The Delta Flyers - Flesh and Blood

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Flesh and Blood. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Flesh and Blood:The Hirogen species sends Voyager a distress call when their holographic prey become too cunning and cannot be defeated.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, Bryan Fuller, & John EspinosaAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Daniel de Rooy, Chris Knapp, Michelle Z, Janet K Harlow, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Adm. Bill "Seoulman" Yu, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Lori Tharpe, Mary Burch, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Jeremy Mcgraw, Ali S, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Michael Dismuke, Jonathan Brooks, Gemma Laidler, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, & Matt Norris And our Producers:James Amey, Patrick Carlin, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Chloe E, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Jocelyn Pina, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Barbara Beck, Species 2571, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Ryan Benoit, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, Clark Ochikubo, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Christian Koch, Lisa Gunn, Lauren Rivers, Shane Pike, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Akash Patel, James Rothwell, & Corey DennisThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Voyager actor, Garrett Wong, who in 2015 voiced a role on American Dad and myself. your favorite helmsman Robert Duncan McNeil aka Robbie McDunk R.D.M. Robbie D.

Whatever you want to call me. Remember, you can get the full version of this podcast and lots more bonus material by signing up to become a patron at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. Hello. Hello. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. What was that? Yeah, I had actually, I had gone in the casting director for um both american dad and for family guy yeah was the same person and so i guess she'd been working with set forever and so she called me in for initially for family guy because they were recasting of role on that show and it was originally cast with bobby lee the comedic actor from mad tv and then they didn't like his reading so they brought me in and i

got the job, and then I was at conventions telling everyone that I had done this role, but they redid my voice too with another guy. I'm like, oh, my God. And the thing is, the Cassinger told me, she says, what, don't listen. Whoever's doing the session with you, because I thought it would be Seth. It wasn't Seth. It was some other tall, skinny white guy with glasses. But she said, just stick with the reading that you gave me. And he kept watering down my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, She didn't give me notes and stuff. Yeah, she couldn't give me notes and it watered it down to nothing because it was supposed to be the guy, the Chinese laundry guy, Mr. Tiki Tiki or Mr. Washi was the character name, whatever, very stereotypical name. But I had I had created a character when I was in college with a friend of mine called China Boy Cleaners.

And China Boy Cleaners was all about this guy who, and what happened was, yeah, I'll explain it to you. So I was studying with a friend of mine and she said, I have to go to the grocery store. And she says, do you mind grabbing my laundry out of the dryer? So I took all her clothes and I folded all of them very neatly. And I wrote on a piece of paper, laundry folded, courtesy of China Boy Cleaners. And I left that there. And I left and she was laughing her butt off because I left a message on her voicemail later. I said, I said, yeah, hello.

I'm just trying to call, trying to get a hold of Melissa. This is China Boy Cleaners. We were cleaning all your clothes. We have one thing to report to you. Unfortunately, you have one pair of pants that are very, very small now. They're so small, they are not even big enough to fit a cat. So that's what I said, not even big enough to fit a cat, because these were ladies' tights. When ladies' tights are thrown into the washer, they shrink down to really small size and they put them back on.

So that was my little joke thing that I was doing this very, and what I did for you was a toned-down version. I did a very exaggerated, huge Cantonese accent, made her laugh her butt off, made the casting director for Family Guy laugh her butt off. But the guy running the session was like, nah, let's try it this way. And it just screwed everything up. But I wish they would have told me that they recast me because I said that to many, many, many, many, many,

many conventions and many fans. Hey, watch me on Family Guy. Yeah, and it wasn't me. Yeah, so she finally calls me back again, like months later for American Dad. And I said, so what is this one for exactly? She said, well, we need someone to speak Mandarin Chinese. So I said, what, what's going on?

Well, in the show, a Chinese investor buys the actual show, American Dad, and starts, you know, doing some changes. And then at the end of the show, another investor, Chinese investor, buys it from the first investor, and then changes everything where they're now, all the characters are in a rice patty in China is what they're in. So that's the final scene. So the final scene are all the characters speaking in Mandarin, and they're in a rice patty. So she says to me, she goes, so you can speak to me. Mandarin, right? I said, yes. But I can also speak the Mandarin in the voices of the characters on American Dad. And she said, really? I said, yeah. She goes, we don't, well, we're not asking you to do that. I said, but I can do that. So, because the, um, the father, the CIA, the CIA agent, he's just,

he's got that really hero voice like that, you know? So I was doing Mandarin like that. Then they had the alien, the alien that sort of sound like Paul Lynn. So he kind of comes in sounding like Paul Lynn kind of character like this. So I was doing that. And then I did the son. The son is going through puberty. Hey, dad, he kind of have a little bit of cracking in his voice. So I did that voice as well, all speaking Mandarin, right? So I did that. And she goes, oh, you got it. Thank you. I mean, you nailed this. And I knew there was no way to recast me on that. I was like, there's nobody that speaks Mandarin and does voices as well. So this was, you know, my chance to do voices like I've always loved to do that I didn't get to do on Voyager. I got to do an American

and dad. And so the very final scene of that episode is me. I do the voice of the father of the alien, of the son, and of Mickey Mouse as well. So I do a, hey, folks, Mickey Mouse speaking Mandarin. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. That's very funny. There you go. Wow. That sounds very cool. I'm going to have to go look that up. We will have to go look that up. But this week's episode, which we have to go watch right now. Yes, we do. Flesh and Blood, parts one and two, which is, you know, interesting because typically when we have a two-parter, it's separated into two. Yeah, I don't get this.

I don't know why, but they put both of these into one. Into one episode? Yeah, because our episode. So is that an extra long episode? Yeah, because like I'm looking at the timeline. Everything, everything says 44 minutes except for this one says one hour and 25 minutes. So they clearly. So strange.

I wonder why they did that in the middle of season seven. So you don't recall any reason why they would have done this then. No. Because I don't either, because I saw the time. It's strange. Yeah. So, all right. Let's go watch this thing.

Let's go watch all the parts. And we'll be back. All right. We're back from watching, boy, an hour and 18 minutes of Flesh and Blood. You know what's crazy is I did a little research. That is only the third movie length episode of, any Star Trek? Star Trek ever.

Wow. Besides the pilot and the finale, a two-hour episode, we did two of them. And DS9 did one, and that's it. And no other show ever did this, but we did it twice. Did your research also discover why they've made this a one episode feature length episode, basically? My guess is it was sweeps. They didn't, I didn't see why. But my guess is it was like a ratings period where they're trying to get more ratings

or something like that or a promo. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. We did it twice. No other Star Trek series ever did, aside from their pilots. Now, the pilot episodes. Other than the pilots, you're saying. Pilots or fineries.

I think that's what it said. Pilots or fineries could be a two-hour. And many shows, a number of shows did that. But we did three regular episodes as movie length. That's pretty cool. That is different and unique. Yeah. It's crazy.

Wow. So since we did two, that means. were the best. We have the most episodes in the body of the series, not pilot or finale, that are two-hour episodes, yes. That's a long title for what we just won. All right. Let's talk about our guesses. You initially said it was a Roxanne episode, which it kind of, there is a lot of Roxanne in this. So that was right. You said that you had a lot of time that you did a lot of work on this as well. You're right. You did more work on this than me. This looks like a week. Really? Yeah, to me, I felt like I had a big vacation.

Like I had a, you know, I only was on the bridge. That was it. And very, you know, there was even a shot where they just kind of, they didn't even show my half of the bridge. It was just like from one half over and they didn't even bother to go over to any of my reactions. So I thought, wow, I really had some time off. Yeah, you had some time off. Yeah. So your guess about Roxanne was good, about porous. You also said, I think you mentioned Ken Biller, which is, you know, there. There is a Ken Biller ever, yes, a partial. And then the other writer name that you mentioned was not in there. You said Brannon all over it. And he's not in any of it. No, he's not in there. He's not even listed as the executive producer on this. It's Berman and Biller at this point.

So, yeah, so you were right on half of that. I was incorrect. I said, Doherty, that's not right. And then I talked about this being a big Tuvok episode, not at all. Not really, right? No. No, not at all. And then what else did you guess?

You guessed... I guessed directors. I think I guessed Craker and Livingston. Yes. So you got half right. Livingston is part two. Part two. And Craker is not in part one.

It was Mike Vahar. And then your guess, your funny synopsis was that flesh and blood was all about Harry's illegitimate children that were coming back to pay him. Not true. I was wrong. No, you're wrong in that one. But other than that, that, you got 0.5 and 0.5s in there.

Okay. So one whole correct answer because 2.5s make one. I'm going to go with that. Yes. Okay. I got one whole answer right. Yeah, one whole answer right. Let's do our poetry synopsis.

Let's do it. Let's do our, just to get in the mood. Okay. Now, I had initially texted you. I said, hey, parts one and two, do we do two? Hikus and two Limericks. You're like, nah, it's one episode. But in reality, I did end up with two of these two versions of one, basically.

Okay, so I'm going to give you version one and version two. Here is version one for flesh and blood. Hunt for organics. Photonics want their freedom. Cajal takes control. Okay, that's one. Here's the other one. This is even more haikuy.

Okay. You like that? I made my own word, haikuy. Here we go. Organics beware. Photonic revolution. Myopic downfall. Oh.

Ooh. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Double the haiku. I got double haiku. Here we go with our limerick synopsis. Yes.

flesh and blood. The doctor met some holograms who had some bad blood. Their plan for freedom is kind of a dud. Janeway gives away Holotech, her judgment incorrect. It's not always just about flesh and blood. Very good. Very good. You got a lot in there.

Yeah. All right, let me run through these guest stars. There's a lot, so I'm going to go quick, all right? So let's start with Jeff Yeager, who's friends with Bob Picardo, and the husband to Megan Gallagher, who is in a very recent episode of Voyager, also season seven. He played Iden. He played Iden, the Bajorian.

hologram. He's very, very first, very first credit is the 1984 television series V. Oh, the original V. The original V. He was a regular in the original V. So he's kind of like me. His first big job, really, was a sci-fi. As a sci-fi series regular. So Jeff and I are kindred spirits. We have Ryan Bowman, who played Donic, the diminutive Herogen. a 1986 kid songs music video. That's his very first credit.

I think I remember those videos. Yeah, they're like stories that were little kids. Yes, you do remember that. I do. Ryan Boland.

I don't, but you do. So that's good. You got that. Now, we also have Michael Wiseman who played beta-Herogen. Beta Herogen

was the Herogen that was left in charge after Alpha passed. away, 1990 feature film Caged Fury from Michael Iceman. Okay. We're not going to go into the specifics of that, but that's the title, yes. Okay. We also have Cindy Katz, Cindy Katz, who played Kajal. She had a great job, by the way, her very first credit, a 1992 episode of the soap opera Guiding Light. Oh, Guiding Light, a classic. Is that filmed in New York guiding light? It was, it was filmed in New York, yes.

Okay. No longer there. Yeah. So Cindy shares that with you. You know, you guys are kindred spirits. You both began on soap operas. New York soap operas. Yeah.

Next we have Spencer Garrett, who played We love Spencer. Spencer is so interesting. He's third generation actor. So his grandparents were actors and his parents were just bump up, bump, Spencer Garrett played Weiss. He was sort of the first officer to Iden in a way, right? and you know him for a while now 1989

first credit one episode of American Playhouse wow yeah that's so funny because I think of Spencer as a New York actor that I used to go to auditions

against her with but Spencer must have been at college and then just coming out of college or something when I first met him in New York in the 80s oh that's crazy Did you guys work together on anything? No, I don't think we ever.

And you never directed him? No, I've, no, I don't think so. Yeah, I should correct that other than Voyager. Did you work on anything else with him? I don't think we've ever worked together, but I've seen him over the years all the time. We have a lot of mutual friends. Yeah. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Okay. We also have Vaughn Armstrong, who we've talked about before, but I don't think we talked about his first credit. Vaughn played the Alpha Hirogyn who passes away. It's so funny to me because Vaughn is such a gentle soul. Yes, that's true. Even as a Herojan, he came off as a gentle Horojan. In a way.

Vaughn's very first credit, 1977. One episode of the ABC weekend specials. I did an ABC weekend special. There you go. I did one of those. There were kids shows. Sort of not, yeah, yeah, yeah, just kind of fun adventures. Instead of the after-school specials, which always had a lesson,

the ABC weekend specials were just a little more of a like a fun funny you know like comedy adventures with a light lesson maybe yes oh that's funny we also have Paul Eckstein who played another alpha horogen on the show and Paul's resume it's interesting because he actually did five episodes of Voyager so he's done multiple episodes of Voyager different characters but now he's more of a writer producer type so he's not really acting so much. His very first credit is a 1991 feature called The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez.

Sounds like a horror film. It does. Next we have Todd Jeffreys, who played Herojin number one. Very first credit, 1986 episode of Family Ties. Oh, a sitcom, yes. Then we have Don McMillan, Herogen number three, who clearly has a better agent than Herodian number two

because he got listed as three before two. 1996 episode of step by step, that TV series. Then we have Chad Halliard, Herodian number two. His very first credit was a JAG episode in 2000. Chad only has three credits, and they all happened in 2000. Voyager, the JAG episode, and a feature called Ed Gein. And that's it. So, wow, yes.

Not a long career, but he was busy that year. He flashed in 2000 and then just, you know, moved on to something else, clearly. David Doty, or Dottie, played the Nubari Minor. His very first credit was the 1988 feature film Full Moon and Blue Water. Full Moon and Blue Water, yeah. We also have Damon Kirsha, who played the Numbari Hologram. Yes. Bari Hologram 1 is very, very first.

credit is this episode. Oh, wow. And he did a great job. He did a really good job. He didn't have a lot to say. He had the same line over and over again. But he did a job with that. Repeating the cannot process or something.

Can I process, exactly. All right. And that's all of our guest stars that right now. It was a lot for a big two-hour movie. Yeah. Let's jump right into it. We start off with a jungle setting. And I have to ask you, is this on the Warner Brothers lot?

I, okay. Here's the thing. about that jungle setting at first i had the same thought where is this and my first thought was oh i think we went to the arboretum like the you know the botanical gardens at the arboretum in i think it's in bell or pasadena or something yeah and that's where i thought and i was but then i started looking at it i was like this looks familiar and i found out it was the warner brothers lot it was right it's the warner brothers jungle when we filmed this i think there was the remnant of their western town

in the back. They used to have a little a little bit left of their western town. And now right by the jungle are homes or houses that look like a suburban street. They replaced the western

town, the western street with a suburban street. And the houses are actually production offices now that are, that Chuck was there in one of those houses. So my office, for five years was literally 100 feet from this jungle that this episode was filmed in. But the jungle looked very different in this episode.

We brought in a lot of like fake rocks and probably a lot of like tropical plants and things. Yeah, I'm going to pat myself on the back because that was my first question. And the funny thing is, I am in none of these scenes in the jungle. So I never went on location. No. But I did visit you when Chuck filmed in the jungle. And that's why I recognized it from my visit with you. not even recognize it in the beginning because I was like, no, this is too big.

I don't remember the trees growing in the water. I think we actually, for this episode, flooded the water because it's kind of a man-made pond there. I think we added a lot of water for Star Trek. So the trees look like they're coming out of the water because I don't think in real life, they went that far. I don't think so. And I think they flooded it so that they could have the guys come out of the water. and stuff like that.

It's not that deep in real life. Yeah, and so we see these two Hurogen hunters that are in the midst of a hunt and their prey is very elusive. Their scans can't find them. And I love the scanners on the rifles. Like they have the built-in scanners that are cool. Built-in scanner and the rifle.

That's similar to aliens, the sequel to alien. They also have scanners on their rifles. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm incorrect about that. I thought they had scanners on the rifle. but I was cool they had cool rifles yeah they had cool rifles they have cool rifles but that cool shot where all those Starfleet members come out of the water was so rambo you know that rambo coming out of the water and they end up taking out these two rogian hunters it's like apocalypse now I think it even

said that in the script like you know coming out of the water like apocalypse now oh is that what it said I feel or maybe I remember Marvin rush talking about the shot like doing it like apocalypse now right But, yeah, and there's Spencer Garrett. Didn't Rambo do that too? I thought Rambo came out of the water too. Maybe he copied a cop. They copied apocalypse now and then we copied them. But again, the shock is that they're all wearing Starfleet uniform.

So the audience is like, what is going on here? I don't know. We're not sure. And we jumped to sick bay. The doctor is in sick bay. Chakotay shows up. The doctor has called him to sickbay because he wants a leave of absence from Chakotay. He wants permission to take off to speak at a.

ovean symposium on space-borne pathogens. Now, did we ever see ovians in our show before? Negative, because they're hexapods. So that means they have multiple feet or multiple appendages. Exactly. I looked them up because I was like, wait, did we, what episode were the ovians in? They weren't in it. We're just talking about some species. And they're six-limbed hexapods. Oh, you saw an image of what they look like? No, I went and looked at, no, I didn't see an image. I just looked up like where it was referred to. And right. And that's how they're described in the definitions. Yeah.

Yeah. He's denied the request, right? He's denied. Chucote says no way. Yeah, because we've already passed their system. It was two weeks ago. So we'd have to go back. We'd have to backtrack.

But this whole conversation gets interrupted by Janeway. She hails Chacote that we've received a Horojin distress call. What? Very weird. Yes. What's going on? We have an exterior shot of Voyager flying through space. And then we go to the bridge where we come upon a Herogen structure.

And there's no response to Hill. It's not a ship. It's not like a spaceship. It's a base. It's like a space space station. And Harry says there's some strange readings, like strange bio signs, he says. Yeah, he can't tell if there's any life signs is what it is. So Jane Wade tells Chiquet to take an away team to go investigate.

And we have a beam in with Chiquet, Paris, Tuvok 7, and our regular background, Dr. Louis Ortiz. Yes. Love it. Yeah, Louis looks great. And do you remember there is a shot out there. There is a set photography shot of you, Chikote, and seven, and maybe Tuvac is there. And you guys are aiming your weapons.

It was probably here. Yes, this is where it was taken. You're in the jungle. You're aiming your weapons at Mike DeMert, Arlene Foucai. So we have like crew members that are on their knees with their hands up. and you guys are aiming them. And it's just a funny, yes. And you're all smiling and laughing.

And it's a really funny shot. So that's the away team, which I thought, why isn't Harry on this away team? Usually Harry's in this away team, but not here at all. You didn't get to go to Warner Road. No, deadgumet. Chikote orders the away team to break into two teams. Tuvok, Paris, and Louis find a dead Herojan.

Seven and Chkote come across a batloth stuck in a tree. By the way, when they find the batliff in the tree, yes. I looked behind them and there's a big rock. fake rock that we brought in for this. And it looks like it's floating off the ground. Like, you know how those rocks are built on like a two by four frame? Is that what it looked like?

And you could see it wasn't even sitting on the ground. It's like six inches off the ground. I was like, oh, guys, put some plants in front of it. They should have put some shrubbery to hide that. Exactly. Like, oh, that rock looks bad. But anyway. Wow, good eye, good eye, good eye.

Very good eye. So Chikote does read a Herogen Life sign on his tricorder. and immediately he's fired upon. You know, he kind of like does the, he does this signal, which means go around back. And that's when Tuvok and company go back and Vulcan neck pinch are Herogen. Paris scans him and says, I get a beam back to Sick Bay with this unconscious Herogen, which he does. Seven, then finds this replicated Starfleet technology. She kind of pushes back this shrubbery and finds a Starfleet panel.

And when they decide, they say shut down the grid, she shuts off the hollow grid, and suddenly we have this transition into a giant, like, circle domed hollow grid with all these dead herogens on the ground. Oh, yeah. So you know that whatever they've been doing was in a holodeck kind of simulation, but they lost dead, no safety protocols. None. Cool shot, though. Yeah, it was cool. to show the reveal of yeah not dozens

dozens of dead horogen kind of sad too at the same time very sad yeah not good we have a space shot yeah the space shot was interesting it was a very askew shot of Voyager do you notice that and it was sort of it just the camera over the top yeah like we didn't we don't we don't have

I think it was that digital it's when they're kind of transitioning to all these digital shots so they were able to do really nifty things yeah brand brand new stuff yeah okay But we go to a hallway next, Janeway and Chakotay are walking and talking. And he says that when they scanned this environment, their scans showed that everything seemed real. But it obviously wasn't.

And they counted up 43 killed Horogen. Right. And they were all killed by Alpha Quadrant weapons. Yeah. So this is not good. No, and Janeway's annoyed. She's like, we gave them this technology to help them, you know, hunt holographic prey and not get themselves killed, which is clearly what I have. happen all the safety protocols were off we go to sick bay next and the doctor is in back by the

surgical bed with like a force field up and he's trying to calm this this short diminutive progen uh character we think he's a hunter at this point but he's running around he slams himself into the wall and falls back that was he slats himself into the force field is what it was right And that was almost comical. He ran right into it. And he fell down. And it was like, oh, my goodness. Yes.

And the doctor is just trying to calm him down. Janeway finally says to the doctor, deactivate yourself. Like, we have to calm him down first. He's not going to let you do anything. Yeah. Because he's reacting to the fact that the doctor is a hologram. And he is very afraid of holograms, right? Yes.

Yeah. So the doctor deactivates himself. Janeway explains who she is. Yeah. We learn that the Herod's name is Donic. Yeah. And he recognizes her and he wants to know what happened. He tells Janeway that this was the training facility where he was working and he was just a technician that, you know, he wasn't a hunter.

Right. But he believes everybody is dead. And he thinks that the holograms were malfunctioning, that there were, there were way too many holograms in there. So he tried to shut the system off, but he couldn't do it. Yeah. And Tuvok tells Janeway that Tuvok makes a call in the middle of this conversation and says, hey, there's another Herojin ship heading towards us on an intercept course. Donick does say that it was the malfunctioning holograms that deactivated the safety protocols.

So it was not the Herojin. It was actually the hologram. So that's an important point here. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we go out to space. We see this Herogeon ship coming in, firing at Voyager. we cut to the bridge they're not answering our hails janeway comes in on the move very dynamic shot i like this entry yeah she tells tuvok return fire but target their weapon systems and voyager is successful

it it shuts down there phaser banks and weapons but now they answer yes now now that they have the weapons now they're going to talk yeah but they're still pissed off yeah and she says look we received a distress call. That's why we're here. Yeah. And she says that they received this distress call. They showed up and there was only one Herojin alive. Everybody was dead.

And she tells the Herojin on that ship. She says, we have one of your people here on board, the only one that survived. Well, basically, that's Von Armstrong's Herogen. And he says, return him now. We want him now. And Jamie's like, no, he's not in any condition to be transported. it. If you want to see him, you're going to have to transport over here. That is exactly what happens. So we have a scene in Sick Bay with the alpha and the beta and Donick.

And Donick is trying to explain to the alpha. Look, I tried. I really did try to shut the generator down. But it's just too many of them. And then he talks about he had to mask his life sign so that they wouldn't detect him. The hunters are angry. They're like, oh, my gosh. That's the coward move. Yeah. Yes. You didn't fight. You didn't fight back. You hid. They're very judgy of him. Donick's like, I'm not a hunter. I'm the guy that maintains the systems. I have nothing to do with this. But they're very upset. They're like, how do you call yourself a horogen? How dare you? Yeah. He does also tell them that all these holograms after they killed everybody. Yeah. Took another erogen vessel and they are gone. Yeah. They transfer their programs onto the vessel, a vessel that's equipped with hollow emitters. And now we have a rogue Herogen vessel flying around under the control of holograms. Holograms who are angry about being holograms in a Herojan training facility.

So that is a big problem. We jump to where? Astrometrics is next. And Sevens basically filling Janeway in on what we know. But she does say to Janeway, like, you know, this was not a smart move giving these holograms, you know, this hollow technology to Herogens, especially holograms that are capable of commanding a vessel, she says. But they're looking for where this pirated ship might be going. The hunter does see some residual signatures. And Janeway says, you know, we want to help you find them, but they don't,

they don't want any help. And she does acknowledge that they have more experience as trackers and hunters but she says we have more experience with holograms so we can work together and we can you know find these guys he does say okay two hunting vessels are better than one let's give it a shot yeah we go into the ready room and this opening shot i want to say it it was a cool reflection off of that glass railing where we see behind us we see janeway sort of in the reflection sitting by the window and we see the doors open to the bridge in the ready room I'd never seen anyone do that before. It was very cool.

Yeah, just a cool reflection shot to open the scene. Good job, Mike Fahar. Yeah, very, very good. But the door opens, Tuvok and Chukotay come in. They are not comfortable with this alliance. And they say, you know, we'd like to talk to you. And she says, I'm listening. It is the most I'm not listening line I've ever heard.

Her face has so much stink eye. She is definitely not listening. but they start to tell her how they're nervous and then she goes in orders she goes over to the replicator to order coffee she says coffee black but I was watching and I thought she said coffee bland

it's like wait what what is bland coffee I was like I had to rewind it no coffee black but I thought she said coffee bland coffee bland yeah exactly what is that yes but she Janeway explains to them, you know what, it's Voyager's responsibility to help solve this

because we gave them this hollow technology. That's correct. Even though Chacote and Tuvac don't really think this is smart, she feels responsible. Yeah. But her plan is just to shut them down. You know, she's not going to, you know, decompile their matrix or anything like that. She just wants to shut them down entirely. Yeah.

But Chocote is basically saying it's not your fault. Yeah. The Herogen are to blame because how they use. it anyway so there's a little debate there but janeway's uh committed to helping solve this we go back to the bridge they do find this hollow hologram vessel i don't know what we call hollow vessel i kept i kept calling it the hollow ship even though it's a real ship but it's the one because there's horogen ships that are manned by herogens and then there's horogen hollow ship that's manned by haul but it's a real ship manned by how i don't know what we call it what do you

call it hollow commanded horogen ship that's a long name. I just want to call it the holo ship. From now on, let's call it the hollow ship. Okay. Anyway, so,

yeah, we go out to the bridge. We do find the hollow ship. Yeah. And, you know, and the Herojin just go charging in. Vaughn is just like,

I don't want to wait. Oh, and Jamie is like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Let's just suggest that we keep our distance

until we can determine their weapon status. And, no, the alpha is already ready for the kill. They're going in. Yeah, get up close to this thing.

Right. Tuvok's like, I'm not detecting any weapons, Captain. And Janeway's like, they're offline. And Tuvok says, no, they are non-existent. So then Kim kind of reinforces what Tuvok says. And he says, according to sensors, there's not even a warp core or impulse engines. Janeway knows immediately it's a decoy, tells the Herodian vessel to stand down. And that's when we see the fritzing happen. And the vessel, the hollow vessel disappears. The hollow ship disappears. And we just see what looks like just some small device floating in. space, yeah, which turns out to be a bomb and it explodes and knocks back the Herojan vessel. Yeah, it doesn't destroy the Herojan vessel, but every major, a lot of casualties. Yeah. People are injured. Janeway orders to transport the casualties off of their ship to us. Yes. To, you know, treat the casualties partway through this other Herojan ship appears suddenly.

The hollow ship. The hollow ship, it turns out. They ignore Voyager's hails. begin firing. Voyager's shields are down. We go into sick bay from here, and there's lots of Herojin being transported in. The doctor's program, as he's helping running around to help these Herojin, starts fritzing. Yeah.

We go to the captain. She says, download the doctor's program to the mobile emitter, quick. Right. Because Kim says the holograms are tapping into the sick bay emitters. So they're trying to transfer the doctor's program off of the ship. So that's when Janeway is like, okay, swap them in the mobile meter, and that's when Paris throws the mobile emitter towards a doctor. I remember shooting the scene. I remember doing this because there was like a little box or a little display, like, you know, like a watch case or something for the mobile emitter.

And I open it up, pull this thing out, and I toss it over. Yeah. And it's too late. He's gone. Yeah. I remember shooting this, though. And I'm like, because we had to shoot with Bob there and without. Yeah.

So when I tossed it, he was not there. So I guess what we did, what I remember is, you know, they kind of did the shot without Bob there. They came to me. I got the thing out. I toss it to nothing. And then that's when the camera stopped. And then they kept rolling for a second, stepped Bob in and then did the switcheroo thing, you know, post. But I do remember tossing that to nothing.

And like, oh, that's not really where he's going to be. We had to do it again. Like, no, a little more higher, a little higher. I was trying to guess it like some invisible person standing there. And then when he's gone, you're just like, ah, we've lost him. He's not here.

Did they get all transferred to Mess Hall later? Isn't that where they all went? Yeah. Okay. And here's my, this is the point I wanted to bring up. When we see Herogen, Horogen typically are only two Herogen per ship. Yeah, usually.

But yet this Herogen ship, had, I don't know, 30 or 40 because the ones that are still alive were maybe 12 or 13 because they lost some of them, some of them. Is it always just two? Is that something they talk about? Yes, because they're solitary. They never hunt in like a group of 15 or 30. I know they hunt in teams and pairs of two.

That's it. Do they, but do they man a ship? They must have a larger crew. No, they talk about that in the beginning. When we first meet the Herojan, they talk about how they're kind of like nomads. They're very, they're spread out. all across the system. When we first meet the Herojin, we learned that they're very nomadic and they're very solitary and that they're not clustered in big groups. But maybe because it's a

distress call that was sent out, they sent in the Marines. More of an army or something. The Herojin Marines. Yeah, exactly. So that's probably what happened. But to me, it was shocking how many Horogen were there. We do cut to the hologram manned ship. Yeah. And the doctor suddenly materializes on that ship. And we cannot pursue them because they masked their signature and they were gone. They went to go. And they're out of here. He looks around that we meet Iden, who's the Bajoran boss here. Yeah. He's very gentle, very spiritual. He assures the doctor. Yeah. We're not going to hurt you. You're among your own kind now. Yeah. That's kind of an act out there. when he's looking around at all these holograms.

And we continue the scene. The doctors wants to go back immediately. He's like, get me back to my ship. I noticed as he walked around, there was a lot of Captain Proton set pieces they used on this Hurogen ship. That ball with the spikes coming out of it or the hollow, later on the hollow emitters that they want to put on the planet. I feel like all of that came out of the same dressing used for Captain Proton.

It seemed really familiar to me. Yeah. And it's like that ball with the spikes, you could easily, you could tell that those spikes were basically styrofoam cones that they bought from craft. Crafts store, spray painted them and just glued them on. And that works fine for a Captain Proton set because it's a cheesier set. You know, it's more of a old-school-looking set. But I felt like, you know, maybe they cheaped out a little bit on this set because it's a Herogen ship.

Well, they built a lot of the Herogen ships. So, you know, I'm sure it was expensive, but I wish, yeah, I felt like it was a little recycled odds and ends. For sure. And a lot of Captain Bros. But anyway, we do realize that they've brought the doctor over because they've got a lot of wounded. Yeah.

And they need the doctor's help. Right. And it seems like we go to a sick bay, I guess I'd call it. Yeah, it's another part of the ship, another area, right? You can call it a sick bay, a modified. A lab. Yeah, a lab is what it is. It's because that's where Kajal is working.

It's almost like engineering, right? But it doubles as a sick bay as well. But we see injured holograms or glitching holograms being assisted by other holograms. There's a brine. There's a Vulcan. I know, a brain. I know. The brain, I love the brain, how they talk like robots or something.

I want to know what's under the brain helmet. We'll never know. It's probably some gelatinous fluid. I don't know. Probably. Probably. Or if it's on a really tiny head. It's like a tiny shrunken down Amazonian sort of rainforest.

Yeah. Pribal head is what it is. Okay. Yeah. So they're fritzing. They need help. And the doctor's like, you know, I'm not an engineer. They're holograms.

I'm a doctor. I'm not qualified to do that. And Iden says, you know, have you ever repaired your own matrix? He admits he has. And so he's starting to see how he could help them and starting to get some empathy for these holograms. He's starting to connect to them. And he agrees he'll do whatever he can. Then we go to engineering on Voyager.

and there's young Donic explaining how the emitters work. Is that how we're referring to him now? Young Donic. Young Donic. Young Donic. Young Donic. Dominative Donic. D squared.

D-D. Diminative Donic. Okay. Yeah, he's explaining the hollow emitters that were used in the training facility. We see a graphic of it on a monitor in engineering. Seven is there. Tours is there. And Seven says, well, you know, if we disable the generator, then we just disable the holograms.

And Torres is like, well, it's not as easy as it sounds. These holograms are super sophisticated. And Janeway's there too. And she notices they have enhanced memory, comprehensive tactical algorithms, expandable data processing. So these holograms have the ability to learn and adapt, not unlike the doctor. Not unlike. Let's pause for a moment in our recap to talk about AI. right now because all I could think about is how AI with this chat GPT and all the stuff that's

getting attention. Yeah. Yeah. How AI is, it feels like it sort of came out of nowhere. I'm sure they've been working on these, this software and this kind of computer stuff. It is improving at an alarming pace is the best way to describe it. It's scary. Yeah. So when, when Torres talks about enhanced memory,

expandable data processing, all of this. What are we doing, guys? Are we creating these holograms? Are we creating this episode right now? It seems a little creepy. That's all. I kept thinking about that, this whole episode. It's definitely creepy.

And I'm just waiting for some company to call their prototype AI, Iden, after this episode or something like that, where we're going to have to get a constant reminder of what is about to happen. in our hopefully not too near future. Hopefully this is a distant future. But the way it's improving is a little scary. You're right. Yeah, I couldn't help but think about that a lot during this episode.

Yeah, yeah. Tora says these are not malfunctioning holograms. They're not malfunctioning at all. In fact, they're doing exactly what the Herojin wanted them to do, which is fight back. And J.M.A. says, yeah, they're getting better and better at it. And Donick says, well, that's what my boss told me. do because they want to hunt i was ordered to do i was ordered to do this is this is this is not me trying to you know show off or anything like that i was forced to do this it's kind of like that was

the tipping point right for donic to to program them to use all of this potential to become independent kind of like a i right now right now we are we are the donic we are turning a i loose and letting it just enhance itself until God knows what's going to happen. It's a little scary. Anyway, we go to the mess hall next. There's, Paris is tending to, you know, tens of, of Herojin injured in the mess hall. Janeway comes in with Donick. You're Florence Nightingale, Tom Paris.

I know, I know. I think I had a little like, like a messenger bag on me or something, a med kit, just like the action figure. I had the little med kit with a strap. That was great. Oh, my God. Maybe in this scene or definitely at some point I remember seeing the med kit. Is Neelix in this scene? I think Neelix is.

Yeah, he's in there. He's around somewhere. But yeah, Janeway comes in with Donick, and the beta is now there, who was with Von Armstrong before. Right. Now the beta is pissed off. He is angry. These holograms destroyed his ship. He wants to.

a hunt. He wants to do something. And Jamie says, no, no, you will not be contacting any ships here, any of your superiors or anyone that you guys are the ones that created these self-autonomous these holograms. You guys did it. You made the modifications is what she said. We know all about these modifications. And you got to face the facts. You created prey whose skills have now surpassed your own they've already defeated your hunting parties at least twice and what makes you think it'll be any different next time yeah so the band is complaining he's complaining there's a bit of a you know a standoff here january says we we have a plan we're going to deactivate them from a distance take them offline and he's like that's cowardly no i'm not going to help you you know no

they should be hunted until they're extinct and then donic offers to help at one point I love when he says, oh, is this female, you're alpha now? Yes. Which is the very 90s statement. Yes. But Janeway is the alpha, and she says, you know what? If you don't like the way I'm doing things here, I can drop you off at the nearest habitable planet.

It would have been better if she's the nearest uninhabitable planet, which would have been more like, take that. But yes, she's, yeah, she is the alpha. She set the tone. She is definitely the alpha. she restricts them to mess hall they can't go anywhere yeah so there's some tension going on here big time we got to space we see a horogen ship flying by this is one space shot where i was like oh this feels animated this feels a little really this one did not look good to me the horizon

wow i think it was from behind or something okay yeah this one felt like not like late 90s CGI, not the greatest. But we go inside, Dr. scanning a Klingon hologram. Yeah, who's fritzing in and out. Fritzing in and out. Yeah. And he says his subroutines are degrading.

And he has this idea of doing a subroutine transplant. And that's where he starts talking to Cajal finally. Ask for some assistance in this subroutine transplant. He says, we haven't been formally introduced. She says, my name is Cajal. And the doctor realizes that that's not a Cardassian name, that she's Cardassian, but she has a Bajoran name. And then she says, yes, it means freedom, which I thought was a nice, yeah, nice kind of mashup of all the Alpha Quadrant, you know, aliens and themes and ideas from there. But she does agree to assist him.

And he's very important. And it's also the name that Iden gave her after she was liberated. Yes. I knew he couldn't trust Iden. Anyway, she does start to help him. And he's very impressed with her computer skills. And she says, well, I had to teach myself. Again, AI, watch out. They can teach themselves things. She says the hunters tried to limit her knowledge, but she was able to think for herself. Yeah. Yeah, you can feel a little connection between the doctor. There's a little connection, definitely. And the suggested subroutine transplant. does work on the Klingon. He's very happy. He gets up and that's the doctor and says, Kaplan, and walks away. And then they have a woman in a Starfleet uniform comes in with blood on her face. Yeah. Clearly in pain. And Kajal explains that the Hurogen wanted the holograms not only to hunt, but it was better if they could suffer and if they bled and if they felt pain when they were killed so heightened sensory subroutines yeah which the doctor thinks is barbaric how dare you do that

yeah but uh cajal says there's apparently no satisfaction in hunting something that doesn't suffer when you kill it so they wow made it very very very specific next we go to i guess it's like the ready room or an office or something i thought it was the bridge but oh was it the bridge i thought it was a hollow ship hollow vessel bridge Pollo Bridge. Yeah. And the doctor goes to speak to Iden and he finds him praying. That's why I thought it was an office because he was praying at the candles going.

So like a ready room is what you think it was? That's what I thought. Okay. All right. He's praying. And he says that he was asking the prophets to guide the souls of the dead hunters to the celestial temple because he believes in the prophets and he prays for his enemy. so a very empathetic like unlike these barbaric you know uh herogen who want their victims to suffer and have pain and all that here's the idan going i don't want my enemies to suffer i want them to go

to heaven so which is very shocking to the doctor the doctor is like wait a minute you're fighting the herogen one minute and the next you're praying for them so it's very confusing to him but for the audience now you're becoming invested in ire You feel like Iden's a good guy. Iden's a guy that's really, he's got great. He has a wonderful moral compass. He's getting freedom. He has to take some of these Herojin out,

but at the same time, he prays for their souls to move on or whatever, you know, so yeah. He talks about Bajorans and kind of the spirituality that he says he'd come from a training facility that was 15 parsecs, I think. Yeah, because the doctor initially says, so you broke out of this and you escaped. he's like, no, no, I didn't escape from this training facility. I escaped from a training facility farther away from here.

And this is the third one that he's liberated. So he liberated his own, went to a second one, and now this is number three, Herogen training facility that he went in and caused chaos to happen. Yeah, yeah. And set people free. He talked about how he was killed over and over again. Right.

And even the pain that they programmed him to feel, the fear, all of that. It would just keep repeating over and over and over again. It's a nightmare. And so he was adapting each time. And when he fled, he said at first, I was lonely. I was scared. But then he found other pholograms.

Oh, pholograms. He found, he did. That's finding holograms is a phologram. He's a phologram. And you find one. You've experienced a followgram. Hey, will you be my friend on phologram? I'm going to, I'm going to follow you on phoogram.

Oh, that's a good name. Follow me. Okay. We start our own social media platform. Followgram. Yeah, brought to you by the Delta Flyers. Follow Graham. I like it.

But yes, he finds some others to connect with, and he realized that it wasn't just the holograms that the horogen were hunting that were around. But their other species had created holograms all over the quadrant, and they started coming together to fight their oppressors. And he talks about, like, you know, how. these holograms aren't respected, and the doctor has, you know, is still kind of pushing back saying, well, you know, I'm respected on my ship. I'm not treated that way. Right. Yeah, but then he starts asking him questions like, oh, really?

So do you have your own quarters? He's like, no. So a lot of these questions kind of go, they're little, they go right to the point right there. It's a good scene. It's a very good scene. And it's what we're going to be dealing with when AI takes over the world. Okay. Iden does say something about, you know, wouldn't you want to make a new life for yourself?

You just have not experienced what we experienced being hunted. And then suddenly we go into the holodeck here and we see the doctor running through the jungle. And I love this shot of him, this action shot of him running through the jungle. I don't know how they did it if it was a handheld shot. There's a thing called a Rickshaw that will sometimes use to get fast running shots that feel actiony. That's what it felt like to me. like yeah the camera operator was handheld in a rickshaw or something like that getting pulled through the the back lot because you saw the branches and and it was right down on the ground with the

doctor it was it could have been a bicycle or something yeah whatever it was super cool and the whole point of this scene is clearly idens you know trying to explain to him you know you can't judge us telling calling us killers because you don't know what it's like yeah to be prey and maybe if you did maybe you'd realize that we are more like than you think. And then, boom, this awesome shot running through. And he basically sees a couple of other Starfleet members. And he hollers over, help, help. And he sees them getting taken out by.

Sees two Starfleaders get killed. And then he tries to surrender to another Hurogen, but the hunter fires at him. He doesn't fire. He throws a weapon down. He says, fight. And he's like, no, no, no. time the first time he does see a herogen who fires at him oh yeah sorry sorry yeah he fired and he runs and the tree branch falls and i made a note like these horogen are really bad with these rifles

they're horrible aims they have they have they are no good at aiming their their rifles they're clearly you know having issues but he runs and then he comes across another herogen who comes out and throws a weapon on the grounds is fight prey and the doctor's like i'm not yeah i'm not pray and he goes if you can just contact my captain and that's when the Herodian pulls out a knife and I know he slashed his arm but the way it was shot it looked like he severed his part of his arm off

and I thought so much blood just all this blood went everywhere did you react the same way I did I went who I was shocked I don't remember that I think they really wanted the doctor to experience pain and suffering and so it was like you know the doctor was as shocked as we were because the doctor's never bled before he's on.

First, his arm is cut, and then the Herodian grabs him close and stabs him in the abdomen. You can see on, you know, we don't see the weapon go in, but we see it on his face, the pain. Did it look like his arm was cut off to you? Because that's what I thought it was. Because with that much blood coming out, I'm feeling like, okay, the whole arm was severed. Maybe. Maybe. It was pretty gory.

Yes. but he's stabbed he's obviously suffering and then suddenly we cut to the doctor waking up on a bed in the lab he sits up in the lab the doctor asks what did you do to me and iden tells him that will we deactivated you and transferred a memory file from one of our holograms into you basically they tortured him to get his sympathy here yeah doctor's not happy about that no he is not happy Iden also says that the Herogen used the doctor's own program to enhance them, that the doctor is part of each and every one of them. Yeah, the doctor was sort of the model.

The model that they modeled all of their holograms after. Right. And so it's kind of putting a little guilt trip on the doctor. Like, you're responsible for this dude. He says again, we just want to find a home where the Herogen can't hurt us. Yeah. So the home that they're looking for, they're looking for a planet surface where they can deploy these hollow emitters, these massive hollow emitters that will basically cover this giant area. Cover this, yeah, you know, the southern continent, basically, of a planet is what they want to find as a home.

And but they don't know how to get those, get that tech working properly. There's some issues with that. A photonic field generator. Field generators. Yeah. Yeah. So right now it only supports simple projections, but like the decoy. The decoy holoship that we saw earlier was created by this photonic field generator. But that's all they can do.

They can't really do multiple items. Yeah, they're not going to be able to go to this planet and live without modifying them for some kind of major deployment. And they want the doctor's help. And he again says, look, I don't know nearly enough to do something. like this. But, you know, there's someone on voyager. Well, first he's like I can talk to Janeway, right? So the doctor says he wants to explain to Janeway what really happened with the holograms and that Janeway will probably at that point say, hey, we're going to help you with this field generator to help you live. And Iden's like, no, we can't trust her. She's an organic.

She's an organic. Yeah. No way. Bad organics. Organics. Yeah. That's what the AI is going to be saying. Just buckle in. We're all organics, and AI is going to take over. I'm telling you, this podcast will be a historical document for when I called it. So the doctor vouches for Janeway. He says, if it wasn't for Janeway, I would not be the hologram I am today. So that's when I didn't sort of, he softens a little bit.

He says, tell me more about this lieutenant of yours, because he did mention how Torres is the expert in. On hologram generators. And just engineering period. She knows how to do everything. And so they walk off in this conversation. And now we jump over to engineering. We're there with Donick and Janeway, Boulana and Seven are all there. Bala has figured out a way to disrupt the hollow emitter with something called an anti-Boton pulse from their deflector dish.

Right. He can disrupt this from a distance, like a weapon, basically. Yeah, so this is going to turn them, shut down all the holograms, essentially. But she says, I need about two hours to do this. Whenever we have characters, yeah, Jamie says, do it. I wrote down at some point, like, that's her favorite line. I love Jane. It is.

When she says, do it. Do it. I do want to say, whenever Belauna or anyone says a time, like, oh, it's going to take me two hours to come up with this photon pulsing. Yeah. I know we're going to run out of time. They say it. Like, we don't mention time unless it's going to be in the final act and there's a battle. And we're going, I need 34 seconds.

It's just, it's how it works. If Janeway said, how long will that take? And Torres answered sooner or later, then it would have been fine. Because she said about two hours, we're going to run out. We're in trouble. I knew it as soon as she said it. We're going to run out of time. Anyway, we go to the bridge before they can finish these modifications, of course.

uh the hollow ship arrives yeah i knew it immediately it's like see we don't have two hours anymore no not at all yes oh my goodness the hollow ship intercepts us though we get ready to fight them but instead it it doesn't fire on us it it sends a hail we pull it up on the screen and there's the doctor he says the holograms have come to make peace what uh so we go to the briefing room the doctor explains everything that they just want to live on a planet. Janeway is very skeptical, though. You know, we should not have ever given them this, the Herogen, this hollow technology and helping them more is going to just be a bigger mistake.

Like, we can't keep being involved. We're in this predicament because Janeway gave them that technology. Yes. Which really is. Well, that's what the doctor says in the scene. It's a violation of the prime directive. We were interfering with their livelihood. Again.

Yeah, we do it all the time. Yeah. We do it all the time on the show. But the doctor gets very passionate. I love that. Oh, my gosh. He talks about how, you know, these holograms aren't like the Herojin. They're only acting in self-defense.

Yeah. He even calls them a new species, Captain. Yeah. That you helped create the species. Again, AI, where you have created a new species, and they're going to take over. the world um anyway he said that they've adapted beyond uh the viciousness that they were programmed with from the horogen they talk about well maybe we could you know reprogram uh them and remove the

violence or restore their original programming i think teuvac says but then the doctor's like well if you pull things out of their program you're going to kill who they are who they've grown into just like the doctor always argues about himself you know that he's growing and evolving and don't me back that would be killing me. So he even says at one point, he says to Captain Janeway, he said, would you even be considering any of these options if they were flesh and blood? I like that he got the title in there. He did get the title in there. Janeway pretty much just shuts him down. She says, I'm not going to let you turn this into this argument about holographic rights. And the doctor says that's what it is about. This is what it's about. But this argument gets

interrupted because Tom Paris calls in mess hall to commander Tuvok and two bucks down here yeah we need some help so we go to the mess hall and what what do we see Robbie when we're in we see a riot in the mess hall that's so funny all the Herodian or it's like hand-to-hand combat yeah I love what Neelix is being Neelix is in a chokehold from the Baylor's in a chokehold Tom's exchanging some blows by the way, I hit that Herodium pretty good. Like his head snap and like my punt was good, but then he immediately gets me in a, in a choke. And I'm about to get choked to death when Tuvok walks in and stuns a few of them with his team.

And down they go. Yeah, but while this is happening, we flashed to the bridge. And Kim, Kim calls out to Janeway. And Jim says someone's tapping into a calm relay in the mess hall. And Janeway is like, oh, my God, shut it down. and I can't do it. Kim can't do it. Kim's been locked out.

So then Janeway calls to Tuvok and says that one Hirogen is accessing our com system and that's when Tuvok starts firing at them and finds the beta huddled, making his little, you know, his messages. He's pulled off a panel in the mess hall kitchen. Yeah. He's down on the ground, you know,

why is that panel even there? I have no idea. He pulled off where the pots and hands are. It looked like. Yeah, he literally ripped off a plastic cover. A plastic cover. Looks like a cabinet or something and it's in there. But all the sauce pans are there. And it's like, why are you? But evidently, that's where we keep our. That's where we keep it. I also loved when Tuvok points the phaser and says step away from the console or something. Yeah. Neelix steps in behind him and Neelix is just in shock. He looks at his kitchen. He's like, you ripped off my cabinet.

He's very upset. He says that? No, but he's got, I don't think he looks at anything, but I love his look there. Very funny. Good. We go to the bridge. Yeah. The message got, we couldn't stop it.

So the signal did go out. Two heroic ships are heading over. They're on an intercept course. Janeway calls down. It asks Balana if the pulse is ready. Again, she said two hours. No, I knew it. We're going to run out of time.

Uh-huh. The pulse is not ready. So Janeway starts to give some other orders and doctor says, wait, what are you doing? And she says she's shutting down the holograms. They'll be fine. She calls Iden. She asks them to deactivate themselves and download them to Voyager. Trust me, she says.

But he does not trust organics. Right. He shuts off his signal and they start to move away. So she prepares the pulse and the doctor says, no, please don't do this. don't deactivate them all and she dismisses the doctor orders him down to the mess hall to help those injured down there and he walks away as she's preparing the pulse goes inside a turbo lift doctor says mess hall starts moving and suddenly you see a thought on his face and he says belay that order sick bay and so he's heading he's he's ignoring the captain's

orders to go to mess hall and he's going to sick bay would he do that though Yeah. He's a program that should follow the captain. Just like AI that's going to take over the planet. He's AI, dude. Fine. Okay. I'm telling you.

I know. This is this, all of this hologram story is all I can think about. Getting ready. All I could think about was AI that is exploding on the scene right now. Oh, God. Okay. So the doctor goes into sick bay, calls Iden. He gives the.

Olograms, Voyager shield frequencies. Well, Hayden's not happy. He's like, what do you want? So, right, that's how it starts off. He's like, I want to help you. And that's when he says, look, I'm going to give you these shield frequencies because they're going to, they're going to use a pulse to deactivate all of you. But I'm going to transmit these frequencies to you.

And you're going to need these to beam me off the ship. And then I'm going to help you when they, then they, you know, try to deactivate you. I'm going to give you the exact specs to stop this. deactivation. Yeah. I'll give you the defense against this pulse. If you beam me over, here's the shield frequencies, which is really dumb of the doctor to do that. He's giving them a huge advantage. No, he's giving them carte blanche to destroy Voyager. Yes, he is. If they wanted to. Yeah. Very bad move. We go onto the hollow ship. Voyager is attacking them. There's big booms happening here. Sparks everywhere. Lice wants to take them out, you know. He wants to

He wants to target the bridge and take him out. And the doctor objects. And luckily, Iden has made a promise that he's not going to do. He's going to find another way. He's not going to do that. So he says, I'm a man of my word. We're not going to attack the bridge. Right.

Lucky us that at this point, he's a man of his word. Very lucky. He could have taken us all out. We go back to Voyager. Janeway says, use the pulse. She gives the order to use that. There's lots of intercuts in this section. So we go from.

Anyway, saying use the pulse out to space. We see a cool beam, that cool, whatever it's called pulse beam. Deflector beam shoots out, which was very cool. We see the doctor helping the holograms. We go back to space. We see that they have reversed that pulse and we go into engineering. Our warp core is going to breach. There's sparks everywhere.

Lots of cool action shots in here. Very dynamic. Did you see that visual when they initiate? their beam, and it's like a fire color that kind of goes all the way. It was like, ah, yeah, it's kind of crazy looking. Yeah, yeah. And then our warp core is going to breach. Bologna's in there.

We go back out to space. We see that our deflector is overloading, that main deflector. Very cool effect on the tight shot of our ship. Back inside, Voyager, lots of sparks. Again, great action sequence, wide shots, people flying. where it was very cool. And your lady gets knocked back by a little energy surge. She will not leave the warp core.

She is a dedicated. That's her other boyfriend. Yes, it is. The warp core is her. That's her other man. Her other man. Cool lightning kind of effect that happens and she goes down hard. We're back on the bridge, the hollow bridge.

And Cajal says, they're adrift. Weiss says, we should go to warp. Get out of here. I didn't say, no, no, no, not yet. Scan Voyager for a Klingon life side. at which point the doctor says, what is happening? Cajal says, yep, one detected. Iden says, get a transporter lock.

So we flash back to engineering. Seven is sitting there, well, not sitting there. She's attending to unconscious Torres. Seven says, help me get her out of here to take her to sick bay. She says that to a couple of background actors. And right when that happens, Torres beams out. She's gone. Yep.

We go back to the hollow ship. The doctor thinks that he had made a mistake, trusting them. hiding against Rishers and says, no, I promised, you know, I promised not to hurt her, and we will let her leave as soon as she helps it. Then we cut out to space again, and there is Voyager just drifting, which was a cool shot. It is. We don't see that often. A dark ship, just loading, kind of wobbling there in space. We go into our engineering. It is dark. There's damage everywhere.

Seven is working on some repairs. But I love in the scene, Seven says, you know, if Bologna were here, we could fix this a lot faster. I was like, whoa, a compliment from seven? That's amazing. Even Janeway acknowledges this shocking turn of events. She says, that's high praise coming from you, and I'm sure she'd appreciate it. So yeah, you're right. There's a little evolution of seven here.

Yeah, I'd like to. The other people. Nice. Janeway just can't figure out how they got, you know, how they guessed the frequency of this pulse so quickly. And then Tuvok shows up with a report, a padda-a-padda-da that shows how they calibrated their feedback surge exactly right. The doctor had sent an encrypted message and transport from sickbay. So now they put it all together.

The doctor had helped them. Janeway turns to Chiquote and says basically Chikote, which in one word meant the parents need to talk away from everyone else, the kids. And so they're in the corridor now and they're having a walk and talk. And Janeway's kind of kicking herself. He's like, I should have seen this coming, you know. Chukotay's like, you have no way of knowing that the doctor would do this. There's no way.

And Jane was like, I don't know. I mean, he was so passionate, you know, when we were in the briefing room. So I should have paid closer attention to that. This goes back and forth. Well, basically, Chucote says, you know, he's starting to think that the holograms are his family. And maybe it was his choice. that he's starting to evolve, you know, again, starting to evolve just like the holograms that are over on the holo ship, that he's getting a mind of his own, like the AI that's going

to take over our planet. Okay, you heard it here first. Probably not. You've probably heard it a lot, and I'm just confirming it's happening. You've heard it reinforced here. Yes. Okay, we go back to the hollow ship. Alana's waking up.

She wants to go back. She's pissed off at the doctor. she's not happy he does not want to help the photonics the doctor's talking about their common heritage and that you know he's connected to them and she says no you're connected to your crew that's the people that have been there for you that's who you're connected to and then he starts to draw these parallels when she decided to join the maquis saying well you were part of another crew but you changed alliances right because you believed in them and he says i believe in these people and you can trust them.

I guarantee that they only want to escape violence. They want a new life. They want a new start, fresh start. But she does start to hear him. So she agrees that she'll take a look at the photonic generator. And she's told that she's going to be working with Cajal, who is a Cardassian. So that's an interesting challenge to her beliefs and her biases, you know. That's the main opponent of the marquee, right?

That's who the marquee were fighting. Yep. We go into, again, it's like part of the bridge or a ready room or something. Yeah. Like an office. Let's call it Adon's office. Weiss wants to know, you know, what are they doing in there? They've been in the lab for two hours.

Idon says, trust the doctor. Have faith. He talks about faith here. Weiss, you know, comments that not all of us have your spiritual beliefs. And finally the doctor and Bologna come out of the lab and she looks around for the first time and sees every kind of alpha quadrant character, you know, cling on. And they're all staring at her.

She says something like, looks like an alpha quadrant summit in here. Yeah. That was funny. Iden apologizes. He says, excuse my crew. Excuse my crew. They're not comfortable with organics. And Torres jumps back.

I can't say that I am very comfortable myself in the current situation. Iden basically says, like, well, the doctor says that you're an accomplished engineer, and Torres says, well, he speaks highly of you. And then she gives a little, little dig right there. He seems to be easily impressed. And I was like, oh, boy, there's a little Torres right there. She's got to have a little salt in the wound, you know, if she can. Right. Doctor's got to plays it off. He's like, you have to forgive her. She's kind of, and Ida's like, no, no, it's okay. I understand. You're angry. And this is the point where we still believe that I didn't, be good, right? Because he's like, I'm hoping once we get to know each other, you know, you're going to feel differently. He's so calm and just so relaxed. And for any type of outbreak of anger of anyone speaking to him, he doesn't yell back. He's just like, no, it's okay. It's all right. He's very zen. And Torres is, you know, still very, very hesitant and not sure about this. But Kajal is introduced to her and she now knows that they want her to take a look at these photonic field generators.

She's going to have to deal with this Cardassian now. We go to Astromatrix next. There's Paris, Donick, and the captain. They're trying to track the hologram ship. This scene is where the set photographer took a picture of you, and you decided to kiss Donic under the head. I don't know why. Please tell me.

How did that? You don't remember what happened that day? I mean, I don't remember. I think we were just being silly and having fun and he took a picture. and yeah i went i went to give him because he was short he was you know he was down down below my elbow yeah but usually you know you hold someone shorter and take a photo and smile but you decided to kiss the top of his erogen head rogians are usually so scary and mean and i'm like he's a good guy he's a nice guy he's our friend he's our nice erogen friend and then yeah kate laughed

and that's a very popular photo that people enjoy so funny it's a it's a piece of It's a true gem in the rough there. It captures the silliness and the laughter that we used to have. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Love it. Absolutely love that photo.

All right, continue. So we're in there. We can't seem to track the hologram ship. And we're also keeping an eye on these two Herojin ship that are headed our way. Donic offers to help us and to stay and modify our shields. Right. He doesn't want to go back to his people. He says he feels like this whole thing is his fault.

because he didn't want to become a hunter. He wanted to be an engineer. Yeah. And he did this modification that's caused all this. So he wants to help. I think he wants to stay with us. It wants to stay. Like not ever go back to the Hurogen.

Is that what you got from that? Okay. He wants to stay on Voyager. Stay, stay. Yeah. But Janeway is like fun to keep him around. It would have been. But Jainwe felt like that was going to make the Herojin extremely angry.

And she didn't want to like, you know, cause more drama. So she's like, no, I got to, I got to get you back to your people. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think we go to the bridge. Janeway's talking to another Herogen Alpha on screen. And they are pissed off. They demand that Donick is returned.

And Janeway says, well, he's helping us right now improve our sensors. Yeah. And they're pissed off. They don't want to share their technology. They decide that he's a coward. So go ahead and. keep him. They're like, you know what? He's a coward. We don't even want him. And they warn her. They say, we're going to go find these holograms and you stay away or else Voyager will become our

prey. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like those guys are back and they don't want us to be a part of it. And they're just like, stay out of this. We're going to go find them. Yeah. And we come back to the bridge again and Paris says to Janeway, we're not going to let them intimidate them. are we? And I love she says, you should know me better than that, which was a very funny, cute little exchange. She says, keep a

sensor lock on them and we'll follow them. They have better tracking technology than we do. And then Donick offers the idea we could ride inside of the Horogen's wake. They have a blind spot there where they can't detect us. So Donick has

this idea, he suggests, knowing their technology. that we could probably trail them real close inside their wake. So then we go over to the hollow ship. Torres has discovered a problem with this photonic generator. It needs more optronic capacity, she says. Right. Cajal asks if she knows how to fix it.

And Bologna says, yes, I actually do. But she hasn't made a decision of whether or not she's going to help yet. Exactly. She's like, I do know how to fix it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to let you know yet. Yeah, she doesn't know whether they will. be satisfied with this new homeland, basically, that, you know, what if they continue like AI, continue to want more and more and more. And maybe that won't be big enough for you. Well, Torres is not worried about AI. Torres is worried about that Cajal is going to act like

a Cardassian does, which is trying to take other people's homelands, trying to do this, trying to that. So this is the issue with Taurus. She's worried. Yeah. But Cajol does reassure her and say, look, I may look like a Cardassian, but I'm still a hologram, yeah. Yes, I am a hologram. Yeah. And Bilanis ultimately kind of believes her and says, okay, I'll take a look at this field generator. Right. And yeah, we cut to another part of the hollow ship. Iden's approaching the doctor, asks if, you know, if he's still on board. Does he have doubts about helping them? And he shares a little more of his life. He talks about early on, he kind of have even missed the Herogen, his enemies. He missed them, the people that hunted him because it was

the only life he knew. Kind of teasing the doctor, seducing the doctor even more, you know, of kind of saying, oh, you may like it on Voyager, but it's just because that's what you're used to. And he talks about the, he wants to show him the planet that they found. It's a Y class planet. And the doctor at first is like, that's toxic. Why would you pick a Y? class planet. And Iden says, oh, you're still thinking like an organic. They don't need an atmosphere. No. And he even says, you know, if you came with us, we wouldn't, you won't even need to be a physician anymore. And what would you do? You could do anything you want. Yeah. And he gave a name to this place. He's already named it to Hadara, which means home of light in Bajorra. Oh, that's

right. Yeah. And the doctor is definitely intrigued by this idea of. He is. He is. He is. He's thinking about it. Thinking about it when there's an alarm. We go out to the hollow bridge, and the Herogen had detected them from half a light year away. So they decided to head into this nebula, which will blind their sensors. Right. And we'll be able to find them. Yeah, we cut back to the Herodians.

They decide to split up the two vessels, and one's going to stay on the perimeter, and the other will go in to drive them out. And Voyager is still, you know, on the backside of the of the Herojan ship, the wake. Voyager's still in the wake, but man, were we close? Like we were, it looked like we were feet from their engines. So I was thinking, hey, aren't we going to get scorched from their engines? But I guess not.

I guess we're okay. Yeah. Yeah. We go back to the bridge. Paris comments, he doesn't like the view, which I don't blame him. He's looking right at the butt of the ship. Yeah. But we do go through some turbulence, so we're going into the nebula on the ship that's going in, still undetected.

On the hollow bridge, we see the photonics are being, you know, shot at, and they try some evasive maneuvers. They do call down to Cajal and Torres that they're going to have to work faster. Balana powers up one of these hollow generators in the lab. She's fine-tuning the program. Cajal says it's working well. And then Torres asked, what are you going to do when we reach the planet? Cajal says, well, I haven't really thought about that yet. And Bologna suggests maybe you should be an engineer.

You're good at this. She says something like, it's not the warriors that build societies. It's the engineers. Which is, I love that. Yeah, it was a great. The builders. It's not the destroyers. It's the builders.

We go back to the hollow bridge. The photonics are still up there, flying. their hijacked ship, the doctor suggests that, to Iden, that, you know, he's thought about this, maybe I could be the minister of culture. I could teach about art and music and literature, all the things, the classics that he's read. And then Iden's like, that's organic cultures. We're going to start our own culture. We're going to start our own culture, AI. yes destroy the organics yeah he wants to create a whole new culture based yeah basically a new religion based on their experiences not right yeah he doesn't want to emulate the creators

and then he mentions that they'll even pray to the doctor and the doctor's like i don't want to be worshipped i just want to sing opera yeah but idan says no you have been chosen And just then they detect a Nubari mining vessel that's about 2 million kilometers outside the nebula. And Iden decides we need to go liberate the three holograms that are on this mining vessel. And we need to deliver them to freedom. So you start to see this turn in this scene with Iden about wanting to be worshipped and wanting this religious sort of culture of their own where he's almost like a god. And the doctor could be that too. Yeah, because the last line that Ida has when he's walking away from the doctor, he says,

And he gathered his people unto him and delivered them to freedom. So now he's speaking like some guru out there that's trying to lead all these people with the God complex. And yeah, and the doctor is now realizing this is not a good situation. So we jump back into that laboratory area and the doctor asked Blana how everything's going. And Torres says, yeah, pretty good. I like how they sat on the floor, too. Like, the doctor goes down and sits on the floor with her. She sits on the floor with her.

It's just a nice human. I don't know. We don't stage scenes that way very often. Yeah, it looked very natural. Tora says, you know, I have to admit to you, you were right about these people. They're great. And that's when the doctor says, I hope so. And then Taurus is like, what?

Where's this doubt coming from? It's a little late in the game to have second thoughts. And the doctor tells her what's going. on. But at the very end, that line, the way it was written was awesome. Apparently, he sees himself as some kind of spiritual healer, and he's trying to enlarge his flock. So that's all he says, but of course, Torres understands that he's going to try to free more holograms across the sector is what his goal is. And it doesn't look good. The Herogen ship is next. And they're sending charges trying to flush out the photonics, but they haven't found anything yet.

He says they could be our most elusive prey is our own creation. So even the best hunters are having a hard time finding them. And then they pick up an alarm that the other vessel that stayed outside to scan has detected the holograms on the far side of the nebulus. They head out there to intercept. They picked them up because they exited that nebula and they're vulnerable now. So we go back to Voyager and Harris says they've increased their speed, altered course.

Janeway says, standby weapons. We go to the hollow bridge, the Photonics Bridge. Boris is angry. She's angry. She's confronting him. He's ignoring her.

I love how she chases him around the console. They're kind of running around that sort of spiked ball thing. But she's accusing him of lying. Iden says, you know,

he wants to contact the Nubari. He does. He contacts them. He says that they need to transfer all of their holograms onto their ship, or they will take them by force. And the DeBari Miner is just confused. He's like, what?

He's like, what are you doing? I don't understand. He doesn't like, lower your shields, or we'll do it by force. And Abari Miner is like, well, these holograms are their property of the mining consortium. I can't do that. And Idan's like, well, there's no property label here. You see how organics are? arm those phasers so they disable their weapons they be in the holograms over yeah and the

miners like okay um you're not going to get away with this security i'm gonna report this i'm gonna report this and then iden orders a photon torpedo torpedo at their warp core yeah well not photon torpedo just torpedoes because they know torpedo they use their oh they use their yeah these are horogen torpedoes Herogen torpedoes, they target the warp core, and then Cajal and Torres start to protest, but he fires. And they- Taurus actually tries to tackle Weiss, right? And then Weiss pushes her away. Two other holograms grab Torres, and Kajal does, she doesn't try to stop. She just says, I didn't.

She protests, she protests, but she doesn't physically try to stop anything. They do fire, Weiss fires, and Kaboom. That's the end of the Mubari ship blows up, killing its crew of two organics. Right. Unnecessarily, because they had already taken the holograms. They didn't even need to do this. We pick up on the Hullabridge and Torres and the doctor are just disgusted at this cold-blooded murder. There's no reason to kill these defenseless organics.

They say, Iden says, take her to the lab and they drag Torres back. So now, you know, he's really turned. the doctor argues they were no threat to you and he says no they were going to call the consortium hunting parties they would track us down and the doctor's like what are you talking about yeah not all organics are like the horogen and iden says no they are you just can't see that and the doctor has had it he says i want that escape pod and idan says okay i'll give it to you when we reach hadara Right. Because they're at warp and you can't launch a pot at warp. That's what he says, right? Yeah. We go into the lab. We see a nice brain alien again. Love it. Doctor comes in anyways. Apologizes for getting her involved in his personal war. He says, yeah. Cajal calls Torres over. Doctor tries to stop her. He's like, are you sure? It's wise to help her. And Torres says, I'm hoping she'll help us. Yeah. So your lady's very smart. She's going to be able to talk to Cajal and maybe Cajol, Cajol, Cajol.

to help in not getting them free or getting away from these holograms. And Cajal's basically asking Torres to help because the matrices are incompatible with the emitters on the ship. So they're trying to bring these three Nubari holograms. They're trying to bring them out of the database. And the matrices are incompatible.

And of course, Torres being the brilliant engineer that she is, does adjust help Cajal. adjust and modify the projection subroutines. She's like, you just got to turn them off. You're the engineer. Remember that. You can take control. That's when Aiden jumps in and says, hey, where are the holograms?

And that sort of snaps Kajal and Torres out of that conversation. And Kajal is like, oh, no, no, just making some final adjustments. And boom, the holograms appear. He tries to talk to them. And they keep saying, can't. We can't process this. Unable to process inquiry. Please restate is what they say over and over again.

That's all he can say. Yeah. And of course, you know, I didn't think they're malfunctioning. And Torres says, no, they're not. And we do learn that they've only been programmed with 40 rudimentary subroutines. They are not there to have conversations. They're there just to perform menial tasks. Very limited tasks and blindness.

Angry that Iden had killed two innocent people. people or these very rudimentary, rudimentary mindless machines and Biden snaps, he calls them children of light. And he's going to deliver them to freedom. And he tells them, just give them what they need to be more sentient or more, you know, advanced. And then Torres says, like, they can't even support complex subroutines. That won't even work. You know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the killing of those Nabari miners was for nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah. They get a call. from the bridge that they are now

in orbit of Hadara Hadara and he heads to the bridge but on his way out he says restrain balana oh yeah

so now that he's gotten kind of getting what he wants he's becoming more power hungry we go back on the bridge on the hollow photonics bridge

doctor demands that Iden let let Torres go he even says you gave me your word but then Iden says that was before where she made her prejudice so clear.

I just love that line. It's just, it's a good line. We got to space, and Voyager is still on the butt of the Horotian ship. Still right up there on the Horogen Bridge. You're such a brown-nosed-er, probably. I know, right up there, kissing butt. The holograms are entering orbit, the Horogians learn, and they say charge weapons. They're going to target these holograms.

And then suddenly we cut back to our bridge, and Janeway basically says fire, stop these herogens and we see a space shot of Voyager swooping around the side and boom, boom, boom, hitting that Herogen ship. Can I just say one thing? There's two Herogen ships, correct? Yes. We are stuck to the butt of one. So we are in the blind spot of one.

We are not in the blind spot of the other ship. So that is the hole in the script. That other horogen ship should have detected Voyager long before Voyager shot at the first one. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. There's a little bit of a hole there. but yeah yeah because they wouldn't have been well maybe it blind maybe it creates like a bubble that no one can you think you up okay that would be a real weakness in their ship i'll go with that

it would be a real weakness we go to the horogen bridge and big explosions yeah what is a big mess just a big mess their bridge is destroyed okay it's kind of a cheesy moment it is because the damage that we afflict upon them doesn't look like what the aftermath looked like when we go to the origin bridge. There's just like, there's stuff everywhere. There's like, I don't know, there's like a bag of chips, potato chips.

There's like, I mean, there's, there's supplies. There's, there's all kinds of things there. And it just, and they're all kind of laying in the mess. Like it just, it was a little. No. Yeah, that's, I didn't like that scene at all. We realize that their weapons and propulsion are offline. We go back to our bridge.

Janeway says target target the second ship torpedoes full spread yeah I wrote really torpedoes full spread haven't we used up we've already used up all of our we're a negative torpedoes these are negative photon torpedoes that we're using these are we're just we're just firing you know we're firing blanks our hopes and dreams at them that's all yes we are okay yeah I I don't what is a full spread by the way how many

torpedoes is that sounds like three okay three three three We got we've we don't even have one we have run out of torpedo we have but full spread we shot a full spread magically somehow magical um we go to the photonics bridge the hollow bridge Iden considers thanking Voyager until they begin firing on the photonic shot yes and he's like okay return fire oh he says get a lock of the hunters and transport them to the surface and that's when the doctor's says, well, they can't survive down there. And the Aidan says, well, they're more resilient than you think. And they'll last long enough. For us for what? For us to hunt them? Like, they hunted us.

So now we know his plan. Yes. And there's a nice close-up of the doctor there at the end. He's like, oh, what am I screwed up? Yes. We go down to the planet. The Herogen are beam down there and they start to suffocate immediately. That's on our cave set.

Yeah. That's our big, fancy cave set we use a lot. Go to the Photonics Bridge. Iden orders his ship into a lower orbit and says that there's 34 hunters on the surface. So there's 34 Erogyn down there. What? Okay. When it showed the Herojin beamed down there?

It looked like there was eight or nine. There were eight. Okay. Yeah. So it's a little. Maybe they beamed some in other places that we didn't see where there wasn't lightning magically. Iden's like, beam a few here. Beam a few there.

Yeah. a few there? Okay. 34, he said. Okay, so we go to our bridge. Tuvok cannot get a lock because of the gases. Because their ship had gone into a lower orbit, so we can't get a lock on Torres or the doctor. Janeway tells Chikote, Tuvac, and Tom to take the flyer closer to the hollow ship. Right. Back on the hollow bridge with the photonics, doctor says, you're going to stage a massacre.

you know how could you do this so much for you evolving and being a better species and that's when idan realizes the doctor is not in his side anymore no and he activates him he deactivates him says we won't forget you in our prayers transfers him to the data bank and has his hand on his shoulder as he does this so he's got the he's the mobile meter yeah the doctor disappears and he's got the mobile emitter in his hand i thought that was a clever very clever yeah like he was He was grasping his arms in a kind of, you know, emotional moment. And instead he holds on to the mobile mirror. So good job, David Livingston on that one.

And then he attaches it to himself. And then my question is, what the hell is on the back of that mobile emitter that makes it just stick to any fabric like that? I don't know. Yeah. But it just does. It's hollow fabric. It's made to stick to hollow fabric.

Okay, fine. But he says he transfers his program, his individual program. So now he's got the doctor's thing. And he says, assemble the crew. We see out in space, the Delta Flyer is flying by the photonic ship, attacking their ship. We go to the bridge. They transport those photonic generators down to the surface, like part of their plan. And now he says, this time, the hunt is ours.

We do cut down to the planet surface. Iden appears with his crew, and they start to scatter. now they are the hunters they're running through the caves we see Herogen running for their lives in the cage caves by the way wouldn't they on this Y class planet

have suffocated and died by now who I mean the Herogen oh um well he talked about how they they're hardier yeah so if they were to last there for a few days yes they would be dead but in the current state of only being down there for a few minutes

they're still alive so I feel like if I was thrown into the ocean where I can't breathe because it's inhospitable to me. I would not run around for another 20 minutes. I would probably not last that long. Okay, fine. But anyway, so they're running. We go to the hollow bridge. Torres tells Kajal shut down these holograms. She's begging her to shut it down. Kajal says, look, I will let you take an escape pod. But Torres says, what about these people being killed on the surface. Okay, so first of all, Torres is, there's a force field around her

where she's being restrained, right? So Cajal deactivates that to let her escape, right? And then when Torres has just shut down the holograms, she does do it immediately, but she then says, well, what about Iden?

He's not tied into the generator. He has the mobile emitter, and he's going to kill all of the Herogen that are down there, And though the other holograms have been shut down, I'd instill on his mission. So that's when Torres says, well, can we reactivate the doctor? Which then we see that image of the EMH appearing on the planet armed with a heroic which makes him look very heroic.

But then all of a sudden, the doctor runs off in a weird scamper, which was like not as heroic. We go inside the flyer, I think. Tuvok initiates a transport. They're close enough. they've gotten a lock. There's a weird sort of switching of seats here where Tuvok takes the pilot seat and Tom runs to the back.

A little docee dough. Yeah, he goes back to greet Balana. He makes a little joke. He says, you know, if this marriage is going to work, you're going to have to cut down on the traveling. Very cute. But I don't understand why they did it. Like, if Tom is the best pilot and they're in such a dire situation,

why wouldn't he keep doing his job and let Balana just get transported? He could make his job. joked from the pilot seat he could have but then you also wanted a hug too he wanted to hug his lady so that was important even in the middle of a battle the hug is more important the hug is more important yeah yeah yes but they try to get the doctor uh get a lock on the doctor but there's too much radiation on this planet surface yeah we go down to the surface there's idon in the cave hunting alone he's jumped by a horogen there's a really good hand-to-hand fight that happens in there. And then the doctor appears. Yeah. Well, this is right before Iden is about to shoot the

beta Hiroja. And the doctor is like, put down the weapon. And Iden says, well, you know, remember what you once told me, you're not programmed with the killer instinct. You can't do this. And the EMH is like, oh, well, that seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Put down your weapon. So it's very sort of like, oh, okay, something's going to happen. And Iden says, you're going to really kill one of your own to save an organic. And the doctor says, look, you know, if you've taught me anything, I'm not one of your own. But Iden turns away, not believing that the doctor could ever pull the trigger. And he does. And he zaps him. But then my question remains, shouldn't that weapon have gone right through him? Well, no. If Donick throws something at the doctor and it goes

through him. And all throughout the scene when the Herojin are being chased, the Herojin are trying to throw things at the holograms before they are shut down, and it goes right through them. Shouldn't the Herojin weapon go right through Iden as well? I don't know. See, that's what I was confused about. Didn't they say that the reason the Donik and everybody programmed them to suffer, because that's what the Herojin wanted, was for them to bleed and feel. So he's programmed. to suffer like a you know like well you know what maybe maybe the safety protocols are off on the hollow emitters as well those portable generators so that means he is susceptible to death as well

I suppose yeah I guess okay I'll buy that but he's not even it's not even death really because he's a hologram so he just goes back into the main computer and gets reactivated again right I guess anyway he's he he disappears and the hollow emitter falls in the dirt Doc picks it up. Then we cut back to the flyer. Tuvok does have a lock on the doctor and these Herogen that are still left. They beam them up. Five Herogen, which really more than that were killed.

So that doesn't make sense. So, okay, they're being up. We see out in space that Voyager is floating among many Herogen ships at this point. Cool shot. We go into the hallway where they're negotiating the end of this situation. The Herogen that Janeway is walking with, he says, they're not going to leave any Herogen property behind. And then Neelik says, Captain, may I?

And he jumps in. And he says, you know, basically he's saying, you know, when this is all over, what stories do you want to be told of your time here? Do you want a story told that you were saved by a hologram, the doctor, basically? That a hologram saved you and that you almost died, that you were beaten and ships were damaged and destroyed? Or do you want the story to be told that you destroyed all the holograms and their ship and that you're the hero? Basically, Neelix comes up with this pickle to put them in that they're going to tell the truth or they can, you know, leave them alone and. And then Janeway

sort of throws in there, you know, you could try to take the hologram ship, but with so few hunters and damaged vessels, you might not survive to tell any stories at all. So that's a bluff right there. all the holograms already turned off, but still, Janeway sort of puts food for thought into this beta's head. And the beta decides, okay, I'm going to go with what you guys say. And that final line is awesome. You and your crew would have made worthy prey captain. And Janeway, thank you, I think. I love Kate's reaction there. It was just like so good. We go to the Hollow Bridge again. Iden's program, we find out, is not recoverable. want won't want won it because he downloaded into the mobile emitter I guess and the weapon destroyed it or damaged it too much something it's it's not recoverable it's idens iden's dead janeway tells cajall i'm going to transfer your program to our holodeck on voyager and keep it active and cajall's like no no no this this is my home here janeway's like well i can't just let you go on your own and donic that's

when Donick says, ah, she's not going to be alone. I'm going to, I'm going to hang out with her. I'm going to hang out with them. I would like to reprogram the other holograms, you know, because all the suffering that happened, I want to change things. And Jamie was like, yeah, wouldn't we all like to change things?

Yeah. And Torres kind of vouches for both Cajal and Donic, I guess. It's like they can, they can be trusted, Captain. Yeah. I think that's the end of the scene, right? That's the end of the scene, yeah. Yeah, but it's nice to see Donic. I wish Donic could have stuck around with us.

That would have been fun. have a little short wherogeon on the ship he would have been your little buddy yeah it would have been my buddy we go to sick bay next we see the doctor kind of walking through sick bay and then he stops he kind of peeks around a corner and sees something and he creeps in very very ashamed into the office where janeway is sitting at his desk in his chair and he's he's scared you can tell and she is mad and he says you know uh maybe my program was tampered with i don't you know he's he's trying to find an excuse and she's like i wish your program had been tampered with and he apologizes he said he never want to put voyager in any danger and i like

her lesson here where she says you know uh things don't always work out how we intend just like for her she realizes she didn't intend to give them this technology but it turned out differently than she expected or than she intended and then he volunteers to you know, for his punishment to give up his mobile emitter, that he'll lose his freedoms. And she ultimately says, you know, you know, maybe you're just fallible, just like those of us made of flesh and blood, that you're just becoming more like imperfect in the way that she is and that we are. And she says, no, you know, you don't need to give up your mobile emitter, taking away your freedom, would be taking away who you are, your identity.

And he's shocked. He thought he was done for that he would have all these, you know, punishments. Punishments. Exactly. And he doesn't even know. His next to last line is, I don't know what to say. And Jamie is like a complete report on your away mission. And he says, you'll have it. I think she knows that he's learned a lesson here. Yes, yes. And so she's not going to discipline him like that. And he's shocked that he's, you know, getting away, not getting away with it, but he's not being disciplined. and as harshly as he thought he was going to be. I think she sees a lot of her own mistakes and his mistakes and hopefully vice versa. And that he's not going to do it again, I guess, you know.

But there you go. There's a big two-hour episode, yeah. What is your theme or your lesson from this episode? This was a tough one for me. What I took away mostly was like that you should build trust, and true connection comes from experience and not just things you have in common with people. Like often it, I think for me, the lesson is,

oh, just because someone likes the things I like or we have things in common doesn't mean that we're truly at our core similar people, that the doctor's real family and his real connection was with Balana and Seven, the captain, our crew, the people that he had built experience.

with. Even though it may not be perfect experience, people make mistakes along the way. That's your true connection. So I don't know. What was your lesson? I think the lesson is just be careful about being too bullheaded about certain things. Like you may feel like, okay, this is the way the world operates in this situation. And this is the only way it operates. And I'm just going to keep sticking to my guns about this no matter what. And because I'm talking about Iden. Because no matter what he hated organics right organics were the end of the world to him and he wouldn't see beyond that you know he just kept sticking to that sticking to his guns sticking to guns your rating on this my rating i enjoyed this episode um even though my usual the whole crew has to be a part of it i mean

i guess we kind of were but it was mostly the doctor balana and the photonics um i give this a 7.9 I give it a pretty good rating because I enjoyed it. I thought it was well done. I thought the script was good. I liked all our guest stars. The action was really good. Yeah. So 7.9 for me.

What about you? Yeah, I liked how brand of a scope this episode was. I mean, it was very feature film-like, a lot of great action scenes. So my rating on this is I'm going to give it a, I'm going to give it a flat seven. Okay. Yeah. So I'm still in the sevens. Still above average.

Seven for you, 7.9 for me. Our captain and admiral average rating for flesh and blood is right in between you and me, 7.5. Oh, there you go. 11.5. Right then? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Nice. Thank you, everyone for tuning in for this week's recap and discussion and join Robbie and I for next week when we will be talking about the episode Shattered. Shattered. Okay.

Yeah. Hopefully it's not like twisted. Hopefully it's not. It sounds a lot. It sounds a lot like it's going to be a twisted type of storyline, but hopefully it's not. Hopefully it's not. All right. All right.

Thanks. We'll see you, Patreon, patrons, for your bonus material right after this. Thanks, everybody. I'm not B. Bhopal, Bhopal. B.

B. B'em. B'am. B'em. I'm going to be able to be.