The Delta Flyers - Little Green Men

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.This week’s episode, Little Green Men, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Armin Shimerman, and special guest James L. ConwayLittle Green Men: While taking Nog to Starfleet Academy on Earth, Quark's shuttle malfunctions and crashes in Roswell, New Mexico, in the year 1947.We would like to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers, Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Sandra Stengel, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, Roxane Ray, Tim Neumark, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Matt Norris, Izzy Jaffer, Andrew Cano, Francesca Garibaldi, Thomas Irvin, Jonathan Capps, Chris Garis, Sean T, & Cindy WoodfordOur Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, David Wei Liu, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Andrew Duncan, Randy Hawke, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, Stephanie Lee, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Heath K., Ryan Mahieu, Kevin Harlow, Megan Doyle, Keir Newton, Mariette Karr, Jeff Allen, & Tamara EvansAnd our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Jake Barrett, Ann Harding, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carl Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Chad Awkerman, AJ Provance, Claire Deans, Maxine Soloway, Heidi McLellan, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Cindy Ring, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Shanyn Behn, Renee Wiley, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, Heather Selig, Rachel Shapiro, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Annie Davey, Jeremy Gaskin, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Eddie Dawson, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Robert Allen Stiffler, PJ Pick, Preston M, Karen Galleski, Jan Hanford, Katelynn Burmark, Timothy McMichens, Cassandra Girard, Robby Hill, Andrea Wilson, Slacktwaddle, Willow Whitcomb, Mo, Leslie Ford, Joshua Shields, Jim Poesl, Daniel Chu, Scott Bowling, Ed Jarot, James Vanhaerent, Nick Cook-West, Shawn Battershall, Natalie Swain, Brian Heckathorne, Mark Johnson, Nelson Silveira, & Ming XieThank you for your support!This Podcast is recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark, and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] Sponsors:* Check out 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

Hello, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers journey through the wormhole with Quark, Dax, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we make our way through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your host for today are my fellow track actors, Armand Shimmeren, Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself, Garrett Wong. For the complete and exciting version of this podcast, please check out patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers and sign up to become a patron today. I almost mispronounced your last name, Robbie. I don't think I've ever done that.

Where I added an extra syllable. I went, McA-Neil, something like that. Micah Neal. And also, we have a very special guest today. Yes, we do. So excited to have director extraordinaire, Jim Conway, or Jamie Conway, as he has known as to other people. He's here.

Yay. Jim, welcome. Also, Garrett, you didn't announce his most important title, which is my golf buddy. Golf partner. Here in Utah. Yes. Yes. That is very.

Well, isn't it golf and tennis? Am I correct to say you? We have played some tennis. Yes. You have played the popular sport of pickleball yet? Has that happened for you? Not me, but I think Jamie has. They're not old enough.

They're not old enough. Thank you, Armin. We're much far too young to play pickleball. Exactly. Jamie, you kind of got cut off there. What did you say about the pickleball? I said I have played pickleball. I played tennis primarily, but I have played pickleball

with some friends socially and my grandson, and it's a lot of fun. So you do enjoy pickleball? Yeah. So it's, okay, I haven't tried it yet. I haven't either. I think we should try it, Robbie. Jamie is a very good tennis player.

I just want to say that. Oh, yeah, all right. Very good tennis player. Okay. And he plays, I think you, don't you play in here in Utah? Like locally with some tennis groups, yeah. I played at the PC mark twice a week, and I play with friends once or twice a week. Yeah, he's good.

You know, all the times that you directed us on Voyager, I had no idea. You were so sporty. Look at all. Did you do that back in the day, too? I played golf, not tennis. Okay, only golf. So tennis was a later thing for you then. Yes, got it.

And there was a golf group at Star Trek, right, that you played with? Some of the, was, who'd you play with? We would get people together, and once a year, and we would go to big courses and stay overnight. Like, we went up to Torrey Pines, and we stayed there, and we were all terrible. I mean, it was last, well, how bad it was. But we had a good time. Who was part of that? It was Brad Yacobin, I know.

Brad Yacobian, Jerry Fleck, me. Billy Peets? Yeah, Bill Peets, but he played, he played. A few others. I can't remember right after you. Oh, man. Yeah, I remember. some of the crew would talk about those golf trips and yeah yeah i also play with billy too i think

i told you that i played oh yeah you did billy a few times and bob i forgot bob's last name on billy's crew no bob something but those are fun times playing with the crew cast and crew armin are you a tennis or a golfer um at one time i was a tennis player i was never a golfer i was uh i i really didn't like golf i caddied for two years and went i don't want to play this game Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, you caddied at a country? Yeah, look at these shoulders that this is, this is from caddy. Where did you get at a country club? Where were you caddy?

Yeah, I caddy. I was 11, 12, 13. In New Jersey. Oh, man, I didn't know that about you. Armand has caddied and Jamie, you don't know this, but he also babysat at a nudist camp. Was it? This is interesting childhood in New Jersey. Did you have to take your clothes off while you babysat?

No. No, no. And as I've told these guys before, the people who I worked for told their neighbors that they were going away, that they were going to have a babysitter. And the neighbors were very kind. They'd showed up in their bathrobes, bathrobes, to make sure that I was okay because I was taking care of the children. So they were very kind. A lot of stuff happened to you when you were 12 and 30. I had a very interesting job.

I have to ask now that now that I know you caddied as a youth, did you ever watch the movie Caddyshack? No. No, I don't particularly like those kinds of entertainment, which is why I was a pain in the ass to Ira because I would never play the comedy the way he wanted me to play this. Oh, my God. But I must say, because I had many responsibilities as a caddy,

as you all, all you golfers must know, oftentimes i had to make sure i knew where the ball went so i had to say yes it's over there by the tree um and and and for people who that i caddied a lot for as i got to know their game i would start to tell them which clubs to use i would say you know i think maybe you need a three iron instead yeah i always love that one you had no real idea what even though you had no no i did if i watched if i watched their game enough if i caddied for them enough times I would know their game. Wow.

That's funny. That's amazing. Again, we had no idea. We had no idea, and now we know. So thank you for sharing that. You're all getting to know me where to well. When I was 13, I also caddied for a year. Oh, wow.

That's where I learned to play poker and drink and swear. And they used to, they didn't have a driving range. So what they do is they would go out to one of the fairways and hit balls at us. And we had a shag bag, and they would hit the balls, and we would pick them up. And then in those days, 18 carry was $5 or $4. Oh, the tip. And if you had a double, it was $10 including tip. Does that sound about right, or not?

That sounds about right. Oh, my gosh. Wow. You guys were slave labor, if you think about that amount right now. It was, but we got a lot of exercise. Oh, my God. And you know what? Also, we were part, I was part of adults, and I was getting adults.

behavior as a 11-12-year-old so you know i was invisible to them a lot of times but but but you know they talked to me as well and some of them were very loyal as i said a lot of them would come back to the golf course and say i want armin as my catty so look at that they loved you loved interacting with you but also doesn't work out armin you know i've often said to kitty if acting doesn't work out i'm going back to waiting on tables because i really liked that Did you, I was a horrible waiter. Yeah, Robbie didn't like that. I did not like, I mean, I didn't mind the work.

I was just bad at it. I could not, like, manage all the orders in my head and timing it from the kitchen properly. I was horrible. I was very good at it. I bet you were. One last thing about golf, though, when both of you were caddying when you were 12 or 13,

there were no digital range finders where you can look at the distance or the app on your phone. which would tell you, which has the course in there, which would tell you exactly, you are 132 yards from the pin. You had all, you have all that now, but none of that when you two were doing it. My goodness. Yes, yeah.

Well, you'd have to. This lie. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, for four bucks, for 18 goals. My God. Get what you pay for. And did you have to sit there for long periods of time waiting to go out?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, me too. Oh, man. So what did you guys do while you're waiting? We play cards. Oh, play cards and smoke and smoke and swear. Okay. Speaking of smoking, there's a lot of, there's a lot of smoking in this episode.

Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Although I think Megan is not a smoker. Looking at the episode, I have a feeling Megan is not a smoke. It's so funny. Was that part of the casting process, Jamie? Did you have to ask them if they could smoke or not?

I think we had to warn him that they were going to be. Oh, my God. But they were those big cigarettes. I did another show, and they just cast me, which was very nice to them. But they never asked me if I could smoke or not, and I don't. And when I watch the episode, it's really obvious that I don't smoke. It's very obvious. All right, everyone.

Guess what July 14th is? What is it? July 14th. Yes, it's Bastille Day. Bastille Day. Happy Bastille Day. No, okay, maybe it is Bastille Day. But more, more.

Importantly, it is the birthday of one of our treasured Patreon patrons, Nicholas Albano. Happy birthday, Nick. Happy birthday, Nick. Happy birthday, Nick. Happy birthday, Nicholas. And we have another birthday on July 19th. It's Debbie D.D.'s birthday. Happy birthday, Debbie.

Happy birthday, Debbie. Happy birthday, Debbie. Happy birthday, Debbie D. Jamie, I don't know if you remember, but Garrett and I do some poems. We do a little poetry synopsis of the episode to kind of warm up. And Armand does a little etymology where we actually get educated and learn about what the title means. Jamie already knows that I'm a pedant, so you don't have to remind it. I'm going to start off with my Limerick poem for the episode Little Green Men.

It goes a little something like this. Nog's headed to Earth at the Academy and then Cork breaks the rules for some profit again They go into the past This explains Roswell at long last Boy, I really loved Little Green Men Yes, nice Little poetry

Very nice Thank you And you have every reason to love it Right? So good All right here is my haiku for Little Green Men. Cork takes Nog

to Earth. Four centuries too early. Rom saves the day twice. Very good, very good. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you. It is important, I think. I think this is the first episode

or certainly the pivotal episode where we realize that Rom is not an idiot that Rom actually is quite brilliant. And that's an enormous part of his character arc. Great. Yeah, I think you chose the right word. It's pivotal because there's been little hints at this before, but this episode just blows it wide open.

He's very intelligent and a great problem solver. All right. So the title of the episode is called Little Green Man. There's no difficult words in it. They're basically Saxon words, but they have non-Saxon derivations. So little is from the old English. Forgive me, the pronunciation is wrong. It's something like Lytel.

Lytel is the original. That sounds like Old English to me. And also corresponds to old Spanish, Lutel, or Middle Dutch, Lutel, or High German, Luzil. That's little. And, of course, the definition is of material objects, small in size, not large or big. Now, of persons from the OED, it says little means short in stature. Well, that applies here. Green, again, very simple word from the old English, and I have the pronunciation wrong.

Gren, from Frisian, and I can't pronounce this, but I'm going to say Gren again, old Spanish. groan middle dutch grew old high german um groaning interesting uh and again that's the adjective denoting the color which is which in the spectrum is intermediate between blue and yellow it's funny when you said groany i thought of the drink the cocktail a negroni which is kind of greenish blue a little bit greenish brown maybe yeah i first had that in italy and i first had that in italy and i was Yes, I love it. My God, it knocked me out my ass. Oh, nice.

All right. Nice. Thank you for that. We appreciate that. Now, the teleplay was by Iris Stephen Bear and Robert Hewitt Wolf, the story by Tony Marbury and Jack, did you guys know that Tony and Jack actually pitched this story during season one? Really? Yeah.

Michael Pillar was not jazzed about this story, but it just happened that the fifth. 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident was to take place early during season four, and that is when writer Renee Eschervaria proposed that they do the Roswell show, and everyone agreed. Wow. Yeah, that's a nice thing. I love that aspect of this episode, that it takes, you know, real mythology, real sci-fi science mythology of Earth and ties Star Trek into it. I think it's awesome.

Well, I'll tell you something that's very coincidental. When I first got the script and read it, knowing I was going to direct it, I said, well, you guys do know that I directed the movie, Hanger 18. Really? I didn't know that. I directed a movie called Hanger 18, starring Darren McAvin, which was a fictionalized version of this. Of the Roswell incident. A fictionalized version, Jamie, this is real, and that wasn't it?

Exactly. Oh, this is real, Armin. It was a set in modern day for then. There was space shuttle hadn't actually gone up yet. But we had dealt with NASA, and we had a space shuttle incident where something interfered with it, and it crashed, and it was a spacecraft that crashed, and the shuttle pilots were the ones who were investigating and got involved in it.

So it was called Hanger 18, and so when I got the script, I went, I'll be darned. I was on the impression. I was on the impression that you, tried very hard to get this script. You're saying now that it was just dropped in your lap. I don't remember. If I, you know, they generally didn't, were that far ahead on script.

So I'm not sure whether they had moved things around or not. But it's just, it was great for me. Yeah. Yeah, you were the perfect director for the time. He was. He is. He will be. Not only is he the perfect director.

He's the perfect podcast guest. because right, my next thing I was going to say was, James, there was a very interesting way that you ended up directing this episode because you directed something in the past, and then he already jumped into it. Oh, the perfect podcast guest. Hangary, 18.

He's ahead of us. He's already ahead of us, which is great. When you got this assignment, did you begin to think about not just setups and that sort of thing, but lighting as well, because the lighting is unique in this episode to others. deep space nine episodes or was that something that the dPs came up with yeah that was jonathan west

um we talked about having it look like uh you know shot for the period uh on earth and and all that of course the wardrobe and the hair and the smoking and even the casting i mean uh the people belonged in that time period and they were great for that um it was fun for me to watch it i haven't seen it in decades no it really was fun to watch it again and i I actually forgot that the dog, when the dog became... Oh, no. Oh, no. I forgot that that happened.

Me too. I totally forgot. That was a surprise for me. I mean, like I said, I've only seen two DS9 episodes, and this is one of them. And when Odo turned into Odo from the dog, I go, oh, I forgot about that. Just like, Jim. Same thing. It's a great surprise.

It's a great surprise in it. It's wonderful. So, you know, obviously this episode was written and designed to be an homage to the 50s B movies. And as Jim said, they actually brought in actors that starred in B movies from that era. For instance, Gregory Walcott from the 1959 film Plan 9 from Outer Space. He came into audition for... Oh, really?

For Lieutenant General Denning, yeah, for Denning. So bringing in, you know, these actors who actually were starring in these 50s movies was, I think, a great little twist. And we've already seen that because when they brought in the Klingons, They brought in the original series Clingons that played them in that one episode that we saw, I think, season two or three, right? So they keep in that theme of bringing in people

from the era, which is wonderful. Ira is very loyal that way. He's very loyal that way to people and the work done in the past. But Charles Napier, he was just stupendous for me to work with. I don't know how Jamie felt, but for me, he was a huge presence

and I really enjoyed his being on the same. said. Yes. He was great. I will tell you that, you know, Ira used to always sit down and go through the tone meeting on the scripts. And before this one, I had done a number of DS-9s before this, but this was the first one that was so much humor. And he said, well, you know, directing comedy is different than directing other things. And I had done some comedy before, so I knew that. But I told him when I read it, I mean, I love humor in these scripts. And these ones that are sort of breakaway episodes that have nothing to do with all the other things that are going on and featured

Armin and his crew of misfits are always fun fun to do so yeah that was great thank you Jamie yeah can I just read a quick quote from Robert Hewitt Wolfe he explains all the characters are archetypes from those movies the B-movies the sort of human nurse who sees beyond appearance and the tough cigar chomping general and the sort of traitorous mid-level military officer and the noble scientist and And it was just like so much fun just to play with all those archetypal science fiction characters, sort of give a nod even beyond the original series, but a nod to all these great movies from the 50s, which made Star Trek possible in the first place. And yet there's an enormous nod to Deep Space Nine itself when Nog mentions the bell riots,

which is a previous episode. Oh, yes. Showing that little pad with Cisco's face on it. This episode reminds me a little bit of when on Voyager we did the... Captain Proton episodes, which was an homage to the old sci-fi movies of the 30s and 40s, really, the Flash Gordons and those kind of things. Yeah, this reminded me in that way of just a love letter to sci-fi in general, you know, it was really great. The only thing that, okay, you brought that thing up about the Bell Riots, Armin, but that was

my one knock, literally. It's like, you, nod, you've spent how many hours with Jake? You should know every single millimeter of his father's face. Okay, so I feel like him looking at that, the line should have been, this guy's, this guy is Benjamin Cisco's doppelganger is what he should have said, you know, because this guy looks exactly like, he kind of goes, he kind of looks like him.

I like, I like quarks response. Oh, Human's all looking like. Yes, that's how you sell it. I was wondering, the humon, the pronunciation of Hibon. Is that something you did? Was that in the script? You remember? No, that's always me.

That's me. always said that there's very little the actors can do as you know to change the script but we could pronounce or mispronounce names well we couldn't mispronounce names but we could mispronounce certain things and human was one of the things i started off with pretty quickly yeah you there's a scream in this episode that became iconographic for me as well so yeah yes when you're getting the shots it's great it's great Let's talk about the guest stars, of course, the iconic Charles Napier as Denning. We also have Megan Gallagher as Nurse.

And I have to ask this, Jamie, I was under the impression, I could be wrong, that the part was just offered Megan. Is that true? Do you remember? I don't remember. Well, the casting, the breakdown service is listed as we are looking for Nurse Garland and we are looking for a Megan Gallagher type. It actually listed that. And at that point, Megan Gallagher's agent called up and said, well, you know, Megan might be able to do it. And that's when the role was then offered to her.

I love that. Yeah. That's funny. I sort of heard that. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool.

We also have, let's see. Oh, Charles Napier played Adam in the original series episode, The Way to Eden. So he was already on Star Trek back in the 60s. Connor O'Ferro played Jeff. and Connor also played Burzon in an Enterprise episode, Rogue Planet, and also Digamot in the Enterprise episode, Chosen Realm. And we have James G. McDonald is Wayne Wright. I have a connection with James McDonald's.

So a couple years before Voyager started, I did a movie of the week up in Calgary. It was a Western, and James McDonald was in that film with me, and we shot for three weeks probably up in Calgary. out on horseback and doing a wagon train thing. And James and I, Jim, as I knew him then, Jim, he and I really became good buddies. And I didn't know he was in this episode.

And he was wearing the hat in the beginning. I'm like, God, that guy looks familiar. But when he took it off and I saw his head and the whole thing, I'm like, oh, my God, that's Jim from the Western. So I Googled last night, found he had a website and an email on his website. I emailed him last night. He's flying today. He couldn't do the podcast,

but I was going to have him pop in. Oh, man. And I haven't talked to him in years. What a great reunion. Is he still acting? He's still acting. He also has, he works with incarcerated persons and works with theater therapy and acting and plays.

And so he's done a ton of, you know, guest star work and recurring work, but also he does this work, theater work with inmates. Nice. Excellent. Yeah. He's a great guy.

I don't know how much you remember him, Jamie, but I got along. We hit it off those three, three or four weeks we spent up in the mountains of Alberta. We hit it off. Yeah, it was nice. What year was this again? You said right before,

Voie? 92, I think, is when I did that M-O-W. This is not the Donner part. Yeah, it was the Donner part. Oh, it is? It is that one. One more mountain was the name of it. Was he part of the...

Was he a guide like you or was he a wagon train person? I can't remember who he played in so long, but... We were both, yeah, cowboy wagon train people. Wow. I directed a Downer Party movie for NBC. Oh, you did? Yeah, this was ABC. That was like 1978 or something.

All right, well, let's dive into this story. So we start off in Quarks. It looks like there's some kind of garage sale going on or something. Rom is holding a traditional Ferengi fundraiser for Nag in Quark's bar. He's selling his boyhood treasures. This is traditional when a young Ferengi goes off on his own. And I have to say, Max delivered this speech to the room beautifully. You know, those kind of scenes often can become performative and very presentational and big.

And I thought Max just, he laid it out in a way that I was like immediately drawn into Rom and Nog's relationship and the emotion of it. It was grounded. It was very personal. I thought it was great. Right out of the case. I have a question about acting with those teeth. Yes, sir. When they were putting them in, obviously you all were able to do it very well.

Did it take practice? If you said, this tooth here is getting in my wake and you move it, how did all that work? As I remember, they just gave me the teeth and I had to deal with it. And my teeth weren't ever a problem, weren't ever a problem. Max had the one. tooth that came out so i'm sure that was a problem and in other episodes max has some kissing scenes i felt really badly for chase who had to kiss that tooth um but but i don't remember any of us really stumbling because of the teeth um i think we got used to it pretty pretty quickly yeah

that westmore did a great job and they fit snugly and and um they gave us each a little different sound that we normally would make because of the teeth, because the prosthetics in the mouth. But they never were a problem. However, ironically, at the very end of the show in the seventh season, somewhere like two or three episodes before we ended, somebody came into my trailer and stole my teeth.

They just disappeared. So Westmore had to make another pair really very quickly because I had to work that day. Wow. I'm surprised they didn't. have a backup ready to go for those kind of things they they they though i kept them in a container uh with polydent and you know to clean them and um and they were in my trailer and they weren't collected every night they just sat my trailer and when i come in at the end of the you know after my makeup

was done i put the teeth in and go to work did you take your teeth out between takes or did you leave them in the whole day i think for the most part uh they stayed in because if i took them out i would have to put them in a container. So they pretty much stayed in, except during lunch. At lunch, of course, they would come out, which used to piss Renee off a great deal. Because I could take the teeth out and eat whatever I wanted for lunch. Renée's makeup came down to his lips, and therefore, if he started to eat something large or crunchy, it would break up the makeup.

So he was restrained to only eating basically yogurt for lunch for years. For years, all he could have is yogurt. makeup was a nightmare anyway yeah yeah it was always being retouched and re-shot and it was awful i'd just want to say one thing to the individual who pilfered those teeth if you happen to be listening to this episode shame on you shame and then through social media contact the delta flyer so you can arrange to have that ship back to us so we can give it back to armin do the right thing do the right they won't give it back everyone they'll just auction it off and make a fortune all right Well, everybody's there at this garage sale, you know, even Wharf is there.

Worf says the captain asked him personally to come to the garage sale and Bashir and Kira there. Bashir gets a hollow suite from the pleasure goddess of Ricks, which Dax insists. Dax buys it for him. He buys it for him. Yeah. Dax likes the Ferengi. Yes, he does.

Yes, he does. Dax loves the Fierre doesn't really know what to do with the Ferengi. And Kira, of course, just hates the Ferengi. Yes. But Bashir's not a negative towards Ferengi, though. No. But he's ambivalent. He's completely ambivalent.

Kira's mad because she sees the spring ball racket that has been missing from her quarters for two years, which I thought Aaron did a great job of, oh, it's been laying on the bar. Isn't that strange? That nice close-up reaction. We love it. Yes. Yeah. It's very funny. But Quark arrives, and he tells Rom that he's got to leave right now, check this shuttle that has arrived from his cousin Gail.

His cousin owed him money or, did your cousin owe you a shuttle or is that? No, no, what had happened was, if I remember from the episode, is Quark had lent Gaila money. That's right. And Gaila promised that should his venture go well that he would get Quark of a ship. Well, you got it. You got a shuttle. The Ferengis have a shuttle. And he tells Rom, go check the shuttle.

And Quirk also comments he's not very happy about Nag going to the academy. He's really not happy about that. And that's not new. No. Quark doesn't particularly like humans. He doesn't dislike humans, but he wants the Ferengi to stay within the sphere of other Ferengi.

Yeah. Can I just bring attention to how lovely it was watching Wharf? Sharpen his teeth. And that moment of realization, he loves this tool. He's like, how much? How much? He's so into it. It's part and parcel of the indoctrination of Worf into Deep Space Nine.

It is learning that this is a different world, a different culture, a different aura altogether. And he's beginning to find out new things not only about us, but about himself, because he's, in this other culture. And this is only the seventh episode of this season. So it's very early in his experience, in Michael Dorn's experience with the show, this cast, all of it. But it's super cool for the massive TNG fans out there. All the fans that love Worf on TNGG,

they get to see another side of him, really. They get to see, they get an even deeper character development dive into Worf on DS9 than they ever got on TNG, I feel. So Jamie, when you got your tone meeting, not only for this, but for other episodes, did they tell you what they expected their actors to do as far as, for instance, this one, this moment with War, did they tell you what they wanted from the scene

and from the actors? Only if it was something extraordinary that wasn't obvious or there was sometimes if, for example, they felt actors were always too slow or too fast in delivery they would try to have you correct instead of them speaking to the actors themselves. But generally, only if there was an issue would they ever give performance notes. It's more about understanding what each scene was about. And so that if I completely understood it, then I could communicate that to the actors.

Do you know what number of Trek episode this would have been for you? Your 10th that you've directed, your 20th, I don't know where this was in your Trek directing. Probably around 10. did 18 in total. And the Enterprise was the pilot, which was two and then one each year. So that was six. And this was one of my last DS-9s before I left. So somewhere around there. I was very familiar with Star Trek, obviously. And also with Michael, because I had done the two part that started the season, Way of the Warrior. I worked with him on T&G. So yeah. Yeah. And to Armin's question i i feel like because of your history they probably did you were on cruise control they

weren't like and you got to do this and that they kind of like to do your thing at this point right i i i understood where we were yeah and that that was one advantage i mean they star trek used a lot of the same directors i think for that reason but i definitely spoke klingon in terms of uh performance those you know getting those guys right was always kind of fun but the writers this being a comedic episode uh and the writers you know they're all good friends of mine, but I know that they had problems with me sometimes. Did they say, okay, we

need Armand to, Arm is not going to be as comedic as Ram is. I mean, that's what's a given. And so, did they tell you that, okay, when Armand does this or when Max does that or when Aaron does something else, did they give you those kind of

parameters as well? No. No marching orders. By then, but I didn't, by the first DS9 I directed, which is damage. I spoke to Pillar at length about you in your performance. I think I told you he had me watch some old double indemnity and how quickly everybody spoke.

And I kept trying to, they wanted you to be like that. And I kept talking to you about speaking quickly. And you know, you slipped to the Bogart kind of speed. And that just, I mean, it sort of stuck. I think you just got there and stayed there. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that's where the teeth. did make a difference.

It was sometimes difficult to speak really quickly because of the teeth. Sometimes when Ethan Phillips would talk fast on Voyager, his teeth would fall out of his mouth. No, they were in the middle of a take. They would shoot like two feet out of his mouth. Yeah, because they weren't super tight. Mine were. Mine never, that never happened.

Oh, wow. Once they were in, they were in. Good. They were easy to take out, but once they were in, they were in. Yeah. But I did use fix it down. as well. Oh, you did? I don't know if you did. Yeah, I don't think he used any of that stuff. I just, that thing fell out all the time. All the time. It was comical. Yeah, it was. Fix a dent and forget

about it. What's the commercial? Fix it and forget about it? It worked fine. Well, we go in the Ferengi shuttle. We see the inside of this shuttle. I love the design of the Ferengi shuttle. I thought it was great. It's in great shape. Rom's checking it out. He tells Quark, he's got this shuttle he could maybe go off on an adventure just retire and rom can take over the the bar and i thought his delivery of that trying to get quark to leave was very funny max is great in this episode you're you're also great but i i i think this is pivotal for that character and he does a pivotal a pivotal episode for max uh and for aaron as well because he's going into starfleet yeah quark says in the scene he wants to take a test flight. Rom suggests Earth. I don't know if

Rom suggests it or if Cork is thinking it because he sort of leads him into the answer. He's like, I forget how the dialogue went, but it's like they're both on the same page of let's take this shuttle, go to Earth, since, since Nag has to go there. And they agree. And Rom tells leaves to go Hotel Nog, and then we finish with Quark's comment about profit. And you've got a line where you say, all I ask is a tall ship and a load of contraband to fill up with. What is that from? I know it's a quote.

Yeah. The tall ship is, and I don't know the source of the quote either, but I recognize it as a quote. I just didn't know where it was from either. And the contraband, of course, is an addendum to that. Yeah, is the addendum, is the change in it. All I ask is a tall ship and a load of contraband to fill it with is a paraphrase of John Maysfield's famous poem, Sea Fever, which includes the line. All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

That's what it was. A star to steer her by, which is also the quote on the USS Defiance Dedication Plaque. Did you know that? No. Oh, yeah. The Defiant has a plaque which says that, has that quote. This is also quoted twice before by James D. Kirk in the original. series episode The Ultimate Computer and on in star trek five the final frontier kirk says it

there as well oh wow so it's a quote that has a long star trek history it does yeah it's been used for quark gave it a little spin and perverted it that's a good example of something that they would have told me about at the tone meeting so then we were doing the scene i would let you know i would if they didn't know it was a quote got it I don't remember if you knew immediately or not I knew that it was a quote

because it was familiar but I didn't know where it was from yeah okay it was great it was a nice button to the scene we go to Cork's bar next and Cork is briefing Morn on how to run the bar

while he's gone which again we know that Morn's never going to respond at this point it's assumed It's kind of a running bit that he never speaks. Yeah, but we, exactly. But also the bar thing, having him look after the bar or manage it, is we talk about that.

What was the one episode where it shows the alternate timeline future where DS9, the bar is owned by Morn. I can't remember. Oh, yeah. So they track that. They're still tracking that all the way through. And I just love that they have this scene here, which kind of reinforces that other episode in a way. Yeah. Ira was very good at that about making connections with whether it was internally within this series or other Star Trek things.

It reminds me of Mike McMahon, honestly. Yes. It's kind of the modern version of that with Lower Decks. Mike McMahon is incredibly smart about connecting all the different shows and the history of Trek. Right. Whereas on Voyager, there was nothing connected. No, not really. I don't think we had much connection.

No. Well, you were on your own, so. Yes, exactly we were. I know. Well, Morne gets his marching orders, and Odo appears, he's very suspicious, thinks that it's suspiciously generous of quark. Yes. To take nogg to Earth. Now, I have a question for Jamie.

Like later on, we've already given away the surprise where he shows up as a dog. We have a sudden appearance of Odo on the. side. Did they suggest that was that your choice, Jamie, to isolate him and all of a sudden there he is in the new shot? That would be my choice. Yeah. That was very good. It was excellent. And again, it's part of the theme that he just shows up out of nowhere, which he will do later on the show as well. Right. Okay. So we're on the promenade next and a great scene with Jake and Nog talking about all the time they spent in that specific little corner where they dangled their feet over the edge.

And that, too, is a reference to things in the past. Yes, a reference to things in the past. And, you know, ever since they met, that was their little spot. And, you know, this is kind of like a goodbye in a way for those two good, good friends because he got Nog heading off to Starfleet and, you know, who knows. Well, has it already been said that Jake is going to go to that school for writing? Or that was. It's been mentioned, but I don't know if it's been, it's concrete.

yet that he is going to go. Right. So we don't know that for sure. But still, it's a nice... They're growing up. Yeah, they're growing up. Yeah. And it's just, it's so, it's so cool to see a tall Jake and a Nog who's about to enter Starfleet Academy. But at this point, we do have both Bashir and O'Brien show up. Bershear has a gift. And he hands it to Nog. Nog, Nog opens it up. And it's a, it's a, it's a, basically a going away present. And it's a path. Going away present where O'Brien does all the talking, although the present is from Bishir. Yes. That is true. That is true. It was handed to, okay, well, maybe it's a dual present from the two of them, right? So they're basically a couple anyway, right? So anyway, so the gift comes in. And it's a pad filled with all the history of Earth. Like everything about how to, you know, the culture, the society, different types of, you know, everything about Earth that you would ever want to know. It's all in there. Yeah, customs, history, everything. So it's a very nice gift for Nag, I think. Yeah.

And I like when Nog asks, well, will this help me meet girls? Nog. Is it girls? Was it girls or did he say Earth Girls? Earth Girls. Huma on women. Huma on females. Yes.

You mean it'll teach me how to attract human females? Yes. Very, very funny. Jake offers to walk him to the airlock and they look back saying it was a good spot, the best. Nice little touch, little. Very nicely shot, too. And so, Jamie, you're dealing with a, I can't remember exactly, but let's say 16-year-old, Sirak Lofton, and a wonderful actor who's older, and Eisenberg. Did you have, did you explain to them?

Did you work with them? Did you give them any notes, if you remember? I mean, this is a very touching scene, very well done. Did you give them any input into their relationship, or do they just come home? up with it by themselves if you remember i don't really remember but as it seems to me they they were there they knew what their relationship was they would have been rehearsing the scene of you know in the trailers and i think they had found some moments themselves so uh they had a relationship and i think that's that they brought it because this really is very sweet very dear it's very touching

i i thought um i thought you also did a couple things in the scene jami where you started sort of panning across the promenade revealing and then tilting up to the to the spot where they hang out their classic spot their iconic spot and i thought that was great because it's almost like their point of view in a way that became their shot so that you're we saw what they're taking in and yeah i just thought that the tone and the pace of it was great i really liked i don't know if it was the low angle on aaron turned into and over to jake but i liked that low angle when he was talking to miles and Bashir because it made

Nag feel heroic. It's that classic superhero low angle close up that made Nag going off to the academy seem very heroic in the way you framed it and I like that a lot. I thought that was a nice detail that you caught there.

Jamie, regarding Armin's comment about asking about directing this scene with the two boys. And then you talked about how they had already been rehearsing, that must be a huge relief on the part of the director of any television episode when two characters are already locked in and you don't have to guide them or shepherd them and do any major corrections. They're just kind of, again, on

cruise control, which is... As long as they've rehearsed it properly, you know, sometimes, as Robbie will know, you'll have actors involved working together and they come in and they do it for you and you go, oh, well, actually. Yes. Yep. I'm sure you're from there. because I've told you this a couple of times, Jamie. We had that discussion in the Way of the Warrior. I said where Jamie and I didn't see eye-to-eye on a particular approach to his scene. Oh, yeah, that's right.

I'm sure I've told you. I had a problem. Andy and I had a problem with the root beer scene. Yeah. He said, who won? He said. Oh, who won? Who won?

We all won, Jamie. Everybody wins. Nice answer. We all win. 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 everyone's epic summer plans, though? What? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. So

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And we are watching, we being Dax, Kura, and Cisco, and the audience are watching as Cork's shuttle leaves. Dax makes the announcement, the Frankie shuttle, Cork's Treasure, has just departed the station. What a lovely title. What a lovely name for your shuttle. Thank you. Treasure. I love it.

Yes, very quick scene. We go inside the Ferengi shuttle next. And again, Kira is not, says, I wouldn't want to be anywhere. I wouldn't want to be on that. Yeah. Look at that. It's not Nana's prejudice. It's Kira's prejudice.

Yes. Just has no fondness for the Ferengi. No. Yeah. It's a shame. Does she ever get any fondness for the Ferengi? No, you don't want to spoil it. I haven't seen...

Look at that. Jamie, we haven't seen this show. We haven't seen the series, so everything's a spoiler. Everyone can't tell me. Silence is golden. Okay, let's move on. Yeah, Nog is studying about Earth's history on the pad that he was given. Quark wants to go faster.

Rom says that they could go faster. It won't risk the chemisite that he's smuggling, so Quark is busted. Quartz is like, wait, how do you know about the chemisite? How did you figure that out? rom is very smart he explains he saw the weight differential and so when yeah this is the beginning of knowing that rom has some brain power here come on now yes yes he does say i like when he says corks says what tipped you off and rom says well when i engage the impulse engines i noticed the ship's weight distribution was a little off so the last time you went

to waste extraction waste extraction yeah i love that last time he went to the back That's a first on Star Trek. No one has ever mentioned the bathroom on Star Trek. No. Waste extraction. Robbie. Now on when you have to go urinate, I don't want you to say, I got to go pee. I want you to say I have to go waste.

Go to waste extraction, yes. Thank you. Well, Rom is very smart. This is the beginning of Rom showing his cleverness about things. He busted Quark on the smuggling, so he wants 20%. Nog gets into the game as well. he basically says Actually Quark invites him into the game

So what do you want? Yes, that's right. How much you want now? 10%. Nog says, well, I'm not really Starflea yet So I don't have to report necessarily this violation But I'll take 10%. So they've made a deal

Who's getting the cut And they go faster, heading to Earth. And as they approach Earth, Rom can't get the ship the shuttle out of warp. It's stuck. Quark is panicking. Rom has a very sciencey and a very smart plan, which now his cleverness has turned into genius at this point.

And as I was watching the episode and hearing that speech deliberate, I'm thinking, oh, my God, how did he even learn that, much less be able to perform it? It's so complicated and long. He did a great job. Yeah. And he has several of those kinds of speeches in this episode. Yes, he does.

And again, I remind you, he's got a lot of. all those teeth, those prosthetic teeth to deal with. With the one snaggle tooth that goes off sideways. Come on. And he's dealing with the voice that he's created for ROM as well. Yeah, he has to do that too. Yeah, he's got a great plan, which I will simply sum up, is to say he's going to vent some plasma into the cargo hold with the chemisite,

where the chemisites being smuggled. And Quark says, I don't know what you just said, but whatever you're talking about, just do it. I'm with Quark. Whatever he said, just do it. It sounded super smart. And I'm, I was very happy to hear the line. He says, Quark accuses, when did you get to be so smart?

And he says, I've always been smart. I've always, I've just lacked self-confidence. Yeah. So it's not just about us understanding his being smart, but it's also the beginning of Rom getting more and more self-confident. Yes. Mm-hmm. This is also the scene where I think Quark says all humans look alike, which made me laugh.

That's the bell riots. The bell riots. That's where Nog's reading about the bell riots. They try Rom's plan, and the shuttle shakes, kind of starts lighting up, quark starts screaming, and then the ship disappears. Now, I start screaming. Another director, not yourself, Jamie, but once said to me, we need you to be really scared. here because you're the only character on the show that can do it not that i'm capable of doing it the others were capable it's just this character was allowed to do it to be afraid and get be fearful

uh did were you again who knows if you can remember or not but um um was that something that was needed or for for the episode for the ferengi to get really panicky do you remember don't remember Do you remember, speaking of do you remembers, Jamie, do you remember the design of the Ferengi Shuttle? This is the first time we've seen kind of a Ferengi Shuttle, certainly this one. It wasn't much to it. I mean, you could see how limited my angles were. So I think it was the barest of sets. Yeah, it was very, just that cockpit area.

And a very, very low ceiling. I liked it. It had sort of nostalgic, like, vintagey touches to it, which I thought were really cool. I love the design. But I was watching it. I was thinking of Andor when he goes into the different shuttles and ships on Andor, and I was thinking they had a little bit bigger budget than we did. Just a little bit more.

But then wouldn't that have been just a redress from maybe Grand Nagas' interior of his cockpit ship? Probably. They reused everything. yeah yeah well the shuttle disappears and suddenly we uh we're uh in an observation room very different set design in this observation room we can already see bits and pieces of a a fan in the background it looks like a very low tech low tech yes yes but we see this is this is the reveal of the first cigarette lighting and the shadow on his face and the cigarette lighter lights it up. I loved that shot. Very film noir,

1950s, 40s, 50s. It was very cool. And it looks like we see through this observation room that looks like World War II era. We're already kind of in that vibe. And the lighting has changed. This is my only quibble with the episode. Most of the lighting is good, and I'm going to talk more about this later. But it's to me palpable the lighting design for this 1947, these 1947 shots is radically different than the lighting for most of the show. Yeah.

Yeah, and it was. You could see that. It was. And did you not like that change? There are times, I will tell you when, when we get to it. But it looks great here. It looks terrific here. And it's purposeful and it's right.

And it's a homage to, you know, things in the past. Absolutely perfect. I have a quibble later on, which I will get to. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah, it definitely feels like this was Jonathan West, right, that did this episode. Yeah, it feels like he's trying to replicate those kind of, I don't want to say the lower budget, but the kind of flat lighting, the contrasty lighting of light and shadow of the black and white versions of these movies.

It felt like he was replicating that. And I think on that level, he was very successful. Very successful. Yeah. But the soldier calls the general. Wainwright calls the general. Wainwright is my friend, Jim. James is Wayne White.

Which immediately, I'm like, this guy looks familiar. It took me so long. Oh, he's the mid-level guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. He's a bad guy. He's the bad guy. He's the captain.

He's doing his job. Fine. He's going to torture people later. Life is not just black and white. There are shades of gray. He calls the general and he says, get me General Denning, tell him one of the Martians is awake. I love that line.

Can I just say, Lieutenant General Denning, that name, the homage to the 50s films goes as deep as the character names also because that name was from the character, sorry, was named after the actor, Richard Denning from Creature from the Black Lagoon and the day the day the world ended. Nurse Faith Garland was named after actress, Beverly Garland, who was in Swamp Woman. It conquered the world. So all these, you know, they really went deep dive in terms of making everything, you know, influenced by the 50s movies.

The shot pans over to a calendar with Rita Hayworth, and we see that it's 1947, so we definitely have made a time jump as Quirk wakes. up, Quirk the Martian, wakes up. And there's an establishing shot of this base. Is that the construction? Yeah, I think it was. And then we brought in just the tail of an airplane. There's a thing over it. It's literally just a, they towed in just a tail. Oh, that's funny. So you saw the plane and the emblem, the USA emblem. Yes. Wait, Jamie, so there's, there's no wing. There's nothing. It's just the back end of the fuselage. It worked, though.

It totally worked. Right. And you pasted that one graphic on of the old U.S. Air Force looking logo, I guess, right, in the 40s. You did a great job of using, because I think that is the construction shop, which is literally 50 feet from the door of the promenade. It's right next to your stage. Yeah, we had many at lunch there.

We had many a lunch there. Yeah. But it looked great. So ladies and gentlemen, that is your look at the Paramount Lot. Yes, exactly. Well, there's one more for when it's hanging. Yes, there are. There are others.

That's right. There's a lovely night shot that I remember very fondly. Yeah, the night shot looks great. Yeah, that little corner of the lot, not only did it work beautifully to tell this story and it looked great. It looked like a military base. Yeah. But it was literally 50 feet, if that, from where you're, you know, your, you're, you're

main sets were so um that's a plus yeah it was great it was great but we cut back inside a whole team of military are staring at all our ferengi who are now awake and it's not ferengues it's ferengi ferengi yeah it's both singular and plural that's right is the same that's the pharynge all three ferengi are awake and i love this tracking shot that you did across the um the faces of everyone as they're looking, Jamie. I thought that was great. And the smoking, smoking and looking. Yes, and smoking. Yeah, this is where the smoking really starts to take off.

Okay, so the scene where all of the humans are observing the Martians behind the one-way mirror where they were smoking was a deliberate commentary on the use of tobacco in the 1940s. Indeed, the studio, Paramount, was originally

against having anybody at all smoking in the episode. They were like, no, we don't want this. But I Stephen DeBear stuck to his guns, and he pointed out that they could not do an homage to the 50s B movies without seeing the character smoke a lot. He cites the 1951 Sam Newfield movie Lost Continent as taking cigarette smoking to an unprecedented extreme. According to Bear, you see smoking in 50s movies all the time from war movies to bug-eyed monster films. But Continent, Lost Continent, took it to an art form that is just jaw-dropping to watch. every time there's a problem.

Yeah, every time there's a problem, everyone just starts handing out cigarettes. There we go, the Los Continent. If you think back to even, like, game shows or talk shows back when I was a kid, you'd watch, you know, Hollywood Squares or something in the late 60s, early 70s. And everybody's just smoked.

Jack Parr, they're drinking cocktails. They're smoking on the game show. Yes. I remember directing a MacGyver and one of the actors wanted to smoke and they wouldn't let him because that was when people stopped smoking

and they didn't want to have TV shows promoting it. Before that, if an actor wanted to smoke for his character, oftentimes they would. And it just gave the actor more to worry about because you have to match the, you know, when you take love. But it became a thing

where the studios and the networks wanted no one to smoke. Wow. So I remember that transition from people smoking to not smoking. Yeah, it was a big thing. So that actor did not get. get to smoke on MacGyver, correct?

He did not. He was very unhappy. I bet. Very unhappy. Yeah. I would imagine there's two reasons. One is the glorification of smoking, which obviously Hollywood had promoted that for a long time, which what we were just talking about.

And two, as Jamie just pointed out, you have the continuity problems. You have to make sure that the cigarette is at the right length each time you do it. Yeah. Which it almost never was. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So hard. Exactly.

And they start talking about the flying saucer that crashed and the retraction that they need to put in the paper about it just being a weather balloon. So immediately we realize, oh, they're talking about Roswell. We're starting to put this together that this is Roswell. And do you know that story was only really finally debunked in 2023? Really? What did they say? What do you mean? finally the Air Force came out and said it's all it was disinformation actually it was

disinformation they were designed they were designed they were just read this the other day they were designing stealth aircraft that's right we read the same article Jamie yeah yeah so they were designing man-made human-made aircraft weapons they didn't want the Russians or anyone else to know about so instead they created this story the Air Force created the story of aliens that was UFOs so that they would take the onus off of people looking at Roswell where they indeed were testing these new aircraft oh interesting interesting did I get that right Jamie is that what you remember from the article as well I just read it a few days ago I mean me too me too yeah quite coincidental but um then nowhere in this episode do they say that this

base is in New Mexico correct they don't ever say Roswell yeah They just say Roswell, eventually, not in this scene, but later on they do. Really? They say that they're in Roswell? Oh. I believe so. Yeah, I think so, too. Okay.

All right, because a lot of this stuff evidently was moved from New Mexico to an Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio. So that's where I thought this was taking place to that. We were in Dayton, but okay. If they mentioned Roswell, then. If they were going to bomb Cleveland, Dayton. would be very close well they also talk about the that later on that they are testing a nuclear bomb and that was all happening in new mexico and arizona and the utah deserts so yeah they would have to be in new mexico here okay all right um denning though turns on the general turns on the

speaker to hear what the martians are saying and we hear we hear some friends Now, how did this happen? First time? I have a vague memory, and I'm hoping Jamie remembers, and I realize this a long time ago. But I think we created that. I think the actors created. Really? The language.

The language. There may have been something in the script, but maybe we did some adlibs that were just that we, that's what I, it's been a long time, and I haven't thought about it for years, but I think some of that was created by us. Do you remember, Jay? I don't remember, though. It's very hard when you ad-lib to do it, take after take, after take, and have any consistency.

So I suspect it was scripted so that there would be some consistency, but I can't remember. Yes, but on the other hand, Jamie, it's possible that we did it differently so that it wasn't consistent, but whatever take you used, whatever we came up with in that take, that's what they used.

but I seem to remember that we made some language up but it's a long time ago had you ever done no no and never again really it's only in this episode and never again because we have universal translators we don't ever have to speak well I have a question about the the English and the Ferengi as we move deeper but but I think that's interesting the improving the language yeah I I could buy that because it did seem like you guys were speaking at a pace and in a way that it would have been hard to do that

if you had been trying to memorize script. It's really something that I can see you guys all getting together and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, just having to have fun with it. Yeah, we probably did that in my house, so yeah. Well, we see through there, through the human's point of view, the military's point of view, that you're speaking for, you hear it through the speaker, but when we cut inside to the room, in the middle of this conversation suddenly we can understand now the audience can understand

what the frame you're saying and they're basically saying they don't know where they are they don't know what happened quark just wants to get out of here he wants a shuttle nog does mention he remembers an emergency landing and quark thinks there's that they're on earth and he yells to be let out um which i thought and he's pulling on the door i like that you were like hitting this light switch to see if that opened the door and you were trying to slide the door sideways like doors just didn't know how this door worked I thought was very funny yeah that feels like something you would have come up with or you know you and sure but I think you're probably right I'll take credit I doubt that was scripted that all those details it was good

and as he's screaming we cut back inside the observation room with the military and now we hear Ferengi again switches back to Ferengi from their point of view and uh the general Denning says that the president has given them orders to try and talk to these Martians and he turns to Carlson the scientist says you do it uh you're elected so and what's wonderful of 50s homage is he's a scientist we don't know what science he's a person but because he's a scientist he can do all sciences. Yes, exactly. He's a scientist. And it's only there because he's engaged to the nurse. Exactly. This love story, C story. And they've got a dog in the scene. I love the dog in the scene. I love the dog in the scene. The dog was great, actually. It seemed like a very well-trained dog. Yes, he was. I think of it. Why is there a dog in the scene before I remembered it?

Exactly. Exactly. Well, back with a Ferengi inside the exam room, they're arguing, they're blaming each other for the situation. And then Rob, I love when Rahm says, maybe we're dead. Maybe this is the divine treasure. The dialogue between the heaven and hell references in their financial aspect is hysterical. It is. And we've never heard of this aspect. there's no mention of divine treasury or divine divine before this yeah honestly this the first time

because uh as amused as jamie was by that scene i get seeing it again i was totally laughing my ass so funny i like quirks quarks's response is oh don't be ridiculous the divine treasury is made of pure latinum besides where's the blessed executor and when are we going to bid on our where we go exactly yeah why aren't we bidding for our new lives You get a bid for your new life. I love it. Great social commentary. Which is what science fiction should be.

Great social commentary. It's great. And hell is described as Nog says, maybe we're in the vault of eternal destitution. Cork again says, no, don't be ridiculous. The bar was showing profit. So you don't go to hell for bad behavior. You go if you're losing money.

You're a bad businessman. That's what you go to hell. It's very funny. Actually, I wish during the course of the many years that followed that we had referenced that, you know, I have to do this to save my soul. I have to do this. I know. Well, it's funny because DS9 has a lot of spirituality built into the show generally. And this is a little taste of some Ferengi spirituality, which I think would have been great to explore that more in future episodes.

We do. Oh, we do? that's not a spoiler that's just information information okay well the military come inside the exam room they start trying to talk and the pharaing from the

pharynge point of view all they hear is gibberish and this is what I was going to ask you Jim for the humans the human actors playing humans it sounded to me like the audio was treated a bit like it was almost like it was played in reverse do you remember I don't I think it was post production

though. I do remember it was there was something it was something we did. I can't remember what it was. Yeah. Because it seemed like the actors, not that they couldn't say gibberish in a sincere way, but it seemed like they were speaking English and the sound was almost like like they took the audio

and reversed each word, reversed each sentence or something, because it was like I think you're right. I don't remember. Yeah, it was cool. I love that effect. The Frangy think the universal translators are broken because they're just hearing gibberish. They start hitting their heads where their universal translators are inside their implanted in their ears, I guess.

The humans think this must be some tradition, some greeting. So the humans start hitting their heads, which is very funny. For me, that's the funniest part, the funniest part of Star Trek I ever directed was that scene where they're doing like this. It's just so well and so innocently. So sincerely. It's a look on their faces. It was just hysterical.

very funny oh my god and they had it harder than we did we had the rubber head yeah the rubber they were actually hitting their heads so possible concussion from one of the human actors is what you're trying to say

just back to the heaven and hell bit so hell for Fringes is the vault of eternal destitution so is that something is that a curse on Frenganar where you instead of saying go to hell go to the vault of eternal destitution to people absolutely garret but it's said in farangi and not in english that's true

yes that's right yes because it's so long that it doesn't work as well as hell so i would say the v oed maybe i just acronym go to the v oed so all right thank you well they're they're all bang in their heads trying to get the universal translator going and uh quark realizes they're just mimicking the farangi so he goes over And he squeezes his nose. Yeah. And then that was me. That I do remember. Oh, really?

Doing that was, I don't know what I was supposed to do in the script or whether it was even indicated in the script. But I do remember going like that. And I shouldn't have done that. It was a bad choice. Here's one. Because you can actually see the rubber nose being squeezed. Yes. So that was, I should have chosen something else.

Okay. It did look a little foamy when you did it, a little bit. like foam. But it was still, it was funny to see them mimic it, though, all of them squeezing their noses. Also, Robbie, did you find it odd or interesting or amusing that the translator was located inside, physically placed inside their head? Because that to me, I had no clue. There's no talk about universal translators and pharynge. Be implanted. Implanted, yes. Well, they don't have a communicator. I get it. But it's still shocking because we have, we've never seen that before. in any other episode.

I liked it because it made sense to me that, oh, this is how every character now, I've never seen this explain this way before, but now I understand when they're taken prisoner and stripped to some alien clothing and they don't have their com badge, that they're still able to have an English scene. Yeah.

It makes sense to me. Yeah, but it's cool. That they're implanted. Yeah. Well, Quark squeeze his nose, and they mimic, thinks these humans are stupider than he even thought. And he thinks that three of them versus millions of these stupid humans is great odds for them.

So he's actually very happy to see how childlike they seem to be. Yeah. Yeah, the quote that I wrote down, I'd always heard that primitive humans lacked intelligence, but I had no idea they were this stupid. Yes. Okay, so we're still in the exam room. It's a little bit later.

Quark is sitting there, and Nurse Garland is checking his blood pressure. I like when she checks your blood pressure, and it's super high. What does she say? 251 over 67, she says. If you were human, I'd say you were due for a heart attack. It's very funny. Yeah, very high blood pressure of the frangy have, I guess. We're under a lot of stress most of the time.

I was about to say, it makes sense that they have extremely high blood pressure. They watch as ROM is checking Nog's ear, and the humans think that this is some kind of grooming ritual. They comment maybe their family, and Quark is the mother, which was very funny. Very clever, but what even cleverer is, it is family. Yeah. It is family. And I went, they're subtly recognizing that, not recognizing, but reminding the audience that they are family.

A lot of, I mean, Quark owes a lot to Latin them, but he also owes a lot to his family, as to the others. And I'd rather like that reference a great deal. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. Yeah, I think the Garland and what's his name, Carlson, that, that, that, relationship is humanizing the humans in a way with their love story, with their attitude towards the Ferengi, you know, there's good people here. We're already starting to feel that a little bit. And I love that they thought Quark was the mother. Oh, God. That was a funny bit.

She's quite a shrew. And then as we cut into the Ferengi side of this conversation, Nag explains that humans have nuclear bombs. And maybe the radiation from their nuclear stuff, their explosions, is what's interfering with the translators. So that bit of information that Nag has picked up from his pad, his encyclopedia on humones, and Earth is helpful here. And then Romsey's a hairpin with Nurse Garland. And he kind of gestures that he wants it. And so she gives it to him. He uses it to reset Knox translator. And while he's doing that, Carlson and Garland, Ireland are discussing their wedding and they smoke a lot.

Lots of smoking in this scene. I like when Carlson lights two cigarettes in his house. Very Bogart-like, very Bogart-like. Yes. Not done very well. Not done very well, no. But it was a good attempt. All right.

Just a bit of trivia about that conversation about the nuclear testing going on. So, as we know, later in the episode, they head towards Nevada. it is incorrect in terms of actual history. In 1947, there were no nuclear tests in Nevada at that point. Oh, really? Yeah, the only atomic tests that were going on was over at the bikini islands atoll out in the middle of the ocean. That's where it was happening, but not anywhere near New Mexico. That's for sure. I wonder, because the early tests were Nevada. What? But that started, but that early test didn't start until 1951.

That's when they used Nevada. So the Nevada proving. The first test was in New Mexico when they developed the bomb in the first place. They developed the bomb and then they went to Nevada and then they went to the Pacific. Was that sort of moving further away or something? Well, I think the bikini test was a hydrogen bomb as opposed to an atomic bomb. Oh. Oh, interesting.

I think. I think that's correct. All right. The notes I have, the all atomic testing that was conducted in the 40s were being conducted at the Pacific Proving Ground. The Nevada Proving Ground did not open until, yeah, until January of 1951. Oh, interesting. But then Jamie talked about that there was actual testing in New Mexico as well. Before 1947.

Before 1947. When they first developed the bomb. But they first. In 1945, you saw Oppenheimer, right? So they set off. Yes. That was New Mexico. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Well, in the scene where they're smoking, we also clock that Quark is disgusted by the smell and Nog talks about tobacco and how it's poison, but people buy it. They actually pay for it. And Quark sees a lot of profit in this. Ira wanted to have Cork become addicted to cigarettes in this episode. Oh, really? Yes.

Oh, thank God he didn't. Yeah. Thank God. I don't smoke. It would have been ridiculous. Right. That would have been. horrible for you yeah okay well i like that they sort of clock this that they start talking about

the poison and cork thinks it's it's a great opportunity to make some money nog says do not get involved do not change the timeline do not mess up uh what's going to happen in in our timeline otherwise there won't be maybe a quirks there won't be a station there won't be a federation it could change everything so So it's just a reminder that these, you know, these time travel episodes have consequences. They do. And I actually rather like Quark's response to Nogsline. Yeah.

Which is, I can make it better for us. Yeah. Yeah. And that, I thought about that for a second. I went, yeah. That makes perfect logic for him. It would be better for us. And not just for us, our family union, but for all for Rengi,

we would have technology far ahead of the time. We could be a bigger power in the cosmos. And I thought, yeah, why stick to the history that you have if you can make it better? And I thought that was a nice way of looking at the timeline, that you could make it better. Yeah. But then, anyway, worse for others. Yeah. But in the end, it would be better.

And we don't often have stories that talk about timelines that way, time travel that way. That's always a terrible thing to destroy the time. But this would be better. Now, I'm going to talk about lighting. Uh-huh. The flat lighting that is iconographic for the period. For the period. Yeah.

It's beautiful for everybody but the Ferengi. In the sense, if you look at the episode, all of a sudden, I'm seeing all the flaws in the makeup, all the things that I never ever. ever see in any other episode. I see the seams. I see the dimples in the makeup. I see where our makeup artists have colored it and put lines in. I see things that normally I don't see because of the lighting. And I'm a little upset because you're drawing back the curtain for the audience and showing

them, you know, this is how we make the art. And that is a disappointment. I don't know what you could have done to keep the iconographic lighting and still kept the work of the makeup artists a secret. That's my problem with the lighting in these scenes. Yeah. It didn't bump me, but I don't have the makeup on, so you're much more hyper aware of it.

There are, I mean, you can see where the seam is between the prosthetic and my mouth. I saw some of that, too. And it's not just the Ferengi. I thought, I thought Odo's in another scene, it was like, wow, you can really see that it's a piece of plastic on his head. It's not plastic, it's foam rubber, but you can see that. And I thought, at the same time, I thought the lighting for the period is perfect. perfect essential brand terrific would have been terrible without it but was there a way to do both I don't know if there was these days it would be easy to do with CGI back then probably not under

the time circumstances we had I mean we probably shot nine pages a day yeah eight eight eight usually eight pages a day so yeah it was a lot of work you had to move fast and and I think you're right Jim you could clean a lot of this up very easily and in simple CGI or color timing and things like that now, but not then. To support your point, though, Armin, I know for, and this may be for actors who play heavy prosthetic characters, I know Ethan Phillips was very protective of Nelix on our show, on Voyager,

and he didn't want to have, like, if I took photos when his costume was off and you saw the T-shirt underneath and his, all that was out, He'd say, just make sure you don't share that. I don't want the fans seeing, looking behind the curtain. And he's all, still, to this day, Ethan's very protective of making Neelix feel authentic, as authentic as possible. So it may be something that only someone like you could experience that sort of protective. I got to protect this. I got to watch out for these things that are undermining the...

And I will give you another take on this. How many, and I'm being pejority. up here, because it happens to both males, to women and men, but how many female actors have come rushing back and saying, I don't like my makeup, this has to be fixed, I want it to look this way, that is not infrequent in our business. So it's really quite the same thing. We want to appear as we, we want to appear in our best light. Yeah, of course.

And you're right. I mean, as much as you love this episode, and this is the one. Well, these are one of the things that it always are going to, yeah, it's always going to bug you. It's always going to be underneath going like, okay, there's a little bit of a pebble in my shoe right now that I can feel it. You know, I get that. It makes sense. Did you watch this show in an air? Yes, absolutely.

Did it bother me then? Probably not. Did you watch every week? Did you watch the show? I did, sure. Good. And I watched for different reasons. And I'll tell you the primary reason I watched.

Maybe it's the same for the other two guys here. I watched to see what I did right and what I did wrong. And if I did something wrong, not to do that again. Got it. It was educational. It was always, yes, I was interested in the show, what everybody did, but being the actor in the show, that choice didn't work. Don't do that again. Oh, that works good.

Let's do that again. You know, let's use that if we can. So it's the same thing when you look at your shows, Jim, I'm sure you're, you're, you're, You're looking at the performances and the lighting and the costume and the makeup, but you're also looking at the camera angles. Did that work? Did that not work? What do I do better the next time? It's a process. It's a process. And that's very admirable that you're watching the show was really to make Cork a better character for the future. That's great. Didn't we all do that? We all tried to make our characters. I would say the vast majority of TV actors that I've worked with never watched the show they were in.

Really? Yeah. That's, forgive me, stupid. how do you learn from your mistakes Robbie I'm sorry Robbie if you're one of them he's one of the I'm stupid it's stupid how do you not learn from your mistake with you I agree with you

for those of you are listening Robbie just covered his face with both of his hands like that in embarrassment you know that he had a family with kids and then kids were all over the place I mean I'm gonna argue with our

for Robbie yeah I did I did find myself if I was shooting 15, 17 hours a day wanting to spend my time with my kids and, you know, go to do those events. Understandable, understandable. But for me, who doesn't have children

and had the time to do it, it was an educational process. How do I make this better? If I don't make it better, then I'm not doing my job, one. And two, I'm not intriguing the writers to do something better for me. Right.

Also, sometimes actors would watch a show and get pissed off at the choices that were made by the producers in terms of takes or performance or scenes cut and becomes quite traumatic for actors so they sort of learn to not do it so they don't get upset. I don't have that kind of ego. I've seen it in others,

but I don't have that kind of ego. After I presented my performance, you deal with it as you will, as you should, your choice, your choice. But for me, when I'm there, I want to give you the best performance I can possibly give within the parameters of what they've given me.

Yeah. Good. All right. Next scene, we go outside the building back to the construction warehouse or the military base in our story. Everybody's smoking again. They're looking at photographs of the shuttle. They can't figure out how it flies. They don't understand how the engines work.

We do see the dog again. The dogs around. Should have gotten guest star billing. Should have. Yes. Not a bad agent. They do talk about how they do, they think they have a language. They haven't been able to talk yet, but they're picking up that they must have a language. They don't talk telepathically.

They have a verbal audio language, audible language like humans. And then Garland appears and says, hey, I think you better come inside right away. And we go inside. And yes, they do have a language. The translator's working. And they can talk to each other for the first time. and Quark says he's got a business proposition. Well, he announces his title.

He's, yeah, first, yeah. Yes, he is the chief, the CFO of the Ferengi Alliance, and he's got business to do. I love the fact that we didn't talk about this, but the whole reason why their universal translators are not working is because of all the nuclear fallout that this planet has engaged in, right? We didn't talk about that, did we?

I thought that was a great tool of the writers to put that in there. I think that was awesome. Yeah, very smart. Besides the comedy, they were putting in social commentary. Oh, yes. Under the radar. Oh, yeah. Which if you watch it a third, fourth time, it becomes clear to you.

Yeah. Ira actually said that, you know, I mean, if you talk about the commentary about atomic testing and also nicotine, that he felt like he hit the nose too on the head with the nicotine, that he wishes he would have pulled back a little bit. Like it was too much like, bad, bad, bad, smoking, you know, where he didn't want to do that. But because you have the comic relief,

I don't think it's that bad. I don't think it's too much. I think it's just right. Okay. Yeah, agreed. Well, we're back in the observation room, Denning's trying to look in his ear to see if there's a translator.

He can't see it. Cork says, it's there, trust me. This was the one time. They asked me once. I'm sure I've said this before, but one of the problems with wearing the makeup is that the heads made us slightly deaf who couldn't hear very well

and then one said to me well if you want it really truly hear we can fix it so that we put a hole in the prosthetics where the ears are and then and you so you could hear and I said how much extra time would that be in the makeup chair and Karen my makeup artist said

probably about 40, 45 minutes I said better to be dead But when they were examining the ears, I thought, eh, we should have probably seen a hole. We should have probably seen. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, he's looking hard. And then Quark says, you know, I'm here to open up trade negotiations with humans and Ferengi.

They talk about things that they could trade, technology, things like that. But Denning's really interested in the weapons. Once weapons come up. He's very interested in that, but he can't authorize it. and then quirk mentions the the russians or actually he he implies we'll talk to another nation state and i think denning says you mean the russians and quark smart he jumps right on that yes the russians denning says uh oh well it'll take some time to get approval and uh cork says no rush take your time and he offers some free advice at this point he says take better care of yourself

the tobacco the atom bombs they're going to kill you which i i liked the balance of social commentary here. I thought that was great. Yeah. And you gave them something free, Armin. Free advice. Free? It's worth, there's a rule of acquisition. Free advice and an empty sack is worth the price of the sack.

Right. Yes. I'm with that rule. Next we go into the exam room. It's nighttime. Carlson and Garland are there. While they discuss naked Ferengi women, nod asked for another ear massage. He says, oh, my ear really need another one of those massages. They're called Umox. Umox, yes. Umox. Made me a little. Which quarks, which is a quark

or nog? I think it's quark who says in the Ferengi language. You hear distinctly the word Umox. Oh, that's right. Is he right? Quark returns. He interrupts this Umach's moment. He wants to talk privately to his fellow Ferengi. Don't you should have looked at Nog, once you see that he's what he's getting, you give him a bit of a stern look, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. He starts to fill them in. And as he's beginning to fill them in, this is when the dog morphs into Odo, which is shocking to all of us, because some of you forgot, and I didn't know. So he says he came along because he knew Quirk was up to something. Odo says he knows where the ship is, and he says he knows it can fly. But he's also putting him under arrest, though, right?

That's what he says when he morphs into it. He says, you're under arrest for chemozyte. More cleverness and genius from ROM where he says, well, if there's a powerful energy source and with the chemisite, maybe we can trigger the same temporal reaction that brought into this timeline. Yes. But this is where Quark says, no, he wants to stay. I don't want to go back.

I can run, you know, trade on the entire planet. I can be richer than the Grand Nagas. Life will be good. So he's happy to stay. Odo says, you're not staying, you're going back, and the ship will be ready in six hours, and you're going to be on it. And then he morphs back into the dog. Another tiny quibble from me, all the writerly things, whenever time clocks get put on things without, like, why does Odo need six hours to get, if the ship's ready to fly, just take him right now. Anyway, that was a little one that I thought, unless, unless.

What I thought should have happened in this scene is, oh, we need a powerful energy source. Well, maybe the nuclear thing. Oh, there's a nuclear test in six hours. All right, six hours, we're going to meet. We're going to go. Okay, okay. That would have helped me. But it felt very arbitrary in this moment to say six hours from now, you're going to be on the ship.

Right. Why? Right. Okay. Well, if they ended it there, we were missing. Jamie, more than anybody would understand, you'd miss 20 minutes of shoot. Yes, that's true. We've got to put all this stuff together.

Yes. All right. Well, back outside the building, Denning arrives in a Jeep. I love the Truman joke in here where he says that piano playing Democrats. He's not as dumb as he looks. I thought that was a nice political joke in there. The president has basically said we got to learn a lot more about them before he'll make a deal. And Wainwright, my buddy, James McDonald, is going to go in and talk.

to him so off he goes um inside back inside the exam room rham is nervous here he says he does quote from the farangy book of acquisition something about new customers can be dangerous or what does he say yes they can bite you in the ass yeah new customers are like razor tooth grie worms they can be succulent but sometimes they bite back i like that rule of acquisition and i've razor tooth grie worms sound disgusting, but to Ferengi, I guess they're succulent and delicious. Robbie, your friend, the guest star who played Wainwright, he would have been filming right when we were filming Voyager. So your buddy was literally 20 feet away from you.

You didn't even know. I didn't know. Oh, my God. Okay, sorry. But that's the funny thing about Star Trek that is so different than any other show I've ever done is here we are talking 30 years later. and most shows you do a show you might stay in touch for a little while

but people go off into their their other shows and make new friends and move on so yeah James McDonald was like one of those guys like we really hit it off we could have hung out and stayed good friends but life takes you different paths

but when the great thing about actors as a community it's probably true of everybody, but there can be a long period of separation. Yet the moment you reconnect, it's as though time has vanished. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Well said. Now we're in the interrogation room. Quark is tied up in a chair. He says he's going to take his business to the Russians and they want to know what he knows about the Russians. This is where Megan Gallagher prepares a truth serum shot the old squeeze the the syringe and poison comes out nice can we go back i think i

think i'm right about this i think i the scene where quark talks to general denning about what he can offer have we done that yet yes we do yes so let me go back and reference that okay um i should have spoken then that was one of my happy moments during the seven years jim um that speech that they gave me was so delicious not only what it said but the length of it it was it was to me almost shakespearean in in what it had to say in the length of it and and and the way you moved me around I think it was probably you um move me around the the set um I enjoyed that's one of when I look back on my ears in deep space nine that moment was one of the most enjoyable acting moments that I ever had

whether it was successful or not for the episode that I can't tell you but for me personally it was a personal joy it's when I look back on the seven years that's at the forefront of the memorable moments what was a great scene I'm looking at it I went back and I'm looking at it now because you start talking about you know

I've been sent by my people to open up a market for advanced Ferengi technology what kind of technology oh how would you like to travel beyond the stars it wasn't just a list it was selling in a poetic way what star trek is all about that's right that's right that's right robbie that's that's one of the things i liked about it i who was always a big star trek fan was advocating all the glories that star trek offers its audience uh yes these are military things but but these are all things that the writers over the course of many years had come up with it and i could regurgitate them up in this speech um and i found

that to be enormously delicious yeah it was great great scene and the movement you talked about i i i i i noticed that jamie the way that you let him work the space and work the room and sell these ideas coming at the camera as he's building up you know an idea um It was great and connecting things. So it wasn't just talking heads, standing still and cutting back and forth. You allowed the actors to use the space and use the bounce off of each other in the way it was staged in a great way. It was really good. So if I may, thank you, Jamie.

You're welcome. I'm glad I've been part of one of your favorite scenes. It was. You're part of another one, but you're also part of this one. So that would mean that Jamie is one of your favorite. favorite directors then yes that's that's a given that's a given no he's a terrific director and he makes a set feel very comfortable he has good ideas he's quiet but authoritarian is that the right word authoritarian um so that you feel authoritative thank you yeah third's quiet but authoritative and and so

you feel you're in good hands you know that you're being taken care of and uh uh certainly over the several episodes that I did with him, he was one of my favorites. And as a human being, he's a terrific guy as well. And one hell of a golfer, I understand. The tennis player. I'll add one more adjective. I'm going to say calm. Calm as well.

By quiet, that's what I mean. Yes, yes, yes. That's my close adjective to your quiet. I would say calm when I think of Jamie. All right. We come back from commercial break. Cork is screaming. We find out this is now five shots of sodium pentothal of truth serum that has been put into a system.

And we don't even know what sodium pentothal does the pharyngees. I mean, it's clearly painful. It's not good. But it doesn't get the desired effect. No, he's not telling the truth about anything at all. I think this is when, doesn't, doesn't, uh, Nog take the, take the, the, the, the initiative here. Yeah. He jumps in and he says, well, let's just give him what he wants.

He's like, yes, we're here to invade you. We're part of this massive attack force. They're all, all these ships are waiting in orbit right now to come and get you. And of course, Wainwright's just eating this up. He loves it. He's like, oh, this is fabulous. This is exactly what we thought of. They talk about a landing zone of where this is going to happen.

He wants to get untied to show him. And Nog points over at one of the Great Lakes. Yeah, well, he points at one of the Great Lakes. He goes, right here, by the Blue Blob, which is one of the Great Lakes. And then Wainwright says, you mean Cleveland? He says, no, no, no, not Cleveland, right here. And that's when Nog elbows win, right? And the melee begins where they knock everybody out and they start the escape.

Credits to Aaron Eisenberg, there's a lot of wonderful moments that he has as Nog. This, I thought, you know, this is another side of Nog that you haven't seen. And his comic timing on delivering his lines is great. Yeah. It's really great. Good laughs in this. scene. And of course, Rahm is screaming Moogie, which is his, you know, when I have gone to conventions with Max, invariably the audience asks him to scream Moogie.

He does it well. Oh, my gosh. He may be smart. He may be a genius, but he's not. He's a mom's boy. Yes, he loves his mom. Yeah, so there's a melee. And at the end of this, Garland and Carlson end up helping them and taking out the last two guards that came in the room so we see that they're taking a risk here they're switching to the Ferengi side of things and they help them escape out of the room which is also with sort of a 50 sci-fi trope too

yeah yes yes but I love one of the final scenes when they're escaping Carlson says he goes the ship come on your ship's in has Hanger 18, which again, Jamie directed Hanger 18. So I just love the fact that there's a little bit of, you know, homage to.

So good. Jamie's involvement in Hanger 18 there. Yeah, we go outside. Garland sends the guards off as they run in the wrong direction into the building. Quark and our heroes come running out. And as they run past, the general stops them with a couple other guards. Guns are drawn. Quark pretends to have a disintegrating death ray in his finger, which I loved.

He points it at Garland, you know, stay back or I'll disintegrate the hostage. With the finger, he says. With your finger? Death ray. Looks a lot like a finger to me. Right then, the spare wheel on the Jeep is what morphs into Odo, who knocks out the two MPs. This is where I thought he came out of thin air. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not sure that by the time it caught my attention, it looked like it was just coming out of thin air. Yeah, they didn't catch the wheel. I'm sure there was a shot that tied them together, but there was probably coverage that didn't. We might have chosen to not show the tire. Yeah, maybe.

There you go. Odo appears. He knocks out the guards with Denning. Quirk, I love Quark's line. My hero. Who's that? Who's he? My hero.

And, you know, my relationship with Renee was very special, so that was from the heart. Yes. That's not acting. That's from the heart. That was very sweet. Now we see the Jeep driving to the hangar, Hanger 18, where the ship is. I just have to say, in the background, so that's the alley between the construction building and what is that stage, where your promenade was. What was that stage?

I think it's between, we were on... Nine. We were on nine. Nine. And I, um, no, nine was ours, guys. Really? Then it was eight, eight. Eight is ours too. We have eight and nine. We had eight and nine. Seven is the, is the promenade. Seven, there you go. That makes sense. Okay. So stage seven's on the left hand side of the frame. The construction building is on the right hand side of the frame.

In the background is where our makeup trailers were parked. And that's right where my trailer, you, behind the Jeep driving at us, would have been where my trailer sits and then our stage was right there in the offices outside so that moment i was like oh a little nostalgia for me because that's spent a lot of time there now just an anecdote uh it was late in the day obviously it's dark yeah uh we'd all piled into this jeep and we had to do several takes i can't remember why but we had to do several takes of the jeep coming forward and we got a little punch drunk uh not liquor but just we were just tired Yeah. And we just started singing in the trailer.

I remember we were all just being fools singing in the trailer, waiting, waiting, you know, for Jamie to say action. We were just, you know, because you drive up and then you have to drive back. You have to drive up and then you have to drive back. So we just began singing songs and just goofing off and stuff. Oh, that's funny. It was delightful. That evening was delightful.

Oh, wow. That sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds like a lot of fun. Well, they pull up to Hanger 18, which is the backside of the construction, a warehouse. They need to go to the next nuclear bomb test. We learn it's at 5 a.m. Rom starts to try to explain this to the scientists, and Cork says, save your breath. And as they run inside, Garland has a nice little moment where she's very hopeful.

Actually, they're still there. Yeah. And Garland is very hopeful that humans will travel to the stars someday and maybe. An alliance. Yes. And take its place in a vast alliance of planets, she says. Rom corrects her, Federation of Planets. And that's what Garland's like, excuse me, Quirk says, don't pay any attention to him.

He's an idiot. I would have liked when Rom says, Federation of Planets, that Quark chimes in, It could have been the Ferengi for Federation of Planet if you listen to me. So, yeah. Yeah. And then another trope of the period here where Carlson's comment to her noble, idealistic, optimistic view of the future, Carlson's comment is, oh, a vast alliance of planets. You get the craziest ideas.

You girls. It was such a, yes, yes, chauvinistic sort of. Yes. And the kiss to punctuate it. And before the kiss. Yeah. I don't know what Megan did, but she flounced into the Jeep, which to me really echoed the period of the 50s. What do you mean by that?

She just sort of flounced in. She jumped in? I mean, what is the flounce? She just sort of hop skipped and jumped into the, which seemed to me, when I looked at that, just the way she got into the Jeep. She comes down, she takes a couple of steps and then she steps into the jeeps and she flounces in and she adjusts her skirt, by the way. She fits the period. Yeah, it was just like, that's perfect, perfect. I love it.

That's great. We go back over to where the general was, Wainwright. Some of the guards are showing up as the ship flies away. So you had a nice interactive light on them as they see the ship. And bumps in the wall. What was that? that that I really that that was a visual effect but I thought it looked great when the ship came out of the roof yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it looked really good uh waynwright says what are we going to do now and denning says

what are you talking about all we ever found was a weather balloon so yeah a classic roswell mythology there um inside the ferengu's shuttle they're racing towards the bomb site we cut outside we see them flying over the desert and a great sort of stock footage combo of a nuclear mushroom cloud as they fly into it back inside the shuttle yeah nice interactive light on them they're inside that that nuclear test and a bit of trivia here glen newfield the visual effects supervisor seasons one through four on ds nine located an original negative of the footage of the nuclear detonation, and cleaned it up substantially for this episode. So this is actual footage of a nuclear bomb being detonated in the desert.

So there you go. Yeah, it looked to me like they had kind of mashed up a few different elements, but it looked great. Outside in space, we see it come back into our story's current timeline, and we cut inside. They made it. They do get a hail, which they're thrilled about. getting a hail means they're back in the right timeline and it's earth's orbital control calling them and they're going to tractor them and get them a docking bay take them to a docking bay

now it's going to make it to the academy quark is still grumpy about all that profit he lost he says humans are still a bunch of savages underneath we cut to ds9 i think this is our final scene right they're at an airlock ram and cork are heading out talking about about being back home. They step onto a lift, and suddenly Odo grabs cork. He's under arrest for smuggling. Cork tries to get out of it. You don't have any evidence.

It's all burned up in the time jump. All that, all the, what was it, you were smuggling again? Kemosite. Kemosite. All burned up. You don't have the evidence. But Odo says, tell that to the arbiter and drags him out. I liked your physicality, the comedy of your,

God, it was great. You're kind of, it was like the hook on stage or something. Just the way, I don't know how you did that, Armand, but your body was sort of leaning in this crazy, oh, it was great. Just, yeah, this, whoa-ho, it was very, the blocking was, was fabulous. Good job.

Thank you. And then it ends on a bit of a sentimental note with Rom, a private moment with Ron. Sentimental. The last thing I think it was sentimental. Really? Stretcher, he wants to take over the bar. That's right.

Well, I mean, after that, yes, he wants to take over the bar. But after he's gone, it feels like Rahm is very proud of himself. He's proud of his son. Like, there was a moment non-scripted. Yes, yes. And what you see is him proud of himself. I see. And Jamie seems to agree with me.

He's going to take over the bar. Oh, okay. I didn't see the take. What I saw was he was actually enjoying the fact that you were being detained and arrested, like something was, you know, and that he was like, I would agree with that. But he was, mine was going to the future, which was I'm taking over the bar for a few weeks. All right.

Right. I think the whole, I saw the whole story for Rom. Okay. It was a hero moment. I don't know what episode you were watching. He's, he's made a lot of smart decisions. He's going to have the bar for a few weeks. Life is good. He was very happy.

He's going to have to get rid of Norm first. Morn first. Yes. I like Robby's utopian. take on it. I like the fact that you're like, look at this. It's beautiful. Life is good. Yes. Oh my goodness. Well, that's it. We got it. Yeah. Great episode. Fabulous episode. It is a great episode. Congratulations. Thank you for inviting me to join. This is really fun walking back through it all.

Oh, it's been super cool. Oh, we do need to talk about the theme. The lesson that we get from this episode. What would that be Robbie McNeil for you? What's that? my lesson for this episode is there's always good somewhere if you look for it i think that to me the lesson came out of going back in time there were a lot of criticisms of earth and but there's always good i think carlson and garland those two characters kind of showed up as the good in humanity and i that's i like it yeah and also i saw that in rome i saw there's there's there's potential that if you look for it every there's potential everywhere if you look for it

maybe that's a better lesson yeah glasses half full for you on this I love it okay armine what is your lesson for this episode my lesson is I should write down what the theme of this episode is because I'm looking at my paperwork and there's no mention anywhere I think um so I don't know what the theme is whatever you guys say will be fine with me okay jaymy did you want to chime in Do you have a lesson? I would just say that the most naive characters in the piece had the most profound things to say. Okay.

That's true. Sometimes wisdom comes from unexpected places. That's what, that is a good one. I like that. Yeah, mine was, I had a couple. One was, the truth will set you free literally because it was, it was, you know, I think it was, was it, was it, Robb's the one. that sort of said,

you know, it was an accident. This is what happened. And essentially, him telling the truth, I think, is what put the nurse and the scientist on their side in a way. It was like, oh, these guys are being. So that is ultimately what ended up setting them free. It was changing the tide of, you know, or at least having someone on their side.

And that came from telling the truth and not telling a lie. The also, my other theme is, I just, because it sounds catchy, that it's important to collaborate to reunificate. Is that a word? Reunificate? I'm trying to get reunification. Reunification with the current timeline of what they are trying to get.

Collaboration. Collaboration provides reunification. There you go. Yeah, we'll go with that. All right. Those are mine. Our Patreon, Paul, winner for the theme slash lesson moral of this episode, as submitted by Snazzy O or Snazzy Zero.

Is that a zero or no, Robbie? Don't know. Okay. Snazy, who knows? Never trust cousin, Gala. Yeah. It's a good lesson. Yeah, it's a good lesson.

We like that. All right. Well, we have come to the end of this podcast. We want to thank everyone for tuning in. Join us next time when we will be recapping and discussing the episode, The Sword of Kalish. with Terry. For all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for our bonus materials section.

And we'll see everyone else next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.