The Delta Flyers - Macrocosm

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Macrocosm. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Macrocosm:After returning from a first contact mission, Janeway, Neelix and the Doctor must retake Voyager from an infestation of microorganisms that grow to an alarming size.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, PJ Tomas, Nicholaus Russell, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, and ArianaAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Elaine Ferguson, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, John Espinosa, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Liz Lowe, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Justin Weir, Simon Inman, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michelle Maroney, Rickard Fahlander, and Meg JohnsonThank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey guys, welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, none other than Mr. Robbie Duncan McNeil. Robbie Duncan McNeil. Robbie Duncan McNeil with an eye infection. What? Yeah, I've got a, I don't know if you can see. I don't want to gross everybody out, but I've got like a little. I can see that. It's in the right corner of your eye.

Yeah, it's right there. When you look left, I can see it. It is very red. I know. Those of you who are listening, I know. Honestly, guys, it looks like someone just, it was like a left jab right to, to his eye. Just imagine what Tom Paris looked like in threshold. This is the beginning of threshold.

This is the beginning. Yes. Basically, it's, I'm going to turn into a lizard soon. Well, what you're saying is it starts with pink eye. You get conjunctivitis, you get pink eye, your eye gets red, and then you turn into a lizard. Exactly. That's how it all starts, the threshold. Goodness, this is crazy.

Wow. You're in a closet, right? You told me you're in a closet. Yeah, I'm in the new house. Let's get this straight. You're not in the closet. You are in a closet. I'm in a closet.

So if you're in the closet, that would mean that you are actually. That's a different expression. Yes. Yes. We want to be clear about that. Okay. Can you please explain what's happening? Yeah, well, I moved into a new house and I tried to do this set up, set all this up in my, let's call it the library or I don't know what it's going to be, but it's like, it's a nice room that was space. But it's, there's nothing in the house yet. We have so little set up that it's really echoey. Everything is super echoey. So I realized there's this kind of storage closet, walking closet that's got carpet on the floor. And, you know, It's kind of quiet, so this is where I'm at. I'm in a closet. Yes. Thank you for clarifying that. How does it sound?

It sounds better than before. Yeah. Just everyone knows, we recorded a deep dive recording a video basically for Patreon patrons, and it was so, that sound was bouncing everywhere. It sounded like Robbie had moved into an empty house and all his belongings had not made it to the house yet. It basically, that's what it was. So this is better. In a closet is much better.

So what are we talking about this week? What's a, we're almost half macrocosm. I can't believe we're almost halfway done. I know. This is crazy. We're almost to the three and a half year point, right? Season three, middle of season three. Yep.

And we went for seven. So three point five would be half of seven. Yep. My goodness. Time has flown by. It really has. It's crazy. I can't believe it.

Yikes. Okay. All right. Well, I'm excited to watch this one at our, nearing our halfway point. I can't wait and to review an episode from my new house in the echoey house. The echoey, echoey, echo, echo. Yes. All right, guys, we'll be right back. We'll be right back. And Patreon, patrons, stay tuned for what do we remember. Hey guys, we are back from our rewatch. Robbie's rewatch took probably one-fifth of the time of my rewatch, just so everyone knows.

I did the rewatch, I did my notes, I took a nap, I had a snack, I made a snack. I went down the basement, worked on a project, clean the kitchen, probably other things. I just want you to say, I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to tell you this podcast is good for your nap life and check off your to-do list life because you get to do all these little extra things that you would not have time for, but since you're waiting for me, you have time for it.

Yeah, all right, macrocosm. Do it. Let's do it. It's written by Brandon Braga. Yeah. And directed by Alex Singer. Alex Singer. Alex Singer.

Alex, old. He was old school. Old school. We love Alex. And that was my impersonation of Alex. He sort of has this kind of voice where he's clearly from the East Coast. You know, he's got that East Coast accent. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we love Alex. That was that. We loved Alex. And that's why I'm wearing a Brooklyn shirt right now in honor. Oh, nice. Really. Yeah.

What did you think? I liked it. It's just interesting how stories are structured because this one was clearly, you know, mystery, mystery. and then let's fill you in on what happened. Yeah, lots of flashback scenes, right? Filling Janeway in, filling the audience in on the mystery. Yeah, for me, this episode, you know, there were so many different levels to this episode

because you're jumping back and forth between time and, you know, you're trying to figure out what's going on in the beginning. It's kind of an almost like a horror slash murder mystery kind of feel when you're going through there. So overall, I mean, as a fan, I was entertained by this episode. like this episode. I didn't hate this episode at all. Right. Right. You know, there was a lot of good things about it. Right. But it was definitely had some flaws for me. Sure. Okay. No problem. No problem. We'll get into that. Let's go ahead and get our, let's do our synopsis, our poetry synopsis.

Let's hear your, your haiku. Here comes my haiku for Star Trek Voyager's episode, Macrocosm. TAC-TAC have sweet moves Mucacy virus spreads fast Janeway wins and paints Yes That was amazing That's my haiku

I'm really happy with that one I like that one I had to get the TACTac in there Because I've never seen anything like it You know and since I'm I'm, uh, you know, you and I, Paris and Kim are buddies. And, and in real life, we're sometimes on the same wavelength. And I've got TACTAC and my poetry. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. Here we go. My Limerick for macrocosm. While Janeway trades with the TACTac, Voyager deals with an attack. The doctor's alive. He helps synthesize an antigen, which brings everyone back. Oh, nice. Very nice. Thank you. That really covers. you know, in a much more straightforward way. It does. It does. And I almost just, it was almost like a run-on sentence the last verse.

I just used everything together there. So yeah. Okay. So once again, written by Brandon, directed by Alex Singer, we start out, the very opening scene that is... By the way, before you start, before you start, before you start. Oh, yes. Here's one important thing I have to say. What? This was a concept that I thought was very interesting based on, you know, the things. fact that we are dealing with a pandemic right now. We're dealing with a, yes. We're dealing with a, you know, coronavirus pandemic. We've been in it for a year. And here is an episode about a virus that it evolves so fast. It grows from a microscopic level into something, you know, insect

size and then much larger. Much, much larger. Yeah, which is interesting. I hadn't thought about this. Brandon wrote it. It's another sort of sped up evolution concept. It's like, you know what I mean? I think Brandon definitely likes that concept of like, you know, biological evolution happening, you know, speeding up at a super fast rate and, you know, all of that. I just, it's an interesting, you know, connection to the writer. No, that's a good point. And I also, you know, I didn't bring this up before when you asked me what I thought about this episode. But I definitely, through the entire viewing of this of this episode, I kept thinking about parallels to what we're dealing with now with COVID.

19 the entire I'm like oh my goodness yeah goodness you know so yeah I think that's really important to put in the context of this because I had the same thing like yeah yeah you realize it's a virus invading and you know there were so many interesting echoes of what we're dealing with you know metaphorically of course yeah yeah so let's jump to the opening scene they're in the shuttle and I thought they were in the alien shuttle but they're not they're actually in the starfleet shuttle which looks for some reason very large and spacious you know in this particular opening scene. I had the same thought. For me, I think because we ended up with the Delta Flyer for the last few years as kind of a main shuttle. Right. Often that's what we went to. That looking at some of these

scenes in the original shuttle, you realize how big it was. It was, we inherited that set from NextGen. Yeah. That's a TNG shuttle, yeah. Yeah, it's a TNG shuttle. But it was a big big, you know, you could fit a lot of people in there. Yeah. It was a big sort of empty space in the middle. Right. Right. We have the guest star playing the TACTAC counselor or council, however they refer to him. That's Alby Selznick. Did you ever work with Albi other than, okay. No. He was in one of my acting classes. So he's a fellow student, you know, with a certain acting teacher that we had. I can't remember to this day who that was. But I remember he and I were in the same class. That's Oh, interesting. Yeah. So when he was on set, I remember. I remember.

talking to him. I wondered if he was like a dancer or something. He seemed like a theater person because of those moves. I mean, yeah. He did a great job of, you know, the moves, the physical communicating with gestures. And I mean, it's a very funny idea. It was so funny. It was kind of silly to me. Definitely silly to the point that it was reminiscent of Third Rock from the Sun for me because that that sitcoms that that sitcom basically you know with john lithgo as humans posing as aliens um aliens posing as humans excuse me they have like a salute or greeting which is very like it's kind of like what neelix was doing when he was having his hands up by his face like that they do a weird weird little thing so these these overly exaggerated um obnoxious kind of gestures reminded me of

third rock from the sun yeah very kind of very sitcom sitcomish like gag gaggy like a yeah Like a funny comedy gag. And, you know, when Chainway starts to talk, she, you know, it's mostly Neelix and, and this tack-tack character. Yeah. Make her quiet. Is it what did he say? Make her.

And he's like, his fingers are like, make her, what did he say? Please make her be quiet. Make her quiet. Yeah. Something like very awkward. Yeah. Yeah. And then Neelix says, you know, whatever, good health or something in his elbow.

He does his, the knee-lix elbow. Right. But he looks away when he has to say. Yeah, he looks away. puts his elbow up and it was just all the weird gesture. It was silly. It was very silly. Yeah, but we learn later when

they've departed, they're heading back to Voyager. We learned later that Janeway basically offended the tack-tow by having her hands on her hip, which is a very Janeway posture on the bridge. She does the hands on the hips a lot. But then that reminded me of growing up in Memphis, Tennessee,

I took martial arts from the same teacher who taught Elvis Presley, Master Congri. And in that school, if you had your hands on your hip or your or your arms folded you were you were basically reprimanded and you had to do push-ups like if they caught anybody doing that so that that was offensive in our school like we're not supposed to ever have our hands on our hips yeah so then i started so he was a tack-tack he was a tack-tack my master master kongri was a tack-tack so um we learn about the possible promotion of future promotion of meelix to ambassador right i didn't want to bring this up you know

Harry never got any offers of promotion. Here, Neelix is like using his elbow and he gets an ambassador. Well, I went all tack-tack when I saw that. I was so offended. I was like, what the? Yeah. And what I took away from that is Harry should have used elbow gestures when he was communicating and you would have gotten a promotion.

Okay. I should have said, Captain, how are you? Exactly. Great today. Have you thought of promoting an engine? Please keep talking. Please keep talking. Yes.

Okay, fine. The Voyager is not at the rendezvous coordinates and not responding to hails. What is going on? So Janeway does a long-range scan. She finds out it's one light year away. And the ship appears to be adrift. So here begins the mystery, right? The story begins as a mysterious, like, an absence.

What's going on? A disappearance, yeah. They basically, nobody's responding. They don't know what the heck's going on. So they fly over there. and the ship is empty. Everything is at red alert. Yes, they detect one thing, a bioelectric field, which is permeating the ship. That's all they can access. The main computer is down. The comm systems are offline. Janeway does notice there's a bio-neural

gel pack, which has ruptured in sick bay. So, you know, she's thinking there's something going on here. They come across, you know, somebody's equipment that was doing maintenance work. Yeah. The power relay being, you know, worked on for some reason and the tools are just left there. Yeah. They hear some voices. Yes, they detect a calm signal and they hear some type of voices, right? It's coming from Samantha Wildman's quarters. And again, this whole thing is reminiscent of aliens like at the second movie where they go to the colony and they come in, they say, wow, these people were in the middle of breakfast. They must have just left, you know, and it's the same thing. This thing is, this program's running. It's Neelix's

Good Morning Voyager program, which is set on an automatic playback. That's why it's still, going on. Neelix says, by the way, she's my most dedicated listener, which I loved, that he knew that. He was very happy that Lieutenant Wildman loves his Good Morning Voyager show. And we saw a little clip of it. We saw a little moment of him on the screen. His enthusiastic Neelix Good Morning Show. That should be a segment for Delta Flyers. We should have the Good Morning Voyager show with like Neelix cartoons that are animated. Oh, God, that's great. Yeah. That'd be good, right? Yeah. We discovered that 11 hours ago, this is when this thing started going on.

So this number of 11 keeps popping up, right? The protein decay of the food tells us 11 hours ago. So we know that is a big number right there. Really, there's nothing like a good old-fashioned mystery story. We go to the transporter room, and we see that there's this hole in the floor of the transporter pad, which, once again, it looks so much like the movie, the alien, the xenomorph. That's what you call it. It's this hole.

and it's got slime all over it. Slime as ever. Mucilaginous compound, Janeway says. Yes. With non-humanoid DNA. Yes. And again, if you watch the original alien film,

when the alien was cut, its blood was acidic, and it would melt through all the floors of the spacecraft. And that's kind of what this looks like, even though it's not an acid reaction. This thing just punched right through the floor, right? and then it left this trail of, yeah.

It goes into the Jeffrey's tubes, Janeway says. And just about this point, the environmental controls start to fail. It's getting very, very hot. Yeah, going offline. Yeah, and they're heading down to whatever deck the hole was going to. When the turbo lift suddenly stops and you can hear this insect sound, the turbo lift is kind of bouncing around. Clearly something's trying to get in or do something.

Yeah. Yeah. And then now we find out that Neelix grew up near these Rhinax Marshlands so that he was used to these 50 degrees Celsius temperatures in the summer, 90% humidity, lava flies, which is kind of foreshadowing to the little fly-like things that have come out later. But it's funny because did you notice when he talks, he leaves Janeway in the turbo lift and he walks a circle. And the way that's filmed, man, that turbo lift looks like it's like 60 feet. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It is so cramped in there. The way that they would do that, yeah, the way that you would do that is you would have a cameraman with a camera on his shoulder and a very wide angle lens, like a fish eye almost. Yes. And then you would have the two shot and you would have Neelick start to walk and the camera operator

would just turn in a circle to follow him around. But that wide angle lens makes everything seem much deeper. Yes. It really is. Yeah. because it really looked like he covered a mile, right? I mean, he's covering so much ground in this walk around, yeah. And it's very cramped in there.

No, it's not big at all. So it was not a target. That lens made it look very deceiving. Yeah, very much so. So that's one thing I wrote down. I'm like, Jesus, it looks like he's walking around the bridge or something, right? And then after he describes his youth and growing up with all these bugs and he's so used to, you know, hot weather and it's not bothering him. all of a sudden, a one of these giant monster in, you know, the tentacle.

Yeah. The tentacle pops through the side of the turbo lift and spuse him with some musilaginous compound. I wrote he got slimed, Ghostbuster style basically. Totally got sling. Right there. And you know what? Maybe that's what we should start saying. Like if you kind of have a bit of a cough and I'll be like, you know what?

You seem to have a lot of miscellaginous compound in your throat. I could say, I could use this as. our everyday terminology from now. Absolutely. Forward. Yes? I like miscellaginous compound. I would like to use it as much as possible. Awesome. That's so good. Okay. So now... And he says, he says, I'm okay. I'm okay. He's okay. Right, right. But we realize later this is the way they transmit the virus by getting slimed, essentially, as well as being bit,

as well, you know, other ways, too. We're not to that point yet. In the Jeffries Tube, Janeway detects faint human life sign. I just want to point something out. When you see these shots of the Jeffries tube if you watch this episode. You'll notice that the Jeffries tube doesn't appear to go straight. It's like the lights on the side sort of go straight for a while. And then the angle sort of changes and it looks, you know, the color is a little different. The reason for that is at the end of the Jeffries tube, there was just a projection like a photograph or whatever at the back of our Jeffries tube. Yeah. Of a much longer Jeffries tube. There was no set there. The Jeffries

tube was only about 10 feet long. It was not that long. That's right. you can see it a number of times in these scenes when they're crawling in Jeffrey's tubes that behind them probably like three or four feet behind them was just a photograph of more Jeffries Tube of more Jeffries Tube yeah there was there's not what the Jeffries tubes we had typically were not that big the ones we had standing occasionally a few times we did build some longer sections for special episodes but in this one I noticed every time you look at the back of the Jeffries tube it was like oh there's that photograph yeah doesn't quite match it's a little bluer.

Well, that's the magic of Hollywood once again, right? Just got to make sure the audience can't pick it out and discover what you're doing. Now, at this point, when he's, you know, Neelix is feeling the effects of being infected, and he doesn't know he's infected, really, but he can't really go on. And at this point, this whole thing became Joseph Campbell for me. Like the whole, you know, it's like, yeah, the hero's journey. Right? And basically, Neelix is the guy.

that takes Janeway to a certain point, but then he can't go any further. Am I right? That he passes and he says, you must go alone on this journey. That's right. Immediately, I kept thinking of you and your, you know, you talk about hero's journey with Joseph. I love the hero's journey. It's the foundation of storytelling. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So she climbs up to a higher level to access a med kit because she's trying to get a hypo spray to come down and help Neelix, you know, feel better. But she gets back and he's gone. and he's been attacked and basically taken away by one of the entities.

Because at this point, we don't know. We've seen a tentacle, but we don't know anything else, right? So very scary. Engineering is the next set where Janeway shows up. I did record some comments as I watched this part. Oh, good. Her phaser technique in an engineering was impeccable, like the turning and pointing and circling around.

And my God, I was watching it going like, wow. That is a lot of turning and pointing. Do you think someone coached her on that? Here's the thing. When I have done, like on Turner and Hooch, we have the U.S. Marshals as our main character's job. He was a U.S. Marshal. Whenever we had a scene on Turner and Hooch where he had to draw a weapon or do anything

tactical. Yes. We had a consultant was there. A consultant there to say, oh, when you approach this door, you'd come from the side. Yeah. You know, you'd push the door and look quickly. And then if it's clear, you make the next move. Correct.

He knew all the moves of where to hold the weapons. Yeah, he gave the step by step to the actors, right? For the real, yes, the authentic sort of tactical techniques that you would use. Of course. I don't ever remember us having a tactical advisor on Star Trek. No, we never had a phaser consultant. No. So as I watched her enter engineering, which is a wide open, if there were bad guys in there with weapons,

it would be like, you know, shoot, what do they say? Shooting something in a barrel, fish in a barrel or something? Like she would be like fish in a barrel in there. And her technique was, I love Kate, but it was horrible. Well, the moves had no bearing on, tactically on where she might be vulnerable or not. It was just cool moves. Okay, I'm going to rewind just a little bit. Do you remember when they, when her and Neelix,

first go to Samantha Wildman's quarters and they open up the door. She kind of jumps in. Did you notice that? There's like a little bit of a jump there. So that's when I was like, oh, okay. This is quite stylized, you know, and then it continues later. It's very flashy and showy, but it's not smart. Open that door. You would take cover for a beat to see if anyone made a move. Then you, you know, cover me while I go in. And there's tactical techniques. Yeah. Yes. But back. to engineering. Now we're back in engineering. Did you notice she did a lot of two-handed phaser? Oh, yeah. Which I'm sorry, I don't recall. I don't think anyone else ever did that. Because I mean, if you think, you're holding a modern 20th century weapon where you're,

or 21st century weapon now, you're holding two hands specifically for the recoil that happens from the nine millimeter that you're firing, right? You're not going to get that recoil. You're not going to get that recoil from a phaser. So it's really, it's a superfluous movement to add another hand for, I guess to make it more steady. It was all part of the flashy, showy stuff. It worked. All right. But it worked fine. Yeah. But if you, if, as long as you don't think about it too hard. Yeah. No. Just start thinking about, oh, if there were bad guys, you haven't looked behind you, Kate, and that big wide open balcony that's right behind you. Yeah. By the way, speaking of the balcony. I love that set. I just love engineering. Oh, it's great. It's such a beautiful set. And then

Janeway goes to the upper level. And I always thought that upper level with that plexiglass floor. It was so cool. And this was before anyone really did plexiglass floors anywhere, right? So this was really kind of an advanced, kind of hip, futuristic concept. And I just loved that set period. So she's at the upper level and she finds in a storage crate, basically, that she loads up on equipment. She's putting in phaser rifles. And I love she finds like a buoy number. knife too, right? She's like, I'm going to take a knife too just in case. She uses it later. Use it later. Explosives. She's got the whole thing. Yeah. By the way, I wrote down, Janeway took all the weapons that Voyager has. It literally felt like she opened up the trunk

of all the weapons that the whole ship had. And she took one of everything, at least. Yeah. When you say the trunk, it's so much like the, the, uh, television series Supernatural. They go into their trunk for all their weapons. And that's Janeway, that's Janeway's supernatural moment, right? She gears up, once again, similar to Ripley from the aliens franchise. She took her clothes off in that scene too. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, because the environmental controls are off. So she takes off the outer layer of her suit. Yeah. And then I noticed that the undergarment was sort of floppy. That thing had Velcro or something on it in the back. Because when she pulled that little, that mock turtleneck thing off, it came off like,

Nothing. It just, it was like, you know, you could almost hear the Velcro on, unfastening or unlatching. And then she's now an undershirt. She's in her tank top. Her tank top, excuse me. But I know that that thing, the other thing that we had to wear underneath took way longer to take off. That thing was like, you know, you had to shimmy out of it. Zipper up the back. Yeah. And there's a zipper in the back. So that would have, you know, so that was probably fabricated by a wardrobe department. Oh, just for this quick tear off for that gag. That's it. Yeah, the magic of Hollywood. She took her communicator off. Yeah, she stuck it on. But when she reached down, she sort of reached down and twisted it. Really? I was like, why is she twisted? It's just Velcro. Like,

it just comes on and off. But I think she wanted to make a move that was like, like, like, yeah, like that's the way you take it. Yeah, it's a lot. As if it's locked into some, something, which it's not. Well, it's not, but I like that. Look at that. That's attention to detail. I think if Kate came up with that, I applaud that then. I think that's really good. I noticed it.

I did notice it. I think too often actors, you know, fail to realize that there's extra steps involved. Like, if you're more, if you have more attention to detail, like you'd then add these little extra things to your performance, which she did, which is good. Next, I think we see her on the bridge. She comes on the bridge, nobody's there. But you see a lot of green slime, and I just kept thinking of Nickelodeon in the 90s. and, you know... It's the same color as Nickelodeon slime.

That's sort of lime green, yeah. Yes, it was the green slime. I did notice that she made her way across the bridge and looking around that there's slime everywhere. But I did notice that my station had the most slime of any place on the bridge. So my takeaway of that is I must have put up a very heroic fight

to get the most slime on the bridge. Okay. Or maybe the virus that was near you was just the most snotty. of all the viruses. It had the most mucilaginous compound. I mean, it's funny because I thought that when I saw this, and then later on, when I see what really happens,

I realized I was nowhere near the bridge when all this went down. You were in the mess hall, right? That's what you yeah. I mean, so the truth is my heroic story, my heroic interpretation of the most slime,

I was burning steak in the mess hall. Yes, you were. I find it funny that you're sitting there and you see the alien perspective. Now the camera angle is the is the macro virus. Yeah, this weird sort of hovering kind of yeah, like on a steady cam kind of like floating through. And I'm thinking why does Janeway not see this? Because up until this point, we've only established the tentacle. So you're thinking this thing's huge, right? So I'm thinking how can she not in her peripheral vision see this thing floating towards her? Yeah. But then we realize this is the

This is the smaller version. This is the fly-sized version, right? Yeah, it's a bug. It's a tiny little bug. It hits her arm and she smacks it and kills it. She kills a little bug and she pulls out a dermal regenerator and tries to, you know, heal herself, I guess. Yeah. For the bug bite.

Obviously, it's not going to do anything. And then she realizes that all the life signs are located in one area on the ship or a couple of areas. Actually, it's Cargo Bay and Mess Hall. But she makes her way over to Mess Hall. and she kind of comes in there. By the way, by the way, before you go into the mess hall, in the hallway, as she goes, I saw her lean up against the wall and kind of take her rifle and she puts it down low. Yes, she does.

And on the weapons, often on Star Trek, we would have the Sims beacons or some kind of light, maybe sometimes strapped on our arm. And Marvin Rush, the DP, would always say, that is your light. Like, you need to help light yourself. That's right. You know, when you stop here, just turn your. your arm up so the light is kind of shining on your face. Yeah. And then you can keep moving. And I notice Kate, she goes over by the door. She takes the rifle that has a light on it.

And she sort of puts it down. And lights her own face. And lights her face perfectly. And I was just like, oh, Marvin. Marvin told her to do that. Put the gun down so she has a moment of this dramatic light from below. It was just perfectly like glowing on her face. Yes. And just to explain to people, Sims beacon. Explain to people what that means. Sims beacons were the lights that we would sometimes strap on our wrist or it would strap onto a, you know, a weapon or something. It was basically just a mag light like you would buy in the hardware store, is all it was. But we called it a Sims beacon because it was named after our props master Alan Sims. Alan Sims. That's the reason why. Yeah. So, but you're so right. Marvin would say, okay, you're going to use your light to light yourself.

And I'm like, oh, Jesus. So then you've got to, you've got to look natural. too. But you can't be like, you can't be obvious. You can't take it and go, ta-da, like right on your face. Like, you have to. Or he would say light the other actor. So if we're in the cage together and you and I talk for a beat, you would want us to, you know, me to sort of shine my light but not hold it there. Just sort of have it kind of moving around. Yeah. I, this is what I recall the most from, from Marvin always say like, you know, keep, keep flashing the, like with your Sims beacon, cross the camera with it.

You know what I'm saying? Like he wants to, yeah, flare the camera. Flare the lens. Flair the lens. Just, you know, keep coming across, searching for something. Make sure you go across the lens so we can see it. So that was a comment that I heard a lot, a lot of direction. I remember that, yeah. I'm going to do that. Okay, so she goes in the mess hall and who's the first person, who's the only person that she checks on?

Me? And it's 20 minutes, 20 minutes into this episode and we finally see Harry. It's like, boop. Well, you haven't seen, you haven't seen Paris yet. No, you haven't seen Paris. yet. So you've seen a lot of people, but yes, but you're the only, like, there's a room full of bodies. Yeah.

And you are the only one. I just want to. So where are you? You are in that same mess hall clearly, but you must have been, but you must be off. You didn't go check on me. No, she didn't. But I was at the door. I'm at the, I'm literally sitting at the chair at the door, which then there's a continuity

issue later in this episode because you see another, you see the mess hall again. And the person slumped by the door is a female background. actress in a blue, a teal blue medical uniform. So I'm like, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? Well, there must have moved around. There must have been time passed before, you know, that you ended up in that chair, but yeah. Yeah. And she talks to me. She's like, Harry, Harry, and then you hear something from Harry. It's sort of like, it's just this kind of flemy. It's this mucilaginous compound sound is what it is, you know, in my throat sound. And I'm just going, that that's all you get the larger version of the flying alien now has shown itself okay so we see

this huge huge macrovirus and it tackles janeway it knocks her so hard that basically it bruises her ribs and and ruptures one of her muscles she shoots it with her phaser rifle she does and yeah and the doc uh she makes it to sick bay where the doctor pulls a phaser at on her not knowing who she is Can I say one thing back in the mess hall? She actually did go over to Chocote. Oh, that's right. She did. She went over to Chocote.

So you're not the only one she loves. She went over to Chacote. Yeah. And he's on the floor. And she tries to talk to him and she sees this, this, I'll call it the neck orifice. He sees that. The neck orifice. Yeah, she sees that bug bite that's kind of got a hole in it.

Yeah. And she's looking at it. And all of a sudden, bugs. start coming out of the neck orifice. Right. And I was like, I was really grossed out because that's the first time I think we see the bug, the, the neck orifice excrete the little bug virus. Yeah.

It was, it was disgusting. And, you know, parallels to the alien film franchise. Where do the aliens come from? They come from a little orifice, these little pods, you know, out of the body, right? But they're initially in these pods and then they come out. Then they go into your body and they come out of your chest. So, again, a lot of parallels with it. aliens. When she goes in the sick bay, you were just talking about another thing before the doctor

pulls a phaser on her. Yes. She's trying to pry open another door at the sick bay. Right. And I noticed she looked ripped. Really? Yeah, I thought like whatever the angle or the lighting or whatever she looked like, you could see some muscular. Yeah, good for her. Musculature. Maybe she worked down before this. And I was just like, does she even lift? That's what I thought. But does she we need to have her as a guest on then just to talk about this episode and say yeah we only have one question for you kate do you even lift and she'll be like lift what do you mean by that she look ripped though she she looked ripped she did she pulls the door up prized it open and the doc puts a phaser in her face mm-hmm that was kind of surprised me that moment and he brings

her in and this is what you're talking about before he catches her up on everything that's happened right first to treat her superficially at this point right so now as an audience member, we now learn what the heck's been going on, right? Voyager has been infected by this macrovirus and he's telling her all this while he's performing minor surgery on her ruptured muscle and bruised ribs. And he tells her that Voyager basically received a distress call from a nearby mining colony of a race called the Garen. Now, Garen is interesting because right after the end of Voyager, Tim Russ directed a independent Star Trek film called Star Trek of Gods and Men. And he asked me to act in this film and the character that they had written

for me is Garin. Oh, interesting. It's the name of the race of these aliens that were the miners, right? Oh, wow. Yeah, a little tidbit, a little fact. A little trivia fact there, yes. Well, the Garan in the mining colony have a virus. Yes.

And the doc says, you know, he's got to come up with a synthetic antigen. And he offers, tells the captain he wants to go, wants to go down there. On his first away mission, not the captain, sorry, he tells Chikote, because the captain's off with, in this flashback, the captain was gone with Neelix, but he tells Chacote, who's in charge in this place. Yes, correct. He wants to go down to the mining colony and, uh, and look into this virus. And, uh, he goes on the bridge at one point. He's very enthusiastic about all of this. Yeah. Um, goes on the bridge. He says, I, I, I've studied, uh, away mission protocols and I'll keep an open channel. And, uh, Chacote looks at Tuvok and like, uh, let's do that. Let's keep an open channel.

and Tuvok's sort of got a grin. And the first time we see Paris is now when it cuts to Paris looking back and sort of like with a chuckle, like a smile, like, oh, that doc, he's so, he's so enthusiastic. That's your whole scene, isn't it? That's the scene. That's it. That's the only one. So far.

I made a note. It's going to be some balana stuff coming out. I made a note at the 32 minute mark, we have the first intelligible lines from Harry Kim. So he's not doing the phlegm kind of, you know, Misalajan, his compound throat acting. He's actually saying something. And 29 seconds later, Paris, we see him for the first time with just a smile. Not that he's just wearing just a smile, but he just has a smile.

And he has a Starfle uniform. And he has a Starfle a Uniform. Yes. Well, did you also notice, everyone's referring to the mobile emitter with different names. They call it the autonomous emitter in the prior scene. Then on the bridge, they talk about it. Chakotas calls it a portable emitter. So here's the fan challenge for all of you,

out there, how many different ways can you come up with how to say mobile emitter? So autonomous emitter, portable emitter. Mobile emitter was the term we used. This is early on, just a couple episodes back. We had the Futures End where we got this technology. This is really new for the doctor and for the writers. So yeah, there were a bunch of names for it. Yeah. I just think it'd be kind of fun if people came up with their, their mobile emitter. Their mobile and what they would call on a mobile amendment. I love it. I love it. Portable. So tweet that, put that on Facebook, wherever, wherever on the Delta Flyers social media platforms that you follow us, we'd like to hear. We're in the mine shaft now. The doctor is giving an overly detailed

report, which is hilarious to Chakota. He's telling him like, and the walls are comprised of this. And then the doctor is like, we don't need all this detail, doctor. And the way the doctor just throws away, he's like, oh, that's fine. It was just comedic gold. I thought it was wonderful. he finds the macroscopic version of the virus which flies out of one of the miners' necks another neck orifice another neck orifice and yes the virus has basically absorbed the miners growth hormone into its protein structure and that's why they're increasing in size exponentially because of the 30 microns a second is what the doctor says it's incredible it just keeps very super fast because he's like get back on the ship and he's like great I'll bring these guys back. We've got to save them. And it was kind of an emotional moment there because the doctor has real, you know, compassion. He does. He does. People who are sick. And Chukote is just saying you cannot bring them back.

It's far too dangerous. You need to get out of there. Yeah, we don't know anything about this. And we cannot bring them back to the ship. It would be way too dangerous. Right. So the doctor comes back. He's beamed back aboard. Immediately goes over to the transporter person. and he does a scan and they find some of the virus and the bio filter in the bio filter and they seal it off and purge the filters right purge the filters yep and they think they're good but they're not

but they're not yeah that virus hid in the transporter buffer that's right it migrated to the buffer so they didn't catch that yeah sad sad day we're in the sick bay and the doctor is creating the synthetic antigen that will inhibit the virus's ability to replicate the virus's ability to replicate Kate. But he's really not sure how to restore the infected cells to the original version, but at least he has something to stop the replication of the virus. And then the doctor apologizes for his overzealous behavior. And now we see another example of the doctor surpassing his program. He's becoming more human-like. You know, he actually is concerned about how he acted that he apologizes to Chakotay. This is very undoctor-like in a way

if you think about that. And then even Kess says, after Chakotay leaves, Kess says, I told you he'd understand. So clearly the doctor had already expressed his concerns to Kess, his assistant, about how he acted on his away mission. But then he kind of gets the voice of approval from Jakote. He's,

Jacote says, you know what? You're going to face other moral dilemmas in the future. And as far as your mission performance, I would say it was exemplary. Exemplary. So he gets this A plus report card for his first real way mission yeah but yeah but we don't know he did that yet yeah so we're going to find that out soon yes because we're in mess hall now where there we go yeah the beginning of the paris torres

relationship right there the beginning the seed of the relationship that's right we see that paris has been the temporary cook melix is uh on this mission with the captain yeah which i just find interesting that paris like he was the temporary nurse he's the temporary cook it's just like They, the writers did not care. Like, imagine if Chacote had just been thrown around. Like, okay, yeah, let's just make Chacote the nurse. Let's make him the, the, let's make him the cook. Okay.

I understand. It's like they had no idea what to do with Paris. I hear you. Throw them into these things. All right. I hear your complaints, Robbie. I understand Paris was the temporary fill in the blank, but you were not Harry's temporary friend.

You were Harry's permanent friend. buddy. Thanks buddy. So yes. So Paris has burned the food and he's like something's going on with the power surges. And he tells Balana, you know, to look into the power surges and the problem. And then they have a little back and forth about, oh, you're blaming me. It's my fault. Oh, no. It's not, you know. There was a nice little. Lurdy witty banter. Flirty witty banter. Flirty, witty, sharp. Like, you know, Paris. can be sharp.

Harris can be kind of a jerk sometimes. And so you get a little sense of like, but it's fun. You can see that they're both having a little fun. And she can be kind of a jerk sometimes. And she, you know, that comes out.

Oh, yeah. But anyway, she goes in, she goes to open up the panel. And I noticed, you know, people, we've talked about like the close standing

of characters on the show. Like when they block us, they stage the shot so that that's right. Janeway and Chacote have to be inches apart unnaturally or, I saw this a bunch with Paris and Bologna in these scenes. Paris is right up in her business in the, in the, uh, when the panels open.

And she doesn't seem to mind it either. She doesn't seem to mind it. Anyway, she goes to fix it. She gets slimed by the, the gel pack virus. You know, the virus is somewhere in the gel pack or something. And she gets slimed by it. And we kind of go out. Did you notice how she pronounced what we know now to be, Janeway pronounces it.

Janeway says it's some sort of mucilaginous compound Torres says it's some kind of musilogynous compound she does a soft day here so it's the tomato tomato moment musilogynous interesting I didn't I didn't catch that yeah but did you also how did you feel Tom Paris how did you feel being the whole reason why we have a patient zero that's I'm I was going to say, if it wasn't for Tom whining about the burnt food, which he shouldn't have been cooking to begin with. No. Then we never would have had this outbreak. Yeah, I say he's like, he's, he's not really patient zero. He's like, uh, you know. Well, Balana's patient zero, right? He's the first one. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. How does, how does Tom Paris feel about causing patient

zero to be zero? It's tragic. You basically gave your future wife of virus. The virus. Yeah, the infected. You infected your future wife. Yeah. All right. So we see her get slimed. And then we go back to Sick Bay. Doc still working to find a cure. Yeah. I didn't make any more notes because I wanted to go right back to Paris and Bologna. Well, okay, I made notes here. And I said Janeway's experience a high fever right now. Okay. And then he has the antigen ready to go. And she says that she is basically going to be the guinea pig for this antigen, which, you know, oh, that's right. Again, there's, I'm sorry, there's parallels to, to now, too, if you think about that as well. The doctor tells Janeway that the larger macroviruses are driven by some sort of instinct to assemble their host population. So that's why we're all kind of jammed together in the mess hall. So maybe you were. Well, no, no, this would have all happened in the mess hall.

Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't have left there to go to the bridge and come back, right? So you would have been there the whole time. The mess hall bridge flashback, the doctor realizes that the macrovirus is on the ship and airborne. That's where Chichote orders a level four quarantine protocol for deck two, which is what he should have ordered for the entire transporter room for when the doctor came home, came back. These kind of quarantines like Chacote calls for a quarantine. I mean, again, interesting with COVID and what we've been going through.

The effectiveness of like when do we lock things down and what happened on the ship. A lot of it was just no one's fault. They just didn't realize what was going on. and how quickly it was spreading. Yeah, yeah. And, well, he orders the quarantine immediately. The minute he finds out that what happened. So that's the right move.

He did what he could. So the sick bay flashback scene is where Kess is studying the virus. And she's now freaked out because it is growing exponentially larger by the second, to the point that the doctor has to erect a containment field around that science station. She's looking at the slide, you know, on the microscope or something. She sees this thing growing. She turns away to talk to the doctor. And when she goes back to the microscope, she's like, where did it go?

Where did it go? And all of a sudden, it like comes out of the machine. She steps back and quick, lock it down. They put a force field around it. Exactly. And now we're in the mess hall flashback scene where Paris sees the traumatic scene for Tom Perez. Yes. I mean, this could have been the end of it right there.

When you see somebody with a neck orifice and bugs are crawling out of it, it's tough to romance them later. You look disgusting. You really did. You were like, oh, no. It was sort of like the first date and she was chewing her food in a weird way and it bugged you. That's the look you had in your face. But I was still like two inches away from her nose. I was so close. What was going on with all the close? Were you thinking of kissing her? I don't know. I think it was just the director said. Get a little closer. It's getting in the shot. All right, Robbie. I need to get a little closer to Roxanne. Get right up in there. Right next to her nose. Yes. So, okay. It was a little close, and the bug thing was a little gross. It was gross, but it was well acted by you.

I believe to you, 1,000%. And I also believe that you were really annoyed and that maybe you would not romance her in the future because of this. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Yeah.

For back in sick bay, the doctor is testing the antigen on the macrovirus, and now we have a very comical scene of Bob Picardo wrestling. A macrovirus, yes. A giant, yeah, like a medicine ball is what he's wrestling. Yeah. Now, this is the beginning of, you know, this has. happens later on with Janeway, by the way. This is sort of hand-to-hand wrestling.

Yeah. A macro virus. I have to say, you know, this was 1996 or 97, maybe. I can't remember. 96, I think. Yeah. I have to say the CGI was not that great back then

compared to what we're used to now. And so the detail of a CGI you know, virus monster having to wrestle with Bob Picardo in a scene, it's just, I felt like the CG, it was a tricky thing to do. It was a very bold thing to try back then, but I don't know that we succeeded by today's standards. It was, it was a, it's just his hand didn't seem to really be holding anything. It just felt off. Yeah. It felt more comical than, you know. That's why I said it looked more comical

because it didn't look as, it didn't really look realistic. I felt like I was watching the original clash of the Titans, you know, you were doing stop motion photography or something like that. It was like, what is he doing? It just looked awkward, right? Which then goes to the next scene in the mess hall flashback. The doctor is going there to administer this antigen slash vaccine to Paris. But before he can do it, he's attacked by the virus. And yet another crazy, you know, just comical scene. He's hiding under the table. And he's crawling under the table. And he fails because there's too many of them now. Right. Right. Right. And the concern is that, you know, he they're they're using these when they get really big the macrovirus uses this um sort of like a needle or lance or

lance kind of thing right and it's if that thing hits the center of his uh mobile emitter uh portable emitter autonomous emitter he could lose we could lose his program right so that's the danger of it because you you know when you're watching this you're thinking well the doctor's immune well he can just walk amongst them but well if they're all attacking him yeah chakotay said that earlier in the So you've got to protect. You've got to be careful. Right. You've got to be careful with this portable emitter.

Exactly. Yep. So now we go back to Sick Bay in the current time period. Yeah, present time. Janeway. Doctor tells Janeway that the larger macroviruses have broken through to the other decks and then overwhelm the ship. And he can't administer the vaccine because of the attacks that he has to endure.

Janeway gears up again. And she asks, hey, can this antigen be distributed in a gaseous form? And the doctor's like, well, Oh, yeah. So two canisters of antigen are prepared, one for Janeway and one for the doctor. And the mission, the doctor and the Janeway will go in separate paths to try to get to where they have to get to, to release the antigen in the gaseous form so that it can go amongst the environmental controls all throughout the ship, right, to heal everybody. And then she says, before she leaves that, before she leaves sick bay, she turns to the sounds of the viruses that are knocking on the outside of the sick bay doors. And she says, will be right with you, which is such a John McLean kind of diehard hero, one-liner. It's like, what? Janeway, that's a, there's coffee in that nebula, kind of one-liner, which, you know, it was very, very like big action hero. Yeah, totally.

Very heroic. And I just found that really amusing to hear her say something like that. They were in the Jeffries tubes, and Janeway and the Doctor split up. Lots of crawling in the Jeffries. the crawling. The bad photographic background. Yes. Now, what the heck room is that that Janeway's in? The room where she's trying to get the environmental controls back online, it looks like the mess hall at one point. It kind of pans over and it looks like where the clamshell bed is a little bit, but there's some other piece of equipment there. What do you think that was, Robbie? I don't know. I don't know. That's interesting because I didn't

clock, you know, I didn't really, honestly, like, it didn't register for me, like, where they shot that. Right. I kind of blew by. Okay. Well, I just, again, with my meticulous viewing habits, I looked at that and I thought, what the heck? This is like a storage area or something.

Like, where is this on the ship? I've never seen this. Never seen where it was. No. There was that little area by the Jeffrey's tubes and the ladder. It was off engineering. Yeah. But that's an alcove, though, Robbie.

That was like a little alcove, right? It wasn't a room. I mean, this place looked like the same size as sickbay. And I think it was sick bay redressed. I think it was a sick bay set, but they redressed it. They moved out the clamshell. Part of it. They put something else in there.

Yeah. And then so just like, you know, as we've been talking about Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, their hero journey is always fraught with different hurdles. And the next hurdle that we find, the tack tack are now firing on Voyager. Those dang tack, they come on the screen and they're doing their moves and they're. Oh, my God. All their gestures, which are just silly. I've just got to say, like,

the tact hack, tack are the silliest. And by the way, like, we talked about tactical advisors for some of our, you know, tactical scenes. I wonder if there were any, like, gesture advisors or if the actors just, like, made all this crap up. I think they just made it up. I would be my guess. I thought the same thing, watching this. My first thought I went straight to, and that's another thing why it takes so long. Because like the minute I saw the first opening scene, I went to social media to find Alby Selznick to try to send him a message to ask him, did you come up with all of those moves on your own?

Was there someone there to go through some type of movement choreograph, you know, a choreograph moves with you? Did somebody, was there a consultant, any of that? But he's not on Twitter. And he's, you know, that would be the fastest way to get a whole. Yeah, my guess is no. My guess is knowing what we had available in terms of advice. or we never had much of anything available that I can recall. I doubt it.

It would have been nice if they had maybe a sign language person there, somebody who, you know, not to do signing, but to kind of go, all right, what might work? I don't know, they should have invented some version of some moves. Yeah, because if you had a signing person, you could root it, you could anchor that performance of those gestures in some sense of reality, right? I mean, you can find, okay, we all know there is American

sign language and certain moves be certain things and maybe they could have used that. Yeah, that would have been smart. Something like that would have been, it would help it feel more authentic. It just felt like the actors were kind of doing silly moves. Yeah. It felt a bit silly and arbitrary and random. For sure. They said that they have to purify is the word they use.

They purified the mining place and now they're going to purify this because this virus is so dangerous. Yeah. Janeway, please for one chance to save. crew and tack-tac captain says one hour right unfortunately the tack-tac torpedo destroyed the secondary power couplings and knocked environmental control offline once again but now is one of the funnier we need we need the uh the environmental control to be offline so that janeway starts sweating again that's what it is when she climatically wrestles the giant virus monster that she can be kind of

you know, oiled up and looking very heroic. So, yes, they had to fire the torpedo. Right, right. Because we, what we've learned is that that's the plasma, that's the, isn't that the warp core not being able to vent the plasma properly? That's why the heat is, uh, yeah, something like that. That's the science version of what happened. Yeah.

But then now comes one of the funniest things in the whole, in the whole episode where she realizes there's got to be a distraction. I can use Holodeck characters. Yes. He uses our Talaxian resort program. And it's somewhat morbid that she does this, but the fact that their holiday characters, it makes it really funny, I think.

Yes. We see Marty, my friend Marty, who the background actor, yeah, he's out there too. All the resort people are walking around, and then all of a sudden these virus monsters are swarming into the holodeck onto the resort program. And they're all running around like crazy. And then we go back to Janeway,

and then when we cut back to them, it's just a shot of them all lying on the ground. It's like, well, because Janeway programmed them to react to being attacked by the virus, right? So otherwise they would have, yeah, it would not have really hurt them because they're all of their characters. That's right. So you had to program them to react to that attack as if they were real humans. Yeah. It's ingenious and funny at the same time.

And silly. Yeah. Oh, now we're in. the corridors yeah we're in the corridors she's got her antigen bomb she's trying to explode this thing and she ends up being attacked by one of these virus monsters knocks her phaser rifle out of her hand isn't that what happened right she has to use her buoy knife basically yeah she wrestles this thing in a series sequence of you know hand-to-hand moves she uses the bowie knife she cuts off the thing almost gets her she grabs the little tentacle and cuts it off

and uh very very heroic stabs it yeah blows basically blows up her you know ignites her antigen bomb again this goes back to the cg i of you know the mid mid 90s when the explosion and the fire and things happened it was okay it was almost better in the shot where they just had an interactive light around the corner you know i almost wish we hadn't seen the fire and the smoke and the because Because it was CG from that period, which just was a little, yeah, yeah, it's, it pulls you out of the story a little bit. You know, you're like, oh, it could be more realistic, you know, definitely. Now we're back in that weird room, which we have no idea where they're at, where Janeway

was working on the environmental controls. And that's where she communicates with the tack, tack captain, right? She's in that strange room again. And he's, you know, he's telling her, she says, listen, we've got the antigen. We'll give it to you, just make sure you don't shoot at us anymore. and he's like, okay. And that's basically the end of the relations with the tack-tac race. I don't think we don't see them again after this.

No, thank God. Those gestures are silly. So, yeah, that was the end of it. They do not purify. They stop trying to purify and destroy Voyager. Yeah. And yeah, and then we jump ahead a little bit and everybody's feeling a little better. Yeah.

You know, we kind of see that people are, you know, ship repairs are happening. And one thing I noticed in this section was, there was this sort of lounge music. Oh, yeah. That ended the whole episode, right. Chacote comes to the ready room and he says, you know, hey, oh, Janeway says, I'm going to grant extended R&R, rest and relaxation for the entire crew. And Chacote invites her to go skiing, you know, which then made me think about you

because you're in Utah where there's wonderful snow. And I thought, wow, you can just go skiing on a holodeck. It's so much fun. But Chacote, yeah, they're all recovering. and trying to relax a little repair the ship and he invites her to go skiing. She's like, I love to ski, but I'm a little tired. I'm going to, you know.

I've had my workout, right? I've had my workout, she says. And we see her painting. Yes, and cue the jazz music. Bung, there's jazz music. Beep, beep, be, be, do, yeah. Bip deeep, be do, but do you,

like that. Yeah. She's painting, and I was just like a couple of things. First of all, when have we ever seen her paint? Never. She ever paint again? I don't think ever again Oh I'm sorry she did paint once

What In your episode that you directed Oh well that was finger paint with this It's still painting you asked when she painted Maybe that's why she's painting here Because it was sort of a spiritual healing thing And she's foreshadowing Maybe

But yeah she's painting And then this music I've never heard one of our episodes End on such goofy music Yeah not at all I don't think it was goofy. It was kind of a, it was very jazzy to me. Did you not feel that? I thought it was like lounge music.

It was like, oh, no, no, it was, it was jazz music. And I, and I thought, what an interesting choice to make to be. Yeah, it was very different. And you end on, you see Voyager kind of, kind of cruising. With that music, with that music. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It didn't bother me. I like that. I like things. Really? Yes. I, because you're not expecting it. You did not expect that at all, right? I'm not expecting that.

If you can use, if you throw something in an episode that I don't expect, then I admire that. I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. It pulled you out, though. It made you, yeah, you were, you were offended or shall I say you were tack-tacked by that, basically. I was tack-tacked. I knew you were tack-tac-fying. Well, there you go.

That was a macrocosm. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this episode, I mean, give it a 5, right in the middle. All right. Five and a half. Five and a half. I'm going to go one more than you. I'm going to go 6.5 just because of the way the storytelling was and how the mystery, how it unfolded. So I like all the different levels that are going on.

There's a lot of stuff going on. Good character development for the doctor as well as Janeway. So I'm going to say 6.5. Okay. Yeah, I think that for me, the things that were misfires were, you know, big hits on the score of this episode. Things like the tack-tack. I just found them to be ridiculous and silly. Okay.

Some of the CG stuff and the wrestling. And I thought the storytelling, the thing you brought up in the very beginning, it was almost like three different episodes in a way. It was like, oh, there's the first episode before she gets filled in by the doctor. And then we kind of go back, you know, in a whole other episode. We're like following another story. And it just felt structurally a little confusing to me and hard to find a groove. And then the CG stuff, yeah, all that stuff.

5.5. Okay. The theme that I came away with was the future does not know how to virus any better than us.

That's my theme. Very good. Very good. I mean... I love that. You know, we've been a mess for the last year

here on planet Earth with our coronavirus. We're not figuring that very well. Clearly the future does not know how to deal with viruses any better

than we do right now. So, I'm going to not say anything. thing. I'm going to... We need a little Janeway to come in COVID. We need Janeway to take care of the COVID. Yeah, we do. That's what you're saying, right? Exactly. I hear you. All righty. So that comes to the end of our recap. Thank you so much, everyone for tuning in. And tune in next week when Robbie and I will be reviewing the episode Fair Trade. Everyone who happens to be a Patreon patron, thank you for your patronage. Please stay tuned for your bonus material.

I don't know.