The Delta Flyers - Phage

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Phage. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars. We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with Megan Elise, Rebecca Sims, and Jessey Miller. Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers Ann Marie Segal, Philipp Havrilla, Jason M Okun, Stephanie Baker, Stephen Smith, Sarah A Gubbins, Kelton Rochelle and John Tufarella. And our Producers Breana Harris, NCC-1701, Máia, Steph Dawe Holland, Richard Banaski, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Gregory Kinstetter, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Laura Swanson, Chris Tribuzio, Thomas Melfi, Liz Scott, Chloe E., and Deborah Schander. Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey guys, welcome back to the Delta Flyers. The Delta Flyers is a weekly podcast whereby my co-host, Robbie Duncan McNeil, and myself will be re-watching, recapping, discussing Voyager episode from start to finish. And for those who are our Patreon supporters, we will be providing additional content and material that our normal podcast will not include. So how's it going, Robbie? It's good. It's going great. It's a beautiful day today. But I'm excited to sit down on the couch with a snack and a nice cold beverage and

watch this next episode, Fage. Yeah. Yeah. Fage is going to be a good one. Yes, it is. I'm excited to watch it, for sure. Yeah, things are good. I'm really starting to find a groove with this. with this podcast and watching these episodes.

And like I said before, every one of them is just bringing back so many memories. Like when we were talking to Dan Curry, we had a great conversation with Dan Curry, which, you know, some of the fans can find out those extra interviews and episodes on Patreon as well. But Dan Curry mentioning like some of those St. Patty's Day lunches

that Cape Mulgrew used to celebrate and bring in food and things like that. and I totally forgot about all that stuff. So this has been... She did that every year, every year. She did it every year, and I totally forgot that that was a tradition. And so, yeah, this podcast is really bringing back,

you know, that's just one of many memories that are coming back and details of those years that are coming back. So really excited to be living the journey with you. Yeah, man. What's your cap say? I'm just curious. I can't read it for me.

Cap says Ocean Village in Tafino, British Columbia. It's, Rebecca and I went out there. So Tafino is on the western coast of Vancouver Island and it's known for like storm watching and it's the big surf spot in Canada. It's kind of like the big sir of Canada, great little town Tafino with great restaurants and, you know, like five star Michelin restaurants and organic food. and surfers, and it's super cool, Tafino. Yeah, that's Ocean Village is where we stayed. Right on the little cabins right on the water. You build bombfires out on the beach.

It's awesome. Nice. So those of you who are our Patreon supporters, we're going to start our segment, what do we remember? And for everybody else, we'll be right back with our recap after we watch the episode. We just watched the episode, Fage.

Here's what I learned. I'm going to jump back. You take it. You go. The doctor, the doctor has one of the most perfectly conceived characters. I think that I realized it watching this episode because for Star Trek, he's the classic kind of, what's the point of view character, I guess, for a sci-fi show, for a Star Trek show. The doctor is a classic point of view character because he's a non-human character who has very human yearnings and experiences and can't quite understand it.

And I just thought, that's one thing I definitely recognized in this episode, having watched now the pilot in a couple episodes. It's so clear right out of the gate that this character is going to be a very critical sort of point of view character for our show. This episode just shot him miles ahead, in my opinion. The whole, the scenes with Kess, the scenes with Tom Paris, the scenes with the captain, the scenes with all those scenes in the Med Bay, they just added up to a complete story. There was comedy.

There was pathos and drama. There was, you know, heartfelt moments. I thought that part of our story in the Medical Bay really landed as a full meal, like a complete experience. That's one thing that I wouldn't have guessed if you had said to me, oh, remember, Fage, I thought about the Videans, I thought about the organ harvesting. Yes, that happened. But to me, the thing that was really important was establishing the doctor as a real important

character for our show. So that's what I learned. Well, you know what's interesting is like I, they never really explain why he has these yearnings or these feelings. Right. You know what I'm saying? Because let's face it, he's a program. So he really shouldn't have had those feelings or yearnings.

And none of that should have been there. So I find it kind of, I'm left in the dark a little bit. I don't understand what's happening other than the fact that, you know, Bob Ricardo, the actor started, you know, adding his own little flare to it. And then the writer sort of just picked up on that cue and they, they ran with it. I don't think I don't know that it was bought like I want to say sure like actors have the ability to sway writers one way or the other but I think it's very it's much more subtle and much more delayed for the writers to to react that way I think this was just in the concept of the character okay I really do I think it was a very well-conceived just like when seven of nine joins our show later on you again have like this second wave of a purse perfect sci-fi character that comes out of technology or an alien experience and starts having human experiences and has to learn it and I also I noticed in the very first scene when

when they were talking about a rogue they were they were on the walk-and-talk yeah a rogue planetoid is what they referred and I was like yeah it was just very interesting you know it's just a subtle little detail but it's like oh it's sort of a rogue it's off on its own. It's, you know, Nelix won't know a lot about it. Like, it already establishes this sort of mysterious little planetoid thing. Well, that's, first of all, just the terminology, that vocabulary, rogue planetoid is just, okay, planetoid, smaller than a major planet, I suppose, rogue away from everything else. But they mentioned that Nelix knows of this as having a di-lythium deposit. So it's like, okay, it's a little, if they,

they mentioned that, then I kind of feel like, wait a minute, I feel like there's a bit of a hole in the script. It's sort of like, if he knew about this, and why didn't he go, why didn't he originally as an explorer, whatever he did, why didn't he go there? Maybe he heard from word of mouth that this was known as a rich dilethium deposit area, I don't know. Then the next scene after the walk and talk,

they go to the mess hall. And this is the first time. By the way, before we get to the mess hall, before we use, so they're walking along. And I noticed Robert's hair looked like it was dark, Oh, is this the beginning? In the very beginning, it looked a little darker. And then later on in the episode, it was that salt and pepper again.

So I'm like, well, they wouldn't have done it only for one scene. No. I wonder if this is, I don't know, I'm just, I hate to sound like the hair police, but I was kind of paying attention to it. And I was like, wait a minute, Roberts, did they change it yet? Or maybe they noticed that it looks a little darker and dark sets and more salt and pepper in the more lit sets. lit sets and maybe they wanted it to be more consistent. I don't know. Yeah. That sounds more, that sounds more like it. It was a lighting issue. You probably saw it differently in a different light. But it's, it's cool that we now have the Chikote Hair Watch. We're going to be watching

and observing Chikote's hair throughout the series to make sure it's... Hair is very important. Very important. I feel like my hair styles changed already in these first few episodes. Like sometimes it was really like, you know, pulled down tight. Other times it was like swoopy it was looser yeah fonty and and uh i should have just worn a baseball cap in the show who who they got to do that on enterprise thank you know those bastards oh yeah they did how did you how did you i always feel like enterprise guys i always like those bastards they got to wear nice jumpsuit modern day you know air force looking jumpsuits they got baseball caps and then we had to deal with our hardcore starfleet itchy tight hot uniform

Oh my God. Now, in the mess hall, did you realize that the mess hall was originally the captain's private dining room? I know. I never, that was brand new. That totally shocked me. Yeah, I've got that down here. It was like, Inway's private dining room. And then when she first comes in, I loved that Neelix was cooking and he was like, he was like, clapping, clapping at the fires. I was like, what the hell are you doing? Why are you clapping at the fire? At the. fire he was he was waving it out he was like like telling it like somehow communicating to the fire like get busy come on get busy fire it was very funny I'll be honest I did I did not notice that it was just random clapping at the fires like good job good job it's just he does the most silly funny absurd things Ethan makes me laugh all the time he does we come in the bridge and you see Jacote and Janeway and Neelix asked to be part of their way team but the first thing you notice

that this is the first time that Kim is sitting down. He's always been standing up. Oh, interesting. And so, you know, Megan actually said, oh, what are you doing? Sitting on the job now? And I said, there's a bit of chair there

the entire time, okay? I just sometimes I'm standing, sometimes I'm sitting. And in this particular episode, it's the first time you see Kim. Wow. So there is a chair. Yeah.

They head down into the caves. And this is the first time I think we shot in those caves, at least to this extent. We were in the cave. a lot in this episode, or you guys were. I wasn't, Paris wasn't down there, but he shot, they shot all over those caves and the cave sets came from next generation. It had been the same cave sets that they had used on that show. So we ended up using these caves for seven

straight years, you know, the same sets. Yeah, and these caves were located on stage 16. So these are a bit of a hike for us from where our trailers were positioned, which was right by stage eight and nine. Stage eight we used for the bridge. We also, the captain's ready room and the briefing room was stage eight. Stage nine, we utilized as all the corridors that you see. Any walk and talks and Voyager corridors, those are on stage nine. Engineering was on stage nine. Sick Bay was also located on stage nine.

And then stage 16 were the alien caverns or landscapes, whatever. That was literally, I would say probably like a block and a half away from where we're at. It wasn't really close. from our, if we went over there, we kind of stuck to that stage. We stayed, you know, stuck around. Yeah. Sat in our chairs or if the weather was nice, we might hang out outside between shots. And do you remember the cats?

There were these rogue cats, I guess, that there, I don't know how many, but dozens of them that lived underneath, on that stage, underneath the stage, soundstage. That stage, 16 had been in, back in the old movie studio days, that had had a tank. in it. So the floor was built over a giant swimming pool. There was actually a tank where they had done water scenes and things on that stage. So the cat sort of lived down in that, that, you know, the old base down. Yeah, the old water, the old pool, basically is what it was. It was a big stage, too, huge stage. This was also an episode, Rick Colby came back to direct the first episode

after he did the pilot. So that was, I think now we're starting to feel that first season a little bit of like a groove, you know, Rick Colby's coming back. We're familiar with him. Yeah, all the cave stuff I thought was really cool. And then the next thing I noticed was in sick bay. I noticed the clam shell on that medical bed. This, I think was the first time we actually used that clam shell coming up and down. And I have a memory of it not working when like the motor wasn't working and then it was weird reflections when it came up. And I remember spending hours trying to deal with that bed for the first time because we had never seen it actually move on cue. You know, so, you know, still working out the kinks of our sets. That's something I remember.

I was just going to say, all these things that the viewers take for granted, like just the clamshell, like opening and closing. There's so many, there's meetings about this, you know, and there's a lot of people sitting here trying to make sure that this thing looks proper, you know, And speaking of people doing things, the doors, all the doors that we had that opened up, we had one guy. That's his job. Will Tom's. Will Tom's. His entire job was to open and close the doors. And he did a great job at it. But, you know, he was a bit older. He was a bit older. So there were days that maybe went a long day. He'd be a little tired, being a little bit older, that he might have maybe possibly dozed off a little bit. I just recall that there was a couple times when the doors were supposed to open and they did. And we ran right into them. just smacked right into them. So that happens every now and then. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh, my gosh, so much already.

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dot com slash TDF. That's mintmobile.com slash TDF. Up front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month, limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. But before we continue with the sick base scene, I just want to say that Neelix does not listen to Chkote, down on the planet in the caves. Chikote keeps saying you're getting too far, you're going to come back, you've got to come back, and he just disobeys orders over and over again. And so that just goes to show you, you know, if you're in a chain of command, you disobey orders, you become the red shirt.

Bad things happen to you, right? You get your lungs removed. Now, back to the Sigby. Robbie, I thought the doc was so harsh on you. Like he literally just was just saying like Paris, a medic, you know, he makes fun of that. Later, Kess talks about, you know, well, you do have, you do have Tom Paris to help you. And he says, like I said, no one helps me like that. Like, he's so harsh on Paris.

How did you feel about that? I was, you know, I felt like Tom didn't do anything wrong in the sick bay. Like, he was doing fine. But I think, again, that's part of like the very clear concept of the doctor is that he's this non-human, thinks he knows better than the humans, but then ends up sort of having these human experiences. I love the developing relationship, friendship with him and Kess. The beginnings of that in this episode I thought were great. When he slapped me, I loved that moment.

I liked my expression. I was very happy with that. I thought like, oh, my God, I can't believe you just slapped me. But why I didn't try to slap him more than the one time my hand went through, I should have just grabbed him and just, you know, hauled off and let him have it. There was, your, your reaction was perfect. It really was. And it was one of those gem moments that you just don't expect him to do that. And he slaps the bejesus out of you. I love the line when Neelik says, your ceiling is hideous because he's lying in that clamshell looking straight up. So that writing was awesome. It just reminds me there was a, there was a salon in Vegas that they placed monitors on the ceiling where you're getting your hair shampooed. So when you're lying back, you got to watch music videos. Oh, that's funny. And I keep thinking, was this because this salon owner was watching this Voyager episode

and thought about this? That's funny. Oh, yeah. I thought this stuff when Tom Paris had a couple of moments with Cass of being sincere and sympathetic, and then Neelix misinterprets that as like, oh, he's creeping on you. And, you know, and Cass is like, no, he's just being nice. And I loved, I had forgotten the jealousy and kind of where and how that. started with Neelix. I know it played out for quite a few episodes. So it was nice to revisit that

and kind of see. I can see how he would have gotten in his panic situation, have gotten jealous. And I loved how he called me one big hormone. I thought that was funny. He called you another name. A reptilian vulture. You're ripped that reptilian vulture and one big hormone. I just love that. Maybe we should make a t-shirt with that. You can just wear that one Big hormone. Big hormone. Oh, my God. I mean, just really some awesome lines in you.

I mean, he's not wrong. The way that Tom Perez was written in those first few episodes, he's not wrong. Right. I think that, you know, it's always tricky. You're trying to find the right kind of cocktail of writing and performance and how heavy you go. You know, I go as an actor or whatever. It's why I really enjoy directing now because I get to help modulate actors and kind of go, hey, let's try one a little softer.

Just throw it away. or whatever. And I feel like some of those early episodes of Tom Paris, he was definitely established as a one big hormone and, you know, chip on his shoulder and all those things. It is surprising how much, how jealousy gets, though, you know? And over, and it's, I'll tell you, that is one emotion or one feeling that is, I, it'd be great if we could somehow work that out of the genetic code where nobody could be jealous at all, but jealousy sucks. It really does. And it's kind of good that they included a character that had to experience this with just full-blown, out of nowhere, and possibly because of, you know,

realizing that his life could be in this clamshell for the rest of eternity. I mean, that's thinking about that and being in his position is, was definitely, for me, going like, oh, my God. I mean, could I live like that, you know, being in that position? And you could easily see how issues that he had that were kind of under, you know, under wraps or he could control it. The jealousy completely went full blown. And it was 100% you know, the jealous bug was there.

And you can see that. It was and it wasn't attractive to watch. Yeah. Right. I wonder if that line that the doctor says, I'm a doctor, not a decorator. I wonder if he ad-lib that one. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if that was written or if he ad-lib that.

I don't know. He did it very subtly. It didn't feel like such a big call. back to, you know, to the original series. Yeah, I can't wait to have Bob in as a guest so we can ask him some of these questions regarding that. I love the Tuvok on the bridge, you know, talking about to Janeway about he's known her for four years now. Yeah. I like that reminder that they've got a special history and Tuvok's going to be somebody who knows her a little better than everybody else. I love the disco ball over Neelix's a bit.

in the curtains. That was hilarious. And I thought that whole scene went from sort of the comic version between the doctor and Neelix to really kind of tragic. And it was a beautiful arc in that scene as he started panicking, you know, and Neil Lick's panicking. And the doctor's like, you know, it starts with comic banter and back and forth and then ends up with him really getting panicked. And then the doctor feeling concerned. And also the doctor feeling like he's failed in some way, you know, that's always going to be a hard one for the doctor to accept that he's not perfect. Yeah.

When it's one of the first times where you see his solution is not going to fix this. Yeah. I did like the scene when we're on the bridge and we start chasing after the aliens who have now entered into an asteroid and we come into that cavern and they've thrown that trick out where there's a reflection of, you know, 100 different voyagers and 100 different, we don't know where their ship is. Chiquotay comes up with a brilliant idea of lowering the phaser output so that it's just a more of a beam of light, you know, so it's not, and so that we can find out which one is the real alien ship. So, you know, so the elements of this episode

all really worked well together. I felt that this was a great episode, obviously character development wise for Neelix, for the doctor, for Cass. But then, and also, you know, the scenes from the bridge. I mean, some of the things, things that we had to see and do in order to forward this story were, you know, well written, I felt. I thought about when that mirror scene as the ship is going through into the asteroid and seeing all the other ships or reflections or images of other ships, I thought about how when we're on the bridge, this was an early episode still. And there is a description in the script of what we see, but we don't see anything. You know, when we're on the bridge looking at a green view screen or they would put up on a flag, some tape that we would stare at, and we would try to imagine what we were seeing, but we didn't really see it until the episode was done and all the visual effects were done.

So looking at that, I was thinking and trying to imagine, like, what did I think I was looking at? you know like when we shot the scene i wonder if what i imagined we were looking at is actually what we ended up with because a lot of times i know i would film something and think you know imagine something there and then when i saw it later i was like whoa that's what i was looking at if i had known that i would have maybe reacted bigger or less or you know so do you think it would have behoved the producers to actually have storyboarded or something to show us like, hey, this is kind of what we're going to be doing, you know, just so it has been helpful. Yeah, because they really relied on our own imagination and whatnot to stare at nothing to create this in our own heads.

Yeah. And of course, what you're thinking is going to be completely different probably than what I'm thinking, right? Everyone's going to have their own image of whatever it is. Let's see. Oh, when we were in engineering, we finally see SESCA in her proper uniform color, the gold color as opposed to the she had one line I think and the whole line yeah the whole episode we have the Janeway dilemma after we catch the two alien Videon yeah I mean this is this goes to the core and the theme of the of the episode right here in the scene but um I really struggle with why she feels like morally she can't steal them back even if he's you know to me, personally, I feel like to take Neelix's lungs back from the thief is morally,

that is justice, because they don't, they don't belong to the thieves. But I know that they did say, well, we've adapted the lungs, they've changed their, you know, biological structure now. He couldn't, Neelix couldn't use them anyway, even if we could give them back to you. You know, they're of no use to Neelich. And if you took them, he would die. So she's kind of in a pickle. It's like she could take them back, but it's not going to fix Neelix's problem. And it's only going to kill this guy.

But that is the dilemma of like. Commit murder to save a life, right? That's what she said. But I thought it was a bit of a cop-out because if they're that advanced, they could have readapted those lungs back to Neelix's body, dead gummit. I just felt like, you know, that was like, all right. I felt like the two Vidyans, Darth, I think, is the first guy that speaks.

And he sounded like an old monster movie Lon Cheney to me with that accent, Darth's accent. When he was talking like this sort of like. When his British accent, he was talking like this. It was very funny. It sounded like Lon Cheney to me. I thought, oh, we had Lon Cheney in the episode.

Mortura, you do not need to explain yourself. So it was very theatrical. I thought was an okay guy. He was, I felt bad for him. As long as he needed somebody to help keep him alive. Yeah, I mean, Dallath, Dareth, he was ready to leave. When Jamie was saying, I'm letting you go. He was like, we will leave immediately.

But Matura was nice. He said, let me take a look at Neelix and let's see what we can do. And Kess volunteers to give her lung, which is very kind. of her to do that. And we, of course, expected that. But I have a note that I really, I really like Jennifer Lien's portrayal of a diminished lung capacity person speaking at the very end. That was good. Yeah, the very little air and very little strength to even speak. I also thought in that scene, they definitely, it came off tonally like the doctor is falling in love with cats. Yeah.

I didn't even know that he's falling in love, but he's like, she's been sympathetic and empathetic to him in the earlier scene. And after that surgery, there was something kind of romantic. It was like everybody loves Cass. It's like Neelix loves Cass. Tom Parris, obviously, is flirting with her because Neelix's jealous. And the doctor loves her. Like, Cass was everybody loved Cass in the episode. But you didn't play it that way, though, right?

I tried not to. I wanted to play it very sincerely, just, you know, really. sincere and yeah it's just concern yeah which is the right way to play it because you really you know the lesson there is that you know jealousy it serves nobody right i mean honestly because you are completely innocent in your dealings with kess you were coming from that one scene in the prior episode with the briefing room where you you take your chair you get up out of your chair you give your chair to kess right and nilix has that initial like wait what's happening and now to this episode everything you say to kess is purely just being a good guy just hate and there was

no ulterior motive at all, but he thought that you were moving in immediately. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was a nice relatively happy ending, I thought, you know. Naleks didn't die. Yeah. Yeah, I think all in all pretty good. In terms of the themes of the episode, you know, I was thinking like this episode was dealing with a question of like, when is doing the wrong thing right?

you know, two wrongs don't make a right was Janeway as sort of, you know, you stole Nelix's lungs, but it's not right for us to steal Nelix the lungs back. Yeah, that was my takeaway. It was kind of like, you know, when is like, when is the situation so desperate that doing the wrong thing may be justified? Yeah. You know, I don't know. That's the predicament, I think, for everybody in that episode. Definitely. I mean, it's a perfect example of being able to take the higher road. You know what I'm saying? And to take the higher road is difficult because you're naturally going to, you're going to want Janeway to say, you took Neelix's line? Well, guess what?

We're going to rip it right back out of your chest cavity. Thank you. And that sort of, you know, vindictive mindset really, this is the reason why conflicts continue. This is the reason why the Arabs and the Israelis have been fighting for 5,000 years because nobody's going to take the higher road and say, hey, all right, you just killed so-and-so, you committed the murder, now we're going to stop it. We're not going to go any further, you know? So it is a lesson in two wrongs do not make a right. Yeah.

So that's a good one. I like that. And also there's a lesson in jealousy. Jealousy serves no one. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. A lot of good lessons in there. Yeah.

All right. Well, I think that does it for our recap this week. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. for our podcast, and a special thanks to all our Patreon supporters. I'm having a blast looking and revisiting these old episodes and remembering all kinds of fun that we had. And I can't wait to see you guys next week. Next week, we are going to revisit the episode called The Cloud.

Until then, any final words, Garrett? No. Everyone stay safe and stay healthy out there. and thank you so much for listening in.