The Delta Flyers - Friendship One

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Friendship One. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars. Friendship One:Captain Janeway must gain the trust of an alien society crippled by a nuclear device launched from Earth in 2067.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, Bryan Fuller, John Espinosa, & Ariana DelbarAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Daniel de Rooy, Chris Knapp, Michelle Z, Janet K Harlow, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, E, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Jenna Appleton, Alicia Kulp, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Adm. Bill "Seoulman" Yu, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Zachary Upton, Lori Tharpe, Mary Burch, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Andrew Duncan, Lauren Wolffe, David Buck, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Michael Dismuke, Jonathan Brooks, Gemma Laidler, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, Matt Norris & Stephanie LeeAnd our Producers:James Amey, Patrick Carlin, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Chloe E, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Jocelyn Pina, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Maxine Soloway, Barbara Beck, Species 2571, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Aaron Ogitis, Ryan Benoit, Megan Chowning, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, Clark Ochikubo, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Mark Lacey, Cindy Holland, Will Forg, Ryan Tomei, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Christopher Berry, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Christian Koch, Lisa Gunn, Lauren Rivers, Shane Pike, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Akash Patel, Jennifer Vaughn, Cameron Wilkins, Michael Butler, Ken McCleskey, Walkerius Logos, & Abby ChavezThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Greetings, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry, as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Voyager actor, Garrett Wong, who in 2010 played Todd in the film Acts of Violence. And myself, your favorite, Helmsman, Robert Duncan McNeil, R.D.M., Robbie McDunk, Robbie D. Yours truly. Remember, everybody, you can get the full version of this whole podcast with lots of bonus material and all kinds of incredible perks and bonuses when you sign up to become a patron at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. All right.

acts of violence. It sounds dramatic. This is really interesting because the individual who basically wrote, directed everything. This is like a one-man project. It's an independent film was a friend of my sisters at her church.

Oh, wow. In Los Angeles. Yeah, that's how my sister knew this individual. His name's Ill. Illlim. He's Korean American. He had a martial arts school in Los Angeles for a long time you taught a lot of different people including you know some hollywood celebs as well so ill's been in that

world for a while and then someone said hey why don't you write and direct your own project you know using your martial arts abilities and he's like oh why not so that's how i got connected through my sister wow yeah isn't it crazy it's crazy and he got one of his star students to be involved as well which was that lily so oh my gosh yeah so lily was in it and and she was the lead and basically we play these I played this member a mechanic

I'm like a car mechanic who has these friends they're kind of blue collar guys and we sort of get kind of wasted and we sort of come across Lili and we sort of do bad things to her and then yeah and then ill kind of takes revenge

and comes after each one of us to take us out so yeah so I basically I think I actually live. I don't die from what I recall. But I have to do stunts and fighting. No, but there's a scene where I'm basically covered. I'm ill pours gasoline. I'm tied to a chair and he pours gasoline all over me and he lights a match and he's about

to, he's about to Joan of Arc me basically just throw that match on me. And yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, it's a very dramatic and very stressful. Like for me, filming the scene where we basically sexually, you know, abuse and rape Lee Lee's character. that was rough like i remember afterwards i was crying like i i couldn't i couldn't even yeah it was just so hard to to get into that space you know what i'm saying to where you're you're physically forcing someone or forcing something upon someone that they don't want and it was just yeah and as

much as we know it's all pretend there's a quality about pretending that experience in a real way that just sticks with you and i remember uh 10 years ago or more when uh you you you Yeah, 15 years ago, I guess now. When I was doing Chuck the first season, there was a writer's strike. And my friend, oh, and Mary Howard and Brad Yokobian from Voyager. Yeah, our producer from Voyager, yeah. Yeah, they were at that time producing Cold Case, the CBS. Oh, right, right, yes.

And the strike happened, and so a lot of shows shut down, we had a few, we had two or three scripts that we could keep filming. Yeah. But I saw Mary and Brad walking on the Warner Brothers lot one night. we were filming and I was like hey guys you know what's going are you guys still shooting and they said no we've got nothing to do we ran out of scripts I said oh we're still filming you should come in and see our big new buy more set the big set I just wanted to show them the set and they walked in and we were filming a scene with Zach Levi and the nerd heard gang and they were it was just a silly

comedic scene Brad and mary watched that one scene and then they turned to me and they said wow this atmosphere is so different than our show, than Colt case. We do shows about, you know, victims and murders. You're doing fart jokes, you know. Yes, it completely different. They were like, wow, this is so nice to be on a set where the environment is influenced by the content.

So I can imagine doing a rape scene anyway. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was so, the energy around set filming that scene was so heavy and it's so oppressive. And plus, as an actor, I had to get myself to that place where it was capable for me to, you know what I'm saying,

to get into that situation, which is, it's a horrible situation for everyone involved, basically. So, yes, that was difficult. Anyway, so that's acts of violence. And your sister hooked you up. I know, and the one before, remember? My sister's never hooked me up with anything.

I'm going to call my sister as soon as we finish this. You're like, hey, where's the little help with my career? Well, this week, our episode is Friendship One. Yeah, exciting. Season 7, Friendship One. We're getting very close to the year. I think we have, after that, I think we have four episodes. Oh, my gosh.

That's sad. Can you believe? Let me just verify. It's sad, but it's sad, but it's also exciting in a way that we are talking now about our new where we go from here and we've got some cool announcements coming down the road about that so yeah everybody stay tuned stay too stay too stay too you more left doesn't mean the delta flyers flies off to the sunset we may be doing some more fun stuff in a whole new way so yeah let's go watch this episode friendship one here we go let's go watch it we'll be right back

with our memories and discussion of Friendship One. Patreon, Patrons. Please stay tuned for your bonus material. All right, everybody. We're back from watching Friendship One. Yes. No Q involvement. No John Delancey.

I was wrong about that. That's okay. That's all right. That's fine. Can we just jump right into our poetry synopsis? Let's jump into poetry because, yes, this was an intense episode. So I think we need a little art. And just so you know, my third verse of my haiku,

I have three options for you. Okay. I'm sorry. That's okay. Here we go. My haiku for Friendship One. Yes. A mission at last.

Away team taken hostage. Not Joe Carey. No! Okay. So not Joe Carrey, no is one. right? Okay. Here's here it is with a second alternative line. Okay. I'll read it in whole, so it kind of gives you the whole feeling creative. I was showing super creative. You really were inspired. Yes. A mission at last. Yes. A way team taken hostage. Mm-hmm. Justice for

Kerry. Okay. Interesting. That's one. Okay. Now, this is the most poetic of all. Here we go. I love it. Here we go. A mission at last. Yes. A way team taken hostage. Gold is the new red. meeting the new red shirts referring to red shirts dying on a mission and it's the gold guy in you got you got very inspired on this episode i did i really did i don't know what came over me but okay well let's see how my limerick goes i don't know if it was quite as inspired as as i don't have three versions i just got one are you not proud of it i'm sure you're proud of it i'm proud of it okay good okay here we go let's go here's our limerick for friendship one the earth sent out the friendship probe station but it caused some pretty nasty radiation taking hostages is a real blow so janeway sent a

torpedo turns out voyager was actually their salvation oh you had a rhyme at all with shun was yes that's hard to do with shun nasty radiation yeah got a little got a little um got a little full in the very beginning because you had to get all that out to say station what Tell me the exact wording right before station. The Earth sent out a friendship probe station. That's okay. Earth caused some pretty nasty radiation. Yes.

I like it. Oh, I love a limerick. Yes, a good limerick it is. Okay, so we were not right about director. We said Terry Windell came back one more time. It was Mike Vahar, who we love. I love Mike Vajar. He did such a good job of this episode.

Really great job. And writer, we're on the nose on that one. We got Taylor, but we didn't get full of it. Michael Taylor co-wrote it with Brian Fuller, who, by the way, we may have mentioned this before, but Michael Taylor and Brian Fuller shared an office. So I know they were always talking with each other about stories and scripts. So, you know, really strong writing for this episode between those two office mates. Great job.

Yeah. Wait, you mean they shared the same room? They had two desks. In the same room? Oh, wow. I thought it was an entryway with the foyer and then two different people that were their assistance in that area. And they each had a separate room. That's not the case.

They were in the same room. They were in the same room. So much easier to collaborate when you're in the same room, right? So that's okay. All right. All right. Let's go through our guest stars right now. Ken Land, who played Veron, the very, very stubborn Varon.

His very, very first credit was a 1994 soap opera by the name of Loving. Do you remember that show? I do remember Loving because, yes, because they filmed right down the street from all my children. Oh, these were like your neighbors. Yeah, I knew a bunch of the actors. It was an ABC soap. Yeah. Back when I did all my children in the 80s, one life to live was nearby.

Loving and Ryan's Hope were the shows that filmed very close. we were all and the cast knew each other and so you guys would hang out with the other soap opera yeah we'd run into each other yeah i don't know at maybe publicity events or i don't know i don't know but i knew them did you do soap opera conventions back then i did one only one all right pre voyager yeah and i think i did actually now that i take it back i did one soap opera appearance which was like a con in New York City. Yes. With a bunch of soap actors.

Then I did I did some kind of like mall appearance where I was at the mall. Yeah. And just did a signing and met people. Nice. A couple of us.

I think that was in Pennsylvania somewhere. Okay. Drove there kind of thing. And then once I went to Houston to Astro. Was it Astro World? Is that what it was called?

That was a theme part. I think it was. It was a theme park. And it was, I think it was called Astro World. Like opened by the Houston Astros owner, maybe. Astro world. Everything was at, like the Astro dome was the thing. And the Astro, the Astros were a baseball team. And, you know, was a very, you do a meet and greed at the amusement park? At the amusement park. Wow. And then we went to see a Jimmy Buffett concert. He was playing at the, what was it called? It was like six flags, kind of. of vibe. Did you guys meet Jimmy Buffett backstage? And he was a big fan of all my children. And so that was pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Yeah. There's a lot of Jimmy Buffett fans. I did a few, but I mean, I could count on one hand the soap opera appearances. Whereas. Right. Where's Star Trek, you can't even, you couldn't count them at this point. So he did loving. What was he? When was he? When he was there after you? So 1994, right? So 1994, you were well, well, I mean, when you left the show, when you left all my children, what year was that? 80. 88.

Yeah, so your character Charlie Yeah, 84, 84 to 85 to 88, something like that. Did your character go to a monastery or did he die? Like, how did he? He went off to medical school to be a doctor. And then like six months later, they cast a much older actor who was like 15 years older than me who came back as a doctor playing Charlie grown up and now he's a doctor. You know, you should have said, hey, come on, I could be Dugie Hauser.

I don't have to, you don't have to cast. this guy but I had actually wanted to leave the soap it was oh you're right got yeah we've we've gone off on my career now but yeah we have I went on the soap with a two-year contract yeah and I enjoyed it but I was ready to be done yeah and they said no no no don't leave we want to sign you for another they want to sign me for like a three-year contract and I said no no don't want to do it for another three years yeah I said um I could sign a two-year contract as long as I have an out after one year. Right. So they said, okay, so we compromised on that. And then I did the show for one more

year and I was ready to go. So I gave my notice. Yeah. I gave my notice and I was supposed to be done in October, I think was when the contract timeline would end. Right. And they wrote me out in like August. Surprised me. And I was like, wait, what? No, I quit you first. You can't quit me. Look at that. Oh, I love it. But anyway, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Once I gave notice, they were like, get them out.

Get them out now. 15 years later, somebody else is going to play you, 15 years older than you. They didn't waste one moment after I gave my notice. Oh, this business can be so harsh sometimes, you know. Next up, we have John Prossky who played Otrin. Otrane was the guy who is the scientist that we kind of have up on the ship on Voyager, right? That we fix his face and he looks great, right? So, 1986, a TV movie called A Case of Deadly Force.

Mm. Yeah. All right. We have Barry Hawkwold playing the character of Bryn. Yes. Bryn, a 1993 episode of Class of 96, the television show Class of 96. Wow. Okay.

Is Bryn the one that was pregnant, I'm guessing? I think that's who that asked. Yeah, I think she was. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yep. Next, we have Peter Dennis. who played Admiral Hendricks. Admiral Hendricks.

He, in 1965, was on an episode of a TV series called No Hiding Place, clearly a UK series because that's what's from. He's British. He's British. It's got to be a British show.

Mm-hmm. Cool. And unfortunately, we lost him in 2009 to cancer, April 18. So, yeah. So he is no longer worth us. We also have Ashley Edner, who played young, young, young. Young, which, funny enough, was a guy in my high school graduating class, a Korean guy.

His name was young, young, young, actually. Yeah, young, so I'm talking about this character, young, young, and that's the exact name of the guy I went to high school with. That's how well. Young or I should say child young, maybe. That's easier for me to say that. Yeah, the little girl, she was a little girl. She was great. Okay, 1998 episode of the TV series, step by step.

Step by step. Yeah. Josh Clark, we know, Lieutenant Joe Kerry, 1976 TV movie, the other side of victory. 1976, the other side of victory. Josh Clark, Josh Clark was, had been around a lot longer than I realized when we worked with. Same here. Yeah. No clue.

I had no idea that his credits went that far back. But we've talked about this before. Yeah, he's an old hat. Yeah, veteran actor. Definitely. John Rosenfeld, who played technician number one, his very first credit was the 1998 film, Rat Bastard. Rad bastard. Wendy Speak, who played technician number two, interestingly enough, her first credit is also 1998, just like John Rosenfeld, but not the same, not Rat Bastard. It was actually a TV series called USA High. I don't know if you've ever

I've never heard of it either. Never heard. I want to go back to this technician number one. Is that the guy that looked kind of like a tall James Taylor? There was one guy who I kept seeing an alien with the radiation stuff. But I kept going, no, that was James Taylor? Was James Taylor a fan? Did he do a cameo?

I got to go back and look at how did I miss this? Okay, maybe that was him. Do you think James Taylor actually did a cameo on our show? I don't know. That would blow me away if that actually happened. We would have heard of that. I think we would have known. But this one guy, I think it's him, technician one.

I think he looks like James Taylor. Okay, never mind. These guys are in the beginning of the episode. They play the aliens pre-radiation. Remember the two? They're detecting the probe coming into their atmosphere. That's where these guys are. Oh, so they had the hoods on.

But then they take the hoods off. They had no hoods on. The very first shot. showing the aliens detecting friendship one probe as it's coming in. And the guy goes, it's entering our atmosphere. They have no clue about what the probe is yet. Okay, so I'm thinking of a different guy. I'm thinking of a radiation dude.

No, these are non-radiation. Yeah, these are the only non-radiation people, unless you count, you know, Otrin, looking less radiation than he gets. But no, but these guys are the very beginning, yeah. Okay. That's not James Taylor. Okay. No, no.

We also have David Galardi. He's our final co-star. Alien Lieutenant. Alien Lieutenant. Maybe that's him. Maybe that's James Taylor. Maybe 1993 episode of the Untouchables, the TV series. So there was a TV series about. I remember that, I guess.

Yeah. I remember that. So that's who David Galardi is. Big Cali slash James Taylor. Yeah, big cast. But the last three were co-stars, of course. I did not. Yeah, this was James Taylor definitely had a Coastal.

Yeah. Opening shot. Do you like that CGI of the Friendship One probe kind of flying through space? Yes, yes. And it looks like Earth in the background. Like it's an M-class planet that looks really lush and oceans and blue. It was a beautiful shot. Yeah. Clearly this planet is pre-radiation. Well, we don't know at that at this point. But we do see some aliens at a control center. They're monitoring the probe, entering their atmosphere. And, you know, I'd like their equipment. look very different. It was like a round view screen thing they had. It was kind of funky. I wonder who did the voice on the probe. You know, when the probe has the recording, we the people of earth greet you in the spirit. I wonder who it was. To me. Probably loop group. Yeah, you think so? Because it kind of sound like Cosmo Genovese to me. Really? Maybe. Well, he would read it on stage. He would have read it. Cosmo would have read it Yeah. Actually, was Cosmo here the last season?

Oh, are you saying that he left? I thought... I feel like Cosmo left. Oh, because Jan came in. Jan Rudolph came in. Oh, my gosh. So Jan would have... Yeah, he was retired. Yeah, I forgot about that. So we've got the alien scene, the opening scene. Then we go to opening credits, which again, I love every time. I think we have maybe the best opening credits of All Star Trek shows. I'm just going to say it. I'm going to go with that, too. I love the beautiful visuals of our opening sequence.

So then we go into astrometrics lab, actually. We're talking, where Janeway is talking on a view screen to an older admiral. This is Hendricks. This is the British actor. Yeah. We were talking about. I got to say his first line, I couldn't understand because of his accent. I was like, wait, what?

I had to go back a couple of times because he said the Voth, the Kabali, the Vodwar. Well, the way he said everything was like very stylized. He's like, you know, the vaudeau. I'm like, oh, I was like, wait a minute. What is he saying? What is he saying? But he was very, I was very impressed with his fancy pantsness. He was.

He was very elegant. And he's one of Janeway's professors from the academy, right? Yeah. So there you go. It was very cool. But yeah, because she says a little farther than I expected professor. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they have a history. Yeah. Anyway, so we cut to that from there, we go to the briefing room. He says, we got a mission for you. We go to the briefing room. We have this cool shot. Yes. Where it's like a crane shot where the camera starts big and wide in the briefing room.

And as we're listening to this recording of the probe, we, the people of earth, greet you in the spirit of peace and humility. The camera's pushing in slowly, seeing all of us just listening, and then it eventually comes down on Janeway pushing a button. To stop the end of the recording. To stop the end of the recording. It's a very cool opening shot. We've never shot from above the briefing room table ever before. No. This ever.

No. It was very cool. Yeah. So that was cool. And then I did make a note in the scene. We're basically talking about this probe that was sent out just four years after Zephrm Cochran tested his first warp engine, that it's packed with all kinds of information, Harry says. And Starfleet just sent us some search. search grids for us at checkout, right? That jumps us into the bridge. And we start off basically

knowing that we have searched all of grid 295, nothing. Harry says he stayed up all night and he looks it, by the way. I'm going to say, the bags underneath my eyes there that either make up or I intentionally did myself made it look like I was up all night. But he spent all night extrapolating the probe's trajectory. And he suggests to move to 310. Grid 310. Let's just move ahead skip 296 up to 309 because of all this all-night work that he's done he basically was an overachiever he was harry was an overachiever two bucks two bucks in the captain's chair listening to harry's pitch and two bucks like okay well let's try it alter course and then paris agrees are you a little shock that he agreed personally i was i was i was i like paris's uh line trying to impress

the starfleet brass harry yeah yeah that's a good line not the best line of the episode but i think there's a there's a really good one coming up uh exterior ship shot uh next back on the bridge harry does find it he finds the the titanium or tritanium signature of the hall or whatever and realizes that he was on the money and then i think tom says something about that too like good job harry you know he's happy about it at this point i made a note i said whatever bad stuff happens now is Harry's fault because we wouldn't have been here if you hadn't been an overachiever

staying up all night we would have been off some other track. Okay, to be on yes, Harry's fault. Harry expedited it, but even if Harry didn't say jumped the 310,

we still would have gotten a 310 eventually. So I'm going to say it's Starfleet's fault in ultimately. Okay. I'm going to blame it on them. I'm going to blame it on Harry That's fine. You can throw Harry into the bus.

I'm part of that. Moving on, we have this wonderful exterior shot of Voyager in orbit of the planet. Did you like the planet the way it looks? Yeah. Kind of dead looking, kind of grayish, sort of purplish, sort of ash-y-looking, yeah. Yeah. Back to Astrometrics.

We have Janeway, Chikote, and Seven. Seven has detected the probe, but anti-matter radiation has interfered with our sensors. So we don't have the exact location. Janeway orders Chacote to assess. assemble and away team to investigate in the Delta Flyer. So, well, they look for life signs too. So it's radiation everywhere, high levels of antimatter radiation. And there's no life signs.

No, no. Zero life signs. So they've got the, they think they've got this probe, but there's nobody there that they think. On the planet. Yeah, we go to Sick Bay. Carrie's there getting inoculations with Tom. And I wrote down Carrie.

We haven't seen him in a long time. We have not seen him in a very long time. Which always makes me nervous for those actresses when they show up out of nowhere, on an away mission, it's not going to end well. But it's not just Lieutenant Kerry. It's Neelix, too. Tocote there as well.

What's interesting is Harry's not there to get inoculated, but yet he is on the away team later. So it's a little strange. I don't know why. They must not care as much about Harry. Clearly not. Tor is arrived. Yeah, they didn't give Harry the memo.

He's expendable. He's a new gold is the new red, right? Tor is a rise. For her inoculation, Paris is just beside himself. He's like, let's just, no, let's walk out here and talk. He challenges her. He challenges her decision to be part of this away team because she's pregnant. It's radiation filled down there.

And she finally relents and agrees with her hubby or her man, Tom. In the end, my nomination for Best Line of the episode is My Money's on Balana from Chikote. My winner, best line is when Tor is outside, when she's talking with Paris. Yes. She says, okay, fine, you win. but if we have another baby, you carry it and I'll go on the away mission. Fine. That's a good one.

It's a deal. It's a deal. So I don't know if Tom won here. He's going to have to carry that baby next time. I don't know if that's winning or I will, yeah. That's funny. Moving on to the Delta Flyer Interior, we have the away team of Neelix carry Chkote

and my auto correct change it to Charkitay, but clearly that's not his not. name. Tom and Harry are also on this away team. It's a very bumpy ride down there. Very bumpy, yes. Neelix is a little queasy. And the music, I don't know if you noticed this, but the music really had a little bit of an homage to Star Wars in a way. It sounded like, yeah, it sounded a lot like some Star Wars background type of orchestral music. I did notice the music in this episode. I thought, I've noticed it the last few episodes, actually, that there's been a kind of a tonal shift to a little more like superhero adventure sounds.

There you go. There you go. Exactly. As they get closer, they see evidence of a civilization that used to be there, but it's in ruins now. Harry says that the radiation levels are at 6,000 iso rems. So nothing would be alive down there. There's no way.

So Chocote says, hey, Tom, set the flyer down. Let's get down there. So we do have a planet surface, a shot, a CGI shot of the Delta Flyer actually land. Paris brings a nice little curve in there. Did you like that shot? Are you okay with that one? I liked it. You know, when the flyer approaches to land,

they sort of cut away. And there's a lot of snow. So it's snowing. Yeah. There's, you know, like I guess it's a snow storm. Yes. And I did notice that when the flyer lands, snow doesn't kick up off the ground.

Like, you know, like when a helicopter lands, it kicks up dirt and stuff like that. It didn't do that in this one. I did make a note here. I was like organic material like that in CG back in the 90s, back when we did this. That's really tricky now with our technology to make really good looking organic, whether it's water, mud, you know, snow. So back then, they just kind of skipped it.

They sure did. They were like, yeah, it's not going to kick up any dust because that's going to be expensive. So they kind of, they just cut away. But it's, yeah, the approach. approach was cool. It kind of did a little bit slide in. Yeah, not bad. As we're seeing the Delta Flyer landing in the process of landing, we also kind of jump over to a shot of a close-up of a hooded figure that's watching. Speaking of Star Wars, though, to me, this felt a Star Warsy. Those those hazmat suits felt very Star Warsy, like shit or something. Yeah, and also kind of

elements of dune as well i felt so yeah so other sci-fi shows kind of came to play there as we see the close-up of the hooded figure watching then now we see his pov through i'm guessing his visor his binoculars alien yeah tech whatever it is so we see a little bit of um you know read out information on the delta flyer as it lands and then finally back to a close up of this alien watching and out to out to commercial after that um planet surface love Vahar, the first shot, your boot. Yes, stepping into the ice and, yes. Great shot.

Crunching through that. Great shot. It was really good. Yeah, nice little revealed that this boot belongs to Tom Parris. Conversation between Paris and everyone's in an EV suit at this point, of course. Tom and Joe. Tom and Joe, isn't that funny? Tom and Joe have a conversation about fatherhood, husband and wife interactions.

But again, I know what's happening. It's making you feel for Kerry right now. You're like, oh, Carrie's a good guy. He had a deal with the same stuff with his wife that Tom's dealing with his wife. So you're getting these feelings of like, gosh, darn it. We love Carrie. And Neelix is following.

And then Tom sees something on the ground. He goes to pick it up. Neil says, be careful. Yeah. And Tom picks it up. And why are you pushing random buttons, Tom? You were the bold. It looks like a grenade.

Like it doesn't look like a toy. And you are so bold. This reminded me of when I was an actual kid in real. And my mother would always, we go to the store and she'd be like, just don't touch anything. Don't just keep your hands to yourself. Don't touch. And I would touch things and I would break them, kind of like the props on this show. Yes.

They stopped giving me props because I'd always break them. And my mother used to always say that. Like, don't touch everything. You don't have to touch it. So I guess Tom is just a little like me. Did you have flashbacks? Did you have flashbacks to your childhood when you watched this scene? I knew you did.

There you go. And, of course, he touches the button on what looks to me like a grenade. Like a grenade. It looks like it's some type of bomb. I'm with you. And even Neelix tries to stop you. But in this episode, clearly it's an alien music box slash toy playing Vivaldi of all things. So now we're thinking, huh, okay.

So maybe the probe did have some influence on these people, on this race of aliens here. Carrie detect something on his tricorder, and it's off. We go to another direction for the trio. We now cut to Chikote and Kim, also in EV suits, also exploring another part of this planet. Harry detects an anti-matter signature ahead, and now we have a cool shot of sort of Chkote and Harry coming in to what looks like an entire football field of missile silos is what it looks like. Yes, these giant bunkers with circle doors on the top. Do you remember where you shot this scene? 16, I'm pretty sure.

Was it near the cave set? Yeah, it must have been right on the edge of that big cave set. Yeah, because they only built one silo, right? All the other ones are CGI. So that one silo that we step on a little bit later. Yeah, so. And if it wasn't there, it had to have been there. They couldn't have, could they have squeezed that on the size of stage nine?

No, I think it had to have been there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. It was very cool, though. Cool shot, though. I like it.

Yeah. Paris Hales, Jacote, that they think the probe is in a cave. Chacote says, just keep him posted. And then we cut back to Chacote and Harry walking onto one of the missile silos. Super cool. And then we got that shot where we can see in, basically, because we've got flashlights. And we actually see the warhead that's still active in there. It's kind of crazy with alien symbols on there.

Yeah, that was very cool. We go to the cave set next. We're inside the caves. Neelix, Carrie, Paris are walking in. they start to see some equipment like dusty old equipment they think it it's some kind of control room or a laboratory diagnostic equipment everywhere and there was tons of it oh yeah you remember this yeah there was a lot of it this was on 16 too i'm guessing yes yes they basically used our cave set where we did all of our planet stuff everything yeah and they just sort of redressed it

with some of this uh you know this lab equipment and stuff but there was a ton of of it in there. And they're looking through all this stuff. Harry does say most of this stuff is still functional. They've been working on something. And then he finds a piece of painted metal that's from the friendship probe or whatever. Harris sees it. But why is it covered with that much dust? I know. This is their, this is their workplace, right? This is where they've been living. Why would it be covered? Oh, gosh. Okay. It feels like a ruse. It feels like they've tried to trap them to make it feel abandoned, but it's not. Oh, that maybe that's what it was.

Yeah. Seems like a lot of work to do this. Paris at the end of the scene, when they find all this lab equipment, basically says, hey, let's set up these transport enhancers. We're going to send all this, you know, transport all this stuff. Transport it back, yeah. And calls Chocote. And again, I just made another note.

Where you and Chakotay are is very, it's a very cool Viz effects. Oh, yeah. extension of our cave set because there's not much room to work with there's not a lot of cave on the edge of that set. Nope. And they did a really good job with the Vizifax and whatever set they built. It looks super cool. But Paris says we found some of this, you know, a piece of the probe and we're going to get ready to beam it back to the flyer.

And Chikote says, great, we'll meet you there. We'll meet you at the flyer. Yeah. And suddenly they hear a noise back in the cave inside. the cave or Paris Newark. And they look around and hazmat suits start popping out from above them

and all around them. And I did make a note like the hazmat suits are almost like dirt colored and it was a great choice to sort of blend in. Make them like camouflaged. Very camouflaged. It looked cool. And then Carrie, Carrie tried.

It looked hot to me. They looked very hot. Yeah. I bet all those actors were really hot. Yeah. But his tricorder didn't read any life signs. And initially and never did, never did because they weren't looking for the type of life signs that we know, which would be life signs that are not totally soaked in radiation. And that's the reason why we couldn't see them or Kerry couldn't detect them because of that. But anyway, we are now back in the Delta Flyer. And yeah, Cicote and Kim, yeah. Harry, Harry and Cicote walked in. Chacote first notices a beeping sound and there's an open panel. Somebody's been in there.

Yeah, someone's going to mess around. yes they've had a they've had a burglar yeah um and then we cut in the back and there's uh harry's putting his helmet away yeah harry's hair looks so good even after the helmet is taken off it's unbelievable really good uh he's he's kind of jumped he's hit with a box as he puts his helmet away well you know you saw what he did first he takes the gate he takes the gate and it but if you look at the gate it doesn't look like that heavy of a gate okay and it hits by the way it hits It hits my EV suit. Yeah, which is like a football.

Thank you. So that really is not going to do anything. That will probably shock me. But what probably did something to me was him taking that container and then bonking me on the head with it, basically. Right? So that's what gets me all woozy, I suppose. It was a good hit. It was, but I might know it was Harry looked stupid.

He looked silly. I thought he looked silly. You just got surprised. I bought it and I thought you saw this very well. You did this, right? I did. I did. No, no. No, that looked like you.

Yeah. Good job on the stunt. Thank you. But yeah, the alien starts to raise his weapon. Chucote comes in and Stunz him. Shuns him. Shunt shoots him. Yeah. Goes over to Harry, lifts him up, and calls the away team and nothing. And then there's a big bump or something. Well, we're getting hit now. We're being fired upon, right? Because we're now in the cockpit. And when we go back to the cockpit, I just have to say, There's all these stripes on the wind. The streaks, yes.

It looks like giant bird poop streaks. It sure does. And I got to say giant birds that just pooped while we were flying. And it's like poop streaks. I must interject right now. Okay. I have a shot from publicity that was taken, that I printed up to take to conventions of me sitting in the shuttle and the Delta Flyer wearing the EV suit and with the window with the streaks on it.

And I never knew which episode that was from. I was like, this is it. I thought it was from the underwater episode that we did a while, while back, right? Yeah, it almost looks like a giant like seaweed kelp. Right. So, but it's completely. Yeah. So I thought, oh my gosh, it's from that episode.

But no, it was from this episode. And now, because you described it as as bird poopoo, maybe that's why that's the least popular photo that I printed up before like, yeah, yeah. Bird poop streaks. It does. It does. Yeah. Skid marks.

Skid marks from birds. It does. But we're getting hip. by these anti-matter weapons and our shields are are failing and Chocote is, let's go. Let's get out of here. Later. We can't help them if we're all dead. Yeah.

And I wrote, you're leaving us? Hey, Harry does protest. He's like, what about the others? But look, you know, but we do need to have us being alive to help you. So we had to go, man. We had to go. I'm sorry. Back to the cave.

Carrie's trying to talk to them, but he takes a nasty hit to my head. gosh. And Tom stands up to protect him. Yeah. When he hit you, he hit you again on the on the EV suit. So I felt like it reminded I had a flashback. And I acted like it hurt. Yeah. I was like, oh, I can't feel of him. Can I just say this? My my flashback when I watched you reacting was as a kid getting punished and pretending it hurt, you know, the spanking. Kenny the spanking hurt to stop it sooner, basically. So I felt like you were doing the exact same thing to the, you were like, ah, to the aliens to make them not hit you again.

Yeah, don't hit me on that hard show. Don't hit me on the really hard, protective part, ow, kind of. But I had a flashback myself. Okay, yeah, so after the beatdown happens, Varon is the one that kind of comes to, see, this is what's horrible. Yeah. But his line is, leave them alone. So you immediately think, okay, this guy's taking sympathy for Carrie.

for Tom, for everyone else that's, you know, being beat down. So, and that's, that's the mind mess. That's, that's what messes with your mind in this episode because you start thinking this guy's sympathetic character and then later what he does. You're like, I mean, it's funny, and I'm going to just editorialize for one brief. Sure. Go. I liked the story.

I love the direction. Yeah. I do feel like as a broad statement that the guest cast. is just a little milk toast to me, just a little in the middle. Like, when you start talking about Varon, seems like a good guy, but then he's a bad guy.

Like, I think we needed much stronger choices. Differentiated personalities of, like, Varen needs to be the scary, badass, like he needs to be, from the jump, he needs to be tough and scary and intense. And I just didn't.

So this Varon was here, you feel, and I agree with you, that the Varen, whoever plays Varen, could have been here, right? I mean, in terms of the commitment. He ends up being a murderer. He kills, spoiler alert, sorry people, but he kills one of our people in cold blood. Yeah. Like, this is not a good person. No. He's a desperate, no.

You know, vengeful, angry. Yeah. But taking the middle of the road sort of tactic. also worked in that you did not expect him to kill Carrie, though. You see what I'm saying? It's sort of like, uh, he's kind of milked toast. He's not really going to do anything. I felt like they all sort of blended, even the pregnant alien lady.

Oh, on the ship. Like they were all sort of low energy. Let's have more layers. Let's have more layers for these aliens, right? Let's not keep them one note. They all felt like they were sort of playing the same kind of character. Right.

And so I didn't know. Yeah. And a lot of times it was very. um low energy and yeah yeah um soft and anyway that was my that's my biggest complaint in this episode i think the the performances should have been as uh have as much variety as i think this story had written into it because it's got a lot of potential in it but i feel like it was a a little unrealized okay all right thank you for that opinion that's my that's my little sidebar yeah Yeah. But after the beat down, Varon realizes that we're there to collect our probe, which is basically the beginning of the end of their civilization. So they're very upset that it's not only how they're upset, they're somewhat, Varen somewhat kind of happy, I think, because he realizes, oh, now the perpetrators have returned. Now we can hold them accountable. So there's a little bit of that going on.

And Tom is very confused. Yeah, he has no clue. By the way, I do want another quick sidebar. Yeah. In our intro, when we're trying to remember this episode, yeah. I'm surprised I don't remember more of this because I had a lot. You're in a lot of it, yes. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a Tom Pera story.

No, but you're in, your screen time is up there, big time. And once I watch this, there are things that came back to me. Yeah. Like in the baby thing, the baby thing. This is a great Tom character development episode. Huge. I think the last couple episodes have been huge. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, you are the stand-up guy in this one. That is for sure. Okay, so the next scene, we're in a hallway. Chakotay and Janeway are walking. Did you notice in the scene they're talking about the aliens and the antimatter weapons? Yeah. And Kate says antimatter. And Chakote says antimatter.

And they both say it differently. And I'm like, how do, is it antimatter, antimatter, antimatter, antimatter, anti-matter. Yeah, it's like, I feel like they said anti-matter in the one scene. I did not nitpick this scene as much as you did. My goodness, you notice the way they pronounced the anti-matter. Okay, I didn't catch that. Yeah, I don't know why, because they said it, because Chikote says, whoever they are, they have anti-matter weapons.

Right. And she goes, antimatter. And he was like, he just said it, into matter. He just said they have anti-matter weapons. Right. Intimatter? No, antimatter. I got to go back and watch that again.

Bad gum it. All right. They get hailed by Tuvok, who's on the bridge. And Tuvok says, hey, we're being hailed from the surface. Jaymeway thinks it's the away team. Tuvok says no. So then we got to the bridge. And this is Janeway basically talking with Veron.

And it's audio, though. There's no video. I think it's just audio at this point. And he's talking about how his name is. Varan and the crewmen are, everyone else is his prisoner that the away team basically is his prisoner. Yeah, he's got hostages. And it's just audio at this point. I did find it interesting because when we were down on the planet, it was a lot of handheld in the cave set when Veron is walking around. I wasn't really clear what he was talking into since there's no bridge set in the cave.

That's right. But I did like the movement. I liked that he was actively, as if he was on speakerphone, I guess he was just kind of walking around talking to Janeway in the cave somewhere. I just, that's my missing scene. Him turning to someone go, hey, hit speakerphone now like that. I do it for him. But, you know, basically he accuses Janeway and all of us for committing genocide, which is a huge accusation to have. Janeway's just confused.

She doesn't know what's happening. But he keeps explaining that we are going to pay for, what happened to his people. And again, she's just, she's clueless. And so she gets, she says, what do you want to do? And he says, I want you to get us, all of us off this planet, find us a new home that's not radiation soaked. Right.

And Janeway says, okay, well, let my crew and go and we'll talk about it. And he says, no, we're not talking. Yeah. Your people are not safe until my people are. Right. And basically threatening, it's, it's a host. hostage situation. And he says, you've got three hours. The clock starts now. Right. And that's our act out. Okay. So we come back from the commercial break. We see Janeway and Tuvok talking. She wants to

scan for the nearest M-class planet. He said, you need to, you know, rescue us and get us someplace safe. So she's going to start looking. And Tuvok's like, you're going to meet his demands. You're going to let him blackmail you? And she says, I'm just keeping my options open. Calls Chacote. You're with me. We cut the sick bay. Now we see that this, this alien who was the burglar on the flyer that Chacote stunned. He's under the clamshell bed right now. He's, he's unconscious, I think. Yeah. And the doctor says he looked at his garment. It's magnocyte, which is kind of like an environmental suit. But it's, it doesn't offer full protection that the doctor says his skin his body is saturated with this radiation that's why no one could detect his life signs that's right so it's it's almost like

his tissues are indistinguishable from the radioactive atmosphere that's right that's gross that's horrible it's just it's just so deep into their skin you can't even tell they it's pretty bad um well Well, Jainway wants to wake him up, and the doctor does wake him up with the hypo spray. And now what ensues is just this conversation of just pretty much, this is what you did to our people. I do not believe that you're trying to help us. I do not believe that you're trying to be nice to us. I believe that you're here to harm us.

And his whole theory is that we sent the probe there to give them technology, to cause themselves to obliterate their own, to basically pollute their own planet, right? To mess everything up so that we come in to conquer them. them. And then Janeway makes a very, very, very key statement, which is why would we contaminate a planet that we're trying to conquer? That makes no sense. Absolutely. And he's still like, no, I don't, I don't believe this is that you guys are, you know, on the up and up. I think this is. But can you blame him a bit? No, no, I can't. But he's that, guess what he does. At this point. No, he's spouting Veron, right? Like, he's just, Veron is their leader. So everything

coming out of Otrin's mouth is basically Varen, from what I hear. But Janeway is very calm. Janeway is just saying, like, look, you know, this probe was sent 300 years ago. Like, we don't have, we weren't even alive when this probe was sent. Everything that he has to say, she has something to sort of balance that out and sort of show him the other side of the coin. Right. It's a nice beginning to changing his understanding of what happened. Correct. Yeah. It's a nice scene. right we jump in the cave yeah jump in the cave uh now paris and neelix and carry uh don't have their environmental suits anymore they're just in their uniforms carries is that is that what you wear under the environmental suit because i never got that uniform ever i've never worn that so so i guess

that's what you had underneath clearly i guess so yeah but paris says i think i need my med kit he's really hurt and brin we begin to meet brin she says i can't give you your your stuff but she hands of a metal bowl and some cloth, and Paris starts cleaning this cut on his head. And I just, I noticed as I was watching the scene when Paris is talking to this woman, that I was wiping on either side of the makeup cut. Because when you touch it,

you're going to mess it up. You're going to mess up the makeup. So if it were a real cut, I would be like, you know, dabbing it and really cleaning it. But a makeup cut, you have to sort of pretend like, you're touching it.

Yeah. So for the next take, it's not ruined. So all I could do is watch my fake cleaning without touching the actual cut. Okay, there's a joke among Star Wars fans that stormtroopers are so bad at aiming that they can never hit their target. You as a medic are so bad at aiming. I can't even find the wound. But we now know why.

It's because if you touched it, makeup would be on your butt about messing up the actual wound. Mm-hmm. So funny. Okay. But Paris and Bryn start talking. They talk about, he says, when's your baby do? She's obviously pregnant. He says, Belana's pregnant too.

We're expecting a girl. And she's like, how do you know? Yeah. And he makes a joke about, she has her, my eyes and her mother's cranial ridges. And then he asked, is this your first baby? And she goes, no. And he goes, oh, boys, girls. She says, two boys and a girl.

And Paris says, what's their names? And she goes, they were all still born. oh very sad you were and i could see your reaction was genuine because you at that point already had kids and you understand what it is yeah if one of your kids was still born you would be devastated so you did a very effective look it was a sad it was a sad look and it was an empathetic look as well so good job i do remember shooting this scene okay and my memory is that this actress barry i think was her name yeah barry hawkwalt who played brin yeah very hawk wall i remember she felt a bit method actressy to me oh and as i as i watched the scene

meaning and what i mean by that is that she was always a bit standoffish with me and a little in character yeah yeah even when the camera wasn't rolling even when the camera wasn't rolling i felt a bit like i couldn't quite you know just have a an easygoing conversation with this guest actor Yeah. He was a bit method. It was always a bit distant. I don't know. That memory sort of came back as I watched this scene.

Because as soon as I saw this scene, I'm like, oh, yeah, there was a whole storyline and it started coming back to me. And I remember, I don't remember feeling like I ever connected with her, you know, when we were shooting it. I did remember Lieutenant Kerry. Josh knew that he was going to, you know, read the script. He knows she's going to die. And he was not happy.

leave the cave scene in all of my memories of that. We go to Astrometrics Lab and there's two Vok Torres, Janeway Harry's there. They're talking about how long it would take to take all of these people. To the nearest M-class planet, which would

really, it's, okay, let's talk about this. There's a hundred right, there's 5,500 people, but it's 132 light years away. Round trip, according to Torres, is two months. So So now to shuttle all 5,500 people, the extrapolated time frame is now three years that we have

to tack on to our journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. We have to first ferry these people for three years. So Janeway is like, no, I mean, this is, I can't believe. No, that's crazy. Tuvok's like, well, we can use force. And Janeway was like, not until we've exhausted every other option. And Balano, by the way, she does say, hey, what about Tom? What about Tom?

Yeah, what are they going to do this whole time in three years while we're shutting? She doesn't say, what about Tom? She goes, what about Tom and the others? And I was like, or just Tom, maybe? What about Bolana? Do you just say, what about Tom and stop there? Well, the fact that she listed your name and no one else is that means you're the special. I was just like, why not just leave it at Tom?

Just Tom? What about Tom? Yeah. What about my husband? Yeah, that would have been a little more emotional rather than Tom and the others. All my other favorite people, you know. Oh my gosh. We're now in sick bay, seven of nine walks in.

Yes, O-Tren notices, sir. I got to say about her walking in. If you freeze frame this, when the door opens, she's just standing there in the hall. No. And you know what the rule was. We always were supposed to be on the move as the door open. So when you see the doctor's doing a little business, he moves back to a table to type something in. And then the door opens, she's.

literally just standing there and then starts to move. So I was like, Jerry, you're supposed to take a couple steps back and be moving. I'm going to play devil's advocate. I'm going to go other side of the coin. I'm going to say, you do remember, there were times that certain scenes would take a take after take after take because something wasn't right in terms of how the camera is going to land and bringing that first actor in or whatever. So maybe this was take eight and it was just like, oh, let's get it over already, maybe.

You know, I'm just feeling like, how could she not know that? Or how could the director not have seen that? And maybe it was the correct way. She walked around the corner and it opened right where she got up to the door. And then this was maybe a later take that they catch it. Yeah, they just happen to pick, yeah, pick a take where she was definitely just standing there, door open and then she walked in. Yeah. Well, anyway, so she walks in, Otrud notices her.

And seven is there because she's, the first thing we hear her saying is, I've extracted the nanoprope. and the doctor says, I'll begin reprogramming them. Now, this catches Otrin's attention. So he's like, nanoprobes. So she's like, yeah, these are small machines. They're going to help us repair your tissue, this damaged tissue of yours. And he's like, wait, extracted from where? She's like, oh, my bloodstream.

So now he's even more like, what? Like, is everyone like this on your ship? Like, now he's thinking like this is a ship full of people that have microscopic machines in their bloodstream. But she says, no, just me. I'm the only one that has this. And this is still something that's shocking to him that anything can repair his skin, though, right? So he's like, but then just as he's getting excited about that, Jane Lee walks in and she's on a mission a bit.

She's like, she is. She's told me you've been looking for ways to neutralize this radiation. Yeah. Yes, all my life. Yeah. Tell me about your work. She comes in kind of mad, though. It was interesting.

It was like a little, she's got some attitude right here. And Carrie's not dead yet. I feel like she's on a mission. Yeah, I think she's like the clock is ticking and she's trying to, she's fishing. But she's trying to find out something that will get, give her away in here. Right. But we don't have to take three years of shuttling people, rag and forth. And so she comes to ass, Otrum, because he's the scientist, and she wants to know about his work, right?

So that's pretty much it. We go inside the cave. Lieutenant Kerry wakes up. Oh, no. It's this scene. This is it. Yeah. He's got a stomachache because the inoculations are wearing off.

Neelix talks about the caves are naturally shielded, but, you know, environment. suit is the way to go and they don't have them on. And that's when Yud comes in, right? Yeah, a little girl peeks around a rock. Yeah. And she says, hello. And I, Tom's delivery of, hello, was so high. I was like, it was the highest.

I said that? Hello. Hello. Yeah, you were me, you were Mickey Mouseing it right there. I was very impressed with your octave that you were able to hit. I was like, my goodness. Yes, but I do start talking to a little girl. Yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to make her comfortable. And then Paris gets the idea to give her the little music box thing and ask Nelix, where's the thing? I wrote down, Paris is a very demanding hostage. You're like, excuse me, we'd like to give her something. Yeah. Give me the bag over there. Give me that bag right there.

Yeah. He could be asking for a weapon. I know. That's what's so funny. Well, she's, Barron says that. He goes, there could be a weapon. Yeah. Yeah, he wants to give her the music box.

And yeah, Varon says, you know, these guys are dangerous. Yeah. Well, he stashes it away from her. She does play with it for a second. And then Varen's running over like, this could be a weapon. So he flips out, right? Bryn's like, like, look, it's harmless. So now you see a little bit of dissenting opinion from Varen a little bit from Brin.

The seeds of rebellion are happening. I do remember this scene with the little girl. She was really young. And I do remember because she had to get all her makeup. on that took time and then she had to get it off and she only had a short day. I do remember this scene being a bit of a crunch scene. Like, oh, we got to go fast because the kid's on a clock. You know, there's limited hours that you can film with very young children. I think this actress was born in 1990. So we're filming this. 10 years old? Yeah, 10 years old.

Yeah, she was pretty young. But, you know, Varon still doesn't trust. them. Well, that's when Neelix jumps up. And he's like, look, let me go talk to him. And Harris is like, what? Why? Because I'm the ambassador, Voyager's ambassador, remember? And I think Neelix did a really good job, try to convince him. I mean, he really laid it out. And he also sort of brought in his own experience about Tlax and how his family was all killed by the Metrion Cascade, hundreds of thousands of people. But, you know, Veron's so bitter. And so he's so myopic. He only sees one thing.

That's it. He can't see anything else. And he says, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about what happened to your family. And I did like that actor's delivery of that line. It seems sincere. But then he goes, but don't compare your life to mine. That's his final line of that.

Dismisses. Nice try, Neelix. Nunes did a really good job. We go to the bridge next. Janeway is talking to Barron now. I'm trying to propose this alternative. There may be a way to counteract the radiation. But Veron is like, you know,

Oatron told you this. Otrane has too many ideas. Like, he doesn't, he doesn't think that Otrin's a very smart guy. Or maybe he's too smart for him, right? One of the two. But Varen, you know, she's trying to, you know, come up with a different plan. And Varen is like, this is not a negotiation. Because his feeling is this.

Varen says, if I release the hostages, what is going to prevent you from just leaving or attacking us? And Janeway's like, okay, all right, you know, I know you've suffered, you know, so let's just let's just take this in baby steps. Let us have one, just one hostage. And then we'll give you food, medicine, whatever you need. And so, Varen, you know, there's actually kind of a, it's not a close up, but you do see a shot of Varen's face sort of like milling. Thinking about it. Yeah, running this through his head, thinking about what he's going to do. And then he says, you, what's your name? And it's Carrie that he's kind of pointing out. He tells Carrie to set up the transport. enhancers. You know, it sounds like he's going to get, you know, one person, one hostage is going to get to go home. It's going to be Lieutenant Carey. Awesome. But the music kind of gave it away. The orchestral music right there started getting very foreboding at that point when he was setting up the transporters. And I was thinking, oh no. Oh, no. And he says, I'm sorry, Mr. Carey. Sorry. Yeah. Your crewman's ready, Captain. And Janeway goes, transport and you hear a little bit of a phaser fire or something like that. And yeah, on the bridge, you hear Paris, yeah, what do you

doing what are you doing yeah yeah what the hell yeah jenway calls for tom but no answer and then the doctor calls the bridge and we cut to the doctor informing the captain that they killed lieutenant carry and he's lying there on the floor with a hole through his heart oh so sad very sad i was shocked josh was not happy about no but there's the act out he's dead on the floor we go to the bridge and janeway He was pissed off. Oh, she's mad. He says, you murdered one of my crewmen. And it's not going to make me more receptive to your demands if you start killing my crewman.

Yeah. Varon plays chicken where he's like, well, don't force me to kill anyone else. And Jim was like, fine, I'll evacuate your people. But our transporters aren't designed to accommodate large groups. So we'll need time to modify them. Varon gives her one hour. And she's like, okay. And that's when she gives that look to Chikote.

my ready room she's so mad right now it's great i love it uh so she goes off to formulate some type of plan we don't know about this point we don't know what's going to happen no we cut to the cave there's brin bringing paris and nelix who are starting to kind of feel the effects of this radiation yeah she brings you guys a bowl of leaves is what it is yeah enjoy these leaves please yeah and she says this will make you feel better and neelix thanks her and paris's like why are you helping us and she says because your child is going to need a father isn't she yeah so you you've got an ally yeah there's a little bonding going on there we cut to to sick bay and for the first time we see otron he's kind of half half his face is it's clear clear so there's no lesions yeah the doctor is he says

the you know that it's partially working seven explains that the nanoprobes are repairing is yeah and even his conversation because before he was sort of breathy like out of breath that the actor was playing it that way and then in this scene he says he can breathe easier and gets up and he walks across the room walking across the room he's fine he's pretty darn good otron and seven you know continue talking about debating basically about seven saying veron is very irrational and otrem's trying to explain that that you have what he's gone through look what we've all gone through yeah yeah Now, Ochoon even says you can't deny that your people sent this. And Seven says, yes, they made an error in judgment.

Right. They didn't fully anticipate the consequences of their actions. But they did not mean to hurt you or destroy your world. And, you know, humans can evolve and learn from their mistakes. And so can you. Which is a great lesson that, you know. Yeah. But then Otreen responds with, well, even if I believed you, Varen never would.

And that's when Seven puts the seeds of rebellion in his mind. He goes, well, then maybe your people need a change in leadership. And Otrane's like, no, I'm not a leader. And Seven says, well, you're a scientist, someone who can see a problem and come up with a solution. And the same thing can apply to a leader. And we leave that scene with this very pensive look on Otrane's face. He feels like, maybe I can do this. Back in the cave.

Back in the cave. We see two kids eating. They're sitting on the ground, I think, like eating, you know. Probably leaves again. Leaves. Yes. Which is, where do the leaves grow, by the way? I was looking at some of their clothes and their food.

And I'm like, that planet's surface, there's nothing. Yeah, it's been nuked. I mean, it's just there's nothing left. There's nothing left. How did they make fabric for their fancy vests and pants and things? Well, okay, if they're growing leaves, it has to be within the cave and some type of hydroponic sort of enclosure. There's that, how can you grow a plant in that type of environment, impossible? Yes.

they eat a plant-based diet so they're very healthy vegetarians yes but Paris is watching the kids eat when suddenly a woman says Bryn's going into labor it's the baby

she says it's too soon but she says let him help me and Varen Varen kind of lightens up a little bit he's like can you? And Paris is like yeah I think so but I need my med kit we see the Delta Flyer

flying in and it's a great CGI kind of a high shot of the of the set yeah so a century post sees that happening and he tells another guard hey go tell Varon what happened back in the cave this is the delivery scene emergency delivery Parisism losing you know the heartbeat of the baby yeah and he's he decides to speed up the contractions get this baby out so he can deal with the baby but suddenly a guard comes in I think this was James Taylor. I think this guard. The one that ships returned.

They think that was I know James Taylor was in this episode. Fine. Wouldn't it be funny if James Taylor was like, I'm going to give him a fake name. I'm going to be an extra on this show or under five on this show. I wish I had known he was on the show. I would have had him sing a song or two.

I love James Taylor. But Varon says, okay, there's ships back, double the guards at the entrance. Yeah, send out patrols, yep. Yeah, we go outside. And Chukotay's kind of signaling our, you know, people to move around, I guess. Yeah.

We come back in the cave, the baby's being delivered. But when he does that thing, before he does that thing, they actually stun one of the patrol members, right? So that's how they get the uniform, right? So he falls back. The rest of them scatter. And that's when Chikote goes, bap, bap, and then it goes right back to the cave, the delivery scene. The delivery scene. And Paris has the baby, but it's not breathing, he says.

And we see this baby. Yeah. It's a rubber baby. Talk about this baby when you're working with this baby. So there were two, there was two props. It was never a real baby. We didn't have a live human actor baby. Yeah.

We had a rubber baby that was the blue one. That's the dead one. A dead one, basically. Yes. And it was kind of gross. I remember. It looked. Yeah.

Very realistic. It was heavy to hold. Really? they put weight to it too my goodness it's pretty it's pretty heavy and then after uh spoiler alert paris saves the baby right there's uh you know more color in the skin not blue anymore animatronic that was that was an animatronics a remote control puppeted baby that's what i where the where the mouth moves and yeah very cool but right now we got the blue baby um it's a rubber baby it was gross paris needs three millijules from the cardio stimulator and we cut to the planet

surface. Tuvok gets ambushed. And the guard says, don't move. I'll take him to Varon. Tell the others. And the guard says, this way, move. And I felt like they got him pretty easy here. I was like, I started getting suspicious. I didn't remember what happened. But I was like, Tuvok gave up really easy. Tubac is our head of security. Would he be taken that quickly? Probably not. Yeah. It felt suspicious to me. But also when that guard said, I'll take him to Varon and tell the others, it's Bob's voice right there. So that's another giveaway if you're listening carefully. We go back in the cave,

Paris increases to five millajoules. He hears a heartbeat. We hear a baby cry. And we cut back and the blue rubber baby is now kind of pink and got color to it. I was like, that was fast. That was a quick change

on the baby. It was. And you basically tell Bryn and hand the little breathing baby back to Bryn saying, have a son. A boy. She had a boy. Guard comes in. One of the patrols took another prisoner. Varen says, put him with the others. And Tuvok starts to head over. You mentioned, you say, we need to get this baby to Voyager. And Varen's like, nope, he's staying right here in Radiation Central. Tuvok and the guard walk over. Suddenly the guard hands him a weapon. They both turn. They stun the other men.

They stun Varen. They stun the other guards. And then this guard that gave Tewaq He doesn't stun Varon. Tuvok Vulcan neck pinches Varon and then shoots another guard that's standing in the eye. So that's what I saw. It was a very fast action scene. But then we reveal the guard is actually the doctor who is quite happy with himself.

And he was able to take out everyone. He aimed well. Good job. And he says when you need to infiltrate a toxic environment, it helps to be a hologram. Most definitely. Which is true because Tuvok needed the environmental suit but the doctor didn't so he could go undercover that is right that so that so really the

doctor was the only person for this job yeah yeah two vok calls chukote um says we've got the hostages they prepare to to beam out yeah so chocote and kim beam out right that's what happens we'd be back with the flyer okay and then uh brehn comes over to paris and says thank you and paris is like you know this baby is not going to survive. I promise I'll bring him. Let me take him to the ship. I'll bring him back. I promise.

And Bryn agrees. She trusts him, which is a huge way. That's huge. Yeah. And Paris steps into the enhancer, inside the enhancers with the baby. Yeah. And Tuvok says five to beam up. See, I think two bucks should have said 4.2 to beam up because the baby is so tiny.

And then what is it? Point two, remember, is saturated. Well, and actually not saturated, right? would the baby still be saturated with I don't know it's been in in utero yeah I'm not sure okay anyway they beam out

they beam out Paris has the baby he's going to go take care of him yeah we come back from the commercial and we're in sick bay yeah and the doctor

has got the baby looking great gameway's all business isn't she she's all business and I did notice so they're by the bio bed yeah and sitting in the background

are Tom and Neelix on the side, the side beds. Yeah. And I just thought, why are we sitting posing by ourselves? Well, you guys just got treated, though. What do you mean? Yeah, but we should have been laying down or on our elbows. We're both sitting there like we're waiting for our lines, Faith. It just was funny.

I was like, it almost looked like we were both like in ready position. Okay, is it my line yet? And speak. So essentially that part of sickbay was the green. room. That's where you guys are just sort of like chilling out, waiting for our lines. Yes. Okay, fine. Just posing. It felt a little posy to me. I don't know. Janeway is just like, look, once this baby is stable, send it back to the surface, transport the baby to the surface, and give them some food, a couple medical supply

cartons, and let's get out of here. And that's not settling well with Neelings and Paris, who then follow. You guys chase her. Not only do we chase her. Oh, gosh. Parish jumps in front of her and cuts her off. I was like, I just cut off the captain. You were so aggressive. I jumped in front of her. Yeah. You could have been demoted for that. I'm just saying. Oh, yeah. Should have been. That was rude. But Paris is arguing here. He's saying, you know, that you told them that you might be able to neutralize the radiation. Is that true? And she goes, yes, but they don't want our help. And I can't force it on them. And plus they killed Mr. Carey. And then, yeah, but then your argument is like, yeah, that was one man. That was one person who killed Kerry.

If you saw how desperate, you would basically help them. You would not ignore their suffering. So I think that was a good plea. I think he gets to her a bit. We go to engineering. Otrend's in there with Janeway. And he's been doing some experiments and demonstrates in this little sparkly red canister. Yeah, it's like a big fat test tube-looking canister.

Well, basically, they're pumping in the antimatter radiation into this chamber, this glass chamber that we're looking at. And Otrane is showing Janeway his theory of how to basically neutralize the radiation. So we see this effect, kind of a sparkling effect that happens, that changes the color of this radiation. It becomes clear. It looks like healthy air. It's not smog anymore.

Polluted air turns clear. So it looks like they've got the science to do it. And Janeway says, well, how can we apply? these methods to a planetary scale and seven says well you know atmospheric processors are one way yeah but that would take an army of engineers yeah we can't do that no and then Jamie goes what if we encase the catalytic agent in photon torpedoes and I went we don't have any more torpedoes the minute she said that I thought of you I thought of you immediately I thought Robbie's watching this going like, oh, she's shaking his head going, really?

Not only do we not have photon torpedoes, but you're using our non-torpedoes just to help people change their atmosphere. It's sort of like, we're not even, we're not even using them to defend ourselves. We're going to need a lot of them because it says multiple detonations at a low altitude. We got to do a lot of torpedoes. Now, some people have said, by the way, yeah. Some people said, like, if, so if we ran out of torpedoes, we could just replicate new torpedoes.

Okay, let's say that's true. but if that's true why did we make such a point in the first pilot episode or whatever that we only have this many torpedoes we're going to have to why would we even it wouldn't matter you've got unlimited torpedoes and we've been all throughout the show we've been conserving replicator rations so it's not like we have rations to go around to make extra torpedoes every week or every day we don't have any torpedoes to do but clearly we do because we send them down. These are the reserve torpedoes. They're off to the side. Okay. All right. We go back to the cave and Otrin is almost completely done. His face is clear almost, right? He's got a couple of lesions,

but that's it. That's it. Brin, does he have the baby? Yes. Brin brings, Oterham brings the baby with him. Otrum brings the baby and Bryn is like, he's beautiful. Yeah. And Otrin says they can, you know, give us medicine to treat all of us but veron is still angry is like can they bring back to people who die can they rebuild our cities yeah we can't trust these people and brin finally says you know look at my child they said they were going to help help him and they kept their word yes and i felt like she was the most rational yeah and and the lesson for me here was like actions speak louder than words It's like, look at this baby they just saved. You know, actions can overcome preconceptions, but just words.

Don't mean anything until people can see. I like that. The baby, the change in this baby. We go back to the bridge. Tuvok says, shield modifications are online. Chikote asks torpedoes. Seven says ready. I say, no, they're not because we don't have any torpedo.

But anyway, Seven says they're ready. Yeah. And they pailed them. and Janeway says Otrin we're ready to begin and he says good luck and I wondered if all these people were jealous of Otrum by the way like he got a makeover he got the full makeover now he's come back like

all cocky like yeah but he told him he has passes to the spa for everyone so everybody can get a makeover go get a makeover it's fine the Jainway orders Tom to take Voyager down closer now once we get at a certain altitude, that's when Janeway says, fire the first sequence. And now the torpedoes come out, the clouds and the atmosphere light up. Two magic torpedoes that we don't really

have. Yes. And when the ground shakes, yeah, we cut back to the cave. The ground is shaking. There's there's dirt and stuff kind of falling on. Yes. And very immediately. Jumping around. And this is where I was worried about James Taylor, by the way, because the James Taylor extra was kind of looking around like, ah, I was worried about James Taylor. Yeah, I'm glad you're concerned about James. But Varon thinks that we are attacking them. Otrane says, no, no, it's a shockwave from the detonations.

And this goes back and forth to the point where Varen decides that he's going to try to shoot missiles at Voyager. And he starts entering the command sequence to open up the missile silo, at which point, Otrane's like, you've got to be kidding. What are you doing? Barron's like fighting back. So there's a big struggle and that ensues, yeah, between those two. Ultimately, Brin, the mom.

Yeah, she stops it all. Pulls a rifle. On Barron. He says, stop. And I cheered. Brin says this is our only chance for survival. Varan asked, would you kill me? And she says, yes, to save my child.

Okay. Can I just stop you right here? I need to, what is your take on this? Was Brin Veron's lady or not? So, no, I don't think so. Because when, okay, so not at all then, right? Because I felt like there were shades of that going on, maybe. They talked a lot.

Okay. You know, but no, I don't think so. Okay. But she says, I'm going to save my child. Varon tells a guard, get that weapon from her. The guard says no, so. Yeah, he turns out. That's James Taylor.

That's James Taylor. Yeah, that's James Taylor. He points the weapon. That's so amazing to have, you know, music legends on our show. It's awesome. Varon is pissed off. He's like, I took care of. of all of you. I kept you all alive. At this point, we have young, young, young,

coming in, not my high school classmate, but young, little young, saying, come outside. Look, everybody. Look outside. Yes. They go outside on the planet's surface. The clouds are breaking open. Sunlight is breaking through. They're getting vitamin D. And those kind of rays that come through, I was thinking about, you know, when we're on set, creating that sort of light on a set or a location. The DPs will call that God rays. It's where you're like, you put like smoke in the room or the set, shine a bright light through and it gives those shafts of light.

So to make the shafts of light, are they putting flags up to sort of block it in some parts? It's really more about the atmosphere and the smoke. If you have smoke in the space. The smoke will cause the rays then. Correct? Yeah, it'll grab the light. That atmosphere will grab the light.

Yes, yes. Youn says, oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. Now we've got a captain's log supplemental saying we retrieve Friendship One and we've resumed our course to the Alpha Quadrant, but the success of our mission had a very high price. And now we're in Kerry's quarters with Janeway looking at this Voyager model of Voyager in a bottle that Carrie's been working on. Okay, I know what you were thinking. you're like this is the hallmark voyager it's the hallmark decorator stuck into a bottle it probably was am i right i look like it okay you may be right

here's the other thing i thought yeah this show's been we've been running seven years seven seasons yes yes and she said or chocote or one of them said he's been working on this the whole time and he had one no she said he spent months working on it not the whole time he said he spent I thought he'd been doing it the whole seven years. I'm like, dude, you need to, like, watch a YouTube video or something, how to do this? Because it's a lot faster. No, when Chikote says, Kerry spent months working on it. When he said that, I laughed and I still laughed at that point.

So I said, no, he didn't. He went on to, I said, he went on to Amazon and said, Voyager Christmas ornament. And boom, within one day, if he had Amazon. Yeah, Amazon would deliver. And this is not. a sponsorship we're not getting no we're not paid it's not an ad which is joking about the fact that you know maybe he use amazon amazon galaxy prime where he gets sent to the delta quadrant

the actual voyager ornament yeah gosh but she's she's very um sad here and uh you know jane way and chigote talk about the urge to explore and you know the the price we pay yeah the whether it's one life or millions there's a high cost and yeah and and it sort of ended abruptly to me this it did this this episode suddenly like the way that Janeway sort of she was kind of mad with that last line and then it it just sort of cut cut out I don't know it was there's a lot of things I liked about the episode but that ending felt like they had to abrupt you know I wonder like a missing scene like a missing dialogue that they just cut. I've got a script here.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. This is my script. So the last lines as scripted say the urge to explore is pretty powerful, says, correct. He nods, takes a beat. But it can't justify the loss of lives, whether it's millions. Then she looks around the room, the evidence of Carrie's life, or just one, she says.

She puts a hand on the bottle, contemplates it. and then she and Chikote exit. Yeah, I feel like this should have had a shot at the end where she was much slower and sad rather than angry. And then if she put her hand as scripted, put her hand on the bottle and you went to a tight shot of her hand. And as they walked away out of focus in the background, you just pushed in on that kind of ship with the broken part.

But I don't think they did that. Oh. I think it was just kind of. And yeah, I don't even, I don't remember them walking out either. I think they're just sitting there and they just talk and that's the end of it. It would have nice to see them walk out and maybe he puts an arm around her sort of like, you know, it's all right, you know, kind of a thing. Sort of I'm supporting you there, you know. By the way, there's the very end here.

Yeah. I don't know if you can see, but it says scene 113 omitted. There was a scene after the exit where they were supposed to exit another. they're seen. And I don't know what it is. Maybe a walk and talk in the corridor where they sort of further extrapolated or further, you know, went into detail of or something about Kerry at least. Yeah. So there was something omitted. I didn't even know that that was Carrie's quarters to be perfectly honest. I had no clue. I didn't, I had no clue. I'm also looking at the script. And so this revision is a Golden Rod revision on February 1st. The draft came out

on January 31st. Okay. But then there were so many revision. immediately the same day the draft came out there was blue revisions the next day the first after the after the first draft came out one two three four sets of revisions in one day wow that's crazy yeah why that happened i don't know taylor and fuller were furiously writing right four sets of revisions in a day that's definitely rare we don't usually see that not in one day that's unique It probably had something to do with budget. I bet you the budgets came in right when they released the script. And they were like, oops, we can't do that.

We can't afford that. We can't afford that. Yeah, do that. Cut that, cut that, cut that. I bet you that's what it was. I believe you. What is your lesson? There's a lot of lessons in this.

I think I agree. I would say, my favorite lesson is that main lesson, I guess, is that sometimes a good intention can have unexpected consequences. That's a good one. I like that one. That's the lesson. for me. What about you? Beware of anger consuming you. Just talking about Varon, you know, he couldn't see, he could not see beyond his anger, right? I mean, everything was about like,

look what you've done to us. You've basically committed genocide. There's only 5,000 left of my race. He couldn't see the good in any of them. No, not even, no. And to me, if I was one of Varen's people, I would say, wait a minute, that probe was sent how many years ago from your planet? 300? Oh, okay. You know, I would, I don't know. I would take into some, I would take in some of the facts that I've been listening to and say, wait a minute, maybe I need to think a little bit differently. But yeah, so my, my lesson is just. Actions speak louder than words. That's another one, right? So you know, he helped the baby. Janeway helped the guy, you know, Otrane. Yeah. All right. So we have three lessons. We have three lessons. We have three lessons. All right. Your rating. A lot of lessons.

My rating for Friendship One is a 7.5. And I would have given this a higher rating because I actually liked the concept. I liked the story. I liked a lot of things about it. But again, I feel like the performances by the guest cast, not that I would say they're bad, I just felt like they were all sort of. To one note. And one note.

And I didn't feel the differentiation of character. I didn't feel the highs and lows of the emotions. It just felt a lot kind of in the middle. Not very compelling. Okay. Well, I'm not going to let the guest stars performance affect my rating. I'm going to give it a little higher. I'm going to go to 8.0.

Wow. Okay. I did like this episode. Here we go. Captains and Admiral average rating for Friendship 1 is... Yes. seven seven on the nose seven okay so you and i were both higher yeah on this one in the average okay so that's uh friendship one for this week what is next week natural law so thank you everyone

for tuning in to this week's recap and discussion of friendship one join robbie and i next week when we tackle natural law patreon patrons please stay tuned for your bonus material The Burt's Bhopal. Burted, Bhopal, Bhop,

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