The Delta Flyers - For the Cause

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.This week’s episode, For the Cause, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill,Armin Shimerman, and special guest host Penny Johnson Jerald. For the Cause: Starfleet Security warns Sisko that a Maquis smuggler is aboard Deep Space Nine, and it may be his girlfriend, Kasidy Yates.We would like to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers, Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Sandra Stengel, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, Roxane Ray, Tim Neumark, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Matt Norris, Jenny Cordina, Izzy Jaffer, Andrew Cano, Francesca Garibaldi, Jonathan Capps, Chris Garis, Sean T, & Cindy WoodfordOur Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Cindy Ring, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, David Wei Liu, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Andrew Duncan, Randy Hawke, Penny Liu, Stephanie Lee, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Heath K., Ryan Mahieu, Kevin Harlow, Megan Doyle, Jeff Allen, Tamara Evans, Deb Lahr, & Linda Paige. And our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Jake Barrett, Sab Ewell, Ann Harding, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carl Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Chad Awkerman, AJ Provance, Maxine Soloway, Heidi McLellan, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Renee Wiley, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Sarah, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, Heather Selig, Steph Davies, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, Annie Davey, Jeremy Gaskin, Sarah Dunnevant, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Eddie Dawson, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, Robert Allen Stiffler, PJ Pick, Preston M, Rebecca Leary, Karen Galleski, Jan Hanford, Katelynn Burmark, Timothy McMichens, Cassandra Girard, Robby Hill, Andrea Wilson, Slacktwaddle, Willow Whitcomb, Mo, Leslie Ford, Jim Poesl, Daniel Chu, Scott Bowling, Michael Jones, Ed Jarot, James Vanhaerent, Nick Cook-West, Brian Heckathorne, Kilian Trapp, Nelson Silveira, Ming Xie, Kit Marie Rackley, Gordon Watson, Andy Bruce, & Durrell Bishop.Thank you for your support!This Podcast is recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark, and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] Sponsors:* Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.com* Check out Uncommon Goods: https://uncommongoods.com/tdfSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers journey through the wormhole with Quark, Dax, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we make our way through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your hosts for today are my fellow Trek actors, Armin Schimmerman, Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself, Garrett Wong. Today we have a super, super special guest, Penny Johnson, Gerald. Yay. But back then, you were credited as Penny Johnson because this is before you got married to Grayland, correct? Oh, no, no.

No, you were already married to Grayland. No, Grayland and I've been married for over 40 years. Oh, my God. But something happened, and I had to change my name. Okay. And it's worth sharing that story. Great. We were at an event and someone called him Mr. Johnson.

Oh. And when we got home, he was Mr. Gerald. And he said, that did make me feel good. I got it. I saw that interaction. And to me, there's nothing more important than marriage to me. And so I called my agents. I said, okay, I have to use my whole name.

They said, so we want to do Penny Johnson hyphen Gerald? I said, no, I am not a hyphen. Johnson is my middle name because I promised my dad I would never leave his name. So I said, I'm hoping my full name. So that's why I'm, I was Penny Johnson, Gerald, like, overnight because of that incident. What a lovely thing for your marriage and for your relationship,

what that says about the two of you, being able to communicate so great and good for you. Take notes, everybody. Take notes. Absolutely, I have been taking notes because for years now, Whenever Kitty is called Mrs. Shimmerman, she just hits the roof. So I've never, she's never changed her name. I've never changed our name.

But I understand that anger at being called something that you're not. You know, he's who he is. You are who you are. You are not defined by your spouse. Yeah. Although, just called me Johnson every when I act up. Yeah. He said, you're a Johnson today, right?

And when I have accidents. because we're accident prone and he has the name for it while my family does. We're called John's Clause because we're accident pro so. Oh my gosh.

And I actually just had one of those moments too. Oh boy. I'm a Johnson every now and then. Okay. Okay. I put the hat on and I mean I literally put my Johnson hat on

because my has a bit because I'm like this girl who like if you look at my nails that are like horrible. I like get into stuff. And that's one of the reasons why like Cassidy so much because it was a big part of me. Like getting in there and doing it. So names are important.

And speaking of names, may I ask a question? You may not have an answer? You may not. Did Avery have a special name for you? Or did he just call you Penny? You know? That's a good question. You would spell it as P-E-N-N-Y, but when it came out of his mouth,

it never sounds like Penny. Oh, really? He would jazz it up? It was musical. Yeah. It was quite musical. And I'm married to a musician, and I am not a jazz lover, but I learned to appreciate jazz through the musicality of Avery's voice

and the conversation that we would have. Wow. We've talked about that. He definitely brings his love of jazz and music into, the way he delivers lines, the way he plays scenes emotionally, the shape of the scene. It's interesting. And especially off-camera.

When you're just talking to him just as Avery, he speaks in jazz is the way I say. And most people say when they talk to him, because that's how he interacts with you when the camera's not rolling. And he moves in jazz. He moves in jazz as well, exactly. I said that, ooh, it's so smooth. You know, like, I followed his career.

Mm-hmm. But I didn't know he was on Deep Space Nine before I ended up on Deep Space Nine. Oh, okay. I wasn't a Trekkie. Right. Unlike Grayland, who is. Graylin was a Trekkie. Yes.

But it was like I just remembered him as the Hawk. Yeah. Oh, what he represented on camera wasn't what everyone else was seeing. And when I say that, this is when I'm going to pull this card. he made the African-American community so proud to see this man who wasn't shaped in any other form other than he is this tall, dark, handsome, rhythmic, black, eccentric man. And he was powerful. And it met so much to us. And so I followed him with that. And so when I see him move like that, I mean, I even have to move. move my shoulders. I can't even describe him without moving, because that's what I got. And so when we finally were on camera together, Deep Space Nine, I felt myself always dancing with him.

Hmm. Hmm. That's fine. You know, that's a good way to put it. We all danced with him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've got a few birthdays to talk about Penny. Some exciting birthdays of our Patreon patrons, starting with Elaine Ferguson on October 28th. Happy birthday, Elaine. birthday, Elaine. Happy birthday, Elaine. Happy birthday to Elaine! Mr. Daryl Chang, your birthday is on October the 30th. Happy birthday, Daryl.

Whoa, happy birthday, Daryl. Almost Halloween. Yes, almost Halloween. And happy birthday, Daryl. Happy birthday, Daryl. And speaking of Halloween, Jocelyn Pina has her birthday on October 31st. Happy birthday, Jocelyn. Happy birthday, Jocelyn.

Boo. Happy birthday, Jocelyn. There you go. It must be terrible to have a birthday on Halloween. It must be terrible. I mean, well, everybody's getting excited about going trick-or-treating. It's your birthday and no one's really paying attention. Yeah.

I would imagine. And you have to hand out gifts to tons of kids. That's the other thing. You're not getting the gifts. You're handing them out all the time. Yeah, that's right. Oh, gosh, I would think totally the opposite. I would think that that's the opportunity for you to be anybody you want to be.

Oh, true, okay. Oh, I think it would be fabulous. Glasses half full. And everyone celebrates your birthday as well, if you think about it. Everyone's celebrating Halloween. So, okay, yes, that's a positive aspect. Penny, we also do a little quick synopsis of the episode. In the beginning, it was a me and a.

rendering synopsis. So now we have very, we've tightened it up. Robbie does a limerick and I do a haiku, after which Armin will do a, uh, esoteric pedantic conversation about the title of the title of itself, the origin of the name of the title. So Robbie, yes, he does his etymology. So Robbie, let's hear that limerick for, for the cause. Yes, here is my poetry synopsis for the episode for the cause. Ben and Cassidy have true love. You can't Deny. Then Eddington tells everyone there's a spy. Garrick has some hesitation of Zial's real motivation. Cisco's perfect love story will be hard to rectify.

Nice. Very good. Very good. There's my little synopsies. I like it. I like it. All right. Here we go. My even more concise form of synopsis as in the haiku, the 575 syllable poem. Here we go. Cassidy smuggles Eddington, the mastermind. Ben's love life on hold. Nice. Captures the essence there.

We both sort of ended with the love story, the love life. We did. And you both started with Cassidy. We did. Yeah. We did. All right. Armand, what do you have for the etymology?

All right. For all you word lovers out there. For the cause. The phrase for the cause does not have a single documented origin, but evolved from the Latin word causa, meaning reason or sake, and was adopted into Middle English around the 12th to 13th century. The specific phrase likely emerged as people began using cause to mean a purpose, a movement, or a goal worth fighting or working for. So Latin to Middle English, no French or German or any other. Latin to Middle English. Wow.

Cosa, Cosa. Que Cosa. Yeah. You guys are brilliant. Oh, well, thank you. I know you truly are, but I would just have two sentences for that. Yes. I'll be back.

I'll be here. Oh, I like that. Oh. Thank you for that. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Very good. I like it. I'll be back. I'll be here. Very good. All right. This teleplay, well, let's say the story. The story is by Mark Garrett. I almost thought, I thought, you know what? That's spelling. G-E-H-R-E-D, G. G.E-H-R-E-D, G. Gerard O'Connell, the story is by this individual. I thought I could change my name from G-A-R-R-E-T to G-H-R-E-H-R-E-D.

It's similar. All right, Mark Garrett-E-O-Connell. He's the story. he's the story man teleplayed by ronald d more directed by james l conway our good friend jimmy james uh also guest stars penny johnson as cassidy yates kenneth marshall hey kentith marshall lady before you go on yeah how many episodes had you done before this one do you remember uh wow wow well i guess enough for us to fall in love then right exactly i want to i want to say three it feels like you had done three right intro which which this was the first season that I know no no no you came on this is season four so you came on season like I think season one or two no not one no season two season

two I think it was three three I think Penny's right so I don't I really don't know the the answer to that they they kind of mesh it just feels like I was always there and then I was that child that they sent away, you know, I had two parents or something. Well, it's cool because, you know, if you think about this, you are the first African-American female captain in Star Trek Canon. You preceded any other female. Even, I think, would she have appeared before Janeway appeared then? Well, I've pulled up the episodes that you did. So you did one episode in season three. You did family business. That was the introduction of your character and then you did two more in season four before this you were in

way of the warrior and indiscretion yeah so a total of three episodes before this this this was only your fourth episode wow we were heated yeah that's why i asked because that first scene is is really quite sexy and um and i thought well how long had they been working together oh i can answer that though if you put it that way. And this is really the truth. Our chemistry was so electrifying that we knew that we were going to limit talking to one another or having any kind of communication off camera. It was as though we both, Avery happily married, Penny, happily married, and we both really honored marriage.

marriage but our chemistry was really like thick I mean it was crazy so we knew that we would that so we used it for the camera and that's what you got so it didn't matter if I hadn't done

one episode I don't know once in a lifetime you'll meet someone other than your spouse and it's like who wow you know so but we were we were pros

I never want to pat myself in the back being a pro but I know that's what it was it was professionalism and a great respect for one another but truly a great respect for marriage

and being able to be in this business and do well in this business but protect that thing that's most important to us that we actually come home to and at the end of this career thing that's what we really have good for you both

to kind of recognize that and to use the energy in the power of that in your work, but know where those boundaries are. That's great. Good for you. Robbie, what's the air date?

Do you have air date of that season three episode that Kenny was in? The very first episode? I'm just curious about when Janeway showed up on screen compared to it. May 15th, 95. So around the same time, they were creating the Janeway character. They were thinking of creating,

they were creating your character, Penny. So the idea of female actresses in captain positions was in the Star Trek writers' room. They were talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. So if it's May that they showed that episode, January is when Voyager premiered. So Janeway predates or precedes Captain Cassidy Hates. Janeway, we aired just around the same time.

I'm just before. Yeah, like four months, really. Months before, yeah. Like Captain Janeway, Penny, Cassidy Yates has just as many hairstyles. Like every episode is a different hairstyle. And the first one, thank goodness, they moved on from that one. I don't know. It came up like this and they tried way too hard.

Garrett, let me tell you. Oh. I sat in that chair and this, I had to call my husband because he's my manager. Then I had to call my agents almost immediately. Because they shaved my hair here. And I didn't sign on for that. And I said, you know, early on, and I was doing two other shows at the same time, too. So I didn't want this changed.

Right. And so, but they did change it. But because they changed that, I didn't recognize myself. And because I have a hairline, I'm hairy, and, you know, I have the hair, you know. And so they shaved it off, and I hated it. I hated it. And I said, I don't know if I'm going back there. And it was due to the hair.

Wow. And so the next time, I said, well, we're going to use my hairline, if you want me, back. And we had that discussion. It was about hair. You know what's interesting, Penny. I've talked to Michelle heard about this. and she was involved in this with the union and negotiations. In the hair departments, there's not been historically a great representation for African-American hair stylists and ethnic hair stylists.

And I've experienced that as a producer and director on shows wanting to improve that and wanting to bring in the right people for the actors that we have in the chair, because, you know, I don't know who was in the hair department exactly on DS9, but they were probably great with wigs for aliens and things like that. They were fabulous. But to shave your hairline is so inappropriate. Oh, my goodness. I mean, honestly, I'm still growing it back because I think some of the – so right here it's the – could be age.

But that's where they shaved it. Yeah. And Avery brought in his own hair person. Good for him. Because for the very reasons we're talking about here, he wanted to have a person of color to do his hairline. Who knew ethnic hair, who knows historically and has experienced that. That's absolutely appropriate. Well, you know, you have to, because I've been in this business for a very long time, I guess you guys too.

But as an African-American woman and having lots of hair, and nowadays there are wigs, there are weeds, and all kinds of things, but I never did that. I always had my own hair. And people who are not used to my texture hair, they were happy to try out. And my hair, I protected. You don't try out on my hair. So from almost the beginning, I would have my hair prepped.

And you'd have a producer or show, say, well, just come in, you know, it's no big deal, but yes, it is a big deal. It's been a really big deal because I'm an actress where once I'm finished in that chair, hair and makeup, I don't want to think hair and makeup because I want for the job. So I need to know that the person who's doing my hair or my makeup is quite adept at doing that so that I don't have to worry about it. I know there are lots of actors black or white or whatever who, you know, they want to do this. I'm not that girl. I want to leave your chair

being that character and then I don't want to think about it. Don't want to think about it for the rest of the day. I don't want to be too cute. I don't want to be too ugly. I want to be the character. So that was a big deal. But I fought for it and I think

Avery fought with me on that one. Interesting. And we won. Hey, I'm glad you stood up. I'm glad you stood up because my feeling is when you see that first hair, that they're doing, the ridiculous one. If I am distracted by staring at your hair, then the hair is not right.

I should be staring at your face, you doing the scene, not at your hair. And it was so distracting. So thank you for standing up and making sure that Cassidy's hair was done correctly. And, Armand, you had something to say right before I went into this whole hair segue. Yeah, going away, way back, it's no surprise. You were talking about the serendipity or the timeline between Voyager and Deep Space 9. And it's no surprise that this episode is about the McKee because at this time, the studio is prepping for the emergence of Voyager, which starts out with a dislike between the McKee and the Federation, which is the first part of your first episode. So we're sort of prepping for the onslaught of Voyager.

Yeah, that's exactly right. The onslaught of Voyager. It sounds like a reflection. But it was an onslaught. It was a tidal wave that subdued us. Really? We were totally lost when Voyager came on. It allowed us to do things that we wouldn't normally have been allowed to do

because no one was paying attention to Deep Space 9. They were all paying attention to this new show, Voyager, as they should. But the glasses half full, we were allowed. We weren't allowed. We did episodes that the studio would have said no to if they had been paying more. attention. Yeah, I think you're right. I think your show benefited from the lack of micromanagement. I think it did. Because it got significantly stronger. The stories and these big arcs that we're into now are so fascinating and so well done. The studio did not want linear stories. They

wanted episodic stories and Ira just didn't want to do that. Mm-hmm. Good for him. Good for him. Let's finish up these guest stars. Yeah, who else was in this? We have Kenneth Marshall, of course, is Michael Eddington, Tracy Middendorf as Tora Zial. So no longer Sia Baton, who we were used to for a couple of episodes. And now we have a new actress playing Golda Kott's daughter, Tora Zial, Tracy Midendorf. We have John Prosky as Barathol. One of my dear friends. Oh, he played the Bolian.

That's your friend. Yes, John Prosky. Also a member of Anteas. Oh, he was. He now lives on the East Coast. but was, and he is the son of Bob Praski, a very famous character actor, and John is a superb teacher, which is what he's doing now, and an extraordinary teacher, and he worked with youth that had been lost in society, and did a great job. He's a terrific guy, and I directed his wife, Kimiko, in production of the Crucible as well. That's great. Is he teaching Shakespeare or general acting?

He does. He teaches Shakespeare, but it teaches general acting. Great. And I can't remember the universe. I think it's in North Carolina or South Carolina, but he's been there for a number of years now. And it's Duke. What? Duke? It isn't Duke, but it's one of the universities on the East Coast in that area.

It might even be Georgia, and I should know and I don't know. Well, whatever university is, they're lucky to have them. It sounds like he's a really great teacher. And this is, this was, you know, forgive me, John, but this was a thankless role. And he does a nice job with it. Yeah. And had to undergo all of that makeup, really, which is always a problem. Mm-hmm.

You can never wash that blue. John Prossky teaches at Savannah College of Art and Design. Oh, Skad. He's at Scat, Savannah. Yep. Yep. Know that well. Know that well.

Great school. Great school. Cool. We also have Stephen, Vincent, Lee, or Lay. I'm not sure how he pronounces it, as Reese, as Lieutenant Reese. First of all, I'm excited that they have an Asian character without an Asian last name. That's great. And then this man pronounces, and the funny thing is when I started looking him up online,

I typed in Stephen, Vincent, and then immediately Busemi popped up. So Steve Busemi's middle name is also Vincent. And also he spells it S-E-V-N and not S-T-E-P-H-N like other people do. And then some weird, weird little thing popped up looking up, and Vincent Lee, and it said he was on this list, Robbie. It's on IMDB. He's on Jules' list of handsome and masculine actors. There's 243 guys on that, of which you and I are not on that, Robbie.

We're not on that. But Armin, you're not on either. Armine's on it, yes. Armine's like number 12, 13, and 14. Yeah, I'm at the very bottom of the list. I'm the footnote, yeah. But it's like all these real square-jawed guys in Hollywood. I go, oh, he made it on that one.

Because when I look at this actor, I think... He was very handsome. He's the prototype for the Asian Ken doll. You know, Barbie and Ken, he's perfect as Ken. Oh, my gosh. He would be. He really was good looking. And I didn't even think about him when we were doing it.

But I did re-watch it. And I realized, I said, oh, my gosh, he's fine. Now, Penny, the reason why you didn't notice it and now you notice it is because of a conversation we had in a convention. about a new show that you started watching. Do you remember the, it's the, the all-Asian cast show, the one that you were telling me about. Warriors. Warriors, right?

Warrior, yes, yes. Don't get me started off. Penny, Penny was saying this. I'm sitting there at dinner with Penny and her husband, Grayland, and Penny's like, oh, if this show would come out when I was young, I don't think I'd be married to Grayland right now. I'm like, no, no, don't say that in front of Grayland. And she was so, like, unnumbered with Asian men after that.

It was so funny. And now you see how handsome Stephen Vincent Lay is after your rewatch. But what I didn't tell you was that my first marriage proposal was from an Asian guy. Really? Wow. You didn't tell me that. Yeah, he was madly in love. And I didn't know he was going to propose.

And a year later, I'd married Grayland. But he was in the Marines. and this was at the Marines, the ball. And I guess he told everybody, which was... Oh, no. And I said, I can't marry you. I'm not... I'm not just met you, and I'm not in love with you, but he met.

Oh, my God. Was he as... I had this thing for him? Was he as handsome as Stephen Vincent Lee was? No, no. No. Oh, Stephen Vincent Lee. Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. I didn't know that story. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. All right. How many broken hearts have you given people? Yes, Penny. Oh, my gosh.

A few. I would think so. But it's their fault because I never, no, truly, because I never like, I don't know what is it with you guys? You go on a date with a girl and then you go around telling everybody that's your girl. It's like, no. You're my breakfast. Oh, boy. And I'm going to have lunch and I'm going to have dinner too.

Okay. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here on the Delta Flyers. That's right. Lessons to be heard on Delta Flyers. Also, we have another special guest star, of course, Andrew Robinson. The fabulous Andrew Robinson is Garrick. And which part did he play? You don't know. We'll have to go back and look for him.

figure out what the heck that he played. I'm wearing that episode. Oh, my goodness. All right, let's do a little bit of trivia before we get into this. First of all, Mark Garrett O'Connell's original inspiration for this episode was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Wow. Yes. Specifically, Garrett O'Connell was surprised by the reaction of the American people. Quote, for the first few days after the event, everyone was so sure that it was foreign terrorists. Anyone who appeared Middle Eastern suddenly was under suspicion for no reason at all. And as it transpired, the bombing was carried out not by a Middle Eastern terrorist, but by Timothy McVeigh, a white American, a Caucasian American.

This led Garrett O'Connell to speculate what might happen if a terrorist attack took place on D-Space 9. Quote, in a situation like that, who would they immediately suspect? What if it turned out to be the last person in the world to come to mind? I just wanted to play with that idea, and it ended up being a story where Cassidy Yates turns out to be the number one suspect. So only a few remnants of this idea remain in the final episode, but the notion of the perpetrator of a crime being the last person you suspect is still to be seen in the Eddington defection plot. So the original inspiration was the bombing, which was, I did not know that, and I thought that was amazing.

And I must say, Ken Marshall does an extraordinary job as Eddington. Yes, he does in this episode. He doesn't get anything away until the end, and it's really quite impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Another piece of trivia, when Ronald D. Moore began to compose his script from Garrett O'Connell's story, there were actually three separate but connected marquee stories, not two, as there are in the finished episode. So the third idea that was not used in this episode was a story idea involving the Klingons and the Maquis.

So there was Klingon involvement as well. So they stayed with the other two. All right. That's it on trivia. And now it's time for Robbie to jump right into the very first scene. All right. Here we go. We're going to go through the whole episode, Penny, bringing back memories and incredible.

work. It was really a great episode, honestly. I really love this episode. So just interrupt anytime you need to. All right. Go, Robbie, Robbie. All right. So our first scene starts in Cisco's bedroom. We see Cassidy and Cisco in bed. They've had a lovely night together. We've never seen you in bed before together. This is a big step for these characters. Well, you know, you see us in bed later, not in this episode. But being in bed, that's a different step. That's a next level. On the United States 9 was difficult.

One time we were in bed and we stopped production because above we got a phone call and that we may not be doing this scene. It was very hurtful because of the reasoning that we knew was behind it to have two African-American people in bed as lovers and loving instead of going at it, like animals. And so it was to normalize for the powers to be. So subsequently, there was another bedroom scene and there were things that we just, we were restricted.

We were limited. Wow. So it's beautiful to me. and for me to see that and to have experienced that and for others to see that too because that's normal. It felt very normal. And story-wise, we hadn't seen these characters take the step. Like we talked about before, three episodes.

We knew that you were going on dates and spending time together and going on trips together. We knew that. But we didn't know that you had taken this step of intimacy. this way. And it felt very normal and very relaxed and very natural. And I thought it was a great, great scene. I agree. Yeah, my notes were just that this was, this was the most tender that I've ever seen, these two characters. There's tenderness. There is, there's a little bit of repartee going on in the dialogue. Playfulness. Playfulness. Yeah. So tenderness, playfulness. And normalcy. This is the type of thing that we all are used to seeing or experiencing in our own lives.

and our own relationships. And it's just wonderful. It's so easy. There's an ease in this scene that is, it's just wonderful to see you. And if I may, just to advocate for our writers, the performances are extraordinary. I said that earlier on.

It's just wonderfully sexy and easy, as you all said. But also, they're attacking something that, yeah, the studio isn't too happy about. And they're saying, we're going to go there because we want to go there because this is how people should say. see it. So bravo to the writing staff for saying, we don't care if it's a problem for the studio. We're going to do it anyway. I agree with you, Armand. On a metaphorical note,

the bed to me is a real strong foundation. And it is the ultimate form of intimacy between two people. And knowing where this episode goes, if you can reflect, by at the end of the episode to back here to this bed we have shaken that up so i when you look at it that way yeah i love to see the whole thing um it is the the writers again like armin said how brave of them but not only how brave of them they were thinking i think they were thinking penny you remind me of something um there's a website and i'm going to look it up in a second but there's a website called first and last frames where they take the first frame of a movie and the last frame of a movie and in great films there's an intentionality to that that the

very opening image is either similar or different in some way to how the movie ends and so you're pointing out like they end up in they start in bed they end up with her walking away that first and last image of this episode is very powerful. There's a story just in that, you know, yeah. I don't think this episode would be as powerful without that first scene because it shows where both of them are coming from. And if they'd just been sipping coffee somewhere, it would not have been as powerful.

This sets up the relationship. 100%. Cassidy's got to go back to meet her engineer, she says, on her ship. So she gets up, goes to change. I did like technically the way that you're changing clothes off camera. So there's a couple lines you have off camera. And then you pop back in and you're dressed. And it was just very, I've been through that as a director before where,

how are we going to get the actor to get out of bed and get them changed in time? And it was just handled Jim Conway and you guys handled it beautifully. It was, you know, you wouldn't even notice it unless you're somebody who's, been through that kind of scene before and like that can be a you know stop get her dressed you know now pick up where we left off and all that so it was done really well good switcheroo and to and to go to the end of this scene i don't know whose choice it was whether it was in the script or whether was avery's choice but the smelling of the pillow and then putting his head on it was enormously sexy to enormously evocative of what their relationship was.

Oh, I didn't catch that. You know, to speak to that, Armand, that thing that what I mentioned before, where we knew that off-camera we wouldn't, you know, have too much of a discussion or time, we did allow one another to do that without feeling violated or anything like that. Like in the rehearsal,

I remember when I was going to, kiss or whatever. That's not scripted, but we knew that if we're going this fast on television that we need to show that there is a progress, a progression to that.

So I would say, I'm probably going to like, because you're here and there and there. Just say it. So that on the take, we did it. So we didn't do a lot of rehearsing, doing it. We just said it.

here and here and, you know, so we were both surprised, even though we knew what was coming, we were both surprised and were able to genuinely react to what was happening in the moment. So I think it really paid off in a lot of ways. It did. And if I might point out to the audience, there probably wasn't an intimacy coach here. There was just the two of you, two actors discussing and what you were going to do, how lovely that you talked about it before you did it. Nowadays, I would imagine, and Robbie, you can chime in here. Nowadays, I think that something would be required

an intimacy coach to say, okay, if you're going to do this, we'd have to have a coach. Yeah. And you don't, you know, sometimes you just don't need a coach. The actors are good enough to know what they're going to do and tell each other. Just what you explain, Penny. I understand the need for an intimacy coach. I get that. I get that a lot. But sometimes it isn't required because of what you just say. It's a trust. It's a matter of trust. Trust. I mean, old school, from the theater, you know, the games that we play, I know when I'm teaching, I still do those games. You know, you fall into the crowd because they're going to catch you.

And so you must work on that trust. And that way, we're not, I think we'd have far less of these situations where I've got to have someone in to say he's going to touch me here and he ends up here or whatever. So I definitely agree with you. I do honor that. And if it's a little more than that, I do want the coach. Right, right. Well, Cassidy heads off to her ship to meet her engineer. We cut to the wardroom.

There's a big meeting. Eddington's starting us off here with super secret information. Starfleet's giving industrial replicators to the Cardassians because the Clingons have damaged the Cardassians' colonies much worse than they thought. And this is super secret information. he says they need to protect this delivery from the maquis who are going to try to take them and the maquis are making we learn they're making a big push uh during this time so you know the cardassians of clangons are fighting each other and the maquis are exploiting that for more power and more more control so he breaks up the super secret information and uh everybody starts to

leave. And after they leave, Odo and Eddington tell Cisco that they think one of these marquee that he was talking about, a smuggler, is actually on the station. And Cisco's like, well, who is it? They look at each other. It's kind of an awkward moment. And they tell him Cassidy Yates. Well, not right away. It takes a while for them to get that information. Yeah, just tell me. Just tell me. Again, it's not for sure. It's just on hearsay. And I had, I had a, I had a, an omelet for breakfast. I mean, they're saying everything but the actual information.

Very funny, yeah. And also, Cisco does send Wharf out with the defiant to patrol the bad lands, to show the flag, let the Mocki know that they're there. So, you know, they're starting to make some moves to try to prevent the Maki from exploiting this situation. Now, I must say, one of the quibbles I had, and it's a quibble about this episode,

and I understand why, but this is the first of many. there are times when I go, why is Odo there? Now, I understand the delivery of the information that you just mentioned. But doesn't Eddington say you need a level seven guarantee? Yeah. I would imagine this was a Starfleet meeting, not the police corps for deep space not. So I understand him coming in later.

I just don't understand why he was in there. And there are various times in this episode where I go, why is Odo there? And I understand the necessity because you have to get him off the station. That's part of the, not only do you have to get Cisco off the station, but you have to get Odo off the station.

And, but that's a quibble. A little tiny quibble. Yeah, it would have been nice if the writers had said something like I've looped, you know, we're looping in Odo, Starfleet's aware because of his position on the station or something. If they just said something about it, then because I had the same thought a couple of times, like, wait,

I thought this was just Starfleet doing this part, and he was there. Yeah. You know, when I read this episode and that scene in particular, I remember that was the first time I even heard the word, Marquis. Really? Yes, because I'm not a trekking. And so I never watched it. And so I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to do this episode,

and they're talking about this group. And it's real important for me. that I know this. So I go to the encyclopedia in my house, Grayland Gerald. And as I'm doing it, and then he explains who they are. And I go, oh, okay. And Penny's idea immediately was something different.

It was right in line with what eventually ends up being Cassidy's idea. But in this scene, I'm trying to navigate who's in this room. and what's happening in this room. But when I see Cisco's reaction, I forget about the marquee. So I know that this is important information for everyone, especially people like myself who don't know what it is and politically what's going on.

But Cisco's reaction to me was unbelievable. Avery was able to show this tortured kind of kind of what's going on and what if it's so and you better be sure you're blaming this or you're making accusations they said well's not accusations it's suspect or you know something that we might want to look into so i didn't know at that at that point the level of security on deep space nine so i didn't know the yeah you can see him like hmm okay what are they getting at. And it's almost like the leader where you

don't want to disappoint him. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Odo and Eddington were definitely not comfortable sharing. They're walking on eggshells. They know the relationship between cats. I started understanding the relationships other than the one that I had.

Right. Right. Yes. Because you go and you go, oh, primarily this is my relationship. But when I was reading the script, I go, well, wait a minute. There are other relationships. So what is hierarchy what what really is yeah each space nine about and that's actually what I was what I thought I was getting in that um that particular scene trying to then so when Armin brought up why was Odo in the room and all I at that point I wasn't thinking anything like that because I didn't

understand the full relationship right right just getting it right petty the actor with this new thing got it understandable so after they drop the bomb that it's Cassidy Yates they go to commercial, well, they, from Odo, not Odo, from Cisco's completely shocked face, many emotions are going through, they go to commercial break, come back, and he asks for evidence.

He goes, what evidence do you have? And Odo says, listen, there is a run that she does, and it normally takes 12 hours, but for some reason it takes Cassidy 18, which is just enough time to do a side run to the bad lands and drop off some goods to the marquee and come

right back. And so now, Cisco's like, okay, so now you're criticizing her for taking longer than it normally should. That's not enough of a reason. And they go through more evidence, which is a Starfleet intelligence report about how Starfleet has infiltrated a Maki cell. They have a partial list of contacts in the Bajoran sector. And of course, one of the contacts just started living on DS9 in the last six months, which matches the timeline of when Cassidy-Yate started living on D-SPAS 9. So that's their other, you know, it's getting hotter now, basically, this information. At which point, again, as Penny said, Avery's playing it on his face this whole damn time.

He's like, what the hell is going on? He's trying to like make reason out of this. And at the end, he just, he's frustrated, but he says, listen, if there is a reason to search the vessels, come up with one, you know, do the search. We do, yeah, he says, we do searches like this all the time, random searches on ships. If you can come up with the reason to do one of those random searches on hers, then do that. How many of us have been in a situation where you know what is right to do, but you still have this bond, this deep thing? And you don't want to break this thing that's so real that you need,

but there's a duty. And that's one wonderful thing about, you know, science fiction and especially Star Trek. in Deep Space 9, you have a sense of honor and in what it is that you do. And so you see that torture. You see this man as a man. And then you see this man as the leader, the captain on this space.

And what turmoil? I mean, and you see it there. So you know you're in for that. And then the whole marquee situation, As an audience, as a person who's just reading it, I'm not sold that they're such bad people. By the end, they make some good arguments about... They sure do.

They leave it up to you to decide about the McKee. Yeah, absolutely. Good writing. I was going to say one thing that you made me think of, Penny, is that this kind of internal struggle is very relatable that Cisco's going through. When you've got somebody who you are intimately connected with in your workplace and suddenly everybody's coming up to you and going, you know, they're not doing their job or I've been in that situation. I worked with someone once who was very close to a colleague and everyone was having trouble with this colleague, but the boss was really close to this person.

And no matter what people told him, the boss just could not do. could not investigate he was just like that that personal relationship got in the way of him investigating what 99% of the other people around that work environment could see he couldn't see it and so that i think this story is very relatable for people like they've either been on one side of this story or the other you know they've had somebody that they really care about who they have to look into or or they've been on the other side where that person needs to be looked into and the boss isn't looking into him. Well, I'm glad the choice was made that he is going to allow them to look at it.

Because that speaks to the strength and the reason why he's captain and nobody else. Yeah, the integrity that he has. Yeah. Absolutely. And if I'm looking at it from Eddington's point of view, he makes your character, Penny, a sacrificial lamb. You haven't been told any of this stuff. They're going to investigate you. You don't know anything about that. you are the sacrificial lamb and in reality he doesn't really care what happens to cassidy

yates he's just concerned about his overall plan yeah and and the that's really ugly if you go back and think about it and it's a it's a credit to ken marshall that he didn't make it ugly but if you think about it it is ugly yeah yeah yeah of that that's yeah yeah but But you don't really get that until... Yes, until you go back and think about it. Yeah. When you go back, he goes, wow. But because at this point, I think that Cassidy is doing something you truly believes in.

That's right. That's right. And there are several people, series regulars, who have speeches that advocate in your favor. Not you per se, but in the McKee's favor. And you are one of those people helping the McKee because you believe in their cause. I think that the parallels, or that's exactly what Cisco was going through. If you take Cassidy and Cisco, they're both going through the exact same thing. Right.

But he is, as you say, or he says, he is the paragon of Starfleet captains. He has to do what he has to do. Which is with that first scene, despite the wonderful intimacy between the two of you, we're also being told what his responsibilities are. Yeah. Yeah, he says he's the paragon of virtue. That's what he says. Yeah. Hey, Robbie, the holidays are approaching.

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Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. All right. We go to the spring ball court next. I love this opening shot with the ball coming right at the lens. Nice job, Jim Conway. There's a crowd cheering on this spring ball game, which I assume the ball was visual effects.

because there's it was a force field glass wall or whatever so I assume that after that first shot the opening shot it probably was just a visual effects ball and they were just jumping around swatting at the air probably okay here's a here's where I am confused spring ball have we seen okay you know when they've talked about it a lot but when O'Brien has played against Bashir isn't that spring ball they're hitting the same thing against the wall the only different is they're wearing helmets now and they're tackling which I thought

they didn't do that before so what on God's earth is happening I don't understand I'm cold contact racquetball basically is what it is no but haven't we seen this Robbie in I think we have hitting a ball against the wall

like racquetball but nobody tackles anybody and nobody wears a deadgum helmet and now is the thing Garrett if you if you're a rugby fan like I am there's different versions of rugby there's union There's all kinds of different versions.

I'll buy that. This is full contact spring ball. This is full contact spring ball. Thank you. All right. Kira's playing someone in this game, though. We don't know. Do we ever know who it is?

They take their helmet off, but then they turned their face away from camera. It was a stunt person. It was a stunt person. It could have been Cassidy Yates for all we know. We don't even know. Jim Conway did a very good job in the stunt department. The doubles did a very good job because I bought it. It was a great, very, very.

physical game and I love watching it. And not only did I love watching it, Garrick and Bashir love watching it. They're cheering. They're up in the stands. But Garrick is very distracted because he keeps looking over at a Cardassian. I didn't know who this was because it's a whole new actress. I was looking at him, looking at this Cardassian going,

wonder who that's going to be. Then he says, Zial. I was like, what? That's a different actress. Yeah. It's a different actress, but she's not just a Cardassian. She's also Bajorn. You can see the...

Yeah, the rigid. Oh, that's true. But in terms of facial structure, if you compare... Siobatin has a thinner face. This actress has a rounder face. When I saw her, I thought, oh, this is if Mary Kate Olson, the Olson twins from Full House grew up and played Cardassian. That's what it is, to me.

That's who I saw. It's a different... Totally different. It's a very gentle, very gentle performance. Oh, my goodness. It is a wonderful performance. Very nuanced. Yes.

But we'll get to that. When I first saw Cardassian in the script, I was like, oh, okay, this is cool. And then a show came on, the Kardashians. I said, oh, it must be a spinoff because I thought. Oh, the Kardashians. Keeping up with the Kardashians, yeah, with the H on there. Yeah. Yes.

So it took me a while. Like, who took what? Oh, well, if that. I wonder if any fans have made, like, a fan video keeping up with the Cardassians. I think that's out there. I think there is a fan video of keeping up with the Cardassians. And if someone did it, yes, I think there is a fan, something on YouTube for that. I hope there is.

I got to go find it. I would watch that spinoff, by the way. I would, too. I would, too. Bashir tells Garrick, you know what, stay away from DuCott's daughter. Not only is that DuCott's daughter, it's Keir's friend, it's trouble. And Garrick's like, I don't have any bad intentions. I have no bad intentions for her.

But he's very obsessed with her. He keeps watching her. He can't, can't, you know, take his eyes off of her. Well, she's also looking back at him, too. It's not like she's just watching the match. She's got a little, there's a little innocent flirtation, I think, happening. It's hard to tell if it's flirtation or. Oh, you didn't read that?

At this point, to me, I was like, are they threatening each other or are they flirting or what's going on? I saw it more as flirtation. Thank you. I suppose there is some danger, but for me it was mostly flirtation. I'm going to go 60% flirtation, 40% danger. Okay, now you go back to the guy that says, just because you look at me, you're my girl thing.

That's what it sounds like to me. I thought it was a dare. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. It could be a dare. All right. Well, Bashir now is so distracted from the game that Kira wins the game,

the match at the end everybody cheers but bashear goes what happened what what happened and garrick says it's a brilliant move on the part of the major you should have been paying attention so i love i like the button there at the end where bishir's tried to be focused on the game and then misses the and remember the scene starts with him saying you should pay attention to the game right at the end of the scene he hasn't paid attention to yeah exactly this was a smooth scene for me for Bashir, for Sadegh, for Alexander Sadegh. I just thought he did, oh my God, I thought he did a great job in this scene, you know, just all that dialogue while trying to be paying attention to the match, it could be a little

dicey, but he pulled it off quite well. Yeah, it was great. Well, we go to Cisco's quarters next. Dinner is being cooked. Nice, tight shot of Cisco chopping some yams or something. I don't know what he was chopping there. But he's cooking, cooking up a delicious meal. Cassidy arrives.

She says she smelled it down the hall. Hall smells delicious. Then Jake shows up. And Jake asks if they know any details about a Caverian tiger bat for a story that he's writing. And Cisco uses Jake's question to kind of fish with Cassidy here. And he's like, doesn't he say something like, wait, don't you do a regular cargo run at the neighboring system over there where these bats are? Maybe. So he's fishing with Cassidy in this scene. And she says no. And he keeps fishing. He keeps fishing. He keeps digging and she says well if you're so interested go look up my flight plan and he drops it then and uh they go eat one of the wonderful things about your performance penny is that you answer

it never looks like you're lying it's just facts it's just you're you're surprised and you're just saying that it never looks like you're trying to cover your butt uh it's it's really quite wonderful that which makes of course harder for for Cisco to know what to believe because it just seems genuine absolutely genuine yeah you know um arman i think that um during that time i um had always seen star trek um as something other than what i it ended up really being but i did think it was a wonderful opportunity to dot your eyes cross your and to have this Shakespearean experience that was natural. Now, I don't know if I, like, really convoluted that, but it makes sense where it has a heightened

sense of reality, but it must be natural. Absolutely. That when you start tipping or delivering what's expected, that you truly ruin the arc. I made an effort while doing Deep Space was to make it very honest. Because a lot of people go, oh, you're doing that show? Don't they do this? This is unbelievable. And it was the most credulous piece of work that I've ever encountered.

And so, thank you for seeing that. And I think the audience and the fans take notice of that, because I think that was the only way to make their relationship real. It is indeed. If you're not genuine, then we don't believe the relationship. And you are very genuine. And as I said before, it also makes it harder for Cisco. He is fishing. And there's no, there's no fish. There's nothing is biting. Because you're just being so incredibly what seems to be honest and genuine and forthright. And so he can't find anything. So only confuses him. There would be no conflict. That's right. There would be no conflict. And there's no reason to even have the scene. So, yeah, conflict test will always be there. And the conflict here is in his mind. That's right.

In his mind. Yeah. The more you create for him, the better the payoff is going to be later. Well, on that note, I'm very curious, Penny. So were you playing Cassidy in this particular scene as being aware that Ben is kind of fishing and maybe possibly on your trail, on your trail? Or were you playing this more like, no, oblivious to where he was coming from? I'm just curious.

I can actually answer that because I remember. I remember because there is a conflict, I remember making a choice that when I'm with Ben, it is about our relationship. So whatever is happening will serve the relationship. And so that's all I was, I was only about building relationship for the scene and as an actor who's going to have further

employment. Yes. Now we're getting to the heart of it. This is very real. I always thought the stronger the Cisco Cassidy relationship, the longer it will last. And I'm serving a community who hasn't had this ever. And so I felt I had a duty. So, yeah, that's the honest truth. really okay yeah well we go to the turbo lift next basically garrick and zi all are in the turbo lift

with some other passengers they get off leaving them alone it's very tense garrick asks if she's gonna hurt him she says no and then he says she has nothing to fear from him either and he exits seems genuine um but then her look at the very end is a little loaded which made me You know, it was nicely played scene. Again, like your story, Penny, I don't think that these actors were tipping their hand of where this story is going to go, you know. This whole episode, one thing I loved about this whole episode

is it's in the writing, but mostly in the performances. People are playing subtext. They're really playing subtext and secrets really well. And it sustains the whole episode. It is an episode of secrets. I just caught that. It truly is. And when you're holding secrets, you do less because, you know, I mean, in real life, you're holding a secret, you've got to learn how to shut up.

Or you will tip to the other person. I'm lost or I know something I'm not telling you about. But, yeah, right. It's a lot of secrets going on in this episode. What I like to what Jim did, Jim Conway, was he isolated, isolated. the characters in the elevator so that they were separate and you could feel that

they were separate and they were trying to bridge some sort of gap or find out something. I like that there wasn't a two shot per se that it was two individual people in a small space. I like that. Thank you, Jim Conway. Jim did a great job in this episode.

I love working with him. Yeah, he's awesome. Do you know any thoughts about Jim when you were there with him, Penny? Just general thoughts about Jim. as a director? You know, some directors, they are just hands on. And they

you know, you have a vision and you know you want it done this way. And so you kind of steer the actor that way. He was generous in that we're still telling the story with his, you know, with his eye

but he allows you to fill in all those gaps. You know, he doesn't have to hold your hand or at least that was with us. And I strongly appreciate that. He loves actors. So Jim is retired and lives near me. We play golf quite often.

And his wife was an actress, Becky. And he loves actors. I mean, he married an actress. He knows what actors go through. As much as he's a storyteller and a producer and writer, all those things, he loves the special thing that actors do. And he wants to give them space. And I think that's...

He trusts that actress can help tell that story, you know, with a definition. Yeah. Well, we go to the cargo bay next. Odo's doing a health inspection of Cassidy's ship with finger quotes. Yes, they've decided that there is a, what did they call it, a Temeculian, Temeculian virus. Yeah. And there's an outbreak on Bayjor, so they're scanning all the ships in cargo before they leave the system. They have to do this inspection.

it's going to take six hours. Cassidy's not happy about this. She's going to miss her rendezvous to deliver her cargo. So she goes and calls Ben and asks if he can help her. And then Cisco says, stand by. Hang on one second. Puts her on hold. And he turns and Eddington's in the room standing,

not on camera, but around his desk. And Cisco says to Eddington, you know, can we do this inspection quicker? Six hours is going to mess up Cassidy's delivery. delivery. Eddington says no. It's going to take that long to look for any, um, you know, any of the stuff that they would need to know. So Cisco gets back on and he goes, he tells Cassidy, sure, you're clear to leave. Go ahead. Go ahead. Take your stuff and go. So

I have the sincerity of that, that particular scene. Yeah. The writers now that I must tell you was all on the page. And, um, And Cassidy asks, she is really concerned about not being able to deliver. But she is calling her man. You have to tell you that is what I got. Yeah. It's like, okay, you're doing this? Well, I got something for you.

And she doesn't like, you know, do it in a nasty way. She just, matter of fact, and he pops up on that screen and it's like, okay, odd man is right there. and I'm going to ask him in front of you. But that's a tough spot. It is a tough spot. It is a tough spot. Yeah. He handles it, though.

Yeah, because you're kind of like going to the supervisor who happens to be your boyfriend at the same time. But my little nitpick on this scene is when you walk over to that monitor, you literally press, boop, you press three buttons and boom, he pops up on the screen, ready to talk to you. And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. No, he should have been doing work or looking, down and then like notice oh oh then she called there's no uh do you guys get where i'm coming

from yeah i do and i want to argue with that okay go you go okay i had that first impression as well garret and then i thought some more about it and i thought they know they know she's gonna do that call him yes that's true so so he's waiting for that call to come in there it is you know it's like the you're you've done an audition you're pretty sure you got it you're waiting for the phone call to come. The phone rings. You see that it's from your agent. Okay. That's the phone call I was waiting for. Okay. So that being said, that explains a lot. But still, I would have played it or I would have said, listen, don't let her know that we're expecting that call. Look away like you're doing some work and then look up, you know, instead of just being all ready to go. It just seemed like it was,

you know, he might spill his, you know, his agenda too early. If, Penny, wouldn't that be an actor? choice then that you have the issue with, not the writing? It would have been to the I mean, yeah, because the actor could have very easily when she does that and he pops up, he could have been down.

Oh, Cassidy, I mean, you know, is that Yeah, it's more the tech, not the actor, the technology of how they've set it up. Because you hit two buttons and it goes right and it turns out immediately on him. It's like there should be some time between where you go, beep, beep, beep, and he go, oh, now she's calling.

You have to wait one, one thousand, two one thousand. Let me turn on the monitor. And then it just was too sudden. That's my thing. It did feel a little tight. That's all. And it's a technology thing. Penny, do you remember when you filmed this scene or scenes like this?

You don't have Avery on a screen. You were looking at a piece of tape on a console, probably. Oh, I've been looking at pieces of tape for 40. and the school supervisor yes so people know they the shows i've been on sometimes the actors are like never that especially 24 no one was ever there on the phone yeah except i must say that um the actors are either generous or not so generous yeah yes avery was generous every was in the room and so he was there for me so I get to hear his voice or whatever

but you don't get that all the time because some actors if they're not in that scene physically they don't want to come to work or they want to go home or they're not called yeah yes or they're in makeup doing something else that's right yeah they're not called producers don't want to pay the actor

for being there if they're not in the scene but yeah most of the time you're looking at a cross on a lens or something like that now there's something I do want to Say something about this, the way, again, Jim shot this scene, which we'll pay off later on. In this scene, when he's talking to you, Penny, we see him talking to the monitor, but we see him physically in his chair talking to the monitor. It isn't just his face on the screen.

We get the sense of where he is while he's talking to you. I wanted him to do that in a different place as well, and I'll talk about that much later on. okay okay and just to clarify for people listening when i said a piece your penny was looking at a piece of tape a lot of times when the other actor is not there the camera system will take some uh some tape like the kind of tape that they put marks down on the floor colored tape colored tape yeah they have all the colors of the rainbow and they'll put a piece of tape like like armin said usually an x or a cross for an eye line and they'll put that somewhere off camera so that's what you're looking at So Penny was probably looking at a piece of colored tape

and not at any playback or video or anything like that. But she did have Avery in the room. But she had Avery in the room, yeah. Which is unusual, which is unusual. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Sometimes that tape is just on the mat box itself on the camera, right? Yeah, right next to the lens.

Sometimes you're looking right by the lens. And sometimes you have someone reading the lines who should never in their life proclaim to be an actor. Oh my gosh, they give you absolutely nothing. And so everything that comes out of you is imagined. Yeah, it's the most monotone delivery. And then they're talking like this and you're going to have to act with this type of monotone delivery. Yeah, it gets, yeah. Well, when Cisco ends the call, he turns to Eddington and says, tell Wharf there's a change of plans. They're going to follow, just follow and observe if she does go to the badlands to meet the

maquis. Don't do anything. Just observe only for now. So, so, you know, Cisco is maybe starting to get a little more suspicious or he's, you know, taking next steps, I guess. We cut to the bridge of the defiant and they're cloaked so Cassidy Yates can't find them, can't see them. And she does change course. she heads towards the badlands and o'brien eddington and wharf are on the on the on the defiant and they stay with her and then a little bit later um the zosha goes into a plasma storm so cassidy's ship heads into the badlands it's exactly where the maquis are uh o'brien has some sympathy we learn in this scene though for the Malky that they're just defending what they believe in and O'Brien great performance by

column here you know it was I was sold on his argument quite a bit yeah he asked Eddington how he feels about the Maki and Eddington such a great performance he says I just follow orders I don't have any personal feelings yeah so you've got you have three viewpoints you've got Switzerland which is Eddington you've got one one angle which is going to be O'Brien and then wharf wharf and I think I think the reason why we buy O'Brien's argument for the Maquis is because Wharf's argument is so extreme. They should be hunted down and destroyed. I mean, it's like, oh, okay.

He's all about just let's kill them all, all the Maquis. So it's, but then again, even if he wasn't saying that O'Brien's argument is definitely very logical. Yeah. His argument really hit home on a deep level. And when we were shooting it, I don't remember feeling anything at all. So it's amazing how something like, you know, a wonderful piece, Deep Space 9, it's for a lifetime. You can watch these episodes over and over and over and still relate to them. This particular scene and the O'Brien character, his argument was, I don't know, I went to bed on that last night.

That was haunting in a way. It is about larger-than-life episodes, but did. dealing with humanity? How do individuals deal with a larger-than-life situation? Yeah. Well, they're having this argument or this discussion about the maquis and the morality of it all when they spot a maquis raider shows up by Cassidy's ship. Sure enough, she beams over some cargo. This is not looking good for you, Penny. You know, and if I may, I'm going to butt in here. Yeah. What I love about this moment is every one of us does not want to see this yeah we do not want to see that cassidy yates is

betraying uh cisco's trust we this goes trust mostly that because at this point like i'm ambivalent about the maquis to be honest i've heard arguments on both sides in this story so far that i don't know if i would pick a side and say oh cassidy shouldn't be doing this because they're the bad guys that's not why it it breaks my heart it breaks my heart because of cisco that's right and because she has told us no i'm not doing any of this and and he she has she has been forgive me lying to him yeah and and and it breaks our heart to realize here relatively early in the episode or around a little before midway that that she has been lying to him and and lying to us because your performance is so believable. You've been lying to us as well. Yes, exactly. And so

it's mind-blowing. It's mind-blowing to go, oh, my God, she is a traitor or or helping the terrorists. Yeah. You know, when I got this script, Grayland reads my scripts before I read them. And so he already knew what was going on. And so I read the script and this scene. He says, oh, you might not be asked back. That's funny. You know, that's what I would have thought, too, if I was reading the script. I would have gone right there. Yes, exactly.

This is the end of me. I'm sorry. But his reason behind that was exactly what you just said, Armand. It's because he said, I said, what makes you think that? He said, well, you don't finally get two black folk on a show together, and you fall in love with them. And then you find out she is lying to this man, a black man. You're gone.

People don't want that. And I was like, oh. So again, that informed me going back to before that, hmm, I'm going to focus on the relationship in this episode. But you're right on there, Armin. It's the lying to Cisco that breaks your heart. Yeah. it breaks your heart means you're yeah

now Penny I know how much of a fan Grayland is of Star Trek so I feel like when he was reading that script when he turned to you to say this might be the last time you'll be on this show I imagine one tear going down the cheek like baby

one more this is probably it I'm so sorry and I'm sorry too because I love Star I just imagine I think it was so that too but I think he's telling me because he's a black man and married you know so if you lose trust lying is a is a deal breaker yeah i don't know how

you bounce back from a lie other than to tell the truth and really hold your reverence of whatever but if i did that to him i'd be gone next up we're in garrick's shop and ziall has come in for a quick visit, which Garrick, again, he still doesn't know why, you know, what's going on. He's trying to piece this together. And she's saying, oh, your shop is so nice. You do good work. And then Garrick just cuts the chase.

He says, is there something I can do for you? And she says she has a Hollisweet program from Quark. And it's a reproduction of a Cardassian sauna, just like the ones they have back on the home planet. And she was wondering if Garrick might want to join her in this Holladick program, which Garrick is very surprised. He's like, oh, oh, okay.

He's still trying to piece it together. And so she sets a time, and he says, great, I'll see you there. Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice scene. But again, he still doesn't know what her motive is, though, at this point. Yes. Very dangerous connection. So going back, because of that recap, I began to think as you were talking, Gary.

Yeah. perhaps in the scene in the in the in the racquetball a scene maybe it should have been shocked forgive me for being a backseat driver that she's looking at him and he's going why is she looking at me well it's because we both thought it was flirtation yeah maybe it's not flirtation maybe she's looking at him she's looking at him and he's going why is she looking at me what right that's what i got was yeah he felt paranoid i would have liked to see a little bit more emphasis that way now that I think about it.

That it was her looking at him rather than them looking at each other. Yes, yes. That would have made more sense. Are you saying the ambiguity of that? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that why is that woman looking at me? Why?

Especially when you know the history that she has with him and he has with her or with her father anyway. And so why is she looking at me? And that's why he can't take his eyes off her Because he catches her continually looking back towards him Right, but the way they set it up Was that he started the looking and staring at her

Which isn't really, it's confusing, it's confusing The other way makes more sense And especially because he's always looking at threats Against his life to begin with Makes more sense of, oh, she wants to kill me too, right? So, okay, I hear you. Which makes sense. And so when she walks into the room, he should, what is this about?

Yeah. But it was, but, but it was both that and the sense of flirtation. Yeah. Both of those. There was both. And I think we could have lost some of the flirtation and had more of the suspicion. Agreed. Right.

Right. Agreed. Okay. Okay. We're in Cisco's quarters now. Jake comes in and says, good morning to dad. And Jake orders a rectigeno extra sweet macapoo bread, no crust. Now, Cisco's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, where's the juice and oatmeal?

And then, of course, Jake says, Cassidy introduced me to this. It's great. So this macapoo bread, when you dip it in the roctogeno, it makes the, it foams up. There's this peppermint sort of taste. And he wants his dad to try it. And guess what? Dad's not in the mood. And Jake picks up on this.

He knows something's going on. What's happening? And he kind of messes with him a little bit before. Is this the point where he's messing with him a little bit about, you know, oh, you did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, Jake gets on Ben's nerves, and he's like, okay, not, when Jake asked, does something happen between you and Cassidy and Cisco says, not exactly?

He said, if you want to talk, but he doesn't want to talk. And that's the end of the scene. But you can see that there's a lot of conflict in Subtext. Subtext. Subtext. Subtext. Tons of subtext. And I did like, I did like.

I did like when Jake takes the bread he puts it in the coffee and it starts foaming like Alka-Seltzer or something and then he picked it up and I thought oh don't drink that whatever they used to make it foam up

I was like don't drink it because they probably literally put Alka-Seltzer on the bottom of the bread or something to make that foamy thing usually onset effects is the department that does that and they don't use usually use things that are edible edible you usually ask can I eat this yes yes how long has

this been sitting yes like that um that scene was not full of conflict for me that scene was full of pain yes and the reason I'm saying that is because it spoke to me on a level of single parents who have a relationship, ultimately, and then they invite the kid in on that. So no longer it's just about you and this other person, you have involved your kid in a relationship. And so as we're watching this episode, and we've learned prior to this,

that she lied to Cisco, Cassidy lied to Cisco, now you see Jake still building her up because he really likes her, And he wants this to work because he actually is the one who introduced them in the first place. It's painful to know that not just Cisco, but Jake is going to be let down too. Well, he grabs his hand. Yeah, he grabs Jake's hand. He holds his hand until the end of the scene when he says,

son, things change. People change. Yeah. And I thought that was a really powerful moment. Very powerful. yeah it's preparing him you know preparing you that is just going to be the two of us again just you and me yeah and and with all due respect to the cassidy yates and uh cisco relationship for me as a viewer of this show uh the the more i don't want to say important they're both important

no i agree with you the more important but the more important relationship is the father and son relationship we're invested in that we've been invested in that from the pile of from the first episode yeah and so he's protecting his son it's also uh um uh delicious to me that when we started the show um jake's character could not have had that that sort of conversation with his father because he was a young boy and now yeah he's basically a grown man or almost a grown man and and quite capable of talking about sex with his father and and and talking about their relationship between his father and Cassidy Yates and his relationship

with Cassidy Yates it's a mark of the time for me that four years have gone by and so much has happened to Jake. Yeah. You talked about morality and that there's always a moral in stories

and that one there is a lesson too of how soon is too soon to bring someone into a relationship to introduced to your child. I just go there because as a woman and as an actor, that was real important to me that you come in as an addition.

You don't come in as a destructive figure. You build on what's already there. You don't destroy what's there, nor do you interfere with what's there. And so the decisions that she's making in this episode are, crucial, not just for her relationship with her man, but this, this family that she could possibly be destroying right now. So that's very painful, like I said. Yeah. Yeah, well said, Benny. Well, we go to the wardroom next. The gang is there. Eddington's filling in Cisco. They scan the cargo that was beamed aboard. It was probably food or medicine, they think.

They showed the route that she took out of the badlands and resumed its course back. to its flight plan that it had before. And Cisco just listens. He's very quiet. And he asks where Zosha is now. And Worf says she's on her way back to the station. She should arrive soon. And then Cisco dismisses them.

And they're all leaving. Dax stops to say something. And Cisco doesn't even let her speak. He says, dismissed, old man. I don't want to talk to anybody. because he knows he's going to have to go confront. Well, you said that, yeah, earlier, you said that Cisco is listening to everyone. He is listening to Eddington, but not Dax, because Dax is literally saying that one thing.

And she's like, Dax says, well, at least we're not dealing with weapons. It sounds like she's only providing, and he cuts her off. He's like, where's his own? Yeah, he does. He cuts her up. And then when she tries to say something else while leaving the room, he doesn't even, like you said, he doesn't let her at all. So he's, you know, and this is his best friend. Dax, from prior Dax, is the best friend that Cisco has,

has known Cisco the longest. Well, as soon as he knows that they caught her, they have evidence now that she literally met the marquee. She's transported supplies to them. She's lied to him. Is it embarrassment? Is embarrassment also part of it for him? Probably.

You know, just sort of. I think he's broken at this point. I think the brokenness. And as captain, you can't appear to be broken in any way. You can be human. You cannot appear to be broken. And for a man of his stature and integrity, this is something he needs to do himself. That's very important.

So I think that he, at this point, he doesn't want to be influenced in any way on this decision that is truly personal for him. and it's very in his leadership capacity for the federation for deep space nine that he has to make the right choice but he must do it himself he's gathered all this information okay and i think that hands up which is what a tender moment that was when she's slightly behind him and she doesn't even push it because she knows too she does he he has all that he needs all the information he's got to make it and he has to do it himself and if I may

just talking historically if we remember originally before the show was cast Dax was supposed to be a mentor to a very young Cisco Avery Brooks was not the archetype that they originally thought

should be Cisco it should be someone actually more like Sid who was a young sort of beginning officer who needs a guide, a mentor to help him. So here it harkens back to that for me. She is about to give him comfort or advice, one or the other, maybe both. She wants to comfort him.

That's why she says, well, it was only medicine. It wasn't weapons. She's trying to comfort him by softening the blow a little. And then when she turns back to offer some advice, Here is where the writers go, we don't have Siddig playing Cisco. We have Avery Brooks playing Cisco. He is not the, this is what Penny said. He is not the man who needs to be mentored.

He knows what he has to do. It's a hard decision. Leave me alone. I'm just, I can do this. I don't need a mentor. And I think that moment was where Dax was going to say something. And he says, I don't need this. for all the reasons the penny just said that's a great point well cisco goes back to his quarters

he's waiting the doorbell rings cassidy returns and he's kind of knowing what what he's just heard he decides he wants to see if she's going to tell him the truth so he fishes again a little bit he covers pretty well how broken and heartbroken he is but not perfectly he's not you know we can start to see the cracks in his in in what he's in what he's he's feeling personally here he asks about the rendezvous did did she get the medicine to them cassie says yes thanks for bending the rules and uh he asked where where she met them and he says the the drayon system she says oh yeah why he's just said he says it just seems odd that they would travel that far just for some medical supplies so he's kind of showing his hand a little

bit here to her and she's not she's not stepping up and being honest she continues to lie well the drayans really needed them or the the tholeans really needed them and they've got she makes up a story they've got some viral infection and one of their colonies so she's just digging herself deeper and and she says i promise you can inspect the cargo ahead of time next time and cisco just says that'll may go to very happy that's when jake comes back jake's like i've got a holodeck uh for the yankees what was it it was the 78 no the 61 yankees and the 78 red socks which when he said that i was like oh i would love to have a program where like where i could see two of my favorite teams play like a virtual game oh that'd be amazing anyway uh cassidy wants to go she says she'll buy the hot dogs

Cisco says, no, I got to get back to ops. I can't, which is, you know, Cisco passing up a game like that, I'm, it's got to be a big deal. Yeah, but Penny, you broke his heart. You just keep digging deeper. I know, and he tried so hard to keep giving her an out. Yes, he did. But to bring Jake into the scene was to show family and to really show what was

at state, like we spoke before. First you have Cassidy and Cisco doing the thing. Then you have Jake and his dad, and you start thinking, these are relationships that don't want to see destroyed. And then if you thought it and wasn't sure, you were sure at this scene. We're talking about the destruction of family. People who love together and trust together are sitting on a lie, a keg that's going to just destroy them all so yeah he tried it

subtext a lot of subtext in this scene for both of you guys and the audience has to be sitting there as i was sitting there saying okay so what it what happens now what obviously she's been lying this is but this is this is their relationship this is really important what happens now I was intrigued with the episode before this but now I'm really intrigued because now I go oh my God what are they going

what is he going to do next how does he solve the problem or deal with the problem I really got my expectations up watching because of this scene and what has led to it's been a gradual process of peeling back the layers of Cassidy Yates and her story

and now we're getting to the nitty gritty and what does Cisco do about it Well, I'll tell you. I tell you, Harmon. Tell us. In the captain's office, Odo's there, Cisco's there, Eddington's there. They're discussing Cassidy's next run. That's where they're going to do something.

Odo and Eddington think they could... So again, excuse me, before, just a sergeant-in-rupt. Why is Odo there? Yeah. I'm happy for Renee to get the work, but why is he there? The residuals. I mean, he's already had... He's already had a residual scene.

You don't have to get any lines, but put my face on the camera because I'm going to get a residual for it. We all understand that, but he's had his residuals. Okay, fine. So he didn't need to be in this one. Okay, fine. Well, they're there. Odo and Eddington both think they should seize both vessels when they meet the next time. Cisco agrees.

And then Eddington says, can I talk to you? Alone. privately, yes. I want to talk alone. He tells Cisco that the CFI replicators arrive tomorrow onto the station and he thinks he should stay for when they arrive. These are the ones that are going to go to the Cardassians. That first scene he talked about the super secret CFI replicators. He says, I think Eddington says, I think I should stay here and be responsible for that. That's super secret important. Also, I don't want responsibility if there's a fight. for Cassidy

I don't like you know that's your person and she might get caught in a crossfire and he doesn't want responsibility and Cisco agrees he says I'll take command of the mission and I made a note to myself well that doesn't sound very smart either

like Cisco's going to be the one to go to battle with Cassidy out there potentially but Robbie before he before he says they you know Cassidy might be caught up the crossfire. He does say, Cisco does say, Lieutenant Reese,

aka Asian Ken, can handle it. That is the one statement that kind of pushes the next thing. Yeah. Yeah, I just want to throw that in there. Well, I want to say Asian Ken. Asian Ken can handle it. Yes. I think that's very important. He's not only handsome, but he's competent.

He is very capable. Very capable. So, all right, Cisco's going to take command. We go to Cargo Bay. Cassidy's about to leave. Cisco arrives and he says, he says to Cassidy, hold on, let's just go to Ryza. Let's run away. Forget about this delivery and we'll just go on a vacate, a romantic trip to Ryza. She's like, what are you crazy? I can't do that. And he's very sad in this scene. And she says,

I wish, you know, she says she wishes that she could take him up on this offer, but she just can't. She has to make this delivery. And another scene with, very strong subtext. Oh, my God. This scene was all, like, before when you guys were saying subtext, I was, I was, oh, yeah, they're right. It is subtext. But this scene, oh, everyone can see this is subtext.

This is such a sad scene. I feel so bad for Cisco the entire time he's just trying to save it. He's just like, please, please, just come with me and everything will be fine. It'll be great. Everything will be better. I'll forget everything that you've done is kind of what he's saying. Just come with me. Just don't do this.

And I wanted to cry during this scene. it was so sad. I know. And Garrett, if I may, I also feel bad for Cassidy Yates because she knows what she's doing and has to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, Cisco is really trying to be the savior, like you said. Yeah. And to see him do that, it was just, it was heartbreaking. That's what I'm saying. It was painful. And, yeah. It was. But when you find out that it's medicine, you,

Somehow you know that Cassidy has, she has to do it. You can't blame someone from wanting to do that. This is someone who truly loves humanity. You know, she's a crusader. She's right there, I get Sisko being an amazing partner because he just wants to be that man and save her, save us together. But you see Cassidy in her strength here, even though this is a sad scene

you see her in her strength where she just can't give up she can't give up and she's not going to allow him to give up something too but what she's doing she's doing on her own

so yeah this was a heartbreaker that one yeah yeah well we go to the bridge of the Defiant next it is cloaked again following Cassidy's ship same deal same rendezvous spot

but this time the marquee appear to be late and they wait O'Brien, Sisko, Worf, Odo are all on the Defiant we go back to Garrick's shop

and Quark is having a fitting Quark's getting a beautiful new outfit there Armin I have a couple qualms with the lengths that you discuss in the scene but yeah meters off the meter

what how can the pants be yeah anyway Quark and Garrick are bickering over the tailoring work. Kira arrives, slams Garrick against the wall, says, stay away from Zial. Don't you hurt her.

She's my friend and leave her alone. Kira leaves. Garik goes back to continue the tailoring with quark. And that's when you say the pants are a meter too long. A meter. That's like a yard. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually should have played it a little different. I can confess that I didn't at that time know how long a meter was. Oh, really? So if I had known what I knew now, I would have played it slightly different. Somebody should have said something, like either rewrite that, like, you know, six, a few centimeters too long or something. Or, yeah, I'm surprised Jim didn't catch it. My other nitpick was just your first line cork when you, when cork, Armin,

when cork says, can't you do something about these lapels? and I'm looking and I'm looking and saying that looks beautiful already as is like Bob Blackman did too good of a job on that that top that garment because I didn't think it looked beautiful it was amazing so that was a good outfit I hope you kept it

no of course well not kept it in life but I mean I hope the character kept it oh the character yeah he did he wears it in other shows but but Blackman once told me that his favorite character to design for was Quark because of what you just said because of the materials and the colors.

God, great. Yeah, 100%. It reminds me of like a Shakespearean costume almost, Armin. I mean, you could see something that, you know, fancy in a historical play or something. And warm. And warm. Bad enough I had to wear to make up. And warm.

I thought you were always the Shakespearean core gesture. Truly. And it was in part due to these. colorful, vibrant costumes that you had. And you should gift one to our Halloween person. Yes. Yes. I should.

Penny, which you don't know which the others do know. I never kept, nor was I allowed to, but I never kept anything. Do you have one of your heads? Do you have a, like, a make? I have a head. Okay, good. I have a head. But no garment.

You have zero quark garments. No, no part of the set. Nothing. The others came in, came in with jack hammers and screwing. drivers and take a truck. I have Odo's last mask. You do? Do you? Oh my God. But Renee, we were filming, it was the last day. No, it was the last day. Don't tell us why, though. We haven't seen any of these episodes. Yeah, yeah, don't tell us why. But I do, I do have a, I do have one head, yes. Good. Yeah. See, now, Armand, if you and I had learned the art of flirting with, like Robbie did

with the wardrobe department and getting all the extra pieces of wardrobe like he did. Who did I flirt with? with Jamie. I don't know. We just told the wardrobe people like, well, if my... I don't flirt with anybody. I just sort of... You charmed them. You charmed them. Yes, charmed. You didn't flirt. Sorry, my apologies. Your charm was so good that you were able to make off with multiple wardrobe pieces. Yeah. Carrick, what would I do with any of those pieces?

No, what do I do? They hang in a closet. No, you auction, you auction them off. For charity. Penny, who's the Ferengi here? I auctioned off my bras. Did you? Oh, you got to keep all your Star Trek bras? You kept all of them? Is that what you're saying?

Are you kidding me? They were the best bras ever. Oh, I know they were great. I didn't know they let you have them, though. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah, I had like four of them, and I auctioned, I don't know, somebody was having a charity or something.

I auctioned them off, and, you know, they have Cassidy Yates bras. Yeah. Wow. All right. Well, I should have, I've got like a dozen of Tom Paris's underpants, so I could just, no, he's just saying that. I just wanted to say underpants because it's funny. Thank you. Tom Paris boxer shorts.

Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, so Garrett comes back after Kira threatens him. He thinks that because Kira is worried he might hurt Zio, that he's safe. That means that I'm safe. and that Zeal isn't trying to hurt me. And Quirk says, well, maybe that's reverse psychology. Maybe she's doing that.

So now at the end of the scene, Garrick's like, oh, he's so confused. He is. If I may, what I liked about the scene was it's one of the rare times that I think Quark actually made more sense than Garrick. So that doesn't happen very often. And I think actually Quark's argument, and he just loves it on. Well, maybe too much overthinking. And every now and then, they would throw a scene, Andy, in my way,

where the two McAvails would actually hash out a chess move between the two of them. And most of the time, Garrick won that match. But in this case, I think actually Quark has the upper hand in this. I do, too. Yeah, Garrick's off his game. He's terrified for some reason. You know, he's just terrified of all here. Penny, there's this one scene where,

Armin is in Cork's bar, and Cork says, who knows more about relationships than me? And then Bashir off to the side, he goes, everybody. He just says it very under his breath. Who knows more than me? Everybody. It was so funny. Oh, my God. So now I have to ask a question.

I know my, I know Cork's relationship with Cira, which was not a good one. Does this indicate the scene that, that Cira's relationship with Garrick, isn't the best either. I think so. Yes. Yeah, I don't know that I had any real sense of them having a good or bad, any kind of relationship, really, other than the Bajoran-Cardassian issues. Right.

That would have obviously been, but there hasn't been a lot of, you know, screen time devoted to anything there that I can recall. So, yeah, I don't. That'll be in the movie that. Yes, the DS9 movie. Hey, there you go. comes out right after the Voyager movie. Yes.

We'll be waiting a while. All right. Robbie, continue. Yeah, we go to the bridge next. And we're back in the Defiant Bridge. They're still waiting. Oda thinks something is fishy because they would just leave if the Maki weren't here.

So why are they sticking around? Wharf says, well, maybe it's not the cargo on her ship that they want. And that's when Odo says, wait a minute, maybe it's Cisco. Maybe that's what they wanted. They wanted to bait him into following Cassidy and trap him. And Cisco decides to beam over to Cassidy's ship to find out. We cut over to the Zosha Bridge. And Cassidy is in the middle of sending a coded message when the defiant decloaks, Cisco and the team beam on. And he confronts Cassidy right there. He thinks that he was lured away for a Machi attack on the station is what he thinks. And she admits that she was meeting a Maki ship, but she says, I don't know anything about an attack.

I don't, I'm waiting for this Maki ship. And Cisco thinks something, somebody else was manipulating all of this. He says, building to this whole setup. He says, they needed to draw me away from the station. Why? If they aren't planning an attack, what other reason could there be? What could be happening happening on the station? Yeah, he takes a moment.

And then he realizes, oh, it's not here that the action. whatever's happening they go they want to get me away from the station so he realizes there at the very end yeah and there's a moment here and i i'm sure the prop department just gave avery the prop and i it really disturbs me when he beams in i understand why the other people that there's odo and he and and two security guards and the two security guards have phasers out and they're holding at bay that your staff on the susa soza um it really bothers me he's got his pistol on you it really oh you know what when i saw uh watched it again um and it reminded me i was thinking he he knows this character he knows cassidy and he knows that she's not going to be armed and

even if his guys were armed, why is he armed? You thought that too? And why is he pointing it at you? He's not like this, but it's there and it's aimed at you. It's at his waist or sort of their bouts, and it's aimed at you. Right on his thigh, yes, right on his side there. And then I watched when it was put away because it did bother me. And it reminded me of when we were shooting it, where I was thinking, hmm, that doesn't, it

doesn't make sense. Yeah, I'm sure the prop department just said, here, this is your pistol. And he had it in his hand, and he kept it at his waist. But it just went, it's wrong for him to have it pissing out. Yeah. Yeah, and this is the moment where all of that subtext playing in these other scenes, the dancing around each other,

she admits to him, you admit to him, Penny, that, yes, I was meeting a Maki ship. She doesn't lie. She doesn't lie here. Yeah. Which makes me think that she wasn't truly lying before. She was protecting before. You know, Penny, it's wonderful work you're doing, and we all do this, but we all justify our character's actions.

She was lying. She was misleading. She was lying. She was. She used alternate facts. Yes. Great. Okay.

We'll go with that. We go back to this. I do like the segue, because the last line that Cisco has is what could be happening, realization, happening on the station, and it flips right to the station in the wardroom with Eddington giving new orders. All those CFI replicators need to be placed on a Vulcan transport, and no one else could know about it, meaning- Super secret. Yes.

More secrets. Yes. Even Asian Ken says, does that include the Bajoran security detachment, sir? And he says, absolutely, they cannot know about this either. Because Odo's on the ship nowhere near the state. that's right oh boy yes but another great scene

with agent Ken I'm very happy yes total communication silence he also says yep and the team leaves Kira arrives and he

so the whole team is out of the room Kira arrives saying you wanted to see me sir Mr. Eddington and he says yes major I'm afraid I need to take command of the station for the next few hours and he turns around

shoots her, she drops down to the ground, and he locks her in, basically punches a coat. So this is why Odo has to be on the ship, because it's one thing to take out Kira, which is hard enough, hard enough. But it's harder, because he's a shapeshifter, it's harder to take out Odo. And that's why I thought, okay, this is why they put him on the ship so they don't have this problem, on the defiant. So they don't have the problem. So they don't have the problem of having overcome Odo on the station. Yeah, that makes sense.

All right, my nitpick for this scene is when Eddickon says, yes, Major, I'm afraid I need to take command to the station for the next few hours and shoots her. He reaches for his phaser pretty early in that dialogue and does a real slow, slow draw and slow aim.

That's enough time for Kirrida. She would have done a move. She would have dodged it or quickly pulled her and shot him. I saw her play spring ball. I know how good athletics he is. Eddington telegraphed his move. He should have moved for his phaser after he said the entire line and then quickly shot her.

You see what I'm saying? He was telegraphing. So that's my nitpick. Kira's too good of a warrior, too good of a soldier to fall for that old, you know, chestnut. So that's my feeling. So you found it too convenient. Too convenient. Yeah, it was too easy.

He should have not pulled for the phaser that quickly or that early. But added 10 more minutes to the episode. That's right. There you go. There you go. What were you going to say, Armin? Just my nitpick of Garrett's nitpick. No one is allowed to carry a weapon on the promenade.

We've been told that several times. Occasionally, when there's a threat, yes, it's like Bobby's in England. They're not allowed to carry guns unless there's a threat and then they're allowed to carry guns. So Keira doesn't have one is what you're saying? That's what I'm saying. Oh, so she has, but she could have dodged. But she has these movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

No one is complaining about that. Just nitpicking the nitpick. I got you. After Springball, we believe. That was my nitpick of your nitpick. Oh, is that it? You got that. Okay, back to the bridge.

Back to the bridge. They're heading back to DS9. Oda says Cassidy will run and he wanted to leave a security detail behind. And Cisco says, no, it's our priority to get back to DS9. So they just left Cassidy out there with the monkee. Which is a little hard to accept, forgive me. It pays off later, but it's a little hard for me to accept that after all of that, he just lets her go.

And it's right for Odo, who shouldn't be on the defiant at all. And it's right for Odo to say, why did you do that? Why did you do that? And he just shuts that down and says, I don't want to talk about that. Yeah. And that, if I may, shows the humanity of Cisco that he let his heart dictate stuff to his brain, even though he might have known better. He was breaking some rules.

That's what makes, forgive me, our show just a tiny bit better than most of the others, is that our captain had flaws. He was a brilliant commander, and he was, but he's still a human being. Yeah, I like it. I like it. I have to say amen to that, Armin. Amen to Armin.

Amen to Armin. Well, we go to the airlock next. We're in an upper pylon, it says here. Eddington's leaving with the Vulcan transport that's docked to the upper pylon. He tells Asian Kendall, Reese, that he's in command now until Cisco returns. And Reese is confused. Reese says, hey, I know I'm good looking. But could I really be running this place?

I'm second in command. I'm good looking enough to be second in command, but I don't know if I'm, yeah. I mean, Kira is still on the station as far as he knows. He doesn't know that she's been taken out. The second in command is Kira. It's Kira. It's Kira in the station. Exactly.

So Reese is confused, but he agrees to take command, heads off, and Eddington steps on to the transport, and he takes off. and he takes off his communicator and sticks it to the wall and seals the doors, those cool rolling gear, giant gear doors, rolled clothes behind him. And then we hear a supplemental log. But he leaves this log. He says the defiant has returned to the station, but it seems Commander Eddington is still one step ahead of us.

And now we go inside ops. The team's all back together. they're looking for the Vulcan ship nothing and then uh eddington calls what eddington's calling them um cisco switches on a uh he goes to his office he says put it through to my office goes inside turns on the monitor eddington calls to say just leave us alone our fight is with cardassia it's not with you guys not with the federation and he gives a very strong speech about the federation and how everyone, you know, should want to be part of paradise, how the Federation is even worse than the Borg, at least the Borg tells, you know, they're direct and tell you what they're going

to do. You guys in the Federation play all these games. It's very, it's a harsh critique of the Federation. One of the harshest critiques of the Federation to this point and also an amazing monologue for acting class. Yes. He was phenomenal. I'll go back to what you said, Armin, early in this podcast about his performance. performance by far the best performance we've we've seen him in much smaller stories and moments yeah but he takes command of this story in a beautiful way he does he does he does and there again is our writers defying the the hand that feeds them they they're saying Star Trek isn't as good as you all think right uh oh Starfleet isn't it's perfect yeah they're biting the hand that feeds them

that's what I'm trying to say so so uh saying that you know You know, it isn't perfect. It isn't paradise. It has its problems. And we're going to show you the underbelly of the Federation in Starfleet. Again, God bless Ira for approaching that. And the performance, his performance was one of those performances where you don't see it coming. He sells you on his sincerity and his loyalty and that he's definitely in the middle of the road.

He's just there to serve. And then you go, oh my gosh. But he actually makes sense in this monologue. Yes, he does. He has a great argument in this monologue. And so the takeaway is that there are bad actors and good actors, but there are actors who just hold you like this and either they let you go like this or they just let you go.

He's in between that. Right. He's great. And if I may, this is something I brought up before and I said, I'll talk about it later. Now is the time to talk about it. Okay. They betrayed him. They betrayed Ken.

Jim did. I love Jim, but he betrayed Ken. In the sense, here too, I would have liked that shocked that we had earlier in the where I got to see him outside of the monitor. I would have loved to have seen him addressing the monitor as opposed to just doing that wonderful performance and that wonderful speech on a box. A view screen.

I would have loved to have seen him. And it's not like you couldn't do it. We saw it earlier. Cisco sitting in his office talking to the monitor. You could have done it. So I think Jim missed the thing. thing there. He should have let Ken have a full body shot or a

close up that wasn't on the box. That's my quibble. Can I counterpoint your argument? To defend Jim, I always tell directors when I'm producing a show to make sure we know the point of view of every scene. Know whose point of view is this one character or another?

Is it a particular character in the scene? That the scene is about that character's experience. Not that it's not about the other characters, but there's a point of view that the writer takes of an experience in the scene that usually comes from a character or two. I think this scene is Cisco's point of view, and that's why Eddington's on the monitor the whole time. It's not, if we cut into Eddington's world, now we're saying, oh, this is maybe a scene about Eddington's point of view. And I think it's more about Cisco hearing this

and how it lands on Cisco as opposed to Eddington, if that makes sense. It does make sense, but I see what you're saying, but all through this episode, we've gotten different points of view about the MacCreat. So, yes, I understand it. It's a Cisco episode, no doubt about it. But that was such a well-written moment. So well-written and so well-performed that I wish it had been photographed so that it had more oomph to it. Agreed.

I mean, it was still effective, Armand. Even though it was on the box, you know. Kenneth Marshall still did a great job. Yeah. But I understand what you're saying. You wanted an extra oomph to have his own, not on the damn box alone. I think what you're saying, Armin, is he was so effective, the writing and the performance that you wanted to be in that point of view.

That's right. You know that even though the scene. I wanted him to have his moment in the certain. Have his moment. And not to be confined by being on a monitor. Yeah. Totally fair. So you can actually get that both.

I mean, both of yours actually kind of saying the same thing. I mean, Rob, you're saying you've got to know who's driving the bus. That's what we call it when I'm teaching it. Yeah. Who's driving the bus in this scene? And Arvin is saying, well, if it's not the bus driver, there's someone on that bus who's really freaking interesting. Right.

And, you know, they have that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. hear you well after this beautiful performance and speech from eddington cisco says uh you know what i don't care about your feelings about the federation what matters to me is you betrayed me you betrayed us you betrayed the federation you broke your oath and he cisco says i will make sure that you spend

the rest of your days in a penal colony wondering if replicators were really worth it strong finished by Sisker. It is a great monologue. Absolutely. A little what's the word, antithetical to what he's just freed Cassidy Yates, who's true. Not the same, of course, not to the same degree at all at all.

But she's betrayed. She broke her oath. Yeah. Well, she's Starfleet? No, but she's a Starfleet. She's a Federation citizen. Yes, true. True. That's his argument, though. Right? That she's a citizen where he says that earlier you can't investigate her without stronger evidence because she's a citizen that now he's now they have the stronger evidence they have the indisputable evidence

and he lets her off the hook i appreciate this scene um even more when i see the scene after because it's the same thing that's going on and it's different tactics that's right the difference for me is that Evington, he does it with he compromises he uses violence he retorts to violence I mean he retorts to violence

and major manipulation as opposed to when we get to that but yeah but that was interesting to watch Cisco how he handles it in a different way but that monologue was really I was really strong Wow, that's...

They know who they're writing for. They knew who they were writing for. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Cisco's response monologue is so strong that I've decided that this is going to be the bit that I use when fans asked me to do an impersonation of Cisco. I'm going to, I'm going to memorize this and come through it because I, you know, Penny, I don't know if you know this, but I do impersonations of a lot of different actors. Oh, honey, I said that you did in a person. Everybody knows, Gary. everybody knows so this is going to be the one i'm going to use for cisco because i love it so so much

it's good it's really good oh my god okay so we're in a hollow suite it's a cardassian sauna uh zia all is laying there basking fully clothed by these hot rocks and the door opens inside this cave spa and garrick arrives he gets down to business he says why am i here and uh she says well did you think i was going to try to kill you she admits yes it has occurred to me. But she says, I'm an outcast on Cardassia. I'm an outcast on Bayjore. And I'd rather learn about Cardassia and enjoy each other's company. It's up to you. I don't want to kill you. And then he reveals that he had a weapon. And he puts his weapon off to the side and he lays down on his side of the rock and they start to talk. He says, what shall we talk about first? So

he's going to fill her in on Cardassia and they're going to be friends. I do like the idea of this sauna though that there's a you know you kind of lay down near the hot rocks and it's a good idea I love a song I did notice that Andy was sweating but she wasn't

oh really I wonder now Andy can't really sweat because he's got makeup on somehow there was a makeup artist it did it there was some moisture I can't remember where under the eye or around the nose or something and you know

that was an awfully hot makeup and costumes or armin did his makeup artist give him a spritz because it's supposed to be a sauna but her makeup artist maybe didn't remember to give a spritz possible possibly all right let's get to the final scene or she wanted to play a cool yes literally okay final scene robbie go yes the final scene we are in the cargo bay cassidy returns to the station question mark what she says she left her crew uh to protect them and uh she says that she knows that cisco left uh cisco's there by the way in the car of obey um she she says uh that she knows that he left them there to help them escape but that she still loves him and she doesn't want to throw that

away and neither does he and they hug it's a really sweet and sad scene. She says, I'm not going to stand here and apologize. You had your duty. I had mine. So she doesn't give up

her beliefs, but she's just acknowledging how strong this love is. And I think that's beautiful. She knows she's going to go to prison. They hug. And then Cisco calls Lieutenant Reese. And Reese comes in very handsomely

and brings a couple couple of security cards with him. That's the consolation prize. She's being arrested by the extremely good-looking Lieutenant Rose. Yes. And then she says, I'll be back. And Cisco responds, I'll be here. Yeah.

Yeah. Ooh, that was a scene full of integrity. Yes, it was. It was. That is truly what that scene was about. The integrity of these two people who love each other. You just saw them. the love so deeply, but you truly understood why it is there in the positions that they hold.

And there was so much power in that. And I remember when doing it, I made the decision that she is not going to cry because you can easily cry, it was sad. And so the whole scene for me, and I think, for Cassidy, the character's choice, was I will not let him see me cry. I will say goodbye to him with the most strength that I can possibly muster, but I do want to leave on a note of, I love you more than I can express right now, but I'm ready to face my consequences.

Yeah. Truly a scene of integrity. Integrity is a great word. Both characters. Great choice. Great choice, Penny. really was you know i've i've heard directors and people say before like if the actor cries the audience won't cry that was what this moment felt like for both you and cisco there was so much

subtext and emotion and love of and the hug in that moment allows the audience to cry of you know um and for these characters to both keep their strength and integrity and their emotions yeah I have an actor-to-actor question, which is, did you know that you had another episode coming up? No, absolutely not. So part of this saying goodbye could have been a real goodbye. A real goodbye. Yes, but again, going full circle back, when I read that and Grayland said, this is it. I said, no, to myself, not if we play it right.

So I never thought this is the last time I'm going to see this actor in this role or play this character, even if it was going to be in my head because you know when you're ready to kind of finish with that character, you kind of like know it, and then you have to agree with the writers and all that. Yeah, you did that. But this is why I think I don't think they knew. When we finally said those two, those words, I don't remember that being in the original, the script that I read. Oh.

That was like something that, you know, you know, you get the on the fly. I think something in there. And then I, because I think they didn't want to stop that relationship because of what it stood for. And it actually, it made Cisco complete. Like you saw all of him, all of what he could be. The Starfleet integrity, the father, the commander, and also the man, the human, the flawed person. And she had to go to prison. Yeah.

She had to because of what he stood for. And the scene right before that, when, you know, same thing, different tactic. He did this one in love and strength, and he did that. one, you don't play with the Starfleet. You don't play with the Federation, sorry. You don't play with the Federation. So and you're going to pay the price. So it spoke volumes for that character, for Cisco.

But in terms of their relationship, I think Cassidy going to prison cemented their relationship. At the end, you saw all this pulling and tucking and tearing and whatever. But at the end of the day, I think that cemented the relationship. I love how this scene harkens back to that very first scene in the bed when Cisco says, I am the paragon of virtue. And that's such foreshadowing for, you know, what ends up happening in the rest of this episode. So great scene.

All right. Well, we did it. We came to the end. We recap. We discussed it. Thank you so much. Penny for joining us and also for Armand for guest hosting with us. Now we talk about our theme, lesson, or moral that we get from this episode, starting with

Robbie and then Armin and then if Penny wants to chime in, she can as well. The theme or the lesson for me was people are much more complicated than we think. Sometimes we want to put them into their good guy, a bad guy. People are complicated. We all have all of those things with inside of us. We have the gray areas. And we have our imperfections in the gray areas. We're much more complicated. Rebecca, watch this episode with me.

Her lesson was do a background check before you date someone. No. Of course that's, of course. I want to get Rebecca's lesson in there. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca, for that one. We love it. Armin, what is your lesson from this episode?

For me, for both stories, was how do you know whom to trust? How do you know whom to trust? In addition, I wrote down, the old adage is trust takes time to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. And then I wrote, although in this episode, it seems forever means less than a minute. But it is about trust. That's what this is about. It's about love, of course, and all the things we've spoken about with important themes. But trust, I think, is what both stories had in common.

How do you learn to trust someone? Nice. Penny? Penny, do you have a lesson from this? I have nothing to add. I think we've been talking about lessons throughout the podcast. But if I were to say anything, I think I would echo directly what Armin just said. Okay.

Yeah, I guess mine would be something along the lines of, if you don't have integrity as part of your base makeup of who you are, then who you are is a house of cards. That's all that. That's it. You got to have integrity or what do you have, you know? Okay. Our Patreon, Paul, winner for the theme slash less and slash more of this episode.

as submitted by Nicole Bratel is, the greatest betrayal anyone could experience doesn't come from our enemies, but from our closest friends. Ouch. Oh, boy. Very good. And Nicole is a student of mine,

so thank you, Nicole. Oh, wow, that's good. You're on the same page, like teacher-like student. Yeah. I hope so. All right, well, that is the end of our podcast for our recap discussion for the cause.

For those of you who happen to be Patreon patrons, you get your bonus material. So please stay tuned for your bonus material. For everyone else, we will be recapping the episode To the Death with Terry. And of course, thank you, thank you, a million times over to Penny for joining us for this podcast review. Thanks, Penny. Thank you, guys. All of you. Thank you.

See you next time, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Guys. I don't know. Thank you.