The Delta Flyers - Hunters

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

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 Hunters. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Hunters:Voyager makes contact with Starfleet Command by using alien relay modules to communicate with Earth; the use of the alien array attracts the attention of the Hirogen, an alien species who live to hunt other humanoids.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeill, & our Post Producer Jessey MillerAnd 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 BragaAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Becca Stillo, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Mike Devlin, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Lucas Shuck, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Lisa Robinson, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Joshua McHenry, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, John Mann, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Melissa Lau, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Paul Young, and Elly PostAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Brian Roman, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Louise Storer, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Scott J. Mark, Megan Chowning, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Joseph Lanning, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Bronwen Duffield, & Red WizardThank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan, McNeil. Hello. Hello, hello there, sir. How are you? I'm good. How are you? You all right? I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. Excellent. excellent. Yeah. The weather has changed. Winter has arrived. It's definitely cold, cold, cold. What's the temperature? I don't know what it is today. I mean, we're in Vancouver,

you know, in BC, which is a little more mild than than the rest of Canada for sure. That's true. I don't know. I'd say it's probably in the 40s or 50s here. Okay. You know, but pretty consistently, it's like coat weather gloves outside. Calgary's at 33 degrees right now. Oh, yeah. We're lower for you. Colder. Calder for me, but not so bad for you. The more temperate climate of Vancouver. But, you know, I'm excited about this time of year

because you feel the holidays coming and there is that, you know, really important holiday tradition of the Delta Flyers Christmas episode. Oh, my gosh. Do you remember how nervous I was about that? Yes, I do. I remember here I'm texting Rob,

I'm like, I don't think I can do this, man. He's like, we'll be fine. He's texting me back. I'm like, I don't know. I'm really nervous. What if we don't, what if we can't think of anything? What if we? And it was, it was absolutely fine.

He was right. But I was so nervous. I was like, you were. You wanted to plan it all out. I'm like, you know, I was like, see where we go. It's going to be fun. I know, here I am trying to make this a like an official planned out meeting. We need bullet points.

We need to have a structure. We need to, we need to outline. We need to, we need to sketch all that. you, Robbie's like, nah, it's going to wing it. It's going to be funny. It's going to be funny. It'd be great. I'm like, no, I was. It's a very important holiday tradition now.

It is. Yes. I can't wait to hear it. Yeah, it should be fun. We'll see what happens. It's going to be fun. It's always fun. All right.

What's this week's episode? This week is hunters. Hunters, yes, yes, yes, hunters. I'm so excited about this episode. All right. So why don't we go watch this and we will come right back. and discuss, recap, and talk about everything that we've remembered about this episode. Hey, everybody, Robbie and I are back from watching Hunters.

Hunters. Hunters. Yes, collecting relics. Yes, relics. Hey, here's a question. Such a creepy, creepy. It is. It is.

We know that Tiny Ron is the main alpha herogen here. but yet i didn't see opening credits and i didn't see end credits you're saying definitely there there should be some end credits there right we had this i wouldn't discussion for a second so this is a this is like a sag union rule you can't have a an actor delivering lines and can i ask you this could it be because they're wearing the masks yeah it is somebody else's voice yes that's all right okay because when i jumped into the i mdb tony todd's name was on this house episode. I thought, okay, well, that makes sense. Tony Todd has that very low resident voice. You know, his voice is so low. Maybe he did the voiceover for Tiny Ron's character. So,

therefore, Tiny Ron's name was not in the beginning of the episode. Maybe, right? Yeah, maybe they didn't know how big or small these Herogen were going to turn out to be. And so they just thought, oh, we can cast somebody who just wears a suit and then we'll loop in somebody else acting maybe that's what i'm thinking because that's a smart idea yeah well first of all let's pay a little bit of a tribute to tiny ron who passed away yes november 28th 2019 at the age of 72 in santa claretta california he passed away ronald taylor was his birth name and this is interesting enough when taylor applied to the screen actors guild he learned that the name ron taylor was already in use by another actor and so his

acting teacher suggested that he used Tiny Ron, figuring that in a niche category populated by actors with such screen names as Andre the Giant, the name Tiny Ron would stand out, which it does. I mean, you can't forget Tiny Ron for a seven foot tall actor slash stuntman stash performer, right? Same thing with the other guest star who played the Beta Hirogy. The Beta Hirogyn was played by Roger Morrissey. Also equally tall, I'm guessing he was probably 610. or 6-11, maybe an inch or two shorter than tiny ones. Morrissey is also credited as a stunt man and an actor. And I guess Tony Ron's name on this is Alpha Hirogyn Idrin, IDR-I-N.

Yeah, I did a little research on that too. I just called it Herojin 1 and Herogen 2 as I was watching it. I didn't ever hear them use a name, but when I did a little looking into the episode after we watched it. Yeah, I saw that Idrin. Maybe he comes back or gets, you know, named later and, you know, maybe there's some story. Do you think it's possible that you can come back from a black hole, though? Yeah, exactly.

I don't know. Yeah. Or maybe it's in a flashback or something like that or maybe they talk about him. That's possible. You know what I mean? Yeah, because I do remember him. I thought he was on the set more than once. I did too.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's very possible. You're absolutely right because of that the mouth being covered. Yeah. You could. And these aliens dress alike, look very similar. Tiny Ron could end up playing a bunch of different characters.

And this one maybe we refer to as Idrin, but Tiny Ron could maybe play a bunch and just revoiced them with different voiceovers. Yeah, I'm going to call it the Vader effect, as in the Darth Vader effect, because David Prowse played the physical manifestation of Darth Vader. He wore the helmet, the cape. But we all know that voice is James Earl Jones and not David Browns. So it's very possible that, you know, that Tiny didn't do his own voice, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Okay. I want to say that I honestly, I never saw what Tiny Ron looked like while we were filming. I recall at the end of a day I saw him. And I said, you know, Tiny, you get here before I do, and you leave well after the time that I leave. So I never get to see what you really look like under all that armor and prosthetics, you know. You know, I have no clue.

And he looks at me. He says, I'm a five foot two black man underneath all this is what he said to me. He said that to me. And I said, that is pretty funny, actually, because we have no clue what he looks like underneath. Let's start this thing off with our poetry sonnobes. Here you go. Here's my haiku for hunters. Message from Starfleet. Herogen take away team. Black hole saves the day. There you go. I love the haiku. There's just a beauty to its simplicity. It is so simple. It makes me happy. All right. Let's hear your complex limerick. Here we go. Complex limerick goes a little something like this. Yes. Silver paint on the face means something bad. Letters from home make the crew really sad. Good and bad news.

Waiting gives Harry the blues. Janeway got dumped, but Chocote's not mad. I'm sorry. I try to stay silent through the entire thing, but I kept doing making weird, like, fart sounds, but I was repressing my laughter. Your laughter. I saw you.

I saw, I could see you. all the was being pushed down so that you couldn't. Yeah. All right. Oh, good job. Good job. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Herald Limerick times. Yes. All right. So this was, uh, an episode written by Jerry Taylor. Yes. Which I did not remember. I don't remember that either. You know, if, if someone had asked me before we did this rewatch and recap, you know, when did Jerry Taylor, like Michael Pillar and Jerry Taylor leave the show. I would have said Michael Pillar left in season two at some point,

and Jerry Taylor left in season three. And I felt like they were both gone. And they both suck around much longer than I remember. Okay. But Jerry Taylor deep into season four surprises me. David Livingston directed this episode, which, you know, David did some of our best episodes, I have to admit. you know he really did he fit the genre and the franchise of star trek at this point in time

his tastes and his instincts were really dead on like he shot some beautiful stuff yeah yeah you want to start this recap where we're yeah here we go so the episode opened with some very cool space shots they have to say i love the shots like beautiful yeah they leveled up here in terms of the production value, some beautiful space shots. And we hear this sort of garbled message over the space shots. We can't really make any sense of it. It's bits and pieces of words, maybe hard to tell. Can we go on the bridge and everyone's listening to this? And Harry says, I'm going to try to reprocess this. And it turns out these messages are from Starfleet command. And Harry reprocesses these back together and can only get a little piece of basically them saying, you know, this is Starfleet command.

We're going to send you some information. It's very important. And that's all you kind of hear. It cuts off. It's not a complete message, right. We realize that the rest of the message is stuck in the relay station, which is Horogen owned. And we already know that. But this is still something that Janeway is like, look, we can't not.

go check this out. We need to download or we need to be able to access the rest of this information. We need to know. This could be an important message from Starfleet in telling us how to get back home maybe or who knows, right? So that is what drives this episode that we need to get the rest of this information. Yeah. And then we go over to this herogen ship, we realize, but the shot starts on these skulls and bones and things. And we reveal we're on a herogen ship. ship. There's a couple Herodians. This is where we first see Tiny Ron again and his buddy. And he says, they pick up Voyager's presence and he says, let's intercept this ship. Yeah. Well, they pick up the message. They ask, where's that message from? And then Beta Hirogyn says far away from another

part of the galaxy. Okay. So then where is it being sent to a ship that's approaching one of our relay stations? And that's when the intercept course happens, right? That's when the intercept course happens. And it puts the paint on. Yeah. Very. Yeah. Like that to me was very reminiscent of indigenous cultures when they put on war paint before they go to war. But clearly this is something that they do before they track prey, right?

Before they go on a hunt as it was. And really, it was, you know, the first time we get to see what these guys are close up. Because the last time we saw a very staticy transmission of the heroism. just on the view screen. It's very small. And then he gets zapped by the feedback loop, whatever, that seven sends through the relay and shocks him, right? Clearly, he's still alive because I'm assuming that was tiny then, right, in that tiny screen. And then now this is tiny close up. So now we get to see the detail in the armor and also the alien full face makeup, you know, that was going on. I mean, it just, to me, one of the most impressive makeups and alien wardrobe so far.

What was a real collaboration between the makeup department and the costume department? Yes. Because all of the suit would have to be sculpted as well. That's not something you could manufacture. So they would have to collaborate between makeup and costumes on that design. I thought it was, yeah, super. And clearly, it had to have been made from scratch because, you know, seven foot tall actors are not, It's difficult to find stuff in the wardrobe department that's going to fit these guys.

Can't just go out and buy a Herojan outfit. Have you ever seen a Herojan? Have you ever seen anyone do cosplay of a Herojan at a convention? Yes. You have? I have. Oh, that's cool. I would love to see that.

Yeah. But not often. It's rare. No, that's a tough one. That's a tough one to do. That would be a super tough one. I would love to see that. If anybody out there knows someone that's cosplayed, the Herogeon,

and send a photo to our Facebook page or to our Twitter or Twitter or whatever. I would love to see someone cosplaying a Herodian. That would be super cool. Yeah, so we go to the bridge next. Harry is very optimistic at this point. He is. He's so excited.

He's skeptical, but he's like, I believe, I believe this is going to happen. Oh, his glass is half full all the way this entire time. And then Janeway pats his hand. end. At the very end, you know, a little pat pat. Very sweet. Yeah, sweet. I noticed in this whole scene that David Livingston did something he did not often do. And that was shoot the shots that he lined up on very long lenses with a lot of heavy foreground railings and things sort of obscuring the frame. And David was known for his wide lenses real close. He'd put a fish eye lens up by

face. So for him to be shooting the bridge that way, I thought, wow, that's a real experiment for him. It is. And I like it. It was very cinematic. It reminded me of like a more modern Trek show, like Discovery or Picard or something, those kind of compositions of a shot where you've got foreground, you know, obscuring things and you feel this kind of tension of the foreground and the background. I thought it was really great for him to start mixing up his techniques there so yeah definitely creative and very effective it did sort of add to the tension his selection of shots there and you're right very atypical of your standard fish eye lens wide angle lens that he always uses yeah yeah he didn't do it still had some wide lenses like

you've got a shot of harry by the console and chikote and janeway later on uh when you're you're working on the back console and it's a big wide lens up on your face and you see the whole bridge And I was like, that was a weird shot. We don't really do. You got one too when you were at the con about your message from home, right? It was right on your face. You could see the pores in your skin, practically. It was right on there.

You can see everything. Okay. So now we are in astrametrics. And the doctor is scolding seven. And you notice that one over the shoulder shot where Bob is literally bright on top. Again, very close in proximity. Close standing. Yeah.

Close standing acting. again, right, right behind seven. And the doctor starts having this inner monologue, which she's not really inner. He's talking about how, bragging about all the risks. Oh, my gosh. She's like, when we get back, I'm going to be hailed as a hero. And I risked my life. And I love how, you know, he thinks he's going to be a hero. And seven's like, yeah, when you get back, you'll probably just be your program will be erased and they'll update it. She's, she's literally the reality check is what she is. Totally the real. Nah, your program is going to be deleted and upgraded.

You won't even, they won't even know who you are. Yeah. And all of a sudden, the ship starts going through some shakes and shutters and we flash back to the bridge. Gravometric forces are being felt from the relay station, which is kind of crazy because it's two light years away. So it's like, wait a minute, how are we feeling this? And it's just, you know, it's just a little bizarre.

They're not sure what's going on. We also detect a vessel, and it's kind of just drifting in space, and sensors pick up one dead humanoid alien, one deceased humanoid on that ship, which is consequently beamed over to Sick Bay. And that's the next scene. We're in Sick Bay. And we see the skin suit. Yeah. We see this. It looks like a Halloween.

Yeah. Just stick that thing right on. Yeah, there you go. I'm sure makeup made it out of some rubber, foam or whatever. The doctor says they performed a complete osteotomy. This alien has been gutted. It's just disgusting. And Seven says that the Borg have seen these aliens, seen this situation before.

Yes, they've seen this osteotomy performed before and other aliens, right? And she says a species number. She says, yes, it's because of species 5-1, blah, blah, whatever. And then I think someone says, Janeway says, you know, can you tell us about it? And she says, no, we didn't. It was irrelevant. Like we didn't, we don't know anything. So it's kind of a dead end with seven.

Like she knows about Horogen, sort of maybe, but not, no details. But they're around. The, you know, the board groups even around. Yeah. And Janeway wants to return the body to the ship. She's got a lot of respect for this crewman who was. Not really a body, though. Would you call it a body at this point?

The skin suit. The skin suit. Yeah. Return this. She said, she should have said, doctor, return the skin to the ship. It's pretty gross. Return his skin to a ship. It's just skin. That's it. There's left. Nothing left. It is gross. Okay. Now we're on the bridge and we see the relay station

on long range sensors. Harry realizes that this relay station is 100,000 years old, not 100, but 100,000 years old, which it's just crazy. What's crazy to me about that, though, is that so if this is the Herogens relay station, and they created this 100,000 years ago with technology, that means for 100,000 years, these sort of primitive behaviors of war paint and hunting and osteotomies, like they're a pretty deeply primitive culture in a lot of ways, too. held on, they've advanced technology in many ways, but a lot of sort of primitive behaviors are still held on to, I mean, the paint on the face does nothing except symbolic or spiritual

or religious. It does nothing to help them in a hunt. It's not a weapon or technology that's going to, you know, give them an advantage in any way. So the paint is just a ritual, a primitive ritual that's symbolic in some way. So I don't know, that's interesting. It was an interesting kind of, yeah, the fact they've had this technology for 100,000 years and still haven't sort of evolved beyond these primitive behaviors, I thought was a really interesting kind of bad guy. And I like you taking the role of Sherlock Holmes and doing a little bit of detective work here because you're right. It has persisted for this long. And it makes sense because the Horogen are not a species that would consider themselves a social type of species in terms of,

we're going to trade with people. We're going to, we're going to, you know, establish a relationship with this alien species and this alien species. These guys are loners. These guys are, are, you know, hunters, but very much living a nomadic and loner lifestyle, right? So away from everybody else. And that's how they like it. So it makes sense that even after 100,000 years, that these rituals still persist.

But then the other question is maybe, maybe 100,000 years ago, it was created by another alien species. And the erogen are the ones that sort of just kind of took it over. Took it over. Exactly. That's true. Maybe hunted them out of existence. You know what I'm saying? Maybe this species with the relay network was their favorite hunt.

and they just hunted every single one of them and they're gone. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Harry also discovers that the station is using a quantum singularity, a black hole as a power source, although it is a tiny one about a centimeter in diameter, which produces almost four terawatts of energy.

So a lot of energy for a very tiny black hole, but still, it's dangerous. It's something that, you know, you can't just bring any ship close to this, you know, quantum singularity, you're going to be, you're going to be risking things. Yep. Most, most noteworthy is the structural integrity of your ship is going to be something that you're going to be missing if you're two clubs. Yep. Yeah. Yep. All right. And so they start together, they get close enough and then the ship starts shaking. And these gravimetric changes are

what's destabilizing the ship and the ship is really unstable and we're risking whole integrity and all those things. And Chacote says, you know what, back off, we're getting too close. We just got to back off. And so Paris takes them back a little. One thing I noticed in this, and it happens throughout the episode quite a bit, is the ship shakes. We used to do ship shakes two ways on the show, right? Either it was like a hit, and the cameraman would just shake the camera with their hands. They'd physically shake it. And the other way that we did ship shakes, if they were long sustained, is they would attach a motor yeah to the to the head of the the camera or whatever uh just under the lens or they attach it to the camera somehow and this motor had an offset on it that would sort of

vibrate that's right that the and they could dial it up or down so they could kind of dial it up and it would start shaking the camera and then they dial it down and they could change it you know up and down right i definitely noticed on these shots that offset motor that they would use to sort of, you know, shake the camera on a long, consistent thing. Yeah, that motor really gives it a uniform shaking. You know what I'm saying? So it's not all jerky and all over the place. It's not like a crash or a hit.

Right. It's more, you know, ramping up like, yeah, shuttering. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I noticed that. And I thought that was, I thought it was interesting. And I, and then it seemed to attract throughout that episode. They kept using that motor.

Yeah. Which sometimes you could hear it. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. hear the, you could sort of, I do remember that. It was a quiet electric motor, but you could, you could hear it, you know, if you're doing a scene that was kind of quiet.

Yeah, that's true. Now, in astramatrics, Janeway heads down there and she realizes, as she starts to read little snippets of these data messages, that these are really letters from home. These are letters from home. And so, you know, this kind of excitement starts to gather. So in the next scene, we see Neelik. with Janeway. Janeway has made Neelix the official mail carrier.

They walk outside of Astromedric's into the corridor outside. Oh, I wish that. It made him a postman's uniform with like the postman's bag. Neelix could have been a good postman. See, and that could have been, you could have replicated that 20th century vintage post. Yes, a vintage, oh. And handed it to Neelix as a gift, right? Yeah, but Tom was, Tom was playing cool with the old. he really was. So I don't know if he would have got it. He would have been like, whatever, Neilex.

Make your own post-Mazian. Well, after Neelix walks away, he's happy with his new job. Janeway gets called back into the astrametrics area with Seven. And Seven says, look, I found a latent data stream. It's buried under the message. It's heavily encrypted. It includes maps. So now we're getting very excited. Like, what? Maps? A way back home. Yeah. So it's not just personal messages. more, it's real important information we may need from Starfleet. So correct. Yep. Correct.

And then there's a nice little character development scene for Seven of Nine when Janeway sort of, you know, are you, are you, you know, how do you feel about all this? And she's like, well, I have no emotional resonance with this because I don't, you know, I've never been to Earth. And then Jamway brings up a very, very possible fact. And that would be, well, you might have family there, cousins, a grandparents. So you might have more emotional resonance than you think. So a nice little touching scene there with seven.

Yeah, I thought it was really great for both of them. It was very well played, very, very nuanced and subtle. Yeah, so far in this episode, by the way, I think everybody's performances are really good. And again, I've said it before, but I love episodes where we're all involved, where it's not just one character on an away mission or something. And this is one of those episodes for me where everybody has an interesting. Yeah, we all had to be gone. Everybody's invested.

We all got something to do. Go back to the bridge and Neelik brings the first letters in. And my first thought, as he walked onto the bridge to hand off a few letters, I was like, why would he give out these letters at work where people could have horrible news or, you know, very emotionally loaded news and like, why would you just hand them out on the bridge? but but so true this question was answered a moment later because chikote looks at it and then he says i'm going to go read this in private yeah and he says tom can you take the bridge you know what he says when he says i'm going to go read this in private when he says this is

from the person who recruited me to the marquee did you think it was something nefarious did you think like uh-oh like this is some secret code stuff from the marquee because that's what i first thought I thought this is something like, you know, something dangerous. When he says that, when he says that, he didn't say it on the bridge, right? He says that later to, he just says it's from an old friend, I think, on the bridge. No, he says, this is from a person who recruited me into the marquee. He says that on the bridge? Yes, he does.

And then he says, I better go read this in private. And then I was thinking, wow, well, that's interesting. So I thought it was something a little negative, right? Nefarious. I didn't think sad. I got from his performance. performance that it was about personal friendship things and not about any political or marquee stuff right okay yeah and then you get the bridge wrote that harry is so sad he didn't

get a he didn't get a letter poor harry i wrote down that that didn't even sound like my voice the first part when i say nilix wait a minute that sounds like me but the second part aren't there anymore sounded like voiceover or someone else it didn't sound like me. No, it was definitely you, but it could have been looped in. There was a lot of looping in this episode, I noticed. I think Tony Todd did my line

the second half of the movie. Yeah, that's probably that's probably what it. He was like, you know what? You're doing the Herodian. Why don't you do Harry's line too? He's like, yeah, okay, oh, raise my voice a little higher to do Harry. So now you get the bridge, but yet you don't sit in the captain's chair. I sit in Chakotay's chair.

Why? I don't know. I noticed that. That confused me. I was like, wait a minute. Well, I think because Chacote was... He gave you the commands. You felt like sitting in his chair? Yeah, I was probably sat in his chair

because I was directed to sit in there. Maybe it was for the shot. I might have been blocked by Neelix or whoever was in the foreground there. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I'm going to pick the chair that hasn't been sat in, the one that's not warm.

I like a cool chair. I don't want to warm chair. I feel like both of those chairs, though, have have the same information. Okay. You know what I mean? So they're interchangeable, right? I think so. Okay.

Okay. I think so. That's fine. Now we jump to Tuvok's quarters, aka Club Tuvok, although it hasn't looked a lot like Club Tuvok lately. It's just, just quarters. No, but he's got a lot going on in those quarters, always. He's got wall art.

He's got plants. He's got a desk with lots of buttons. I didn't have a desk with any buttons in my quarters. What? Okay, fine. So Club Tuvok is still happening. And he's completing his weekly tactical review. And Neelix is so excited to bring Tuvac his letter. And he keeps saying, well, you're going to read it, right? And then Tuvok's like, yeah, maybe later, I need to complete this. And he said, you got to be kidding me. You got to read this. And finally, he offers to read it tovok. And we discover that Tuvac is now Grandpa. Because he says, well, don't you want to read it now? It's really important from your family. Vuevok turns around, Mr. Neelix, did you read my letter? Yeah. Well, yeah, a little bit.

I mean, just a little. I just read. I just saw. Just the first few letters. Just the first few lines. Yeah, that's it. That's so funny. It was very funny.

I was actually expecting that famous scene that Ethan Phillips does in Wagon's East, where he's taking notes for a letter, and he's trying to remember the whole thing. And I was like, as this moment happened, I was like, what if it was the reverse of that. What if he was like, Tuvok was like, Mr. Neelix, have you read my letter? Well, no, not much. Not much. Just the first line, you know, hello, Tuvok, it's your wife. And then she says, what did she say? And then he just go on like he memorized the whole letter. Is that all you read? Well, hello, Tuvok, it's your wife and your kids are good. And he keeps going, what? Is it a reverse of Wagon's East? Yeah. That's what I wanted to happen in that moment.

Very funny. I really did. But it could also work identical parallel to the movie if Tuvok decided to write back, right? And then Neelix was like, ah, do you have a writing utensil? And Tuvok goes like, no, you have to. And he's like, oh, that's fine. And he starts going to do the whole thing, just like you did in Wagon's East. I wish we could have. Oh, I wonder if they thought about that.

If Ethan had a moment where he was like, you know, oh, this is like that scene. It's a classic. It's one of the funniest scenes ever filmed. It's really. is. Maybe a dick cross is mine. I know. I know. Okay. Anyway, he reads it. You're right. And Tuvok is a grandfather. Yeah. His son has gone through the Ponfar successfully. And now you're grandfather. Yeah. Congratulations. And Tuvok still seems distracted with work and Neelix leaves, gives him this news. And Tuvok goes back to work alone for a moment. And then he stops and he looks

back at the pad. And he puts his work down and he gets the pad and sits down. I thought that was a really sweet moment. It's a good moment. It was really nice for Tuvok to kind of have this private moment where you see his vulnerability. Yeah. Sensitivity. Yeah, there's a lot of vulnerability in this episode. What else happens a lot in this episode is Harry says, yes, ma'am, a lot in this one. He's yes, man, left and right. I know. You didn't notice that, right? And you don't say it so much, much more than Tom. I may say it once. I think you said it one time. I said it four or five times. least yeah at least that's a trademarked uh line there by the way yeah do i owe you residuals on that now yes you do that may or may not be part of my uh fine my reaction videos that i'm going to send you four dollars i'm going to send you a dollar per yes ma'am yes ma'am i mean there come on

there's a t-shirt that says yes ma'am that has her i mean how much more trademarks can it be so you want retroactive residuals is what you're saying you want to okay every time anyone says yes ma'am on voyager yeah i need a dollar yeah okay that's maybe a little high yeah so now we go to the bridge and janeway has a letter and she tells tom to stay on the bridge she's going to go in a ready room to read a letter and she goes in sits down and we have this very simple and very effective shot that just pushes in on janeway as she start to read. It does show the reverse, though. Did you freeze it and try to read it? No. Uh-uh. Oh, I told it did. I told it. Yes. Oh, I'm sure it was nothing. No. Actually, you can make out the very towards the end. It says, however, I do need to relate some rather

difficult news. Dot, dot, dot. So they actually made it, it's, you know, it looks like it's just a bunch of gibberish, but I made out part of it. And for everybody to know, on these pads, the prop pads, the little things that they would hand us. They were just made out of wood. And they had printed graphics on them. And most often it was just generic numbers and symbols and things like that. But every now and then for an insert, they do like what you're describing. They'd print something out specific if we were going to go close on it.

Right. So, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. That's interesting. But I did love this moment because as we push in, she's kind of laughing. You know, she's very happy to read the letter. and she just feels so contented and excited to read this. And then you see her stop and you see sort of the news sort of landing on her.

And I just thought Kate did a beautiful job over that moment. And the simplicity that, you know, David Levison shot it with was perfect. It was perfectly matched. Yeah. The tone of that scene was very effective. You clearly could see that. that something was not right and the life or the air

just kind of just leaves the room and you can see that difference her face just turns dark and it's a great scene really is a great scene and something occurs to me and I could be wrong but as I'm remembering it

remembering watching it just now I don't think there was a lot of music in that scene I think it was pretty quiet and that's unusual because usually if there's not characters talking our composers and the producers would often just fill it with some kind of score behind there.

And so you would think for a moment like this that you could easily have, they could have written this swelling music that was very dramatic and whatever. But I think the fact that they didn't from my memory, and we just watched it, so I should remember this. But I don't remember any music. Or if it was there, it was very minimal. And it's, and it just allowed Kate to play this moment, very, very authentically. I thought it was great.

Yeah. Agreed. And then we go to engineering. And in engineering, we're upstairs again, which, you know, the first thing I thought of was like, boy, David Livingston always had to pick the hardest places to shoot. Because you can't get up there easily. Like, you have to, I don't even remember how they got the equipment up there. It was like pullies or, I don't know. I don't know.

Wait a minute. You're right. I'm just trying to think about that. No, there was that little elevator. That little kind of like, there was a tiny little one-person elevator, but it was. You couldn't fit a dolly on there. No way.

Dolly on there. You wouldn't be able to fit a lot of things on there. So it was very difficult to film on the mezzanine of the mezzanine level. And I, and I, as I watched it, I was like, okay, she is going to lose her temper. So you kind of want that to be private. But shooting upstairs was hard. It just was slower. So that was my first thought as we watched that.

Yeah. And Chikote comes up to Bologna and he says, remember, was it Spada? It's Svetta, like Sveta, Sveta. Svetta. Svetta. Yeah. And he says, terrible, I have terrible news. Yeah.

And he tells Bala that the marquee have been wiped out. That the Kardashians. Yeah. Yeah. Cardassians have an ally that they're from the gamma quadrant. and they supplied them with weapons and chips. And Balana is just dumbfounded. She's so upset.

And her Klingon comes out a bit here because she vows revenge. Yeah. She's really emotional. I thought another good scene. Yeah. It's great. I mean, the whole realization that your entire group of friends,

your movement, your freedom movement is now nothing. I mean, there's a few people left alive, but they're all in prison. That's it, right? It's big news, for sure. It's huge, and it was really well played by both of them.

Then we go to the mess hall, I think. Yeah. Harry approaches Tom, and you and I have a nice little scene there. Yeah. I got to say, you are very good at eating on camera. You really are. You're a good on-camera eater because it's not easy. Because, you know, when you're eating and you have lines,

and you've got to time it all properly. And it's like, once you do coverage, then you've got to remember, oh, wait a minute. Okay. And the master shot, I stuck this piece of food in my mouth right before I said this line. And now my close up, where do I do? I mean, all this stuff has to be in your head. And, yeah, you did a good job with the food. Well, thank you.

Yeah, I was impressed. Yeah, I think I like the concept of this scene that Harry is really excited. Yeah. And Tom's playing like he could care less. He's talking about the food. Yeah. How'd you like the chicken? And he's just avoiding.

Basically, Tom is pretending like he doesn't care. Right. But Harry is really, really excited. And Neelix walks into Mess Hall with a bunch of letters. Yeah. And Harry had told Tom a moment before he heard that there were maybe 30 more letters. Mm-hmm. And feels like this might be his batch.

Yeah. And the letters get handed out. Nothing for Tom. Nothing for Harry. No. And Harry goes over to Neelix and says, you know, I heard that there were 30 letters. And Neelks is like, where do you hear that? yeah and those are rumors yeah yeah they said well that's what the word going around no that's rumors yeah

and and and this last exchange between tom and harry where tom says you know harry no hopes no disappointment yeah and harry says i'm not you i'm not you yeah this is this is probably the the harshest tom and harry interchange that we've had to this to this point in the show there really it's always been kind of rainbows and funniness and pulling jokes and pulling jokes on each other. And then all of a sudden there's this, you know, Harry's clearly obsessed with getting this letter. Tom is clearly obsessed with avoiding any talk about letters.

Our, as actors, we talk about, you know, what's your motivation? And our motivations are diametrically opposite of each other in this scene. And it ends in kind of, not even a stalemate, it's sort of a dismissive tone that Harry gives to Tom. It's sort of like, you know what, I'm not you, okay? I got to get out. out of here. I'm not going to go to your, you know, disconnected place. I'm going to stay authentic. Yes, but I was still shocked that I even kind of put that tone out towards you, you know,

that Harry did that because I don't recall filming that scene. And seeing that, I was like, ooh, that's a little harsh. Yeah, I didn't recall filming that scene either, but I liked it a lot. No, it was a great scene. We're really, really good. And the way, and the way that Livingston chose to shoot that too, you know? So it really, um, having me in the foreground and looking away and you in the back kind of right behind me, but also looking away. You're, you're looking the other direction, you know, kind of eating your food. And it was well done. I liked it. Yeah. Agreed. After this, we go to the ready room and seven comes in to talk to Janeway. Yeah. And seven asked, she says she wants to go shore up this containment field that it's degrading and, and, uh, we,

we need to get closer and she's got a way to shore up this containment field so we can keep getting these messages. Yeah. And Janeway says, well, I'm not accustomed to sending an away team of one. So take Tuvok with you. Right. And seven agrees and leaves. And you see Janeway for a moment after that she's still clearly shaken by whatever it was in this letter.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is great because as an actress, she tracked it. You know, she realized, okay, I'm still, I got my dear John. and I need to keep that same life going inside of me for every scene after. And she definitely does. And the whole suggestion of this shuttle was because a smaller craft can handle those gravimetric eddies better than Voyager, right? It's too big.

So that was the whole reason behind that. Then we jump to astrometrics and it's Torres and Harry. Harry comes in. He's expecting to see seven, doesn't see her. He says, we're seven. And then, of course, Bologna starts teasing Harry about seven, you know, I can tell you're in love, blah, blah, blah. And Harry's, you know, he's really just bummed about no letter from home.

That's, that's his driving motivation in this scene. And also to just get Bala to stop messing with him. And I love the change that Roxanne throws in there. I mean, Roxanne's just teasing, teasing, teasing. And then she realizes what the reason behind, what is the reason behind Harry's appearance in the astrametrics lab? and it's all about that letter, she becomes quite empathetic, you know,

and she really just switches her tone entirely, which I thought was great what Roxanne did. Yeah, agreed. I thought it was really great. The one thing I thought was really important in the scene that we learned is Harry sort of admits at first, you know, she's an attractive woman, and at first I did think about seven, you know,

as a potential date or whatever, but there's nothing between us. And he literally says, I'm over that now. I thought it was interesting, because the writers wrote it, obviously. And so he says, he says he's over it. That's all. I thought that was, that was important to sort of hear Harry explain that and literally acknowledge it, you know, the stories that we'd already shot.

Right. And it's interesting. Maybe this is the last time that you'll hear of this after. There may be no talk after this. Yeah, they may have want to put that behind him. I mean, you know, there is another way to look at it of like, Harry's just covering. I mean, just because he says, oh, yeah, I'm over that now. It doesn't mean he really, people say things all the time that they don't mean.

That's true. But I think I felt like your performance of this in the context of everything, it felt like an authentic. He believed he was over at this point. Okay. I thought that was good. Yeah. We cut into side the shuttle. Seven asked, too, are Vulcans capable of telling lies?

Yeah. which I thought was a fun exploration between these two, you know, brainiacs here. And he goes, yes, but only under certain conditions. Yeah. You know, what a roundabout way of getting to the point, right? Are Vulcan's a liars or not? I mean, just like, just get to the point, seven. And it's so funny because now she's becoming more human.

Yes, very gradually, but she is becoming more human and less Borg. The Borg and her would say immediately, is it Starfleet protocol? for one person to be assigned another person on an away mission. Is it always a two person to minimum? That would have been the board seven chatting to Tuvok. But of course, now that her humanity is reasserting itself, now she's worried about Janeway and what she thinks of her, right? Yeah.

They get close to this relay station. Yes. And they admit a Polaron pulse to prevent further degradation. That seems to be successful. And then suddenly there's this big, light. And they're like, what was that? They say they were scanned by a sub-nucleonic beam. They have lost communication. They've lost engine. They've lost weapons. And there's a ship approaching. And navigation. Yes. I want to rewind for a second. It lost all of that stuff, right?

Yes. Rewind for just a quick second. Do you recall in the ready room when seven approached Janeway saying, I need to go on a shuttle to get closer? way assigned Chakotay for that away mission. But yet, that's clearly not Chocote in the shuttle. So I don't know if you made that better about it. And then I, I rewound it. And she said Tuvok. Why did you and I both think that she assigned Chacote? She didn't. What? Because I wrote it down. You rewounded back to what Jane, to the scene in the ready room. Yeah, when Tuvok was in, I was like, wait, I wrote down Chacote. I looked and I wrote it down. And I was like, wait a minute, let me go back. Did I mishear this? And I did. She said Tuvok. You and I both thought she assigned Chukote,

but she didn't. That's weird. We are experiencing the same glitch in the matrix. You and I are the same matrix right now. I heard Chocote 1,000 percent. I wrote that down. I said, why did Janeway assign Chac for the away mission? But then Tuvok is inside the shuttle. And you rewound it back to the ready room scene. And she clearly says Tuvon. She says Tuvok. But I literally had to go delete and retype Tuvok because I had already typed Chukotay in there. That's weird that we both heard that. Wow. We're on the same page.

That's crazy. With our errors, we're on the same page. I know. Okay. That's really weird. All right. So now they're back in the shuttle interior. The shields are weakening.

They're maneuvering towards the relay station because Tuvok thinks that the larger vessel will be affected by the gravimetric forces. this might be their way of getting away from them. But then a tractor beam hits them. And Tuvac quickly launches a distress beacon. And then the tractor beam all of a sudden emits another beam of red light, which then causes them to lose unconsciousness. What was that?

We don't even know it that one. I call it the sleeping beam. That's the sleeping beam. Sleep beam. Sleep beam them. I'm going to go back for two things. Yeah, go. So during this attack, we just heard Zevah,

and say, we've lost communication, we've lost navigation, we've lost engines, we've lost weapons. But yet, they keep pushing all these buttons and when we cut to space, the shuttle is flying closer. So did they... I don't know. Like, she

said we got nothing, but clearly they had something because the shuttle's moving around. Maybe it was on autopilot. And the autopilot navigation left. I don't know. Well, you know, an object in motion stays in motion. if you're talking about physics, right?

So then they say, let's get closer. Yeah. It's just a little, yeah, there's a little whole of the script here. Yes. There's that. And here's the other thing. During the battle, during the battle, when they were first fighting this ship that's approached, David Livingston went to these low angles.

And two things I thought is, wow, when you get low like that, you need the star field. Because what we would do is we would film with stars on a solid black like velvet cloth curtain curtain yeah yeah there would be little reflective stars on a black velvet curtain it would hang inside the windows but if you got too low you'd look up to the ceiling of the soundstick he would see the top of it I was yeah so I was looking at this low angle and I'm thinking how did they get the star field up that would have been complicated and the second thing more importantly was I was like oh from this low angle you see these cool reflections in the window Of the console, of the console.

I like that, actually. Well, I liked it, too, until I went, wait a minute, there are no windows in ships. It's a force field, and force fields don't reflect like glass. Like, you wouldn't have a reflection of anything because it's just a force field. Yeah. A reflection would have to be a solid surface that have some reflective qualities of light. A force field would not have that. At first, I was like, oh, that's cool.

There are reflections of the consoles. Wait a minute. There aren't reflections in space windows. Yeah, but there has to be. I mean, you're not going to manufacture a shuttle with no type of flexiglass of window. It's super cool, believe me. But I've literally, I've got to be honest, we're four and a half seasons into the show. I've never thought of it before.

Okay. But there should not be reflections on force fields. Yeah. So you know what I mean? I do know what you mean, but I also feel that there is some type of window there, and then there's shields on top of that, that go over everything. All right. Because I don't see that thing coming off the assembly line with just this windowless gap,

which is, oh, of course, when your shields are on, it'll just cover it, you know, because if you lose shields, you're still going to have to have some type of protection from the exterior space. Okay. Okay. This is a good debate for the major. This is a very good debate. Would Andre Bormonis know the answers?

Andre Bormonis would know. Okay. Or Mike and Denise might know this. Or Mike and Denise who know this. Because they know all the ships, you know, and how they're built. One of our listeners should probably also know this, too. So we'll see. Are there, scientifically, would there be reflections in the windows of a Starfleet vessel?

Correct. I'm going to go with a no. Technically, there should not be reflections. Okay. But it was a cool shot from David Livingston. This isn't the first time this has happened. There's been reflections of people in the windows from the mess hall, too. So I've seen that.

So, yeah. All right. Okay. So, yeah, and how are they flying? Because they just lost everything and now all of a sudden fly. Anyway, yeah. I had a couple issues in that moment. I guess you did.

But, yeah, after the sleep beam, which I think is cool, I wish Starfleet would come up with our sleep beam. We could avoid all this violence and destruction. If we could just, like, send a little sleep beam. Put them into a nap. Everybody just take a little nap and we'll feel better. So now that makes me feel like instead of saying set phasers to stun, you're going to say set phasers to sleep. To sleep.

Yeah. Just nap it off. Sleep it off. Yeah. We go to the bridge and there's a calm call. Torres says she has some letters and she asked for Tom to come down. And he goes to astrometrics. Yep.

And he makes a joke at first. I think he knows the letter is probably coming. He makes a joke. And he says, maybe it's, you know, rehab sending a message that I violated probation. Yeah.

And she doesn't really laugh. Yeah. He just wants to go back to work. And she says, yeah, I think this is for you. It's from an Admiral Owen. Do you know him?

And I'm like, oh, yeah. That's my dad. That's my pappy. I loved when Paris says here, you know, the more everybody gets excited,

the more I don't want to be any part of it, because this is better than anything I ever had back there. I love that line. I thought it was super cool. So much vulnerability in this scene. Yeah, tons of vulnerability. Taurus says, give him a chance. And Tom says, it's not going to matter when he's made up his mind.

Right. And then she reveals, well, you know, you're feeling sorry for yourself. And all my friends are dead. And I was first mad and sad. I'm trying to accept all this. Yeah. Would you had no idea about it. You didn't know anything about this.

No. And Tom goes over to hug her. It's a very sweet scene. I did notice, I have to say, Rebecca actually pointed this out, that Roxanne's forehead makeup is very white compared to the rest of her face. And it just didn't seem to match in a few of the moments. It was just like, whoa, that forehead makeup piece is just not matching color-wise, anything on her face.

Good catch by Rebecca. I also caught. My catch was when you guys hug in this scene, if you look at Roxanne's fingers, some of the makeup that they put on her hand has worn off of her fingers. Oh, really? Yeah, so she has a darker part of her hand and a lighter part of her hand.

I said, oh, they didn't catch that one. And then earlier, I'm going to rewind back into that shuttle scene with Seven and Tuvok. Did you see there was some type of discoloration right over Seven's eyebrow implant where it's darker as if someone punched her there like it was bruised? And I was like, what is going?

on. So there's a couple of catches on makeup that I noticed. I did not catch, yeah, I didn't catch the whiteness of the forehead, but I caught. It was very different above the eyebrows, the color palette than below, right? It was a much darker change down below. Yeah. Well, it's a very sweet scene. I really loved what Roxanne did in this scene. I was very happy with what I did and I love what they wrote. So I thought that was a great, a really great scene. A really good scene for both characters for sure we go to the ready room chakotay tells the captain that it looks like two vok and seven succeeded that the the field is stable and the letters should be coming in much more easily and he kind of casually says you know we don't have the shuttle on sensors yet but

they should be back soon and i was like dude you don't have the shuttle on sensors you've lost the shuttle like couldn't that be a red alert yeah they're not that far away of the letters, dude, you've lost the shuttle. Oh my gosh. But then he brings up Mark's letter. Even though our shuttle is lost, let's talk about the letters. Let's talk about what's important. Yeah.

Mark's letter. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. I love what Jerry Taylor wrote when Chikote, actually, Janeway says he married his co-worker four months ago. And then Chacote says, well, how do you feel about that? And she pauses. And she says, well, I knew he would eventually move on with his life. But there was such a finality to that letter. That line right there, there was such a finality to that letter was really impactful. I felt. I was like, wow, this is quite poetic and moving at the same time.

And that's when Harry interrupts with the call to Janeway, come to the bridge. We got some issues. and Harry has picked up the distress signal from Tuvok shuttle and sensors show that there is no one on board the shuttle. Yeah, Zippo. Maybe Chikote should have been thinking about that when he said, we don't have the shuttle on sensors instead of talking about the letters. Maybe you should have focused on that.

Oh, my goodness. Anyway, now we go to the ship and now is the bones in the net. Yeah, which I kept thinking we saw those earlier. Well, what is the now? No, but what have you, where have you, seen something similar to that though, Robbie in filmed entertainment. What would you say? I don't know. Predator. Did you watch Predator? Oh, yeah. Predator. The interior of the Predatorship. Same thing. The netting, you know, bone, vertebrae, yeah, skull. And I, and it was very

imposing until it showed that one scalp. Do you see that one little fluff of hair that was kind of hanging from the thing? And I said, oh, that's too Halloween costuming. Which was, That pulled me out a little bit. But the rest of the bones made me feel quite creepy, quite eerie, quite like, ooh, these guys, these guys mean business, right? They're not, they're not playing around at all. And Seven and Tuvok are on the floor tied up their restraint and the Herogen arrive. Yeah. And he was disappointed in the hunt.

Yeah. There wasn't much of a fight and he wants information. Why did you violate our property? And they say just, you know, we're trying to get some communication. from home and just let us grab that and we'll go yeah and he said nope i took you in a fair hunt i claim you he said i hope the others are stronger he says they'll make they'll make a better fight didn't he paint stuff on them in this scene does he paint something on them yeah yeah that's that's what he claims them yeah yeah i'm guessing maybe white or silver is his color right like they all

each herogen has a hue you know that they have right yeah maybe something like that. We do find out in the scene that another Herogen, a couple of Horogen ships are approaching. Yeah. But he's focused on this erogen, Idrin, I guess is his name. Yes. He's like, no, this is the first of their kind and I will be envied by everyone. Yes. I'm not sharing this prey. Right. And he wants to collect the relics from them. This is the torture and the skinning and all that stuff that he wants to do. Yeah. Kind of gross. It's definitely probably the most, well, you know what? No, I would have to say the Herojin are not the most scary, eerie people.

The first were really the Videans. The Videans were the creepiest people. Yeah. Things were super creepy. I love the Videans. But these guys are just like battle ready. Yeah, that's true. Where the Videans were, you know, a very advanced culture, you know, but that had to deal with

this phage. They weren't really about going out and, you know, gutting people. that's not their that's not their MO but these guys the Herojin is very primal like you said 100,000 years worth of of primal urges that they just keep acting on right yeah very very creepy in their own right okay so Janeway tries to bargain yeah go ahead yeah we go to the bridge captain says return our people she tries to bargain he and he basically says you just better run like I'm not giving your people back yeah you better get out of you three more ships are coming when my people show up you're you guys are

toast. So I'm giving you a chance to save yourself, but I'm not giving you back here, too. These are my relics. Or these are my, I've claimed these two for myself. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then we stay on the Herojan ship here. And the two Herojin, start to argue a bit. They're arguing over the relics. And we see some of these tools that they're going to use. And we end this scene with them preparing to, I guess, you know, dissect. dissect seven yeah and he says i think his last line is something like their bone structure will make cutting through the back very difficult this will take time which which means it's going to be slow and painful is what it's going to be right i kept thinking do they get any type of you know

anesthesia do you think they do you think they even offer that to their their people no i don't think No, they just cut it in to you. Yeah. Okay. We go back to the bridge that they're preparing for battle. She's strategizing. She's strategizing. What are we going to do?

We realize that they have massive weapons that were outgunned. She says an antithoron burst with a low level warp field may draw them in or, you know, change the gravitational pull in some way. It'll boost the effects. I don't get science as well. Like, really? Okay, so what they're saying is the relay station has its own containment field, which keeps the singularity in check, right? So if you don't have a containment field,

the singularity will now suck in everything that's close by and completely just make everything disappear, right? So she's saying, how can we boost the effects of the singularity? How can we make it stronger to attract in these ships that are coming towards us? And at the same time, how do we protect Voyager from getting sucked in? So the low-level warp field created around Voyager is to keep it sort of, you know, protected from the singularity. That thoron burst is the sort was, I think Harry recommended it. If we throw that, that thoron burst, it'll weaken the containment field,

which will make the singularity or the black hole stronger to suck in the errogen vessel. Exactly. Is science better now? Sure. Yeah. Science is better. I still don't get science, but sure. And I also wrote Harry, yes ma'am's Janeway about finding the right balance to beam.

Again, he, yes, ma'am. Well, it just shows you that you rub off on me, right? So that's it. You're my buddy and how you speak. I start to, yes, ma'am. And I noticed that there's a couple that I did do an extra josh. A little extra parish, too. So, yeah, so Janeway is like, hey, you need to find the right balance to be.

be able to beam, because the concern is this. If we create this low-level warp field around Voyager, it may be too high to beam Tuvok and seven back. And that's when Harry, that's when, that's when Janeway looks at Harry and says, well, you better find the right balance. And that's when I go, yes, ma'am, sit right back. So there you got. Okay. We cut over to the Horogen ship, Tuvok is in a bit of a fight with the Horogen guys. He's got some nice moves over there with the does. But he slices his neck, but it does nothing to him. It does not. guy keeps fighting. It's just, and then somebody picks Tuvok up.

And I wonder, same guy, same guy. I wondered if they put some, a wire on Tuvok, because he was up in the air kind of sideways and then gets thrown. Yeah, that was tiny. That was tiny. Tiny was the one that, Tiny was the one that was holding the, the, um, taxidermy tool, whatever you want to call it, the, the scalpel. And then that's what Tuvac grabs it from him, slices him, and then goes to try to stab a beta

Horogen who's working on the you know the console there the other yeah yeah and that's when tiny grabs Tuvac and you're right there has to be some type of yeah do you think he would have had enough power to pick up Tim like that and throw him on his own no way right no way so there's a harness there's a wire and a harness that's underneath his uniform and what they would do is they would cut a little hole in the in the uniform to to kind of thread that wire through and then on command they would lift him up lift him up lift him up and just jerk them, they move them around anywhere they want them, right, with that harness in the wire. Yeah, I think they, I think Tim got to do a little wirework on that because that was Tim

floating up in the air and then the, the toss probably went to a stunt double, you know, jumping off a platform into the wall or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but it was cool. Then we cut back and Balana is saying she's gotten as much as she thinks she's going to get. Right. The battle ensues. There are sparks on the bridge that I think were the biggest sparks I'd ever seen in our bridge. I thought that was pretty cool. And Janeway did warn them. Janeway warned those guys. She said, stop firing on us. If you do that, that containment field is going to be done. And they don't listen. And of course, one by one, they're all sucked into the relay station, get sucked in. The gravity well of the black hole just sucks them all in. I thought Chacote's

line, he said, we're losing this tug of war. That sounds like a Tom line. Like Tom's the one Yeah, he's doing science and makes it like something any idiot can understand. We're losing this tug of war. We're losing this tug of war. That sounds like a Tom line, but Chukotay said it. Whatever. Yeah. They're mixing up lines.

They're giving me to yes ma'ams. They're giving. I know. Everybody's talking like the other war. The wrong person. Totally the wrong person. Now, so those guys all got sucked in. Voyager's now getting sucked in.

I know. And it's looking bad, right? Yeah. And then suddenly Janeway says, open the antimatter injectors. to 120%. Right. That was the final command. Everything else was like,

reroute life support. That's not working. Redrout this. That's not working. And then open anti-matter injectors, 120%. Yeah. And Harry says something like,

we could have a warp core breach. Yeah. Breach. And we do it anyway. And that fixes it. And I'm like, I really don't get science now. Oh,

anti-matter ejectors just to 120. No, not 125. 119. No, 120. Just right. I can figure that out in my little brain, science. I think it was, it seemed a little easy. I think you did. You were like spouting off the yes, ma'am. And left the right. Oh my goodness. But that saves the day, right? Saves the day because Janeway knows the exact percentage of antimatter injectors that will fix a giant black hole that no one else seemed to be able to defend themselves. Clearly, Janeway has run tons of simulations about being sucked into a one-centimeter black hole. I guess so.

A hundred and 20 percent. She knew that off the top of her head and made the call. And anyway, I still don't understand science. Astrometrics. Bologna says she's got everything. She delivers Harry his letters. Yes, yes. That's right.

Yeah. And also, she says that Harry should work on the decoding of the encrypted Starfleet message. And that's when she leaves to deliver a personal message to Harry. And Harry is so happy that he got this message. But I kept thinking he's not having any, like nothing is registering about Libby. Like why isn't he going like, oh, is it from Libby or my, oh, it's from my parents. Like he's probably expecting a message from his fiance as well, but there's no mention of her whatsoever in this. No, not at all in this episode.

And then she goes down to your station. It goes down to Tom. And you don't get your message. message she says tom i'm sorry your letter didn't make it but she says uh i'm going to choose to believe that he's proud of you and that he misses you yeah and paris takes a pause and goes so will i i will yeah yeah and i think that's pretty it's a nice moment because you see like his negativity his pessimism his sarcasm yeah that has even you know played out has softened over the years on voyager yeah but this is a moment where with Balana and that relationship, you see him grow and change and learn to be positive

and look on the brighter side or the more positive side of life. I love that moment. It's a very important character moment and relationship for those two. Yeah. We go into Janeway's quarters and Tuvok is talking about the Herogen and downloading to her. They have no moral center, he says. And before you get to that, let's also make mention there is an exterior space shot. And it's the captain's log supplemental. And she says, she starts talking about the last part of her line, which then leads into the shot of Tuvok walking in is, I've been eager to hear Tuvok's impressions of the species who took them hostage.

And the first thing I thought of was Tuvok coming in going. Coming into doing impressions. So, Captain, they spoke like this. He starts doing the impression of the origin, which is my first thought. But of course, that wasn't it. Yeah. That would have been very funny. That would be in the comedy version.

That's the lower decks version of it, basically. Exactly. Okay. All right. Continue. Yeah. Tuvok says these guys are really badasses. They're extremely dangerous.

They have no moral center. No morals. And then Tuvok leaves and Chukote comes in. And she offers him some coffee. And he says, she goes cream and sugar. He goes two sugars. And she's like, oh, two sugars. Two sugars.

And he says, you know, boy, you drink. a lot of that coffee you've had three or four today i think four he says you've been drinking too much is what he says too much yeah you've been drinking too much like three she's like no four so yeah i love her line she says yeah she says coffee the finest organic suspension ever devised it got me through the worst of the last three years i beat the borg with it she says i want to make a coffee mug that says i beat the board with this yeah yes this copy this this cop this mug can beat the board or something all right yeah we'll work it out i think streamlined that message that would be funny beat the board with coffee but all those coffee shippers out there were pretty happy to hear these

lines come out of janeway i'm sure yes uh janeway says she's worried about the crew morale and that nilix is throwing everybody a party yeah and then she does confide in Chucote. She says that she got a dear John letter. As hard as it is, she said, I feel like, you know, I was using it as a safety net. I don't have a safety net anymore. And he, a safety net, well, let's be precise. She said, I used Mark as a safety net to avoid becoming involved with someone else. Yep. Okay. Clearly. And then what does he say? He says, you don't have that net anymore. You don't have that safe. safety net anymore. And I'm waiting for them to kiss, but it doesn't. I was too. But then they

got up to go to the party. He gives her arm to her. Arm and arm. Come on, people. What are they saying? They're saying no safety net. You don't have one. I got to meet other people. Let's go arm and arm to the party. Come on. I know. What a tease. It's sort of like we're going to end the episode with this one scene and every J.C. Shipper will watch this going, Yeah, I know, right? I know. I know. I'm with the JCs all the way.

Yeah. I am totally with them. What would you rate this on a scale of 1 to 10? What would you make this episode? Yeah, I'm going to say 6.5 is what I'm going to give this one. Whoa. We're very different on this. Uh-oh.

Where are you? Nine. Nine. No. Why? Nine out of 10. Why? Why?

This is a good episode. Really? I think this is good because it involves absolutely everybody in the show, the entire cast. Okay. There is such an emotional foundation to this with all of the characters from Chiquotay and the Maquis and Balana in the Maquis to Janeway and Mark to the Chiquette, Janeway relationship to Harry's relationship with his family, his optimism. I don't know. To me, you know what? Every relationship, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Okay. Now that I'm thinking about all the vulnerability that has been displayed, which we haven't really seen until now, I need to shoot that up. I'm going to go to 7.5. So I'm going to add one point to it because of the amount of vulnerability. Okay. I'll go with that one. I think this was one of my favorite episodes. The Herogen are badasses. Like they're scary. I think it's cool that we found somebody like them in the Delta Quadrant. I think the makeup is phenomenal. Okay. You know, those shots of seven. and Tuvok standing with these giant creatures who are so intimidating because Tim Russ is tall. He's taller than me. I'm over six feet. Tim's taller than me. But he was looking up to the Herogen. And so was seven. And I just, I found everything about the concept and I thought the visual effects were great. I give this a nine out of ten. Wow, that's a high rating. I'm, I'm shocked. I'm not surprised, but I'm shocked. And so I feel like this season to me is the best. season we've had so far. Oh, by far. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, the seven of nine by far shift. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not just that. It's like, no, we're, we're getting our

legs underneath us, you know? Performances are so good. Writing is so good. They are. They are. FX is so good. We've had a lot of great episodes. I give this, I give it a solid nine out of ten for me. What about a lesson then? The theme for me was life goes on. Oh. And things are always changing. Things that are around us are changed, things that we see are changing, and things that we don't see are changing as well. Change is the theme. I like that.

I like that a lot. Mine is a little bit more dead on. It is don't use other species technology without permission. That's all. That's fair. That's fair. They told us don't do it and we did it anyway. And we didn't even do it.

Well, you know, what happened? Seven shocked that guy, right? So we didn't even get a chance to negotiate with him, really. So, yeah, you need to ask permission before using people's things. Agreed. Yeah. That's all. That was fun.

Yeah, it was fun. I enjoyed this episode as well. What is next week? Next week is prey, which sounds like a continuation of hunters. It sounds like another erogen. Yes. Yes, it does. Wow.

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