The Delta Flyers - Scorpion Part 2

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is Scorpion, Part 2. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Scorpion, Part 2:The ship remains on Red Alert after Janeway and the Borg Collective agree to fight the destructive Species Eight Four Seven Two.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.And a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, and Tim Russ.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, Lucas Shuck, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Marcus Vanderzonbrouwer, Nathan Walker, Shambhavi Kadam, and Christopher ArzebergerAnd our Producers:Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Ann Harding, Laura Swanson, Ann Marie Segal, Charity Ponton, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Craig Sweaton, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Crystal Komenda, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Heidi Mclellan, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, James Cottrell, Jenna Appleton, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Liz Lowe, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Kevin Selman, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Justin Weir, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Mike Chow, Kevin Hooker, Michelle Maroney, Victor Ling, Scott J. Mark, John Mann, Michael "Klink" Klinckhardt, Megan Chowning, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Joseph Lanning, and Melissa A. NathanThank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers and Tom and Harry. It's me journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Garrett Wong, and of course, my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. Hello, sir. Hello, sir. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. We both have like space stuff behind, like,

we both have sort of nebulas or star clusters or some sort of it's we do yeah it's kind of it's spacey it's dreamy back there it's a dreamy background we didn't choose the uh voyager behind us like no we went with something that was deep and mysterious and magical because it's the start of a new season yes right believe that it's unbelievable we've actually made it Season four. Season four. That's crazy. It is crazy.

Well, typically we kind of just schmooze and talk about what's going on in our life, but I kind of want to start this out by reading an email from one of our listeners of our podcast, the Delta Flyers, that this email completely moved me when I read it. And I'm going to apologize in advance if I kind of lose it a little bit from reading this again. So if it happens, so be it. but I think this is something that everyone should hear so everyone knows the importance of what this podcast is, how this podcast has helped people, you know, and specifically this one listener. So let me just start this up. Here we go. He says, hey guys, I think I had just found your

podcast about two weeks before I got sick. It was early April or March. I had always wanted sort of a director's narrative of Star Trek episodes, but more of an actor's point of view. Well, with you guys, I had both. I listened to a couple of episodes, but got too busy and didn't follow on. On April 13th, I was hospitalized due to COVID-19 here in my native country of Honduras in Central America, actually in the capital city of Tegouti Alpa. I stayed there for eight days, and while it was scary, my severity never went past what they called moderate. I had to use a nasal cannula for supplementary oxygen during seven of those eight days. The first two days were a blur of exhaustion and commotion due to other very sick patients in the COVID ward I was in.

We were eight to 12 guys in there. Numbers varied during the day as some left, but at night it was full again. Anyways, besides the effects of the illness, one of the things that makes people really suffer there is just the boredom. There's no TV, no radio, no music, no books. We were on the eighth floor and the windows don't have a view to anything unless you walk up close. Most of us couldn't stay standing for very long without the oxygen tether. If you're on oxygen, it means that you can barely walk to the bathroom and it feels like you have run around the block. So even reading a book can make you a bit tired. I had heard about it but never experienced it myself until I was there. I was sort of rushed in. And at some point, they must have forgot to ask me for my cell phone and my portable battery charger and iPod. Anyways, I was able to keep those for most of my stay. I don't know why they take them away, but they do. Some sort of hospital policy there that probably has reasons, but I don't know them.

Thus, the complete isolation and boredom. I was fortunate that I kept them and someone in the bed next to mine actually had to tell me to hide my phone since I didn't know it was not allowed. During that eight-day stay, I listen to your podcasts every day. Actually, I listen to about three or four of your podcast every day. One, after having blood samples taken, eating breakfast, and getting the morning checkup with the doctors. Then I would listen to another during the long afternoon time between lunch, the afternoon doctor rounds, and dinner. Finally, I listened to two more after dinner. Usually the last one was around 10 p.m. since it felt like 3 a.m. already.

Did I say it was really boring in there? Sometimes I dozed off to your podcast, but it wasn't because it was boring. It was just because it was relaxing enough that I could forget about the back and joint pain and actually sleep. Oh, and we had to sleep face down to help the lungs breathe easier and expand if they were able to. Anyways, between the moments of terror watching other patients get really ill and taken downstairs to the ICU and thinking how sick I would get, and the boredom of the rest of the day, I knew I needed something, something to take my mind outside that hospital. I take anti-anxiety medication and I know the effects of panic attacks and having just a small nasal cannula in your nostrils 24-7 can be enough to trigger one. I always prayed not to have

to use an oxygen mask, low or high flow. Those things are torture. It is sad that I know of at least three COVID patients that died because they were stable but had a panic attack, took off their oxygen and started fighting with the medical staff until the exhaustion caused them to have a heart attack and they could not recover. So it was really important to keep calm. I didn't know that those COVID panic attacks were so common until about a month later when I talked to someone about how I used your podcast to mentally leave the hospital. So listening to your podcast helped hugely more than you and I knew at the time. I had already watched Star Trek Voyager some years before when I decided to watch all of the Star Trek series and movies. I did it. It took me several

years, but I did. Now I'm starting again, but when I was in that hospital, I played your podcast, put my AirPods on, and none was the wiser that I was taking my mind out of that hospital and into space. Actually, I felt as if I was taking it more into your living room, as you guys talked about the episodes. I would listen to you and remember the episode, and even some parts that I didn't, I know a lot of the lore that I could follow the story and get it and enjoy it. You really helped me past the time and it was such a great help to keep me mentally sane. I dozed off to a couple of your episodes, but when I noticed that, I would listen to them fully the next day. I enjoyed your self-criticism of each episode, the haikus and the limericks, the lessons, etc. Even when they found

my cell phone, I had already thought about that possibility and had downloaded a bunch of the episodes onto my iPod. Okay, it is an older iPhone with no SIM cards, so I was still able to listen to you guys for a couple days more until I was discharged. Even when I came home, I was still too weak to do much for about a whole month afterwards. I still listened to your podcast daily, usually twice a day, and started watching Voyager episodes on Netflix and listen to your podcast afterwards. My recovery from the COVID-induced pneumonia was slow. but you guys are there with me all the time helping me mentally. I remember that James Dewan mentioned that someone else

also used Star Trek episodes to mentally get out of that hospital during his or her stay. Now I understand that a whole lot better. Today I have just listened to Rise and I enjoyed your guest, Ethan and Tim, excellent podcast. Now I actually wait for your podcast before watching an episode. Anyways, this is too long already. Garrett and Robert, once again, thank you for an excellent show. thank you for helping me. Angel Castillo. Oh my God. Okay, I didn't cry this time, but I cried the first two times I read it.

I was sitting there going, oh my God, because that's, this is something that you don't hear about. COVID patients pulling their breathing apparatuses out of their, you know, off of their face because they're having a panic attack. Yeah. And then they're fighting the hospital staff until they have a heart attack and die. Yeah. It's horrible. It's horrible. And he, you know, and he was, he's prone to having panic attacks, but our podcast kept him calm. Thank you so much to Angel Castillo for sending that email to us and just letting us know what you've been doing. Well, that's very vulnerable for him to share such a personal story like that. And the fact that the podcast somehow gave him some comfort and some sense of normalcy. And, oh, yeah.

All of that, that's really, that's really wonderful. Yeah, that's huge. And I feel like, I feel like we've heard that a lot with people since this started, you know, we started this during COVID, just as COVID started to everybody got locked down. And we've heard that from day one that people are like, this has really been a comfort, you know, that a lot of people couldn't go to conventions or just, you know, the comfort they get from the Star Trek episodes. And this was just an extension of that and a sense of connection, really being able to connect,

you know, the people that listen to our audio podcast that goes out for free on all those platforms, but also our patron patrons who really get involved in, you know, helping to sustain and create this podcast with us. And the community and the family that that's created, I think has been a real comfort to people, too. I agree. I think we've had many, many email correspondences and other Twitter, you know, social media comments where people have said, thank you so much. We've looked forward to this every Monday. This has really been a godsend in helping us get out of this craziness of being locked down. Honestly, and I've said this before, it's been a comfort for me to be able to do the podcast and to be able to sort of take another look at what we did and find, a whole new appreciation of what those seven years of making episodes of Star Trek Voyager meant to me

and what that experience was like and to really, you know, re-appreciate it and re-experience it and reconnect with our fellow actors and the writers and producers and ADs and cameramen, like we've, and our stunt coordinators and like the list goes on. It's been a real comfort for me.

So I can relate to what everybody is shared and expressed with us. And I really appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, let's move on to the entertainment. Yes.

Time for the show. Okay, man. All right. So here we are, season four. Season four. Part two, Scorpion. Scorpion part two. Yeah.

Will Harry Kim survive after being hit by species 8472 lying on that bile bed? Will he survive? We don't know. We'll see. Who knows? Who knows? All right. Let's go watch it. All right. Thanks, guys. We'll be right back. Hey, everyone. Rockwood, we're back from watching Scorpion. Part two. Part two. Oh, my God. That was so exciting. It was very exciting.

Yikes. Oh, my goodness. So many things to talk about. Yeah. Let me just begin by saying, obviously, this is still written by Braga and Monoski. This is the second part of it. But we now have Rick Colby directing this. And I, you know, typically I've always felt like, well, why don't they have the same director direct part one and two? But in our television episodic world, we always had one director prepping while the other director was directing. So that's kind of the, you know, the pattern. So they never really were able to have the same director for part one and two, right?

So there's a little bit of a different tone to this. compared to the first one, in terms of directorially speaking, pacing, because it's another director, you know, so that's one of the things that can have a little bit of inconsistency, but still it adds a little, you know, spice to life, right? I mean, it's okay. I love Rick Colby. I think he's a, he was a super talented director, but this is not my favorite episode of his directing style. I've got to say. Interesting. Okay. I thought it was, as you say, very different than part one directorially but which was directed by Livingston yeah by everyone's memory yeah and it's funny I don't think I didn't think that that was

David Livingston's best episode either I don't know what it is I don't know if if there was a lot of outside pressure that they were you know trying to because I think there was a lot of attention on this episode these two parts yeah and scrambling to get seven of nine ready you know, all the makeup and everything that they, you know, everything was very last minute. Well, it's funny because when you and I were talking about what do we remember, and I said, I remember they were bringing Jerry out to do these camera tests on the bridge, and she was in her skin suit, and they were trying different eye makeups, bigger, smaller,

different hairdos. And so we were, we were, there was a lot of time spent on that. I thought that was for this episode, but she's never in the dermal regenerative. She's only in full Borg in this episode. So I think what was happening is while we were filming this part, because they knew what the Borg looked like. I mean, she had a custom Borg outfit, of course, but it was in the world of Borg stuff, you know. By the way, I did notice one shot I'll talk about later on,

where it's like the shot starts on her butt. Like she bumps somebody, and you can see the way that Bob Blackman designed Seven's Borg. you know, full board look. And it had like cutouts around the butt cheeks. I was just like, oh my God. Even in the Borg costume, they're like, they're like, you know, playing with this whole like sexy.

And there's a shot of her butt because she bumped somebody out of the way. But I was just like, oh, man. When you're talking about cutouts, are you talking about like she's got Borg chaps on? Yeah, it almost looked like Bored Chaps with like her butt hanging out or something. I mean, it was all costumed. But I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe already. Like, they're going full on with the sexy borg and the shots of the butt.

And, like, it's so, they would never do that with Janeway or you or me. They'd never show our butt, you know what I mean? So, I don't know. It wasn't my favorite Rick Colby, you're talking about directing. It wasn't my favorite. And I don't know exactly why. There were some wonderful moments. There was one shot, I'll talk about later, where the collective talk.

And one shot that I thought, oh, how cool. It was very simple, but it was elegant and dynamic and told the story in a really cool way. Rick is always really good with that sort of thing. But in this one, I felt like, I felt like he was feeling the pressure of other things, I guess. Okay. All right. So let's just start as we normally do. And this time, we are back to the way it was in the beginning, which is I'm haikuing. I am haikuing it and you are limericking it. Yes. Limericking it? Okay. I'm limerking it. Limerking it.

Limerking it. Limericka, wika, wika. Okay, ready. It's almost like padda-da-da-da. It is. All right, let's hear this hy-coo. Here we go. Here's my haiku for Scorpion.

Part two. Janeway strikes a deal. Seven makes her screen debut. Nanoprobes save us. There you go. I'm back. Nice, nice, very nice. Nice to have you back in the saddle

of the haiku. Thank you so much. Well, here we go with a limerick. So as you've talked about, limericks are not easy, so it might take me a little while to get back in the game, but here we go. An alliance with the Borg is the Janeway plan. Seven of nine could use a good tan. The enemy is talking to Kess.

everything looks like a mess. Seven's link now severed her new life began. He's back. Bam, bam, bam. Nice. It is tricky, though. I was struggling with that one. Yeah, yes, yes.

But good job, though. You're back, you're riding the bicycle once again. Well, seven of nine is pasty as heck. I mean, she needs to late. She needs a tan. Yeah, seven of nine could use a good tan. She needs to get out of that board. Now, I need to ask you how much of this limerick was you and how much of this was RJ.

Come on. I will never, I will never disclose. Okay, fine. The teamwork that goes on. All right, all right. Let's go. Let's start off with the teaser, the beginning shot. Janeway has made this deal, basically, with the Borg.

And she tells Chikote, stop trying to transport me back over, right? I've figured this out. The Cube is now heading back towards. the Alpha Quadrant. We're going to work on figuring out how to defeat 8472. I will stay on board the Cube because they have a little bit more advanced technology

that will help me work towards this goal. Yeah, they're going to work on the weapon and the deal, just to recap, the deal was, let's form a Borg, Voyager Alliance. And Janeway says, we have this kind of nanoprobe technology thing that we've figured out that we'll defeat these guys,

but we're not going to give it to you until you escort us all the way through Borg space and promise that the Borg are not going to attack us. So that's the deal they made. And when J-Way appears on screen, by the way, just so people know, when we're filming those bridge scenes,

we never see anybody on the view screen. There is nothing there. There's a set piece. But so, you know, when Chikote is having that emotional, you know, he's very skeptical, and all that, he's just acting with like a piece of tape on a stand. That's right. Like he's looking at a piece of tape.

And then Janeway, for her part of that conversation, films it against a green screen, just like I'm doing right now for this Zoom thing. Like literally, she sat in front of a green screen and looked at a piece of tape. Yeah. Same thing. Two pieces of tape, right? Two pieces. Yeah, they would make an X.

An X. Yes. Usually a green or an orange, something bright that you could see on the dark stage. Yeah, it just occurred to me as I was watching that. I was like, that's how they, you know, how we did all of those conversations. And so a lot of times you'd never hear the other actor, the other side of it. You wouldn't hear if they were emotional or if they were, you know, like Kate Mulgrew didn't hear Robert Beltran's side of that conversation when she sat down in front of a green screen.

That's right. They just read our script supervisor, Cosmoginevese, would just read it from off camera without a lot of emotion usually, very neutral. So it's amazing to me sometimes that those things come together. It is. And this is stuff that you're not taught when you, you know, if you go to ACT or Juilliard or any of these conservatory type of training programs, they don't teach you how to act with green screen. You know, you don't know that. And we really was just, we were in a baptism by fire. We were thrown into the deep end of the pool as actors because we have to deal with this, right?

And Jamie says, Tuvok, come join me over here. Right. That's right. She says, beam over Tuvok. And Tuvok's like, okay. You know, he's probably thinking, great, I got to go to the Borgube. Now we're in Sick Bay, right? Well, before we go to Sick Bay, the opening credits come up.

Oh, yes, yes. The opening credits come up. And for the first time, Jerry Ryan's name is in our opening credit. Yes, yes. And also, for the first time, Jennifer Lean's name is not in our opening credits. Yes, where it says also starring Jennifer Lane, which is so difficult to see that, really. I know. Harry's in the bed, and the doctor has reprogrammed what he talked about theoretically in part one. He's now done it. And they're going to try it. Yep. And they replicated, I think the number is nearly 10 million nanoprobes, right, to inject Harry. And so I'm lying on the biobed, and I have, once again, the spaghetti with pesto sauce has completely

covered my eyes. You can't even sleep. But it wasn't really on your face. That was a vis effect, right? It was 90. It was 97% visual effect and then 3% real. Real practical. Yeah, it was probably the tendril that's coming out of my nose was a real tendril.

Because I talked about earlier, I saved that tendril. And I stuck it on my mirror. in my trailer for the rest of this, I think the rest of the entire show. I had that tendril. I remember cleaning out my trailer at season seven. I go, oh, I guess I'll take the tendril. So the tendril is in an envelope somewhere stacked away in a box somewhere. And Balana makes a joke about that. She does later on. He's sitting there up your nose. Yeah, up your nose. Yeah. That was a good joke. I like that. So it works. Harry's getting better. He starts to get better. Yeah. I thought that that was an interesting.

an interesting visual effect because, you know, it was probably something that Dan Curry hand drew. He, you know, Dan would do a lot of our Viz effects, the art, the artistry, if it was a planet background or something, he would do a lot of the art and painting. He had other artists as well, but to me that felt like, you know, we still were not doing a lot of CG, you know, uh, effects. In fact, 8472 was a very early version of CG aliens or CG stuff. We just, it was not something that Voyager had done much of or Star Trek or it was just not in the TV budgets at that point. It was, it was, it was, that was a movie thing that you might do, but television didn't do it. So we were starting to do it. So that stuff on your face, I think,

was probably not CG, but hand painted, and then when it starts moving and animated, you know, the animation of it disappearing and changing, that was probably hand done as well, not computer generated. Yeah, time intensive. Yeah, very time intensive. So now, the funny thing, a part of this scene is when the Chicoat, when the, I just called him the Chacote, when the Chacote, when the Chacote tells the doctor to store all this information about the nanoprobes in his hollow matrix. The doctor says, you know, don't worry, I'll delete myself at the first sign of trouble. Well, maybe not the first sign. And he laughs about it, but Chocote doesn't be. Chacote is wound up. No, he's like, no, that's not even funny.

I mean, in the next scene, Chacote is really on edge and snapping at Bologna. So it does track that Chacote would not laugh at it. And I thought it was very funny that, that Picardo sort of makes that joke, not the first sign. Well, maybe not the first sign. Right. And then he sort of, and I think he deleted himself, didn't he? Like, he just wanted, he was out of there, computer shut down program. No, no, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't, he just, no, because I think Chacote just walks out

a frame, right? And then it's just, the doctor's kind of like, you know, funny. Trying to make a joke and it's not funny. Yeah, it was really good. Yes, yes. Yeah, we go to the bridge. Yes. And Chocote says, you know, keep a trance.

transport or lock on the captain and Tuvok, just in case something happens. We can beam them out of there very quickly. And Torres is like, well, I can try to, but it's not really going to work because their shields are always changing, blah, blah, blah. And that's when Chikote gets very stern with your honey bunny, your future honeybony. He snaps up my future wife. I was not happy about that. Yes, yes.

My note here is that when you talk on this scene, your voice sounds so young. Really? Notice that? Yes. No, I didn't notice that. It's a very young Robbie McNeil voice. Yeah. Well, you were the first, it was the first episode back, you know, probably.

Practically virginal. You were practically virginal. Yes, practically virginal. Your voice was very, can a voice be virginal? I think it can be. I think it can be. Okay. All right.

Yeah, sometimes I think like coming back from a big hiatus, everybody's a little nervous. And this one had a lot of particularly stressful, you know, changes going on. Okay. So maybe there was a little bit of, like, anxiety in my voice. That's maybe why it sounded younger. I don't know. I think you're, maybe, but I think overall, the tone that you don't seem very anxious throughout this episode, you're pretty calm. You're pretty like, you're pretty like, okay, yeah, things are going to go one way or another.

There's a couple of times where I'm thinking, oh, you know, the stakes aren't that high for Paris. At least that's what I felt, you know, it was a professional. doing his job. It's funny you say that because later on when we're being attacked by 8472 and the ship's going on all cattywampus, everybody's yelling on the bridge. I made that note. And Paris is yelling. He's the only one that's not.

He's the only one that's acting like a professional, which I appreciated. The rest of us are yelling. And Paris is yelling the loudest. Yeah, you were. I was like, why am I yelling so loud? Yeah, you're yelling so loud. It's not helping the situation. You know what I think?

I think it was because of me, maybe. Maybe I was yelling. And then you were like, maybe I need to yell as loud as Garrett does. Maybe. You had to one-up me, being my big brother on the show. You're like, I've got to be the loudest yeller there. So I don't know. All right.

Now, after the bridge, we jump to Sick Bay and Kess sees a vision of 8472. And now her vision is intense because it's almost as if 8472 is in Sick Bay with her, which really shocks her. and she falls down. She's like, they're watching us, and the doctor's trying to help her out. And he doesn't know what's happening. It was an odd little scene

because it pushed in on Jennifer Lean's back for a long time. And I found that to be, you know, when you can't see actors' faces or eyes, if you're going to do that, the framing and the shot making needs to be really interesting to me or else it's just,

you can't linger in those kind of shots too long, and it felt too long to me. Atypical of Colby. You would not expect Colby to do a shot like that. Exactly. Right? Exactly. Yes. And if we had seen her face and then she turned away

and then the camera was chasing her and sort of pushing in slowly, but we never saw her face. We just started on her back. Yep. And I found that to be strange. I also found it to be strange that when she turns around

and sees the alien, that it seems to attack or lunge at her. Yes. but for what purpose because we've you know I don't know I found it very inconsistent it seems like oh we're just trying to scare the audience but it made no logical sense of what these guys these guys were actually listening in on her brain correct so why would the lunging move and and her fall was weird I just found this whole scene to be a little I agree awkwardly staged and it didn't track story wise for me like these aliens shouldn't be it would have been different

if she turned around and it was right there and it just sort of had a curious head tilts or something but this lunging no yeah and and if it lunged at her it would kill her like these guys would just take her right so like if it wants to attack her they're going to attack her and it didn't really attack it was just like a horror a horror movie jump yeah clearly it was for dramatic effect they thought okay this lunch is going to make the audience go you know that's that's what that's the only thing I can possibly think that why they did it that way. So it is odd, definitely. We jump back to the Borgube and now Tuvok has been aboard per Janeway's request and information on a padda-da-da-da that the aliens and their ships are made of the exact same organic material. So this is very

important because now we know that we can disable their ship. Their ships and their physical bodies. Like it's all the same thing. So these nanoproves, the doctor figured out is going to take care of all of it. Yeah. Right. So what happened to Harry is going to happen to their ships and to them if we throw those nanoprobes at them. Right. So that's, that's what we figure out. Janeway talks about this new info and the need to think about a larger scale delivery system. And at that point, Janeway and Tuvok are very forcibly shoved to the ground. And all of a sudden, these neurotransceivers are being installed upon them. The Borg are saying, look, your way of communication is primitive and inefficient.

This is the way we would, we want this to happen. And Janeway is like, no, no, no, no. I would rather communicate verbally. Tuvok is protesting. And Janeway basically plays hardball. And she remains so calm through this entire, you know, interchange between herself and the Borg collective. And by the way, she's talking to the Borg collective.

So there's a number of Borg that have blocked her that shove them to the ground. And I noticed a bunch of those faces. That was a lot of our stand-in, regular extras. I can't remember exactly who was in that scene. But there were a bunch of familiar faces that was fun to see. That is right. So then Janeway asked about choosing a representative to talk directly to one single Borg. And then she gives the example of the transformation of Jean-Luc Picard into La Coutis of Borg.

which then really gives the board collective pause. They're like, wait a minute, she's making sense. So they agree to Janeway's request. And that is the appearance, the first appearance of seven of nine. The intro of Jerry Ryan. Well, her full name is seven of nine tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix 0.1. That is her full name. But of course, we can call her just seven of nine.

And the shot sequence that he introduced that Rick Colby, you know, first there's this wide shot with this smoke bursting all around her like a rock star and then we we cut into this low angle of tubes popping tubes flying which by the way was partially real practical tubes tubes and part of it was some vis effects in there because there were no sparks or anything right in real life they added that after yeah last shot is this dramatic push-in to this close-up as as she walks at the camera and the camera pushes in after the rock star smoke and the popping tubes and the low angles. And she steps up and she says, I speak for the board. Yeah. But to me, I found it funny because I would expect that Seven of Nine should have been one of the Borg that were

surrounding Janeway in the beginning. That was, you know what I'm saying? But instead they find, they show that Seven of Nine is being, you know, warehoused in this side compartment that opens up. stop and shows her, it's like, ta-da! But, you know, again, it's a lot of... It's dramatic effect, man. They were pushing hard on this intro. This is like the 8472 lunging against Kess, right? Yeah, which I get.

I get if it was, if they were introducing Kate Mulgrew as a character, you know, any new character, they would want to land it, but I think the thing here sometimes is it feels now that we've done this show for three years coming in to start a scene. season four. It just feels a little gratuitous isn't the right word, but it feels out of, out of pattern for our show. It's not the same tone of the show that we're, what we're used to. It didn't feel like it. It felt like we were, we've added this sort of rock star element that. I was going to say a Barnum and Bailey sort of a circus sort of, you know, presentation, right? Is what it is. But yeah, rock star, you could say it that way, too. By the way, like, why did they have to do all that?

because she was napping, you know. Seven of nine was just, she was in her quiet corner, resting, not bothering anybody. And why did they have to like blow up the smoke and spark the tubes and like, they really interrupted a nice nap? I think that's me. They should have had a little bit of drool coming out, you know, for that too. Okay. So the Borg are concurring with the proposal of a large scale weapon, torpedoes.

Basically, in case with nanoprobes is what Janeway is talking about. And then Seven says, you know, those torpedoes are just inadequate. We suggest a multi-kinetic neutron mine with a five million isotone yield. Tuvok says that could basically take out an entire star system. And this is a weapon of mass destruction is what Janeway says. And she disagrees. She goes, no way. Tuvok says, you know what, this would take the doctor several weeks to replicate the requirements.

the required amount of 50 trillion nanopromes to arm this mine. And, you know, seven sort of like, well, that's going to be too long. And Janeway says, you know what? If we create the smaller weapons using our torpedoes and we destroy a few of the bioships, this may give them the message that, hey, we have the technology back off. And so seven agrees because, you know, time is at the essence. And by the way, Janeway's right. Like right here, she's got a plan that makes sense.

And for a lot of the rest of this episode, we're going to go off the rails a bit. But this is ultimately what happens. Like, we're going to create a small weapon. We're going to show them that we got this. We're not going to have any innocent lives lost with your giant weapon of mass destruction. You know what else I noticed here, by the way,

the scene as they start to debate, you know, 7 of 9 and Janeway for the first time. So we have one of these battles of infillade. here. Boy, non-human characters on Star Trek are, they're just made for Star Trek. Like when you had seven, you have seven and Tuvok sort of getting into a conversation, neither one of them are human characters or the doctor interacting. Like these sort of robotic technology, logic-based characters are just the best part I think

of Star Trek in some ways. Like, they just fit so perfectly, and I think seven of nine was a great character for, you know, for the writers to come up with, because as soon as she starts debating logic with the captain, I'm just like, oh, yeah, here we go. Like, this is Star Trek. It's a basic building block of all Star Trek. It's a basic building. That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. I love how when Seven starts spouting out all this information about our weapons and everything. And then someone, is it two boxes? How did you obtain this information? And her response is, we are bored. And I started that, yeah, we are. I said, this is awesome.

This is how you should respond to anybody about anything that you don't want to give a full explanation to. Just say, we are borg. And that's it. You can get away with anything. That's all you need to say. Yeah. You know how fast you were going? we are barg and just say that to a cop and see what happens after that right we go to sick bay

and i've got to say um you know cass is having these telepathic visions and um you know the doctors trying to you know treat her deal with it but this was the tightest close up on jennifer lean that i've ever seen on our show i could be wrong but i was like it was like into her lips and her eyebrows and it was in so tight and yeah um that's not the only tight close-up on in this episode there's a few people that got some really ECU extreme close-ups yes where you're like whoa yeah agreed so in this part of our story clearly these these eight four seven two are you know jumping in her mind and she's having these horrific nightmares or visions or telepathic moments with these guys and and yeah and she can't block it out she can't they it's just coming in yep it's just non-stop

stop telepathic visions. They're more and more, and she's having issues with them. We go back to the Borg Cube, and Seven wants Janeway's data of these torpedoes, and she wants basically the information about the weapons that Voyager has so that they can start inputting those and, you know, getting ready for Janeway's plan. Yeah. And Janeway sort of follows her over to a Borg station. They start talking, and Seven says,

18 years ago, she was assimilated and ceased to be human because Janeway says... Well, Jamie starts by saying, you're human, aren't you? That's how that conversation begins. Jamie says, you're human. I mean, she can see it. Yeah. Which is really interesting because this becomes a big part, obviously, of this episode and of the series, really. So, you know, starting to get some backstory or at least plant the seeds of backstory for Seven of Nine. I love Seven's reaction. don't engage us in irrelevant discourse. I'm going to say another thing you can say to someone in public. You don't want to talk to them.

Don't engage me in irrelevant discourse, just to be different. Chacote then hails to say that the aliens are accessing Kess's memory. And Janeway then realizes, uh-oh, 8472 might know what we're up to. So she says, let's alter course to throw them off, seven agrees. And then there's this sort of tete-a-tete between Janeway and seven. where they're going back and forth, and seven's like, well, what if I transport 500 drones to your ship? Will you be able to sufficiently offer enough resistance against that? And so they're

just going back and forth. Janeway's like, well, we die trying. And so it's a game of chicken between the two. Everything is like, oh, yeah, I'll do this. Well, what are you going to do then? Well, I'll do this then. And so then seven backs off, not necessary. You don't need to die trying. We're not going to do that. We're not going to go down that route. Yeah. By the way, by the way, when Chikote pops up on the, you know, the call he makes to the board queue. He's on this cool, like, round view screen monitor that feels kind of retro and they kind of made it grainy. And I don't know, I thought it was super. Was it kind of Captain Protoni? It was a little Captain Protani. Yeah, I knew it. I thought it was kind of cool. I like that. I liked it too. Yeah, it was cool.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now we jump back to the bridge. And here we go. Here we hold, Harry reports back to duty. Here we go. You're the first one to go, welcome back. I'm like, yeah. Torres is at my station. I relieved her of duty from that station, and that's when she says. With the biggest smile we've ever seen on Star Trek.

So happy. So happy. Yes, you've still got a tender up your nose, which I think I reacted very well to that. That was a good reaction. It was funny. Yeah. It was a funny bit, you know.

Yeah, it was good. I'm happy with that. No do over for that scene. No, that was perfect. Tom Harris. now picks up gravimetric distortions. By the way, there's a singularity.

By the way, when you first come in and you say, reporting for Duvier, and you asked Chacote, did I miss much? And he goes, no, not much. And I'm like, oh, it's cute. It's funny. But actually, he missed a lot. And if you guys don't want to die, Chukote,

maybe you should fill him in a little bit. Like, really? You're going to have, no, not much. Oh, okay. Like, how do you know any? I mean, I guess there's computers that are going to, you know, tell me. Yeah, I think I know everything. I think, I think that's more tongue and cheek from Kim to say that to begin with.

Like, hey, did I miss much? Because he knew that he has missed a lot, right? But he's filled in, I'm sure. He's, he's, he has his paddida that he's studied, right? So he knows. He knows. Yes. So you pick up gravimetric distortions.

A singularity opens up. And now we're under attack. And this bioship severely damages void. and it's about to take one more shot, but then the cube maneuvers to the point where it blocks Voyager. Yeah, the Cube sort of starts as Voyager comes around the front for some cover of the board cube, the alien ship is coming around the side of the cube, and the cube just spins and the alien ship crashes into the board cube,

and the board cube explodes and is destroyed. I thought that was a cool, that was a cool idea. It was well done by Vizifax. I thought it was super cool. It looked really good. Tuvok, then we hear Tuvok reporting in that he is in Cargo Bay 2 with the captain and a number of Borg in need of assistance. And Seven says that, excuse me, I'm jumping ahead, in need of assistance. And then Chikote goes down there and essentially finds both an unconscious Janeway and even Tuvok is down on the ground, kind of out of it.

Seven shows up and says that, hey, we're here with your captain's consent. we have an alliance do we not and then they've kind of assimilated cargo bay already already yeah there's you know board pods and yeah and and all kinds of stuff or did they beam that in

did they beam that in with them so maybe they're saying I think that was beamed in I don't think they had enough time to really you know set up shop that quickly but it was it's a lot it's a lot of stuff there's a lot of equipment so seven was thinking ahead she was like okay this is the emergency

BN out procedure and we're going to take this much stuff. We need our regeneration podules, you know, and everything. We need all that stuff. We need a chunk of the cube to come with us. We jumped to sick bay and we talk about how for now they are contained, meaning the Borg. They've assimilated cargo bay too and are now drawing energy from secondary power couplings. Kess says that Tuvok is ready to return to duty. Tuvok asks Kess if she's all right and she quickly says she's all right and that the visions have

stop for now. But the way she said that and delivered that line, to me, it was awkward. It was subconsciously her impending departure from the show was affecting her acting. She didn't look at an another actor. She was looking at the pad the whole time. I agree. She seemed very introverted. The actress. Yes. That was Jennifer Lean and that was not Kess. So that was Jennifer Lean being and not Jennifer Lean acting as cast. So you, you detected that as well. Right. Yeah. And it's sad to that. I mean, that just broke my heart, to be honest. Now, the captain is in an induced coma and she may never regain consciousness again if the doctor cannot repair the damage. And then the captain talks to Jacote and her final speech is get this crew home. All I can say is my

note is this choice of voice that Janeway or Kate decided to use. Reminded me that episode where you made fun of her speech. Remember when she was like, at one episode, which she didn't make any sense. This was twisted or something like that, right? Where she's like, and you were imitating her. She's doing the same thing here. And I kept thinking she should have just whispered. She should have been like, Jacote, get the Crowho.

But instead she's like, Jacote, get the Crowha. It just said, it was like. It was a little awkward. I know what she was trying to, she was trying to do. Yes. But it didn't read that well, I feel. It was a little bit awkward, and this is one of my, you know, one of my criticisms of this episode was that particular scene, right? Yeah. Yeah. That bothered me. I think that when she, this moment

with Chocote, I definitely felt like, you know, she puts her hand up on his chest and they sort of are, they're holding hands. I felt like this was another, you know, J.C. Shipper moment of of there's something there, like they're both playing it, you know, that they have a relationship, uh, intimate, you know, more than friendship, but, uh, but it's funny how they play it, but it just never gets dealt with very well. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Anyway, we go to cargo bay, cargo bay too, creepy walk through the drone bays. Yeah. And then seven steps out. And she says that, um, uh, because their ship is destroyed now that they, it requires a change in their agreement and yeah well first she asked for the captain and chukote's like well sorry you're dealing

with me now she's she's incapacitated right yeah um and she says well we got to turn around we got to meet with the nearest borg cube and chokote's like absolutely not so now this is really chokote disobeying janeway's orders which is we need to cooperate with the borg right so this is a turning point right here um we do jump to the briefing room where chikote says that he's going to end this alliance By the way, by the way, back to Chacote in seven for a minute. At the very end of the scene, it's very end of the scene, you know, Chacote is like, no, absolutely not going back. And then I think she says something like,

think quickly or something like that. Yeah, right. Think of something, think quickly. And she turns and she walks away from the camera towards a wall. Like it's all, there's the drone regeneration pods. And then there's a wall at the end. And she's just walking towards the wall. wall. And it was like, where is she going? Like, that's a dead end. And she just stepped off a regeneration

pod. Like, there's no where, like, either get back in your pod or go the other way. You're just walking at a wall. Anyway, I thought that was funny. I mean, maybe there, maybe there was an exit door down there. I don't know where she was going, but she seemed like, I'm going away somewhere important, but there's a dead end. It was so funny. Yeah. So that's definitely very, very funny. So now we are, she's walking in the wall. So then we jump to the briefing room and Chocote says he's going to end this alliance and drop off the Borg at the nearest uninhabited planet and then give them the nanoprobes and take off.

So we're going to be on our own. So we now see a scene in Janeway's Ready Room where Chocote is now telling seven of his plan. And seven is like, we didn't think this screen would last. She's like, she's like, we knew that humans. Yeah. And she goes through all the fallacies of what it is to be a human, erratic, conflicted, disorganized, every decision debated, every action question, every individual entitled to their own small opinion, you lack harmony, cohesion, greatness, and it will be your undoing.

So this was sort of the dressing down of humanity by the Borg, right? Yeah, Chucote doesn't have an answer for this. No, he's like, hmm, because the entire time he's thinking in his mind, Scorpion. The story of the scorpion, right? And the whole like, you know, what's the nature of the scorpion? it's always going to bite whoever it is it's dealing with so he's always thinking that and he has nothing to say to that you're right we jump to sick bay chukotay is is talking to an unconscious jane way an unconscious and unclothed jane way she has no clothes she's got a little blanket over her but clearly she's naked clearly she's in the naked expanse is what she's in the naked expanse yes she is

you know when she's naked and chakotay sings things like you're more than just my captain you're my friend. Yes. What's going? What I don't know. What kind of confusion of the ride you're sewing here? They like to torture. They like to torture all the J.C. Shippers. This is part of the routine. We know this now. And he says, you know, I'm sorry. I'm going against your orders. And I hope you're under you will understand this. And it, you know, we end on a nice shot. It's that sort of, you know, distant shot of the of Chikotay over her. We don't, we don't usually. do those kind of special wide shots that are just pretty tabloes, you know, we usually don't do

them. But no. I did notice that. It was, and it was well lit, and it was very poignant. Yep. I like that a lot. So then we, we go out to space. We go out to space for a minute and we see the cubes, board cubes being attacked by A472. Oh, yes. Fighting. And A472 is kicking ass. And the cubes are blowing up left and right. We hear the collective saying something here like four million Borg have been eliminated. That's a lot. Well, yes, and it's 4.4 million 621 is what they said. They're so precise, right? Yes, they're very precise. Not just 4 million. There's another 621 above the four million. So 4,621 Borg eliminated. Eight planets, eight Borg planets completely destroyed. Planets, not just part of a planet, the whole planet. 312 vessels disabled.

and that they must seize control of the alpha quadrant vessel. I love how they don't even call us Starfleet. They call us the Alpha Quadrant vessel and take it into the alien realm. So these are the commands. And Seven's like, yep, copy that, ready to go. We then are on the bridge and we're about to beam, where Chocote is about to beam the Borg off the ship to the uninhabited planet. And Harry detects these power fluctuations in the deflector array.

And basically the Borg are trying to realign the emitters. and we cannot shut them out, and all of a sudden a singularity is being created. Chacote then starts saying to, he announces to the board, guess what, if you keep doing this, if you don't stop, I'm going to depressurize that deck that you are on and blow you out into space. They don't respond. So Chacote does it. And I, you know, I love Chocote like this. Chocote is so, there's no, there's no splits.

Everything is made in a split second, every decision. He doesn't really sit there and think about it for too long. He's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, throw them in his space. And they're all getting sucked out except for seven. When we see that shot of the side of the ship and they decompress that deck, and the little borg are flying and getting sucked out into space, it was a very cool effect. And I think that this was CGI.

I think these little digital borg were CG. were CG, because I do remember directing on Voyager and using in the later seasons, and they were starting to introduce the option of having tiny CG characters. And this was the very beginnings of that. So I think it was the early CG, like, you know, many people bodies that they used here. But you could see them sort of getting sucked out and moving around. I thought it was very cool. But we cut inside the Jeffries tube and Seven of Nine is holding on tight.

she's not going to get sucked out and the singularity ends up pulling Voyager into into the singularity and we're not in space anymore we're in some kind of fluid liquid thing yeah torres is the one that detects it so we've crossed an interdimensional rift torres says the entire region is filled with some kind of organic fluid it's not space it's matter which really that concept is crazy to think about that, right? That you're in a place where everything is organic and fluid and it's just what? That's, I mean, that's not, other than the ocean, that's something that we're not really as, you know, land-based beings. We don't really understand that concept, right? So now, Seven tells Jacote that we are in 8472's domain and that

he should meet her in Cargo Bay too. Jacote complies and Jacote discovers that basically the Borg have started this war. He keeps pushing seven for answers and he realizes, hey, this is you guys. You attack them first. You attack them first. You were the, you know, and you were trying to assimilate them. She admits it. She says, yes, we did want to assimilate. Right. Because of how amazing they were. They were like, oh my God, we could really use these guys, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the board started this war and now they're getting beaten and yeah, and they need their help. We go to sick bay and the doctor is very pleased with himself. Two for two, he says. I see. It's a Kim and now to the captain. Yes, exactly. Because, uh, but he knows that Janeway is

mad. You see her pacing around back there and Chikotay. Well, before she pacing, though, when you first see the establishing shot of Janeway, she's got her one hand on the hip, the other hand on a pad, a padada, and she's looking over her shoulder. Like, she looks like a model for a, Sears catalog or something. I'm like, what are you doing? It was a very interesting staging of that very beginning shot for me. Interesting. Yes. And she's upset. And she, and she basically tells the doctor, I need privacy. And he's, he's very comedic in this stuff. I mean, it's almost like he's not even a program anymore. He's very human. Like this episode was sort of like the doctor's human sitcom experience for me. You know, it's like, oh, okay. So Janeway is upset that Chacote has gone

against her orders. Chiquotay tells Janeway that the Borg lied and that they started the war. And Chikote wants to try and duplicate the deflector protocols so they can open another singularity and get out of fluidic space. And Janeway says, no, we need to fight the aliens with the full cooperation of the Borg right here, right now. Chikote says that he was linked with the Borg and he knows what they're dealing with. And then we've just got to get rid of this last Borg that's on our ship and take our chances on our own. And Janeway says that, you know what, she and Chukotay just need to stop fighting each other. We need to stop it right now.

Get beyond this. Yeah, it's funny, though. I found this scene a little troublesome. Like, it felt like they went into the scene already knowing they were going to fight. Like, there was no discovery of information. It's like Janeway already knew. I feel like this could have been a better scene if Janeway didn't know any of this. And Chukotay came in and she asked him and then,

discovered, wait a minute, what? Wait, you did what? And then the fight could happen. Yeah. You know, the argument. I just felt like there was a bigger shape to this that it was sort of boiled down to, okay, Janeway's ready and Chikote's ready, and we're just going to have them dive

right into a fight. And especially after the last scene where he's like, you're more than just my captain. You're my friend. Like, how can you go from that to like diving in without you know, hey, I got to tell you something, and I think you might, I know you well, and I know you may be upset.

And I don't know, it feels like there could have been a different shape to this scene. There definitely could have been a more organic flow to get to where they were going to get to at the end of the scene. Yeah, they just jumped right into this thing. Jumped ahead a little bit. Yeah, skip some steps. Agreed. So now we jump to the bridge and we find out that Janeway has relieved Chikote of duty and confined him to the brig. And I was like, what?

But of course, we figure out later that this. Oh, yes, part of the plan, right? Part of the plan, right? And Janeway tells everybody on the bridge of her plan of engaging the enemy here and now. And this, all these modifications and preparations for this battle have to take place within two hours, which is when the suspected bioships are going to arrive. So we have a time jump. We're still on the bridge a couple hours later.

The board modifications are complete and now they're online. Four bioships appear. Kess gets this message from 8472. By the way, when we're on the bridge in these scenes. This is the first time that Jerry Ryan and the character of seven of nine was on the bridge. She's in her book, but the very first time we ever had her on the bridge, I'm trying to remember what that was, I remember generally a bunch of moments on the bridge in that first episode where we were doing, you know, costume tests and makeup tests for the other look

after she has the dermal regenerative suit on. I remember her being in the board look on the bridge. I do remember that. I remember tension and, you know, I remember Brannan and Rick Colt. I mean, Rick Berman coming down and everybody. A lot of attention. Yeah.

But one thing I'll say is on the bridge, the Borg makeup and costumes, to me, look really great in their set, the black set with the dark lights and the green glow and stuff. But when Seven of Nine came on the bridge, she did look like she needed a tan. Like it just, it looks like makeup to me. It looked much.

more like it's not as scary and intimidating when you put them under the fluorescent lights of the bridge you know it yeah kind of i'm glad that we made a change that seven of nine didn't stay in that bored look all the time because she would have it would have looked bad on our show like with the fluorescent lights it just doesn't look good it's not a great no no and i'm sure jerry ryan was happy about not having to be in that poor costume because if you look at these scenes where she's on the bridge. She is sweating, profusely sweating. I mean, her skin, and I remember that day when she was on the bridge that the makeup department was just flitting around her nonstop to keep that, you know, keep some powder on there, to keep some of that sweat off. But still, you couldn't,

you couldn't maintain that. There's definitely some shots, some closeups where it looks like someone just threw a whole bunch of vegetable oil on her face. Like she's glistening. You know what I'm saying? She's really sweaty because that suit didn't look great on the bridge. It didn't look great. I got to, I just wanted to bring that up. It was like, and it's no, not that anyone did a bad job. It's just, it's not made for that environment. It's made for the dark set with the dark lights and shadows. Yeah. Yeah. It looks those, which also hides imperfections too, right? I mean, that's, that's the one thing about having that dark Borg's, uh, cube set is that you can hide imperfections and whatnot. But on a very well lit bridge, nope, none of that's being hidden. So you see everything.

So Kess gets this message from 8472 Kess is in Chakote's chair by the way She is there I noticed that She's just sitting there There's no explanation No why is she there No it's almost like they were

Yeah it's almost like they were like Yeah we know that we've written you off the show Pretty much so we'll let you sit At least in the commander's chair You know at your last sort of going away present You know here's your box of rice errone You know here we go You know this is your parting gift

No one even says why she's there But she's there But she's now getting this message that we've contaminated the realm of 8472, that 8472 feels that our galaxy is impure and that our galaxy needs to be purged. And now this begins the whole Paris and Kim Yellen. Exactly. We end up getting it. We get attacked. And the ship, it looks cool the way that the camera sort of tilted and then people went flying on the floor.

But we're yelling. Like, Tuvok's the only one who's not screaming. I'm not yelling, yeah. Well, I was, well, first I heard myself yell. I'm like, ooh, that is loud. And then you spoke? I yell louder. Man, he's screaming at the top of his lungs.

We must have been told to yell. I mean, I can't imagine, like. I don't know. That was just so awkward, though. I was like, wow. Yeah. This is, hmm, okay. So it is what it is.

We fire the four torpedoes at the four bioships. No immediate, uh, uh, no, it looks like they didn't work. and they keep kind of heading right at us. And then all of a sudden, just before they're about to, like, power weapons and take us out, they turn sort of green and then black and then they blow up. Yeah, they just, they're done.

They're done. And this is where Seven of Nine goes. I'm going to, you know, she goes to take care of something in the back row. Well, no, no. Let me just tell you what, this is what happened. Janeway says, tell Seven, okay, open a singularity and get us out of this fluidic space. And so when she walks over there, she pushes this Starfleet person out of the way. It's like, it's, she.

She hip checks her. Was it a hip check? I thought it was a hand swipe. It wasn't a hand swipe? No, because the camera goes down to the background, the extra's butt. And you see Seven's butt step in and bump her. And then it tilts up to her back and she's doing the thing. It was a butt shot.

It was a gratuitous board butt shot. Okay. Well, then it cuts to Janeway. G. Ghibs. Gretuitous board butt shot. Would that be a Ghibibibis? A gibbibibibis.

A gibbibibis. So then that's when Janeway cuts to Janeway, and Janeway gives this look of just like death. Do you see that? But at this point, Janeway does not trust seven. Yeah. And for good reason, we'll see. Yes.

You know. Yeah. Yeah. Does not trust her, keeping an eye on her. Yeah. I thought it was more because Janeway saw her shove the crew member out of the way. And she was like thinking, you don't treat my crew like that. And that's where the look of death was coming from.

but you know who knows um so we we are now getting out of fluidic space but a whole bunch of bioships follow us more bioships right and so now uh this is where we see jerry ryan is sweating a lot seven of nine and we use this larger dispersal weapon um and the for the remaining it's the high yield war warhead yeah warhead which knocks out 12 bioships yeah and then now uh seven gets this report from the collective that all the remaining bioships in our part of the galaxy is now in this part of the Delta Quadrant have now returned to their realm because they've realized that this is not something that we want to deal with. The Borg have won. Yeah. The Borg and Starflea and Janeway's plan, the one she said way back when that plan, you know, we don't have to do a weapon

of mass destruction. Let's just show them with a few torpedoes that we've got this and they'll turn around. they do. They turn around and they head back to their realm. Yeah. And so 8472 has retreated and we we should be good now. Right. But then seven terminates the alliance. This is where she's like, we're done. Now it's your turn. Janeway turns and said, there you go. Now it's your turn. Get us through Boring space safely. And seven goes, nope, this deal is terminated. This deal is done. You will be assimilated to serve us. Right. And she walks down to Paris. Paris pulls his face. He pulls his phaser. He shoots nothing.

And then I start hitting some buttons. Like, oh, maybe you turn it, turn the power up a little bit. And she just shoves you out of the way. She shoves me down. Like you were a five-year-old girl. It's just like, dig it out of the way. And you make it sound. What's that sound that you made?

I don't know. Like that. Maybe you were saying pad to-da-da. I don't know what it was, but it- I wish I was a little more heroic in that moment. I wanted you to be more heroic. I'm fumbling with my, I'm fumbling with my thing. And then she just shoves me down and I drop like a little tree.

I was disappointed. I was so disappointed. I was like, this is almost like how Kaplan died. Remember when or not, no, not Kaplan. It was Levy or whatever.

When she's like, she does that little snakey, you know, that ensign that kind of falls over in the, that was bad. Prior episode. I'm sure that they told me like, you know,

I don't know. I was, I'm sure I was trying to help them out, you know, by not moving on the mark so that she could knock me over and the, and they could be, put a stunt pad on the ground to fall, and I probably trusted that it would look okay, because it didn't make any sense, but it didn't look okay. No, I agree with you. Let's move

beyond my lack of heroism. Yeah, let's move beyond that. And let me, let me correct myself. It was Ensign Lang in the prior episode when the aliens that were like, oh, displaced. Was that what it was? But we were swapped out with each alien over and over again. And then, yeah, she's on the bridge. She had the worst, you know, death of Starfleet death until Paris gets knocked over by seven. But that wasn't a death. That's just a shove out of the way. It was a shove. Right. It was pathetic. It was pathetic. But it wasn't, but it was similar to when you shoved Chacote. Remember that one of yeah, and he fell down pretty pathetic. Maybe that's like a classic Starfleet move is like, sometimes you just got to take the Starfleet shove fall. Yes. Yes. And it's the pathetic Starfleet fall is

what it is. So Chicoatay had to do it and now Paris has to do it. It's a PSF. Pathetic Starfleet fall. Is it a Pissf? That's exactly what it looks like. It looks like a POSF. Okay. So now she's trying to access helm control and Janeway says bridge to Chacote, Scorpion. And clearly there is a predetermined plan, a secret plan, code word scorpion. Now Chacote has this neural link that is attached to his neck he's over there in cargo bay two and he starts speaking to seven because he's now collect he's now part of the collective he's connected to the collective yeah and the doctors down there and he's distracting her yep yep Torres is down there working on you know different things and we realize they're just buying time that she can program and overload into

this link so a power surge goes into um and short circuits all the neurolinks right so that's what they're trying to do that's what they're trying to do but chokote says I can see I can see your past. I can see your past and he sees that she was human. He sees her memories. And by the way, the little girl on the grass and then the mom and dad was a little girl. Onica Hanson, yeah. It was her human name. I think that grass was out right down the alley from our stage. There was the paramed theater and there was grass there. I think that was real outdoors. I don't think that that was on stage. I don't think they put up. a tree and, you know, grass and everything. I think it was right down there. Yeah, yeah. And I remember

when they did that because, because, uh, I remember the family being in hair makeup and it was like they splintered off a camera to go shoot. Like, it wasn't part of our main unit that they did that. Yeah. So it was, uh, it was a little extra unit that went down and shot the, uh, the running around stuff. Yeah. So the overload, the power search goes through. The link from seven of nine to the collective is severed. It's just gone and seven sort of collapses and falls over. She's then sent to sickbay, and now we go to Da Vinci's workspace. It's late at night, no Da Vinci, just kind of Janeway's there.

Janeway's there writing, and she says, you know, Chucote shows up, and she's just trying to calm down and relax. She says she just needed to get away from technology and work stuff, you know. And Chakotay says something about the power couplings on Decade are working better with the Borg technology. And so Janeway says, leave it. Leave it. Leave it. Let's leave it.

I like that. Yeah. And he apologizes, right? He apologized for disobeying orders. And she says she respects his decision, even though she disagrees with it. But in the end, all that matters is that we got through this together. Yeah. And they have that conversation, Janeway, standing in front of a fire, a big fireplace.

And I love the crackling log fire sounds, but I know that there were no real logs. That's ceramic cement logs with the propane gas. Like we never have, you know, fire and things like that on the sound stage is very tricky. You've got to be very careful. So it's all fake. But the fire sounds, you know, the crackling logs were really cool. And so I just wanted to point that out to people. that there's no, you know, it sounded, you could feel the warmth of that fire and hear the sounds of it

as you watch the episode, but it was really just cement logs with propane. Yes. It was like a gas grill. That's all that's there. That's right. That is right. We end the episode in Sick Bay with a shot on seven, which just reminded me of, you know, all I could think of was like Frankenstein on being built.

by the evil doctor kind of, you know, lying on this biobed. And that's the end of the show. That is the end. I got to say, and the music in that last scene was a reminder to me, this whole episode, the music, I think, the score was a step up from our typical scores. It was a little just extra dramatic and cinematic. And I thought the music was really good. Yeah.

What's your theme? What's your lesson? My theme, my lesson is what I wrote to. down is that our unique human differences can help if we respect each other and we prioritize working together. So ultimately it was kind of the Chukote Janeway lesson of like, sure, seven was right that there's humans can be chaotic and unpredictable and all that. But if we use those truly human qualities together, if we're committed to coming together to find solutions, that that'll bring, that actually helps us.

Yeah. Those differences actually are an asset. Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. I think the theme, the lesson is in that last conversation in Da Vinci's workspace with Chakotay and Janeway, and that, you know, you need to respect as human beings. We need to respect each other,

even though we may not agree with each other about something. But as long as we work together, we can get through anything. That's the key, right? collaboration is key. Yeah. Okay, excellent. We did it. Excellente.

Yes. That was fun. Okay, so next week, everybody, join us when Robbie and I will be reviewing the episode, The Gift, season four, episode two, The Gift. Thank you so much. See you next week. I'm going to be

a bit of B. B. B. Bhophe, Bhopal, Bhop, Bhop,

Bhop, Bess, Bess, Bess, Bess, Bess, B. Bess,

B, You know, I'm going to be able to be.