The Delta Flyers - Good Shepherd

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Voyager actor and passionate supporter of the reigning NCAA college football champion Georgia Bulldogs, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself, your favorite Forever Ensign. at Wong. Remember, you can get the full version of this podcast by signing up to become a patron at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. Wow. And you know what's funny? Are you wearing Georgia underneath there? You are. I am wearing a Georgia. Yes, you are. I like that shirt. Yeah, it's an old school. Yeah, it's like a vintage kind of looking shirt, Georgia shirt. So Robbie texted me. He's like, listen, can we push our intro like half an hour a little bit later? the game is running a little long.

Starting point is 00:01:02 And I am more than happy to oblige because I understand, I understand his fascination with sports ball at the collegiate level at least. I'm more of an NFL fan, but all right. So this week's episode, yes. Let us get into that. Yes. Yeah. It's good shepherd.

Starting point is 00:01:23 So I like the name at least. Good shepherd. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah. I'm not sure whether it's about. Let's go watch that. Let's go watch it.

Starting point is 00:01:32 We'll go watch Good Shepherd. We'll be right back with our recap and discussion. Patreon, patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. Robbie and I are back. Yeah. My goodness. What an unusual episode. Very unusual.

Starting point is 00:01:48 And I sat there. It's so funny because when I watch episodes now, I think like you, or I'll think about you watching it. And I sit there and I go, Robbie's going, where are the main characters? of where are the main characters? But I will say this much, I was right in my guess of what episode. Yes, these are the lower deck characters. I didn't even remember this at all.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Okay. And well, I don't remember the actual episode, the specifics. Because when I watched it, I was like, what is going on? But I was also right about the musician that's in this one too. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yes. Crewman Mitchell, played by none other than Tom Morello,

Starting point is 00:02:28 the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine so excited because I'm a huge rage fan so yes, that was really good. All right, let's just start talking about a guest stars first. Yeah, guest stars with Tom Morello. So he played the junction operator. Yeah, he was the one that, yeah, that sort of gave her directions,

Starting point is 00:02:45 had that little interaction with her on the lower decks. He is the guitarist for Rage Against a Machine. Yep. He's a huge Star Trek fan, huge. Yeah, massive. And in fact, what happened was He had contacted Rick Berman because he heard that Rick Berman's son was a fan of Rage Against the Machine.

Starting point is 00:03:05 So he sent a message to the office saying, hey, I hear your son's a fan. I'm a Star Trek fan. Yeah. And they started talking. That's how I started. Okay. Yeah. Tom Borrello ended up doing two cameo.

Starting point is 00:03:18 So he did our show. Okay. Did our show. And he did Star Trek Insurrection, the feature. No lines in that, though. But he had makeup on. So he got to sit through like five hours of makeup and experience that. And so that's amazing.

Starting point is 00:03:34 It is amazing. Unfortunately, he was in one of the two, in my opinion, the two worst Star Trek movies ever. So, but yes. But we also see Tom in the very beginning. We don't see his face, but he walks past in the very beginning when they're handing that first scene. That first scene that, you know, when they're actually taking the pad to da-da and they're walking it all the way down, whatever, they actually, the guy that, yes. There's a crewman who takes it to hand it to Heron. And as he's going down into that lowered, you know, the bowels of the ship, he passes a gentleman that's wearing the same blue or teal, whatever you want to call it, Starfleet uniform, which is being worn by Tom Rello.

Starting point is 00:04:14 So we kind of see the backside of Tom. See him twice. We see him twice in the episode, one with no lines in his backside and the other side. And the other side, we see his face and he talks. So it's very cool that he did. All right. The other. So you mentioned the other officer or the crewman holding the pad.

Starting point is 00:04:30 He plays the engineer. He does have a little dialogue. Oh. His name is Kimball Jemison. Kimball. Kimball Jemison. May Jemison's relation, the astronaut? Oh, maybe.

Starting point is 00:04:44 Yeah, May Jemison, African American female astronaut, huge. I mean, that's a very rare last name. J-E-M-I-S-O-N then? Yeah. Then he's probably related to her. If we do some more research, that would be amazing. Oh, interesting. Well, Kimball Jemison plays the engineer who carries the pad down there.

Starting point is 00:05:00 His first acting role was in 1988, a horror film called The Boy from Hell. The Boy from Hell was his breakthrough role, Kimball Jemison. That was Tom Harris' nickname, Season 1. The Boy from Hell. That's right. It was. We have a few other great guest stars. Jay Underwood plays Heron, the grumpy, nerdy, smart guy.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Jay Underwood was great. His very first job was in 1986, a movie called Desert Bloom with John... Blume. Yeah, with John Voight and Joe Beth Williams. Oh. And, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Not bad. I remember Desert Bloom was like one of those indie art house films. So Jay Underwood was in that. We also have an actor Michael Rice, and he played Telfer. Yes, the hypochondriac. Hypercondriac, yes. Yes, his very first acting role was in 1996, a movie called Just Friends with Hal Landon.

Starting point is 00:06:08 Oh, wow, 96. Okay. Yeah, and I think Michael Rice became a writer. I think he has a ton of writing credits. Rice is now a writer. Okay. Yeah, a very successful writer. Let's see.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Our last guest star is. Arborjorn. Yes, Arbajoran, tall Celis. who it was pronounced differently by everyone. Janeway kept calling her Celes. Celes. And Balaire called her Cellis. Cellis.

Starting point is 00:06:38 Celfare called her Cellis. But Janeway had her own fancy pronunciation of Célez. I'm going to say Célis. Okay, there's another one. Everyone pronounces Tull's last name differently. But Zoe McClellan or Zoe McClellan. I'm going to say Zoe McClellan. Zoe McClellan.

Starting point is 00:06:55 Her first job was in 1994, a movie called Imaginary Crimes with Harvey Kytel was the star, and it had a very young Elizabeth Moss playing a 12-year-old daughter. Jeez. And that was one of the big roles. So Elizabeth Moss was as a child actress, I didn't, I did not realize that she had a career as a child actor. Me neither. No.

Starting point is 00:07:20 Look at the stuff we learn on this podcast. It's amazing. Yeah. Zoe McClellan was also in that. And Zoe McClellan played the very important role of Edgemont Girl No. 4. Ah, yes. In imaginary crimes. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:38 It's important. You have to have small roles to begin your career, right? That's our guest stars. I thought they were all great, by the way. I thought they were all really good. They did a good job. Robbie, guess what? We've actually kind of skipped over our poetry synopsis.

Starting point is 00:07:49 So let's jump backwards. Yes. And we will start with our haiku and our limerick. And here we go for my haiku for Good Shepherd. Three, to go away. Anomily Disables. Two, stay with Janeway. Nice.

Starting point is 00:08:09 All right. It's nice. It's because two of them say they're not going to. One took an escape pod. Aaron is the escape pod guy. No, I get it. I get it. Okay, good.

Starting point is 00:08:18 Okay. Okay. Okay, here's my limerick for Good Shepherd. Here we go. We finally meet the crew. works down deep, Janeway says, take the away mission leap. When dark matter attacks, the team starts to collapse, but the shepherd always finds the lost sheep. Oh, yeah. Bam. Bada, bada, bam, bada, bada, bam, bam. There you go. I like that one. I love that one. Okay. That was short and sweet.

Starting point is 00:08:48 That was like a shorter and sweeter limer than normal. You've become more blipidipidip in the last few. That's how I like to do it. Blip-de-Blipp. You become more concise. Okay. Yeah. Did we talk about the writer and the director?

Starting point is 00:09:03 So the writer of this is a story by Diana Gitto and teleplay by Diana Gito and Joe Minoski. Wow. So I guess the Joe Mnorski, which I can't believe. Yeah, you got that. Diana Gitto. So I was like, who is that? I looked her up. is her first and only writing credit.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Wow. Absolutely no other writing credit. She sold the story to them and they said, hey, we'll get Joe to help you write the actual teleplay? Or she wrote a spec script. Ah. And this is her spec script. And this is her spec script and Joe cleaned it up a little bit.

Starting point is 00:09:40 He cleaned it up. Oh, my goodness. Now, we're late in season six. They were probably desperate for stories and scripts. Yes. So this could have been a spec script that they're like, let's just clean this up. You're absolutely right. Wow.

Starting point is 00:09:54 But Diana Gitto has no other credits besides this, so I can't talk about it. I can't tell you about her. I have no idea. I want to track her down now. I really feel like I want to talk to Ms. Gitto about this. I'm curious. Okay. Our director is Rick Colby.

Starting point is 00:10:09 Okay. Oh, my. What did I say to you in the intro? You said, oh, you're going to guess Rick, right? I was like, no, no, Rick never directed this. It's not going to direct it now. And it was Rick Colby. Damn.

Starting point is 00:10:20 I can't believe. I thought he was done with us by season five or something. No, he was still there. You did a couple every year. I love it. It was very well directed, beautifully directed. I agree. Well, let's talk about how it was directed.

Starting point is 00:10:31 So the first thing we see is a space shot. Yeah. And we're out in space. And the camera flies from outside to an upper deck. I love it. Into Janeway's ready room window. I love it. But before it gets to her window, you do see other windows with people walking around.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Down below. Yeah. So you start to get a sense of. this, you know, the size and scale of the ship. Of course. Which is a great choice, lies into her window. Yeah. I want to say, it wasn't a perfectly composed.

Starting point is 00:11:03 Yes. It got a little off angle and I was like, oh, it's a visit. For the year and the time, I think it's pretty damn good. Not perfect, but cool. I love that they did it. I love that they did it. We never do that shot. Agreed.

Starting point is 00:11:16 So it goes inside the ready room. Chikote walks in. He says seven of nine. wants to show her this shipwide efficiency report that she's made of the senior staff. She wants to make a presentation, basically. She wants to make a presentation. And she's like, okay, yeah, put it on the schedule. We'll get to that.

Starting point is 00:11:36 So Chikote also reminds her that they're going to be passing this Class T cluster in the next couple days. And it's, you know, it's not that big a deal. They shouldn't, they don't need to alter their course. but maybe they can send the Delta flyer out for, you know, some kind of... Yes, Janeway suggests that. She goes, well, in the very least, we can send the flyer. Yeah, we'll get some readers, get some readings and stuff like that. So Chocote leaves and now...

Starting point is 00:12:04 So this shot that started in space going into her thing. Now we're continuing to move. I love what Rick did in this opening sequence, moving the camera from one room to the next. Yeah, it tracked Chocote going onto the bridge from the ready room. Love it. Yeah. Goes right onto the bridge and he tells everybody, you know, what, what they just discussed. He tells Tom to prepare the Delta Flyer for an away mission as he passes. And Tom just sits there. In fact, goes back to the, I was like, what is Tom? Chocote just said, prepare the

Starting point is 00:12:34 Delta Flyer. Why are you just sitting there? But I think because the camera had to go by, they probably just said, just nod and then the camera will pass by. But I was like, shouldn't I be getting up and starting to move or something? I think there's a button down a con that says Delta Flyer Prep prepare delta flyer you just push a little button and it goes it just starts you know sort of like the self-cleaning mode on your oven or just something like that it's just it's automatic it's cruise control it's pre-heating it's like the oven preheat yes you're pre-heating the two you're warming up the delta flyer you did it already you're fine you know by the way uh i do have a a tesla model three is my car i do know this yes and you call it the delta flyer yes you name it when you get that car you have

Starting point is 00:13:15 to put it on the computer thing because you do, I do sometimes warm up the Tesla. I go on my app and I'll hit like warm up the car because it's freezing out there. And so I do warm up the Delta Flyer in real life. I actually do that. And now if I get a Tesla, I'm going to call it the Delta Flyer 2.0 because you've already called yours the Delta Flyer. So I got to be 2.0. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:39 All right. I'm glad we talked this through because now I know why I didn't get up. I was warming up the Delta Fly. You were. Um, so Harry, uh, Harry is ordered to start continuous scans by Chikote. So Kim says to seven, he hails seven and seven says, uh, says, yes, go ahead. And Kim's like, well, you know, any chance you can increase radiogenic resolution in the long range sensors.

Starting point is 00:14:02 The captain wants to get a cleaner look, not closer, but cleaner look at that cluster coming up off the star bird. And seven says, acknowledged. And so then she says, uh, take. take these specs to Lieutenant Torres and she hands them to one of our first guest stars, Zoe McClellan, playing the role of Celis or Celiz or Celina. Yeah, she's a Bajoran. She's a Bajoran. Now, by the way, when we go to Astromatrix and we see seven in there.

Starting point is 00:14:30 Yeah. There's Brumann Celis or Siles or whatever, the Bajoran. There's another background. There is. That's right. I thought to myself, we never have background. There's never anyone. No.

Starting point is 00:14:42 Why are there suddenly all? It's like crowded in astrometric. Usually sevens all by herself. You're so right. That's usually her office. Yeah. I mean, no one's ever there.

Starting point is 00:14:54 Yeah. Anyway, she hands the pad, though. She does hand it to Celis. And then Celis walks down the corridor. And the shots are cool because it's sort of, you know, Rick Colby has started this theme of kind of moving from one space to another. So now we're following Celis as she walks. down the hall.

Starting point is 00:15:14 You're kind of following the pad. The pad. Yeah, we're kind of following the pad. Very cool shot. And then she gets in the turbo lift. She says, deck 11. So now we're going down. We're kind of starting from the bridge level.

Starting point is 00:15:26 There's a theme here as well. We're going down to deck 11. The door opens. She's in engineering. We follow the pad again out of the turbo lift. She hands it to Torres. And Torres says, well, we're going to need to transfer 5 terawatts into the sensor array. And she hands, Torres puts,

Starting point is 00:15:44 something in the pad, hands it to an engineer, crewman. Mr. Jemison. Yes, maybe related to Mae Jemison. We don't know yet. And then we follow that pad back into the same turbo lift. Yeah. Now he says deck 15. So now we're going down even more.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And when the door opens, we are now for the first time on our show, seeing what the lower decks look like. We're in the bottom of deck of the ship. I guess it's near the bottom. super tight hallway. We've never seen this before. We've followed the pad down this super tight hallway. It looks like a submarine.

Starting point is 00:16:19 He enters, I think it is the plasma relay room where Heron works, Grim and Heron. Yes, I don't even know if it's a room. To me, it's more of a closet. Closet. It's like a closet. Plasma sublimation control closet is what I think it is.

Starting point is 00:16:35 Okay. Very tiny. But he walks in. Heron says, you know, don't interrupt. I'm trying to disprove. Schletz-Holt's theory of multiple big bangs. Yeah. So right off the bat, I kept thinking, this is Sheldon from the big bang theory.

Starting point is 00:16:54 Aaron is the smartest dude on this ship, clearly. But what I didn't like is his mispronunciation of my last name. And part of it is because I wasn't watching this scene being shot. He said, because I had to demolish, he says, Wang's second postulate to him. to do it. And only Americans make that mistake of doing the hard A. It is a soft A. So it should be Wong's second postulate. But, you know, it is what it is. He did. He said wings. Yeah, he did. Just like Janeway says, Saliz. Like there's a lot of mispronunciation going on. And we say censor. And we say censors. Right. So there's a little mispronunciation there. But what that reminds me

Starting point is 00:17:34 and what I want to impart to everybody was that I remember my recollection of filming this episode was that these guest stars really kind of bonded and stuck together. And I felt like, I felt like an outsider on my own show when I was around. You know what that reminds me of when I guest starred on the next generation. Yeah. With First Duty. And we had all the cadets that were in that story. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:57 This was bonded. You guys became all of us. You know, fast friends. We hung out at lunch. We went to the commissary together. We hung out in Will Wheaton's trailer. We just, we went to set early. We didn't leave when they were lighting.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Well, again, it was the same kind of thing. I felt like an outsider with these guest stars because I, you know, me being as personable as I am, I tried to interject myself into some of their conversations, but they weren't interesting. No. And to be frank with you, to be perfectly honest, I was slightly offended by that. I was like, hey, this is really, who show is this, by the way, you know? Well, it's there. This episode is theirs.

Starting point is 00:18:37 Yeah, it's pretty much theirs. Yeah. Yes. But yeah, so Heron doesn't want to look at this pad that we've been following around the ship. He says, you're standing in the way of cosmological history. And our crewman says, the cosmos is 16 billion years old. It can wait a few minutes. So he hands him the pad. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:58 So he does the adjustment, whatever he needs to do. Power transfer requisition that Bilanah typed out. And then that engineer crewman leaves. and we have another shot now of Heron looking out a window. Now we pull out of the window to see that we're down on the bottom of the ship. That's as far down as you can get. Am I right? The very, we're underneath.

Starting point is 00:19:22 Yeah, we're underneath this portal. And I just thought Rick Colby knocked out of the park with the opening shot coming in, walking all the way, you know, serpentineing through the entire. higher ship all the way down to the lower decks and then pulling out at the bottom. Very cool. You know what I didn't realize that 15 was our bottom deck? I didn't get that until this episode, which would have greatly affected my hour, our recreation of that lost episode.

Starting point is 00:19:53 Oh, yeah. Miracle on deck 15. I would have included some lower decks people in that too, but I didn't realize that until now. I didn't realize that was our bottom deck. Now, the thing about deck 15 is, if that's our bottom deck, have ever said like deck 23 or deck? Nope. Nothing I can think of.

Starting point is 00:20:08 Are you sure? I'm pretty damn sure. I mean, if he's on deck 15 and we see the pullout. We should never have said anything higher than no 16 or 17. No, no. I've definitely know. This is homework for the fans. If anybody can prove that we said anything, any number higher than deck 15,

Starting point is 00:20:28 then there's a, there's a blatant error. Yes, I recall nothing like that. This is a challenge to the fans. And I know for sure no one said deck 20 something and never got not high. Deck 32, deck 199. Deck 199. You know how funny Voyager would look if there was deck 199? It would be extremely thin and tall.

Starting point is 00:20:56 Yeah, yeah. It would be weird. It would be very, very strange. Okay. All right, where are we? All right. So we come back to space and they have a cool flyby of the underside of The ship, which seems like a new angle.

Starting point is 00:21:09 And we have a captain's log. She says, Star Date 537.3.3.2. Long-range scans of the T-Cluster indicated a number of tantalizing anomalies. Tentilizing. The away team. Yes. The away team should have a field day. Who knows?

Starting point is 00:21:25 I may even join them. Hey, could that be a name for a band? Like a Trek-based? No. A trek-based band? No. T-cluster. Analyzing anomalies.

Starting point is 00:21:37 And next on stage, tantalizing anomalies. Yeah. Can you see that? I can see that. Okay, good. I can see that. All right. So we have this flyby captain's log.

Starting point is 00:21:50 She may join them on the away mission. We go inside somebody's quarters. We've never seen before. It's Celis or Celeste or Siles or Siles. Depending on how you want to say it. But we see a roommate sleeping or something. Yeah. Wait.

Starting point is 00:22:05 Was it? It was a door. dorm room kind of. It felt like a dorm room. I don't think there was just one person. It looked like there was multiple. Maybe I'm wrong. But I felt like it looked like there could have been like a, you know, four people or I don't

Starting point is 00:22:17 know. But we do see somebody sleeping. We hear someone else in the room whispering saying, Billy, Billy. And then we realized that Cellis is under her blanket, trying to wake up her buddy, Billy on a comm badge. And finally he answers. and he says it's late, go to sleep. She's got a Sims beacon, you know, like a flashlight,

Starting point is 00:22:41 classic kind of dorm room, like, you know. But we see that she needs help. So we're establishing that like we've met the smartest guy, Heron down in the basement. Now she may not be the smartest cookie. She needs, you know, not that she's dumb, but it's just it's not her math and science or not her things. She needs a tutor.

Starting point is 00:22:59 She needs a constant tutor for sure. We do see Telfer's quarters a little bit in this interchange of for this conversation and he's in a bunk bed or something no he's in like his own quarters that's what i saw oh i thought it was a bunk above him maybe but to me i i kept thinking all right i mean once i watched the entire episode i was thinking well maybe because he was a hypochondriac he couldn't even live with anybody he was like too freaked out about being next to anybody i think it was the one guy yeah okay i do i think he was on the bottom bunk all right i felt like there was something above him. I'll go with him. But he basically, yeah, we see him in his in his quarters and he says it's,

Starting point is 00:23:37 it's too late and this is too complicated for us to do over the calm, meet me in the mess hall. And she's like, I don't want to get dressed. And but she's got to have this tomorrow. And he says, well, that's your only option. And he hangs up on her. Yeah. We start to meet some of these lower decks characters. We go to the briefing room now. And all the senior crew are there, except for Tom. Or is Tom? You're busy prepping the Delta Fly. I guess so. It's like the second episode in a row or near each other. I imagine.

Starting point is 00:24:08 I'm the only one that's not there. I imagine you're still sitting at the con. You've hit the button and you're watching that little bar that's slowly loading. It's like watching the oven heat up. The oven heat up. Is it ready? Is it ready? It's not ready yet.

Starting point is 00:24:23 It's still prepping. That's what you were doing. The rest of the senior staff are there, seven is explaining her efficiency analysis to them. Well, you know what I wrote down. I wrote down, this is the scene where seven grills all her crewmates, basically. And she just, she's so picky. And she, you know, she starts off with Kim.

Starting point is 00:24:41 She starts up with Kim. My efficiency rating was 76. And Kim is not. A hundred. 76 out of 100. Oh, yeah. And Harry is not happy with that. He's just like, oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:24:53 And then so she starts saying exactly why the efficiency rating is where it's at. And she says that the crewman that I have assigned to. night shift are frequently left with little to do once the ship's course has been locked in and it is upon it is basically it's on me it's on harry to give them more work duty or work assignments while you know they're you know in charge of the night shift exactly so that they're more efficient but then she only got a 76 i got 76 yeah is that the only number that she even says i think i think so yeah because everyone else starts everyone else starts kind of chiming off about like, wait, what's, what's going on?

Starting point is 00:25:35 Bala is like, hey, my score stinks. Why did I get this? Bilan is pissed off. Failure to utilize expertise. So 7 talks about Khruman, Mortimer, Heron, who we've already met, deck 15, that he has five advanced degrees in theoretical cosmology. And when I first watched this, I thought she said cosmetology. I go, wow, he can do hair, he can do makeup.

Starting point is 00:26:01 Yeah. Yeah. Five advanced greed. Utilize that expertise. Utilize that. In cosmology, not cosmetology, but he's only been assigned to the plasma relay room. His talents could be put to better use.

Starting point is 00:26:16 And Bologna is like, look, trust me. I've tried. This guy only wants to be in the closet. He doesn't care about leaving his little room at all, ever. Yep. Yeah. We'll leave him down there where he wants to be. And then she talks about security.

Starting point is 00:26:30 And she says, security got a near perfect grade. But she does believe the phaser rifles could use some reorganization to make them more accessible during an emergency. And Tuvok's very polite. He sort of takes it in. He says, I'll look into it. I will look into this. Yes. Then the doctor starts complaining about how.

Starting point is 00:26:55 His score was ruined. Yeah, his score was ruined because Billy. Good old Billy Telfer. Billy Telfer visits Sick Bay once a week and is always complaining. Oh, I thought it was once a day. Is it once a week? Once a week, right? But he's always in there complaining that he's got some kind of illness and the doctor's like, he's fine.

Starting point is 00:27:14 There's nothing wrong with him. He's a telfer's a hypochondria. He says that, you know, Telfer's afraid of medication. He's also afraid of counseling. He's just kind of hokey. And that's why the doctor's pissed off about his score. Yeah, but Harry does. Harry brings up seven score.

Starting point is 00:27:34 It looks like you could use a little bit of improvement yourself, Seven, and Asthma Matrix. And Seven, you know, Seven doesn't even deny it. She's like, you are correct. Unfortunately, Tao Celis, or Salis, sensor analyst grade three. Her work must be constantly rechecked all the time. So clearly, no one trusts anything that Celest does. Immediately, Seven says she should be removed from Asper.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Estermetrics and reassigned elsewhere. And once again, you brought up an interesting point. Where the heck was Seles, in every other scene that we've seen Estometrics? Because if she's been assigned to that department, she's never there. She's the first time we've seen her. No, no. But Bala says absolutely not. No, she's not going to take it.

Starting point is 00:28:19 She's got her own problems. And Janeway, Janeway's got like this look on her face. She's very bothered by something. She dismisses everybody. She's super concentrating. Yeah. Chucote says, Captain, what are you thinking? And she says, I realize none of these people have ever been on an away mission. Yeah. And Chucote says, you know, there's plenty of officers that aren't suited to life on a starship. And maybe they should just be relieved of their duties so they can pursue their own interests. Maybe they're just not cut out for. Well, yeah, I mean, the way he says it, he says typically in their first year, You know, they get reassigned, right? But because we're stuck in the Delta Quadrant,

Starting point is 00:29:02 no one can get reassigned to another ship or another, you know, department, whatever. So we're kind of stuck with the people that aren't fitting in. And these are the three. These are the three last non-fitter inners, I guess. Yeah. And Chukot is basically saying, like, look, if they're just not fitting in, why don't you just relieve them of duty?

Starting point is 00:29:21 And she goes, they're not bored drones. Right. It's like you can't just deactivate them. So she decides that they're going to go on this away mission. And we have a space flyby here. And then we cut inside the mess hall. And we see Telfer and Tall sitting down doing some homework. Telfer's explaining subspace infrared algorithms to her,

Starting point is 00:29:48 trying to help her analyze this data. That's why she called last night. Did you notice? He kept blocking himself. He kept blocking himself. as he was leaning in as Telfer was leading in to sell us say those things his key light just kept was being shaded by her head yes and it was just like come on like you've got to you got to know these things actors any of any of you out there that are upcoming actors when it's when you're in

Starting point is 00:30:16 the shot and all sudden you sense it isn't as light as it was before you've blocked yourself with with the other actors maybe that's whatever it is maybe that's why he became a writer because he realized he wasn't cut out for the acting thing. Kind of like the lesson of this episode. Not everyone's cut out for life on a ship. Okay, you're right, you're right. That's why I became a writer.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Okay. But so he's trying to explain this. He says, break it down into, you know, four or smaller algorithms. He basically says, break it down into smaller things. And then Janeway pops in and they sort of freak out a bit because they don't usually interact with the captain. And she says, it's okay.

Starting point is 00:30:54 you know, she comes in and she says, zero G is fun. And they're like, what? And she says, Zeta particle derivation, gamma wave frequency, ion distribution, and flow rate of positrons. Zero G is fun. Yeah. So it's kind of like in music with E.GIF. Right. With EGBDF, every good boy does fine, right?

Starting point is 00:31:20 When you do the scales, yeah. Well, that technique is what. Did you do that? It's me. Yes, you thought it was Bob Picardo, it was not Bob. I taught Bob and then Bob and I taught you. Is it anagrams or what does it call? It's like an acronym.

Starting point is 00:31:34 So you take the first letter of every word of a complex techno babel sentence or monologue and then replace it with something easier. And then that'll help you remember all the techno babel. Zero G is fun. See, Janeway does it. That was my technique. Dane Janeway does it. And of course, that was probably, that was probably,

Starting point is 00:31:54 Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if they added it in because you did that with your dialogue. I was telling everyone that maybe. Hmm. Okay. Anyway, she gives the little memory trick. And then she says, you know, where we're headed, you're going to need it. And she hands them pads.

Starting point is 00:32:13 And she says, we leave in the morning. So they're realizing, uh-oh, we must be going on our way mission. You know what? They're sitting here thinking, gosh, we've avoided it for six years. And now they finally, it's, yeah, there you go. So she hands them the pads. Then we go inside a turbo lift and we see, again, back to that earlier technique.

Starting point is 00:32:37 Following the turban. The pad to do that. The pad come in and then it tilts up from the pad to Janeway. And she had such a sneaky smile on her face. I don't know if you remember that shot. She did. She did. What was that?

Starting point is 00:32:50 I don't know. No, you know what it was. It was probably because she goes, like, I got two of them, two down, one to go. Yeah. This is the one that I'm going to, you know, I'm going to cherish this one. So I think that's what that was. That's what the smile was. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:05 So she says deck 15, which we now know is the lower decks. Yep. Door opens. She comes out into this lower deck hallway and she's lost. She's never been down here before, clearly. She starts walking down a corridor and this is when Tom Marello pops out. Yeah. And he says, Captain on deck.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Yeah. he's very he's standing at attention very stiffly everybody everybody uh snaps to and she says at ease and she says where is the junction where's junction room 16 she's a little lost yeah and the crewman tomorello points her down in the right direction yeah crewman mitchell played by tom rowman mitchell and she takes a moment she said thank you and then she says how have you been and he replies never better ma'am yourself she says not bad not bad at all yeah she had and she had it She heads down the hall. And she goes the wrong way.

Starting point is 00:33:54 I feel like this is a missed opportunity. Well, she didn't. She went down the hall. Oh, she didn't go one way or though. She stopped yet. She stopped. And he says, first junction or on the left or something. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:06 To the left. To the left, ma'am, he says. And I thought, oh, it would have been so much funnier if you saw her never better, or not bad or whatever. And then she walks down the hall and goes right and disappears for a second. And then he yells to the left man. To the left, ma'am. And then she comes back through again.

Starting point is 00:34:22 Yeah. It would have been a classic comedy, like, you know, it would have been a funnier bit. Yeah, but it might have been a little broad or sick. No, I think that would have been great. That would have been awesome. I definitely could see the doctor doing something like that, but, you know, Janeway doing something like that

Starting point is 00:34:39 would have been fun to see that too. I don't think it would have been funny. Yeah, I feel that your thought of it being too heavy-handed. I think it's fine because she's never down there. Janeway's never in deck 15. So that would make total sense to me. It just would have been a sharp. comedic kind of staging and moment, it would allow her to be a little funnier.

Starting point is 00:34:58 It was a little soft. I mean, it was, you got that she got there and looked both ways. And then he said to the left and she went. Yeah. It wasn't quite as funny. Yeah. And once again, you know, for us to have a rock star on our show is pretty exciting. Yes.

Starting point is 00:35:12 And he did a great job. He was great. He was fine. And, you know, he's a huge Trek fan. So, cool. All right. So now we're in Junction Room 16. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:35:21 Or the closet. in, or closet, she does find Heron. Yeah. And he's there leaning on a console. Yes. Like, he's got his arms down, like a kid asleep at his desk in a class. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:33 And I thought, never would we be allowed to have to be like so casual. She hands in the pad. He looks at it. He says, oh, this is an away mission list. This must be a mistake. She's like, no, not a mistake. You're going on an away mission. He's like, I don't want to.

Starting point is 00:35:50 Yeah, I have my duties here. I can't, I prefer not to leave my post. It was like, no, we've got someone to cover for you, so you are leaving your post. He tells her that, you know, he can't leave. He's about to disprove Schlett's Holt's theory. But then she reminds him of Wong's second postulate. Oh, did she mispronounce it too? Oh, my goodness.

Starting point is 00:36:12 I don't remember. I don't think she did. Okay. So maybe she said the right thing. But she does say that the postulate has more lives than a cat, you know, You know, that he solve one thing, and then another thing pops up. And she says, I'll give you a hand once the mission is over for her. So that's the, yeah, that's the button on this scene.

Starting point is 00:36:31 And then he goes back to leaning on his desk again. How casual like, you know. All right. But now we have a space fly by and then back into astrometrics. And Janeway has the lower decks team now and is keeping them their assignments. Tall is assigned to run the sensor analysis. Heron's going to monitor the subspace particle decay for anything new that they can learn from the star and Telfer will look for signs of life or Telfer.

Starting point is 00:37:01 He's like the red shirt here. Things are not going to go well for him, even though it's unlikely that there's any signs of life. Telfer panics. He's like, wait, we're going to go down to a planet. And she's like, no, no, we're not. I don't think we're going to end up going on a planet. But even if we did, the Delta Flyers equipped for any medical emergencies, you'll be fine.

Starting point is 00:37:27 And so they got their assignments, off they go. And Seven tells Janeway that Celis is unreliable. And I can't remember how Seven pronounced it. I think she pronounced it Celis. Did she? Okay. I think so. Janeway later says Salis all the time.

Starting point is 00:37:44 Clearly she doesn't know these lower-dash-gru. Selis Navidad. Yes. But Seven says, you can't trust Hall. She makes tons of errors. This away team needs more experience. And Janeway says, tells her the story of the good shepherd. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:59 This is the, this is the whole episode where the name of the episode comes up. Yes. She says, even if one sheep from the flock goes astray, that the shepherd would leave the safety of the flock to retrieve that lost sheep. Yes. And she says, you know, this team, they just need some personal attention. Yeah. And that Janeway is not going to abandon a single crew member. So you see kind of Janeway's mission here.

Starting point is 00:38:26 And really, the only lost sheep amongst these three truly is Siles or Seles. Salis Navidad. She is the last sheep. Heron's lost. He wants to just live in a blogger. But Heron knows the algorithms. Heron, Heron knows Starfleet protocol. Heron is not an idiot.

Starting point is 00:38:44 But he's lost socially. He's lost socially. It's a hypochondriac, though. We all know hypergondriacs in life. Heron is the, Heron's the smirk. Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Starting point is 00:38:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Telfer. Telfer is the, you were saying heron is another lost sheep in a way, right? Yeah, because he's totally alone socially. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:39:02 He has no social skills whatsoever. But he prefers it that way. He doesn't want to have social skills. Yeah. So I still feel like the real true lost sheep is Celeste in this episode. Or sell us. Or sell us. This name, this name is going to baffle all of us.

Starting point is 00:39:20 About C to the E to the L to the E.S. We could say that. Okay. So off they go from Astrometrics. Now they're in the mess hall. Yes, now we're in the mess hall. There's Tom and Boulana sitting. And then Tom and Boulon are eating silently.

Starting point is 00:39:39 Then Neelik sits down, notices their awkward silence. Yeah. Well, they rack focus. I mean, when you guys are sitting down, they rack focus to Heron in the, in the background sitting there. And they're drinking coffee, working on a pad, he's in a corner by himself. What were you about to say that I interrupted you on? I just wanted to say, Ethan Phillips sits down, funny, does weird body movements, looks at us, and then kind of looks behind and makes a face. All he has, he doesn't even have to have words to make me laugh.

Starting point is 00:40:08 I just laughed. I know you do. He's so funny. I know you do. And it's funny because his first. Fine. And when he says, I'll bet you haven't said two words to him. It didn't come out like Neelix. It came out like Ethan Phillips speaking to Robbie McNeil to me. I was like, this is like, no, this is he totally pulled out a character for a second. For me, I was like, okay, that's that's Ethan Phillips. It was funny. Yeah. It's a cute little scene. I liked this scene. I'll say overall, I thought it was a fun scene. Tom teases Balana. He's like, well, too bad. She doesn't have a superior. really cares about him and she's like not my job to take care of people and then neelix says yeah yeah i bet you haven't said two words to him paris says i said exactly two words to him once during a borg

Starting point is 00:40:56 attack we ran into each other in the hallway and i said excuse me two words too and and then tom goes you know we were at red alert so i thought it was quite courteous um that's very funny so your honey encourages you to go over and give him some encouragement for his first the way mission. So you're being nice. You're being nice. And Heron, who has no social skills, just comes off as rude, brusque. Paris says, well, hey, what are you working on?

Starting point is 00:41:24 And he, and he looks at him and he shows him the pad. And it is like the most complex, you know, a beautiful mind sort of equation of equation of every complex symbol I've ever seen in math. Yes, yes. And goodwill hunting. Or goodwill hunting or something. Paris is very interesting. That's all that all that's all that's all that's all that's all that's all that crazy equation right it's very funny and then he goes oh really what part of it specifically is most interesting to you yeah and then I love how Paris goes hmm your creative use of the minus sign Tom's not no is not the best math no and then he just sort of cuts into your job at the helm he kind of you know he bust your you know he messes with you

Starting point is 00:42:12 in this. Oh, yeah. Seen. And then you react kindly or you react appropriately. And you were like, I enjoy the view. And then you just leave abruptly because you give up on it. Rude. He's just rude.

Starting point is 00:42:26 He's just rude. Then Tom says, oh, really well. I invited him over to watch our television set tonight. Hope you don't mind. So it was a fun little scene. It was fun. It was fun. I wasn't sure how she reacted to that last line, though.

Starting point is 00:42:42 Roxanne. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it didn't, yeah. I always felt like, I don't believe you. I felt like her response was like, I don't believe it. Yeah, okay. I felt like there was something left on the table there that could have been played a little bit more. Just like how you felt like Janeway walking down to the right would have been funny.

Starting point is 00:42:58 If then she came back in frame, I feel like there's some. Could have been a stronger button here. Yeah, something. Yeah, maybe. Okay. But it was a fun scene. That was about my only scene in the whole, besides sitting in the chair and not getting up when Chikote said. Right.

Starting point is 00:43:10 Besides warming up the Delta Flyer. Yeah, you don't have a lot. I think that's about it in the whole episode. Anyway, we go back to Tall's quarters, and she's sleeping, and suddenly her com badge beeps on the table. I don't think that was a con badge with the Velcro on the backside. T'was not. You know, we had the com badges that we wore, and they were attached by Velcro. But they also had some when they had to be loose, were finished on the backside.

Starting point is 00:43:40 That's right. And that was one of them. That was one of them. It's Telfer. Calls. She says, I know what you're going to say and you're not sick. And he goes, no, I am. I'm really sick.

Starting point is 00:43:53 And he's scanning himself with a medical tricorder. And she just says, you're not sick and hangs up on him. Goes back to sleep. Oh, my God. Very funny. We go into sick bag next. And I love this low angle with the doctor scanning. Yeah, it was cool.

Starting point is 00:44:11 Again, you know, Rick Colby just does a great job. Doc says your temperature is 0.2 degrees above normal. You're fine. And he goes, no, no, no, I may have a multifacic prion. What's a multifacic prion? I don't know. That's like the follow-up to the Prius. So I don't know.

Starting point is 00:44:32 But evidently, it's something that attaches themselves to the mitochondrial walls. And they, you know, they basically cause your cell membranes to, rupture or something like that. Something like that. Yeah, I've never heard of Prion. The doctor says you do not. Isn't Prion the king of

Starting point is 00:44:50 Oh, that was Priam, actually? I'm talking about Helen of Troy times. So, you know, Pram, not Prion. Okay. It's something obscure. The doctor is like, you do not have a prion. Yes. And Doc says, I'm not going to give you a medical excuse

Starting point is 00:45:06 to avoid going on this away mission. Now go have fun. This is what we're here to do is explore and he confiscates his tricording and you should not even have a medical tricorder yes it's very funny he says you're going to have so much fun on this you'll forget about uh your his hypochondria you know you'll forget all about it that's right it'll remind you of why you're here so we feel like you know this is going to be good for telfer little does he know little does he No.

Starting point is 00:45:37 So we have a Delta Flyer fly by here. Delta Flyers at warp. Stars are streaming by. We go inside Janeway's piloting. She's sitting in my chair with the manual controls that I added, the vintage manual controls. I don't think she even knows how to fly the flyer. Well, that's what I'm wondering.

Starting point is 00:45:57 She doesn't know. Have I given her lesson? No. She doesn't know. It takes a special license to fly this thing. It sure does. but she's piloting. She says drop to one quarter impulse has

Starting point is 00:46:09 Celis or Celes start a sense this is where I noticed that she's calling her the wrong name. Okay. He says start a sensor sweep and then there's a there's kind of a shutter

Starting point is 00:46:22 like a jolt in the ship. And Heron says that wasn't the engines. Celis scans for any problems but doesn't find anything. And then Telfer who's in the back evidently on the calm he says hey anybody wants some lunch yeah it's lunch time ready delis Dulles is like sure I can help captain what do you what do you want and Janeway thinks

Starting point is 00:46:46 about it she turns back to heron and says Mortimer and he says even my mother doesn't call me that well okay that's his first name so Janeway kind of rolls her eyes one of many eye rolls that she gives in the scene yeah and she says I'll have Neelix's ministering Tony Soup. And she says it's a replicator program, Neelix 651. Yeah. And I got to say, this is the first time we've ever referred to any food replicator programs labeled Neelix 651. Like, I guess every single, I suppose, or does everything in the replicator that's edible under the file heading, Neelix and then a number, maybe? Everything is Neelix. I think it's only the things he's invented. Like, if you

Starting point is 00:47:35 just say tomato soup. You don't need to have Nelix, whatever, whatever. Yeah, it's just a classic. I'll buy that. That makes sense. But if you want Nelix tomato soup, 534, that's a whole different recipe. Sure is. It's delicious. It has Leola root.

Starting point is 00:47:51 Yes, it does. Then we go in the back of the Delta Flyer. There's Telfar back there. Tall walks in the door. She orders a computer, Neelix 651, two servings. And she's bummed out because she says, Janeway checks everything that I do. And she's like, I just want to go back to Voyager.

Starting point is 00:48:10 Elfer tries to make her feel better. He's like, I don't know. That's standard procedure. Yeah. But he also wants to go back to Voyager. Yes. He says at the end of this, yeah, she basically has no confidence, no self-esteem about her work. She thinks Janeway's checking on everything.

Starting point is 00:48:26 He doesn't want to be here either. And in the end, he says, well, we can always use the escape pods. And it's interesting that he says that because that, does come up later, but yet it's not Salis or Telfer that is in the escape house. Or Celis. Yes, or Celis. Or tall. There's so many names. So many names in this.

Starting point is 00:48:45 We go back up front. Yeah. And Janeway is really trying to start a conversation with Heron. And she asks, he's rude to her too. He is so rude. Oh my God. She asks about him growing up on Vico 5. Yeah. And he says, do you really believe

Starting point is 00:49:02 that the environment a child is raised in as more important than the genetically driven behavior patterns. So he's basically saying like nature and nurture and he's all about science. Like what does it matter where I grew up? Like, you know, my DNA decides who I am. This is so Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. It's funny. Yeah, it was very funny.

Starting point is 00:49:25 And he basically accuses her of trying to attempt conversation with him with assumptions that he just doesn't agree with. So he's basically saying, like, why are you trying to start a conversation with me about things that I don't even agree with you about? He's just very combative. He is. Yeah, he's just annoying me. He already annoyed me when he mispronounced my last name in the beginning.

Starting point is 00:49:47 No, from that point forward, he already had negative brownie points with me. He does, then he tries to change the subject, and he says he only signed on to Voyager because the Orion Institute of Cosmology requires a single year of hands-on experience. and if they hadn't become stranded in the Delta Quadron, he wouldn't even be here. That's right. He'd be gone. He didn't want to be here.

Starting point is 00:50:10 Good ridges. He just had to do it because of the Institute of Cosmology's rules. I'm going to think of it as the Institute of Cosmetology. Cosmetology, yes. But Jane was like, yeah, well, here we are in the Delta Quadrant, but that's the great thing about space exploration. It's unpredictable. And you never know what's going to happen.

Starting point is 00:50:28 He goes, exactly. That's why I don't like space exploration. He likes to know what's going to happen. Yes. And she says, well, the reason that you're here on this away mission is I want you and the rest of this lower-dex crew to fulfill their full potential. I want you guys to, you know, to be able to do your best and reach your potential. And he says something like, well, do you feel responsible? And she's like, for what?

Starting point is 00:50:54 For us three misfits? You know? Yeah. Yeah. He's like, if there's anything I can do to relieve your guilt, because he's basically, saying, oh, you brought us on this away mission because you feel guilty. Pretty much. And none of us really want to be here and you're just doing this because you feel guilty.

Starting point is 00:51:11 Oh, yeah. And he goes, I'm going to go join my team for some food. He says all this exploration has given me an appetite. Exploration, aka banter with the captain. Conversation. Yeah. Conversations. Too much for him.

Starting point is 00:51:24 Too much work. Yes. So, yes. But it's that point that we have a big hit at this place. Yeah. Yeah, she goes back to, they get, there's a, he walks to the back to have some food. And then the captain rolls her eyes, one of many eye rolls to heron. And then suddenly there's a, the ship is, this kind of bumped and rocked.

Starting point is 00:51:45 And she goes back to where I think Seles was sitting to scan for what, what that was. Then it's, then it's a big hit. And we see out in space that a piece of the hole literally. Yeah. So the whole pleading. Yeah. Yeah, like, it's pretty big, too, from what it looks like, right? This is a big piece of the hole, and it's just kind of floating in space.

Starting point is 00:52:08 It sheers off, flies off the ship, and she yells, red alert. And, oh, and she calls for the crew in the back, but we cut away. You know, she basically says, you know, red alert and get up here or something. We go to space, and I guess this is where there was a commercial break. That was the end of the act. Okay. Oh, Janeway's in trouble. We come back and the Delta Flyer is just dead in the water.

Starting point is 00:52:35 It's just floating in space now. We see the hull is damaged below. All we have, I think, is one-tenth impulse, which is not a lot. That's really slow. Yeah. Janeway brings the emergency power back on. Heron says 90% of the antimatter has been drained, drained, and one-eighth impulses the best the engines can do. Is it one-eighth?

Starting point is 00:52:56 Oh, I said it wrong. Okay. I think so. He says, that means that it could be 10 years before we reach Voyager. Great. So Janeway says, let's transmit a distress call. And so she sends out this distress call, asks Salis or Tal or Celis, however you pronounce your name, checking the sensors, they scan. Heron thinks that it was dark matter protocomet, that it was theoretical, that, you know,

Starting point is 00:53:28 know, that there was, he thinks it was dark matter turning into a proto-commit. Yeah, which is attracted to antimatter is what it is. Yes. And she said, oh, she read about that once. Heron goes, yeah, it's a theory that I wrote about. You read what I wrote. So, again, combative. Yeah, she says, I read a paper on that phenomenon once.

Starting point is 00:53:49 He goes, written by me is what he did. So little cocky son of a gun. Yeah, but Heron basically theorized that this dark matter would, consolidate into like a comet-like assembly of this dark matter, and it would be attracted to antimatter and neutralize it on contact. So it was like, it was almost like magnets, right? It was like a positive negative, sort of a theory like that. And so he says, if that's the case, we should just eject all the remaining antimatter. Object the warp core, the entire warp core. Yeah, adjust the warp core, right? And Janeway says, well, we can't do that. That's our only way to

Starting point is 00:54:28 get propulsion back online. Yeah. I think he insults tall at one point. Like, the Sellis, he says something about, well, she'll, she's no help or something. Doesn't he say something about her? Janeway says, we got to keep that, that warp core in the antimatter because that's the only way we're going to have propulsion, ask Sell us to do something. Oh, oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:54:51 So what it was, for the whole plating. No, no, because Janeway says, because he says, look, you know, it's attracted to antimatter. And he suggests ejecting the warp core. So Janeway says, eject the warp core, and we lose any hope of getting warp drive back. And I need more evidence. And right now, sensors are not talking. And then Heron says, well, maybe they are talking, but somebody doesn't know how to listen to them. That's right.

Starting point is 00:55:14 That's his big. He's insulting Sellis at this. Somebody doesn't know how to, and she feels bad. And then. And Janeway says, you're out of line, Truman. So she's trying to put him in his place, really. But Celis does locate the hole. She does find it on sensors, and then she says to beam it back, beam it back to the aft section or something.

Starting point is 00:55:34 So they go back there, we're in the aft section, Janeway is scanning the whole plate that they've located and beam back into the back. Correct. She says there's no plasma burns. There's no evidence of anything here. It was just sheared right off. But she does hand the tricorder to sell us and has her downloaded on the computer. And Tall's really feels horrible. She feels guilty for not detecting these fluctuations earlier, that it's her fault, that this happened.

Starting point is 00:56:05 And Janeway is really, you know, sweet to her. She says, don't doubt yourself. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. And Janeway says, you know, I doubt myself too. I make mistakes all the time and sell something like, oh, every day. Every day? Yeah, every time you report for duty, you make mistakes? That's me.

Starting point is 00:56:22 and um she says on seven not trusting her at all yeah she says seven doesn't let me do anything important yeah uh which is fine but out here yeah if i make a mistake we could all be die yeah yeah we do learn a little better backstory about yeah yeah how she got through starfleet academy she cramped every single but then jane we even says well that was something that i did as well. She says that she was infamous for her all-nighters. Janeway pulled a bunch of all-nighters, the academy. And Salas is like, what, every single night? Because that's what it took for me. So evidently, Salas barely kept her head above water at Starfleet Academy. She also says something about like Starfleet really was eager to get Bajorans in. Yes. After the war. Yes.

Starting point is 00:57:14 That the conflict with Bajor. A type of thing. Yeah, worked in her favor. And Janeway says, No, I brought you aboard here because of your unconventional thinking. And Tall says, I don't deserve to be on this ship. I'm not really a part of Voyager. I just live here. It was very sad. It was. This whole scene was, there was a lot to this scene.

Starting point is 00:57:37 That's why we were meandering around because there was so many great moments between Janeway and Sellis here that really shows how everybody has low self-esteem at some points. and everybody struggles and that you need somebody to sort of believe in you and when you can't believe in yourself. And Janeway's doing that for Tall. Yeah, I mean, this whole thing is really Janeway saying, Tall, turn your frown upside down. Like, change your attitude. I got your back. I got it, right? I got your back. And I think the sad part for me is Celis responding. Well, you know, this has nothing to do with attitude, Captain. You and I are wired differently. To you, this is nothing but data. But to me, this is a monster with fangs and claws. It's in my nightmares. I'm

Starting point is 00:58:23 chased by algorithms. My brain just wasn't built to understand this. So Janeway says, like, okay, well, we can find you another post on Voyager. And Celis is like, well, there really isn't another post and Voyager for me, unless you need a waitress. And before she even said that, I said, you could work in the mess hall with Neelix. That's what I thought. And she even suggests that. But it's very sad, you know, that she's basically accepted the fact that. But this is not her cup of tea at all, really. Yeah. Great scene.

Starting point is 00:58:53 I like that scene. Yeah, it's a good scene. We go back to the front and Heron's working on the EPS relay. I love the shot that Rick did down through that foreground stuff, a really cool angle with Telfer in the background. Twas. Telfer scanning himself with a medical cycle or something. As he does, as he does.

Starting point is 00:59:14 As he does. And Heron says cut the play. plasma flow, but Telford's too busy, too busy scanning himself. And the EPS relay starts to vent some gas. Yeah. And Telford finally hits the button. And Haren's pissed off. Yeah. And he says, you know what? You could have gotten us killed. You could have gotten me killed. And then Telford says, aren't you ever lonely down there? You know, where you work? But Heron says, no, I prefer being by myself and uh telfer says well maybe you can spend some time with me and tall when we get back and heron says um no that he doesn't he doesn't want to he doesn't want to socialize doesn't want

Starting point is 00:59:59 to hang out with people he's fine by himself so that's the kind of reinforcing where those guys are up front yeah we kept his log we have captains logs uh we have a status update basically minimal power and no response from the distress call. Voyager is not aware of what's going on. And we're back in the cockpit. And Janeway says the scans of the whole fragment were absolutely inconclusive. We found some displaced positrons that could indicate a dark matter impact, but it's not for certain.

Starting point is 01:00:34 I guess Telver even says that could have been caused by something else. But Heron believes that's enough proof. Janeway doesn't believe that's enough for her. She says not enough to jettison the remaining antimatter because that's pretty much what Heron wants. She wants that whole warp core to be ejected. And the conversation continues back and forth. She talks about a gas giant within range

Starting point is 01:00:59 and it's surrounded by radiogenic rings. So something like Saturn is what she's describing, these rings that could possibly reinitiate the warp core. Ah, yes. So set a course there. So they head towards this gas giant with the ring. around it go back to their stations uh tall picks up more fluctuations uh like before and janeway tries to hail it she calls out in case there's some kind of life form there um so she's

Starting point is 01:01:26 starting to you know have her own ideas that aren't herons but he still wants to eject the warp core yeah janeway says no let's fire a photon torpedo and if it was uh the antimatter in the photon torpedo would draw that anomaly in if that's what it is, if Heron's right. So they fire this torpedo and just as, just as they do that, the spatial disruptions start happening and there's the sound inside the cockpit. There's like this murmuring sound and they all start scanning. And I love how they, like they're all scanning and then Tall Ocellus gets up and starts scanning over towards Telfer, Heron gets up, he starts standing, they're all sort of scanning

Starting point is 01:02:12 Telfer, and then suddenly he's sitting in his chair, he sort of disappears. Yeah, he says, oh, no, and then he disappears. He's just gone. Then he just, oh, no, and then he disappears. And then they scan around. He's not anywhere. Yeah. Can't locate his biosignature.

Starting point is 01:02:29 You can't locate his biosignatures in space or subspace. Or subspace, which makes absolutely zero sense, because you have to be in one place. You can't be completely devoid of any location, right? You have to have a location. While they're scanning for him, though, he suddenly beams back in just where he disappeared from. But he's falling onto the ground when he falls down. Yes. And he falls down and he goes, inside me.

Starting point is 01:02:56 Yes. And when he did that, all I can think of was you on one more mountain going, eat me. I mean, you didn't say that, but you thought you said. But I thought I said that. Yes. And so did you think of that too when you watched it? see. See we're of like mine, Robbie McNeil. I did. Yeah. I thought about when I had to do that Donner,

Starting point is 01:03:13 Donor Party movie. Yes. Inside me. So he's down on the ground. And then we see this weird like it's just it's like it's like in it's under his skin. Yeah. It's just moving around underneath the skin this whatever it is. This strange thing. It was gross. Good good vis effects there by the way. Yeah, it was. Um, we go. We come back. We're in the back of the flyer this time, and they're walking him into the biobed section. How did he go from falling down with a snake under his skin to being able to walk? I have no idea.

Starting point is 01:03:48 I wish they had just picked him up with him in the biobed and skipped the walk. Yeah, that would have been nice. Janeway does say activate the transporter. She wants to get a lock on whatever's inside of him, but the tricorder is not picking up anything at all. But Telfare still feels it. Yeah. Yeah. He says that he was transported into some dark place. He couldn't see anything. He tried to talk. There was no air there. Tall's trying to comfort him, you know. She says, Billy, if they wanted to kill you, they would have done it already. Yeah. Janeway says Salis again. She does act. Janeway does activate a force field, though, around the biobed and leaves Tall to monitor Telford back there. Well, Telfar actually asks for a hypo spray to knock him out. And James was like, no, no, no. I mean, I could sedate you, but no, this would possibly lower your immune response. You need to stay conscious. And that's when she activates that force field around the thing. And then we go up to the front and Janeway and Heron are up there. And Heron's like, I should have never left Voyager. I knew I shouldn't have done this. This was stupid. I didn't want to be here. And I knew this would not be fun. And Janeway says, Voyager is not a safe place either.

Starting point is 01:05:03 It's true. Yeah. And she said, we've been up against the Borg, the Vodian, species 8472 and so many more things. And she says, aren't you proud when we accomplish something, when we have to deal with these unexpected things and we survive? And he's like, no. No. He doesn't get any joy or satisfaction. No, not one bit at all.

Starting point is 01:05:28 She's like, don't you want to be a part of this crew and the friendships that, that you see all around you? And he basically says, no, you don't know me at all. No. He doesn't want to be a part of the crew. He wants to be a part tee pooper is what he wants to be. Yep. But they do receive some kind of transmission on a Starfleet frequency.

Starting point is 01:05:49 Aaron thinks it's Voyager. Voyager. Yeah. And adjust some buttons here. And they do hear this transmission, but it is their own distress call. It's Janeway. Janeway saying the same thing, basically. They called it a subspace echo, is what Heron says.

Starting point is 01:06:08 Exactly. And he thinks that they're just teasing them and Janeway thinks that they're trying to communicate, that, you know, he thinks it's basically glass half empty and she thinks it's glass half full, that there could be something here. They're going to try to modulate the universal translator, see if maybe they're sending a message back through their emergency signal, and suddenly Telfer walks in. in and he said followed by sellus yeah yeah sellus is behind him and he says i walked right through the force field um so and he says yeah yeah yeah sellus says he walked right through the force

Starting point is 01:06:44 field and then um telfer says the aliens are in control now they're they're controlling my body i'm not doing this yeah and he says captain you're going to have to stop me so she fires on she fires on him she stuns him this episode is crazy it really is okay There's that snake coming out of his neck again. And basically it breaks through and jumps onto his console. Yeah. And starts interfacing with the console. Yes.

Starting point is 01:07:18 It's just it's connecting into the console. And of course, Heron thinks it's tapping into our systems. Janeway thinks it's trying to communicate. So Janeway half full is like, look, this is the way we can communicate. Heron, half empty is like, no, no, no. We've got to shoot it. So he grabs,

Starting point is 01:07:36 does he grab his own phaser or does he grab Janeway's face? I think he grabs his own phaser, but she orders him to hold his fire. Yeah, but he vaporizes him a direct order and he fires at the alien anyway. Vaparizes the thing.

Starting point is 01:07:51 Janeway knocks the phaser out of his hand and yells at him. She's so mad. And she says, what the hell is wrong with you. That's what she says. Yeah. And now they've lost their chance for first contact.

Starting point is 01:08:02 I mean, Heron still believes it was trying to kill everybody on the ship. So now they're screwed royally. And there's another like shake, jolt of the ship. More of the hull is sheared off. And Janeway decides to take the flyer into the rings of the gas giant. Well, before you get to that point, I think Telfer says that when the organism left his body, he could hear what it was thinking and those yeah and that message was do not belong that do not belong so Aaron was saying well we don't belong here and Celis is like well it didn't or it did not belong in

Starting point is 01:08:47 the Delta Flyer and Janeway was like well maybe it was tapping into the environmental controls because it was trying to survive in a place that it didn't belong and Heron's like no that's just your speculation not fact factually based at all. And Janeway's like, well, it's based on direct observation, you murdered an alien being and destroyed any chance we had to make first contact. So then, yeah, that that's pretty much when we hit the second wump and another piece of the hall gets sheared off. Yep. And now we are heading into radiogenic ring. The radiogenic rings.

Starting point is 01:09:23 They could only survive for a few minutes in there, but it might be long enough to restart the warp core. Yeah, that's all they want to do. cut out to space, we see the flyer heading into the rings of Saturn, basically, is what it looked like to me. It was a cool shot. I thought it was super cool. I like it. And we see, we see the flyer flying through these rocks or asteroids or whatever, which reminds me of our opening credits. I wonder if they use the same Viz effects. Maybe. Elements, you know, because it's, our opening credits are beautiful, some of the shots of the ship and stuff. And This was another just beautiful shot.

Starting point is 01:10:02 So I wonder if they kind of reuse some of those elements because it looked really. We go inside the flyer and they're transporting radiogenic particles into the reaction chamber. Do you want to talk about the thing that Telfer, what happened to Telfer? He always, yeah, because Janeway asked him how, Janeway asked Telfer how he's doing and he talks about how he's always had this kind of a second sense or he has an alarm in his head. I always thought he was sick or was dying. Exactly. He was being, he poisoned.

Starting point is 01:10:37 Anxiety. Yes. And Jane was like, well, what, that voice is not there any longer? And he's like, no, he's like smiling. It's totally gone. Yeah. So really, guess what happened? That being, that organism, scanned Telford knew that he was a hypochondriac and fixed him somehow is what it was.

Starting point is 01:10:58 So clearly, this was not an organism that was trying to kill us. And she says when she was a child, she was afraid of the ocean. She talks about that. And she says she used to like to swim in the shallow parts. You don't always know what's underneath you. And when she was at the academy, she had to go through zero G training in the coral sea. And she overcame her fear of the ocean there. And then she says to him, I think you just came up from your first deep dive.

Starting point is 01:11:28 is her last line to him because he's he does feel this relief that anxiety's all gone so so then uh tall interrupts and says the aliens are in pursuit yeah something invisible is making the ring fragments move apart so it's coming at them basically yeah um three men and then 20 seconds to intercept so then heron says we we need twice that amount of time to get the warp court restarted so jane wade thanks and she says all right everybody get in the escape pods. Yeah. Well,

Starting point is 01:11:59 if she says, get into the skate pods, hopefully, you know, you guys can get away, plot a course

Starting point is 01:12:03 away from this planet. She's going to fire a phaser volley and hopefully set off a chain reaction of these

Starting point is 01:12:08 radiogenic particles. And it might just be enough to disable the whatever it is that's coming at them right now. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:12:17 Yeah. Exactly. Clearly, the buddies of the vaporized organism that Heron totally screwed up with. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:12:25 So Janeway is basically saying, you guys get in these skate pods. you need to save yourselves i've got this really risky thing i'm going to try but i don't want to risk your lives too so you guys get in these escape cards and then tall says she wants to stay she's like nope i'm not leaving um and then she gives the other team members a little pep talk yeah is like um you know when we're on voyager what we do doesn't really matter but here what we do is important it makes a difference

Starting point is 01:12:55 and I'm going to stay. And then Telfer says, me too. Me too. And Heron says, not me. I'm going to go into an escape pod. I'll get out of here. I guess I'll be alone. And so he gets in the escape pod.

Starting point is 01:13:13 We see the escape pod come out. And then we realize Heron has altered the course of the escape pod. Heron is a hero. Look at that. He turns into a hero. He's going to take one for the team. He's like, Nah, I'm going to go ahead and just, I'm going to draw all the, uh, the attraction or the attention

Starting point is 01:13:30 of these alien organisms away from the Delta Flyer. And, you know, who knew that he was going to turn like that and actually become someone that is going to be a hero in essence? Yeah. He says he'll buy them some time and maybe by sacrificing himself, he'll, yeah, he'll realize what he's been missing. Right. Interesting.

Starting point is 01:13:52 Yeah. It's like, okay. Yes, but Jane was like, nope, get a lock on him. We're going to beat him. Well, not only him. She beams the entire escape pod back to get back into. We're going to that escape pod back onto. And they're out of transporter range.

Starting point is 01:14:09 They're too far away. So she says, speed up, more power to the thrusters. Let's get closer. We see the pod heading right towards the dark matter. And just before it hits the dark matter, it's like going to play in a game of chicken, right? It's heading me toward it. And the flyer swoops in, beams him out of, out of the collision with the dark matter. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:31 And then heads out of the rings. And just as they're heading out of the rings, they fire the phasers at the radiogenic rocks. And it explodes, causing this chain reaction. And the shock wave is just approaching the flyer from behind. Tall is counting down to impact. she goes you know three seconds till impact three two one more or less so her calculations were off still it's a very funny moment she's like yeah her math was a little off but they do get overtaken by the shock wave shock wave and it sort of whites everything out everything out yeah similar

Starting point is 01:15:14 to the pilot episode we get sucked into the delta quadru we get whited out by the caretaker same way Yeah, Rick Colby directed both of those. There's a little whiteout moment here. And then from the whiteout, we come into a white inn and we're in sick bay. And it's basically Janeway's POV, although we don't know it at first. J.C. Shippers rejoice. And Chikote leans in to her view. Yes.

Starting point is 01:15:44 And then we see her wake up and she looks around. The team is all alive. they're safe, they're sleeping, and Janeway and Chiquotay talk. And Chakotay says they found the Delta Flyer drifting near a gas giant, but everyone was all right. And they didn't find any signs of dark matter, life forms, or any other ships. He says, what, you know, what happened to you guys? And she thinks for a minute.

Starting point is 01:16:14 And then she says, well, the good shepherd went after some lost sheep. and ran into a wolf. Chacote says, well, did you, did you find the sheep you were looking for? And she looks around at her team and she says, yes, I think I did. Yeah. And that's the end of our. That's the end of it. But I do like the way Colby shot that final scene because it was a really comforting J.C. moment to have Chacote there. And it just, it was sort of like everyone breathed the sigh of relief. And that was off of that camera, that, that that composition of that scene, just the way that was shot, it was just very relaxing and sort of like a sigh of relief. So I like that final scene that's this episode. I really like this

Starting point is 01:17:00 episode, even though it broke my rule of everybody needs to be included. I thought the guest cast was great. I thought it was directed beautifully, a very different kind of story. It was a lot of fun. So many elements. They really packed a lot into this episode for sure. So what is your lesson for this episode, Good Shippard? My lesson is, I wrote down, no one is a lost cause. I actually have two lessons. But the main one is no one's a lost cause, that Janeway went after these lost sheep, and she didn't give up on any of them.

Starting point is 01:17:35 And they all had big breakthroughs in terms of their self-esteem or their view of themselves and who they were and how they fit in. So, yeah, my first lesson is no one's. lost cause. My second lesson is it's probably better not to be too smart or too dumb. Just be right in the middle. It's safer in the middle. Like, you don't want to be in the lower decks. You don't want to be in command. I just want to be in the middle. Okay. Because when you're in the command, you're always every week we're getting in hot water. And if you're in the lower decks, you're in trouble down there. So you just want to be in the middle. That's my second

Starting point is 01:18:14 lesson. What about you? Okay, so my overall lesson has to do with Heron, really, because Aaron really like to keep himself in that little tiny space and didn't ever want to leave that space. So my overall lesson is that everybody, and this is very similar to the type of world we live in now, because of technology, there are so many people that never venture outside. You know what I'm saying? They just cooped up and they just do all their work and stay in one place. So really my overall lesson is you got to get out there and smell the roses. You've got to get out there and just be out in nature, just, you know, get out and do something. Don't stay at home all the time. And then my other, my other lesson, which is not really serious, is do not let anyone other

Starting point is 01:19:03 than Tom Paris pilot the Delta Flyer. Yes, thank you. Simple as that. Simple as that. Thank you very much. Okay. I agree with you. What is your rating? My rating. I'm going to give this episode. I'm going to give it a 7.4 is what I'm going to give it. Interesting. 7.4. And I do think that the admirals and captains will rank this lower. I think they'll put it at about 6.9. Okay. That's my feeling. Well, I'm going to, I gave this a rating of 8. Whoa, you went high. I I really liked this episode. And even though it broke my rule, I think the reason I liked it is the captain had such a strong emotional story that I really, I was along on her team for this ride.

Starting point is 01:19:53 Okay, okay, okay. And I also liked the fact that we were getting to meet, even though it wasn't our series regular crew, we were getting a sense of our ship in a way that I think is really important, that there's people outside of the series regular crew that we should acknowledge that keep that ship going. Of course. And the only reason I didn't even give it higher, honestly, is I felt like the alien, the subspace story, was a little thin.

Starting point is 01:20:21 I just didn't. I feel like we didn't explain it in the end, who these aliens were. Okay, all right. If it was, that was the part of it. Eliminate that alien storyline, what would your rating be now? If that had been If that had been fleshed out properly Okay, if that had been fleshed out properly.

Starting point is 01:20:39 I'd give it close to a nine probably So 8.8.8.9? Yeah, 8.8.9. Wow, my goodness. Yeah, I really liked this episode. I thought it was really good. Okay, let's see what the admirals and captains think, though. The admiral and captain's average rating for Good Shepherd is

Starting point is 01:20:55 7.4. Oh, hey, that's my regular rating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So this was actually a pretty well-received episode overall. That's a pretty decent average rating and yeah. Well, good. I'm surprised because I thought it was about Shepard's Pie this episode. It really surprised me. All right. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our recap and discussion of Good Shepherd. Join Robbie and I next week when we will recap and discuss

Starting point is 01:21:30 the episode, Live Fast and Prosper. Oh. I like that title. I get it. Yeah. And remember how you said you did not remember the title, Good Shepherd, at all? I do not remember the title, Live Fast and Prosper at all. So there you go.

Starting point is 01:21:49 Okay. Well, we'll see you next week. Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. Thank you.

The Delta Flyers - Good Shepherd

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