The Delta Flyers - Retrospect

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Retrospect. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars. This week they are joined by one of the writers of this episode, Lisa Klink!Retrospect:Janeway orders Seven of Nine to assist an alien arms-merchant, but the latter two have an altercation that only the Doctor can explain.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeill, & our Post Producer Jessey MillerAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, & Brannon BragaAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Mike Devlin, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey,Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, John Mann, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Melissa Lau, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Paul Young, Elly Post, & Brandon MayAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, James Amey, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Scott Lakes, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Amy Tudor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Louise Storer, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Megan Chowning, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Bronwen Duffield, Red Wizard, Jessica B, & E.G. GalanoThank 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, everybody. Robbie and Garrett here. I just wanted to let everybody know. This episode this week has some issues of accusations, being believed, and assault. And so if anybody has the sensitivity to those issues, we just wanted to give you a heads up and a little warning for the subject matter this week. Thanks. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Delta Flyers of Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. Well, hello there, sir. Hello. How are you today? You're in sick bay. I see your background.

I'm in sick bay. Your background is sick bay, so you must not be feeling well. I'm feeling a little blue, maybe. I don't know. I do feel a little bit like the light, do you think the light's a little bit too hot? No, I think the light looks like sick bay light. It actually, I'm actually not kidding. You're the lighting of your, of your Zoom lights or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Your podcasting studio lights match the sick bay lighting beautifully.

It looks like a professional, professional episode of Star Trek right now. Would Billy Pete be proud of me right now? Yes, Billy Pete, our gaffer, our lighting guy would be. He would be very proud of you for your Star Trek lighting. Good to know. All right. So what's going on in the McNeil world? Anything crazy?

What's going on? I'm wearing my Resident Alien hat. We're more than halfway through season two filming. And we've got about five episodes kind of locks already. So I'm going to be airing in late January, 2022. So I love it. A little Resident Alien love. And I've got my turn.

and Hootts sweatshirt on. So all the McNeil TV shows from Vancouver this season are represented in my outfit. I love that. Very cool. Yes. Huh. So you're wearing studio swag right now pretty much, right? Show gear, yeah.

Show gear or show swag. That could be a tongue twister. Show swag. Show swag. Show swag or swag? Swag. Swag. I just added an H on there.

Yeah. It's nice. Yeah. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm hanging in there, man. I just got back from my mother's 80th birthday celebration. She turned the big 8-0, yeah. So that was wonderful. That was in L.A. A lot of relatives showed up for that. And a lot of birthday. That's a big birthday. That's, yeah, that's a big milestone. Big birthday, yeah. Are your mom and dad the same age? Or is your mom older or younger? My mom's older. My mom is older. Interesting. Yeah, she got the younger guy. Yeah, got the hot young guy.

You got the hot young 78 year old is what she got. She's two years older, I think, than my dad. So, yeah, yeah, she was born in 1941 and my dad was 1943. So there is a little bit of difference there. Nice. But yeah, but the big 80, she's still, you know, she's still churning along, still good with health and still sound mind and sharp mind. So that's, that's a good thing. That's awesome.

That's awesome that you could be there. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. So this week's episode. Yeah, what is this week's episode? Retrospect. You don't use that word that often, you know? That's not a word that's used a lot. Yeah, sometimes like in the art world, a retrospective is sort of a look back at an artist's work. Right. But, yeah. I mean, you see it, you see it written. You'll see it written as in retrospect, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of times you don't hear it spoken, you know. And people don't usually say, in retrospect, I should have, you know, turned off the oven before I left the home, you know, whatever. You don't hear that.

So retrospect is this title of this episode. You also don't hear words from Star Trek like Kapla or, you know, there's other words that we use in Star Trek like retrospect, that. Quickly, use retrospect and kapla in no sentence. Go. This episode, I'm excited to go watch this. So why don't we go check this out? We'll be right back. with our retrospect of retrospect.

All right, everyone, we are back. Robbie and I are back. And with us, we are joined by none other than writer extraordinaire, Lisa Klink from Star Trek Voyager. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. Hey, guys. Hello.

Hi, so happy to have you here. Yes. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Yes. And just to start it all off, Lisa had requested that when we reached this episode retrospect that we bring her in on the recap and discussion of this episode, because she does have a lot to say about this episode. So just to start it off, Lisa, if you can speak to how this pitch came about, I guess the story was by Andrew Shepard Price and Mark Gaborman, but the teleplay was written by yourself and Brian Fuller. So could you please speak to at least how this was pitched and then how you guys translated it and how things went well and how things didn't go that well in terms of your opinion? So please.

Well, I don't remember a lot about the original pitch, but I think it was kind of in the air at the moment was the McMartin School case in which the kids had sort of had their repressed memories, you know, brought forward and they had remembered all of these horrible things, you know, as a tent. rituals and abuse and all that. And there was also a psychology study that had come out right about then. Elizabeth Loftus had demonstrated how easy it was by the power of suggestion to induce people to remember things that had never happened. They did this with college students and told them, you know, your family has told us that you got lost in the mall once as a kid. Did you remember that? And of course, it never happened. But with enough questioning and kind of leading questions, they got these people to genuinely remember that they had been lost in the mall as a kid. So we thought this was a pretty interesting concept. And I believe that's what the

pitch, the gentleman came in with the pitch, kind of said, you know, what if this happened to one of our people? And then we decided to make it seven and nine, because she has sort of a complicated past. Yeah. Yeah, that all makes sense. I think this is a, it's a complex subject because every case, like when you talk about the McMarton case, that's very different circumstances than maybe the typical and very historically relevant a woman comes, you know, a forward with an accusation of some kind of assault that wasn't just a memory, but what actually happened and then is not believed or is believed or, you know, whatever. We can go down all those. I think the thing that I struggled within this is it does feel like an analogy for the most common experience, which is historically a woman has been assaulted or sexually attacked in some way, comes forward, and then is believed or not believed, and often not believed. And that's just historical truth. And so this one is, this one was tricky for me because we can, as we go through the plot, we can kind of talk. about all the details, but yeah, it's tricky.

What intrigued me and Brian was the failability of memory. Obviously, we did not have in mind making it analogous to like a woman, you know, alleging a sexual assault. You know, we wanted to make this very specifically sci-fi that, you know, Seven says that he took her nanoprobes and, you know, something like that. Had we, I guess, maybe thought about it a step further, we might have made it a different incident that was remembered differently. But that's that's kind of where we were coming from as we wanted to just look at how memory could be manipulated. I think it's interesting because the fact that it is seven of nine

in our show playing a very physically attractive woman and casting a man who's kind of hyper-aggressive from the start and then having an accusation from the woman to this man who fits a certain stereotype as well, just like Seven of Nine sort of fit a certain stereotype. It's inevitable that all those things added up. Yes, if it had been the doctor accusing a woman, or I don't know, or a group of people, or if the players had been shifted a little more differently than maybe a stereotypical kind of familiar story, it would have helped to separate that analogy from a classic sexual attack assault of some kind or something. You can't help but go to the issue when you use seven of nine.

So I do feel that if it was thrown into a construct of it was Harry, you know, that was the one that was, you know, then people wouldn't have immediately, this wouldn't be opening such a huge Pandora's box in a way right now. You know, I feel like a lot of people probably watching this episode were triggered in a way. Whereas in this episode, it's very clear. she was violated because her nanoproats were taken from her without her consent is what it was, right? That's her memory. Why don't we just begin our episode as we normally do? Let's go back and begin with our normal kind of thing. Our poetry synopsis.

Let's start with that. And then we'll dive right into it. So this is my haiku for retrospect. Okay. All right. Here we go. Seven can't recall. Doc thinks repressed memory.

Coven. for not. Oh. Yeah. You know, and it was a difficult haiku for me to come up with because there's so many

elements in this episode. So I was like, oh, do I begin with the arms guy trying to sell weapons, you know, and then he's falsely accused and this and that,

but, and I was like, oh, gosh, like it's really difficult to, you know, boil down the essence of a, of a haiku synopsis

for this, for this, uh, yeah, this one was tricky. This one was true. All right, let's see your limerick.

It was tricky. Nonetheless, I may have, one of my best limericks ever. So we'll see. Goodness. Let's hear it. Here we go with a little poetry limerick synopsis for retrospect.

Coven's got new weapons to sell. Seven's memories are a new sort of hell. Doc's new therapy technique turns out to be weak. The whole incident was not handled very well. Wow. Bam, bam, bam. Good job, Rebecca. Good job.

I'll never tell. I know you want that. I like that one. That was a really smooth, smooth limerick. Good job. Thank you very much. Yeah, I imagine that was tricky because you don't really want to make light of it.

Yes. You know, you don't want to be too snarky. We can be snarky and glib with a lot of them, but this one is filled with a lot of landmines and a lot of sensitive and very real issues that I don't want to disrespect or claim. to be an expert on. Yeah, so retrospect is teleplayed by Brian Fuller and Lisa Klink,

our esteemed guest, a story by Andrew Shepard Price and Mark Gaborman, directed by Jesus Salvador Trevino. I love Jesus. Oh, man, I wanted to say that. Okay, let me ask you. And Garrett, yes. Who directed this episode? Oh, yes.

This was directed by one of our favorite directors, Jesus Salvador Trevino. Ah, yes. I like the way you say that. Thank you. Let's talk about the guest stars real quick. We have two. We have Michael Horton who played Coven. Michael Horton was also on Star Trek First Contact and Star Trek Insurrection, as well as many other guest star credits. But he has a podcast, which I did not know. Does he really? Yes, he does. It's called Digital Production Buzz. He is the co-host of podcast Digital Production Buzz. He's also the founder of the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro user group. So he clearly knows how to edit. Wow. Yeah, so that's, maybe he went, because I did quick searches on some of these guest stars. And he seemed to have really stopped acting in the early 2000s.

Right. You know, he had made a career of it for maybe 20 years. And then he seems to have changed, it appeared that he changed careers because he, there weren't many acting credits or, you know, IMDB credits after that. Right, right. So I wonder if he went into, if he's a Final Cup program, maybe he started editing or doing some post-production work, things like that. Could be.

And he left the acting world. We also have Adrian Sparks, who played the Unthoran Magistrate. I thought he was great. Oh, my gosh. Have you looked at his theater credits? I mean, he has stage credits longer than our bodies. Wow. So many stage credits.

It's unbelievable. A lot of theater, a lot of guest stars. His most recent and memorable film role would have been in the movie Purge. The Purge. Oh, wow. that film, that crazy, crazy film. But, yeah, so those are our two guest stars. And let us begin with the first scene.

Let's talk about it. Yeah, we're on the bridge. And we have Coven, an arms dealer, showing off the isoconetic cannon demonstration. And my notation was when we first see the Antharin, Coven, I said, this is the spinal column forehead alien. Yes. the classic put something on the bridge of the nose and up to the forehead. And it was a talk about distracting. Oh my goodness. I could not look at anything but the spinal column and exposed at spinal column. And depending on the angle, like if it was a side angle, it was solid and

you couldn't see it. But if he turned to you, there was like holes in this thing. Holes into it. I thought I was going to see his brain parts. It's definitely one of the more unique looking you know, forehead applications that the makeup department has come up with. Yes. Well, you know, so he's showing the canon. Janeway's interested. And he says, sure. Well, how about, well, what are you going to trade for that?

Janeway says, what about the astrometric charts that we have spanning 12 sectors? And he says, well, what about the mapping technology? He says, well, that's really, you know, that's sort of, that's proprietary to our ship. It's not going to do you any good. So she says, what about isolinear processing chips? And then they start bargaining between those and they settle on 125 chips. The funniest line is at the end of that scene where he leaves and Tom Paris goes, that guy is worse than a franke.

So that to me was the best part of the scene. That was the funniest. Yeah, because it was you. Yeah, I just loved it. It was so good. I have a question that Lisa, I found it odd that they were negotiating publicly on the bridge. Like, that's the kind of thing I would think you would do in the briefing room or the ready room

or somewhere like, okay, we've seen this thing on the view screen. Let's go talk in my office. That would have been more sense, huh? You know, I don't know. Robbie, that makes sense in the alpha quadrant. But when you're in the Delta Quadrant, the Wild West, anything goes. You got to go with it.

Yeah. Well, maybe it was, you know, there were some moments with Jane Wade looking at Chiquet and like, there was a lot of, you know, and Paris's funny line. We wouldn't have had his funny line. Yeah, that, yeah.

Well, actually, it's a memorable line. I'm going to correct that. It's a funny. It's a memorable line spoken in the true Paris way. The funniest part of this scene is just the shooting of it when he says, what are you going to get me? And she looks back at Chacote. And in my reaction video, I wrote, you're going to bargain Chikote? You're going to give him away for a second. What do you think about my first officer? I can give you him. That was the funny point. I'll also have another question, Lisa. So in the last episode before this, seven got in big trouble. Yeah. Like, as big as anyone has ever gotten in trouble on our show in four years at this point, you know, for disobeying the captain numerous times and just really being obstinate and difficult. And I think Garrett and I talked about it last week that, you know, I think the captain gave her way too much leniency and she should have been in the brig for if any of the rest of us

had behaved the way Seven did in the last episode, we would have been demoted. We would have lost all privileges. is we would have been in the brig. Like, there's no way, but somehow she got away with it. And then when Chikote talks about seven, she says, go down and talk to seven, maybe we'll bring her back on. She's been behaving well. I was like, what?

Are you kidding me? Like you just took away absolutely every privilege. She confined to the, you know, to her regeneration thing, no access to systems. And now she off camera somehow has been behaving well. Well, you don't know the passage of time. you don't know how long it was. Yeah, there's definitely a time cut involved here in which she's been very well-behaved

for the past, let's say, month or so. Yes, a month. Okay, I don't know. I just, I was like, yeah, I know we don't do serialized stories. Like, that's not what we did. So, you know, even the reference to the fact that something happened before this episode

is a miracle that we even talk about it. But it would have been nice to see her have to grow and, I don't know, not that this episode shouldn't have happened or whatever, but I would have, I wish, I feel like there was four or five episodes that could have happened for seven to have gotten to the place of access and privilege and all of that. Like, we sort of missed that opportunity. Anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with that. Was that ever talked about when you guys were writing it or just the assumption is she's got to be back in the game? No, I think we really focused on, on the needs of the individual story more than, more than sort of the consistency of the arc over the season. Yeah, okay. Okay.

All right. Another thing that we have from the last episode continuing to this episode, Robbie, is poofy hair Paris. Yes. There's more poofy hair in this episode. I don't understand it. What's happening? I don't know.

Okay. All right. I miss the kind of swoop-to-do that I used to have. Yeah. Yeah. The little wave. Yeah. All right.

So now we can't. My hair cannot be tamed. Garrett. It's just. Why do you think I wear a hat all the time? I can't deal with it. It doesn't ever do the same thing twice. We go to Astrometrics and Chocote has assigned seven to work with Kovin and she's not even

happy about doing that. She doesn't want to do it. And he's like, look, this is what's going to happen. This is how you're going to get into Janeway's good graces if you, you know, do this work and just earn her trust. Earn her trust. Exactly. Then we go to engineering and Kovin is explaining this weapons installation to

Balana and Seven. And then Balana says, well, let me go check on the field generator supplies or something. She's like, I'll be right back. So she heads out looking for their field generator status. Seven goes over to start programming in some of the stuff. I guess Kovin was talking about. And he looks over. He's like, what are you doing? And she tells him. And he's like, you're not doing it right. He's again, mansplaining, kind of fitting an archetype that we're familiar with of a toxic mansplaining kind of man and he reaches over and kind of pushes her out of the way so he can input this data and she responds with you know kind of get your hands off me and there's a brief it it almost looks like a scuffle like yeah they don't separate you know he tries to move her she

puts her hands on him there's a bit of a scuffle and bam she hits him in the face and the stunt man who did the stunt it was very funny to me because you literally see him off his feet like I guess seven's got a little extra strength but it was funny because he just went whoop boom he's like up and down it was a funny little hit to me I liked it definitely well obviously we were trying to make him kind of obnoxious yes I mean the term mansplaining did not exist at the time but yes he was mansplaining and so we wanted to make us sympathetic with seven wanting to to knock his lights out yeah yeah and I was just happy that someone other than Harry was being hit by seven. So I was so ecstatic to see that. That's a good thing. All right. Let's move to the next

scene, Robbie. Yeah, we go to Sick Bay and Kovin's nose is broken and he is pissed. And he's blaming seven that she's out of control and she's crazy and Janeway's listening. And I think Bala's in there and Bala says something like, yeah, I could, I was 10 feet away and I could hear he was being rude and he may have put his hands on her. So he's pissed off. He's, angry. And Janeway's trying to be a non-biased person, even with COVID at this point. So I did get that in that moment that, all right, she's trying not to jump to defending seven or jump to blaming seven. She's trying to be a neutral party here and be fair. So I thought that was established very early. And then she'll head off to talk to seven. Do you remember anything about that scene? Well, I like Roxanne's

delivery of one lion when she was talking about, yeah, we had to hold her back. Yeah. You know, you could tell but she kind of wanted to let seven go and let her, you know, and let her, you know, go to town on this guy. Yeah. So I find that kind of amusing. But yeah, I mean, the scene sort of establishes everybody's attitudes, you know, toward this guy, towards seven. And you're right, Janeway really is trying very hard to be impartial. Yeah. And did you recognize the lab coat on Roxanne Dawson? I guess the pregnancy code. Yeah, the pregnancy code and all the close-ups. You'd never see Balana in a wide shot in this episode. Oh, by the way, this reminds me, I know we never saw neelix in this episode

Neelix was not in this episode I guess you're right zero I don't know what that is I don't know what yeah I didn't know if you had any thoughts about that or yeah I don't remember specifically cutting him out for any particular reason if the actor was unavailable

or if there just really wasn't a role for him I don't know yeah sometimes it's hard to service writing for a really large ensemble cast and there's just not you're trying to fit enough story in there and there's not an opportunity. So, but I didn't know if you had any memories of that. Yeah, no, writing for the entire ensemble, every single episode was difficult.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm sure Ethan Phillips was happy to have the time off and not be in the makeup chair. So that was probably good for him, right? Okay, moving to the next scene. Yeah, we go to the ready room. Janeway asked seven, you know, what happened? I love Janeway in the scene.

She's just like, what am I going to do? Like, I have tried everything. I am at a loss. She just thought Kate's performance was great. And Seven goes, are you asking my opinion on what you should do? And James was like, sure, why not? Because, you know, throwing you in the brig's not going to work. Everything I can think of, nothing seems to work.

So again, that's establishing, sort of resolving the dynamic from the last episode with them and dealing with it, acknowledging it. But also sort of, it's setting up, I think, in a way that in this story, that Seven's very different. I think that serves this story to say that Seven is, you know, is a different kind of crew member than anybody else. It puts us in a more challenging place as we try to solve the mysteries. I always really like the Seven Janeway relationship, you know, and Janeway's attitude in this whole episode is that she wants to support Seven. She wants Seven to feel like she has her back. And so I think that comes into play a little bit here and that she's not just sort of knee-jerk punishing her in some way, but she's trying to sort of get her involved. and how are we going to work together on this?

Yeah, I do like the line that you wrote, you have to start learning the difference between having an impulse and acting on it. And that leads to my question, since you co-wrote this with Fuller, did you guys just alternate between scenes, or did you sit there and brainstorming together and throw down the dialogue?

How did that happen? It's funny, I really enjoyed working with Brian. This was the first year he was on the show and we were really good friends, and it was so much fun writing a script, with him. At first, we tried doing it both of us sitting in the same room with one of us at the keyboard and kind of talking. And after about half an hour, we realized that was not going to work at all. So I think what we did is trade off. You know, you do the teaser, I'll try act one.

You do act two. And then we swapped and rewrote a little bit. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting to hear about the process because when we talk to Braga, he and Monoski do do the sitting in the same room together. Yeah, it's tricky when you have a writing partner, especially when to somebody that you're partnering with for the first time. Yes. You know, you kind of have to figure out the rules of the partnership as you go. Understood. How many scripts did you write with Brian?

Was this the only one? Oh, wow. Yeah. So we go back to Sick Bay after Janeway's Ready Room, and the doctor is trying to do a checkup on seven, just a regular checkup. But she is oddly stressed out now since this punching the guy in engineering. She seems oddly distracted and stressed out as he examines her.

I made a note how funny I thought Bob was in this scene. He was very funny. And I think that the doctor's arrogance, which I find very entertaining, it's very important in the story. Yes, it is. It's to me the key to the others having some innocence in this, that he's the guy, actually in many ways, that sort of fuels this fire,

which I think now that you mentioned that preschool story, I see the analogy that you intended more clearly that, you know, that seven is really led by the doctor here in creating a story that is not really accurate. Yeah, I mean, this seems like, you know, a seven episode kind of on the surface, but I think you're right that it really is a doctor story as well. Yeah. And that he's the one that kind of goes through the full arc of wanting to be helpful and then kind of going a little too far with it and then ultimately regretting it. And so I think that he's the one that has sort of the development here. Yeah, I agree with you. So, Rob, you find the doctor's arrogance as entertaining and colorful.

I love it. He makes me laugh. He just makes me the more arrogant the better. It's amazing. That's funny. I'm the opposite of you. I just find it so annoying. Well, I think it's hilarious.

You guys love it. I love it when we can give the doctor, you know, sort of the extreme emotions of, you know, extremely arrogant or, you know, full of himself. Yeah. Let me digress a little off this story for a minute, Lisa, while you're here, because I made a note and I was thinking about emotions and how both Seven and the doctor really developing these emotional experiences, which really are unique to human beings. And I know Seven is part human, part more, you know, embracing her humanity in a lot of ways. But the doctor is a hologram. He's a program. So like the idea of emotions is a tricky one there. Like did you guys talk about how far can we go? with a doctor in terms of his humanity or because he really does experience regret and shame and arrogance and all of the human emotions in a way that is tricky when you're talking about he's a computer program, you know. Well, I think that we really did kind of lean into it, into the fact that he would have

probably been programmed with at least basic emotions to be more empathetic to his patients, you know, to have a little more of a bedside manner. Because even though he's an emergency hologram, he is still a doctor. And so we kind of assumed that he would have been programmed with some basic compassion and empathy and that he would have had the capacity to kind of grow beyond that. And one of the ways he grew was, of course, in, you know, conceit. Right. Yes, absolutely. There's a school of psychotherapy that I just heard about yesterday, literally.

And this psychiatrist broke down that humans are born with nine effects, he calls them, this therapist. And effects are biological things that only are unique to humans. And the effects are things like shame is an effect, joy is an effect, and that those effects that are biological in us as human beings react in situations in circumstances to those circumstances and create feelings. So feelings are a result of effects that are biological in us, right? That's his theory. And so I was thinking about that school of psychiatry as I watched this episode today because I'm like, well, he's a computer program. He doesn't have effects. He doesn't have biological abilities to interact with a circumstance. And the result is a feeling, an experience. It's a program. I mean, I guess it's programmed. Like, yeah, we could talk about this for a long. But like, I guess it's programmed in him. Just like Seven has it in her board technology, certain feelings. But there's limitations. patience to those feelings and some of them may be discovered for the first time. And yeah, I find this episode to be pretty challenging on that front for both seven and

the doctor because they're experiencing some pretty heavy and deep human emotions. Yeah. And it's a real stretch, this one for me to be able to give them that, okay, they have those feelings with those kind of. I think we also took a cue a little bit from Data's emotion ship. you know, the idea that, you know, that such thing could exist in that you could program, you know, artificial intelligent being with emotions. And again, data seemed to genuinely feel them. I mean, it wasn't just a simulation of it. And so we figured if data can do it, then the doctor can do it.

Like I said, I always enjoyed Bob Picardo's performance of his eric and his talking about himself in such grandiose ways. It just made me laugh. And the same was seven. I find the non-human characters when they are awkwardly trying to replicate a human experience or understand it, I find that the best version of track. And it's interesting with Seven, because she resisted her humanity at first, you know, that she didn't want to sort of give into what she saw as like her softer self, you know, her more vulnerable self. And, you know, episodes like this, you know, really kind of force her to at least experience

that human side, you know, that she did not want to have. That's right. Okay. And we're still in sick bay. And Janeway is now being briefed by the doctor. He feels that it's memory suppression. That's what's going on. He's very excited. And we discover later that he's been studying all of these therapy or, you know, psychiatric manuals. And he's, you know, wants to put into practice some of his, these new things that he's learned. And even Janeway says, oh, I didn't know that you had therapeutic, you know. psychiatry built into your program or something. And he's like, oh, it's brand new. So, you know, he's a rookie at all this. And he's going to make some big mistake. I thought that was great.

I love the movement through sickbay. You know, we went from one side of sickbay to the other. I thought Jesus did a great job of staging it and moving around sickbay in a way that gave us some nice energy. Well, I think that part of our goal was to sort of draw in the audience almost on the doctor's side, you know, and that we sympathize with him and we empathize, you know, with him wanting to improve himself and that he thinks, you know, oh, I have all these great new programs and I can be so much more useful to you, you know, that we wanted the audience to be

on his side. Yeah. So that as he goes through and as he sort of gets these more extreme, you know, kind of leading seven through recollection of her experience and what it turns out to be an invented experience, we wanted him to have the audience sympathy as he went through that so that we would be as surprised as he was and, you know, that it turns out not to be so. So, started to keep pausing, but I love your answers and your insight on this. So in the end of this episode, spoiler alert, for those who haven't seen it recently, in the end, we never really are told how these memories turned so specific. Was she remembering specific things that happened when she was a Borg? Because the images that we saw as an audience, which I will assume is what

seven was seeing in her brain. The images were of sickbay and the doctor was even in some of these and then Coven was in them and the lab that she was in and the person next to her. Like she saw very specific things. How was the doctor leading her through? I didn't hear the doctor implant those memories or he just said things like, what do you see? So why was she imagining that, I guess? Do you know what I'm saying? Well, I think we tried to give Jay way, what turned out to be the explanation, which was, you know, when she suggests, you know, you've had all these experiences as a Borg, you know, of essentially being assaulted and watching other people get assimilated. And, you know, she also presumably has the memories of all of the

other Borg drones and what their experiences in life had been. And so I guess my interpretation, you know, was that seven was conflating memories that she had from, from her Borg experience, from other Borg drones. You know, she has presumably millions of people's life histories in her mind. And from those, I think she kind of confabulated this memory along with, you know, this, you know, perhaps unpleasant experience that she had dealing with this, you know, unpleasant guy. And, you know, they said at one point the weapon did discharge.

And so there was, you know, a little bit of, you know, uncomfortable experience. Yeah. That makes sense. It totally makes sense. And again, if we were. a more serialized show and we're tracking this story through later episodes, I would suggest that we might want to be careful with Seven. If her experiences are prone to confabulation or fantasy, that that should have been tracked? Like, you know, should we trust Seven in this particular

situation because this is one of her weaknesses? Anyway, I think, you know, if we tracked episodes, I would say, this tells us seven is not a reliable person for certain situations. Anyway, but we didn't, yeah. Well, I would have liked to have seen some type of scene, which would have shown the parallel memories that she got confused with these memories. Do you know what I'm saying? If there was something where she was like, oh, okay, this is what I really remembered. And it's not really, it wasn't COVID. It was an assimilation of another, uh, species, another alien that we, that happened in Star Date, you know, blah, blah, blah.

I would have liked to seen that. I don't know if that would have been too on the nail on the head right there, but it just like Robbie said, it leaves you wondering. It's like, well, then how did she have these thoughts? You know, where did these come from? And there really isn't an explanation of like, well, these are just all the, all the people that have been assimilated and all the, all the the group collective Borg memory that she's had that's kind of infected her memories or made her think that she had these issues with COVID when she really didn't, you know, so you're just kind of sitting there going, hmm. It's funny. It's funny because this sci-fi version of this story is so difficult and challenging and complicated to kind of put all the puzzle pieces together and

deconstruct that it just is a reminder of how complicated the real life version of these situations are so complicated. And there's no easy answers. And there's often not clarity for the people who are trying to be impartial and have good intentions to help sort these things out that, you know, just like the doctor had good intentions. Yeah. But sort of went down a road that ultimately was a bad road to go down for COVID. Yeah.

Real bad. So anyway, yeah, a very complicated episode. I don't envy you having to try to write it. And back in the day and you and Brian this sort of. all this now. All right, now we're in cargo bay and the doctor starts beginning his psychiatric treatments of seven, which slowly but surely seven now realizes that it was COVID who extracted the board implants from her, the nanoprobes, and that he violated her. So this is a very long scene with the doctor in seven, but needed. You need a long scene in order to get to that final

moment of her having this false realization, as it turns out, but right now a very real realization. Any thoughts about this particular scene? Well, the word that she uses, you know, I was violated, obviously does have, you know, a lot of, it's used most often, you know, with a sexual assault. Correct. And so I think we were very careful about using that word and realizing that it would have, you know, a parallel. But, you know, that's, you know, always kind of what we're shooting for with the sci-fi story is that it has some relation to the real world. And here's where I also think that the doctor, he's not exactly implanting. suggestions, but I think that he is steering her a bit, you know, and it's subtle, and we wanted

it to be subtle. We didn't want to have them just come out and go, oh, you mean, you were attacked, but he is kind of pushing at the edges a little bit and, you know, trying to make it fit in his mind with her, you know, PTSD kind of reactions. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's move on to the planet surface where we have Paris. Yes, we do. He's full. He's full. fluffy hair, Paris. Yes, but he's so lucky. He gets to fire a bunch of guns, phaser rifles, disruptor rifles. I mean, he's got all the weapons there and he's testing them. Coven is there, seven is there. One of the weapons that Paris is firing, he talks about how it's not as accurate, and that's when seven chimes in. Well, if we used a thermal imaging, then that would increase the accuracy by 20-something percent.

Coven says, I can fix that right now. And that's when they start walking away to the laboratory. Paris says, I'm going to stay here and fire more weapons. Like, I'm going to be a guy. Yes. Let's pause right there. Let's pause right there for a second. Okay.

So in the Boy Scouts, they tell you about this thing called the buddy system. Yes. And when you go somewhere, you stay with your buddy. You didn't do that. And so there's me and seven with a bunch of strangers. who have guns and we go, hey, I'm just going to stay here by myself and you go by yourself. So my takeaway is this whole thing is my fault, because Tom let her go by yourself. If he had gone with her, then there could be no memory because you got the buddy system.

Right. But the other funny thing is this. You can see there's probably a total of five weapons on the ground, total, right? not many. She's gone for two hours. It's not going to take you two hours to fire all five of those weapons. At some point, and maybe the half hour mark, you would have said, well, let me go check on seven, right? But you would think. But here's the other thing. We know Tom is not that smart because he says about this terawatt particle beam thing. He says, oh, this rifle's a lot easier to handle than our Starfleet compression rifles. But when I look at the prop, it's like bulky and big and our

sharply compression rifles look super cool and small and sleek. And this thing looks like an old World War I. It just looks awkward. It looks awkward. Tom thinks that's a better rifle. Clearly he's not a smart guy.

No, I'm not going to criticize Tom. Tom's still smart. I think that's a sweet guy. That is, that's the props department. They should have come up with something that didn't look so awkward, right? That would have made more sense. Well, it's funny because when I was doing the rewatch, I was wondering, why isn't it Tuvok, our security officer? Exactly. Why is the pilot?

Why on Earth can we send Paris standard? I don't know. There were so many things wrong with Tom being down on that planet. It would have made more sense for Harry to be down there, the operations officer, than Tom, the pilot, right? But yes, logically speaking, it should have been the tactical security chief, Tuvok down there. Yeah, I don't know what on earth we were thinking. Did you ever, speaking of thinking in Tuvok and all of a sudden, I went, duh, so if this is a repressed memory situation, why wasn't Tuvok's Vulcan mindmeld ever thought of? Oh, yeah. Why didn't Tuvok use that? Could have just solved all this, right? Well, I think that we, we didn't want to

go to the mind meld well too often. You know, we didn't want to make it something that he just did, you know, all the time. Yeah. You know, we wanted to have it be really special. And since the doctor felt like he had a handle on it, you know, there was no reason to go and say, here, come and do this, you know, sacred ceremony that is, you know, makes a big deal to the Balkans when the doctor felt like he was handling it. Right. Okay. Yeah, totally makes sense. And, and I would think, I don't know about mind melds if they, I'm trying to think back to like ex post facto with, when Tom had this memory and Tuvok did the mind meld, he saw the implanted memory. He wasn't seeing truth. He was seeing

what I thought was truth. So I don't know if it would have made any difference if Tuvok had mind-melded. He might have seen what seven thought she remembered and not necessarily seen. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. You remember that scene shooting the weapons down there on stage 16? I have no memory of it. Zero memory of it. I'm guessing that stage 16. Yes. I'm sure it was. I think it's because they blue-dry my hair so long to get that

poofy look. Yeah. The heat from the hair dryer sort of just. It affected my memory. I knew it. I don't remember with the poofy hair. But do you really remember what you think you remember? Exactly.

Yes. Do you really remember what you think you remember? I love it. I just got to say that the cool flashbacks looked, they looked super sweet. They were sort of black and white, but there was this. But not full back and white. It was just some color was gone, right? It was only red.

I don't know if you noticed, but it was only red. No, no. And red in the in the kind of art world or the symbolic world can mean love, can mean death. It's a very important color in art, in things like that. So I feel like that was chosen specifically by either Jesus or Marvin Rush or something, that these memories would be color timed and shot in a way that it was mostly desaturated color, almost black and white, except. for red. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. Is that a really easy process, Robbie? I mean, as long as you have it in your production design, the sets are sort of designed in a way that there's only one color present.

It could be any color. It could be yellow. It could be blue. But if everything else is sort of in gray tones, then in color timing or color correction, you can pick out the one color that is present and turn that into any color you want. If you had blue light, in the background and the rest of the set was gray,

you could change it to red lights and color timing. It's kind of like Instagram filters. I feel like the magic of filmmaking with Instagram has ruined all that because people see now that you can turn a photo into anything you want. You could change the color. You can change the focal kind of qualities. You could do all kinds of things. So, yeah, you can just dial, you hit some buttons and the colors change.

That's an interesting catch that you saw that red was the one. color that was left. All right, we're in the briefing room now. We have the doctor. We have Janeway. We have Tuvok. We have Paris. And Tuvok, you know, is sort of, everyone's sort of questioning this whole thing. Tuvok especially, like, wait a minute. What about the hallucinations that Seven had before, you know? So there's a lot of just banter back and forth about, you know, what's going on. Did this really happen? Could this be not a real, you know, vision? Or did this really, did this really happen? Is the, is the theme of this scene pretty much? Yeah, Tuvok literally says, historically repressed memories have proven to be unreliable.

And I think that's a big part of your theme or your thesis on this episode, Lisa. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is that, you know, because again, everybody's instinct is to believe seven. Right. You know, because she's, she's their crew member. She's the person that they trust. You know, but we wanted to definitely throw a bunch of uncertainty at it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was nice to hear that. And Tom even, I think, had a line where he said, well, I saw her afterwards. she seemed fine. You know, nothing seemed wrong with her. So he was a little skeptical. Tuvok was skeptical, but yet the doctor is very passionate. And he's using science here.

He's like, scientifically. I'm not making this up. It's science. We did want to throw a bunch of different points of view. You know, again, Tuvok saying, you know, the repressed memories. And the doctor saying, no, wait, this is accurate. Yeah. And make it pretty much as difficult to make up your mind as possible.

Yep. go ahead. We go to Janeway's ready room next. Coven's in there. He's mad. He's not happy. He is mad. Janeway is kind of interrogating him.

And I will say it does feel in this scene like Janeway is the good guy and Coven's the bad guy. Yep. It definitely feels like she wants to examine his lab. He's like, no. Like, what do you have to hide? You know, that's an interesting concept of like if someone, says no, then that is assumed evidence of guilt in some way.

Yeah. And it did remind me of like, you know, taking the Fifth Amendment or, you know, the Fifth Amendment, like I'm not going to say, just because I say I don't want to testify about something doesn't mean I have any guilt. It just means I don't want to testify. Exactly. Period. I don't want to speak to you.

I don't have to speak to you. But as you said, it is kind of human nature to think, well, what? To assume, yes. Yeah, if you were innocent, you would not have a problem. Yeah, it is. It is human nature, for sure. The next thing that happens, where are we next? Well, Janeway wants to basically conduct an investigation, which, you know, he says, well, I guess I have no choice, right?

So now we're in Tuvok's quarters is what it looks like. Yes, I think so. Looking around, I was like, is this the mess hall? No, it's too small. It's Tuvok's quarters. And Tuvok begins this interrogation of COVID, and Tuvok sort of assures him that, you know, This is going to be a fair, fair investigation. We're not going to be biased.

We're just going to be objective. And let me start questioning you about different things. And so, you know, it goes fairly well. I like when COVID at one point, he's like, okay, I'll apologize. I'll say, I'm sorry. Two bucks is like, I am not seeking a statement of remorse. Yes, yes, yeah. I love that line.

Do you remember, did you write that or Brian or who knows? Probably me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's what I assume, because I know you love writing for Tuvok, so yeah, I am not seeking a statement of remorse. Very, very Tuvokian, for sure. Good line. Yes. Well, I like in the scene that COVID is starting to get a little more sympathetic, you know, because I think at one point he says to Tuvok, you seem like a man of your word. Yes. You know, which kind of makes us like him a little bit more. Right. which again, you know, hopefully they'll muddy the waters a little bit more that, you know, maybe he's not just, you know, this, this obnoxious guy. Sick Bay is next. And the doctor is, I wrote down just stoking the fires here. He's totally pushing Seven's anger and resentment. You've got to feel these feelings. Seven is insisting that she doesn't want any part of this. And the doctor says, you have to. You've got to accept that these feelings exist. And you, that's how you can. deal with them. And now he's reminding her at this point that, look, this guy violated your individuality and acted like a coward. And now he's starting to put much more of the specifics

of the story in her mind. How did you guys feel about the blocking? Because at one point, Picardo walks right behind. Standing like, you remember, they would often tell us like, hey, can you walk over here and stay, no, closer, closer. And they'd push us into these frames because it was that old format. It was tight. That old format was there, Robbie, but in that shot, there was so much space to the right and to the left of both actors. You must remember, like, sometimes they'd say, okay, we need you guys to be real close, but we didn't see the frames. Like, I might get too close, but I don't know I'm too close because I'm trying to do what they told me. That's true. Just get real close. And I have to leave it to them to say, oh, no, that was too close. You can back

up a little. So if they didn't say that to Bob, he may not have known. because I agree with you, it was a little, it felt stagy. It didn't, you know, it just, it felt like I get the point that he's enthusiastic and he's trying to kind of, you know, like, you know, direct her, lead her down these, these, these memories and these feelings, but he didn't need to be an inch and a half away from her. Yeah, it was awkward. Well, yeah, I mean, this is, you know, again, him, the doctor kind of stepping it up. And he thinks he's being very empathetic, you know, and that he's, you know, and that he's,

He's, you know, he's feeling sort of her feelings with her, you know, and the outrage and the, you know, it's kind of the next step in his journey of, you know, starting off, you know, just asking her about her memories. And now he's sort of telling her what her feelings should be. And so it's his escalation. Yeah, this is definitely escalated. Yeah. I definitely saw that too. Good. Maybe that closeness worked then for this. In a way, I mean, it, it isn't a bad thing if the viewer felt a little uncomfortable. Yeah. And I did. I did. I really did. All right. So we're jumping over to, I guess it's COVID. Yeah, Coven's lab on the on Thorin planet service. And the doctor now has a lot of confidence. He's acting like a detective here. Yeah. And they do find some activated board nanoprobes on the on the countertop there. And it does look like maybe these stories were true, you know. So again, complicated situation. Yeah. And the magistrate just jumps on that. He doesn't even need to see anything. He's just like, oh, no, but you know, we were set up for that later because Coven initially in this conversation with Janeway in the ready room, he said, listen, this is something that can really mess with, you know, my, like we have rules in

dealing with aliens and when trading with aliens and any small deviation from these rules is going to have major repercussions, you know, against against my business. and my livelihood, essentially, right? And right off the bat, yep, the magistrate just sees one little, little, little tiny little piece of evidence. And he's like, okay, that's it. You're detained now pending official proceedings, right? And Coven draws a weapon and says, I can't let this happen.

He beams out. Tuvok contacts Janeway. Janeway asks the magistrate, do you want us to follow him, track him? The magistrate says, yes, and I want to be there. So the entire party beams on to Voyagers. bridge at that point. Well, it's interesting if you, you know, again, go back and rewatch it, you know, COVID is right, you know, that everything he says is true.

You know, he says, I'm going to be prejudged about this, and he is. You know, he says, you know, about, you know, what happened that she got, you know, the weapon overloaded and that's why there are nanoprobes there. And it's true. And it's just because you don't like him that you don't want to believe him. So true. Agreed. So they beam back up.

They start tracking Coven's ship. He's on the run. Tricote says in this scene, the fact that he's running proves that he's got something to hide. Like, again, it is kind of human nature to be suspicious of someone who doesn't want to be cooperative, totally cooperative. So Coven escapes by generating a photonic pulse, which takes out all of our sensors. We have no sensors. They're offline. And he's gone.

He's gone. And when we jump to the science lab, and Janeway and Tuvok are now testing the weapons that they brought back from Kovin's lab. And they realize that they can't find any evidence supporting Seven's accusations of being violated. Well, the bridge scene, again, the whole reason was, you know, as Robbie just said, you know, that it's our reaction is, why is me cooperating? You know, and it just sort of, again, in the context of we already don't like this guy and don't trust this guy. In that context, it looks much more suspicious. And in a way, it feels like evidence against him. And then we go to the science lab in which we're looking for actual evidence and we're

not finding it. Right. And so that hopefully starts to kind of throw into relief the way that our feelings are kind of everybody's feelings are kind of taking over and, you know, they're getting carried away with it when if you actually stop and kind of look at the facts, they're telling you something else. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So the next scene is Janeway and Tuvac kind of discussing where they're, they're at with things, you know, we've got some evidence, some feelings, like you said, Lisa, about guilt. We've got some, what we think is evidence. We're going to finally take a look at this. We're going to reenact the rifle malfunction. And we're going to use a hypospray to sort of reenact that and see how the nanoprobes react. And if they would react that way from what Kovin had described. And they do this. Seven is still furious. is she's just her anger seems to have built and built and she will not be satisfied unless he's held accountable and they do this and Janeway goes and takes a look under the microscope

and she's like, Doc, you don't need to come take a look at this and he does. And Kovin was right. The nanoprobes are reacting in the way that he described. And so they realize that this memory is not real and the story is not true or they can't be certain, put it down. They certainly, they cannot be certain that it's true and it could possibly be a deeper Borg memory like you described earlier, Lisa, you know, her own personal experience as a Borg or maybe the memories of other Borg that have been implanted. So all of a sudden, they've got real evidence. The nanoprobe reactivation is identical.

The pattern is identical to what they found in the lab. yeah i remember it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the techno babble behind you know what kind of evidence could we find here exactly right you know and and nanopropes get reactivated yeah yeah that's that's that's that's the ticket exactly but i mean i like that our heroes you know that jane way and tobac and even the doctor are behaving honorably you know that when they see this evidence they don't just try and like well we won't tell anybody what we found i mean that they, they, they're willing to admit that they could be wrong. You know, even the doctor, you know, who is so passionate and so forceful, you know, has to, has to kind of take a step back

and say, I made a mistake. And the fact that our people are willing to do that, I think is, you know, what makes them our heroes. Right. Okay. Good. Now we, we jump to the bridge and we have tracked COVID. We've, we're chasing after him. And we sent a message to him. We get him on the view screen and Janeway tells him that we have the evidence that you are, innocent. What you were saying is correct. It was just an overload of the, of the rifle. And Kovin's like, no, this is just a trap to bring me in. And I don't believe you. And he keeps firing on Voyager and our shields are weakening. But we also detect that if he keeps firing, there can be an overload on his end. And he doesn't listen to us at all. He doesn't listen to Janeway.

Yeah, Janeway's like, Harry, beam him over here. And you're like, no, he's got shields up. Yeah. And maybe I can, maybe I can override his shields, I think you say. Gattering beam is what it was. Gattering beam. I was like, come on, faster, Harry, faster. I know. Run, Harry, run. I was like, can you? But you couldn't do it fast enough. I really, really felt bad. But I thought that was. You were his last hope.

I was, but I did like my reaction to not being able to get him, though. It was definitely. Did you cry? I didn't cry, but I was very upset inside. I could see that. Yeah, that I didn't save the guy. You didn't see it, but Tom Paris cried. He sobbed like, it was all off. camera. It was a much bigger reaction than that. So it was huge. All right. Okay. I was like pounding the console. It was huge. I don't know why they didn't leave it in the episode. I thought it was really. Yeah, you did. Didn't you go, COVID?

Like that. You fell to your knees and you did that. I'm sure I must have done that. But they didn't leave it in. That's what you did. They didn't. Yeah, that was on the editing room floor. Well, again, COVID is kind of right in that he's just. totally right not to trust us at this point and that, you know, he, he perceives correctly that we were biased against him. And that's, that was something that we really wanted, you know, to keep consistent was that COVID actually doesn't overreact very much, you know, that, that he is in fact trapped in a situation that that is totally out of his hands. And what he, what he tries to do is escape and he's probably sensible to do so. Do you think that his

he knew that it was going to overload that this, that was his way of, basically, basically just ending his own life, do you think? Or do you think that was just a mistake? No, I think I assumed it was a mistake. Okay. All right. That makes sense. He's not a warrior that he's,

he's an arms dealer and he probably just is kind of caught up in the moment of trying to get away. Well, it's desperate people backed into a corner to do desperate things. And he wasn't, yeah, I think it was probably just a desperate oversight that he didn't know. He just kept firing to protect himself because he was desperate and didn't, and wasn't aware of the fact that it was overloading.

Makes sense. We have a doctor's log here. I always am surprised when I hear anyone other than Janeways. Yeah, the doctor is very sad. Seven enters for her weekly maintenance. And he basically goes, okay, this looks good, that looks good. See you next week. It's a great little moment of like, oh.

His enthusiastic and super detailed checkup at the beginning of the episode is now turned into this yeah you know this is the second time the doctor has been really sad the first time was when he had to shut that one door

between the decks remember that and the Jeffreys tube and then all the crew members died there so he felt really sad in that moment and now he's equally sad and seven seven basically tells the doctor that she's having issues with

she can't stop thinking about the Coven's passing his death death and that she feels guilty or she has remorse is what the doctor says, right? The doctor says, that's remorse is what you're feeling. And she says, well, I don't want to feel this. You know, I want this to end fast quickly. And he says, well, I can't help you with that. This is something that you're going to have to live with.

It will dissipate with time, but there's nothing that I can do. And so she shrugs her shoulders and walks out. And that's when we cut on the doctor. and he says, but there is something I can do. And then we go to the ready room. So before you go to the ready room, any comments on the sick base scene with the doctor in seven, Lisa? Well, I think that my favorite line, which I'm pretty sure that Brian wrote, was Seven saying something about, you know, as a Borg, I assisted in the destruction of millions, you know, but I regret this one being's death. Yes, yes.

I really like that line. Yeah. Yeah. So that's Fuller? That's Brian writing that one. Okay. Yeah. That was a great line. Agreed.

Now we're in Janeway's ready room. and the doctor is there, and he basically tells Janeway, I would like to delete the algorithms which are responsible for expanding my abilities beyond my original programming. I have lost my objectivity. And I just want to stop this now. And she's looking at him like, you want to reset to how we first met you, you know, when we're thrown into the Delta Quadrant, you're going to lose everything that you've built through all this time through these years and he says yes and she says nope i'm not going to allow it

i'm not going to allow that and in a way what janeway says to the doctor is what the doctor said to seven in the prior scene you're going to have to live with this you're going to have to feel this these emotions and you're going to have to reconcile that and and get over it with time but but i think what the doctor didn't realize with seven what he learned from janeway's wisdom is you're going to have to live with this, and that's going to help you prevent this from happening again. That was the key for me in the scene, was like, you know, that's the key for what is the purpose of pain, you know, in life for any human. Forget this analogy or situation. Like, what's the use of pain? And the only use is that it'll help us remember next time not to get burned, not to make the same mistake. Lisa, your thoughts on this final scene? Yeah, I agree. I mean, Janeway saying, you know, that eliminating those

feelings is the last thing we should do. I agree that that's kind of what it comes down to is that, you know, everybody, you know, it's human nature, you know, if we could push a button and, you know, wish things away, we would. Sure. Yeah. But the, yeah, January points out the, you know, the utility basically of, you know, feeling like crap. Yeah.

Okay. Robbie, what is your theme or lesson from this entire episode? This is a tough one. The truth is complicated. I guess that would be my theme and lesson. Okay. The truth is complicated. All right.

And be careful. Okay. Mine is that we all make mistakes as humans. And the hope is that we will learn from it and not repeat that same mistake again. Do you have a lesson from this, Lisa, that you want to impart on us? I guess it's something along the lines of not letting your feelings run away with you. You know, that when you are faced with the complicated situation, It's really easy to just, you know, well, I feel angry.

And so therefore I'm going to take this side. But, you know, that really what, you know, kind of resolves the problem is, is the cold, hard facts. Yeah. Yeah, there's a great saying. I've heard feelings are not facts. Yeah. That's a great theme. I'm going to take a mulligan on this.

My theme is feelings are not facts. That's my theme, Garrett. Okay. That's very Vulcan of you. Yes. Thank you. I mean, if everyone took a moment to just take a pause before acting on an emotion and just divest themselves from the emotion and just realize, okay, this is pushing me into an area which I can't control what's going to happen next and just realize, you know,

this is my emotions getting the best of me. If we could acknowledge that, just for the split second, that could save a lot of heart, heartbreak and a lot of drama in this world that we live in. Yeah. That was retrospect. Thank you, Lisa, for joining us for this recap and review and a tricky, tricky episode. You know, you had reached out to us and said that you wanted to come talk about it because it's an episode that may be misunderstood or may not hold up as well nowadays with the things happening in the world and the way people look at stories like this with a different perspective than the preschool analogy that maybe was was in the zeitgeist at that moment that might have fit that time and that particular story. Yeah, it was not our

intention at all to say that, oh, we shouldn't have believed seven. I mean, that is not the moral of the story. Yeah. And that's why I wanted to kind of clarify where, where the inspiration came from. Yeah. And that it really was, was about, you know, the fallibility of memory. Yeah. Yeah. That is the true theme of this episode, the fallibility of memory and not about not believing seven, right? And that's an easy mistake that people will, you know, make when watching this episode, I feel. Okay. All right. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our recap. And thank you again to our special guest, Lisa Clink. Join us next week when Robbie and I review The Killing Game, part one. Dun, dun, da. See you soon, everyone.

Hi, everybody. I'm going to be able to be.