The Delta Flyers - One Small Step

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is One Small Step. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.One Small Step:Voyager crosses paths with a rare spatial anomaly that swallowed an Earth ship orbiting Mars in 2032. A discovery that calls for an away mission.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, & Bryan FullerAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Daniel de Rooy, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Lori Tharpe, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Brandon May, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Jeremy Mcgraw, Jason Bonnett, Ali S, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Susan V. Gruner, Andrew Evans, & Michael DismukeAnd our Producers:James Amey, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Chloe E, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Species 2571, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Craig M. Nakashian, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Carmen Puente-Garza, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Jordan Marie Benko, Christian Koch, Lisa Gunn, & Wendy WeatherholtzThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, 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 my fellow Trek actor who also directed the third episode of the series. So help me, Todd, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself, your favorite Eternal Ensign, Garrett Remember, you can get the full version of this podcast by signing up to become a patron at patreon.com for it slash the Delta Flyers. Robbie McNeil. Hey, buddy. You're getting very current with the credits now.

You're like, you're like, that'll be your credit. At some point, I'm going to run out of stuff to say. So I'm going to be saying, my fellow actor and the man who ate Eggs Benedict for breakfast today is what I'm going to throw in there. That's how current it's going to be. It's going to get really current. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Speaking of current, did you see someone on Twitter adapted a poster? Oh, no. Yes, I saw. You saw, and they made a Captain Proton poster, but it was a, what was the original poster? The original poster was for the TV series Buck Rogers. The one that starred, my good buddy, Gil Gerard, who's always at Dragon Con every year with me. He comes and judges the Miss Star Trek Universe pageant for me.

So shout out to Gilgerard. But that's the original poster. So it's basically it's Buck. Photoshopped it, adapted it into a Captain Proton with me as Gilgerard, I guess. As Buck Rogers is Gil Gerard's body. And me as Wilma Deering, his quiz. I looked at it for a second. It was like, what is going on there?

And then I realized, oh, you have a woman's body. I do. I do. And a head of Harry Kim. Of Harry Kim. So Harry Kim's head is. Buster Kincade, really. Buster, yes.

So Buster Kincade is quite, is quite shapely. Yes, it really is. The regular Buster Kinkade. I really need that poster. And even funnier is Jerry Ryan's head, 7 and 9's head, is on Twiggy, the robot. So this little tiny robot named Twiggy is, it's very, very funny. She's very funny. And then Janeway is like some showgirl, Vegas showgirl.

Did you see Janeway? That's who she was. Okay. I don't know what that's from. Yeah, I think that's from... It's not even from the original poster, I don't think. It might be. It might be.

I think that might have been Ming the Merciless's daughter, his princess, maybe in one of her outfits, possibly, possibly. So it's still very funny. I know you were tick-pick by it, so... I thought it was amazing. I'm like, I need this in my home theater. I need this somewhere. Because it just makes me laugh.

Yeah, it's very fun. So it's very well done. Yes, it's the Photoshop job that that was done on that poster, it was a good job. I'm impressed. Yeah. I'm impressed. For me, right before I logged on, Megan was showing me a video on YouTube of the Foo Fighters were performing their hit song, My Hero. But at drummer, instead of their drummer passed away, Taylor Hawkins, it was Taylor Hawkins.

it was Taylor Hawkins son, Shane Hawkins. You saw this video? Oh, yeah. It's very powerful. It's so powerful. I mean, I'm about to start crying. I got to get out of that phase. I mean, but this has been a month.

This month has been a month of tears, but tears of just, you know, moving things like that, seeing the sun with all the emotion that he had drumming. And if you guys haven't seen that video, go on YouTube and look at that. Yeah. And then for me, at DragonCon, just all these panels with, with, you know, Tears were shed by Wilson Cruz. They were blue Del Barrio from Discovery, just pushed from Strange New Worlds.

Everyone had some type of story where there was some emotionality, some heavy emotions attached to it. And every time any of the actors started crying, me being the host and being so sensitive and emotional, I started crying immediately right after them. So it was a tear fest, pretty much. Oh, wow.

It sounds, yeah. That sounds powerful. Yeah, powerful. and not in a bad way. It was all, you know, it was a good way. It was transformational kind of stuff. Like, this was the deepest of all the conversations I've ever had at DragonCon. Wow.

So, yeah, intense, really intense. But, yeah, so you've had an intense experience seeing a poster, which tickled your funny bone. Yes, that was very intense. I laughed, I cried. The poster just brought on the full experience of emotions. Is the, is the artist going to make a full-size real poster and send it to you? I don't know. I begged for it.

on Twitter. I did. So we'll see. Go to Twitter and you can see me or Harry Kim with boobs basically. Yes. Okay. All right. So what is our episode this week? One small step. One small step. So let us go watch one small

step and we'll be right back for Patreon patrons. Please stay tuned for your bonus material. All right, Robbie and I are back from watching One Small Step and we also have writer extraordinaire, Mr. Brian Fuller, with us to talk about this episode. Yes, thank you for being here once again. Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me. For those of you who are listening and

not viewing, Brian has on his The Delta Flyers merch shirt. It's the one with all the episodes on the back forming the Star Trek Chevron. And there, yeah, look at that. Brian's modeling it for us right now. It really is. Fabulous model. Yeah. And Brian, it is a comfortable. shirt isn't it sir it's so cozy and soft it goes right on and flyers right above my nipple so when i'm underlying flyer i'm stroking my nip oh that's why we did it that way it's all part of our plan that was our plan yes multi-functional shirts can accomplish all sorts of experience it really is it really is all right let's um let's begin every episode like we normally do ravi let's start with our poetry synopsis of this episode. One Small Step. And I will begin with my haiku.

Please do. You will follow with your Limerick. So here we go, Brian. You ready for this? Yes. Okay. All right. Here's my haiku of one small step. Graviton ellipse. It devoured Ares four, the Yankees in six. Oh. Oh. Thank you. Thank you. Nice. Yeah. All right. As we've discussed the haiku because we've traded these before we have a haiku is it doesn't have to rhyme you just got to fit in a certain number syllables yes i'm going to say it's a slightly easier version than the limerick which it has to yes it's easier but it's also difficult because in the haiku you really have to boil it down to the essence i mean you have to you do what's going to fit in here and still give you the episode right the haiku actually is more effective for capturing

The synopsis. The synopsis, true. The limerick is more effective for trying to be clever. Yes. So with that said, here we go. My limerick for one small step. Yeah. A spatial anomaly may be our apocalypse

until seven see some old NASA clips. John Kelly is an inspiration, but my main observation is stay away from a graviton ellipse. Nice. Woo. Look at that. Thank you. It doesn't really tell you much about the episode, but...

Or does it? Or does it? Or does it? Oh, my goodness. Yes. Let's talk about guest stars and writers and directors and everything right now. Let's talk about writers since we have our writer here. We have four writers.

We do. Mike Volager, Jessica Scott, Brian Fuller, and Michael Taylor. Brian, how did that happen that you get four writers? this story idea came in as like this was a freelance assignment for the slot and we did a couple of those a season where it was trying to get new writers in exposed to the environment and you know throw them a bone the raven was my freelance uh on on voyager and it's usually like a ticket to get into uh the writing staff and and in this instance you know It's such a hard thing to do a spec script or a freelance script rather for a show because it's in situ. You're joining. Everybody knows the characters and the situations much better than you.

There were certain situations with this script as it evolved that the writers did a couple of drafts and then Mike and I jumped in to do a rewrite. It was a pretty extensive rewrite and there were things about the first draft. that just felt like kind of green. I remember there was one point where two characters were described and like this tent situation and they gave each other a knowing look

and then that was the act out of the and we were like oh they're not quite yet first in how to wrap up a scene and we're doing it in a way where they're like I think this is what you do

but that always like struck me as one of those lessons to be learned in a situation when you're writing a freelance script for somebody about what qualifies as an act out and what doesn't. And it's hard to know what on the page is going to work in an act out. So Mike and Jessica did a really solid draft. And then Mike and I, other Mike, Mike Taylor, were given the task of rewriting. And I've done a few things with Mike Taylor and love, love. love working with him. So this was, this was another ball. It was very nostalgia-esque, you know,

for us like Bright of Chaotica. There was something about the nostalgia of the crew that was exciting about this one. But it was much more kind of historical excitement as opposed to pop culture excitement. Yeah. Which I think was the impetus to give Chacote the storyline when you might think that it would naturally go to Tom Paris because of history, but that kind of fine line that we discussed was, you know, Tom is a purveyor of pop culture, and this was actually historical for Chikote. I think knowing what I know now about structuring characters and supporting characters, there was a very blurred line between what one character would be interested in as opposed to another and they're so individually specifies to give a greater kind

of protagonist journey in a script that looking back now and and and thinking like wow everybody besides chakotay would be as as obsessive but chocote was the one whose decision making was kind of compromised by his passion and in this story so there's a lot of things looking back at the episode where i'm like does that trap did it track for you gentlemen? It did. It did for me. It tracked very well. I thought I thought Chucote's journey and Seven of Nine's journey was a very interesting sort of counterpoint those two. Just to jump back. So this was a spec script. Was this script originally a Tom Paris? Did they write it as a Tom Paris? I'm trying to remember the first graphs and it evolved. Like I believe that Chiquet

became the, you know, sort of passion flag for the Aries and the history of the Ares. I think it's great. I mean, I don't, it's not like, oh, God, why didn't I get an episode or something? It's not that at all. I actually think it's really great that it's Chacote because you could speak to this better than I, but I felt like often Chacote was left without story and without specificity. And this was really great to see him on something, you know, a character journey where I understood the passion, that the weight of his passion made sense to me. A lot of times our characters were given sort of these journeys motivated by something, especially Tom Parr's first couple seasons, that was so shallow and so un, that was just,

why is that the thing that they're passionate about? This for Chocote was great, and I love it. Knowing that it was a spec script, and my second question is normally a script evolved from a story pitch and then the room breaks the story. So you've got all the writers figuring out scene by scene how it's going to go. Then you've got your outline document and then you write. So it's kind of there's a group development process often. Am I correct in that? Yeah. And this was the same. I misspoke when I said spec script and and intended to say freelance script. So Mike and Jessica did come into the writer's room. They did break it with us. And we did the whole process. And it

was one of those that the storyline was so clear and about the, you know, finding a piece of home so far away from home and what that means. That was something that we returned a lot to in Voyager throughout the years. You would, we frequently did episodes where we found a bit of home in the Delta Quadrant, whether that was, you know, a Klingon ship or distilled. an origin with the dinosaur people who went out to discover the galaxy. That was a theme that kept recurring in Voyager that I enjoyed, but it is like space is big and we keep running. All of these things like, oh, you drop this. So that that came out of another one of those ideas that was

above the fray because that was a lot of the pitches that we got is some piece of home that we found in the Delta Quadrant. And this one felt like it was going to the heart of exploration and the thematics of what Starfleet represents in a way that was clearer. And so Jessica and Mike pitched the story, then got to go along the process of coming to the room, breaking it, doing the outline, doing the first draft of the script, doing the second draft of the script.

And then that's when Mike and I jumped in to polish. So I would say most of it, of the dialogue in there is probably Mike and I's, including like, you know, Arracus and those types of references. I was always throwing in references to other science fiction or pop culture, whether it's Battlestar Galactica or Dune

or what have you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. When it listed the teleplay credits, it's interesting that you see, it says Mike Wolliger and, and it's the ampersand, and symbol and Jessica Scott, and then it's A&D spelled out. It says Brian Fuller, another ampersand, Michael Taylor.

So it's formatted in a very unique way, too. Like it usually would just say Mike Wallager and Jessica Scott and Brian Fuller and Michael Taylor, but there's the ampersand that separates Mike and Jessica and the ampersand between you and Michael. Is that on purpose because that you guys did a lot of the actual tele... play or the rewrite and so they separated you i don't know why they used the ampersand and the and d well it's all wj sort of clarification so if it's an ampersand it's a team so jessica and mike wrote it as a team copy and then the a and d is is the is basically to indicate that we did not

work simultaneously got you okay so mike and jessica did their their drafts and then mike and i did our drafts. Okay. So, but we, we, we weren't sort of like changing scenes around and working, uh, as a unit. So the Amber's 10 is me, it means team. Okay. So it's a writer's guild. It's a union thing for you guys.

Okay. Understood. Speaking of unions, the DGA comes next here. And I see Robert Picardo. Robert Picardo directed this. What are your memories of, uh, Bob directing on this? his second episode ever. I think he did a great job on the, on the episode.

And I, you know, we've all worked with Bob. We all love Bob. And I think the thing that is distinctive about Bob is that he is in it to win it. And very passionate and wants to do a great job. So, of course, that is usually, and you know this better than anybody, Robbie, in television directing, there's a certain. sense of show up, do the job, and then kind of like ghost in, ghost out, and move along home, where Bob was already home. And so his passions were, and for the development process

and questions over the course of the development of the script, were always omnipresent. So he didn't have to move along home because he was already there. And I just remember him being very passionate and... Agreed. I do too. Equitous in the heart building during this process because he wanted to make sure that he was getting it right and showing up and asking questions and

cornering the right people in the hallways. Right. And just continuing to make sure that he was leaving no stone and turned. And that was delightful because it was kind of, be careful what you wish for in terms of the producers on the show

because they're like, just go do the job. And Bob was like, I want to talk about it. And of course, for me as a staff writer, I'm like, I'm going to talk about it all day too. So it was delightful for me, but I think for some of the higher up producers, they were like, maybe collect your questions altogether. And then approach. I was telling Garrett, I remember that zero gravity stuff. He was very concerned about the technicalities of it. And I remember him once coming in my trailer or asking me to step in and we sat and we kind of broke down like transitions and shots in that in all of that stuff because he was passionate absolutely at the at the core of it but there

was nerves well it's interesting you know when you talk about the anti-gravity stuff and and how challenging that is it's you know experience and just having the hours logged goes such a long way and being able to solve those problems economically. Like, I remember, you know, there was some anti-grav stuff in Prey. And Tim was, I think that might have been David Livingston who directed Pray, but I'm not sure. It was somebody who was a much more experienced director. And for this, instead of doing this big elaborate gimbal or wires or anything like this, the director and Tim, And I think it was Tim.

Tim was like, why don't you put an apple box there? And I'll just slowly step up onto it and do the special effect with the performance. So there was a collaboration and a problem solving there that I think you only get when you have a lot of experience where it's like, oh, the camera is only going to be seeing this frame. So everything outside of that frame is inconsequential. As long as we can deliver anti-gravity within this frame, we don't need wire. and we don't need a gimbal. We're just going to have Tim Russ step elegantly on top of an apple box and look like he's floating.

And that probably would have helped Bob have an easier time if he had that kind of buttressing and shepherding in the process because I think oftentimes directors and television are just served at wolves. Yeah, that was Alan Eastman, by the way. Was Alan Eastman? Yeah, I guess. Did a great job.

I love that. Yes, all right. Absolutely. Guestar, Phil Morris. I know I'm more from more comedic job that he's done, but he is a really stand-up guy, and I'm glad that he was cast in this role. I actually saw him at Star Trek Las Vegas.

He was at that convention just this year. And he's been in a lot of Star Trek. He's played humans and Klingons and Jim Hidar, and he was in the original series as a child. He was in the original series as a child? Yeah. Oh, my God. I had no.

If we talk about a long resume, look at that guy's resume. Okay, so I, you know, I somehow forgot to get his first job as my one homework assignment. I'm wondering if the original TOS was his very first one. That's what I'm about to tell you. That is his first job. That is it. I just looked it up. It's Mary, the one with all the kids.

He plays one of the boys. Yeah. He's got the art. It says he's the Army helmet boy. but that's that's yeah if there's ever a guest star that we need to have on this podcast it's the one whose first job was star trek as a kid you have to agree this is this is quite apropos i cannot believe that he's also been in over 250 tv and tv shows that's what i'm saying that that's that's a huge resume he was in search for spock star trek three yeah he's been on um daytime soaps he's he's done

a million different things. It's unbelievable as I look at this. You know what? He still looks the same too. He looks great. Phil looks great right now. And one of the things that I love about actors like Phil Morris is that they're so handsome yet to drink this comedy.

And there's something about comedic actors who are so facile between extremities of tone that do so well on Star Trek, whether they're playing Jim Hedars or Klingon. or a human being, and all of those are different styles of performances. But it's so amusing that someone so handsome gets how to use their handsomeness as a comedic tool. Yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm a talented guy. Talented guy.

All right. Let's jump right into this, Robbie. I mean, we start out with an exterior planet shot. We know the date October 19th, 2013. It's Mars. We have an exterior space shot of the Ares 4. and now we go into the interior there is four and Phil Morris is talking to his ground crew

and he's talking about how the Yankees have just won game five and then he says well there's one more game left but now here's my question then they start talking about how Houston ground control has too many kings fans and I'm going now wait a minute the kings are in basketball

the Sacramento Kings and they're also in hockey the Los Angeles Kings but they are not in baseball so was this a writer thing thinking that there would be an expansion of the baseball league to include a team called the Kings? Or was this just a snuffoo on the part of the writers in terms of you guys kind of threw in the wrong thing? I don't know. If it was sports related, chances are I didn't write it. Okay. So was this Michael Taylor who wrote that then? Maybe. Yes. And I would imagine with Mike Taylor that he probably extrapolated some sort of, you know, expansion or

The King's title and thought about that, knowing Michael Taylor, but anything in any of these scripts that is any sort of like sports reference, I can guarantee I had nothing to do. That you had nothing to do with it. But, Rob, did you, when you were watching, I didn't catch that. Oh, well, I think my mind, my mind went to exactly what I think the intention was, which was they were talking about fake future players and fake future teams. So I think it just blew past me. So it went past you.

The thing I noticed in this right away was the way, the way, Bob shot this, even though John Kelly, the astronaut, was strapped into his seat, the camera movement was twisting and floating and very lyrical and definitely different than the artificial gravity that we experience on Voyager, where everything is just like there is gravity. In this, you know, historical NASA ship, there's not. So that shot making, I thought, was really well done. Yeah.

I remember Bob talking about that, about talking about the point of view of the camera being subject to the lack of gravity since everybody else was strapped in. So to sell gravity, he had to do it with the camera. So I remember him thinking about those things in the production meetings. Yeah, it was very effective. Yeah, it was. It worked, definitely. Phil detects an anomaly heading right for him. And that is pretty much the act out, or not the act out, the straight to commercial.

with the, I loved it. You see the reflection of the yes, of the anomaly in his eyes. Do you remember, was that something that was scripted or was that a conversation that was scripted? Yeah, a lot of times, you know, things like that as we do our podcast, I don't know if it's the director choice or if you guys, you know, wrote in the moment, but that felt like a very intentional moment for sure. Yeah, yeah, I think it was in the script.

Great. We go to Chikote's quarters next. He's reading a book, drinking some Akuchi-Moya tea. I think that doorbell chimes and he says chimes and chimes. He's like come in, doesn't open, come in

ding-dongs again, rings a few more times, he gets up, nobody's there. But he tries to call the bridge, he gets the transporter room captain, which I assume is a loop group person. It was a voice I didn't recognize. I was like, okay, the transporter engineer says, sorry, this

transporter room. Chikote says, can you patch me into the bridge, you reroute, my call and then he gets all this interference we hear neelix the only appearance of neelix in the episode by the way what i think so i did not recall seeing me wait a minute he's he's never on screen we hear his voice and that's it tell me if you saw him i don't remember seeing him i feel okay well we'll keep going but you hear him i'm here you do hear him you hear the bridge you hear the mess hall You know, we hear a whole cacophony of voices and sounds. Yes.

And at the very end, Chikotay is like, okay, I'm out of here. He tries to go out the door that doesn't open. He turns and walks away and then it opens. It's a great comical beat with him heading to the door. It keeps shutting on him. He walks away. It opens. And then finally he jumps through and gets out of his quarters.

So everything's a mess. I wonder if Bob embellished that last moment, that beat. I don't. It feels like a Bob bit. Yeah, it does. It feels like this. is what Bob would suggest, like, I'm going to have him go through and then go back and go through and then go back and then finally get out.

You know, maybe that's a classic comedy, vaudeville bit. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it was good. And it's fun to see Chacote doing these lighter moments. Yes. It really is. It really is. It was really refreshing for me.

I agree. I agree. All right, engineering. Chikote comes in and approaches seven. Obviously, he already knows that Seven's been tinkering with this because he says that he sees that she's making some changes, but he's, He's not really at her station yet, so I'm assuming that he already knows that she's been tinkering with this. She's been making some changes to the computer core.

She says she's enhanced the command sequencers with Borg algorithms, and Chikote says it is wreaking havoc with the secondary systems. He didn't authorize these changes, but then she starts telling us that she's been trying to tell Bala that these changes would help, and Bala's been not paying attention to her. So she just wanted to show her. Just thought a demonstration would be better. I'll just do it anyway. A bit of a maverick here and not, you know, I thought that she would have already learned her lesson not to do things without permission

or without someone at least approving it, but not in this case. Seven and nine is the Honey Badger. She is the Honey Badger. Yes, you're right. Seven has a little comedy here. She says clearly, she tells Tukote, well, clearly Voyager is not ready for assimilation. Yes.

Silence. That was a joke. And then she says, to comedy. The doctor tells me that I need to come up with some comedy to diffuse tense situations. Yes, I need to use humor. Do you remember the kind of runner? That was a runner

that went on, because later on, Chukotet's got his thing. Yeah. Who wrote the comedy in these scripts? Yeah, Brian. It was probably Mike and I, you know, we did, we wrote separately and we did a lot of writing together. On Bright of Chaotica, I think we

just stood in the same room and wrote that. And I think this was one where we did a lot of writing together and we also did some separate writing. But the comedy stuff was kind of fun. But it was also trying to find that balance between 7 of 9 stoicism and her humor. I thought it was something that Jerry navigated really, really well. But it was also, I think comedy on Star Trek is a complicated needle to thread. Because tonally it's not supported any place else and it sort of seems out of character so you really need actors who are facile with that level of tone shift and and i think you know bob certainly is Ethan certainly as you

both are and jerry surprisingly is as well yeah yeah yeah at least with star trek there was an opportunity to include it in our tone but you had to be careful you're right it was a very small needle to thread there. Yeah. All right. So Chacote asks her to get the secondary systems back up again. Then all of a sudden we have a shipwide power drain, a big ship shake and Harry's voice in the calm calling all senior officers to the bridge. We enter the bridge and we see Harry is in the command chair. Yay. Yeah, Janeway and Tuvac enter. Tuvok relieves Ayala from tactical and Kim is relieved of the big chair by Janeway. And Janeway sort of, I don't know if she scolds him. She sort of, you know, She says, it's two in the morning.

This better be good. She's a little. She's grumpy. She hasn't had her coffee, clearly. There's no coffee inside of Janeway. So that's why she's grumpy. Harry tells Janeway that we have a level nine gravimetric distortion coming at us from subspace.

It's closing in our positions. Janeway says shields up, evasive maneuvers. Chikotean 7 now appear on the bridge. Paris says we cannot outrun them at impulse. Janeway orders us to go to warp. And the anomaly, which reads as 30 million teradjules of subspace energy, disrupts our warp field. Seven recognizes the phenomenon as a spatial anomaly known as 521 to the board and it is

attracted to objects that emit electromagnetic energy. She says we better cut power to reverse our shield polarity and it works. Isn't it also attracted to dark matter? Like it's like we don't know that yet. Not yet. We haven't got to that. That comes up later. Yep. Yes. You're absolutely right. I totally did a Twitter bomb like hey. And I wish and you shut me down and now I'm deleting my tweet. I want to say in this scene, I thought Bob did a great job of carving out character in here. Like when 7 of 9 sees the anomaly and she says this was the board designated this spatial anomaly 521. There's this like push into a real tight close up as she's just looking at it before she names it. And so you see that this is landing with some stakes for 7, that this thing is a scary thing

to her. She knows because of the Borg what this is. So it sets up her whole point of view through the episode. And I think if Bob had not filmed it in that way, if he had just cut to a medium shot of seven saying this, it wouldn't have landed as with the weight

that you needed to carry seven of nine's point of view through the whole episode, that she has a different outlook on this thing than everybody else. So I just I thought that detail was great. I think those points are really salient in terms of translating story because otherwise the conflict later with 7 of 9 and Chacote would be meaningless if you're not setting up that she thinks this thing is dangerous

and should be destroyed so it stops you know capturing ships and pulling things into subspace and that juxtaposed with Chocote's desire to solve it or to get inside it sets up the whole dramatic conflict of the episode. Yeah, I agree. I think, again, Bob's attention to detail was really, really strong here. Yeah. After we avoid the ellipse from taking us over, Janeway then realizes that she also recognizes this anomaly

and that Starfleet has basically named it a graviton ellipse. It travels through subspace, emerging occasionally without warning. Chocote then mentions the Ares 4 mission and its encounter. There's a couple of moments in this scene where because Bob is an actor, I think he allowed the actors to take moments of silence. And I noticed in this episode some off-camera looped lines that I'm sure Rick Berman was like, we can't have three habits of silence.

Have Janeway say something off-camera here while Chacote is having his dramatic walk forward. And I noticed a pattern a little more in this episode. and I was wondering why, and then I thought, oh, it's probably Bob. It's because Bob allowed us because he's an actor. He's a sensitive guy. Yeah. To him, that silent moment of Chikote walking forward to be drawn to this thing was powerful. But to Rick Berman, it's just silence and somebody's got to be talking.

I think if you look at those moments as they would exist in a movie, you would let them play, but television is a different kind of attention span. Yeah. And they should have been left to play. But, like, as you were describing that, I went, like, my mind was just cycling through all of these moments of Starfleet officers approaching U-Screen silently in awe of what they're seeing. And it was kind of undermined. And there's a, yeah, there's a few of them in here where I felt like you could hear the loop, the change in tone of the delivery of Janeway's line or whoever, you know, you, I heard quite a few of them in this episode. So it was just a little observation.

Chocote mentions the Ares 4 mission and its encounter with the Graviton ellipse, which causes the mysterious disappearance of the Aries 4 and astronaut Kelly. Janeway then decides to follow it and study it after Chacote mentions that no one has been this close and lived to tell about it and that this is a great opportunity. Yeah, Chacote, he says, this could be a remarkable opportunity. And Brian, whenever a character in Star Trek in the Act 1 says, a remarkable opportunity. We know we're in trouble.

Yeah. I was like, bad decision making is coming up. Well, at least he doesn't dive head in. I mean, he says, let's launch a probe. You know, he doesn't say, we're going to go right into it. So he has a little bit of caution there, right? So we have an exterior shot of the anomaly traveling through space with Voyager following.

And now we're in astrometrics with Tuvac and Seven. Seven says that she's receiving some telemetry for the probe. and the probe has entered a stable core within the anomaly, which Tuvac then says, the eye of the storm. Tuvac asked the computer to run a multi-spectoral analysis of the anomaly's core, and Seventh starts suggesting that we dissipate the anomaly from the inside by first, you know, taking a shuttle and altering the shields. So she's talking about, you know, getting rid of this anomaly. Tuvok doesn't agree. He thinks we should study it. The core analysis does come back, showing that there are more than 2.8 billion compounds, including the synthetic alloys,

titanium and polymer composites, which made up the hull of the Ares 4 command capsule. So that is the most intriguing thing in this scene. I would argue that there are other intriguing things happening in this scene. Oh, please, please. One of the things I love about this scene is 7 of 9 calling out Tuvok for not being logical with the thing is deadly, so it should be destroyed. Correct. And he's like, or it should be explored.

and she's like, WTF, Tuvok. Yeah. WTFT. And he's like, I'm still a Starfleet officer. I still explore. I still have fascination and curiosity. Logic does not negate curiosity. And it's one of those.

There's several scenes between Tuvok and Seven of Nine that I love because you have two very dry characters and whenever they can get into something that is about passion or things that are outside of, their logical exteriors because Seven of Nine is, you know, fulfilling a kind of Vulcan role in the classic Star Trek sense of being the voice of reason and logic. And even here she's met with the real voice of reason and logic on the ship. And he's saying, let's be curious.

And that felt like there was a unique dynamic between Tubac and Seven of Nine that made those types of scenes extra special. I even felt it in an early line in the scene when Tuvok says, like the eye of a storm. And he uses sort of a poetic metaphor. In fact, I think seven even comments, apt metaphor, something like that. But I was like, immediately I went, oh, that's interesting that Tuvok is taking a more kind of poetic point of view that's unexpected. When you see these two very logical dry characters, it's an opportunity to kind of explore

the nuances of Tuvok or the. nuances. So I totally agree with you. I thought it was a very interesting scene. My question, though, Brian, is, so we're in astrometrics. We're getting data on this probe we sent. Why does it have to be an astrometrics? Like, I know the scene was a nice little two-ender, but like, why does astrometrics exist, I guess is what I'm getting at? Like, why can't we analyze the same data on the bridge with everybody being a part of it? Was astrometrics just a place to go do PowerPoint presentations that could have been done on the bridge anyway. Well, I think the censors are, like, within the narrative,

the sensors are much more acute in terms of their sensitivity. And also, when you're doing that kind of work on the bridge, you have Tom Perez saying, I'm driving. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Like, go do that in the back. Go do that in the back. Okay.

It's just sometimes it's interesting to me because we didn't have. the astrometrics lab for a long time and then once seven came on the show now we've got this new set where a lot of things we do in astrometrics even when janeway's there or other people there were like oh we used to do all that on the bridge but now we've got this other place it just yeah it's it's i guess it depends on if you want tom paris screaming i'm driving here or not don't think we turn around yeah exactly i think it's it's a couple of reasons and and didn't harry kim and initiate the astrometrics and then seven of nine came along and they did it in yeah they did it together that's right it's a collab between harry and i and i think that if you spent all that money on

building that set you might as well show it off oh yeah it's a cool set it's cynical but that's probably the main reason is that it's it's we're on the bridge for every other kind of conversation so let's find someplace else agree yeah it's funny it's just it's kind of like another bridge is kind of what It is. It's got a big view screen and a bunch of computers telling you stuff. Right. But it's a bridge with only usually two characters on it basically. It's a good place for two handers. It's kind of like the bridge is the big TV and the astrometrics is a screening room.

So it depends on what you're watching. If you're going to watch reality TV, just do it on the bridge. If you're going to watch a movie, go to Astrolet. Yes. Okay. After another exterior space shot of the Graviton ellipse being followed by Voyager, we are now in the briefing room. Torres is up at the monitor describing this command capsule,

46 meters in length, 92 metric tons, powered by a third generation ion drive, equipped with a transpectral imager. Seven says that the Borg were working on shield enhancements to enter the anomaly. Tuvok says we've got about 16 hours before this anomaly re-enters subspace. Janeway wants to find what's left of Ares 4.

So Harry and Boulana are assigned to help with shield enhancements. Tom is assigned to review the database from the Ares 4 mission. Chikote volunteers as the mission leader, Seven Stays, to express her concern about the danger involved. She more than expresses concern. She really, she and Janeway go out. She is a buzz kill. She really is. He's very combative with Janeway in this scene. And Janeway, again, you know, raising this adolescent child that she is raising in Seven of Nine, you know, is very patient. And I thought, you know, the way she speaks to her. her and tries to explain that exploration is about seeing things with your own eyes. I love that idea.

You know, it's not just probes and data. It's about the connection of actually being there, which ties into speeches later on. It's a big theme in this of like, you know, was it worth us exploring space, John Kelly says. You know, this was worth it. So I love that idea. Janeway expresses that with seven and kind of plants the seeds. And then she says, hey, maybe you should join the away team. she suggests that she volunteered for the first time. It does. And I like her line when Janeway says that Seven never really appreciated human history. I mean, as a Borg drone, they just, you know, they just basically assimilated all these people

and got their histories, but not, there was no appreciation of it. So she encourages her to volunteer and she's not happy about it. You know, there's something about, you know, Seven of Nine's assessment of Humanity's curiosity and human history, that being a Borg, you kind of want her to say, surprise, you're not the most interesting people in the galaxy. Right. So, you know, as opposed to, like, it being some sort of disconnect, you know, there's something about just an entitlement and point of view that could have been explored

in that scene where, you know, 7 of 9 has met a lot of people and killed them, eventually and and perhaps humans aren't the most interesting which took which is why it took the board so long to get around to uh you know our neck of the woods that's an interesting idea yeah i don't know that i've heard that expressed in the show from seven ever quite that succinctly well because it's sort of you know antithetical to what star trek is which is like the human experience and and how great we are going out into the world or, you know, the galaxy, and it is our point of view. But as we are learning, you know, through, you know, as so many different aspects of

humanity are emerging, whether it's transness or gender fluidness or non-binaryness, like one point of view is it necessarily as unique as you would think. So that was also, I think, one thing that I wish we had leached out of this story of seven and I saying like, you know, I'm, you know, it's important to you, but it might not be important enough to risk your lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Very interesting point. I have a question, point of discussion for about Borg. So I read that Borg maturation chambers accelerate maturation 25 times. 25 times natural acceleration is what a Borg maturation chamber. And seven has said that she was raised after she was assimilated, she was raised in a maturation chamber.

So if she was kidnapped, let's say it's seven years old, I can't recall, but something like that, and put in a 25 times maturation chamber to be an adult, then she was really only assimilated maybe a year ago, two years ago, right? Basically, she's nine is what you're saying. Well, I'm saying like in our human times, she wasn't, she wasn't assimilated 20 years ago, 30, you know, she was assimilated not that long ago, which just kind of blew my mind. That changes a lot. That's huge. Yeah.

Do you, any thoughts on that, Brian? Did you guys ever discuss that? Because the Raven and her assimilation, she was assimilated as a child, like the Raven was 20 or 30 years before. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, keep going. So I think the logic would be that she was assimilated, putting them. maturation chamber and you know accelerated but then had been a borg for uh 20 years yeah 15 or 20

years so she'd been borging for a while but she she was assimilated as a child then that's accelerated to her her adult borg form and then you know so she her childhood was basically compressed so her adult experience as a board was longer was longer okay that helps that helps my my brain a little bit. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane. Trip after trip. You've been doing your impersonation of me. Yes. You know what doesn't belong in everyone's epic summer plans, though? What? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. So while you're planning your beach trips and your barbecues and your three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding

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I imagine you have nanoprobes that are regenerating tissues and body-thumption. system function, like, you know, on a pretty clear cycle that... So you could live forever, theoretically, almost live forever, unless you're killed in a battle or something. Yeah, I mean, Borg are, you know, cyborg zombies. Yeah, right. A lot of a better expression. So they are undead in a way, or their systems are being kept up by a constant circulation of robots that are repairing any damage.

that might hurt or cellular decay. So that makes sense. Now, I was just trying to wrap my head around her timeline. Yeah. That she was seven and then she skipped to be whatever she is basically now. And then was sort of frozen in time for 15, 20 years as a drone. And then when we restored her as much as we did, that she became her human body started a new, a new human. timeline. Okay, that helps a lot because I was, I was just trying to wrap my head around like

how her memory and how her human experience of aging had happened. You know, she experienced aging to seven. Then she skipped it in the maturation chamber really fast. And she sort of got frozen in time. Okay, that helps. She kind of went from six to 25, you know, over a matter of of a couple of months and then has been living at at 25 this whole time for two decades. Okay. All right. Thank you for the sidebar. But it was something like knowing that timeline helps the context of this story in a way.

You know, like being clear on it. And I don't know that I was ever clear on it, to be honest. All right. We are now in astrometrics where we find Jekote and Paris listening to the last transmission from astronaut, Lieutenant John Kelly. Seven does arrive to comment on their hero worship and to announce that she is going on the missions and she is the best suited to monitor

the board tech enhanced shields. I loved her reading of her line when she was, I'll be joining you or something. She was so angry about it. Yeah. It was great. Cherry did a great job. Not happy to be doing it.

I also love this scene. I had forgotten that I was much a part of this episode, to be honest, until we watched it. I really didn't remember anything. that other than Bob directed it. That's all I remember. Yeah. But watching it, I love this scene with Tom Paris and Chucote because we don't often see them sort of bonding. No. In any way. They had conflict from the pilot. And so to see this sort of common ground that they're on and this kind of the romanticism and the authenticity of the

scene, I thought it was really nice. So it was something we rarely saw out of either one of them and much less together it was great for me obviously you can see with my office i'm a collector and i have you know huge sentimental attraction to a lot of different things and that was kind of the basis that we we talked about with the scene michael and i in terms of what were what were the sentimental attractions uh for both of these men that they were able to share kind of for the first time so they're like oh you you like history and like i like history but we just are focused on different facets of it. And that just felt like, oh, like these two guys probably would have more in common

if they actually opened up to each other. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was really well done and something we didn't normally see. So thank you. It was great. We are in sick bay and the doctor gives seven a hypospray to counteract the effects of gravimetric radiation. He talks about one of his first away missions to Iraqis Prime,

a little reference to the, amazing dune. He asked Seven to record images from inside the ellipse. And he talks about how materializing on Arracus Prime was so exhilarating. And he says one small step for a hologram and one giant leap for mankind. Hence the title of this episode. And then Chikote Hail 7 to Report to Shuttle Bay too. Comments on this scene in Sick Bay. It's an added scene. So the episode was short. And you have to remember those, like whenever it's like, hey, we need a two-page walk-and-talk, or we need a two-page

because I think the scene originally was seven, I just brought the camera and has like a line reference. And then the episode was short, so it's like, well, let's have a scene where he hands the camera over. And so those scenes are always really, really tricky

because they are not moving the story forward. They're just filling up time. So they have to be all about character. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was great. It was nice to see Bob. I know he directed this episode, but he didn't have much more to do than this scene. He had very little. So it was nice to see the doctor and him doing his thing. And that probably helps actually, right? I mean, Robbie, if you're not in it a lot and you're directing it, you can focus more in the directing

than on your own work. So yeah, that's a good thing. We have exterior shot of the Delta Flyer leaving Voyager heading towards the anomaly. In that space shot, by the way, you see the Delta flyer kind of show the belly, the underside. Yes. And you see these, it looks like shield enhancements or hull enhancements, these black portions. But I didn't see it the rest of the episode. Whenever I saw the double flyer after that underside, I was like, where's the shield enhancements?

Yeah. And then I was like, well, maybe it was shadows that I saw, but I don't know. But I felt like, when I first saw this, I'm like, oh, there's the Borg shield enhancements that they were talking about and stalling. But I never saw them again. This is the only time. so uh well i i think that was probably you know using the standard model and then having one shot that had the add-ons yeah yeah probably was a budget thing but it was a little detail that i was

like oh i wish we could attract that yeah uh paris is giving a countdown to the ellipses perimeter and on the voyager bridge we are monitoring the delta flyer and we know that the shields have been weakened but they are still holding janeway wants harry to keep his finger on that tractor beam button just in case. We've lost sensor contact, but the calm link is still active. Inside the Delta Flyer interior, there's full thrusters to punch through the core. Chikote reports that we are now inside the stable and calm eye of the storm. And on the bridge, everyone is listening to Chikosate's description. The EM activity has created this natural luminescence. They've detected asteroid fragments, pieces of vessels, matter from every quadrant in the galaxy, even a primitive

atmosphere. Janeway asked Seven what she thinks. Seven says it's intriguing and that some of the matter is extra-dimensional in origin. Harry responds, sounds like this anomaly's gotten around. So here's a little bit of humor now from Harry talking about how the anomaly is a little frivolous with its behavior, I guess. Bloody anomalies are Harry's favorite kind of thing. I loved the execution of this whole thing as they because once once chikote says punch us through tom or something yeah we we kind of leave the shuttle right and we just go to audio yeah and we hear a lot of chikote's description and bob did a beautiful job on the bridge of this long oner it was the crane with the remote head moving around the bridge capturing in the background the joke that harry's got capturing in the

background balana but it just it it it stayed on the reaction to what they were hearing and the anticipation and the and Janeway sort of picturing what Chacote was describing and I thought that was really wonderful to to play it kind of off the dialogue and more on the reactions in such an elegant way. It was really well done. Good job. We talked about that scene being analogous to the close encounters scene early on in the movie when you're at the traffic control hubs and you don't see the aliens. You just hear people talking about. about it and it being this shared experience where everybody back on the ship, who also has an emotional attachment to whatever piece of histories that we find in the anomaly, I remember distinctively referencing the close encounters of the third kind scene where you're with people who only have audio and the special effect is their faces. Yeah, it was great. I love that that was again intentional a discussion about that reference and it was really well done by the camera crew and bob and everybody i thought was great after harry's a slutty anomaly joke we are jolted

by a gravimetric surge caused by the anomaly making a course correction of 0.006 degrees there's only five hours and 36 minutes left before this anomaly will reenter subspace so they are going to go ahead and record data inside the core while trying to locate the Ares 4, which is definitely going to be a task since it's so vast inside there. We jump to the Delta Flyer interior, the aft compartment, where Seven and Chocote are studying material that they've collected from inside the core. Chocote talks about a rock that is billions of years older than Earth. And, you know, this is something that Seven seems quite not enthusiastic about. And basically, he says, you're now holding a piece of history after he tells

or grab this. And he says paleontology was always his first love. Is this his first reference to this ever in the show that he's this paleontologist enthusiast? Well, history, he's definitely talked about history and cultural history. Right.

It's been in there, but this is you're not wrong to be like, wait, this is new. Because we kind of got a little bit of that with distant origin. Yeah. And so we knew that he was paleontological by training. Right.

And we just hadn't talked about it. Gotcha. Yeah. I think actually the last time we discussed it was just an origin. Yes. And that's been quite a while. But he says this is why he joins Starfleet. And then he asked seven what she wanted be before she was assimilated.

She hesitates. But then it comes out that she wanted to be a ballerina. This is where I went, wait a minute. She remembers she want to be a ballerian. Let me track her timeline. This is where I was like... This is it? Yeah, this was the moment where I was like,

when did she want to be a ballerina? And does she know that Janeway did the dying swan ballet in one of our episodes? Because that might bond them a bit. That might. Janeway and Seven doing some ballet on talent show night, I think would be amazing. I wasn't a fan of the ballerina stuff.

Yeah. That Seven wanted to be a ballerina? Yeah, that was sort of like the game, the gag of, isn't it funny that this board wanted to be something as delicate as a ballerina? And it felt like a lame joke for me. Brian, if you had that battle. Okay. If you won that battle, what would you have filled in instead of ballerina?

I think there would be an interesting comment about, you know, I never had aspirations as a child because I was in a maturation chamber for six months. and then I was a 25-year-old drone. So to have these aspirations is not how I think. And there's something about, once again, sort of human privilege, that would have been interesting to explore there by just saying, no, because of my trauma, I was denied aspirations of such kind. I think there would have been humor in shutting that shit down with, oh, it's so funny that you didn't, like, you weren't violated as a child like me.

Right. Tom interrupts on the calm that we are getting. getting close to the Ares 4, but what I found interesting was that Tom uses the term heads up. And typically we don't use 20th century slang or colloquialisms. It's just, it's very interesting that we get to hear Tom say something a little out of his norm or out of the norm of how we normally do it. So was that something that you wrote on there?

Was that Michael writing heads up like felt like just everybody like, look. So is there a deeper sports reference that I was missing? No, I'm just saying it's just, Robbie, do you agree with me? I mean, I mean, Tom, that, you know, we love, I think Tom's one of the few that, that used that kind of 20th century slang or, yeah, that's one thing I loved about Tom is everybody else would have the techno babble explanation of some phenomenon. And then he'd say, oh, it's like the, you know, shit hitting the fan, basically. He'd just say, oh, what you're trying to say is, it's like the shit's hitting the fan. Right. And I love that he would be able to say a version.

of that and speak kind of plain English for, you know, the every man out there. And I think the audience is like that as well. Yeah, I agree. In the Delta Flyer cockpit, they come across an intact command module and Chacote essentially wants to tractor beam this thing back to Voyager. Now, on the bridge, Harry detects another course change of 0.003 degrees. Janeway says it's the third one in an hour and asks what could generate an EM field large enough to get its attention, but still not show up on sensors. Bala says dark matter. Okay, wait, wait, wait, right here.

So this is a moment. Oh, Brian, I wish. So you know when they do, one of our early episodes in season one, it's famous now when Janeway and Bala both are talking, well, what if this and what if that? And they both simultaneously to go, War particles.

This was a moment where I was like, because Janeway's up by Harry, and she's asking a question. Harry answers a couple of things, right? Harry answers, yeah, he's sandwiched in the middle. And then Balana asked a question, and I wanted them both to go, Dark matter! It would have been a great warp particles moment.

But anyway, Balana does it by herself. She has her aha moment of dark matter. And then they should have done that in unison, though. They should have. Good call, Robbie. Good call. I love that. They scan for dark matter.

Balana finds a dark matter after. asteroid approaching in the distance. And Janeway calls over to the flyer and says, you guys got to get out of there now. There's a problem. Uh-huh. We cut inside the flyer. Yeah. He's sort of like yelling this stuff.

He's getting very passionate. Obsessive is another description. Did you think that was earned from his character? Did that feel organic or did it feel like, oh, like maybe he's hungry? If I'm being honest, I felt a little bit Jekyll and Hyde here. Like he was kind of going to the dark side a little. It was inconsistent. It was sort of like, do we buy that?

It's one of our great frustrations when we're watching a horror movie and a character does something stupid and then results of them being danger. and we're kind of in the same circumstance. Pretty much. Yeah. As they are trying to exit this anomaly, they're basically slowed down by this tractor beam. And just when they're at the perimeter about to get out,

that's when the asteroid collides with the anomaly and knocks the Delta Flyers back. The tractor beam is dissolved. Chikote gets electrocuted, I suppose. Yeah. And he gets thrown on the ground. Plasma cuted? Yeah, we can say that. He gets plasma cut.

He gets plasma cut. And he kind of falls back from the panel and then hits the ground. Yeah. I have to say it was a classic Shatner sort of fall. It was like a fall over. It was only on Star Trek. Can we get away with it? It's like when you got shot in Prime Directive, if you remember that.

Oh, I did a jazz die. You did a jazz fall. I did a total jazz fall. It was amazing. Yeah. Broadway. Yeah, pretty much it. He has severe concussion, internal injuries,

communication shields propulsion offline shields are repairable but the engine forget about it it's shot and there is less than two hours before this anomaly enters subspace huge problem go to commercial come back back to the interior chocote regains consciousness and he's informed of this dire situation and he keeps making these suggestions and commands keeps trying to sit up and tom's like shoving him down like sit down i'm the doctor's orders yeah i like that i like my i like my part of that scene I liked I was like I like taking control shut up you got very firm with him Robbie I did you kind of yeah well I started it and then I went up to work on something in the in the front and seven took over big pass the you pass the baton to seven yeah right so seven gives

him the status of court and then lays into him almost harsher than Robbie did than than Tom does for disobeying Janeway and causing their current predicament and who she to be talking he Yeah, because I saw the underside of the flyer and she didn't finish the shield She didn't finish the shielding. They fell off. She like licked the bottoms and stuff with them and then they did an anomaly and they Yeah. You know, saliva often can attach sealed shield modifications quite well.

So, oh my gosh. But Chikote actually admits to his wrong choice. He, you know, he apologizes. He feels like, look, I put everyone in jeopardy. And she said, no, you put all our lives in jeopardy, basically. but it's nice to have Chacote not argue about this. He tries to make a joke too.

He says, you know, well, if we don't survive out here, somebody will come looking for us in a couple hundred years, yeah. So they're like, B-h-you- Exactly. What the hell?

Seven's like, no, not even funny at all. I love it. This is sort of like the wobblest part of the episode is that Chacote, who's usually the guy saying, like, don't do this dangerous thing, is now doing this dangerous thing. Yes.

And it is, it's a little artificial. Oh, yeah, for sure. But we do get a transmission from Voyager. Voyager uses the probe to help as a relay, a transmission relay, and now we know what's going on. And we're in deep poop at this point. One thing I wanted to say about, again, about Bob's direction is his panning shot game was very strong in this episode.

It was. That his ability to kind of block things in a way where one character would speak, it would hand off to another, they'd bring it around to another. I wonder, because Brian, you said the episode was short, when you direct that way, when you don't build in editorial cuts, but you're sort of handing off shots without a cut, it's very elegant, but it locks you into the timing of things. And generally, that can be longer. And I think, you know, what we found, I think on the Star Trek shows that they often were shot. shorter when there wasn't time for for cinema when there weren't any kind of like moments of

awe and those things weren't milked is when we we found ourselves short and uh you know like i've learned so much in terms of what translates to page count and what doesn't and like on hannibal our scripts for the same length of time were like 32 pages 33 pages were Voyager, we were in 50s. Yeah, at 50s or 60s, sometimes even 70s. I remember getting scripts. Sometimes there were 72 pages. And a lot of times that was because on Star Trek, we would have to give a new scene number

to every visual effect shot. So if there was a they beam in, that had its own scene number, which added page count because often in scripts that I work with now, those kind of vis effects are just buried in the description or an action line. They don't have an entire scene number dedicated to them. But that's what, for budget purposes on Star Trek, that's what was asked, as I recall, of the writers, is if it was a beam in, if it was a space shot, if it was any Viz effects shot, that that have its own scene number, even though it continued the action to the next scene, it would make the scripts much longer. So they no longer became accurate representations of any sort of timing. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. There's a race now. There's a race to solve this problem of lack of power. And Kim suggests, well, we could do the same type of shielding on a class two shuttle, take it in. Paris says, well, that took us hours to make the original modifications. This is no good. Tuvok says we could tractor beam them. Harry says, you couldn't get this tractor beam all the way through to the core. Janeway says, we'll just start working on it anyway. Then Torres thinks of plasma manifold. She does. She thinks if they're few, they could be fused in performance. preventing it from moving on its own power. Seven confirms this and the new manifolds can't be created as the replicators aren't working on the on the flyer. So then Torres points out, she says, wait a minute. Aries 4 had the same device that called the ion distributor. Right.

And she said maybe this Ares 4 thing, the ion distributor, could be modified to channel our warp plasma. And Seven's like, yeah, well, if we can find it. And everybody agrees that that's worth a. try. Let's find this ion distributor. So Janeway asks if there's enough power for transporting, Paris volunteers to go. But Janeway says, no, you stay on the flyer and be there in case another gravimetric surge hits. We need you. Your piloting skills. So Janeway says, ask seven. And I love seven again says, oh, Captain, are you encouraging me to volunteer again? Which I thought, I literally

laughed out loud Brian and she said that because I love a good runner so it's the comedy it's the comedy and the callbacks it's the classic yeah it's yeah oh yeah then we see seven in a space suit which I'm very familiar with I remember wearing that a few times a long episode floating around in space with balana as we almost died um those spaces were so uncomfortable they were the worst because they sort of sat on your shoulders and they were this molded plastic so any kind of movement it would dig in your rib cage

and then they had fans on the inside to keep them from fogging up so you couldn't hear anybody. I wonder, Robbie, how many of those spacesuits did they have? Because I really felt like they were only maybe two or three total.

They didn't have, yeah. They were from first contact. They were all adapted from first contact. Okay. All right. She's in the space suit And Chakotay's jealous, he says, as she's getting ready, he's very jealous that she gets to go. And this is sort of like an interesting metaphor for Seven's introduction to the show is that even when it is a Chacote story,

7 of 9 is going to come along and take it away from you. And that was like, that was, it's, it's thematically and narratively sound and it works because of 7 of 9's arc, but it's hard to deny. the overwhelming commonplace of seven of nine taking stories away from other characters. Yes, but, you know, Brian, it's funny because I always talk about seasons five, six, and seven is the Janeway Doctor Seven show at that point. It's like so focused on those three characters. But you're right. She totally snags away the touchdown rush, the rush for the touchdown. Yeah, I just want to say, like, so I've learned in this podcast that you say this could have been a Tom Paris episode, but then it became a

Chakote episode. And it could have been a Chacote episode, but it became a 7 of 9. It's interesting how all that sort of evolved. I think it's sound for 7 of 9's character. Absolutely. But Chacote's character growth

just stops. Like, sort of he's going here, he sort of behaves a little inconsistently, and then he checks out, and somebody else finishes his arc. I can see why there would be frustration. Yes.

Yes. Agreed. So we go over to the Ares 4 next. Yeah. And 7 does beam in. And I noticed on her beam in as she comes into this old NASA vehicle, the music, there was a nod to the original series as she comes in. Oh.

You hear a little theme of the original Star Trek series. And I love that. And I wonder, I caught it there, but I wonder if there was more of that from the composer. I thought it was really smart and there's little touches of this is it Max Steinberg who did a lot of the original music there's little touches that it gosh I'm I'm blanking on our composer we had two different ones but one primary right yeah we had three sometimes I don't know who did this episode but I did catch that that little nod the the whatever Dennis McCarthy it I I caught that little nod to, it wasn't, it didn't complete the phrase of, of the original theme, but it started the phrase. You had a little bit of it there. And I thought for this episode, for us going back to NASA, the inspiration for our Voyager characters, and using what probably inspired Gene Roddenberry, the space race of the 50s and 60s, the NASA that was in the culture back then, putting all those things together with that little musical theme, I thought was very, very smart, especially in that moment that she just comes into this Ares 4 NASA spaceship. It was great, just a little detail. Yeah.

I love the Dutch stangles and the floating camera again. We're back to, you know, anti or no gravity on the ship. I loved how Jerry was walking with the, you know, the magnetic, the mag boots that she had to walk with. She really sold all of that. There was a floating flashlight that came through that she pushed out of the way. Thought that was great. I also love the fact that we never saw John Kelly's fully mummified body, that we only saw. He saw his hand.

His hand. And it kept it from going into a horror genre and more to Seven's experience of what we're not seeing, but what we know she is seeing. Yeah. So as she's trying to retrieve this ion distributor, she comes across some log entries. These are the final log entries or all the final log entries of Kelly. and I'd like seeing those log entries because you do see the sort of progression of him going from having all his wits about him

until the last moments of his life so it's very, it's quite sad to be honest but what I didn't like it, I got pulled out when it Bob cut to a reaction shot of seven kind of like looking back at him and I didn't think that was necessary. Really? Yeah, that pulled me out. I didn't like that. So that's the only criticism I have of the entire episode

is that one point right there. I didn't like that. I thought there was such great transitions in this sequence that he went off of kind of a light flare at one point. Bob went off of with set, we're with seven and the camera sort of went into a light that flared the camera out. And all of a sudden we were in the flashback with John Kelly. And then off of John Kelly as he moved, floated through the cockpit into a bulkhead or something and then came out of the bulkhead into seven. So I felt like the way he photographed it, he and Marvin Rush, it started. bringing the past and the present together in a visual way that I thought was really smart. No, I'm not arguing with those transitions. I agree with you 1,000 percent. I'm saying later on,

after we're listening to the log entries, towards the end of the log entries, there's a point where you're really engrossed in what's happening with Kelly. And then all of a sudden, you're pulled out of it by this very awkward shot of seven sort of like looking back at the screen and still trying to work. And it was like, I don't know if that maybe the direction of her business could have been different. Maybe if it was just her kind of working and then just looking up for a second instead of like awkwardly. I mean, because that whole suit, you can tell she's uncomfortable in it too, you know? Your physicality is completely messed up wearing those damn suits.

So yeah, but I did love story wise in here that we realized that Kelly survived this. Yeah. That he actually was able to experience being inside this anomaly for a while, which we didn't know from the teaser. We just knew that the thing hit him. But here's the weird thing. How did he survive? Because we talk about how in the beginning,

as this anomaly is about to overtake us, Harry says, this is going to rip our shields off. This is going to rip our plating off once we go through. So I feel like he should have been killed immediately, right? When he went through, but somehow maybe he was shielded by some other debris or something where he made it through. But that to me didn't add up a little bit.

The science. It's also the size of the ship was a three guys, the Voyager and White, the Delta Flyer, being a smaller ship was able to penetrate the anomaly and without. being destroyed like a larger ship right okay that helps me thank you and i and i think the the shadow seven that you're you're talking about is like was editorial so it's probably not a decision that bob made okay i will agree to disagree on this i actually like that moment because when it

came off the hand because she sort of gets lost in these log entries and feeling connected to it and then it's the moment of remembering that oh i'm i'm not back there i'm here and he's a mummy And I did like that moment because it was a reminder to seven in the audience that that, yeah, that's nostalgic history and this is very moving and emotional to experience. Yeah. But the reality is I've got this, this man who had this tragic end, his mumfied body right in front of me. So I actually liked that shot. I think my favorite moment really was her attaching the comm badge onto his body and saying, let's beat this over. Let's let's not leave him out here.

Let's give him a proper burial. Well, she doesn't even say that to anyone. She just says, lock on to my bio, what does she say? My biosignature and my com badge, which is a strange way to ask for a beam out. But she, you know, she doesn't have time to explain. So she just says, lock onto my bio signature and my com badge. Yeah. Whose idea was it, Brian, to sort of, in John Kelly's last log entries, towards the very end,

the last couple of them? Now he starts referencing, like he'll say, you know, he's talking to, the other you know to mission control but he's also talking to his dad you know so that that was something that i thought was interesting well it was just the idea that i don't know if these messages are ever going to receive or be received by the people that they're intended for so i'm just going to put them out into the ether yeah and that that the kind of tragedy of those last moments when you are by yourself and you know you you you don't know uh so you just have to have faith that like by putting it out into the universe that it will find its way and if it doesn't then you got to

express yourself even if it wasn't a vacuum yeah i love the way that in these last moments that you were able to so efficiently touch on some really big ideas like when he apologizes to kumagawa that you know she claims she saw something over the gulf and he was so dismissive and he regrets it um you know that's that's a big idea that's right he's able to you were able to very efficiently touch on dismissing the mysteries of things we don't understand or don't know. And he's admitting that he could have been wrong about that. He was seven of nine in that moment. You know, that was sort of like the, like his monologue had to be servicing seven of nine's emotional journey at that point. So it's just as much of what John Kelly is saying as a character

as the storytellers are saying about seven of nine's journey in terms of I'm sorry I dismissed your passions I'm sorry I dismissed whatever observations that you had and now that I'm living in your shoes I have a greater understanding of your experience and and that felt like

it was the best way to sort land the plane on seven of nine's arc since she stole it from Jacote so seven of nine's and and also has a more satisfying through line because seven of nine I would argue is authentic throughout as

7 of 9 and Chacote is inconsistent with his character. So I think it's good that it landed on 7 of 9 because she was being consistent unlike Dakota. Yeah, agree. And I did completely forget about that one part with Lieutenant Kelly seeing

the piece of the alien spacecraft hull that floats by which was a very goose bumpy moment. It's like, there you go. There is life outside of Earth. So yeah, I did forget about that. So that was a good moment for sure. So all right. So Seven gets beamed over and Kelly's body gets beamed over. Seven, we, once she's beamed back on board, we see her rushing into

the cockpit with the manifold. Paris and Seven quickly try to install it. They get it kind of working, but it's fluctuating power. He lays in a course out of the ellipse back on the bridge, Janeway and everyone are watching as the ellipse seems to start to melt. So it's going back into subspace. Seven continues trying to adapt this part, this distributor. And Paris says, okay, we're almost ready. Open the shuttle bay doors. He's very confident. Then on the flyer, we see these sparks as they're trying to make their way out of this, this, their situation. And on the bridge, I love that Janeway, we come back to the bridge and Janeway orders Voyager closer to the edge to try to help them. And Torres,

is manning the helm. I've never seen Bala flying the ship, but there's Belauna down. And I was like, oh, that's kind of nice. Maybe that means that she and Tom have spent some time talking about navigating or, because this is probably a tricky maneuver. It was just surprising to see Bala at the helm

getting so close to such a dangerous situation, but they're trying to get close, tractor them in. Or Janeway is just trying to give Bala a little bit of experience just in case Tom eats it. this mission. So she can take over his position. That's what it was. That seat comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. How does that feel? Does it feel okay? All right. But they do get dangerously close and Tuvok succeeds in getting this tractor beam locked on, which is the shuttle is just below the ellipse's surface, but they get the tractor beam through because they've gotten close. Janeway

orders immediately orders a full reverse and they struggle to pull it out of the ellipse and just as they pull it out and tow it out. We see it go back into subspace. Boy, that was close, Brian. You guys. It was like giving birth. He was pulling this baby out of the womb right there. Yes. And I did appreciate Bob giving Seven and Tom that one of those panning shots. It was about the biggest close-up of Tom Paris I've ever seen. So thank you, Bob, for that nice, very flattering close-up. He sprinkled in close-ups throughout this episode, I've noticed. He did, which I love. I love that there's a variety of we're not stuck in kind of the medium sizes that all feel the same.

He did a great job. Agreed. We go to the bridge. We are having a funeral for Kelly there. Anyways, giving a very inspiring speech. I couldn't pay attention because my uniform looked less than flattering, let's say. I don't know why. Is that what you were obsessing on in the last part of this episode?

I needed to do sit-ups or they needed to tailor that a little differently or something. The pants were baggy. and look like dad jeans. I don't know. I was like, what am I wearing? Wait, aren't we wearing formal dress uniforms at the end? Mine was not fitted very well. Maybe I skipped the fitting.

I don't know, but I was like, that is not a good look. Oh, my God. But anyway. Oh, wow. But Janeway's speech was very inspiring, I'm sure. I couldn't pay attention to it, but I'm sure it was. And then seven asked to speak. And she starts to speak.

gives her inspiring speech, but we cut to Sick Bay where Chocote is listening. And I love, we kind of come back, even though Seven stole his story. Yeah. Do have a moment of closure for Chocote there, which I really liked. Yeah. And both Janeway and Seven talk about the importance of exploration and about the human experience. And I thought that was beautifully written words, Brian, really great. Yeah. And ending with Seven's little comment of the Yankees in six games. Yeah, that private A little whisper to the coffin there. Yankees in six games. And then a close-up of Pablo blowing his whistle.

Pablo blowing the Bosen's whistle. Yes, that's Pablo Soriana, our eternal background actor. Yes. That was a nice ending right there. So here's a question. What the heck, Brian, happens to these these coffin, photon torpedo coffins? What happens to that? You shoot it out in space.

Is it in a direction back towards earth? Or what's happening? What does it do? It's littering, honestly. It is littering, isn't it? It's an interesting kind of thing because you're sort of like formally letting go of a body. Yeah. So it is all just from the pomp and circumstance of the gesture.

And so it's hard to think like what's the goal beyond letting go? Yeah. I think it is the pomp and circumstance. It's the, it's the, it's the, that's all it is. There should be some episode of Star Trek where they just keep on bumping into coffins. That's my point. There should be thousands, hundreds of thousands of Starfleet, photon torpedo coffins that are just floating in space randomly, especially, you know, after like a battle, flowing out of nacelle, yes. And deflector dishes and like, what the hell? It's sort of like how, you know, modern day airline pilots, have to avoid flocks of geese from ruin. Now, Starfleet helmsman have to avoid flocks of photon torpedo casings of human bodies that are now disposed of. I want to see the gravity sequence with all the space debris, but it's just coffins and body parts, like slamming in the main stations. And they're like, Jesus. Oh, my goodness.

Okay. So it doesn't evaporates or vaporize or anything like that. No, it just stays intact. It's just littering. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. There's our episode. My theme is just to appreciate the value of the past and how your life is what it is because of the people before us. That was my theme, appreciating the people that came before. Our ancestors are all of it. I like that. What about you, Garrett? I think it's a caveat. I think the lesson is a caveat, which is, you know, try not to be so obsessive that you're myopic to the point where you don't.

even see the big picture, which is kind of what Chacote did and caused all the issues. But without him doing that, we wouldn't have an episode. So it's important that sometimes people lose it. So I think that's my theme. It's just careful about becoming too obsessive. And let's go to our writer. What is your smart guy now? Your Star Trek lesson.

Well, there's something about the exploration of humanity as explorers that feels particularly resonant in this episode. because we're seeing a wide variety of characters and their relationship to not even the past, but their own sentimentality that has to be confronted in ways of like, why are you searching out the past? Are you searching out for validation?

Are you searching out for education? Are you searching the past for some link to the future? And 7 of 9 cuts through all of those days. different motivations for exploring the past and amalgamates them and assimilates them in a way that is uniquely bored. She assimilates everybody else's journey of exploration and relationship to exploration and homogenizes them into her own point of view, which feels like that's that's the best of the Borg.

Yes. Yes. So you are validating that seven of nine stole this episode from Chikotay. Yes, yes. Is that the lesson? Look that way and went, yoy. Okay, next we have our

Admiral and Captain's ratings. They are averaged out from all of our Admiral and Captains. But first we give our ratings. Yes, Brian. So I'm going to give this episode. This one is tough for me because there's a lot of things about it I like,

but it doesn't feel like it starts to take off and then it just doesn't for me. It doesn't add, and maybe it's because 7 of 9 steals the episode from Chacote. Maybe that's why. Maybe because it seems to change course midway in terms of... What's your number? It's focused, but I'm going to give you my number. It's well executed.

There's well executed by Bob, some great writing in it. I love some of the ideas, the inspiring ideas that all the characters have throughout. So there's a lot of good in it, but I still ultimately didn't quite take off from me. I'm going to give it a 7. Oh, good. All right. Out of 10. Out of 10, yes.

I am going to give, I'm going to boost it up a little bit more. I'm going to give it 7.8 because of Phil Morris's involvement. So I'm going to give it a little bit more. Yeah, 7.8. Okay. Brian? You know, I'm going to bump it up just a bit more with eight. I think because of its character inconsistency.

it's a little wobbly in the narrative but I think it goes to the heart of a lot of the thematics of Star Trek much more explicitly than we generally use because they're kind of obfuscated in a puzzle box or a science fiction mystery and this is really going to the heart of why we explore and and I feel like that that makes it aspirational in a way that, you know, covers a lot of the kind of character and consistencies that we have in the story, but still makes it a solid entry into Star Trek. Okay. 75788, our captain and admiral average rating for one small step is 7.8. Garrett, I have been nailing these, Rob, you know, I've been dang close within 0.1 or dead on. Unbelievable. Thank you. I feel so good right now. Wow. All right. So we were all validated with that number, I think. We were all very close. We were. Wow. All right. Well, Brian, thank you so much for recapping with us here. And it's always a pleasure, more than a pleasure to have you on. It's fun and learn a lot. And it's great to see you. So thank you. Great to see you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for the cozy t-shirt. Oh, you're welcome.

All right. And so thank you, everyone, for tuning in. And once again, thank you to Brian. And please join Robbie and I next week when we review, recap, and discuss the Voyager episode, The Voyager Conspiracy. Probably the only, only episode with the name Voyager within the title. So, yes, the Voyager conspiracy. All right, everyone, thanks again. And for all of the Patreon patrons, please stay tuned.

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