The Delta Flyers - Infinite Regress

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

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 Infinite Regress. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Infinite Regress:Voyager encounters a Borg device floating in space which causes Seven of Nine to exhibit multiple personalities, including that of a Klingon, a Ferengi, a Vulcan, and a human.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, & Brannon BragaAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, 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, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Mike Devlin, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Amber Eason, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, 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, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Brandon May, Jeremy Mcgraw, & Jason BonnettAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Katherine Hendrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Aithne Loeblich, Caryn Mellom, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Mike Chow, Michael "Klink" Klinckhardt, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Craig M. Nakashian, Julie McCain, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Estelle Keller, & Carmen Puente-GarzaThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey y'all. Welcome to the Delta Flyers of Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are my fellow Star Trek Voyager series regular Robert Duncan McNeil and myself, Garrett 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. Did you like my y'all at the beginning? I did. I speak Southern. You do speak Southern.

I do. North Carolina and then Georgia. Y'all. Tennessee. Y'all is very, very popular. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And for those of you who are not Americans,

that is a contraction of you and all. Y'all. So there you go. When I was in high school, I had a summer job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And they had a phrase that I think, is very local and regional up there instead of y'all or you guys they say yunns yuns like are you ones coming down to the game or yinns interesting are yinns going downtown yin's going down oh yin's

let me see how that sounds like y'all here we go let me just try the intro with that hey yunz welcome it's harder for me to say that like hey y'all that's the pittsburgh way that's the pittsburgh way all right hey yunz welcome to the delta flyers okay that is new to me i've never heard of that what job were you doing in pittsburgh i worked at a theme park uh one summer what called kanywood amusement park in pittsburg pennsylvania doing the kid show during the day and doing a big band review at night i was doing like, you know, six shows a day or something at the theme park in the entertainment division. It was a summer job. And it was between my junior and my 11th and 12th grade year at high school. So they recruited from all around the country or just from Georgia.

I don't understand. The company that put together the shows or some of these smaller amusement parks that didn't have their own entertainment division. If you're not Disney World, you're a small park. You hire an outside company and that company was from Atlanta, Georgia. So they did kind of put a lot of the staff together and then they hired locally. Yeah. So I think I was the only actor, I was the only performer in that show that was from Atlanta. I was sort of there, I was brought up as a utility person to be in the kid show and then to sort of be the manager, but I didn't, I didn't really have to do anything. But, you know, sort of their eyes on the ground, I guess. So anyway.

Well, this must have been pretty exciting for you to leave Georgia, to go to another state for the summer. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So you had some fun memories from that time, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. It was a great summer. It was a lot of fun. Right. And it's better than that other amusement park we just talked about in the Admiral's Call,

the one that documentaries. Action Park. Gosh. In New Jersey was a very dangerous water park or whatever. And yeah, there's a great documentary. I think it's called Class Action Park about all the lawsuits and the horrible.

The most dangerous amusement park in the world, at least in America. And they were sort of proud of it. It was like, that's how they promoted this place. It's action-packed and dangerous. You might get killed. There may be grave injuries,

but come on down, bring the kids. So, yeah, that's action park. So this is a documentary on Netflix. What did you, what platform? I don't know where it is, but somewhere. online you can find class action park okay yeah i want to watch this i'm just it's really good it's a great documentary so funny yeah all right are you ready for this week's episode let's do this week's

episode very excited yes you don't ask you usually ask me the name what is the name okay good the name is infinite regress now we've kind of talked about this at the end of last episode regress or regress how would you go with regress Okay, regress. Infinite regress. Excellent. Yes. Yes. All right, y'all or Yunz, we will be right back with our recap and discussion of Infinite Regress. See you, everybody. Robbie and I are now back from watching Infinite Regress. Yes, we are. That was an intense episode. Very different, very different than, you know, I think our average episode.

episode. It was just the whole structure of it. Um, obviously a huge seven episode. It was big seven episode. She handled it well with all the different personalities that she had to take on. I was very impressed. And also a bit of jealousy is in my body because you know, you know me. I love to do impersonations. And this would have been my dream episode. if I was allowed to have doing multiple characters, Klingons and Vulcans. Multiple personalities. Oh my gosh.

This is the dream episode for me, Garrett Wong. I mean, as a person, I love that. Well, she did an awesome job. And I think, honestly, I didn't remember this episode. No.

It surprised me all of the stuff she did. And I was actually surprised at her ability to be a character actor, to really transform into these characters. I thought she did a really, really good job. And I got to say, she and I both fall under Year of the Monkey. We're both year of the monkey and the Chinese zodiac, and that is the entertainer of the Zodiac.

So she and I are good with voices and characters, and she knocked it out of the park on several of those characters. Okay. Very was great. Let's do our poetry right now. So here's my haiku for infinite regress. Clingon 7 eats. Too many voices to count.

Cat is caught is fun. Wow. You got highlights in there for sure. Highlights, but I kind of, these are just, it almost was so. Impressionistic moments. Yes, that's what it was. That was a very impressionistic hyac. All right, let me hear this limerick. I'm so. Here's the limerick for a very complicated and dense episodes. Infinite regress. Let's go. Here we go. Seven gets a pesky multiple personality from the past. She can't seem to break free. To get those voices expelled, Tuvok does a weird Vulcan mind meld. Now seven must learn from Naomi. So what was the thought process behind throwing weird in front of Vulcan mind melt? Were there other adjectives that didn't work that didn't fit? Yeah, I was, it was, you know, the rhythm's a little off on this one. But it was that mind meld was like a trip.

Yeah. Like that mind melt. So you could have said trippy mind meld. as well. Was there a runner-up adjective that you had other than weird? I'm just curious if you were thinking of, oh, maybe we'd go with this.

I can't remember. I did think of some other ones. Yeah. Crazy or bizarre. I don't know. Right. I just wanted a one syllable. Yeah.

I had too many syllables. Yeah. I hear you. Yeah. That's the thing with the limericks. Like if you have too many syllables, it doesn't, it doesn't flow that well. Land. Yeah.

Okay. So let's jump into the people who we, we guessed. We guessed wrong entirely. It was David. You know, David Livingston should be. the answer for every single one almost. Odds are, if we say David Livingston directed it, he probably did. He probably did.

And he did a good job on this one, I felt. Did a great job. Jimmy Diggs, our friend Jimmy Diggs and Robert J. Doherty were the story. They came up with a story. And Doherty went ahead with the teleplay. He wrote the teleplay. And I got to say, he really, I love the subtle humor in this episode. I think there was a lot of, there were four or five moments of awesome subtle humor.

and I have often been guilty of being very critical of the Voyager writers and saying that they're not good at writing humor for anyone other than the doctor. And it's just, you know, and I've always talked about, you know, oh, my gosh, I wish the human characters could be funnier. And I have to say, Robert Doherty knocked it out of the park. I wish there was more teleplay by Robert Doherty. End of story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There was a lot of humor and a lot of comic moments, even with Naomi, with seven, with Naomi with the doctor. Tuvok had some moments. Oh my goodness. Inouye had a couple good moments. You and I didn't have much at all to do in this episode. No, we were, yeah, we were minor players in this completely. But just like you say a good episode is one that includes every character.

I think one that includes comedy or humor, humor with every character to me is a knockout out of the park episode. So I'm going to, when we do the rating at the end, it's going to be better than most people's ratings. Okay. All right. Guest are Scarlet Combers. So we've talked about Scarlet before, playing Naomi Wildman.

So good to have her back on the show. She was really good in this episode. She was really good. We also had Neil Maffin playing Venn. Yeah. The alien, 6339 captain, right? Yeah. That was Venn.

Neil Maffin is from Shenandoah, Iowa. Okay. So that's where Cape Mugrew is from, right? Not Shenandoah, but she's from Iowa. Right. From Iowa. The other co-star that I found listed was Erica Murr, who was the little girl. Oh, the one in the alternate reality, Tuvac, mind meld. Okay.

So that's, what's her name again? Say her name. Erica Mur. Erica Mur. Okay. She was born in 1988 in Texas. Thank you for doing that research. I appreciate that.

Let us begin with our recap. So here we go into the show, as they say. Dive in. Diving right in. we find seven on a regeneration pad or pod and as we pan across the the regeneration bay the cargo bay where her regeneration pod is yeah as we open the the episode we're hearing voices and panning through but it's an empty cargo bay there's no one else there no except for seven and i thought that image whether david livingston came up with it or whether it was scripted you know it may have been

scripted that it said pan across the you know as we look around the cargo bay no one's there but we hear voices the only person is seven it may have said that or maybe david david livingson just interpreted this as the director but yeah it was a great shot because it started on a crane shot but i don't know if you notice turned into what they call a step off so that means the steady cam operator yeah was riding on the crane standing up okay and he He gets lowered down to the floor level. And he steps off that crane. And he continues the shot.

He walks in. Oh, wow. It was a very flashy opening shot. Yeah. I've done that shot a couple of times, but it's, it takes a long time because the crane. Yeah. To lift an operator up in the air, you need a counterweight, just like on a seesaw, right? Right.

So you have to counterweight it. But when that weight is on and the operator steps off. oh goodness all of a sudden the weight is off balance right and it could go it could just shoot off like a yeah yeah so you have to bring that crane down then you get people to step on top of it to counterweight the weights i see so that it's safe and the timing has to be just right so it's a team effort to get this done it's a complicated shot i'm sure it took a long time did you notice any shakiness from the actual movement of the camera operator off the crane, the stepping off of the, did you see a bump? A little bit, just a little bit. It's a hard shot to totally get smooth like that.

Right. Definitely. But I thought it was really cool. That shot continues, goes into a close-up, and then she steps out, hands her, she's looking around the cargo bay for where the voices are coming from, follows her out into the hallway. The other thing I noticed out in the hallway is it was a wide lens. Again, David Livingston loves us. 12, 14 millimeter lenses. And it was, it was a great lens for everything until, in my opinion, she got out in the hall because now you could see down to her waist or something like that. And it made her body look very straight.

Out of proportion. Yeah, like the upper arm is really wide, but then it turns really like spindly. It tapers. It tapers weirdly. Yeah. No, I hear you. No. It distorted her upper body.

from her hips all the way up and her face was big and I don't know it was a weird it was a weird I was a I was conscious of the shot yes at that point but before that it was really elegant I thought it was really good yeah anyway so she walks down the hall we pick her up stepping into the mess hall and she starts throwing food you know there's bowls of food on the tables she's tossing the food specific let's be specific the food is anything not meat so it's vegetables you know like salad crackers chips or something not meat is being peanuts side exactly it's flaming hot cheetos tossed to the side until she finds the meat and she starts just devouring this meat and then all the sudden the camera cool camera shot because you see a reflection in this frosted glass it's either a cupboard door or a partition so i can't

remember if it was a partition or not but that's where you see the clingon it reflected eating the same meat. So now we know, uh-oh, something's up. She's got her. He has another personality inside of her. Somehow. We don't know how. As soon as I saw that shot, by the way, the reflection, two things occurred to me. The first thing was, oh, we do that on Resident Alien with Alan Tudence. Yes, you do do that. Whenever he walks by a mirror or reflective thing, we see his alien face. And I was like, oh, that's just like Resident Alien. Yeah. The next thing I thought of was, is that influence, by Voyager by this episode, you feel? No, I don't think so.

Okay, just a coincidence. But it's kind of the same rule as Resident Alien because we saw the Klingon reflection of Seven, but when you cut back to her, she's not a Klingon. Correct. She's still seven. So it's kind of a artistic interpretation. It's not a literal reflection that her physical reflection looks like a Klinger. Right, right.

It's just a creative expansion of an idea. It's a reminder to the audience. But it was a little confusing to me, just like on Resident Alien. Sometimes we're in this sort of weird gray area because when Alan Tudik reflects as an alien on Resident Alien, the rest of the world can't see him that way. It's just for the audience, just for the audience to remember he's an alien. Right. I do think it's cool that this same artistic creative choice was chosen two decades before Resident Alien. I know.

That's very groundbreaking. Yeah. I like that. yeah uh okay so where we go to the briefing room yeah kim is giving a a breakdown of this huge debris field 120 kilometers wide yes anyways there chocote uh tuvok torres neelix no paris though uh no where is paris i mean typically doesn't show up to like 20 minutes in this episode he hardly does anything he's Paris, you're busy and you're working on your,

your 20th century vehicle in your holodeck. Exactly. Gassing. But yeah, Harry gives a 4-1-1, and he finds the overnight sensor logs has something there that's just bizarre. And like you said, 120-kilometer wide debris field, that's nothing to be, you know, nothing, yeah. I will say that when seven comes up to next to me, I was, I remember filming this.

And I remember thinking, oh, thank God. God, I don't have to say anything, Technobabble right now. She gets to do it. So she took over for me. And it was almost, and up until, you know, before she arrived in season four, it was always me saying the entire technical babble monologue. And so having her there was so nice to be able to take a breather, really, because a lot of that technical bubble can be really tricky to get out of your mouth.

It becomes a tongue twister and seeing her walk up. And I just remember so distinctly, I was like breathing a sigh of her. when she walked up into frame and took it over for me. So I'm very happy about that. But we find out, yes, it's a Borg debris field. That's right. She says, there's no Borg vessels around. We're going to have a scan.

We talk about investigating, but Janeway's like, nope, we're not going to investigate this. The Borg will be back to investigate this debris field and come see what happened to their buddies. So let's go around this thing. Yes. Will you humor me? Yes. I wanted to, one of the things I've been missing is my impersonate.

nation videos. Can I do this one little part right here? Oh, yeah, of course. Okay, all right. So, yeah, so the very end of Janeway speeches, she says, alter course to avoid the debris, if that's all. And then Neelix interrupts. One other piece of business captain. It seems we had another incident in the mess hall last night. And then Torres says, return of the midnight snacker. I'm afraid so. Janeway says, casualties. Neelix replies with a leg of Caleran wildebeest. I prepared for Ensign Risen's birthday. Since Commander Tuvok has been unable to round up any suspects, I'd like to ask that stronger measures be taken.

And then Tuvok with the killer line says, yes, perhaps an armed security detail. Then that is, this is the subtle humor that I love from this episode. I really love Doherty's what he wrote here. I thought just to me, it made me laugh. And also David played it in the two shot with Tuvok and Neelix. And I got to say, Ethan and Tim, Ethan Phillips and Tim, Ethan Phillips and Tim. Tim Russ hung out quite a bit. And they had this exact same dynamic.

This energy was like Ethan, you know, saying some energetic thing. Yeah. And Tim Russ would be like dry and super dry and always judgy. Yes. And just annoyed. So in that moment, yeah, perhaps an armed security detail. It's great. I immediately thought.

It's like real life. Yes. But watching this scene, I kept thinking this could have been the start. Trick Voyager spin-off. Star Trek, Tuvok, and Neelix. I mean, these two aliens are the true alien odd couple.

I mean, I love these two together. They were great. We got in the hallway. We see Naomi's following 7 of 9, taking notes. This was the first time I noticed, oh, David Livingston's using Steadicam again.

Yeah. And I'll just point it out here. And then he used Steadicam more than any episode I've ever seen. He was moving the camera around. He was... In this episode, you say? 360s everywhere, moving the camera constantly,

which sometimes was really great. And then sometimes I felt like it was, we were missing opportunities to kind of just hang on a character as they were feeling something because the camera was always... It keeps moving. Yeah, lots of blocking, lots of movement. But this was a great sequence down the hall with Naomi. And finally, she's caught.

by seven and seven says Naomi Wildman subunit of Samantha Wildman state your intentions I loved it sub-unuch. Can I please refer to your son that way? Can I just say sub-yam McNeil subunit of Robbie McNeil congratulations on your new daughter as what I said to your son. Yeah yeah there you go great great dialogue in this whole sequence I thought between seven and Naomi wonderful wonderful we hear that that Naomi wants to try to emulate Seven to become the bridge assistant. And it's just, you know, it's a nice little bonding scene and with a nice humor, humorous twist to it, enjoyed it. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, uh, you know, she says, I want to be the captain's bridge assistant. Seven's like, there is no such position. And we hear some voices again. Laughter, actually. And all of a sudden, Seven's personality completely changes. And I was like, what? Yeah. She's at.

And she started talking like Jerry Ryan. being like a kid. A little girl. Yeah. Young Jerry Ryan. Talking really, really silly. And she's like, let's go do something, Naomi. And she just had said, leave me alone.

Right. Sub unit. And now she's like, let's do something. Come on. Let's hang out. And she goes, let's go swimming. And Naomi's like, no, I can't go swimming. Without my mom.

Yeah. And then she says, and then someone says, what about Catascott? And that's a game that Naomi just loves. She's like, great. Yeah. Let's do it. they go off holding hands. It was so adorable.

To the, yes, to the, the Wildman residents. Wildman's quarters. Yes. We see them playing Catascott. What do you think that looks like?

It looks like Chinese checkers to me. Kind of, but my first thought was connect four with a hexagonal board. That was my image. But yes, Chinese checkers as well. I can see that.

Yeah. So they're playing Catascott, and you hear Seven talking about her childhood or her family. And she talks about 12 siblings all of a sudden you're like what what are you talking about yeah and we also see in the board game which is kind of vertical it's up on an angle yeah we see a reflection and we see it's not seven in the reflection it's another little girl correct so we know that like what happened with the the cling on reflection now there's a little girl it's another personality kind of thing

and then torres calls for seven and she doesn't answer because she doesn't think she doesn't She thinks she's a little girl. Torres is like, Seven, I know you're there, answer. And she still sits there and then finally she calls again and Seven sort of snaps out of it. We hear these voices for a second and Seven's back to her normal self. And Naomi's a little confused and Seven heads off for engineering. So now she's in engineering and she hears, you know, well, she doesn't hear the voices yet. She gets into engineering and she has a conversation with Torres about some issues that trying to,

they're trying to figure something out. And then the voices come in. And this is when she takes on the persona of the Klingon, who is known as the son of Kvok. And I'm going to say right now that this, to me, was the best impersonation of all. And of all the impersonations she did. This was such a good Klingon voice. It suits the lowness. It does.

She had a very deep. Yeah, she could definitely pull off a full Klingon if she had to. And this is when she tries to mate with Torres, your darling woman. Which I love, by the way, by the way, Belana looks, turns over to her and she's like, Tom put you up to this, didn't. Yeah, she did say that. What?

Why are you involving me? Like, I had nothing to do with this. She's a Klingon all by herself. You practical joker, you, Tommy. It's a funny idea, though. It is funny. But then she calls, Torres has to call for security because she's just been bitten on the face by by Klingon 7.

And security. And, thank God, security runs into engineering. Thank God to take control. They do. Because then seven seems to just run towards them and tap them on the shoulder and they collapse like wet socks on the ground. They're completely unconscious. The security team was doing their best impersonation of bowling pins. It was just, it's a joke.

I know she's strong. I know she's seven of nine, got bored stuff. But that was embarrassing. Like a little tap. And they just. And they were unconscious. It wasn't like they got knocked over and then jumped up and started chasing after her. They just fell down and were like, okay.

It was her version of a Vulcan nerve pinch, I guess. It was Star Trek original series. Oh, gosh. Gatner acting. All the way. All the way. All the way. So she runs out into the corridor.

She gets away. Now, Tuvok, the Tuvok led security detail arrives in the corridors to find seven is now coward in a corner and she's now taken on a whole different personality. This personality emerges as a as a young child again. She's talking like a little girl. She's like someone's hurt and he needs help. She says, right. She says, did I do something bad? Yeah. And Tuvok says, who are you? And she responds. And again, Jerry's little girl is so sweet and innocent and just wonderfully played. Yes.

She says that she's Meryl. Meryl, which then I wondered, is this the same Meryl? Because Mary Howard, one of our producers, her husband was Meryl. So I thought, hey, maybe this is a little tribute to Meryl and include his name as one of the characters. Could be. Could be. Yeah. So as Meryl, Tuvok is able to release the force field, he walks in there and he's trying to get the

little child, but suddenly, suddenly she's changed and she's got a phaser. release the force field to go get the phaser. And then he realizes, uh-oh, she's got a different voice now. And she is a Vulcan. She's Vulcan High Command. Vulcan High Command, subaltern Lorotte or something like that.

And she asked, how may I be of assistance? So she goes from a child to a Vulcan High Command. And Tuvok says, well, you could accompany me to sickbay trying to play along here. So she gets up, walks ahead. Now, this was a moment I loved where as she's walking forward, we see her in the foreground as the Vulcan. And then all of a sudden, their voices again.

And she stops and her, you know, she gets very angry and kind of cling on again. Yeah. And you see her face and her line. You see Tuvok behind. It was very simple and elegant. And then she turns and kind of starts to attack him. Tuvok has to shoot her in that shot, and she collapses.

And the shot was great because it was a two shot. You see all the action and the dialogue. They're both facing towards the lens. And then as she collapses, it pushes into a close-up, very elegant, really super shot. Dave Livingston did a great job on that. I loved it. Yeah. And it was so non-intrusive.

You know, it's something that you didn't even notice it happening. And it was flawless and it, no, not flawless. It was effortless. That's the word I'm looking for. and yeah great shot and of course you know after stunning her with the phaser now we pick it up in sick bay and we have the doctor there and he's telling seven that she basically has the borg version of multiple personality disorder and the cortical inhibitor is suppressing the effect of this mpd but it's only a temporary measure there's a little bit of funny thing because

in the beginning what does she say when she wakes up she says She goes, I don't even know if she asked, but Janeway, the first thing she says is, Seven, you've been unconscious for two hours. And I was like, what? Yeah, you just phazered her. Of course she's out. That's what phasers do. They knock you out unconscious.

They take you out. Exactly. Yeah, she was out for two hours. Duh. So the cortical inhibitor is on her neck. It's suppressing the effects of this MPD. Torres detected a Borg interlink frequency. And this could be caused.

causing her cortical implants to malfunction. And the signal has been coming from the debris field. Then Janeway's is like, well, why don't we just get away from it? You'll be fine. And Seven says, no, unfortunately, this message or this frequency is going through subspace. So it permeates subspace. So it doesn't matter where I go, I'm still going to hear it. So I can't avoid it.

So Janeway says we must go to the debris field. And at this point, this is when... By the way, in this scene, when the doctor says, basically that you've got multiple personalities. I love, I just want to comment on the graphics. Mike and Tini's when the doctor's explaining this whole concept, I love how graphics can often make our sci-fi stories very clear to understand. And so you see these graphics and the doctor says, this is your normal neurological pattern or something. And you see this very smooth, big waves going along. And then he says, underneath that, you can see these other personalities hiding out. And

then he removes that and underneath you see all these tiny little scratchy little graphs or you know wavelengths underneath yeah and for me that was a great example of how mike and denis okuda our graphics department can tell a story put it into a graphic element that is so simple and clear that you just kind of go oh i get it i get how this technology the borg personalities are buried underneath it's just i love how they do that this is just one example they do it all the time but definitely and and you know it's nice to have that visual example there and it's something that it's so subtle and but all the people that it takes to you know get an episode up and running it's just amazing and the small tiny details that that you don't really notice until you really

really look at every part of the episode so yeah they did a wonderful job so now we're in the corridor and we have a wonderful scene with the doctor seven and neelix I just love when neelix says his line have some wonderful medicinal teas. Maybe I can prepare one for you. And then the doctor has that wonderfully subtle, hilarious line. He says, Tlaxian homeopathy. I don't think we're quite that desperate yet.

So it was a real great line written by, you know, the teleplay written by this writer. It's such a good job. I love, I love Nelix's energy when he comes in with this sort of positivity. It's just such an Ethan Phillips kind of vibe. Yeah. And when he hands over the card from Naomi,

which I love that he's the one to hand that card over. Yes. Because we know that he has this relationship. We've seen it in earlier episodes, his connection with Naomi. So just keeping that alive, I thought was super sweet. And this is sort of setting up because I loved how Jerry reacted when she started, she walked away with the card in her hand. Yeah.

You could see the, you know, the crayon drawing or whatever. But Jerry was already kind of planting the seed of like, this Naomi thing is different. She's really starting to get in touch with her humanity, and that's going to pay off later in a quick way. I mean, this is such a great character development story episode for Seven of Nine, because she is slowly but surely becoming 100% human. And I love, by the way, I mean, you and I have talked about, I have been critical of the way that Seven of Nine sort of behaved in this rebellious teenager way. You have been. didn't buy it. I didn't buy that that Janeway would put up with it for that long. Right. But in this story, this is the perfect, in my opinion, perfect story. Yeah.

To show the complications and to build audience sympathy and empathy for seven because she's just so you see why her character is so tight and so controlling and so wants to suppress all of these feelings and then starting to connect with a child i think just like naomi brought out great things in the character of neelix was the perfect to put with to put neelix with a child yeah um i think putting seven with a child is a genius move it's just it's really no one else could have done it the way that naomi's character do mm-mm yeah so all around really really good episode hey garrett have you been traveling this summer oh my gosh so much already i don't always travel but this summer's been insane trip after trip you've been doing your impersonation of me yes you know what doesn't belong in

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So this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at Mintmobile.com slash TDF. That's mintmobile.com slash TDF. Up front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month, limited time new customer offer for first three months only speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes and fees extra see mint mobile for details uh we're now in the cargo bay and the doctor discovers that she has been sleepwalking sleep walking and now we get to hear some audio files that were recorded by seven as this is like her logs or something yeah yeah he looks in and sees her regeneration cycles or keep getting interrupted and so he's like yeah, you've been sleepwalking and you made some logs, so let's go listen to him. So the first log comes up.

You hear Jerry Ryan's voice, but again, it's in the character of a young officer, Starfleet officer on his first starship assignment, on the USS Tombaugh under some Captain Blackwood, I think. The USS, what? Tomba, Tomba, Tomba, Tomba, Tombaris. Tompah, Tombaris. The USS Tomparares, Captain Blackwood. is the captain but jerry did a great job of modulating her voice so that you really felt like

you were hearing another person and yes and yeah seven says i assimilated uh the board assimilated that ship captain blackwood ship and its crew 13 years earlier and that she was the one that assimilated this officer yeah so she's not just having one of the collective kind of experiences but she's specifically remembering oh my god this guy i i am assimilated I'm very, very sad. There's another log entry, and Seven records another file that is some alien female, I guess, dictating a message to her romantic partner. It's a love letter to her, to her romantic partner.

And this really, again, really sweet, very different than Seven Ever would sound. And she's very upset by this. And the doctor, she walks away and the doctor sort of stops her. And again, it's a little close talking for me. The doctor puts his hand up on her shoulder by her neck. It's very intimate. This, by the way, I wrote down S.D. Shipper, question mark. Okay.

Because I feel like this is the beginning. I was like, for the first time, I'm going, oh, this is not just the doctor taking professional interest in seven of nine. This is personal interest. This is personal interest. and maybe it was because it was coming on the heels of that romantic love letter or something. I don't know. No, I think you're exactly right about that. As much as I hate to agree with you on this because I just,

I did not like the combination of seven and the dogs or the SD because my personal opinion is, how can you have a relationship with Microsoft Windows? He is a program. So why is this is happening? But you're right. This is the very beginning. I think it is. A little,

yeah, little little, because that hand out on the shoulder and standing close. and he sort of keeps the hand. As she walks away, it's like the hand... It's still there. It's just, oh, my gosh, yeah. He's lingering. The lingering hand gives it away, for sure.

So you're right on the money on that one. We go to the bridge. Chucote calls, and it is the Borg vinculum we have found. The Borg vinculum. Yes. It is a... Can I just talk about this very quickly? So when we were on the set, I don't know if you remember this,

but we were on the set, and this is where Robert Beltron Chacote and Tim Russ, Tuvok, started joking about the word vinculum. They started giving this funny character voice, yes, and it was Beltrane basically putting on this voice of a 70-year-old man from the South. And he would say something like, meanwhile, back at the binkulum, like that, and he would say binkulum instead of vinculum sometimes. He would put a B there, but back at the vinculum. And then Tim Russ would do his version of what Beltran did.

It was a character. voice off, you know, that they would go back and forth between saying the vinculum, you know. I feel like it was that, that cartoon character of, uh, shoot, where he'd say, I said son, son. Oh, the rooster. Yeah, the rooster guy. Yeah. I think it was that one. I'll say, I'll say, I'll say it.

I said son. Yeah. It's similar to that. It was kind of like that, wasn't it? Yeah, it was like that, but to me it was more Mark Twain-ish, you know, there, yeah, it was a little less cartooning. I remember that on the Brit, Tim, Tim, Tim, us and Robert Beltram would go back and forth with the vinculum line. And this is how we passed

the time on the bridge. I forgot about that bit. That was a good bit. It was a good, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful and funny bit. And funderable. And fundable. So the Borg vinculum is the source of the interlink frequency. This is the processing device at the core of every Borg vessel. It's the CPU of the computer, probably the most important part of the Borg. The Borgube. And the Vincul must be taken off line. Seven says this is the only way to deal with this vinculum and I need to beam this on board, Voyager. Janeway's not happy about that. Janeway is like, well, wait a minute. I don't feel comfortable with this, but in the end, she agrees. And it is beamed aboard. Now, we, as we go to engineering, there are. Oh, wait, before you go to engineering,

there's a, there's a space shot and there's the coolest flyby. I don't know if anybody else caught it, but I felt like it was a flyby that caught my attention because the ship's coming at us and it kind of does when they, like, I must have been piloting at that moment. Yeah, how pilot it, how pilot the of you to recognize that? It was a cool move. I was so busy writing notes.

I didn't even see that. It's an exterior shot of Voyager banking on, like doing a bank move. I don't know. It was just, it caught my eye as I was making notes myself. I was like, oh, that's a cool flyby. Voyager's flying away from camera. No, it's coming right at it. Right.

It felt a little different to me. All right, cool. I didn't even see it, but thank you for bringing that up. So now they're in engineering, and as seven walks closer to the vinculum, the voices become louder. So the doctor has to adjust the cortical inhibitor on her neck to sort of drown out those voices. And now another wonderful, wonderfully funny comedic interchange happens. You see Torres C-7 and sort of stops in her tracks because the last time, she saw seven. She was bitten on the face. She's a little upset. So she sees seven. She's a little

like, oh my goodness. And seven looks at her and says, don't worry, Lieutenant, the son of Kavak will not be joining us. And that is when she says, glad to hear it. Does this qualify as our second date? And then the doctor chimes in, just think of me as your chaperone. And again, great, subtle comedy. Good dialogue. In this teleplay by Doherty, I love Doherty. He's my favorite teleplay writer right now. It was wonderful. Good. Great dialogue. So they probe the divinculum device. They realize there's a viral agent, some kind of pathogen, an organism in there. It's trying to attack all the board technology. And they do find a signature of species 6339 in this virus. And the doctor buttons are seen with looks like we found our typhoid Mary. So they have found where

this virus came from. Species 6339. Right. So we need to track. We need to track. We need to find 6339 is what we need to do, right? This takes us to astrometrics. We're trying to chart where this species 6339 is where we can find them. And this is where 7 of 9 falls into the next personality we have not been introduced yet to. And here it is. The Ferengi comes out. And boy, it starts off with a, oh, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. And she starts marching up on the upper deck. she's walking very differently than, than, her physicality has totally changed. You're right.

They say something to her and she's like, are you making fun of my ears? There's a great moment about her ears in there. Yes, but my notes were LMAO, laugh my ass off, but even funnier to me, I initially thought when she went, my mind walked up there that she was doing like a James Cagney impersonation or a 1920s sort of character.

She definitely changed her voice. Yeah, hey, yeah, dardy rat. You know, it was that. But then I realized it's Ferengi. And again, very, very funny. Very funny. And of course, Janeway speaks to Seven as if she is the Ferengi and says, Yeah, they play along again. Yeah. Why don't you come? Come with us to sickbay. If you think this is nice, come look at sickbay. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah. They go into the sick bay and and seven's Ferengi starts walking around going, well, this needs to be redecorated and renovated and we can renovate this and that. I know a guy and I'll only take 30% of the cost. And so,

kind of making the deal and then they should put up the force field and seven's trapped in the back um and the doctor says this is bad he's looking at some readings but even her even when she's behind the force field as the ferengi she's still you know it's still the frangy character which is so funny to watch that interaction there and uh the doctor says seven may be lost for good so we're starting to realize these multiple personalities are wearing her down that she's really yeah her own neural patterns may disappear and she will not she'll get lost in this sort of these other personalities just he says that we hear another voice from jerry ryan her amazing tour to force of acting and she's now this very sad mother of a son that she was supposed to meet

at wolf 359 she says i'm looking for my son gregory bergen and it's a very sad brief exchange but you feel like this woman has really, I don't know, it's just the story of her losing her son and then being assimilated by the board, being caught up in this battle. It's just very sad. And then all of a sudden we hear voices again and now she's back to seven. And now seven is scared off the heels of this woman's story. Yeah. Seven of nine says how many voices. They say two voices this time. Janeway explains, you know, and seven says, I'm scared. Yeah. But her voice as the woman that's grieving was great. That character was really good, too, because she completely, you know, she went there. She started getting choked up over it. I go to the bridge and, uh, I just had a comment

here. There's a dark, it's a dark bridge. I'm like, yeah. Why is the bridge dark? Usually that we save that for battle or something, you know, low power mode. It wasn't red alert. No, there was no red alert. We're not in battle. I was just like, but the only reason I could think of is what? Janeway walks in and What is, Chacote, what is it? Chacote says, meet anyone interesting? So it was a very flirtatious kind of line, to be honest. And then we find out that 12 new personalities have surfaced in the last hour alone. But what's your theory?

You have a theory. Here's my theory on this scene. So Janeway basically says, you know, she leans in in this dark, dim light, romantic light, maybe. And she says, you know, Chacote, I think maybe you were right. You were right, Chacote. I shouldn't have brought a seven on. Yeah. Let me come around to Chakotay and he's like, no, you were right.

Because she's changed and I was wrong. I was just like, come on, J.C. writers. Like, this is all, basically it was a scene of Chakote, you were right. And Chagote says, no, Janeway, you were more right. And then she says, no, Chakotay, you are more most right. You were most right. You were right. writer I'm right you're writer than me it was just uh it was you're right it was a love it was a love fest of you're a love fest and it was it was j c all the way j c scene jc moment on the bridge was amazing

good engineering now tours is starting this dampening field around the the pathogen to disable the vinculum disable the vinculum power down and all of a sudden it's going down but then it starts adapting Yeah. It's rerouting internal surgery. Now it's adapting. We go into sick bay. Seven's having a seizure. She's starting to have voices. And the doctor is starting to, he says, we got to abort this. We come back to engineering. No, we can't abort it. The vinculum is back to coming back to full power. And the doctor is very emotional in this whole sequence, cutting back and forth with trying to shut down this thing. And finally, we cut back to sickbay. And the doctor is very emotional. about this he says we've lost seven her neural pattern is gone yeah so this feels like she may just have these personalities have taken her over and we've lost her we cut to the ready room they're having a meeting about this the doctor still very emotional tells the captain you know these personalities just keep popping up there's nothing i could do anymore we've lost her and tuvok says let's try a vulcan mind melt and the doctor's like come on are you no this is he's

He calls it Vulcan mumbo-jumbo. Which clearly means he has a crush on seven. Because look at this. He's this impassioned speech to the captain. If we don't deactivate this vinculum soon, we made loser forever. And then Vulcan mumbo, jumbo, what do you mind-mouth? How dare you, you know, suggest that on my beloved seven. It is really the subtext going on.

Yeah, he's very personally connected. Very much. But Tuvok says, this is the only thing we can do. I'm going to go to my quarters and prepare. Yeah. He needs a couple hours to meditate. Right. That's right. And we jump to the bridge.

Yep. We jump to the bridge. And that's where we have our conversation with species 6339, with the Captain Venn, I suppose, that's his name. Yep. Venn does come over to Voyager and they have a conversation. Captain Janeway and Venn start talking. And then he finds out that Captain Janeway will not give up this vinculum until they find a cure for seven. But let's hold on a second.

Let's go back and talk about. the species six three three nine outfits yes let's talk about it you may call them six three three nine i like to call them the saran wrap tron suit aliens because basically they're wearing like plasticy saran wrap suits over their uniform with tron like lights running all up and down okay it was amazing I've never seen anything like it. Aside from, they've also got like antennas on their head. Yes, I'm going to just say when I saw that uniform, the saran wrap or raincoat, whatever you want to call it clear, underneath it looked like a command Starfleet uniform.

It did look like Starfleet. But it had some lights underneath underneath. It did. That changed. Starfleet. Their underneath uniform had some blinky lights. And then the saran wrap with the string lights going all around. And they were booted just like Tron.

They were the same kind of Tron. Blue. That's true. It was that was Tron Blue. And the other note that I wrote down was that the makeup, the actual and the little appendages that came off of their forehead there, it reminded me of a conversation that I had with Michael Westmore, head of makeup. I said to him one day, I said, what inspires you or your makeup artist that work for you in terms of designing new alien makeups? And he said, well, I use nature. And I said, well, what do you mean? And he had these coffee books, these huge, huge books filled with, you know, creatures of earth, you know, amphibians and fish and, you know, mammals, everything, photographs, insects, everything. Insects, you name it. And he says, we go to that. And I do remember as he's, as he was leafing through one of these books, it stopped on one of those fish that has, it's basically an appendage that it has a little bit of a light on it. And it lures smaller fish over so that once they try to eat that little appendage, that's when that fish attacks and eats them. Nice.

Yeah, so I feel like, mm-hmm. So I feel like that was the influence of this. Interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah, but they talk about this vinculum and this, this Venn guy, the alien, the Tron-suited alien, saran wrap guy. He says that the board basically decimated their world.

Yeah. And they have been looking for ways to avenge that. And so 13 of the survivors on their planet agreed to, to allow themselves to be infected with this virus, this pathogen, and then to be assimilated. Right. So it was like a suicide mission. And then that virus would start to take out the Borg. And that was their way of combating the Borg.

And Janeway, like I said, doesn't want to give up the Vinculum until they figure out how to help seven of nine. And this is when Venn starts playing hardball with Janeway. And he's like, he says, I'm like, this Vinculum could have killed, you know, hundreds or dozens or hundreds or thousands of Borg. Like, you're getting in the way. No, I don't care about your Borg crewman that you're trying to help. This one Borg crewman, this could get rid of thousands of Borg.

Absolutely. So he's like, put this thing back out there where you found it and let us continue our plan. And so we go to Sick Bay and Seven is revived. And I wrote down, the doc is just in love with her at this point. yeah because when she regains consciousness boy is he happy he's like oh my goodness let me debrief you darling and then she says to him in the love fest she's like and please please doctor tell everyone that i'm so grateful for all their efforts to help me and it's like but it is a nice character moment we start to see seven really appreciating the yeah she's a part of she is she

and the crew and that people are standing up for i think you know didn't she say at some point like The Borg, if there's a, a Borg that's not functioning well, that they just, they kill it. They get rid of it. Yeah. And that on the human experience is not that. If someone needs help, the other crewman and the other humans step up for it. So that's a whole new experience for her. It definitely is.

And I think that's the strength of this episode is the character development for seven, because really, I mean, just everything we've been seeing before is just rebellious teenager, rebellious teenager, you know, ungrateful, ungrateful. And now she sees what humanity is. She sees what caring and compassion is from a fellow human being or a fellow being. And it's wonderful. I like seeing this type of episode. All right.

So the voices overwhelm her again and the doctor sedates her. She's out. She's down for the count. Now we have a quick shot of Tuvok in his quarters. And Tuvok is there. He's in midst of meditation to prepare for the mind meld. And he's just, he's ready. This is his action hero shot.

and all of a sudden he's ready to go. And I love it's a nice, it's like one shot that starts, David just sort of started wide with Tuvok's sitting there and sort of pushing in. But I felt like this is such a classic sort of, it felt like rocky, you know, like they should have been playing Eye of the Tiger or something. And they're like, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, yeah, he was getting ready for the thing. I had so much fun doing that. Can we just continue doing that? Oh, yeah, it was fine. It was good.

Yeah, so Tuvac is getting ready, though. I like with his eye of the tiger moment, is here at a moment. Yeah. Cut to the bridge, the battle's starting. And I think Paris has one line here. He says, the alien vessel is coming about. Maybe that was your line. Mm-hmm.

I think that was my big line. You had more than one in this. I don't know. I didn't have much to do. That's okay. Okay, it's okay. That's all right. Okay.

Continue. But the battle is starting. We go to Sick Bay. Tuvok is, we're prepping for this month. I melt. Here's another scene where I think I mentioned this before, but, you know, David Livingston really moved the camera in this episode. Lots of steady cam. The steady cam shot down the hallway with, you know, chasing Naomi, chasing seven, all of that. Every scene. I mean, if, if anything, this episode may have lacked, sometimes maybe some coverage or close-ups,

but as far as camera movement, it was really active, really diverse in terms of, of steady cam, dolly shots, handheld shots, all kinds of stuff. So this had a ton of energy because there's a battle happening. There's a battle on the bridge and adds to the energy. Yeah. And they've seen seven, Tuvok arrives to initiate this mind melt and seven is now rotating through all the different personalities. And once Tuvok, you know, touches her face, her side of her face and the mind melt

begins, now we enter into this crazy alternate reality, you know, of, of, of the Borg cube, the inside of a Borg cube. Yeah, we're in the mind meld. We're in the mind meld. Basically inside the mind meld. So we're inside Tuvok and Seven's experience, which is sort of manifesting as this, they're on a Borg ship is what it feels, it looks like. They're on a Borg ship and it's packed with all of these assimilated aliens.

So tons of makeups that they had to do for this sequence. The little girl is there, all kinds of different species. And they're all, and the lights are, there's like strobe lights going and there are colorful lights everywhere and people like reaching and um i have to say it reminded me i i wrote down it looks like studio 54 entrance when i went there in the 80s it looks like it looked like a club like everybody dancing and uh i just read a very long article about studio 54 yesterday so it's so funny that you bring up that reference you you were able you were one of the few people when

not a few people, but you were one of the people that were able to enter Studio 54. So that's great. I went there back in the 80, although not in the Hayday. The Hayday was like late 70s. 78, 79, yes. I probably went there, you know, mid-80s or something. I went a few times on the down of the popularity. I did get to see the village people perform at Studio 54.

And they were there a lot. Yeah, they performed there quite a bit. They came down on this like this catwalk. Like a wire thing? No, it was a catwalk that was on motors and. So they came down to the village people, which was very fine. I mean, but they were past their prime at this point. Were they the village geysers at this point?

Or what are you thinking? I don't know. Okay. I don't even know if the village people stayed the same people. Like, I feel like they started rotating in different other village people because it was a character, right? Basically, if they aged out, they would bring someone else that would come in. Yeah, it was like Minuto.

Minuto did that. Yeah, exactly. they just cast another singer. Yeah, so Studio 54 was one of the vibes that I had from that. Yeah. The other thing I have to touch on is David Livingston, who's always very experimental and pushing the envelope, at this point, I'm going to go through the lenses that I noticed he shot with.

So, you know, like, during the mind meld, in the mind meld, in the board cube, what we saw was basically, I'm going to say. it's like David Livingston just vomited out every possible lens that you could pick to do weird weird photography and shots.

So he used a lens. Before you list them, let me just say that this is very similar to July the 4th when you're watching a fireworks display. And then at the very end, they throw up everything,

the brand finale. It's a big finale. But it's a lens finale. David, David Livingston's lens finale. So he used the mesmerizer lens, which is this lens that sort of it turns and stretches things like this. I love that name.

Very, very trendy back in, you know, the 80s and 90s. It was a lens that was used that it sort of moved around and mesmerized things. Okay, mesmerizer lens. He used a fish eye lens, which is, you know, people are familiar with that. He used something called a lens baby or a squishy lens, not sure, two different brand names, but basically it's two pieces of glass with gel on the inside and you move it around and it sort of diffuses the outside. He used some kind of prism lens or refractor lens that had all of these shards of light flying

with the mesmerizer and the squishy and the fish eye and the lens baby. Boom. Boom. Lens explosion. I'm just wondering. I mean, did he think that he was getting fired after this episode where he was like, guess what? I'm going to throw every lens at this.

I know that David really likes to push the envelope. I know that he doesn't tell, he doesn't ask for permission often. He said that to us in the interview. He's like, don't ask for permission. Just do it. Just do it. And I'm of the school being a producer.

Yeah. It's like, hey, let's ask for permission. first. Let's make sure we're shooting the right thing. But I think in this case, he was very bold, and it did work because it was a really stylized, very cool thing. But it was an explosion of every lens, trick lens you could probably use. Anyway, we go back to engineering, the battle's still going on. I got bridge. I have bridge right now. Yeah, we go to engineering and bridge intercut. This goes back and forth a lot. My note very quickly on the bridge. My note is that I am really projecting in this scene like this part of the episode everybody's screaming almost screaming things out

yeah it's it's nuts chikote is at two vok station very rare occurrence i don't know why he's over there we could have thrown anybody in there and he could have stayed by his love yeah and then and the doctor screaming at two vok to that he has to terminate the meld because otherwise he will never get his love back seven of nine suppose lots of handheld and steady cam shots in here you're again moving all over the place going crazy um let's say we're back inside the mill Tuvok is fighting with a cling on and something we see his wide shot of like a pit or something he throws a cling on over which I thought it was Tuvok I thought Tuvac got thrown over but no that was a cling on it was a cling on but that's definitely a Viz effect set extension it's

we didn't have a set that big supposed to be some part of the Borg cube I guess but great work by our vis effects department and stunt department to do a big high fall like that when I know we didn't have a giant set. And I'm sad. I evidently, I'm going to sue, I will assume that that was the son of Kavak that was thrown over. That guy was the party, you know, party guy. It's only a mind meld. It's not reality. It's like having a dream. That's right. It's okay. Um, we go to engineering. We're losing power to the field emitter. We have to use a emergency power. Basically, we, you know, finally defeat this this vinculum thing and it's turned off line final fizzles off and finally and janeway's yes janeway's wonderful line there very diehard ask she says

lock onto the damn thing beam it into space it's just like get it out of here i just love that line it's good we go back to the regeneration bay and uh she's waking up she's back we hear uh we hear a captain's log that this has been a couple weeks later i think a week or two or something and And gives her a clean bill of health. Yeah, Seven talks to the doctor. They have a nice conversation where the doctor says you're good. But he does say to her, you know, you may not hear these voices, but they'll always be with you. Which is an interesting, that really stuck with me.

I like that line a lot. And Seven says to the doctor, I want to think the crew, you know, they all cared so much and tried so hard to make this happen. and she really is appreciating it. And she says, in particular, there's somebody I need to go talk to. And the next thing we do, we cut into the hallway, and she's walking around the corner with Naomi, and she's giving her homework. She's got pads with all kinds of homework. She says, star charts for the next three years, or the next three systems that Voyage is

going to pass through, star charts, sociological data on 173 Delta Quadrant species. And she says, all of this is relevant. if you want to be the captain's bridge assistant. And Naomi says, I will comply. Great line, Doherty, great line. Mm-hmm. And she asked for one thing, one more thing. So I've asked for one more thing of Naomi.

She says, I need you to teach me how to play Katis Kot. So that ends the episode. Great episode. Really, really dig this episode. What is your theme slash lesson for this episode? My theme for this was that we all have a connect. to our past and the things that have wounded us and that will always be there inside of us, but we have to learn to accept that and to move on and grow from it.

And that's why that last line of the doctor sort of sucked to me. Those voices will always be there. You may not hear them, that those wounds are always there with us. We may not feel them or see them, but having an awareness that they may show up now and then and to grow from that. What about you? For me, I guess it has more to do with just the persistence that the crew had. No matter how the chips were down, everything was against them, but they just kept working.

They kept working. They didn't stop. They said, we're not going to quit. We're not going to do what a Borg drone would do once they know that they're malfunctioning, which is just, you know, cut off, end that life of that drone. They kept going. I just love that message of, you know, you've got to keep, you've got to keep that persistence there and keep on trekking and get it done.

Yep. Awesome. What's your, what, here's my rating here. So let's write. Let's rate this. Ratings of the episode. I, historically, I'm pretty tough on some episodes, but this one I thought was really, really good.

I'm going to give this an eight out of 10, which is, you know, on the higher end of my scale. what about you i concur with you i have an aid as well yeah mainly because of uh this is this is a one woman show practically a tour to force tour to force by jerry david livingston even though i'm teasing a little about the vomiting all the lenses that you could use it was beautifully shot like camera movement a phenomenal camera movement great challenging stuff i did notice a lot of challenging stuff steady cam throughout agreed and very complex and for the the short amount of time that Jerry had to prepare for this. She did such a phenomenal job.

With the short amount of time that she had to do. So I'm actually going to pump it up to 8.1. I'm going to give it 8.1. Oh, look at you. All right. Here I have an envelope in my hands. Drum roll. That has the official fan rating based on our captain and admiral survey.

And the survey says, infinite regress. Admiral and Captain rating is 7. three out of 10. Okay. 7.3. We were close. We actually went higher than the fans. Yes.

Did you just pull a David Letterman? When you threw the, did you just throw the paper? That's David Letterman does that. Or maybe Johnny. Does Johnny Carson throw things to? His little cute cards, maybe. Okay. And they used to put the crash in.

They throw it. Yeah, the window breaking, the glass. Yeah. All right. So we're close. 7.38. 7.3. we both got, I got an 8.

You got an 8. All right. Yeah. Not bad. All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our review and discussion, behind the scenes, discussion of Infinite Regress. Join us next week when Robbie and I will be talking about the episode, Nothing Human. Nothing Human.

And as the Ferengi say it, Human. So nothing Human next week. Next week. See you, everybody. See ya. I don't know.