top of this precipice, this cliff. And she's like, help me.
Starting point is 00:12:54 And he can't help her. He loses his grip on her. And she falls to probably her death. We don't see it all the way. Yeah. It's very compelling, you know, nightmare that he has there because you're like, wow, we're going to see this story about a young Tuvok, a Vulcan, I assumed, because he was a child. And who is this human? That seemed, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:18 so many questions from the, from the memory. But of course, we learn later on in our story what that memory really. Yeah. Can I just interrupt very quickly? The image of that child of the young Tuvac, he is uncredited, this actor. His name is Demetris Lawson, but I will. say this, great casting. That looked just like what I would think Tim Russ looked like as a child. I mean, very, very good. Yeah, agreed.
Starting point is 00:13:45 And I'm going to throw in very quickly, this is a random observation. The character of Walt Lloyd, the young African American child on the TV series Lost, is also a dead ringer for Tim Russ as a child. So for
Starting point is 00:14:01 those of you lost fans, take a look at young Walt Lloyd played by Malcolm David Kelly Well I also have to bring this up So we're on the bridge Before Tuvac has his nightmare And collapses or whatever gets dizzy
Starting point is 00:14:16 And disoriented Before that We're talking about this anomaly This gaseous anomaly As it's put Many times in this episode People refer to Gracely Whitney by the way
Starting point is 00:14:31 Gracely Whitney Who I knew somebody else besides George was in this. Gracely Whitney. Anyway, she talks about the gaseous anomaly all the time. And I just want all the fans to know
Starting point is 00:14:44 that Tim Russ, Ethan Phillips, and myself over the lifetime of our series had sort of a competition, if you will, a game that we played that included methane,
Starting point is 00:15:04 propulsion anyway we would we would use the term gaseous anomaly I remember everybody used Kate on the bridge would talk about oh my God who left the gaseous anomaly
Starting point is 00:15:17 so it became a whole thing yeah and this must have been the episode where we got that gaseous anomaly because it's it's I feel like I can see Kate almost laughing a number of times when when that phrase is is used so
Starting point is 00:15:33 I was very excited. And then they say, by the way, they say, it's a gaseous anomaly with high levels of ceruleum. And they say, yes, it's a highly combustible energy source like a fart. And then where are we going to store it? And Ethan goes, you can store the gaseous anomaly in my kitchen. Or no, Janeway says, we're going to store it. The only place we can store it is down there in the closet in your kitchen.
Starting point is 00:16:06 So I just find it ironic that Ethan Phillips will be storing the gaseous anomaly himself because he was one of the players in our game. Yes, that was what I affectionately refer to as fart wars, but really it was gaseous anomaly wars is what it was. I do find it curious that as actors on Star Trek, we were so, affected by this techno babble to the point that we stopped calling farts farts. We called them gaseous anomalies. And I think that's so deadgum funny that we technobabalized the word fart. I mean, typically people are like, who cut the cheese? We didn't use any of those typical
Starting point is 00:16:47 modern day references to farts. We just said who, you know, someone just let go of a gaseous anomaly. And that's how we referred to it for the extent of the series. Yeah, we did. Yes, we did. I think that's an important milestone for us to recognize in this episode that this episode began a very popular tradition of gaseous anomalies on our series. And it's like everyone has gaseous anomalies, but the three people that had the most were you, Tuvok, and Neelig's. And I think the culmination...
Starting point is 00:17:22 You were the most vocal about it, yes. You were the most gaseous about it? I was going to say the most vulcan, but no, The most vocal. Yes, your rectums were the most vocal, that's for sure. But I'm going to say, is that where the term, stop talking out of your ass comes from? I don't know. Maybe.
Starting point is 00:17:41 I just want to say the culmination of this gaseous anomaly wars, or at least this period of gaseous anomalies, was the time that Tim Russ asked for the sound team to come over to his station. he asked our head of sound if it was okay if they brought the boom over and recorded something and they were like sure what do you need to record well i need to record my gaseous anomaly and he literally Tim Russ let out a gaseous anomaly that lasted probably for a good two and a half minutes no this was the longest oh my god oh yes it was it was the funniest thing you I don't know where You were. I remember I was standing there watching and I kept thinking, what are we, why is there no producer walking up and yelling at us going, what are you guys doing? You're wasting all this time. Why are we, why are we recording his fart? But it was so long and so, and it had so many
Starting point is 00:18:45 levels to it. It was just like, it was the most amazing, amazing thing. Well, I think it's important that we've taken this time to really delve into bashesus anomalies because it is the inciting event in this episode. Hey, I wonder how many people are still with us after this. Some people may have just... We may have just crossed a line into gaseous anomaly. We might have lost some people, yeah. We might have.
Starting point is 00:19:13 Okay. Okay. So back to our story. So he goes down the hallway. Tim or Tuvok goes down the hall. He's trying to make his way to sick bay and collapses there in sick bay. The doctor says that he basically had a panic attack. he's got this, you know, repressed memory or something.
Starting point is 00:19:33 Maybe he didn't figure that out yet. He puts on the neurocortical stimulator. Yeah. Which, by the way, looked a lot like the doctor's hollow emitter, mobile hollow emitter that we're going to come to down the road. So that may have been a repurposed prop of some sort, maybe. Maybe, maybe. Did you notice when Tuvok passes out?
Starting point is 00:19:52 This is the first time we really get a good look at the carpet. Oh, no, I didn't. Yeah. I mean, it has a very interesting design. Interesting. It's just like, yeah, it's sort of a gray with teal, you know, undertones underneath like a diamond pattern. But I was just staring at that going, wow, that's our carpet.
Starting point is 00:20:10 We never have a really good close-up of the carpet. This was a really good close-up. And it's interesting because if you compare this to, if you're watching, if you watch Discovery on their bridge, there's no carpet. It's just, it's just like, I don't know, it's just flat floor. Yeah, it's just this epoxy floor base. I don't know, but there's no carpet. It's just, it's like cement.
Starting point is 00:20:34 It's just, it's, it's really, really. Well, I know that. It's got a nice sheen to it. I know that carpet may be because Jean Roddenberry, who then passed this on to Rick Berman, who became obsessed with it, was that in a starship, you would not hear footsteps. you wouldn't hear you know you wouldn't hear the noises of a wooden floor or creeks or kind of that echoy sound that on a starship you wouldn't hear the footsteps because it would be so deadened and you know I don't know I know that was an obsession because a lot of times I remember in looping when we go to to re-record some dialogue it was often I would say like why are we doing this and they'd say oh because you can hear the footsteps on
Starting point is 00:21:26 underneath and Rick doesn't want any footsteps. That's really bizarre. On the starship. Yeah. So the carpet may have been a hand-me-down for let's make everything as quiet as possible. Huh. Rather than a like a design choice, like rather than a, you know, an aesthetic choice. It was for the sound quality.
Starting point is 00:21:50 Well, I mean, if you compare it to, let's face it, what, you know, if you look at our rank, our rankings, they're naval rankings, right? I mean, basically, we are basically a ship in space or a submarine. And if you look at naval vessels, there's no carpet. It's all metal, you know, that they're all walking on corrugated metal, whatever. I mean, there's no carpet. So it's kind of, it's kind of funny. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Continue. So we're in sick bay. Okay. So we're in sick bay. He gets a hollow emitter and Tuvok goes back to his quarters where he, he decides to play Vulcan Jenga. He's got the blocks, and he's stacking them.
Starting point is 00:22:33 I think the name of the game is Kathera. Ketheera. Ketheera. And then Kess kind of mispronounces it a little bit by saying Kethara. But it's Ketheera from Tuvok's mouth. And it's a meditation aid. Kess has come to adjust the monitor. And the thing I found interesting in that scene was when Kess is leaving,
Starting point is 00:22:55 Tuvok stops her and says, Kess, and then she turns, and she pauses for a moment, and she says, it's all right, I understand, and then she leaves. And I wonder, was that a telepathy moment? Because they don't, like, Kess and Tuthan worked their telepathy powers. And I found that a really interesting moment. My assumption was that when he says Kess, and she stops, that they speak somehow how telepathically, you know, that he says, you know, I'm sorry or I don't know, whatever he says.
Starting point is 00:23:32 Hmm. He says, it's all right. I understand. So it was a nice little detail, but I liked that moment. That's a good catch. I didn't notice that at all. And you wrote Vulcan Jenga. I wrote Tuvok plays futuristic Jenga in club at Club Tuvok, because once again,
Starting point is 00:23:49 that's right. Two Vox's quarters looks like a nightclub as we've established in a prior. episode to this resolutions so yeah that's a good catch i did not see her you know kind of using telepathy i mean if i don't know maybe she's just in tune maybe she's just in tune with him right yeah just like you knew i was going to say written by directed by you're in tune with me so yeah right it could have been but it was a nice little moment that i thought was um was interesting i also noticed in Tuvok's quarters, it reminded me that, you know, we had a couple different starfields on our set. We had kind of a star field that they could pull like a curtain that was a static
Starting point is 00:24:34 star field that just kind of sat there. But then we had this thing that was on motors that remember the moving star field that they would use sometimes? Yeah, it would just move very slowly, and then it would come, it would kind of loop around a corner and just, it was just in a loop. It was set on a loop, right? and it was a big giant curtain that was hung to loop around so it would it would come in front of the you know by the window and it would move past very slowly but i remember when we started the series they couldn't get that thing going i guess they had had so many problems on tng with um times where they were supposed to be the ship was supposed to be moving but they didn't want to do a green screen outside because it cost so much money so they decided to build this mechanical moving starfield but it didn't work for a long time like it was noisy i don't know if you remember that but i think on the pilot they had trouble getting it and i don't know if it was a no a hand-me-down from tNG or a response to the cost of green screens every time but they were
Starting point is 00:25:37 trying to figure out the moving thing and i think they finally got ours dialed in so it would move very very slowly that would keep the noise down yeah so they'd use it sometimes but uh i never heard it i anything from it every time they used it and they always used it when we were in the mess hall i remember seeing that thing you know outside the mess hall windows right so um but yeah i guess they worked out all the kinks they worked out the kink there were some kinks during the pilot but i don't know i just thought of that as as we looked at the scene in tuvok's quarters because yeah after the quarters we have a scene where it's tuvok and chukotay doing a walk and talk down the corridor did you notice how close they were I mean, it was almost like they were holding hands.
Starting point is 00:26:21 That's how close they were. They were in such unison. You know, actors, as an actor, you don't know when you're doing a scene like this, a walk-and-talk, as we'd call it, walking down in the hall. You don't know how wide the frame is. So they may have gotten the direction to, hey, can you guys stay real close together so that we keep you in the frame? I'm sure they must have gotten that direction.
Starting point is 00:26:44 But it's funny because the size of the frame that they ended up having, could have allowed them to move apart a little bit, but they probably got that direction early on and just stayed really close. Yeah. They literally, to me, they look like, what are those Air Force fighters that put on shows? The Blue Angels, they look like Blue Angels in formation.
Starting point is 00:27:08 It was so tight. The Blue Angels are Navy, by the way. We're going to get letters about that. We're going to get crap on that, right? Blue Angels are Navy. Thunderbirds are the Air Force, correct? Okay, so. Blue Angels are Navy.
Starting point is 00:27:18 Yes. So let's say a Blue Angels Navy formation. Let's get that right. There's a line that Chacote has when he's like, he's like, you know, I'm asking because I'm just worried about you, Chacote says. And then Tuvac says, well, yeah, this is what's going on. And Chacote's advice to me, I laughed out loud because it's just so non-advice. He goes, try not to think about it for a little while. Sometimes when you don't think about something, a solution will come to you. I was just like, oh, yeah, I'm having panic attacks. Just try not to think about it.
Starting point is 00:27:56 That's great advice from the spiritual warrior, Chukotay. Just repress it. Just turn it off. Turn off your feeling. Turn off your brain. Try not to think about it. I think that that would have been funnier if he, if Chikote said, yeah, you know what, try not to think about it sometimes. And just, you know, sometimes a solution will come to you, Akuchi-Moya.
Starting point is 00:28:21 Just if he ended it with some spiritual word. Mumber jumbo, yes. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh, my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane. Trip after trip. You've been doing your impersonation of me. Yes.
Starting point is 00:28:38 You know what doesn't belong in everyone's epic summer plans, though? What? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. So while you're planning your beach trips and your barbecues and your three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. Well, that is why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. The coverage and speed are the same as I'm used to, but the savings, that is the difference. The savings are incredible.
Starting point is 00:28:59 And now I'm saving all kinds of money for when my stepdaughter wants to go back to school shopping. She's currently at the mall right now as we speak. Well, all the Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data, unlimited talking tax, and they deliver the nation's largest 5G network. So this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash TDF. That's mintmobile.com slash TDF. Up front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.
Starting point is 00:29:31 Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. By the way, that was a steady cam. coming down the hall so the operator holding the steady cam because often we would use the dolly for those shots they would just put the camera on the dolly and they'd pull the dolly backwards but i noticed that shot went all the way into engineering and there were there were a couple of steps when you came
Starting point is 00:29:58 into engineering so yeah that had to be steady cam in there yeah which means a specific person who is called a steady cam operator would have been used somebody who has been trained in the art of steady cam which really is not that easy. Correct, Robbie? I mean, this is a heavy, heavy device with the fulcrum and there's all this stuff going on to sort of balance that camera. But you need, I mean, there's a harness that they're wearing and they have to have someone guiding them so they don't trip and fall backwards, whatever. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into Steadicam operation. Yeah. I did notice in the scene in engineering a lot of Hitchcockian sort of angles again, And guess who's in engineering?
Starting point is 00:30:47 Harry's in engineering. Harry and your love. I know. Together again. Paris is nowhere to be found this episode. No, no, no, no Paris at all. It's just Torres and Kim hanging out, doing work like they always do. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:04 Tuvac has another flashback there, debilitating flashback. He falls down onto the ground. So now he's taken back to Sick Bay, where we realized. where we realize that there's a repressed memory. And in Vulcan medicine, it's called a Tolokin schism. Yeah, a Tolokum schism. Talokin schism. Which sounds like...
Starting point is 00:31:25 Or a repressed memory. Yes. But the thing that's interesting for Vulcans with repressed memories, it ends up being a physical battle that what for humans may just be an emotional trauma or something. For Vulcans, this becomes physical. physically, he says he could literally lobotomize himself because his brain will fight, physically fight so hard between the conscious and the unconscious. So that's an interesting trait of a Vulcan mind that it takes this sort of repressed memory
Starting point is 00:31:59 because it has, you know, it has no control over it. Yeah. Can't control it and it becomes a little thing. So it's dangerous to Tuvok because it could cause brain damage to Tuvok. So the cure, what is the cure, to initiate a mind meld with a family member. Tuvok doesn't have any family members on this ship. He considers other Vulcans on this ship. But then he feels, nah, I think I'm going to go with Janeway.
Starting point is 00:32:24 Because the key, the reason why it's a mind meld with a family member is because you need to mind meld with someone that you have the ultimate trust with. And he has that with Janeway or he trusts Janeway more than anyone else. So then he kind of asked Janeway, will you be part of this mind? well you act as my polora which is the vulcan word for guide or counselor during the mind meld in which she will be more of an observer and a guide than anything else right yep so she agrees they do this mind meld and uh we pop out on the excelsior and suulu is revealed stepping out of a gaseous anomaly i got goosebumps the minute he came out i'm like oh my god there he is you missed my joke he stepped out of a gaseous
Starting point is 00:33:10 he stepped out of a gaseous anomaly come on by the way janus ran uh uh she she talks about gase anomalies a lot but yes you're right i did get goosebumps and i laughed a little when he stepped out of a gaseous scenario well now that makes me think of sulu should have stepped out of the gaseous anomaly and should have said like who cut the cheese duvac was it you i'm stepping right through your gase anomaly who did So that would have been funny. That would have been funny. And yeah, and Gracely Whitney, who is Janice Rand. And I was wrong.
Starting point is 00:33:47 I thought it was Nurse Chapel. But to be honest, I had Grace Lee Whitney's face in my head when I said Nurse Chapel, but I just got it wrong. She was yeoman Janice Rand, I think. That's right, right, yeah. And I think that she was actually, she was not in the pile. There's some history about her that she was like on for the first season, some. and then they got rid of her for budget cuts or something.
Starting point is 00:34:13 And then the conventions, she became so popular at conventions that they put her into the movies, that they brought her back into the movies. Well, there's some controversy there. I guess she wrote a book and autobiography, but she made some complaints back then. I guess some producer on the original series had basically, you know, tried to assault her. Yes, yes. It was, it was, uh, yeah. It was one of those
Starting point is 00:34:40 Me Too moments, but way before Me Too was a Me Too moment, right? So she was dealing with that. But the fact that conventions kind of brought her back and then she ended up coming back into the movies and she got promoted, obviously. She went from Yeoman to Ensign and then in this particular episode of Voyager, she's commander.
Starting point is 00:35:01 She's the commander on this episode, which is nice to see a female commander. I love when Tuvok When Tuvok brings Sulu tea and the wine Janeway is like
Starting point is 00:35:15 you never brought me tea I just I love it I love it Yeah We get a little bit of back story With Tuvok We find out that he was 29 years old A mere 29 years old
Starting point is 00:35:28 On the bridge of the Excelsior And then they also make reference To the fact that this took place About 80 some odd years ago So now that gives us, you know, Tuvac is roughly 109, 110, 111, yeah. So that's his true age. Sulu has a comment where he says, you know, you need to find your sense of humor,
Starting point is 00:35:50 Tuvac. I know Vulcans have a sense of humor, which I love that he's referring to Spock there and his relationship with Spock and all these little, you know, Easter eggs and nuggets and references to the original series. I really, I really enjoyed. I do have to pause, though, and say that as we got into this mind-meld flashback memory, whatever you want to call it,
Starting point is 00:36:17 I think it was a big mistake that they had Tuvac while he's in the memory, the living memory, breaking out of the memory to talk directly to Janeway. I thought that was a mistake because for me, for me as the stakes went on and the story went on, I kept wanting, because he kept breaking out, out of character in the memory to just talk to Janeway and tell her some backstory or some peripheral story,
Starting point is 00:36:44 I found it undermined the stakes of the show, of the story, that I think if it had been a memory where Tuvac was like everyone else doing their job and Tuvok and Janeway could just be there as observers and kind of move around and he could watch himself, I think that would have kept the stakes strong and not broken the reality of that memory. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:10 And then I think when Sulu saw Tuvok, ultimately, much later in our story, he could have seen the other Tuvok, and that could have been a much weirder, you know, then as the memory starts collapsing in and itself, it could have been weirder. I just found the way they did it. It probably saved money and time. You didn't have to shoot Tim in two places.
Starting point is 00:37:31 Yeah. But I just, I felt like it, it took away the the level of stakes for me in the story because he was he kept breaking the fourth wall there breaking out of that story just to talk to Janeway anyway that's my my editorial there no that's that's great that's almost like a foreshadowing of your do-over yes it is actually is very much a foreshadowing of my do-over and for those of you listening if you don't know we In our bonus material for our Patreon patrons, we have different segments that we go through.
Starting point is 00:38:10 We do a winners and losers of each episode. We do a do-over what we would like to see, you know, if we were to do-over something in this episode. And I'm kind of referring to Robbie's future do-over, and I was right. Look at that. Telepathy. Yeah, so Tuvok was a junior science officer.
Starting point is 00:38:27 Yeah. Which is not on his record, Janeway talks about. and let's see what else Tuvok then says the Klingon Moon Praxis is about to explode and sure enough there's a big energy wave and it hits the Excelsior and that was the Klingon Moon Praxis
Starting point is 00:38:48 which exploded which part of the mythology of the original series and of Star Trek that was an event that led to the first Federation Klingon Peace Treaty which was right you know all of these little nuggets that are tied in to the original series I thought were really cool.
Starting point is 00:39:07 Well, yeah, and if you're a fan, you're loving it, right? You're watching this going, oh, my gosh, look at that. They're tying this in. They're tying that in, right? And then the whole decision on Sulu's part that he needs to go and save Kirk and McCoy. Kirk and Bones, yeah, Kirk and McCoy from the clutches of the Klingons, basically.
Starting point is 00:39:25 And then Tuvok, Tuvok realizes this is the standard protocol. He objects. And that one line that, that after Tuvok objects to... Oh, yeah, I know exactly the line you're going to say. This is the line that I started repeating to Tim Russ over and over again. Is that where... This is where it comes from.
Starting point is 00:39:45 Yeah, whenever I would... Whenever Tim would say something, you know, on set, like I would... If I wanted to mess with him, I would say... I would say, Ensign Tuvuck, you're absolutely right, but you're also absolutely wrong. I would do that to him.
Starting point is 00:40:02 All the time, just to mess with him. I couldn't remember why that line became so famous. I wrote it down here. I wrote it down. I'm like, and I even Googled it. I was like, did he say that in a movie too? Why is that? No, it's because I said it so many times.
Starting point is 00:40:17 That's funny. It's completely, it's been like, you know, railroaded into everybody's brains that I said this. And it's because it was my joking around with Tim. Like, I would always mess with him. Like, you know. But it's also, it is the craziest line like that's a tough line i don't know how you deliver that line with
Starting point is 00:40:38 you're absolutely right and you're absolutely wrong oh my god wow that's a tough line i'm glad i did not i'm glad i didn't have any lines in this episode so i didn't have to say that yeah that was a tough one. That was a tough one. Okay, so he does say regulations be damned. He takes them into the azure nebula to conceal it from the Klingons. And, yeah, and then Tuvok collapses again, because they start to, they start to go into this nebula. And again, he collapses. We see the doctor says that Tuvok is having more brain damage from this repressed memory. Synaptic pathways are continuing to degrade. Yeah. And Harry, goes into I think this is your long talk with Janeway and you don't see any connection with
Starting point is 00:41:35 these nebulas technically they're totally different although the visual similarity could be triggering but the memory is not connected to the little girl so you guys are sort of puzzled by that but then you go into this long conversation with Janeway and Harry Kim about the history of Starfleet and I guess it was very sweet and I and I looked at that scene And I was like, wow, because I know, Garrett, that you're a sci-fi fan and the fact that you were able to sit and sort of be nostalgic with Kate Mulgrew in that scene. You know, I think that's really cool. It's really, it was a great little scene. I had a fangasm when I was filming that scene for sure.
Starting point is 00:42:19 I bet. I mean, it was super, super exciting. And I, you know, I liked what I did in that scene acting wise. I did too. I thought it was great. The only thing that I noticed was that it sounded like I had a cold. I don't know if you caught that or not. It did actually.
Starting point is 00:42:36 It did sound that way to me. Yeah, I was a little nasally. It was a little nasally. It was a little nasly. Then I started thinking, you know, oh my God, is this my homage to the fact that George DeK was on this episode? Because to me, when George, yeah, when George talks, it almost has a bit of nasally to it, you know, there's a little nasal, nasal.
Starting point is 00:42:55 quality to know i think you probably just had allergies i probably had an allergy cold and i'm just i'm shocked that that i you know didn't take care of that beforehand you know in some way um but yeah that's the one thing i noticed about that scene yeah i did notice that a little bit but it's it's fine it was fine okay um tuvok is awake again after that scene we go back in sick bay he wants to mind melt again he wants to find this girl figured this out so we mind meld go back on the Excelsior and a right in a battle with the Clingons. Can I tell you what I wrote in my notes? And I said in my notes I wrote, Sickbay, Tuvac Janeway, mind meld, the sequel.
Starting point is 00:43:35 That's what I wrote. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, continue. So we're on Excel. Yeah. So we go back and there's a shift change because Tuvok shift needs a rest from this battle. Yeah. And two Vachshift, right?
Starting point is 00:43:48 Gamma shift. I think that was what it was. Bracely Whitney called. And we don't, we've never used that terminology on Voyager. We didn't say like, okay, beta shift, come in. No. Yeah, so now we're in the Excelsior quarters. They have bunk beds, like double bunk beds.
Starting point is 00:44:02 And by the way, they sleep in their clothes, fully closed. They sleep in their jackets. They're buttoned up to the top. Did you notice that? They're all sleeping with no blankets or pillows or anything. Fully dressed. I did not write that in my notes. I did write, I said, Excelsior quarters with double bunk beds,
Starting point is 00:44:22 definitely not club Tuvok is what I know so I no yes so you're right Tuvok is sleeping in his club Dimitri is wearing everything from the bridge
Starting point is 00:44:33 nobody took nobody took the time to just remove their jacket they didn't care even the jacket would have been nice you know pull a blanket over
Starting point is 00:44:40 sheets or something it's very Spartan yeah Valtaine Lieutenant Valtaine wants to talk he wants to talk to Tuvok and he says
Starting point is 00:44:51 he admires Sulu's orders. And you see that Tuvok does not like this. And we get a lot of backstory after this about Tuvok was forced to attend Start for the Academy. He did not want to. Oh my God. Forced by his parents. Yeah. And just everything in this conversation, it was all exposition, but holy moly, we learned everything about Tuvok. And he continued. He resigned after this mission. He doesn't like humans very much at this point in his life. No. He doesn't like Starfleet. He wanted to go back to Vulcan, try to dive into meditation, reach a state of pure logic. Colonar is what they call it. To immerse himself in Colenar, a rigorous
Starting point is 00:45:40 discipline intended to purge all emotions and you're in seclusion when you're doing this. and while he was doing this, he accidentally pawnfired. How do you accidentally pawnfired? I don't know. Does it involve gaseous anomalies as well? Probably. Accidentally.
Starting point is 00:46:00 Okay. With Tim Russ is involved, yes. Whoops, he panfired. So he had some kids. And having children made him realize that he did want to rejoin Starfleet. So I thought that was an interesting circle to learn about. And really, the whole thing of Starfleet was because his parents.
Starting point is 00:46:17 His parents were the ones that said, look, you need to join Starfleet. And as a young Vulcan, you know, he didn't appreciate what his parents told him and not in your right. Until he had his own children, raising his own kids, did he realize that the decisions he made as a young man
Starting point is 00:46:31 were not always in his best interest? And then he understood why his parents decided to send him to the academy and that he had many things to learn from humans and other species. And that's why he left that 50-year height. Can you imagine that taking a 50-year hiatus from your job and that coming back, which is similar to what I did, very similar in a way, if you think about it.
Starting point is 00:46:53 I took a long, long, long hiatus close to 15, 16 years before I started acting again. But yeah, it's a lot of wonderful backstory for Tuvok that we rarely hear for any of our character, main players for Voyager. We go back on the bridge. Kang is the Klingon captain up on the bridge talking to Sulu. and he congratulates Sulu for his well-deserved captain post, he says. But he insists that they leave. And Sulu agrees Sulu's got this trick plan.
Starting point is 00:47:25 He asked Tuvok, what is this gaseous anomaly made of? And Tuvok says, it's an explosive gas. Again, I just had trouble. Cyrillium, Cyrillium, Cyrillium, I had trouble about not laughing. I'm inside I'm 12 years old so but Sulu wants to ignite this gaseous anomaly with a positron beam and then run for it
Starting point is 00:47:53 Robbie I'm going to say this if we're at a if we're at a convention together and we're sitting next to each other signing autographs if you have a lot of gaseous anomalies I'm going to just look at you and say enough with the ceruleum enough with the ceruleum Robbie
Starting point is 00:48:08 Cyrillium is yeah that's our code word for far yeah that's new street language for For explosive fart, explosive fart of ceruleum, regular fart is just gaseous anomaly. Okay, good. Okay. Okay. I'm good. Yeah, so they're headed back. They're headed for Kronos and three Klingon battle cruisers are in hot pursuit and there's some battling going on. And Lieutenant Valtane, you know, Tuvok knows what's going to happen in this thing and he tells him, get away from there, but he doesn't. Valtane is killed and he says, Tuvok, and then eyes. So what we learned is that's the moment where the virus was passed on. We're going
Starting point is 00:48:49 down the road. Also now the neural patterns are starting to merge into one, Janeway and Tuvok's neural patterns. So the doctor notices this and basically Zulu notices Janeway now. He's like, who are you, dude? Who are you? Exactly. So Janeway and Tuvok are then sent to the brig because they're not, you know, something weird is going on. And then are they in the mess hall? Are they in Excelsior's mess hall when they, when Tuvok does the Vulcan pinch? The Vulcan pinch on Janus Rand.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Hard's at the hell. What is that? I don't know. It was a small doorway. They probably cheated something for, okay, for wherever they were. But I love the line of dialogue where Tuvok says,
Starting point is 00:49:35 asking female officers for their clothing may lead to misunderstandings. Yes. I thought that was very funny. I loved it too. It was sort of our cognizance of Me Too before Me Too in a way. Yeah. Yes. Vulcans understand.
Starting point is 00:49:50 Yeah. You just don't ask a female officer for their clothing. You don't ask anybody for their clothes. You don't say like, hey, can I have your clothing? Just would be weird. You know, especially the clothing you're wearing. Like, if it's like, hey, do you have a sweater in your closet I could borrow? Fine.
Starting point is 00:50:08 That's all good. But like, hey, can you take your pants off? And can I have them? Weird. Well, you know what this tells me? All HR departments in every major corporation should be manned by Vulcans because Vulcans understand. Yes.
Starting point is 00:50:24 They get it. All right. So now we're in Voyager sick bay. Yeah. A cortical stimulator is programmed to emit thoron radiation. Yeah. And we're thinking, well, the doc is thinking that this will bombard his telepathic cortex to terminate the meld because Janeway and two,
Starting point is 00:50:41 are stuck in this meld. That's when the docs discovers there's not one, not two memory engrams, but three memory and grams. And what is it? It's a virus masquerading as a memory engram. How brilliant. Yep. The memory is a, the memory is a virus.
Starting point is 00:51:02 It's not really a memory. It's a virus. It thrives on the peptides generated in the brain, hides, hides in the brain as a repressed memory, but it's not. It's a virus. and the memory is so traumatic that it would guarantee to stay repressed or hidden by whoever the host is. So, yeah, the thoron radiation. By the way, I think thoron radiation, we use to fix a lot of things.
Starting point is 00:51:25 It fixes a lot of things. Like, when in doubt, call it a gaseous anomaly or fix it with thoron radiation. There's an African-American comedian that talks about like how the grandmother would always use robitussin for everything. It was like, oh, you skin your elbow, throw some tussin on it. You know, you did this, like Robitusson is the, yeah. So for us on Voyager, the fixall is Thoron radiation, that's right. I find it interesting. We have that shot on the precipice, and you have the young, different versions of everybody.
Starting point is 00:52:00 Janeway, yeah, Janeway is that little chubby redhead girl, which was kind of cute. I was like, that's different. A Neanderthal kid, right? an African tribal kid you see and so you know at first I was thinking what are they doing but then you realize this virus has been around for so long that it started during Neanderthal times right you see the caveman kid there right so the cave kid not a caveman but a cave kid so that to me signified that this virus has been around since the dawn of time and finally finally in voyager times that virus is is eradicated. It took that long. Yeah. Took a long time to figure it out.
Starting point is 00:52:43 And there we go. And then at the very end, we have a little walk-and-talk moment with Tuvac and Janeway. Talking about the nostalgia of the old days. And Tuvok's like, I don't feel nostalgia. Yeah. But I'm glad you do. And so you can feel all that nostalgia for me. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:00 Yeah. I thought that was a sweet moment. Yeah. I like the episode. I mean, this is, you know, it's always tricky to try to incorporate members of Star Trek from prior casts, you know, into an episode. But I think Brandon Braga did a good job of figuring out a way to somehow bring Sulu into it. And all the little Easter eggs and little references to all the other bits of Trek history that we already know about is absolutely wonderful. So I
Starting point is 00:53:28 like that for sure. I'm going to give this a thumbs down on my end. I've got to be honest. Go for it. The only thing that holds value for me is that nostalgia, the incorporation of Sulu and Gracely Whitney and the connections and stories. But as an episode for me, I find this very unsatisfying because I never felt, I never felt like Tuvok was really in danger of dying. I didn't have an emotional experience to that. maybe if while they were in this memory, if there had been some more cutting back to sickbay and feel the stress and the drama that was going on in sickbay to keep them alive
Starting point is 00:54:13 or Janeway may be dying to. I don't know. It was missing a whole element of stakes for me. And as I said before, I think because Tuvac was sort of breaking character constantly, I felt like it was more someone telling a story than an actual dramatic situation being acted out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:32 It just felt like, oh, let's, You know, Tuvok's going to tell this story. And I never felt any of the stakes were very significant or real. They just felt it felt like it lacked any stakes or true consequences. Anyway, I would say it was a great intellectual exercise for me, but as an experience of watching it, it was not one of my favorite episodes. So from a scale of 1 to 10, what are you going to give it? I'd give it a five, right in the middle.
Starting point is 00:55:08 Okay. Maybe a four or five. No more than a five, no less than a four. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. You are entitled to your opinion, sir. Yeah, that's my honest opinion.
Starting point is 00:55:21 Just go. All right. So the theme for me in this episode is nostalgic memories are not trustworthy. That's what I kind of boiled it down to. Because, you know, there was a lot. a lot of nostalgia and Tuvok's memory of being on the Excelsior and all of that. But it was kind of a distraction to really what was at the core of it was where this virus came from. And, you know, so a lot of it was smoke and mirrors that really wasn't very reliable, ultimately. And even the
Starting point is 00:55:55 memory of the child feels like some nostalgic memory of, oh, that when I was a young boy as a young Tuvok, there was this girl that I didn't want her to die and I have this memory. It was not even a real memory. There was nothing real about it. It was all concocted. So to me, those kind of deep, nostalgic sort of memories through a filter of a lot of time are not that trustworthy. Hmm. Okay.
Starting point is 00:56:30 Yeah, for me, I think the lesson here. is that youth usually is not partnered with wisdom. Meaning, I'm referring to Tuvok, you know, his decision to leave Starfleet, and then he took off for 50 years. And really, it was the parents that encouraged him to be, to go to Starfleet Academy. And so, you know, listen to your parents.
Starting point is 00:57:05 Sometimes they know things that you respect your elders. That is the theme and the lesson here. Respect your elders and realize that wisdom comes with age. Okay. And young, you know, headstrong individuals, although they think they might be right, they're usually not. So listen to your own. That's good. I like it. That'll be my lesson for this episode.
Starting point is 00:57:29 Thank you. All right. Thanks, everyone, for tuning. in to our review of flashback stay tuned next week when Robbie and I will be covering
Starting point is 00:57:40 our seminal our seminal season three Paris and Kim episode the shoot the shoot I'm ready for it
Starting point is 00:57:51 I'm really excited it's a big one it's a good one it's a good one that'll be fun we'll see you guys next week thanks you guys next week stay tuned for your
Starting point is 00:58:00 bonus material for all of your Patreon on patrons. Thanks, guys. The But, B. Bhopal, Bhop.
Starting point is 00:58:42 But B B B B B B B
Starting point is 00:58:51 B I don't know.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.