The Delta Flyers - Nemesis

Episode Date: September 13, 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 Nemesis. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Nemesis:Chakotay is marooned on a planet where two alien life forms are attempting planetwide genocide against each other.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.And a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, and Kate Mulgrew.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Mike Devlin, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Lisa Robinson, Joshua McHenry, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, John Mann, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, and Melissa LauAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Jenna Appleton, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michelle Maroney, Michael "Klink" Klinckhardt, Megan Chowning, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Joseph Lanning, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, Yousuf Khan, and David Wei LiuThank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry. As we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager, your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. And remember, you can get the full version of this podcast by signing up to become a patron at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers. Hi, buddy. Hey, hi. Hi. How are you? It's early. It is early. Yes, it is. Well, you know, we've got busy lives. We have busy lives. We got, yeah, we got things to do. We do. And so we decided to be, you know, get a little Starfleet motivation and get up early and jump on. So, yes, at the crack of dawn, practically. So Robbie, tell us a little bit of about your role on lower decks lower decks that's right yeah it was really it was crazy um you know they they reached out to me last year at some point and said hey would you be interested in the voice on the show i hadn't seen the lower decks at that point and i was like sure you know

we we had just started the podcast i think so i was like oh that could be you know now that i'm doing this podcast, you know, recording, like, sure, that'd be fun. I've never done really that sort of thing. Anyway, it was fun. I was up here in Vancouver, had to do it remotely on a Saturday because I was directing and producing, but it was a silly little, you know, I play a plate. Well, it's basically Tom Paris makes a visit on their ship. Yeah.

And Boimler thinks that Tom is just, you know, a man. amazing. Later on, when Boimler's in trouble, because he wanted Tom Paris to sign his plate, because they had a plate of Tom Paris, and then he starts hallucinating and talking to the plate. Now, when you're saying plate, you're talking about the collectible, like a Star Trek collectible plate. Yeah, like those collectible plates that fans have, you know. Which we both have. We are both on a real collectible plate, correct? Yeah, and they've done these kind of plates for years. It's one of the weird little, you know, odd little collectibles that people can get, quirky, I guess, and, you know, the original cast has been

on plates, but in the cartoon, they actually make it like a thing that's part of Star Trek. Yeah. Famous Starfleet people are on plates, and, and then when he's hallucinating, the plate starts talking to him. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I get to play a plate. I'll say, first of all, it's very outside the box for them to actually utilize a piece of fandom in the show, which is a Star Trek show. That's pretty cool. But you never met the producers

face to face. Correct? This was all remote. In Vancouver in Gastown with, it's a neighborhood in Vancouver. Yeah. And on a Saturday morning, bright and early, you know, just like this, right now. Just like. Getting up early on a Saturday, kind of groggy, going in and doing the voice. But I think they've had a few truck people. I'm sure it will come around. they'll you know over time involve a lot of people and uh i think that's part of the fun of that show yes i agree i heard about that show that started as like a twitter account that the creator of that show started a twitter account oh wow and was doing funny things that the crew down below would say like tweet like literally like this is their twitter and they're tweeting out what's happening

and the lower ducts of the Starfleet ship. Yeah. And it turned into a show. I think that was a great idea. That's a great idea. It really is. So the guy that started the Twitter account is the showrunner. Is that what you think so?

Yeah. What does that tell me? I think we need to start a Captain Proton Twitter account. Yes, we do. And start doing that. And now they are going to look at that and go, hey, because I know you've already had the conversation with Kurtzman and his people. it's a bit on a on a back burner in a way or it's it's it's not shelved but it's unclear where it's unclear

I didn't talk to Alex Kurtzman directly I talked to his team so a bunch of his development people got on a on a zoom thing and I and I you know my pitch my idea has always been that Captain Proton felt like those Uster, those old, I always thought that Captain Proton felt like those old serial radio shows or those little short films, you know, Buster, Crab, the old, you know, Flash Gordon, those old serialized kind of soapy, sci-fi adventures that would be the short before a movie or a radio show that would come on. I was like, let's do a version of that, because that's what it was in the spirit of. And then we could get our cast back together. Correct.

You know, it's a way of, it's a unique way of getting our cast back together. And we could do it as a podcast, we could do it as a live action, you know, webs, you know, streaming only or... Or it could be animated. I don't know, there's a... Or it could be an animated thing, but there's a lot of ways to do it, and it'd be fun just to get our cast back together and a different spin on the Star Trek universe. So, every time I mention it at a convention or I tweeted about it or whatever,

people just seem to really feel like it's a no-brainer that that would be something that so many fans would really love and it would just add to, you know, the mythology of Star Trek. I was with you at the first convention where you brought that up. I was actually on stage with you. And when you said that, it caused the entire room to erupt, not in chaos, but in just excitement, enthusiasm, and just. you know, they were, the immediate response, you could tell, oh my gosh, if this really went through, this would be a hit. I mean, just off of just how enthusiastic this one room of fans was. It was just across the board. There wasn't one person sitting there going, eh, kind of good idea, but not really. Everyone was like, oh my God, yes. They were so excited. And I think that one thing that, you know, Alex Kurtzman has done in a way that no one did

with Star Trek before is to show that Star Trek can exist in a lot of different forms. Like it doesn't have to be just the template of the original series, that we can do something like Picard, we can do something like Lower Decks, we can do short treks. You know, he's done a lot of, you know, really reinventing and expanding the way that we can tell stories with Star Trek characters. So I think a Captain Proton kind of a serialized adventure would be fun and would work. So, yeah, we'll see. Someday.

Okay, Twitter account. Let's get on it. Let's do it. All right. So this week's episode is nemesis. Nemesis. All right. Nemesis.

Okay. Let's go watch this. Let's go watch it. I can't wait. All right. As always. All right. We'll be right back.

All right. And we are back from watching Nemesis. All right, let's start it off like we normally do with our little poetry synopsis, everybody. And I will begin with my haiku. So here is my haiku for Nemesis. Chikote is lost. Vori find him and train him. Mind control was used.

Nice. that is straightforward I think to capture the heart of this episode and I think that's awesome okay now for our limerick limerick time here we go

Chocote wakes up in a war the Craydon monsters are true Vori lore his mind gets all twisted his hate grows ballistic propaganda

is what this was all four. Oh, very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and general. Good. Good job, Robbie slash. Thanks, buddy. I will not say, I will not say. You're not going to give up. Teamwork. True teamwork. Teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work. I just think that she has a knack for Limericks, and it's very impressive. Okay. Hey, this is probably the most guest stars ever. This is a big cast for us. Holy moly.

This is a really big cast. I'm shocked. Here's a couple things I want to talk about before we get into the scene by scene. Ken Biller wrote the script. Yes, he did. I thought he did a phenomenal job at capturing the idea of propaganda and how that can affect people. I thought he did a phenomenal job of. creating this language that was very stylized and then poetic in a way.

Like I dug it. I know some of the fans may have mixed feelings because of the universal translator and blah, blah, blah, but I thought that language thing was really descriptive and interesting and just kept my attention constantly. Ken did a great job. Alex Singer brought out some great performances in everybody. I thought it was, you know, felt very much. modern, like a modern war film in a way that Alex is a, it was an older director, could have

easily fallen into like old school patterns. And I still think Alex did a phenomenal job at making this feel modern and edgy. Yeah, the guest stars were huge. I thought it was great. Yeah. So let me just talk a little bit about the dialogue. I also wrote down there's a lot of interesting stylized dialogue slash slang. And that in and of itself is interesting because I would say that our show is already stylized, you know, with all the techno babble, our dialogue without, you know, getting into this episode is already stylized. So now having the aliens or the guest stars of the week speak in this very stylized type of way is also, it's sort of like it's actually made us seem more modern or casual or something. Yes, it really did. Instead of us feeling formal. I'm like, whoa, we're really good. I go, we're really loose and loosey-goosey, whereas, you know, these guys are almost like speaking old English, you know, in a way.

So it was so, you know, interesting for me to watch this because typically I'm always telling everybody, well, you know, our episodes are pretty, you have to really pay attention. We use a lot of techno babble, so it's very stylized. And now we meet a race, which is even more stylized dialogue than we have. So it's kind of like inception. It's sort of like something with a story within a story or a dialogue within a dialogue. So yes, very, very interesting. I thought it was very cool. So of all the guest stars, which there are many, only one has passed away, the character

of Penno, which was played by Booth Coleman. He passed away at the ripe age of 91 in Los Angeles. And on my birthday, December 15th of 2014. Wow. And his, just looking at his resolution. resume, very long, very extensive, been in the business for a very, very, very long time. Booth Coleman, I recognized his face for sure when we got to the village, that section of our story. And he seemed like a very familiar character actor face. And I'm so glad, you know,

that's the one thing about Voyager and being in a Star Trek show. We got to work with so many veteran really experienced familiar faces and great actors and um sad to hear that he passed away i actually saw garrett that another actor in this episode passed away it's terence evans terence evans who played ambassador treene oh yeah so two people two people yeah and i think uh terence passed away in 2015 he was 81 years old yeah um so yeah two of these guest stars are no longer with us but so happy that we've got their performances, you know, forever in this. I did also look up some of these guest stars. The little girl that played Caria or Kara, Megan Murphy, she was just a child actor, did not pursue it beyond that. But I bet that, you know, when you're a kid actor, I would imagine

you grow up and you're not an actor anymore. What a cool thing to have a Star Trek show like this. I thought she did a great job. I wonder why they didn't have Terrence Evans' name on the opening credits. I think depending on how large the role is, yeah, that's how it works with actors. You know, you get a single card credit in the opening titles that's usually reserved for the larger, the roles that have more screen time. I don't think Ambassador Treen, Terrence Evans, who played that role, I don't think he had much more than the scene at the end in the sick bay and maybe one other scene. In the transporter room. Yeah, so he was maybe not a guest star, top-of-show guest star.

Maybe he was a, you know, more a day player or a co-star. Yeah, it's funny. The only people that get the credits up front are the larger roles, or if their agents negotiate that. And then they'll get the single card opening titles is what that's called. Gotcha. Otherwise, they come at the end of the show. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, you know, in our review of all the Voyager episodes that we've done so far, There have been a few times where you're, you will say, oh, yeah, and so-and-so, I've known him from the blah, blah, blah, you know, you'll, you'll know some of the guest stars. And rarely do I ever know any of the guest stars, but I do know Rayfan, the character Rayfan, played by Matt Levin. Uh-huh. Yeah, and so Matt is someone who I've met, you know, out and about in back in the day. So that was, this is one of the few times where I was like, oh, I know Matt. I know, Matt, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, Matt was great. I did not work with him before, but I thought, I thought all these, the young actors that were doing this kind of stylized language and playing out the war movie, I thought they were great. I thought they were all great. It's interesting. We talk about young actors, and I look at their birth years, and they're all right around

R-A-R-E. They're anywhere from 1964 to 1977, so that little range of years, and that's where we're located, you're 60, I'm 68. And so all these young actors that are on this, or were young like you and I back then. We were both in our 20s when we started this show. Yes, yes. We had no gray hair, man.

We had zero gray hair. We had all as I rubbed my gray beard. Yeah, but you still have color there too, though. You know, it's not just gray. You still have regular color, your normal color, too, on the edges. So it looks good. I like it. Yeah.

I'm trying to be like Jonathan Frakes, you know, with the beard and the gray and yeah. Yeah. All right. So, you know, so we start off the scene or we start off the episode and they are, you know, it's just this scene in the dark and somebody. In the dark, it's in the woods and people are running through the woods. I actually thought because you, you had said to me before we watched this, you thought that Paris went down with Chakotay or something.

So I was like, oh, that's me. That's me. I literally thought that was me running through the woods. I'm like, oh, and you know what else I've thought of as I watched this? When we shot these scenes in the woods on that stage, they would put down like mulch or fake dirt on the plywood floors, but it was slippery. Oh, yes.

As I watched these actors, you know, this opening scene with them running through, I was like, oh, don't slip. Like I remember, it's not like real ground. Yeah. It just slides and slips and things like that. And they put smoke on the stage. It was, I think, thought it looked great. Overall, this whole episode, Marvin Rush did a phenomenal job with

creating this exterior planet. Agreed. When a lot of it was on stage. Yeah, Marvin did a great job. And definitely Alex Singer did a great job. Yeah, this opening scene I thought was really dynamic. It looked very authentic. We see them running through the woods. And it's, it feels like like a, I kept flashing to like a Vietnam War movie or something. Yeah. That's what it felt like to me. And we stumble upon Chakotay is there, and we don't know how he got here on this planet. We don't know we're very disoriented to start this story. Definitely. And he's captured, right?

He's captured by the soldiers and brought to a camp. Yeah. And basically we are introduced to Brone, who is the team leader, and he is of the fourth Vori defense contingent. Mm-hmm. We then meet Raffin, who gives food to chants. Chacote and we get a little, we get a little taste of this language. We learn that nullify is to kill, to die. Glimpse is to use, is talking about to see your eyes. Yeah. They don't say planet,

they say sphere, which is, you know, it's so cool that Kim Biller, you know, included all these different vocabulary terms. Even when he's, you know, Chocote's got the gag on or whatever and they're talking. And, and I think it's Rayfan or one of them says, uh, weren't you drilled to fathom the nemesis, we abhor none but the nemesis. That was Brone speaking to Neiman. To Naiman, basically saying, like, weren't you taught to understand who your enemy is? Like, we don't hate anyone except our enemy. Yeah.

Great, great dialogue. Can we use this from now on? I say something like, do you understand, Robbie? I'm going to say, do you fathom me, Robbie? I'm going to start using that, you know? Yeah. This is kind of cool. It took a lot of work for Ken to write this.

And it goes, you know, much deeper. But I love the fact that especially, you know, looking ahead in this story, they've got this slang, this way of speaking. And slowly Chakotay sort of starts adopting it. It starts showing up in his dialogue, right? Which is interesting because you start to see him kind of moving towards their story that they're trying to indoctrinate him in. Yeah.

And the use of this voice. dialogue you really it keeps the viewer engaged you have to really pay attention and pay attention or else it'll just it'll go right by you you know very quickly um they said the clash by the way my first thought was oh i love that band i was the same here i was like the clash the clash the clash The clashery? Oh, awesome. I love that. I love those songs. Yeah, wonderful band from our childhood, from our youth. And I thought the same thing. And maybe Cam Biller felt the same thing when he wrote that down. Maybe that might be his favorite band and he threw that in there. So Rayfin, yes, go ahead. And they and they asked you,

Cote, like, what were you doing? He says, I was just on a survey mission. And then I was attacked he thinks by the Craden, that he was attacked by the Craden. Right. And so they kind of, we start to understand how he got here, that he was shot down. And it seems like right now that these guys,

the Vory, are the good guys that are saving him. And they're like, give him some food. And let's wait for sharper to wait for the new light, they say. Yeah. Sharper to be sharper. Yeah, sharper. I love that. Smarter, right? Yeah, smarter. Cool that along.

And trees and forest are trunk. the trunks, right? So, yeah, the trunks. Naman volunteers to escort Chacote. Because the whole thing is Chacote needs to get to some type of communications equipment to Radio Voyager, right? So he's escorting Chiquet and he gets shot and killed by the cradon. So we lose our first person and we learn that they have this crazy ritual where they have to be buried face down or else their graves are essentially desecrated, right? So they won't go to the afterlife if they're not buried face down.

down. We learn this because we later on we find this upturned soldier that we find and they call it being upturned is not a good thing if you're... And also I think when we see them burying their friend there

we see them roll him over and we see them grab some stones and the first thing I thought of was usually we have like these styrofoam rocks like you know when we're shooting these scenes there's not there's their fake rock and stuff, but I was actually looking at some of the extras and the people that were picking up the rocks.

They looked heavy. It looks like they might have used real rocks in the scene, which I think is great because you can tell the difference if an actor or someone picks up a styrofoam rock. But then my next thought is, oh my God, they're going to put these rocks on top of the actor. Like those look real. I can't believe they're going to bury this guy with, you know, face down with real rocks on them. But I don't think they did. They put them next to the actor. I watched carefully.

I was like, they can't put these heavy rocks on it. But speaking of fake rocks, it's funny to me that that's something you're never taught as an actor when you're doing conservatory type of training. No one ever says like, okay, so this class is all about lifting fake rocks to make it look in. Fake heavy things. That's right. Fake heavy things, exactly. Well, it's even like on other shows, it might be, you know, you walk in with a bag of groceries.

The props people don't put heavy stuff in there. No. But I've worked with actors, you know. know, and I try it when I'm directing to say, like, hey, put some heavy stuff in there. So, so the actor has to, you know, it's, it's not just a bunch of newspaper and, you know, a bag of chips on top or something that it's got some weight to it. The only exception to that rule was our phaser rifles, which were so heavy. Those are pretty heavy. Those things were, it's ridiculous. I remember telling props saying, like, why, of everything that we have, everything is lightweight,

wait, but this phaser rifle, it feels like a ton of bricks. And why didn't you guys use balsa wood? You clearly used like the hardest, most dense Brazilian, you know, jungle, rainforest wood. It was just, oh my gosh. The strap that you put on to hold the thing, it left indentation in my skin after wearing it for too long. Well, in the next scene, here we go to some shooting

practice with Rayfin. That's right. And Rayfin's a really good shot, but they're using real weapon. Like we don't, we normally have fake laser guns. They're actually using, uh, automatic rifle, like real, because you can, when they're doing the shooting practice scene and they fire it, you can see the brass getting ejected. You can see the recoil, the recoil. And we never use real weapon, you know, real life weapons on our show. So that was unusual to see. Very much so. I was actually trying to look in the actor's ears. Usually when you are firing a weapon like that, even blanks, they're loud. So they'll put little ear plugs and they'll put makeup so that they blend in.

I was trying to see if I could see ear plugs. Because there were quite a few shots with the brass ejecting. And you could see they were firing real blanks there. I thought that was cool. Yeah, definitely. And the other thing I was thinking about is, you know, nowadays, when I do directing or whatever and there's guns or weapons it's so much easier nowadays because there's a lot of replicas that are like airsoft guns they're toys but they look like a real automatic rifle or a real handgun

and so it's much easier nowadays than it was in the 90s when we made this show right to just have a plastic it's not a real gun it's an airsoft it's a replica but it looks very realistic very much And that way we don't have to have anything dangerous on the set. Yeah. We can shoot the plastic guns and then put in a muzzle flash, which is just that little fire at the end of the thing. We can even put in fake shells ejecting. It's much easier with Viz effects now to do guns and things,

which I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. Good not to have real weapons on set. That's always an uncomfortable, you know, for safety, just making sure that there's no, you know, bullets that have gotten jammed or, you know, that all of these blanks that we're putting in don't, don't eject any kind of, you know, debris of any kind because there's been some accidents on sets. Oh, definitely. And, you know, and now you're able to do it the way you're doing it now because the cost of visual effects has gone down. Yeah. From back in the 90s when we were

filming, you know, so that definitely helps. Yeah. All right, where are we in the story? Um, so they're doing the shooting, the, you know, target practice and they're talking about Raffin's fear. I think in the previous scene, someone says to Raffin, I wrote this down, sharper to blend with the trunks, your fleet colors will get us all nullified. Yeah. Love that line. Sharper to blend with the trunk, smarter to go through the trees. Yeah.

Your fleet colors will get us all nullified. Your Starfleet uniforms going to get us killed. I love the dialogue. I just love, I thought, I can't say enough about it. I thought it was cool. It was, you know, when people are getting on your nerves, and it's a common slang for us to say, you're killing me, you know, so now you and I can say, you're nullifying me. Exactly.

Yeah, but Raven talks about how he's scared to fight, and he was at war with the Kardashians, and he felt fearful, he says, before every firefight, every battle. So it's, you know, you see this sort of gentler side of Chukote at this point in our story. He's not been indoctrinated yet. He's trying to use, you know, be rational and be kind and peaceful and all of those things. So you see where he starts here and where he's going to go. Now they're in the jungle at night, heading to meet. Is it the seventh or something?

That's right. They're going to rendezvous with the seventh contingent. And I think this is the scene where Chikote stumbles upon the one Vori soldier who's already on the ground dead. He's been upturned. He's he's strapped down on the ground. And then they have that little device. You know, even though their weapons aren't as modern, they have that modern device to contact the seventh contingent. And the seventh contingent doesn't respond. And then we find out that after sending scouts out that they've been completely nullified, they're gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this night scene, I made a note. You know, I know Marvin always, Marvin Rush, our cinematographer, always struggled with wanting to keep, you know, day and night looking very realistic.

If things were supposed to be dark, he wanted to play the darkness. In the scene, you can see the moonlight on the act, which is that sort of blue, you know, probably brighter than real moonlight. If you were really in the jungle in the dark, it would be pitch black. You wouldn't be able to see the actor's faces. Right. Because of the canopy, right? I mean, you're talking about trees above you. It doesn't make it through.

Moonlight would not cut through that. enough to illuminate people's faces. But Marvin, I thought, did a great job of balancing, you know, the authenticity of nighttime with the need to see the actor's faces. I just, I thought Marvin did a great job in this episode. He really did. Yeah, he really did. But Broan whips up this hatred yelling like revenge and we've got to go fight these people.

And Rayfin, who has had all this fear, is whipped up now. and this firefight begins that um and chocote goes to help rafin rafin is shot and chukote goes to help him and and chokote is wounded we see chukotay take a bullet to the shoulder yeah and he's wounded in this firefight and uh drops down and he is uh he's wounded so he's down we don't know what's going to happen the next morning we find him struggling through the woods wounded barely standing and he stumbles into this village. Yeah. He sees this village.

And he's sort of welcomed as a hero, and this little girl puts a wreath around his neck, and then he faints. Yes. Well, I wrote down what resembles a Hawaiian lay. It does look like a Hawaiian lay. It's placed on Chikote Day, and he passes out. Yeah.

One thing I got to say about this village, we didn't go off the lot very much on Star Trek. We were on stage. We could create these planets, you know, forests on stage and caves. But this whole village was probably too big for us to build. So I remember we went to the Warner Brothers lot where they have a jungle backlot. And I know that jungle back lot really well where this village was created. Because of Chuck.

Of Chuck. Exactly. And so this jungle back lot where a thousand things have been filmed back there, a little pond there's a bunch of trees there's a couple different roads it's not huge but it's big enough to film jungle scenes or forest scenes and on one side of the jungle back lot are the executive offices through the trees right and right by the pond now is about 10 houses that look like a suburban street that you can film on but the houses are really offices and that's where my chuck office was right there next to the the jungle back lot yeah um

And I remember going to what I didn't I did I kept thinking as I'm watching this. Oh, I remember going when they were filming this, but I I thought I was in a scene. Turns out I wasn't. But I must have gone down there because I wanted to see them filming. I probably went to observe because I was still shadowing a lot. Right. I remember going there and watching some of this get filmed and wandering around the jungle. And there used to be where the Chuck office was, which is just. now suburban street when we filmed this episode of star trek that was a western street it was still a western street back in the 90s so it had sort of this curved western you know a saloon and all those things because i remember when going to visit um star trek filming over there and i wandered around the other parts of the back lot and i was like oh that's cool they still have a western town and then 10 years later when I'm on Chuck, it's not a western town anymore. It's gone and it's a more modern suburbs. But that was cool. That was fun to see. Well, of the many times that I visited you while you were directing Chuck, if you recall, I was actually there one night when we filmed, when you guys were

filming on that jungle, that jungle lot. And that was the night that I sat on the director's chair and I broke it. You remember? I brought my backpack. I brought like a like a shoulder pack with me. I had my laptop in there. It was probably 50 pounds. It was so heavy. So I'd strap that on the back of the chair. So that already had the weight, that already had a lot of weight. And then when I sat down on it, the whole thing gave way and broke. And I was so embarrassed. I fell on the ground. I don't know where you were. Yeah. And then who was your first AD? Skinny guy? Chris. Chris Delapenella. Chris was like he was like what did you do I was like I don't know man I was like and he was laughing at me and I was so embarrassed and I looked at Chris I said I go Chris I got my checkbook here just how much do I owe you because I felt so crappy I broke so up you know a director no I'm sure it was probably going to break it compromised okay it was compromised anyway but I you know Chris looked at me and he's like he's like no he's like put your checkbook away we're not going to charge you for this you know and I I said like, I feel like an idiot, but that was the day where we were filming on that jungle lot. Same one, same lot that we filmed this episode on. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. I didn't make that connection until you said that. That's exactly where this was. Yeah. All right. Got it. That's funny. Okay. So, yeah, he feints. And then we cut to space. And for the first time in the episode, we hear a captain's log. Yeah. And we're in the briefing room. But this is the first time. This is already, I looked at the time code. This is half what, past.

the halfway point. And now we finally see Tuvok, Torres, Janeway, Paris, and Kim in this briefing room. And Neelix is in there, yeah. Yes, Neelix is there too, yes. Yeah, it's crazy. It's very deep into our story. But we go in the briefing room, and I have to say, there's the wide shot there has Janeway in the foreground, and all of us, like, crammed together in this puddle looking at the monitor or whatever. And it must have been a wide angle lens. And we just look like we've lined up like for the school photo. I was going to say that. It's an elementary school photo. Yeah. Grade four, fourth grade right here. Yeah. It looked a little goofy to me. I was like, I wish we had done this a little. It just felt weird. But you are so concerned about Chikote.

I am thinking, my goodness. I take it very personal. Why is Tom this in, you know, he's so involved and so everything about Paris's dialogue in this entire episode was like, well, I'll go save Chacote. Wait, what's Chacote doing? Is he okay? I'll be the one who does. I mean, it's like, what is going on here? Why are you trying to be such a hero?

Yes, I know. Down. Yeah. I even give, Kim even gives you a weird look too in the briefing room. Really? After you say, yeah. So, yeah, that's in my video reaction. Did you notice that Paris and Torres are in the same two shot?

and they both have their arms crossed because she said she loves him now. So they're kind of close together and standing exactly the same way. So your body language has synced is what you're saying. Yes, we're in sync. Yeah. Maybe it's the love that's just making him feel so heroic, I think. Okay, I'll buy that. Yeah.

I'll buy that. But Neelik says he's talked to this ambassador, a man named Trine. Yeah. we think it's, you know, one of... We think it's the Avori ambassador. We don't know. But he says, I've talked to this guy. He's really nice.

He's going to try and help. And we know that he's been gone. Chucote has been gone for two days. Yeah. Because they've had a two-day search. They found the remains of his shuttle. Yeah. Can't find him.

And then we cut back down to the planet. And Chikote's in a cave or something recovering. Starting to talk to... Penno, right? I think Penno has a conversation with. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the first time I noticed Chakotay starting to use the word.

It's like, you know, the trunks and the fathom and things. Yeah. And I was like, I bet Beltran love this. Because Robert Beltran, if he could just do Shakespeare the rest of his life, he'd die happy. He would die happy, man. He would nullify happy. He would nullify happy.

because Robert loves performing and reading Shakespeare. It's just his favorite thing. It's the reason he became an actor. He's very, very good at it. And I bet he loved starting to incorporate this stylized language into Chikote's dialogue. This was right up his alley. Yeah. He loved it.

Yeah, he asks for communications equipment, and they tell him, well, it's 10,000 footfalls through the trunks to get there. Footfalls. I love it. And he's like, well, I should go. And they say, you know, maybe you should rest. Yeah.

Go with first light. Yeah. Yeah, go at first light. Exactly. So he's like, okay. And then the little girl shows up. And she wants to know. What the heck is her name?

Is it Taria or I was trying to figure that out. I did, I did look it up. I'm going to take her name. Caria. Caria. Okay. Caria. Yeah, because her brother is Dario.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So Caria comes in and now she's talking to Chacote about, you know, why do the nemesis hate us? You know, I can't fathom this. And so again, enlisting the aid of using sympathetic kind of character of this young, innocent girl. She's a kid. She's vulnerable. Right. Innocent. Right. And she talks about her brother who was such a hero. And then she says, maybe you met him. He was in the seventh defense. contingent. Right. We know they're all dead. They're all nullified. So yeah, Chiquotay's doesn't doesn't share that that they're all gone, but, um, but he's got to carry this with him now. This porch kid has lost her. She's like, let me write a letter in case you see him when you go. Yeah. You can give it to him. So very persuasive propaganda scene. Um, but we go to the, we go to a daylight scene now through the jungle. And I think this was also.

in the Warner Brothers Jungle Backlott. Okay. Because there is a part of the back lot that kind of goes up this mound and trees. And then if you go a little, just on the other side of that mound, there's a fence and a neighborhood. Right. You know, there's like people live there. And I know that mound very well because I use it on Chuck.

I've shot other things back there. It's the only mound you can use if someone's supposed to be, you know, coming over the hill or something. It's about four or five feet high and that's it. That mound and you are old friends. Yes. But it was very close to my Chuck office too. My office was right, right, you could throw a rock and hit it.

Yeah. But anyway, so we see him going through the jungle. And then he sees, he looks up and he sees planes flying over. They look just like F-15s almost. I was like, whoa, fighter planes. Yeah, yeah. You see shuttles, you know, something. Yeah.

And so he turns around and runs back to the village. And they have been attacked and bombed, and he sees the, he sees the Craydon taking everyone prisoner, and he goes to shoot, he raises his rifle to, he's going to save these poor innocent people from the horrible Caden. And then all of a sudden there's two Caden on his back. He's captured. So that's kind of how we end that. And on that little mound, the Caden show up on the one little five-foot mound that's back there. And then we go to the ready room. and Janeway is talking with Paris and Tuvac,

and here's Paris wants to go. He wants to save Chikote hard. Big time. And Tuvok just kiboshes your plan. He's like, no, there's only gonna be one person and that person will be me, not you. I am the logical choice to go do this. So he's got his plan.

Now we go to the prison at night and Chiquet has been beat up and interrogated, It's nighttime and there's some lights around and the little girl is asking what's going on. And where's my grandfather? Where's my grandfather? And so he goes to the guard. Chocote walks over to the edge here at the garden and says, where is, where is the old man? Yeah, where's Penno?

Where's the old man? And they hit him over the head. That's right. Knock him back. And then he says, you know what? You should just, we should rest. We should sleep. And he says, close your glimpses.

Yes. And dream of your gloried brother. Yeah. so he's he's he's all full fory now he's all in close your glimpses and dream of your gloried brother he has definitely been this bias this hatred this propaganda he is of course he's experienced this had this experience which is all pretend and manipulated we learn but yes yeah that's the way people's biases get built anyway we go to the daytime scene yeah back at the jungle back lot and they're going to they're taking all the old people to execute them

and that would be penna that would be who the little girl asked about the night before yeah and this is where they also grabbed a little girl everybody's struggling somebody's got chakote yeah this is the scene i struggled with because yeah i just felt like the action and the restraint i didn't buy much of it it felt kind of kind of like indicate it just felt fake yeah it did and then you could also see Chikote's stunt double. When he tackles the other guy, you see it's clearly not Robert Beltron. Yeah. Yeah, this one I, yeah, it was a little tricky. Yeah, but there is this struggle. And then we go to the transporter room and Trine shows up. Yes. The Creighton, Creighton shows up. The captain's there. Yep. And he's super friendly. And this is the first time you're like, wait a minute, this is

the ambassador. One of those guys. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's, it's, This is the plot twist here. And we see Harry. Harry's in the, he's basically the transporter chief. And it's Janeway. Is Tuvok in this scene? I think Tuvok is here too.

I think Tuvok is maybe there too. Yeah. And that's the dun dun dun da moment. That's the big plot twist moment where you're like, I thought these were the bad guys. Wait a minute. I love this makeup, by the way. I love this, you know,

they look like what the, what the Vori described them as, these monsters, but they're not. No, but they look like the alien from, oh my God, what is the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? Predator. Predator. Yeah, they look like the predator.

They look a lot like the predator, yeah. The fangs and the hair, you know, so it's very predator-like alien. Yeah, we cut out of this plot twist moment, we come to reveal Chakote is strapped to the ground. Yeah, he's been upturned. He's been upturned, and so what a horrible thing. They've got this, this tight rope. string almost around the neck

and so if you try to come up you're just going to decapitate yourself it looks horrible and then Broan comes and saves him and he says we found a way for you to contact your ship now now that he's been converted now that your coach has

been indoctrinated they feel like all right we can put him in the field for you know that's what's going on here they say you can contact your ship but Chacote says, no, I want to help, I'm going to fight. I want to fight with you guys. Right.

The fifth contingent, that's what they join up with, right? So he goes into this battle, and he finds a Craydon approaching, and he's got his weapon, and he's ready to shoot him. And the Craydon says, no, it's, it's Tuvok. He says, commander Chiquet. How do you know my name? It's me, Tuvok. Yes.

And he's like, what? Which is crazy that this technology can. And, you know, Tuvok got into this technology, these projections, all of this holodeck almost. Yeah. But that when he enters it, he won't look like himself. He'll look like the enemy. Like the enemy. Yeah.

Which I will say, I will say, man, Tuvok looks good in the creating uniform. He looked really bad. You can see his eyes underneath. I thought that was very cool. I was like, oh, yeah, I could tell that that was slowly. Yeah. You know, he slowly starts to, you start to see a little more. And his voice, I guess it's more the voice changing.

But as the voice became more Tim Russ, I started seeing Tim Russ under all that makeup. And then we cut to Chukote. And then at one point, we finally cut back. And it's Tim Russ. You can, you know, the projection has been. Right. The bias has been cracked a little bit.

But did you like the wardrobe, though, on him? I thought it looked good. Yeah, I thought it looked really good. you know i thought it was sharp yeah yeah big shoulder pants yeah that's cool tuvok says i'll prove it because chikote doesn't believe him that this is all fake i'll prove it to you and so they walk back into the village and it's uh deja vu the same moment the simulation starts again he's being welcomed you know the little girl there she is yeah so then we go back to the ship and we see the doctor for the first time in this episode and and he's the doctor says you know they

must have used a combination of mind control, drugs, projections, all kinds of things. And I was thinking when I watched this scene, I was like, so the doctor had one scene in this episode. Kate probably worked one day, maybe probably one day. I think, you know, you and I probably worked one day. Like, this was, this was all Robert for a week and a half, you know, it was Robert and the guest stars. I love the final line from Beltran from Chikote. I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, that's the last line. That's the end of our episode. The other thing I really saw here was this manipulation of this projection and this propaganda. Yep. It's just what, that's how hate is taught. You know, no one's born hating. Yeah. It's the biased stories and, you know,

know, the truth is the Creighton are not, didn't seem to be horrible people. They may look scary. Yeah. You know, don't judge a book by its cover kind of thing. Like, they may look different than you and maybe different is scary, but that doesn't mean that they're evil people or is this your lesson? Is this your, is this your lesson? Don't judge a book by a cover. Is that your thing? Yeah. I think, um, I think my lesson is more bias is hard to unlearn and it's usually learned by being manipulated by someone else. That's my lesson is bias is not true. It's not facts. It's learned. Yeah. And taught by somebody else who's kind of manipulating things. That's what happened in Chikote here. Yeah. Yeah. That's my takeaway. Yeah. For me, I really feel that

you know, the important lesson here is that in any conflict, propaganda is always used. Propaganda is a huge tool you know the lesson here is just to realize that you got to you got to do your own research you have to do you have to be able to know that what's fed to you is being fed to you and that you need to know that there are other points of view there are other ways of looking at people or situations right so it's not always there's always a flip side to the coin right it's not always one one specific way so yeah so just to be wary of the propaganda that is being thrown out there i think it's funny we we we often feel like we have to have an enemy in our in our life story i think everybody feels like they're the hero in their own story even you know uh serial killers have felt you know most often

feel like they don't think that you know no one thinks they're the bad guy no no no there's another enemy out there that has you know life has treated them unfairly in some way and i think that that's that's at the core of all of this kind of stuff this hatred or this looking for an enemy that's need to feel like well i can't be the hero in my story unless there's an enemy in my story right and uh you know chakote when he first started in this episode was talking about i i look for a peaceful solution and you know we can all coexist together in some way and find peaceful outcomes and learn from each other and those are i think much better attitudes than oh i've got to have an enemy and I've got to fight them because life is about fighting and a war and all that.

Right. Yeah. Agreed. What are you going to rate this episode, one to ten? I will, I would give this, I really like this episode a lot. I would give this a 7.5. Oh, good. Three quarter. Three quarter full. Three quarter tank. All right. What about you? I'll give it a six and a half. So I'll go a little bit lower than you, but still, still an engaging episode. It was enjoyable to watch it was yeah maybe a seven for me seven seven and a half the reason that it's not yeah i'd give a seven actually the reason that i wouldn't go any higher even though i thought everything that was done in this episode was really done well except for that one struggling scene in the village it didn't involve our entire cast and i always think we're better when we have more characters

involved i really do all right join us next week everyone when robbie and i review the episode revulsion. Thanks, everybody. See you next week. I don't know.