The Delta Flyers - Paradise

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This week’s episode, Paradise, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, & Armin ShimermanParadise: Sisko and O’Brien find themselves stranded on a world populated by survivors of a shipwrecked expedition, where none of their technology will function.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Tom Paynter, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Lisa Robinson, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Nicole Anne Toma, Roxane Ray, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Rob Traverse, Matt Norris, Stephanie Lee, Izzy Jaffer, Jan Hanford, Sam Mikelic, Thomas Irvin, & Jonathan CappsOur Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Luz R., Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Jenna Appleton, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Sandra Stengel, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Tae Phoenix, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Tim Neumark, Daniel O’Brien, Danie Crofoot, Randy Hawke, Steven Lugo, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Kevin Harlow, & Hailey LugoAnd our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Patrick Carlin, Jake Barrett, Ann Harding, Trip Lives, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carol Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Mike Fillmon, Chad Awkerman, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Claire Deans, Maxine Soloway, Barbara Beck, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Cindy Ring, Alicia Kulp, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Maria Rosell, Heather Choe, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Justin Weir, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, John Richardson, Heather Selig, Rachel Shapiro, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Annie Davey, Jeremy Gaskin, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lisa Gunn, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, Gemma Laidler, Dean Chew, Linda Daireaux, Mars DeVore, Jennifer Vaughn, Walkerius Logos, PJ Pick, Preston M, Rebecca Leary, Ryan Mahieu, Andrew Cook-Feltz, Karen Galleski, Constance, Loretta Reyes, Timothy McMichens, Cassandra Girard, Francesca Garibaldi, Andrea Wilson, Carol Ramsey, Willow Whitcomb, Jadzia Mehari, Mo, Leslie Ford, Travis Campos, & Douglas Lawrence-PlantThank 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, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the Delta Flyers, journey through the warm hole with Cork Dax and their good friends. Tom and Harry, join us as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your host along this journey are Terry Farrell, our super smart science officer, Armand Shimmerman, our beloved businessman, myself. your eternal ensign. And of course, my good buddy, my hilarious helmsman, I keep throwing, there's probably other H words I could throw in there, but I like hilarious helmsman. Today, we have

Armin. Hey, Armin. Hello, Armin. Hello, hello, hello. All right, we've got a few birthdays. We have Warren Stein. Happy birthday to Warren Stein. August 13th is Warren's birthday. Happy birthday, Happy birthday, buddy. Happy birthday, August. Hey, Warren, happy birthday. We also have Samantha Hunter on August 15th. Happy birthday, Samantha. Samantha, happy birthday.

Samantha, happy birthday to you. And we have Jan Hanford. August 16th is Jan's birthday. Happy birthday, Jan. Jan, happy birthday. Go, Jan. And we've got Donna Runyon to take us home here. Donna Runyon on August 17th.

Happy birthday, Donna. Donna, many happy returns. Happy birthday to Donna, my craps protege. Really? I thought her everything you know. I did. She rolled forever. So I won a couple grand for her off of it.

She's telling her where to bet. So she did a good job. It's an appropriate episode for her because this is about a parrot. dice so yes exactly there you go um we also have a new profit with us we want to welcome our new prophet jonathan caps jonathan welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome to our newest prophet jonathan caps don't go anywhere we'll be right back interesting episode right interesting episode let's talk about the fact that you're not in this episode. Yes, I'm not in it. Sid is not in it. Sirak is not in it. Max is not in it.

There's, yeah, it's a- And someone else we're missing. One other person. Who's that? Renee is not in this nine. That's right. Isn't that crazy? Of course. Missing in action. This is the first episode in the entire series in which Renee and Sid do not appear. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So everyone else has had an episode off before those guys. Yeah, everyone. Have I had it, I don't think I, have I had an episode off before this? I think you did. I think you have. I remember.

Yeah. And I remember being very upset about it, Armin. Yeah, I'm like, he's not here. I'm quite sure that I wasn't at the time. Or did they, wasn't there one where they gave you a, like, a call to, so that you could get the residuals? Oh, like a voice, like a, like a voiceover. Like a voiceover? No, they may have put me on a voiceover, but, but they never told me that so I could get the residual.

get the residual but but so that everybody understands if we appear anywhere in the episode then we get a residual full residual yeah but if you're not in it there's no residual so i don't get a residual for this particular episode so let's stop watching this episode but your name is still on the title yeah yeah yeah so doesn't that entitle you to something no you have to physically be on camera recorded and yes and just to be clear full residual at this point for our episode. This is like three cents. Right. Because they go down over time.

Yes. And just to get into the weeds a little bit more, a residual for a syndicated show is a lot less than residual for a primetime network show. Really? Or a streaming show. Or a cable show. And unlike Voyager, we were a syndicated show, not a network show. So does that mean if you filmed something and that ended up on the cutting room floor and that was your only appearance in that episode, you still do not have. get residuals. Even though you worked and they cut it out, correct? Yep. That's right. I did a Star Trek film. I had a lovely scene with Patrick Stewart. It never made it into the final cut. Really? I get no residual for that.

Which one was that, Armin? Insurrection. Insurrection. Okay, got it. Robbie, could we have your limerick for Paradise, please? Yes, sir. Here we go. Cisco and O'Brien move in with a cult, where tech won't work, so they're stuck as a result. miles uses a gourd to scan and discovers the evil plan for advice elixis is not the one to consult lovely thank you thank you thank you i like it that was a hard one for me that episode sometimes the limericks come out easy this one was hard wow well it's still a good one this episode was hard to watch so maybe that's part of it go armin go i can't wait i almost feel like didn't they pronounce her name as if it was A-L-E-X-I-S.

Sometimes. Someone said Alexis on there. I know they did. And someone may have said elixis like that. It was both ways, yeah. Okay, both ways. All righty. Here is my haiku.

My haiku for paradise goes a little something like this. Cisco Brian tale. No tech human settlement. Ben makes hotbox home. Did you get the beginning of that? Cisco Brian. I merged their names together. Because I only have five syllables.

So I went Cisco and I use the O of Cisco to make Brian. So I have a capital. I like it. Cisco Brian. Tale, T-A-L-E. It's a new genre of Trek shows. The Cisco Brian episode. The Cisco Brian episodes, exactly.

Etymology, Armin. Etymology. Oh, my God. That means I'm up. It's time. It's time. it's time for the heady part i always love it paradise is a word from ital english uh which was pronounced it i think uh paradis paradise uh there i have two definitions of the word the first all

of these are from the oxford english dictionary the first of my two definitions is heaven paradise means the heaven the abode of the gods and his angels and the final abode of the righteous which i think uh might pertain to what we just are about to talk about yes the second definition uh that i chose was a state of supreme bliss or felicity which i think also is appropriate for this episode yeah yeah paradis i yeah it's interesting to imagine the pronunciation of some of these words when you go back in the OED, because I was always told like, Shakespeare,

when you heard it in Shakespeare's time, that English sounded like a pirate. They kind of spoke a bit like pirate. To be more precise, it sounds like the accent from the Ozarks. A pirate just tends to be Southern England, that's Portsmouth, and might indeed been that. But the scholars believe that it sounds very much

like deep in the in the Mount mountains of the Ozarks in... Wow. And also there's an island in Maryland that has very close to the Shakespearean accent. Ocracoke. There is a thing called O.P., original pronunciation, which has done great studies about the sound of Elizabethan English. And some of the lines in Shakespeare make much more sense if you say it in O.P. Because then you hear, it's a play on the sound.

Right, right. There's a line. Sorry, I'm getting into something. No, I love it. I love this. You opened up a Pandora's box. So there's a line in as you like it. Jayquiz says, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.

That's what's written. From hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. But if you do it in O.P., it's from whore to whore, we ripe and ripe. So it makes a different meaning altogether. Yeah. And actually, that's closer to the under, to making that line more understandable to an all.

audience. Interesting. So our was pronounced whore. Hor. Or. Interesting because Shakespeare was so, you know, we've opened up a Pandora's box here, but he was so clever. Yes, the sounds and the double

meanings of things and all of that is so complex, the way his brain worked with language. I've been trying to peel back the onion for 50 years. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about who made this episode. We have

Story by Jim Trombetta and James Crocker, teleplay by Jeff King, Richard Manning, and Hans Bimler. And we have directed by none other than one of my acting teachers and mentors, Corey Allen. Yes, Cory Allen, the man who directed the first episode of Next Generation. That's right. He did the pilot episode of NextGen. Yeah, good old Corey. There we go. We have guest appearances, of course. We have Gail Strickland as Alexis or Elixus. We have Julia Nixon, who was Julia Nixon's soul at one point, but now she's Julian Nixon here as Cassandra, Steve Vinovich as Joseph. And Steve Venevich, for you guys should know, is Ethan Phillips's best friend, one of his best friends. Yeah, yeah. And went to college

with me. Oh, really? I didn't know. Steve and I went to college together. And then he went to Juilliard. He was in UCLA for a little while, and then he went to Julliard. Did you know that, Robbie? That he went to Julie? I didn't know he went to Juilliard. I think I did a play reading with him in New York at Playwright's Horizons once. I know I crossed paths with Steve and I've met him with Ethan over the years for, you know, in New York for coffees and things like that. So yeah, he's a great guy. Have either of you worked with Gail Strickland or Julia Nixon? No, but my wife played baseball with Gail Strickland for about three years. So I knew Gail from Kitty's baseball team. Wow. That's awesome. We also have Michael Buckman.

in Silver as V-note. Anyone work with Michael? Yes, I have. Oh, boy. So I'm watching this episode because I don't look at the cast beforehand. And I'm watching the episode in that first scene where he comes out with a bow. I'm like, who is that young guy? He looks so familiar.

Yeah. And then the next scene after the credits, when he starts talking, I was like, oh, my God, wait a minute. So Michael Silver directed for me on Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, a couple of episodes. Oh, wow. Because he was very close with Marty Knoxon at the time who created the show and she wanted Michael to direct. He's an awesome guy, but I did not, like now he's salt and pepper, mostly gray. He's like, he's got facial hair now.

I did not recognize him at all. But he's a handsome young man. He's a young buck here. Yes, he is. Interesting choice of name, though, Vinoed. Because you remember coming to the independent film that I filmed that screening, Robbie? 100% do you remember that okay yeah so the main executive producer the guy that basically provided the entire financing was v-node was his name actually that's his real first name v-node and here we have

because you know you don't see that name very often he was our executive producer yeah v-note uh we have eric weiss as stephen or stephen i don't know how they pronounced it that was the individual who was in the hot box in the very beginning yes yeah he had a lot of fun in there. I don't think you have fun. I'm joking, of course. We also have uncredited co-stars. We have Lisa Madigan as Meg, the almost dead and then later dead, spoiler alert, colonist.

Yeah. So that's it. That's all of our people. And as I looked at the background people in the village, I thought, these are all new people. I've never seen these faces before. Right. Well, that's good that they did that. Sometimes they cheat and they use the same people from the promenade.

Yeah. They did that on Voyager. You'd go to a planet and there'd be a couple of people we knew when we rewatch these episodes. I'm like, that's cheating. They're supposed to be on our ship. We recognize those faces. A couple of quick notes about story and script. Michael Pillar commented that we hadn't done a Cisco episode since Second Sight. And I wanted to do another show that gave Cisco the opportunity to show courage and force of personality. Now, the idea of a cult, was chosen by Michael Pillar because he was interested in the idea and cultism is an issue his quote that I'm very interested in because I've got a family member who was involved in a cult

so I had to study the issues quite a bit that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. And Jim Trombetta, one of the writers, he based his original idea for this episode on the primitivist anti-technology philosophy

of the Khmer Rouge of Southeast Asia. So that's another fact I had no clue about either. Interesting. Interesting. For sure. It's funny when you bring up the cult idea. You know, cults, there's a big gray area where you can kind of say, oh, I'm a part of this group and we believe these things.

And it's a good, you know, there's good that we do where this group helps me in some way. And then there's like, where does that line cross into, because it's part of this plot as well. like is this you know a lot of them believe and they spoiler alert but they make a choice in the end to kind of go keep going with this belief even after they they have a choice so is the definition of a cult like a cult of personality that there's kind of a person embodies the leadership role that every i i don't know but that would make sense i think that's intrinsic to a cult although it doesn't seem to me that has to be that that has to be one person could be more than one person. But certainly when one reads about cults, there usually is one person that they're focusing on who is the leader, who is the person directing the rest of the community around him or her.

Yeah, there's another interesting note I found. Both producer Ira Stephen Baer and director Corey Allen were disappointed with the final form of this episode. Bear felt that the show wavers unevenly between depicting the colony both in a good and a bad light, but never really settles for either view. I would disagree with you. That's one of the things I liked about the episode is it doesn't say it's good or bad.

It leaves it up to the viewer to decide. Yeah. A little thing from David Livingston, who we just talked about earlier, commented. It was a tough show because we had to create an exterior environment on stage 18. The way that Corey and Martin shot it with long lenses and stuff was successful in selling that world. It was fun to build part of a ship on the surface, so you really got the sense of size. We wanted it to be bigger. But we just didn't have the money.

So the grand designs that we had for the set were severely truncated. I could have sworn that those scenes were shot outside. There was some of them that were a very little bit. Like they used the same creek side pathway that they used for Bage or at Griffith Park. But the main set was inside. Yeah. The actual cell, the colony itself, right, with the hot box. That's all on stage 18 there.

But I thought it was very effective. I actually didn't know at first. I was like, are they outside or is it not? But a couple of things gave it away later on that they were inside. But yeah. Okay. Jump into it, Robbie. Yeah.

Well, we've got a station log from Cisco. He says, to respond to questions about setting up colonies near the wormhole, Chief O'Brien and I have set out to survey a nearby star system. So, yeah, right away, we know it's a Cisco Brian episode. I like that combo, though. I really do. I enjoy it. They were a very good combo.

They understood each other. They were sympathical with each other. Oh, totally. As characters or as actors? As actors. As actors. They had a very, very good relationship. Great.

Great. I didn't know that. I was curious about that. They got along very well. I think they complimented each other. They're acting as well. I would venture to say that Cullum was probably Avery's favorite person on the set. Really?

Well, we did not. know that i did not know that now we do yeah well o'brien and cisco are looking for these possible spots for colonies they discuss uh jake and o'brien says he's happy to mentor him cisco reveals here that jake's in the bottom third of his class which i didn't get that impression from the last but not in his class in a particular age study no it was a study it was a mechanical something mechanical aptitude yeah right that that's where he was in the third because we've just heard in the previous episode that he's at the top of his class so i know it's you know any one of us can be very good at most things but bad at one particular thing yeah well myles says he was bad at it too

he said he was in the bottom third and he tells this story about fixing this transporter just in time to get away from some cardassians so the question i asked myself is why is that in the episode i don't think this a bad thing but i'm i asked myself why is that speech there why now why there and I think it's to again spoiler alert it's it's to get to make us understand how he's capable of doing what he does towards the end of the episode yeah he's very clever he's very and and has an intuition about things and how to use things that allows him to come up with with this particular answer at the end of the episode however he does a number of other things in the episode I go

really who trained you to do that what does that have to do with your skill set what is that all about and i went they're just making him more superhuman than he needs to be it's yeah that happens for all the characters though in a way for me it doesn't well i've seen bashear be an amazing pilot yes but you haven't gotten to the end of the series oh okay uh this episode does set up jake's ongoing apprenticeship to o'brien which would become official in the next episode so that's Yeah, so this is a real deal. They don't just refer to it and then never talk about it again.

This is going to keep on. And again, you guys, not knowing the end of the series, I go, Cisco is pushing Jake into an area that he may or not want to go into. Right, right. He wants, you know, he says in this episode, Cisco says, I want him to go into Starfleet. But have we heard from Jake about this? No, we have not. now i'm curious arman thank you for that little clue i'll be looking i'll be tracking you'll be

looking you'll see it soon enough soon enough well they do also talk about kids together which i thought was a nice moment about how fast kids their kids grow up yeah we've seen sarac sprouting it's it's not just jake who's growing it's a rock who's as i said in the last uh blog that is now taller than Column is. Yeah. They do find a planet. They scan it and, oh, find a planet. You just rhymed.

Damn it. Look at that. Another rhyme. They find this planet and they see that there's human life signs. Humans are already there. But they try to contact them, no response. So they beam down. And I immediately said, always the first mistake in a Star Trek episode.

When you beam down to a planet, you're going to get in trouble well okay when they try to hail them and they say no response and o'brien says i'm picking up some kind of low level duenetic field anything that has some kind of means it's possibly dangerous yeah yeah yeah yes it makes no sense for both of them to beam down you didn't need both of them did you didn't need both of them no just say hello find out what suss out what the place looks like and get back yeah and if they're looking for uninhabited planets that's what they say in the in the log engine then that this planet is inhabited let's move on let's move on down the road yeah i was just thinking like when they've made star trek back then like we have

drones now i have i have a drone in my closet like everybody's got a drone but drones weren't really like a thing right but you would think that if there's two of them together on this runabout they could have sent a probe or some type of drone type of thing exactly yeah A probe actually would have been, yeah. Send number one. That's why Franks' character was invented. Exactly. So you're saying send Nana?

She's kind of the number one. You know, she's number one. She's number one. But yes, or, you know, send somebody, but not both of them. Why should both of them going down? Yeah. Yeah, well, like I said, we know they're going to get in trouble. So we cut to a forest, hillside of a forest down on this planet.

they beam in, it's like paradise. But their tricorders don't work. No. Neither does the comm back to the runabout. So none of their technology works. They're stuck. Even their phasers don't work, I think, Miles said. That's right.

That's right. Phaser doesn't work. Nothing works. No tech works. And then suddenly a man with a bow and arrow stops them. Hands up, says, Vnode. Vnode. Is that how you pronounce it?

Yeah, Vnode. Don't move and then hands up. Yeah. And let's not forget to Steve Venevich is standing right next to him. Steve is right next to him. Joe, the character of Joe is, and you know what, thinking about this episode, Steve is a very good choice with his character. As a metaphor, this is paradise, of course, as a metaphor, he makes a very good Adam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He's learning. There's a naivete to Steve on camera that I thought worked as I began to think about it as to stand in for biblical Adam. yeah i like that he's a bit of an every man too like uh like yeah like column in a way like oh brian they sort of yeah they fit that now i thought that he was his son but that's not correct correct no no no they're not related in the in the script they're just for some reason i thought they were related well he says go tell your mother right so it made me think that steve was his father in a way the way the script was written yeah well we come back this is where i was

like, is this on stage? Is this real? But I realize it was on stage. Joseph and Vino'd approach. Joseph sees that they're Starfleet. He recognizes this. And he says, turns out we are too. We're both. We were Starfleet. We were headed to Gemmulan 10, 10 years ago. I'm not sure if he was Starfleet, though, because he just said, I forgot what they looked like. I don't think he ever said, we're Starfleet, too. I don't. You may be right, but I would agree with Robbie. I got the impression that they were Starfleet also. Yeah, that was my impression. Okay. Okay.

He's like, we were, we were, yeah, we were traveling to Gemmulan 10 years ago. Right. Gimelan 5, 10 years ago, when life support began to fail, and they landed here on this planet to try to repair their ship. But they couldn't. They're stuck here. Now it's their home. And he says that Cisco and Miles are stuck too. So I knew that they were, being down.

They were traveling. for a long time because the wormhole wasn't discovered when they got to the Gamble Quadrant back then. So they must have been going for a long, long time. Yeah. Okay. So he says Cisco and Miles are stuck too and they head back to bring their guests to dinner. Go tell mom to make dinner. You know, it felt like we've got company. I'm just going to put in a quibble here. So the bow and arrow, I understand that they, you know, they don't want any technical stuff. That bone arrow looked really high-tech. Like a compound bow, yeah.

Not so much the arrow, but the bow looked very high-teteen. It's shiny and polished. Yeah. I thought immediately, okay, so this is part of a bulkhead or something from the initial crash landing. Oh, okay. You know what I'm saying? And that's why it's so shiny. Yeah, they bent it or something.

Yeah, they bent it around. It looked very shiny. But it looked like a compound bow that was very complex and very modern looking. But I do feel like it must have been. part of some wreckage. Part of the show. Yeah, I'm sure the prop department went to the store to Dix or something. And they spray painted it silver, right?

And they go, there it is. Yeah. There you go. Well, we go to their little colony. And we see in a big wide shot, beautiful wide shot, this part of this broken down ship or shuttle runabout, it wasn't a runabout. It was a ship. Air one class personnel transport.

Is that what's? I think that's what they said. Air one, it's the health food store. It's the health food store. Yeah. It's a health food shuttle. It's an organic. It's an organic shuttle transport. It's made of all, you know, recyclable materials. It's really good. Yeah. Good for you. They're there. They see this shuttle that now they're using as a cabin for their quarters. All the villagers are gathering. And a woman named Alyxas greets them. To me, she seemed to be the boss very clearly. Maybe she was the captain of, this is what I thought then. I thought she seems like. she might have been the captain of their ship or something well that's you know i never thought about that but that makes perfect sense she would have been directed them what direction they were going yeah you know she would have said to the pilot head in this direction yeah

now it could have been the pilot too she could have killed off the captain and been the pilot so right yeah but somebody has to get them to to this where they're at of course she had to be in the position of of yeah some kind of control yeah the bartender could not have done it let me just say that That's why you're not in the episode. That's why I'm not in the episode. But her mistrust of technology makes me wonder, was she really the captain? So, Ravi, you might be right. Maybe she killed the captain possibly, like you said.

I mean, she does have technical background, as we'll find out later in the episode. Right. That's true. So she has capabilities that we will find out later on that she's renouncing. I knew she was a leader from her hair, clearly. Well, Gail has an incredible. authoritarian persona everything she does. There's a sense

of I'm in charge. The hair was authoritarian to me. Yes, the hair is very authoritarian. It's always about the hair. Star Trek is always. Not always. On Voyager it was. On Voyager it was definitely about the hair. Oh, gosh. Well, because we had Carrie McCluggage running that

network, and Carrie McCluggage was obsessed with actors' hair on all the Paramount TV shows. Carrie McClugger was president of Paramount television, so wouldn't he have overseen deep space nine as well then yeah he probably did he did he did yeah he was he was there um how much he was there i don't know but he was there i feel like odo's hair looks a lot like carrie mccluggage's hair honestly i think they modeled odo's hair after carrie mccluggages's hair

very mccluggage is actually the scientists the pejoran scientist that helped odo become odo good job carry yeah good job gary um anyway we find out in this scene joseph was an engineer on a ship called the santa maria vnode our bow and arrow michael silver my friend vnode wants the soccer news there's a there's a woman cassandra asks about women's fashion i laughed out loud when miles turns she says what are the latest fashions of miles turns to cisco and cisco was like um ask him he's got a wife yeah it was a fun i don't know again It was, yeah, a lot of good acting between those two. Yeah. Cisco explains that they're hoping that their people will come rescue them. And Alyssa says, you know, we've made a great community here. And even if a rescue party does come, she's going to stay.

She has a big speech. That's where, this is where I was feeling like she's the boss. She's definitely taking charge of this moment. I would venture to say that not much further in the future, both Cisco and O'Brien come to the same conclusion. that she is the boss they treat her as the boss yeah and they make accusations as though she's the boss yeah we do see a lot of the settle the settlers in this scene this very beginning scene i think they're all out there right including julia nixon who exactly and one of the things i like that cori did i'm or the second a d did there's a lot of children present in this uh in the back

yes children seem to be very important in this community and i'm i was taking for that and again without any spoilers towards the end children will become important in the very last shot of the scene of the episode they listen to the boss elixis talk about how great their community their cult is yes and then they go find some bunks to sleep in yeah and there's a moment with uh elixis and v note at the end where she's she says it's going to be good to have two more strong healthy men it was very ominous it was it was like what what do you do with strong with strong healthy man it just felt creepy i thought maybe they were cannibals at that point i was like wait a minute what does that mean what yeah okay it could be cannibals it could be like sex slaves i

don't know it was a little scary yeah it was a little creepy agreed but it good at this point yes seems fine yeah okay so uh we go to ops and uh kira mentions that admiral mitsuya is coming wants to discuss cardassian politics but dac says he really just wants to play poker with Cisco. And also she mentions that Cisco sucks at poker. Well, he can't bluff. He cannot bluff. Exactly.

I love that exchange because poker plays such an interesting part in Next Generation where they all sit around. And even in Picard, they're playing for it. So we won't see much of poker on deep space. Right. I love it. That's funny. And I always ask Michael,

He says, well, there's no money in Starfleet. I said, what did you play poker with? Exactly. Exactly. But they talk about this and then Kira hails the Rio Grande, but there's no response. Nothing. Uh-oh. And Kira gets very upset about that.

She is. She's really, she's unnerved by this. This is a big deal for Kira. Yes. You would think she's next in the command. Yeah, you know. Yeah, she's the number one. She was the one that was supposed to be lost.

Yeah. Yeah. We go back to Cisco's room where he was reading Alexis's writings. Miles enters, asks about, you know, what are these writings? And they're all like in pencil or something, these journals. These are handwritten books is what it is. And evidently, she's written multiple books on all kinds of things. So she's very, very prolific.

Yeah, 10 years to write and write and write. That's what cult leaders do. Well, Cisco does mention she has very strong opinions about everything. Yeah. That was funny. And she basically feels, he realizes in these writings, she feels that technology has destroyed the true nature of human identity. And besides the comment about the two husky men are working in the fields, this is the second. Now we're beginning to think, well, maybe this paradise has got a snake in it.

And again, going back to biblical references. I think Alexis is the snake in the Garden of Eden. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I like the metaphor. It's also interesting in this scene when they start talking about how she believes everyone's become very lazy and very dull. And it's technology has at the time when they film this is not where it's at now. And you do see a lot of people being very lazy now, I feel, with technology.

Well, if you think about how phones, just our cell phones, these smartphones have become this. this epidemic of like obsession with phones. People don't connect with each other. They don't even look up at all. Right? Yeah. And we're all guilty of that. Maybe she was right. Speak for yourself, sir. Sorry. I am guilty of that, not armed. I am too. Because I don't have a, I don't have a smartphone. You don't have a, you have a regular phone. I have a flip phone. Yeah. We're going off on a tangent. But I think back to when I was a kid, my father in my eyes had this magical ability to the sense of direction if we were driving somewhere and my mother would pull the map out of the glove box and unfold it and she'd be looking around and my dad would just go no i know i know how to get there

wow i don't know if he did or not but the sense of like he was going to find his way and now we've got these phones yeah where you just put in an address and it tells you and so you don't have to right be present for the journey you don't have to pay attention right because the the you know the navigation is just going to tell you turn right turn left right that's kind of cool that your dad was the human the human version of a navigation app he knew it all already i don't know if he knew anything he might have been getting lost but to me as a kid i was like how does my dad know he was like magical yes obviously your mother didn't trust him because she pulled out the map she pulled the map every time she didn't oh she should have trusted your dad was a where are you going

Is that what you would hear? Yes. Where are you going? Okay. All right. Anyway, okay, so we go back into the compound. We see a nice shot of Joseph up on a ledge grinding a grindstone. Yeah, that was a very nice shot.

And I wondered, did Steve have to do that? Did he have to do that? And that is not the hard part, but to make sure that the sparks came out. Yeah. Was that at it or was that something Steve had to do in the shot in order for the shot to succeed. Do you think he caused the sparks? Was it like a actual flit stone? Yeah, I think it was practical. It was a practical effect. Whatever he was making contact with was hidden a little behind that stone. So they may have had something more modern than a literal grindstone because they may

have hidden it behind that spinning stone. Right. But yeah, you don't think it was his effects. It was actual practical effect. Yeah, I think that was real. Okay. Great sparks coming off the sparks, the old, old school sparks in the foreground, Cisco Miles, taking a little walk and talk discussing parts on the ship, but O'Brien says they've stripped this thing bare. There's nothing. A Ferengi junkyard, if I remember, correct? Yes, something like that. What? Yes, this is bare. Oh, that's a line that he said. That's right. Yeah, it looks like it's been through a Ferengi junkyard. Again, how offensive. Again, no respect. But I got the day off. I got the day off.

I got the day off. Well, unlike a Ferengi junkyard where Ferenghis would take this technology and make use of it, Joseph says, we actually trashed it. We intentionally got rid of everything because Elixis believed that they have to abandon their dependence on all this technology. And because of whatever the field is, it wouldn't have worked anyway. Yeah. I was thinking about the doors, you know, that. Oh, the automatic door?

Yeah, exactly. The doors wouldn't have worked. No, none of that. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a little, that's a little loss of privacy there, though, as we'll see later on. You think? Yeah. And yet we still have children on this planet.

Yes. They have a lot of children. So they didn't, doors did not deter them from doing things to have children. Uh-huh. But there were cornfields, so maybe who knows. That's the privacy. you just go into the cornfields yeah there you go but joseph mentions he was the last convert so there's a little you get a sense like oh this is this guy's gonna we maybe we can get to him

if we need his help because he was the last convert so we're kind of clued in that that he may be um we may be able to convert him right uh but then cassandra appears and she says meg's fever is getting worse meg who we haven't met yet um but we jump inside and there's a there's meg lying on the bed she's got a big banana leaf or something strapped around her arm she's dying i don't think the banana leaf that's what it looked like to me it's a special banana leaf it has herbs and stuff on there right so some roots and so yeah basically ineffective is what's happening do we learn here it's a bug bite in the scene yes we learn it's a bug bite yeah that's right yeah that has already taken two of the community

right killed off two of the community right and when they said that that's when i knew they weren't cannibals i would go oh okay they just need two more people to fill in for the two that died from bug bites oh yeah true they got to replenish those kids are going to take a while to grow up yeah put them to work so exactly but uh o'brien thinks maybe they can tap into this duenetic field power some communications beam up and get a medical kit off of their ship so they really want to help and get this medical kit but elixis says no it's a waste of time she's getting frustrated cuts cisco off and asked to speak to him privately yeah and that's when i first began to think okay elixis is is the snake in the grass the other things were i thought

well maybe these are mcuffins but but that really when she said no we're not going to do anything to try and save this girl's life that that could be just within you know a beaming distance um i thought this lady is is not to be trusted yeah agreed well she talks to cisco says stop giving people a false hope of a rescue um she does say that they've cured 17 illnesses with their ingenuity so they haven't failed every sick person they they do believe they can well we we have heard the extremity of the sickness they could have cured acne for all of us which would be great we would love that here there's a lot of people that would love these youngans we've cleared up their sickness aka acne with yes a couple of herbs yeah it's comical uh about the curing of the of the diseases

and this is what we were citing ira bear for the earlier about good and bad that they did find cures for it. That ingenuity did find a way to get around 17 problems. And that's the good side of this community, that they are being forced to make wondrous discoveries. And for that, we can sort of see it as an Edenic sort of place, a paradise, where the best of us comes forth and we're forced to make really important ingenious decisions. I like the fact that they solved the illnesses, even though it may only be acne. Your perspective reminds me of like my father analogy of like there was something that having to go through the thinking of directions of really the thought process, the creative, you know,

that experience was very different than if we just had GPS and. the car kept saying turn left, turn right, or if you jump on your phone to find an answer for something, instead of going through the process of asking someone for information and, you know, and trial and error, seeing what works, what doesn't work, discovering this might be productive towards something. There is something really quite good about that. Yeah. Because in Starfleet, you've got a med kit, you just take a hypo spray and you're better. And so you have a, haven't gone through that human experience of concern discovery discovery and is there anything better than realizing you've just found something you didn't know before yeah i mean for me uh learning i

can do something a little bit better than i thought i could or discovering something that i didn't know before uh that's one of the best moments in my life is when i have those discoveries so yeah you know god bless them for doing that i see the validity of wanting to establish something like this here yeah Well, it makes me think of AI, too, of where we're going with AI. You know, even in the creative fields, like I see some of these incredible AI generated photos or videos, things like that. And we'll lose the creative process that humans had to go through to create that. You'll just type in, you know, create a movie about this. And, yeah, it is a loss.

So I agree with you, Armin. We'll be right back after this message from our sponsor. We're in ops now and Dax and Kura are still on the case. They've got some good news. The Rio Grande has been spotted. What happened to Ensign Hansom? Ensign. Yeah, last week's episode.

Where's he? O'Brien is off the station. Where's Ensign Hanson? Exactly. But the odd thing about the Rio Grande being spotted, the runabout, is that it is actually traveling at warp with no one in it, which now, as a first-time viewer of this episode, I'm thinking, what is happening here? But sure enough, the markings are NCC-72452, which is the missing runabout.

But it's been spotted by a Romulan vessel, which then made me think, okay, why would they report? The Romulans are a little bit kind of, you know, they are kind of our adversaries. Wouldn't they have just basically gone and grabbed the runabout and then reverse engineered all the tech in there just to figure out what Starfleet's up to? But they didn't do that. It was odd to me. And talking now to the pilot, Robbie, I didn't know that you could navigate a Vestel if there was nobody at the helm. There is an autopilot function. Oh, is it?

Yes. Elon Musk developed it for Starfleet. And, yeah. Now, this is a problem for me in the episode. that i want to get to a little later perhaps it's too early to talk about but um i'll wait for the scene where where they do talk about it so i'll hold off okay but to get back to garrant's your point it could have been a romulan freighter it could have been something okay that makes sense if it's not like an attack vessel or whatever okay makes sense and they just didn't want to get involved

stay away from it but they mentioned it or reported right right but kira clearly is on a mission and she's already ready to jump into another runabout to go investigate. The last shot where they go up on the lift and it's just like beautifully framed and they just disappear below. I like that shot. It was very heroic. Good job, Cory Allen. Yeah.

Yeah, that was good. We go to a field next back to our planet. O'Brien and Cisco are working in the fields. They're down on their knees. And at first I was like, well, these are. with corn. It looks like corn or bamboo, maybe. Yeah, that's what I thought. Bamboo or corn. Something like that.

Yeah. But why are they down on their knees? And then I realized when they did stand up later, they were on stage. And if they had been up over these plants, you would have seen just a blue backing. So they had to be low. Put them down in the plants so that we don't see that blue backdrop right there because they're on stage. That's right.

But anyway, they're working on their hands and knees. and Cisco reveals his dad was a chef, which I don't think we'd heard that before. No, I think we have, actually. It's hard for me to tell because this is intrinsic to Cisco as the show goes on. So I don't know if we've already heard it or not, but you'll hear more. I felt like we have, but what we have not heard is that he and his brothers, brothers. So he has at least two, maybe more. So we don't know.

And we've never heard about that before. No. I missed that all together. So when you just said that, I was taken back. Right. Am I correct to say? When he says brothers, it could be two or more brothers. So we don't know the number of brothers, but they're multiple brothers. Well, they all had to go out to the garden to get, I guess, fresh vegetables or herbs for his father who was the chef. So, yeah, that's a lot of backstory that was new to me. Definitely. All of it. And then we go over to O'Brien and Joseph. O'Brien says that he has a black thumb, but his wife, Keiko, would love it here.

talks about her love of botany and plants and things like that. And as they're talking, they look back, they hear a noise, they look back and there's a box being opened up. And they're letting out a man who's been locked up in this tiny box. And they take him over to some shade, elixis approaches. We learn he was being punished for stealing a candle. That's why they locked him up in a box. And Cisco is furious about this.

he says that's not punishment that's torture did anyone laugh at this the point at all i mean the candle i mean i was like what why would you i thought yeah that's excessive it's excessive it's excessive i don't think i laughed at it but it's excessive yeah yeah no no it's excessive but i'm saying it's it's just comical to me that that anyone would even try to steal a candle yeah well what's i i don't understand that like to me that was just what what are you going to do with a candle why is that so valuable yes i it would have been better if he stole some of her writings or something of her originally written books or

food or something. Food, yes. But a candle. I don't know. It's just... Yeah, it seemed like a very minor, but I think that's the point. Is that what they were trying to say? It's so minor, and yet he's had to endure this torture. Right. This is indicative of Alexis's sway over the community.

Cult leader. Got it. Cult leader. Definitely cult leader alert. Yeah. He apologizes to her, though. He comes out of the box and apologizes. Who does? the what's his name stephen stephen does i thought he couldn't even speak didn't wasn't he no no he he apologizes oh he says a word or two there no he says more than a word he says i'm really sorry i'm sorry i'll never do this again you were right oh okay i just remember her feeding him some stuff to make his

i don't know i thought he was eating some something that is i believe maybe they do it the same time i don't remember but okay and i must say i don't know this actor uh but i thought wow they got the right guy for this box i mean he he looked like he had been in there for a while yeah he really i felt that he played that very well yeah i agree i agree well they leave and cisco now says to o'brien if there's any way to adapt the energy in this doing field i want you to find it we need to get out of this place so they're they're starting to see how ominous this place is and this torture was just too much We go inside Cisco's room and he's washing up very elegantly washing his arms. I thought it felt, it felt sensual to me.

The wash it. When I shower, I'm just like this, you know, it's this and I felt like I was watching someone bathe in a way that was private. Okay. I all right. Yeah. Anyway, Cisco's washing up. Cassandra, comes in. Maybe she caught a glimpse of him bathing this way. And that's why she's so turned on. That turned her on. The minute he centrally watched his forearms, she was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. No doors in the room, though. No candles either for them. There's no candles. Stephen. That damn Stephen took all our candles. I mean, it is dark in that scene. There's no candles. No, they need candles. You know, I think this, I don't think that Gail read the line right. It was for stealing

candles, plural, not candor. And he took every darn candle in the settlement. That's the issue. Yeah, so it's just Cassandra and how did she say the name of that tree? Zoota. Zupta. Okay, so she's got Zupta cream that she wants to rub on them.

Yeah. Yeah, it looked nice, the Zupter cream. Sure. It looked like cool whip to me. I wanted to taste it, put it on a slice of pie. Okay, yeah. But she asked if she can rub you know massage him with a zupta cream and he says no very politely yes he says no and then she comes over and tries to seduce him anyway oh she doesn't care and when when she reaches up he grabs her

stops her yeah and he immediately asks her point blank did elixis send you there send you here to make love to me to seduce me yeah he's very direct he is i was surprised i'm going to ask a question yes again And kudos to my show to Deep Space Night. I thought there was very sexual that scene. And I don't think I, and you have to tell me, whether or not there was something comparable to that on Voyager. I certainly never saw that on any other Star Trek show. I think we had scenes like that.

Yes. Yeah. I would say a number of them. Really? Oh, yeah. You had the scene with the girls all over your body. But where they were using sex to manipulate one of your characters? Yes.

Yeah. Now that Robbie brought that one up, yes. Oh, there's that. There's the ex post facto where I was accused of murder, the bird lady. Yeah, she was a lot of them. I think that happened to us a lot. Yeah, so, yeah. No one's ever come straight out and said,

well, you sent here to, we didn't say anything like that in our show. Will you set here to have sexuality? It was very direct. It was very direct. Nobody on Voyager ever said that. So I would say it's much more, no one's pulling punches on Deep Space Nine. They're just going to say exactly what's happening and what's in their head, whereas we kind of would beat around the bush and we never would directly say anything like Cisco did. Yeah, he was pretty direct.

Yes, he was. Well, he's mad. He goes into Alexis's a little bunk room. Yeah. He is mad, slams her book shut. Yeah. And she's actually impressed with that. She's like, what does she call it a core behavior or something?

She's trying to analyze him with her therapy ways. whatever her self-therapy, whatever. That's the first core behavior I've seen from you since you arrived. That's a very cultish kind of dialogue, I've felt. Yes, yes, exactly. Cisco asks if she sent Cassandra, and she says, you know, Cassandra was worried about you, and she really likes you sincerely. Right.

And she said, I just suggested that you go make him feel more a part of the community. Yeah. He notices her books, and he says, what a coincidence. that you brought all these books instead of having this on a pad. Exactly. To come to a place where the pad wouldn't have worked, you seems like you were prepared for this oddly. So I thought that was interesting.

Yeah. Interesting little observation and connection that he made in the scene. But from that connection, immediately you realize, my goodness, this was possibly her grand scheme all along. She faked out of everybody thinking that, oh, no, I'm into tech. And all of a sudden, no, she's not going to do that. like she had this in her mind it was already set up to go yeah it did sort of open up that possibility yeah touching on my background in in other topics in elizabethan times and prior to that and

after that for that matter too it wasn't that hard to make paper right they have they have plants so who's to say that she brought the books that's his accusation right or they just simply knew how to make paper Because she had her journals, which I think they made paper with. But there were other books that looked like books. It looked like published books. Okay. And I think that, to me, that's what he was commenting on.

He's going, wait a minute. You've got your journals that you made here. But you've also got those books over there. But you brought your library with you on a mission, you know, in a way? Yeah. Well, they were going to establish a new colony. So they were going to live. Oh.

It wasn't that they were on a mission and they were going to. going back to the home base. Okay, they were going to stay there. Got it. But he also says in the scene, you never ate replicator food even before you got here. So there's some clues that suggest that she had this philosophy. Because he says in the scene,

I think your whole philosophy is a sham that accusing her that you didn't come here and discover this idea. You had this idea. You've always believed it. From the get-go. And I don't find that to be terrible. why not follow your own ideas yeah i mean yes i we will find that she's taking it too far right but but these are her ideas she's entitled to have her own ideas and uh forcing them on other

people is something else yeah but um having your own ideas and following them why not you know there's a baseball on cisco's desk in every scene of his office right he loves baseball we they talk about baseball during this episode um there's nothing wrong with that yeah right right well um she says she she's suggesting throughout this episode just take off your uniform yes she's just take off your uniform and just join us and he refuses yeah and she says in this scene she goes well maybe some work if you some hard work will help you see the light you're going to stand watch all night so she punishes him she punishes him for speaking up and saying that her way isn't the right way

And now she's giving him. He's already worked in the field the entire day. So now he's going to stay up all night and he watched. That's a punishment. Now, I don't understand why he exceeds to that. I understand that he could be forced to exceed to that. But she's, you know, as my young nephew once said to me, you're not the boss of me. She's not the boss of him.

I had the same feeling in this entire episode. Why are they doing what she says? Why are they doing that? Now, I can understand helping out when I happen. the field. Okay, you volunteer for that. I'm part of the community. I want food. I understand that I can't be given free food. I need to work for it. Got that. But this standing in place of being a guard, if we're going to talk about missing scenes, there should have been an argument here where you can't make me do that. She says, oh, yes, we can. And yes, yes. Right. There should have

been. And then the other question is, what are they standing watch for? I mean, I'm sorry. There's no one else on this planet. There doesn't seem to be any wild animals of any sorts anywhere. We see Cassandra's going door to door with this cream. So you need a stand watch for Cassandra and her, what is it, Hepta? Zupta. Zupta.

The Zupta. The other thing, it comes to mind as we discuss this, the classic move of a cult or cult leader is to tire people out to where their will, their free will starts to get broken down. So when you're making people hard work, staying up all night, sleep deprivation, yeah, that's all part of cult moves. Yeah, you're right. The next morning, we go out to the stage set that looks like a planet, which I thought was outside. Yeah, it looked great. And speaking of which, I've watched a lot of deep space nine episodes. I thought this episode in the stage now that you've told me that was brighter than i've remember many of you've ever seen it

right yeah it's like oh my god they really turned the lights on it they sure did yeah yeah i remember marvin used to use the big lights the 10 k's the 12 k's those big lights and when we did episodes that were on planets big sets like this he'd bring in a lot of those lights you could rent them for the episode they'd rig them up there yeah and it makes those lights made the stage really hot. Oh, yeah. When we had those outdoor scenes, those were old school lights

that were just so hot. And now they've got these fluorescent color-corrected fluorescence, so it's much, you can do the same thing with modern lights, and it doesn't give off all this heat, but back then. It's like walking into a greenhouse.

That's how hot it is on the stage. And I'm glad I had the week off. Good. Yeah, you didn't have to sweat. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so they're out in this compound on stage. Cisco's very tired, sleep deprivation.

He's been up all night. O'Brien does mention in the scene. He thinks maybe this duenetic field is not coming from a natural source. Maybe it's something, you know, created by some technology, but it's still a mystery. He doesn't know. Alexis is up for breakfast. She asks Cisco if he's too tired to work his shift. and he says he's he looks exhausted to me but he goes no i'm fine i'll do it i'll do it again why is he

deferring to why do that and why doesn't he take his uniform off to work in the field i understand later on why he does it then then it's a point of honor i get that and that's important but and i suppose if he took it off working in the field um that would be undercut but but it just didn't make any sense if it's hot as as hot as you say it is under those lights yes um then why didn't he take his it mean he takes his uniform to bathe his arms um whatever you want to call that yes but why does he take his uniform off to work in the fields if it is that hot yeah where where is the commitment there later on i understand but not right no it should have been off here definitely Well, he says he's not too tired to work, even though he looks exhausted.

And she again, yeah, she says, take off the uniform. He still doesn't do it. And she mentions in this scene that Meg's doing better. See, we got some herbs, a new combination of herbs. She's doing, yeah. Our philosophy is working. She's getting better. And I'm going to stop for a second because I just had a thought that answered my own question.

Uniforms represent a way of showing authority. yeah we see a uniform on a cop and we know it's a cop and that uniform indicates authority a military person authority so if he keeps his uniform on she has to see him as a conflict to her authority that's a possibility yeah yeah i was going to say marching band trombonist authority Is he the uniform? Chompet player? Authority. Exactly. Exactly. Valet for any hotel?

Valet. That's a uniform. Bell Deskai, authority. Okay. Yes, yes. There is truth in that. There is truth in that. I absolutely agree. Even the marching band, you know. Yeah. We go inside the runabout. Kira and Dax are there.

They do find the Rio Grande. It's going at warp. Kira wants to beam over. At warp, Dax says, no, it's too dangerous. Yeah, it's crazy. They have a little back and forth about, she goes, I'm the science officer. It's my job to have a better. There's about authority there, too.

Yes. Yes. Dax decides she wants to use a tractor beam, lasso, the Rio Grande, pull it back. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No, I'm sorry. And when they do it, it doesn't even look like a lasso. No, it just looks like a tractor beam. No, they're not.

Yeah, it's a tractor beam. Yeah. You know. Yes. Yeah. She says it's a. rope trick of some kind. Right. From Hopi, an American Indian truck. And she's had several lifetime, so she's probably come in contact with them. But, but I thought, yeah, I thought you were

from a different planet. But okay, okay. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, boy. Kira's very nervous, though. She says the holes could rip apart, but she doesn't have a better idea. So they tracked her the Rio Grande, pull it back to impulse. I noticed some very good shaking. So it wasn't like, Like, whatever the combination of camera work and the actors kind of doing this, it felt it felt like turbulence and not like it was a blast from some phaser. Right. It felt like turbulence. Yeah. That good on everybody's part.

Yeah, good on everybody. That's good teamwork. They sold it for sure. Yeah. Kara goes to transport a board. Now they pulled it back to Impulse. I like Dax's line where she says, remind me to thank the assembly team. after this the holes didn't come apart

all that little detail is back in the compound everyone's called for an announcement everybody comes out yeah was it handsome young buck that hits the the bell the dinner bell thing to call everybody there was something that made it come over

yeah handsome young Michael Silver Michael Silver yes good director by the way he is a good director anyway Alexis announces that Meg has died and everybody's very sad so maybe their philosophy doesn't work

maybe they should have gotten the med kit because someone's dead she's mad though because they caught Miles O'Brien trying to use his tricorder to save her and she says there must be a punishment so instead of punishing Miles she's going to put his commanding officer

Ben Sisko in the torture box. Yeah. And this is now she has, Alexa, has absolutely crossed the line. If he's trying to save her, no matter what you use, he should be praised, not punished. Exactly. But they do have knives. Well, you know what it was. The guy that was holding Cisco, it wasn't a knife.

He was holding an arrow. The arrow. It was an arrow. It was an arrow. It was an arrow point. Yeah. He had the arrow point. Right next to Cisco's face is what he had.

So, yeah. Awkward. Awkward. It was handsome young buck's arrow, remember? So much silver had arrows. So he gave one to that guy to hold Cisco in place. Cisco gets inside the torture box, and that's how our scene ends. We go back to the runabout Rio Grande.

Kira returns. She says there's no sign of weapons fire on the ship that they were on. um dach says all the logs were erased and it seems like someone was trying to destroy the ship because she tracks the course back to a star aurelius minor and um that was where it was sent but it was kind of just barely missed so they're jostled jostled yeah they suggest and then they contradict it but they suggest that somebody's been on board ahead of time yeah and and i am the story is really clear now that they don't know that this the dax and kira don't know this but there's no way anyone from that planet could have gotten onto there furthermore there's no way that they

could have used any technical devices to do what they say eventually was done yeah right and i go that that's not possible you set this world up it doesn't make any sense that they could do this I think because Gail Strickland's character knows exactly where the field is, Alexis, yeah, Alexis, that I think that she turned it off and they sent a remote command to the shuttle to go on a collision course with the start. Something she's kept in her hip pocket for 10 years and has now finally decided to whip out and use. I can't. I can't. I know you can. It's contradictory. It doesn't. It doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't. But how else could it have been targeted? targeted to go there. They didn't beam aboard there. Or maybe they did. Do they do? Because you can do a remote beam in. You can actually make the runabout beam you aboard because that's what they were trying to do to get up to get the med kit to begin with. Yeah, it's contradictory to the world they created. It is. But the only way to happen if she turned off a duenetic field that the generator, right? And then yes, she could have done that. In which case, well, it. Okay, never mind. I just made my point. My point is it just didn't make any sense.

It doesn't make sense. That's when I went, no, no, sorry. That's when my interest in this episode began to wane. Oh, okay. I just can't believe that. It's inconsistent. The rules are inconsistent. Well, they head back to where the ship missed the star, I guess, and they're going to follow

the warp trail, look for a warp trail. So they're going to try to see where this, where it was sent from. One more thing about this thing, missing the star. A star is a big thing. It has an enormous gravitational field. They would have had to miss the star by like where Saturn is in our galaxy to have missed it. It isn't that they missed it by a block or two, you know, because it's a, it would have drawn it into the star just doesn't make any sense i'm sorry i mean you know you could have yeah you could have done something where hey a romulan saw this this ship heading at warp toward a star

and they go there and they try to like tractor it or something i don't know but even let's say it's destroyed and they're like oh how could it be where did it come from okay let's look for the warp trail and they could be in this spot having not missed the star like you know what i mean yeah I don't know. There's a, yes, this, this felt contradictory to the world rules that they created for, for the duenetic fields. Right. Yeah. So, Miles and Cisco are upset with the way this world is being run, right? They're upset.

Right. Can't argue with that. Right. Isn't the prime directive say that you can't get involved in how planets are run? No interference. Even if it's run by humans. Yes. It doesn't matter, right?

It doesn't matter. This is a world unto itself with its own government, its own group of people. Right. I thought the prime directive said, no, you can't get, you can't ask them to change their ways. Although they do that on a regular basis. But I thought that was the prime directive. When I started to have problems, an avalanche of problems. Oh, gosh.

My rating is going down by the second. No, Robbie. Don't do that. No, I won't change it. Okay. But it's my rating is being validated by the second. I mean, the main reason that the prime directive exists, let's face it, is in dealing with primitive societies that you don't want to show them technology, which changes their

course of history, right? And you could argue, well, this is a primitive society, I suppose, right? But still, you're right. They shouldn't have messed with any of that stuff. It doesn't matter how they think about it. They shouldn't have done anything. They should have just said, okay. They shouldn't have beamed down, like I said from the beginning.

You're right. The trouble started when you just go beamed down somewhere. They stuck their nose in a beehive, which they shouldn't have done. Yeah. Well, we go back to Alexis's bunk room. Yeah. And a very weak and dehydrated and just exhausted Cisco is brought in. And she's very empathetic here.

She says, I know this is hard. It's hard for me to watch this. It's painful. Yeah. But it's necessary. And she offers him water if he will finally take off that damn uniform. Right. And just put on their clothes.

And that's how they leave it. Right. So there he is. And I must give credit to Gail Strickland, who is playing basically a wicked character. One could assume that. But she does her very best to show the alternate side of that. This scene in particular, she can show that she does have a heart,

heart she does have feelings they are often sublimated to her philosophy absolutely but she's but the actress is trying not to make it black and white to say that there are areas of gray here yeah for which uh my my compliments to gale and often in a cult there are elements of logic and truth um in the philosophies of those cults, but in going back to my old question of what is the definition of a cult, I think even if there is truth and value in some of the philosophy, the way that it's executed, the way that that philosophy gets, you know, put onto the community is what defines a cult. It's her, you know, yeah, withholding sleep from people, putting them out in boxes, lying. trying the the cult of personality the control the mind control that's the cult part of it all

and the opposite is the is the visible empathy that she has for her community so um that plays one against the other and that's i think that the gray area the gray area and the power to true successful cult leaders is that they can be enormously empathetic yeah and still lead you down the garden path to hell yeah absolutely Absolutely. So he's left with the choice of take off the uniform. You can have the water. We cut outside. He comes out. He's still in his uniform. Everybody stares at him. He starts walking toward the box. He falls down for a second. Gets back up and then goes inside and locks himself back in the box. Chooses to go back in the torture box. The weight of that scene. The weight of that scene. It's it was so it's very moving. It was very heavy to watch that, you know, for him to. fall down and get back up and put himself back into the torture box, heatbox. It was so difficult to watch and very emotional for me too.

It's a lovely, lovely, lovely performance by Andrew Brooks. For sure. It's not easy to play like, you know, dehydrated, you know what I'm saying, and be and out of it like he did. And he did a good job. He really did. Well, yeah, the depth of the suffering that he was able to play and the depth of the dignity and the height of the dignity those two things are hard to put into the same performance and

he did it beautifully I guarantee you people there are people who are watching this episode in this scene that are coming that they are crying they're they're going to they're they're going to be brought to tears guarantee I guarantee you that well the next scene is in it looks like Joseph's workshop or something O'Brien's in there banging some rocks together okay so earlier when we talked about the sparks was that there was that there was sparks twice then or is this do we confuse sparks here with earlier by by chance i think there was sparks twice in the beginning and in this scene yeah yeah okay yeah so but this time o'brien made right so vinavich made sparks and now o'brien made sparks so we did not confuse that at all then okay

no got it no more more primitive tool using uh with miles o'brien banging some rocks yeah uh joseph comes in ask what he's doing and miles says uh the source of the doing genetic field is not the astatine deposits, but he thinks he knows a way to find out what it is, and he wants Joseph to cover for him. And he realizes in this moment when he says, I need your help, he realizes Joseph's going to be put in the box if he helps. So he says he can knock him out without any pain. And Joseph agrees and kind of kneels down. And Miles says, I owe you. one and bam it's him with a ninja move from you the back or something right which we'll never see again again this is one of the things i'm going i can't he doesn't do that it's not a superpower in

his quiver i went no no no i could almost have believed if he'd given him a vulcan whatever that is called the neck pinch the neck pinch but but this like he goes like that and and then it seems not yeah it's not not not not not a skill that he would have as a character. Well, okay, can I be the dissenting opinion? I'm going to say that, I'm going to say that his experience in the front line fighting the Cardassians, he does know where someone's, you know, certain pressure point is. I feel like that's how I.

For Kardashians. Hmm, yeah. It just seemed more a high level. I literally put in my notes, it's a ninja move. That's a very high level of training. skill okay as a civilian i wouldn't know where to hit somebody and you know but he has been in battle though he has been in he has experienced and what and what and now the tables are turned the opposite is true he's been in battle with technical uh phasers with with with you know 22nd century uh weapons

so all of a sudden he knows how to do something that early cavemen would have known about maybe who knows uh i'm going no that just is just doesn't in play. I'm sorry. It bummed me too. It bummed me too. But I could justify it, but it bumped me. It was like, whoa. Right. Never seen that. It's a skill that we expect Bashir, who does everything to do, basically.

And being a doctor, knowing where pressure points are. Yes. Yes. And I have to bite my tongue. Yes. Yes. Because I can't tell you about future episodes. I know. It's so funny, because we can sense you want to tell us stuff, but you know it's going to spoil it. Don't say.

we go to the forest next and we see miles o'brien walking through the woods with a half-open gourd and some water and something spinning around in it i don't know what it was but it's genius whatever it's it's a it's a compass basically uh he did a mcgivered compass is what it was yes yes which emulates that speech at the very beginning of the episode that says uh he didn't know how to do these things but in less than 10 minutes or whatever that he figured out a way to do this and that that sets us up to believe that he can do this yeah yeah you're right yeah absolutely it does even if you don't make the connection consciously it's been embedded in there as you watch the episode for sure um he does find a console digs through some dirt finds this beeping thing under the dirt when

and suddenly an arrow nearly hits him. I made a note, I feel like, and we see it's Vinode, Vinode. V-Node? V-Node. We see it's V-Node, and I made a note that if he's been doing this for 10 years, he should be a better shot after 10 years. So he's probably the one that set the Rio Grande on its course to the star.

He can't aim. He's lovely with the bone arrow, but he has really poor eyes. sight is what... Yes. He needs bifocals. He needs bifocals. He looks good, though. He had like biceps.

Oh, he had everything going on. Yeah. Their arms and, yeah. So they have a little chase scene with the bow and arrow. When we see in the foreground of a shot, Vnode pops in, and we see a little of the gold uniform. Right. In the foreground.

So we think Miles is hiding behind a tree. Yeah. But Vnode sees it and shoots an arrow. And it turns out it's just the uniform. see he's a really good shot when only the uniform is involved if there's a human being in the uniform no way he can't hit it when he hits the uniform he goes over realizes the uniform where's miles o'brien he's in the tree he's in a tree drops down in his boxers i love the boxer look the gray t-shirt and the shorty short the boxers yeah that's amazing he knocks him out he knocks

To be no doubt. Good old young buck. And somebody had the smart idea for him to say, you know, you finally got me out of my uniform. Yeah, I know. I know. I love it. I love it. But then we saw him shirtless in the last episode.

Oh, that's true. A racquetball and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Well, we go back to the compound. O'Brien Storm's in. He's got boss energy now.

He takes charge. Yeah. Shoots. His phaser is now working. So he opens the box with a phaser shot. to free Cisco and he tells the entire village the truth right and elixis finally uh admits the the real story here that she made this technology it was always uh part of her plan she this cover up she yeah all of it was part of her plan to get to this place yeah but she's got this big

speech she passionately believes in this philosophy and i love the score under and she's giving this it was almost like church violins or something. I don't know if you noticed the score, but it just sounded like church to me. It was more romantic score or it just felt different than our normal Star Trek story. Dennis McCarthy composed the music for the episode. McCarthy commented, there's an eight-minute sequence at the end where Alexis is trying to get everyone to stay. And as I watched it, I thought, what would Martin Luther have put in here? So I played it from a very Protestant viewpoint using all the old church harmonies.

It's subtle, but if I shortened the music and made it slightly more melodic, it could be used as a hymnal. So there you go. That's what it sounded like. Good catch, good catch, good catch. I didn't hear that, Robbie, but you caught. No, I didn't hear it either. No, it felt very Protestant, like old, old-timey, you know, Quaker music or something. Oh, that's so funny that he said that.

Yeah, but it works, though, I think. It totally works. Yeah. Yeah. But she gives this big speech with the, with the Quaker violins underneath. And then Cisco, he's not swayed by this. He's like, what about the dead? What about the people who've died?

Is it worth that? Right. And she says she suffered every time one of them died. He even says, what if it was your son? What if your son was the one that was dying? She says, she puts a hand. on Michael Silver's shoulder and she says yes for the community I would have let him die yeah mm-hmm yeah and uh Cisco says well you're gonna have to answer for your crimes and she agrees to go

with him if she was and I assumed that she was but if she and she was Starfleet then perhaps she has to answer to Starfleet for yeah crimes right but again she is the leader of that planet where do they get off having the authority to drag her off shouldn't they again a missing scene shouldn't there have been some consultation with an admiral or somebody back at the headquarters to say do we bring her back

or just fall under prime directive? Yeah it's another prime directive thing issue yeah in a way the biggest problem I had in this scene she does agree to go back she says she agrees to answer for a crime she'll go back with him

but no one else speaks No one, like, there's no vote. Joseph doesn't say, hey, everybody, raise of hands of who wants to stay. No one seemed to express their opinion. Joseph seemed to just assume and speak for all of them. Because he literally says, we all want to say, to stay. Right. And I thought, have you asked all the we?

I don't know that everyone's had a chance to vote here. It's wrong. It's wrong. It's stupid. It boggles imagination. Yeah. it doesn't make sense and wouldn't elixis be the only one beaming up with them why is v note going i think because she's he's her son i had a problem with that too and i finally went well he's her

son he would want to go with his mother to support her in whatever decision is happening i i don't think he's going to be put on trial or reprimanded for his actions right he's going as a family member got it i thought he was going to be uh arrested because it seemed like he was at the technology shooting the bow and arrow trying to so he was aware yes but he didn't strand the people on the planet yeah as far as I know he could have you're right he could have although he would have been what age if if that was 10 years before what he is in in he was a 10 year old yeah you or he was a 12 12 13 teenager whatever you know so I don't think you could find him responsible no but but so

I and I had a problem with that and I thought that through and I thought no that makes going as a family member okay but this what is it that she said and i didn't quite catch it it's time for those of us who don't belong here to go something like that she says that to cisco yeah it's time for those of us who don't belong here to leave ben yeah so he says four to beam up major so that i didn't understand that line at all i understand why he has to cisco has to yeah and miles because they don't belong there right but but she certainly can't think of herself as someone who doesn't belong here yeah it just that line went what What does that mean?

Yeah. Well, even more perplexing, I wasn't sure what was going on because after they beam up, those two villager kids, they walk right into the center of the frame, standing there as if it was Jack Nicholson's The Shining when he sees the twins. And it's like, what's, what? So I wasn't sure what the message was there. So I don't know how you guys interpreted that, seeing that scene. I hoped what it meant, and I have no idea what it meant,

but I hope what it meant was the slavery that she had kept everybody in. would hopefully now be over. That box was now going to become a relic and not to be used again. Oh, I hope that's what that meant. But having the kids come into sort of like a new beginning. But they're looking at the box. They're looking at the sunbox.

Oh, I thought they were looking at the beam out area where they just left. No, I thought they were looking at the box. And I'm thinking the next generation is not going to allow this to happen. I see. Okay. You do you concur, Robbie? Yeah, that's kind of what I got is this. like a fresh start, you know, we're going to keep some of this philosophy, but we've got a

fresh start. We can do things differently. Yeah. Right. And just the way it blocked, it just seemed very different from what we've ever seen. And Joseph makes the comment, we'll either turn it on or we'll keep it off one or the other. We don't know yet. We don't know. Right. So, okay, that makes sense. I mean, the original purpose was to find a colony, to establish a colony on a planet. That is what they were hoping to do. They all had agreed to that. They just had not agreed to give up technology. Yeah. Yeah.

Or to get in a box. Yeah, or to get in a box. I agree with you. Everyone should have been asked. Another missing scene. Everyone should have been asked, you know. And there had to be some people who lost family by being stranded there. Yeah.

But didn't it also seem that Cassandra wanted to go? Because she asked very early in the episode. She says, when they come to rescue us, do we all get to go with them? Like, it seemed like she wanted to go and leave this place, right? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And they said they destroyed all the technology, right? I mean, everything was junk to them, they say, and so they've gotten rid of it.

So they have, I would imagine, very little communication equipment left. So even if they turn the machine on, they won't be able to communicate with anybody else. Maybe that's what some of them want. That's what Alexis wanted. But do all of them want that? It's a very unsatisfactory ending. I agree. Stick around.

There's lots more after this message from our sponsor. Well, let's talk about our theme or lesson or moral of this episode, starting with Robbie. What is your assertation? I have two thoughts. My first thought was cult leaders will lie and let people suffer to achieve their selfish goals. And the other idea I had was extremist ideas can be very dangerous. I like that. Yeah.

Armand, do you have a... Well, I was so pleased with myself in the last episode that I went hunting for ideas that much smarter people than I had come up with about these themes. I did it again. And so I found Ben Franklin. Okay. Ben Franklin said, they that give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary...

safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Oh, I love Ben Franklin. He was a smart dude. Yeah. Garrett, what is your theme, moral lesson? It is all of our duties to remind ourselves to be free thinkers. Yeah. Independent thought.

Yeah. Who knew? Yeah, that's all. Everyone needs to try to strive to be a free thinker, I feel. And stay out of a box. And stay out of a hot box. Exactly. Yes.

And if you're working in the field, take off your wool, Starfleet uniform. And the Patreon poll for the theme slash lesson slash moral of this episode, as submitted by Daniel Kaminsky, is a person with a God complex serves no one but themselves. Hmm. Good, good. Okay. I like it. Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our review, recap of the Deep Space Nine episode Paradise. please join us on the next episode of the Delta Flyers as we journey through the wormhole

as we review, recap, and discuss the episode Shadow Play with Terry. And I'm in that one. You are in that one. Thank goodness. For all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. And for everyone else, see you next time. Bye. Bye-bye.

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