The Delta Flyers - The Thaw

Episode Date: January 25, 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 The Thaw. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.The Thaw:The Voyager crew discovers that members of a colony that placed themselves in stasis to survive a climate disaster have been unable to revive. Upon closer inspection, they find that the computer system that has kept their stasis tubes functioning, has taken a life of its own.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Ann Marie Segal, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Holly Smith, Jesse Noriega, Dominic Burgess, Amber Eason, and Lucas ShuckAnd our Producers:Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Eleanor Lamb, Thomas Melfi, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Ann Harding, Gregory Kinstetter, Laura Swanson, Luz R, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Katie Johnson, Craig Sweaton, Ryan Hammond, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, York Lee, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Crystal Komenda, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Dat Cao, Robert Deveau, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Oliver Campbell, Robert Hess, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Daniel Owen, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Ming Xie, Mark G Hamilton, and Heather Chappelle Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey everyone, welcome to the Delta Flyers with Tom and Harry as we journey through episodes of Star Trek Voyager. Your two hosts along this journey are myself, Gare Wong, and my co-host, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil. Hello, Robbie. I feel like I wanted some music. How many people know that tune? Only the millennials, but they know the millennials know that tune? Probably not.

Wait, you know, I got to admit, I haven't watched the Tonight Show in many years. I know Jimmy Fallon is very popular. I think I've seen clips. But my question is, when he comes out, do they do the Tonight Show theme? I don't think so. That's gone now.

I think it's gone. Wow. I'm going to have to watch this tonight. Don't quote me on that, but we have to check it out. Yeah. I have no idea. Wow. That's too bad.

That was a classic theme. You know, someday, Garrett, the theme song to the Delta Flyers podcast, people are going to be, you know, singing along to our theme song. They will, which I picked out. I know you did. After I listened to, I don't know, was it probably like 1,000 hours worth of songs? We auditioned a lot of different themes. We wanted it. to be kind of spacey, kind of, you know, relaxing, kind of techno, good energy, good vibes.

Good vibes for everybody. But I must say, my original, the number one pick did not get approved by Robbie, because Robbie was like, I don't want to pay for this for like things. We have to pay royalties on this. I'm like, Robbie, it's not that much. Well, I'm not down for it. So then we backed off of that. But maybe.

Yeah, you like some song that had a very. tough licensing situation and sometimes but garritt i got to tell you like when i'm producing tv shows or editing you know directing tv shows yes like this turner and hooch i put an aerosmith song into my my director's cut yeah that everybody love the studio the network everybody was like oh my god it's so funny when you play walk this way over the hooch dog yeah but then we got the price tag on it. And everybody's like, we're not going to use that Aerosmith song. So we ended up going with a, you know, like an indie band that's got a similar kind of, but it's not as funny. Okay. But that happens in the big leagues too, baby. It does. It does. And as disappointed and

frustrated as I was, you know, back in May when I now, how do you feel about our theme? Well, I mean, I like our theme. I just want to say that I'm glad that you're there to be a bit of a voice of reason and to consider budget, you know, concerns, whatever. But I was bummed. I'm going to say that. And you know that I was bummed. I really wanted to. I almost wanted to reach out to the DJ, um, the actual DJ that put that out. He's on Twitter. So I wanted to, you know, I wanted to message him and say, look, man. We can change up. I would love to be able to use this. We could do some musical, you know, switcharoos now and then for some special, you know, bonus material. We can talk to them and see if we can't mix it up a little.

I mean, you know, we may, we may, we may get to a point where we want to, you know, change things up a little bit. But now the Delta Flyers theme is classic. It's classic. I would say equally as classic as the old tonight show theme. I think it's, yeah, I'm going to. Yeah. Okay.

I know, I agree. I mean, it's definitely something that you and I have heard many times. over and of course our listeners have heard many times over and they're very used to it they're used to that's our brand yeah once you hear the the familiar jingle jangle of our theme music you know it's delta flyers time right that's right i'm not complaining i'm just just sharing with everybody yeah that's how the that's how the sausage gets made sometimes and the creative decisions you know it's all part of the cocktail speaking of cocktails i i'm not doing as many uh cocktail hour with tom paris videos for our patrons some of the bonus material is a cocktail mixes and lessons uh you know

mixology with tom paris but i've been you know in the new year i'm running a few days a week i'm changing my diet up getting a little healthier drinking uh only only having cocktails once a week maximum at this point you know rob i'm feeling good yeah it's really good that you're doing that and maybe you can segue it into tom paris's recipe stuff like you doesn't have healthy recipes. It could be a healthy, a healthy smoothie, or it could be some type of really yummy appetizer. It could be food as well, okay? So you can, you know, you can kind of expand out there. Yeah. By the way, you got my package yesterday. Oh, yeah. Were you surprised to get that? Were you like, okay. My big fear was, I brought this all the way from the U.S. to Canada.

Then I had to rebox it and shipped out. I kept thinking if this, because initially, Megan was like, I think, I don't think you can ship alcohol. And I said, well, my God. Gosh, I have to find out. So Canada Post said that you can. You're okay, yes. But I thought it was going to break. I kept thinking, I don't know how Canada Post people are if you're going to toss it. But I packed it tight as possible and it's in another box and it's all good, right?

Everything was not. It was all good. So I got a box from Garrett yesterday. I opened it up. It's this beautiful box. It says a fistful of bourbon. And I was like, whoa, because I love bourbons. I love bourbons.

I love bourbon, all kinds of ways. you know, I just enjoy it. It's like people like wine. Some people like wine. I like bourbons in particular and ryes and whiskeys. And there's some amazing whiskeys these days. We're in like a renaissance, a golden age of distilling and bourbons and whiskeys. And yeah, this is called a fistful of bourbon. It's a blend. But this company was, it was very fun. The packaging, there's like dice and a game in there. There's some hot some popcorn. It's like a goody bag. It wasn't just a bottle of alcohol that I sent you. was a whole little, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Yeah, it was a little

bourbon gift box. So I would highly recommend, I have not tasted the bourbon yet, by the way, but I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, anybody looking for a great gift for friends that like whiskey, Garrett's gift that I received yesterday made me very happy. It's a great company called A Fistful of Bourbon. Yeah. And this gift box is great. I would recommend it. We're not, you know, it's not a commercial, but I'm telling you honestly, it was. it was a great box to open if you if you like bourbon so it was fun yeah i'm sure the uh the owners of fistful of bourbon are very happy to get that shout out but i'm very curious to know what it tastes like once you you know please i will report back posted yes i

captain i will report back speaking of uh i captain we got to get into this episode yeah we do i'm excited the thall yes yes this is uh this is definitely an episode i'm excited about as well. Eric Kim is definitely featured in this one. So without further ado, let's go ahead and watch this episode. And for all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material.

See you in a minute. All right, guys, we are back from watching The Thaw, and we have a very special guest with us, none other than the director and our full-time director of photography on Star Trek Voyager, Mr. Marvin v. Rush. Yay, Mar, thank you so much for being here.

Garrett and I just came off watching this episode. I had not seen it since we made it, but I do remember shadowing you directing this episode, and so many things came to mind about it. We'll get into all the details as we do our recap, but I just want to thank you for being here. It was really fun to watch. The Thall, Home, Destroyed by Flair.

Stasis Chambers, two are dead. Janeway defeats fear. Oh, I like that. That's a good, that's quite good. Okay. That's quite good. Robbie. Good, Garrett.

All right. You want to agree with your limerick. Now, Marv, limericks are much harder than haiku. Hicus can be abstract, 17 syllables. Don't understand yourself. I'm just going to warn you that my limericks are always a little bumpier. they're not quite as elegant and profound as the haiku naturally is. I think so.

So here's my limerick. I intuit that you're right. My limerick goes a little something like this. Voyager finds a strange place called fear. For the hostages a way out is not clear. Janeway has to think quick. She comes up with a trick, conquers fear, so he'll just disappear. That's pretty good.

I don't know. you know, I think you really undersold it. That was pretty great. That actually is one of my better limericks. I've had some really, some tough ones, I got to say. There's an art to everything. That's our synopsies. That is our synopsis. Let's jump at the beginning. First of all, teleplayed by Joe Monoskey, story by Richard Gaddis, and of course, directed by Marvin Rush. So let's just start with the opening scene. We start out in Harry's quarters. And, you know, it's actually more spacious in Harry's quarters than I thought. There's that big sectional in there, And I'm playing the clarinet once again.

And I have to say right now, this particular piece of clarinet music, sheet music, was extremely difficult for longer than most of your clarinet. Longer than most, more notes. You know, I don't, I kept it in, but I'd never walked up to Marvin and said like, I'm freaking out, but I was freaking out when I was doing this. But thank God, it ended up looking okay. Yeah, and I put a lot of that on screen. You know, that was, you know, like you guys, I hadn't watched it for a

long time for years. And so I truly wasn't kind of a fresh audience. You know, I remembered scenes, but not the individual sequences and structure of them. Yeah. And of course, there was editorial where we shot things that didn't remain in. So, you know, that it was, it was a kind of a fresh experience to watch it again. I hadn't seen it for a while, long time. Yeah. It's the same for for Garrett and myself with our podcast here. It has been such a joy for me. I'm going to pause in our recap for a second to just say this to you, Marf. It has been such a joy. for me to revisit these episodes in sequence because I got to be honest. I sort of walked away and didn't look back from Voyager 20 years ago 2001. I had not seen any of these episodes really

to speak of. Life goes on and to go back and rewatch these has given me such gratitude. I don't know any other word. Gratitude for the people that were a part of that experience. A lot of pride for the stories and the work that we all did. And I just thank you for your contribution on the show for seven years. You did amazing work, not just directing this episode, but lighting these shows, story after story with different looks, different planets, different tones, comedy or thrillers or mysteries, you know, the work in the lighting department, the camera department, every department. I've just found a whole new love of what we did in this. rewatch. So I really appreciate this episode in particular. It was really special and very different

than anything else we did. Yeah. To me, one of the things about the thought in general, notwithstanding that opening sequence, because that was more conventional. It was meant, it was meant to be, you know, an introduction to an episode and sort of really the scene, I don't, I'm trying to think, did it actually relate in any way to the story? It was really just kind of a cold opening. Kind of a cold opening, except I would say Harry talks about some of his anxiety with playing the there's a little subtle hint of anxiety with playing the clarinet and things like that but very subtle it's subtle yeah exactly and then the the thing that for me that was so important in the episode was to make uh the world of the clown surreal not long before

i had rewatched federico felini's eight and a half yeah and i had been very very impressed with a style of direction and staging that was not linear that ignored the concept of continuity of position. And I embraced that for the episode. So when we'll talk about later, but when we get into the sequences where we were in the virtual reality world, in the way that a video game, for instance, can suddenly jump from one place to the next place.

And people don't actually have to move to that place. or if they do, they move in an almost magical way. Yeah. I felt like it was important to construct the world inside the computer in a surreal way. Yeah. And obviously, Joe Mnowski wrote it that way. Maybe he was influenced by eight and a half as well. We never really talked about that.

But I felt like that was a really good model for staging and for telling the story. I got to say, Paris was chasing Susan Nicoletti for six months. What? I don't think I'd ever spoken that name before. and now all of a sudden it comes out that I've been chasing her for six months which by the way Marv I've said on the show before

I really didn't like this womanizer skirt chasing character that was written over and over again and just when in this point in our second season just when Tom Paris had done something

he had pretended to be a jerk for a while so that he could be a spy and get over to Seska's ship to help like this whole story had just culminated in sort of redeeming Tom Paris a couple episodes back. And now they're throwing in the skirt chaser lines again. And I was just like, oh, I'm going to guess that that was not Joe Manoski's words. Yeah, I'm going to guess it was. That scene was not Joe Manoski. Yeah, I would guess too. I don't know that. I really don't. I'm just, that's a, that's a

W-A-G, wild-ass guess. But the point of that scene is that Harry has the inside track, the lead in this horse race and not Tom, right? Tom is like, you're making waves with Nicoletti. You're making inroads there. And that's who I like. And I think that's a little interesting too. That's fair. Look, it's a lovely scene. I'm not going to give it my favorite scene score. No, no, me neither. We'll get to that later when our do-overs. Then what happens? Well, then you talk about how you always wanted to learn how to play the drums. You bring that up. And we're like, oh, you never knew that. We didn't know that. I didn't know that.

No. There's so much about themselves that their characters in the middle of a scene. They discovered new things that they didn't know all the time. Yeah, for two seasons, we've never known any of this. Then we go to the bridge. We find out that there's a major solar flare that caused a glacial freeze amongst these aliens in their colony. Not only was there a glacial freeze, there were magnetic storms and extreme levels of radiation.

And so the only way to really save themselves was to put themselves into stasis. stasis. And so the stasis was supposed to last long enough for the radiation to dissipate and then they would come out of this. But there is a subroutine built into these stasis chambers that informs them of the weather conditions on the planet's surface to tell them, is it safe or not? And so it's been four years now since it's been safe and they're still not out of their stasis chambers, which we find two or dead, three are still alive. I want to stop right there. So all of that is true. We talk about that on the bridge. And then Harry's the one. They do scans for life signs and there's no life signs. But Harry's the one that pushes a little more. He goes, wait a minute. Let me check

something. And he digs a little deeper. One kilometer, nothing. Two kilometers. Wait, 2.3 kilometers down. Faint life signs, two human rights. So I thought that was interesting that he's the one. We would have just moved on probably. Yeah, sure. At that moment. Right. Well, you know, that's that all that scene is as a lot of exposition to set up the scenario so you understand the problem. I mean, that's what that is. From my perspective, it was about, you know, getting people moving, keep the shot changing, not do it as much in cuts, but rather in camera movement and actors moving around a little bit. And that whole sequence, you know, in fact, the through line for the episode,

and I re-learned it from watching the episode again this morning. But that was something I did in the entire episode was to try to get, if people were talking, they were also going from one place to another place to get ostensibly get something done. sometimes more effectively than others, but just as opposed to laying pipe, you know, exposition laying pipe, getting people, you know, walking about and moving. Alan Craker, a lovely director, you know,

was a master of doing that, and I admired his style of doing it. You know, sometimes I felt like he did it to get a scene done quickly. And sometimes that's true. You know, as a director of photographer, sometimes we get behind and we got to finish a scene in an hour. We thought it was going to take three.

we only have an hour let's get it done i did notice though marv that you were very uh creative and very specific about the blocking and the shots and how one line would bring us to another and to another and so it was minimizing the cuts which i think is some of our best episodes yeah like yours the thaw like some of uh rick colby's episodes rick was able to he was very good at moving actors into position so that we didn't cut all the time that you deliver the next line by an actor's movement. Yeah. But if you do it wrong, it looks obvious.

You know, if you do it right, you know, someone can ruminate and ruminate and as they are ruminating, they move around and the camera pans with them and suddenly, you know, it brings to the person who's got the next line and I said, oh, wait a minute, I know what, and that's upstage and that person then begins to do something and maybe they wander. I mean, that kind of thing, as long as you can find justification for the movement, that it's not completely, you know, move just because I need you to move. Yeah. Federico Felini in eight and a half, there's a painting on the wall, and the kids are jumping

up and down in the bed. Yeah. And they're saying that the saying that's written under the painting, which says, when the picture moves, will all be rich. Oh, yeah. And I took that as a lesson that Felini was reaching out to filmmakers. And what he's saying is that make sure that something's moving. Either people are walking around or there's something emotionally.

moving. But when you have movement, you know, when the picture moves, you're getting it right. So I took that to heart in that episode as well to make sure that there was, you know, flow and that it wasn't relying on the editor cuts all the time. Yeah. And there was good emotional movement as well, you know, obviously with the fear and all of the things that happened in that side of our story. All right. In our, what we've been talking about, briefing room, we find out the subroutine gives the atmospheric conditions like inside went to end stasis. And then now we go down to the stasis chamber for the very first time. It's Kess, Kim, and Janeway. Kess is obviously there because she has the medical knowledge just in case somebody needs some help there. And we have a

perfect example of Marvin using action. You see Kim moving from one stasis chamber to the other. The camera tilts down and on Kim's hand and he's tapping on and we figure out all the all the things that are happening with these people that they are now connected everyone's consciousness is interconnected with the computer and the computer is sending data streams back and forth so something is up most definitely it's also interesting was interesting to me I had forgotten until this rewatch I remembered that we went into some computer simulation thing but I had forgotten that some of the people were alive and some were dead I had forgotten about the dead people, the mummy people.

So that was scary, too. I thought the makeup was really good. So it sets up some stakes there. Like whatever we're getting involved in is deadly dangerous. They're not all alive. It's not going to be simple. Again, another scene that really is basically laying the understanding, I call it pipe, but it's exposition, to understand the problem.

So we can get into what we're going to do about it. So again, another place. where movement, you know, keep it rolling. You know, the audience can process this information pretty quickly. Our people are really smart, so they figure stuff out quick, move it along, you know, to gain time, in some ways, to gain in time, maintain enough time for other parts that where the real heart of the story gets, gets going. We're now we're not doing exposition and we're dealing with the problem directly. Yeah, and you have time to breathe and let the story and the performances breathe a little more there. Right. I thought it was interesting that

Janeway talks about Starfleet had developed this similar technology for long distance travel too. So I thought that was interesting. Well, 2001 is a good example of the movie 2001 of long distance space travel and the problem that humans face for, you know, multi-year missions. You've got to find some way to not have people not die on the way or you have a whole different way of doing it. So I would say that was an example of how Star Trek is trying to sort of talk. about the real problems that we actually face with the technology we actually have or would like to have in the real the real world not the make-believe world of tv yeah so that's i would call it that is a callback to a future that almost exists but doesn't quite right on a side note i just want to

say that the full orchestra did an excellent job in in all the background music that you hear i agree giving you giving you the tension and everything and building tension um they did a fantastic amazing job And I got, I was so lucky because when they were scoring it, it was the scoring stage right next door to our bridge. And I got to run over there a couple of times and I hung out at lunch while they were doing the score. And for that episode, they brought in the full orchestra. They didn't, they don't do that for all the episodes. Oh, yeah. And I think the company was, I'm going to assume the company was pretty excited about the episode because they brought in absolutely the full.

We're talking about the best studio musicians in Hollywood and the Philharmonic musicians and all the best people in LA that do that for a living. And they had, I don't know, it was it a 60 piece? I don't recall the number, but it was a full orchestra, you know, and it was just such a thrill to look up there and the screen

and watch the scenes playing and have the orchestra go, boom, you know, and just knock you out. It would do one take and they'd go, well, let's do one more, and they'd do another take. I couldn't tell it. There was a vote for, but they would move on the next one. really a thrill to see that the scoring process and I got to I got to do it because we were right

next door yeah between setups I'd run over there and listen and it was exciting to see our show get scored I thought this particular score was very special I think yeah in the way you played with the visuals they also played with the music in some unconventional ways so I also loved what you did marv with the doctors popping in I'm you know I think it was more effective in this episode he felt more present than he normally does sometimes that was just very much a cutaway to a monitor when he would pop into the briefing room or something. But the way you tied him in and the angles you chose, the way you shot all that, I thought, was more effective than usual.

Thank you. It was fun. I mean, Rob Picardo is, you know, he's fabulous, you know. He's so good in this episode. He's so good. You know, he was such a good balance, though, because when you're in that Cirque de Soleil world of craziness, oh my gosh. I mean, with the score, the musical score, everything, you're sitting there just,

you're on that, you're biting your fingernails. And then the doctor would come in and you'd breathe a sigh of relief. You're like, oh, okay, thank God. Yeah, he's really there to kind of balance out the tension that was in this episode, for sure. What kind of input did you have, Marv, in terms of designing that Cirque de Soleil world that fear was living in? Well, surprisingly not a whole hell of a lot. I had forgotten about the little person. I don't know if her character had a name, but I loved her.

And she looked so familiar from other things that I've seen her in. There's a little story real quickly about her that I will talk to you about. I never worked with little people except as stand-ins for children, you know. So I'm not in that culture. I don't know much about it. I don't know one is, I don't have any friends that happen to be little people. Not that I wouldn't, but I don't. So, you know, originally I was going to have someone pick her up and place her.

And she really, like, was super offended at that. And I said to, innocently, I said to her wife. She said, well, you know, we don't want to be, we don't like to be treated like little children. You know, I can't, I can't exactly quote what she said. But I remember how, how almost aghast she was at the idea. And so I said, well, what would you have me do? And she said, well, just let me stand on a platform. And there's a scene where she's, you know, where the clown is talking to her.

And I had had somebody pick her up and put her there. I'm, again, I'm thinking about movement, movement. And so I honored her request. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm not deliberately insensitive, but I'm insensitive at times because I don't realize it's hard to put yourself in the place of a person who is only, you know, four feet tall or whatever her height was. So, you know, it was a real wake up calls like, yeah, okay, you know, think before you speak, you know. But she was nice about it. She wasn't mad at me. She just didn't want to do it.

And I instantly adjusted it. In fact, what I did is I asked her. I said, well, what would you have me do? Yeah. What do you want to do? She said, when I do this, I said, do it. That was great. Great.

You want to keep people on your side for one thing. But more importantly, I just, it was one of those little wake-up calls where you, you know, the world gives you a lesson, you know. Yeah. Well, I thought she was great. I really enjoyed her performance and the addition of her and the big masked character, the scary monster guy. That was Carl Stroichen, who I did not realize it was Carl Stryken until I saw the credits. He was, he played Lurch and Adam's family. Really?

It was Mr. Haum, Mr. Haum in Next Generation. I had no clue that was Carl Stroke. My question to you, Marv, regarding the lady, the little person. And when I was watching the rewatch, my significant other, Megan, she's the one that saw this. In the scene where I'm first placed in the guillotine, she's standing next to me. Then you cut to the audience. She's also in the audience. Was that on purpose?

Was that the Philemi-esque? Yes. Yeah, let's get to that. I said something earlier that related to that. One of the things I told everybody is I said, when we're in the world of the video game, which is what it kind of is, is a video game or the program, physical continuity is not going to be honored. The clown can be anywhere. Every character is essentially a manifestation of the clown. So there's no physical continuity. And I said it would be a mistake if we try to do physical continuity.

Because there's so much, you know, you got handcuffs on. You take the handcuffs off. free and in a world of normal continuity where we have to honor it because the audience will be confused we want to confuse the wrong word we want to reinforce the idea that none of the rules apply that everything in this world is crazy world you know because it's whatever this guy imagines at whatever moment he's here then he's there and then he's over here and then he's over there and everybody else is the same they're all they're all manifestations of his imagination or his his idea. I was thinking about that as I watched it more from a director's perspective. And what occurred to me was when the continuity is taken away, when you intentionally want things to

jump, that the anchor that we normally rely on for making television every day, the anchor of, okay, here's the marks, here's the blocking, we can look at it, we can break it down in our heads, okay, I need this over and tighter, and I need this insert, and this is the screen direction and the proper eye line direction, all these things we normally use as the anchor or taken away from you in this episode. And it occurred to me as I'm watching it, how much more difficult it is, I would imagine that it was to not have that anchor of continuity and to go, okay, what's my next shot? Well, I'm looking over here, but now I can't rely on that anchor anymore. I don't know, are the people there? Are they not there? Or what is my new background? I know

What's got to change? Here's the thing that I learned from Federico Fellini, because eight and a half is a movie where the continuity is not, the story jumps all over the place, hard to follow. You have to really be paying attention. But what he did, and it's not so much the physical continuity, because within the scenes, they had physical continuity within the scenes. But scene to scene to scene, they are not, they're disparate sequences. They're almost like not connected at all.

But what they are connected in is emotional continuity. Right? In other words, what's happening up here in the clown's head and in Garrett's head and in everybody else's head, there is continuity. Emotional continuity is maintained. But mechanical, physical continuity is broken. That was not an accident. I thought about that.

Interesting. And I felt like that was the way to solve that problem. I can do anything I want to do so long as it makes sense to the character's intentions. That makes a lot of sense. It sort of forced you to do what we should always do. There should always be emotional continuity. and sometimes the easy way is, oh, just stage the scene and I don't have to think about the emotional continuity

because the actors will do that. It really was two things. Maintain emotional continuity and do not maintain physical continuity. Yeah, right. Don't make a mistake of not caring about it. Make a point of caring about it to the point of breaking it. Yeah. Regularly, reliably, but not frivolously,

but rather with intention of emotional continuity. That's the driver. That's what drove. every staging decision and every way I changed and junk people around. It was about that. It was very effective. There was a fight when they were taking you to the guillotine, Garrett. There was sort of a fight that went on with some punches. And it was like a, it was a surreal, you know, the hits didn't hurt anybody. Yeah, they weren't being injured at all. No. No. It did a thing to them. Like, Balana was, was double fisting back, you know,

doing all types of Matalone directed, you know, hits and nothing was happening to those guys. I thought that was really interesting to see, you know. And again, it's because, you know, if you had gone the other way, it wouldn't be a video game. It wouldn't be a manifestation. They're all ghosts, you know. The only thing that's, that's even remotely real is the intention of the clown. But he's not physically real either. Yeah.

Do you remember how Marvin directed, Garrett? Do I remember how he directed? Do you remember Marvin directing you in the episode? Just a quick and thought of asking this question. You know, the scene where I'm on the operating bed and they're reminding me of my memory as a nine-year-old with my parents on a humanitarian mission to the colony that had radiation poisoning. And I see the little kid on the operating table and I got to scream. And I'm just going through all this craziness. I remember Marvin coming up to me and going going to go saying, Garrett, you do pain real good or something like that.

You said something to that effect where you were like you were complimenting me on how well I could do stressed out. You suffer better than anybody. You're good at that. We shared a good laugh about that. I just remember him, Marvin being pretty collaborative. Like, you know, he would listen to us. Like, there are some directors who come in.

They just don't even listen to any, you know, an actor raises in hand and says, hey, I've got a suggestion and he gets shut down. I've experienced that. I'm not going to say who. But then, you know, I just remember that the process went, it went very quickly and it went smoothly.

Well, there's something you may have forgotten. I want to jump in because, in fact, it just flashed into my head. Yeah. We did something on that episode that we never do. We had a full pre-episode rehearsal with the entire cast at lunch. I remember because we never do it. I remember. We ran that script three times at lunch.

Wow. Three times. I remember the rehearsal conversation because we never, was that your idea? We even brought McKinan in and we brought some of the other guest cast in. Mary was willing to it. I said to her, I said, this show, is so big and so complicated that if I have to take time to direct the scenes from zero to get what I need to make the story work, we'll never finish it. And she said, well, what do you need? And I said,

well, I'd like to really would love to be able to do a read-through before. Actually, I said we did it three times. We did it two times. And what I did the first time is I just had you guys read it. And I just listened. And when I thought if something was not quite right, I made a little scribble. Then I went back through and I gave notes on that. And I said, you know, I talked about what I thought would be appropriate to change to get this value or that value. You know, I wasn't negative, but I was, I was positive. I was, this is what I would love to get. This is why.

And there was not much argument. I had thought a lot about what I wanted every moment to be. Not that everybody got it wrong. Most people got it right. I mean, it wasn't far off, but there were a couple of moments. I can't recall now what they were. But I explained myself quickly, you know, in terms of what I was thinking and why. Right?

Because if I could give you the why, then internalize the why, and make it your own why. And that was my hope. And we ran it again. It was flawless. I mean, it really was. And I think everybody excited about that. Yeah, and you're right. We, I don't know another time that we did a rehearsal like that.

We never did. I don't think we did. And I recall you being a real advocate for that and pushing for that. And that was exciting. Marvin, I don't know if you remember this. Robbie, I know you do not remember this. But one of my most embarrassing moments happened during this episode. We were filming.

on the video game set and I was really tired that day and I decided to find a little nook and cranny to lay down in and take a bit of a nap I started snoring so badly that they heard it while they were filming and so they were like who is snoring so Marvin's like cut

who's snoring and they send the PAs out they're running all around the sound stage trying to find and I literally Robbie I found a nook and cranny so far away They couldn't find me for minutes. And finally, Mike, I think it was Mike DeMert that showed up.

And he's like, he shakes me. And I'm like, I wake up. And he's like, Garrett, you are snoring. We're filming right now. I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God. I was so embarrassed. But literally that old Arsenio Hall stage with all those set pieces, I had hidden myself

that no one could find me for 15 years. They were just listening for the echoing of my snore. You're not the first. snore on a set while we're rolling. I mean, that's happened dozens of times. Okay, but it's embarrassing to say the least. You know what I'm saying? And it's a credit that you brought it back to us for us to all enjoy again.

Exactly. Because I've forgotten it completely, but now that you mentioned, I have some vague memory of that. I'm sure I was mad. Yes. Like, who's wrecking the take? I'm behind. I remember apologizing to you.

When I walked up to you, you gave me a sideways glance. You were like, really? that the eyes were like really kid and I was like I'm so sorry Marv I'm so sorry okay let's get back to the episode we're in the briefing room where we're talking about Janeway is trying to negotiate how do you negotiate with an emotion I just love that line right the lighting in the briefing room is much more stark than usual oh I had a question about that who was the DP I think Doug Knapp was the DP of record okay but I lit every shot you did okay I also operated the camera a fair amount of

as well. Did you really? He did. That's crazy. I don't remember that. You know what? I'll tell you something. It's very interesting. I love to operate. It's one of my favorite things to do. And, you know, that's one of my skills. That's something I'm good at, right? So there's a weird thing if you thought, especially for handheld, if you throw a camera on your shoulder and you're a handheld camera operator and you want to direct and you're standing right next to the actors, like inches at times inches away and you're watching the performance through the lens inches away, there isn't a better place to be to do that job. Back at the monitors, I'm right, I'm right in your face. Yeah. If I want to say something, I can say something so softly and it lands with a kilowatt punch. Yeah. That's why there are

some directors who are also good at camera. Stephen Soderberg, one of my heroes is, uh, loves to operate is. That's where they want to be. It's not that they don't like the work of other people. They may or may not. But there is no better place to be than where the lightning is striking. Yeah. You're right there. Do you remember why you chose that different lighting in that briefing room scene? It typically was not that dark. The reason for that darkening of that scene was because the stakes had raised. I know the stakes had raised at that point. The stakes had gone up to the point where the stress level, the threat level, the problem level had gone way up. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the stress level was that Bala was released and Harry was still in there. That's the first time where we understand that our team may not be able to solve this problem. Correct, yeah. And may not be able to save Harry Kim's life. I remember that scene now. Looking at my notes, I remember I loved Neelix had a moment where he says, just try to make him laugh. A good joke seems to make it go away.

At least it does for me anyway. He's sort of lost. Yeah, and we cut back to you. guys giving him that like that death silence you know yes he's not wrong but it's wrong in the moment yeah and i think you know you can't hurry that moment it's like a joke you know if you start the next line on a joke you kill the laugh right yeah okay and the same kind of situation here if you step on that moment you don't let the audience enjoy his discomfort it's got to breathe it's got play out we go back in from that briefing room seeing we go back into the uh video game fear

back at the Fear's world. And we see Harry is saying, you know, we don't have, don't regret anything. We don't have time for regret. And then Fear says something about, you know, they're the old people. You're the new, new and old, old and new. The answer, aha, is to make you old. And you have that old age makeup. Oh, my God. Yeah, I do. I mean, that's my first full prosthetic. Everything on my face was a prosthetic, basically. There wasn't any part of me. Yeah, but it looked like you. Yeah, it still looked like me. Yeah. It was a very good makeup, by the way. Very good, very long, and I felt very old. And it's funny, the minute you put on old age makeup like that, it changes your physicality as an actor. All of a sudden, I wanted to hunt over more. Everything about me became ancient.

And I remember thinking, God, I look horrible old. And I remember there was somebody in the hair department that was a day player that happened to be an Asian-American lady, like an older lady. And she saw me when I came out of the makeup, trailer and she goes, wow, you're handsome as an old man. And I thought that I looked horrible, right? But to her, she was like, woo, you're a silver fox. I mean, she loved it, right? So that's funny. And then you turned into a baby. How was it working with a baby, Marve? Do you remember that? You know, I really don't. I just,

I just remember that, you know, Ade gives me, Adele gives me, okay, you got 20 minutes. You know, she looks at her watch. You got 20 minutes and we have to change babies. And it's like, you know, okay, you can't think about it. You have to have a plan. You have to execute your plan. It has to go quickly. Everybody's got to punch in because there's not much time. I thought your plan was great. As I recall, we didn't have any problem. The one thing I wanted to do, which we couldn't do, is to throw the baby way up in the air. Yeah. I don't think the real baby. Oh, the real baby. No, I don't think you could do that. But there's a white shop where McKin does throw it up in the air, and it does get a little bit of air. Yeah. But I wanted him to throw it up about four feet,

get four feet of air. That was a prop baby, though, Marv, wasn't it when he threw up a little bit? I know, and here's what I don't recall. It's been a long time. I don't recall whether we did a take where it went up. It may very well have been that the weight of the, of the prop baby wasn't enough weight that its dynamics in the air looked real. Yeah. Okay. In other words, to do it right, it's got to have the same weight distribution as a real, as a real thing. Or it looks like a doll. Yeah, it has to be, you know, silicone, because silicone weighs the same as flesh. It has to have the weight and heft. And the distribution of that weight has to be right. We're very good at picking out fake movement. But that was one of the things I would love to have done is to

have him be even more like flip with it. I loved the transition you had when he took the baby to put him down on the floor and you cut to the reverse and there he's putting down Garrett full adult-sized Garrett. Again, we had no visual effects budget. So all that stuff had to be done in camera. Because they'd spent all the money on Cirque to Soleil. So they had no... I just remember that the parents were a little nervous with the baby. They were on set. You know, they had never, I don't think they had on seven before. Now, Adele Simmons, R.A.D. was one of these, you know, rightly so, a stickler for the rules. I'm sure we had the representative of a nurse and, you know, all the things that come with that, you know.

For me, it was really about, you know, making sure the gag worked. The baby cried like crazy. Unbelievable. Oh, God, yeah. We needed the baby to be scared. Here, I'm traumatizing a child for life, right? You know, you got to get this shot. You got to just scared, you know.

But fortunately, I think just the situation put the baby. in stress enough that he cried and so we got the performance he got it quickly it was appropriate we were able to do it and let the baby go back to its parents and move on to the next scene rather quick i mean all of the things worked you know all the beats that were scripted were pulled off and i think you know part of the reason why that happened not that didn't always happen the show always worked but but you know it worked especially well on that episode i think is because everybody was excited about the episode. Yeah.

I think nobody thought that was a regular episode. Correct. And I certainly didn't treat it like it was just a run-of-the-mill television show that we're all going to get through as quick as we can. To me, it was a real high watermark and had the potential to be a remarkable success or an unbelievable failure. Yes. It had the potential to be just awful.

Yes. What in the world would they think? And to guard against that, everybody leaned in. Yeah, you're right. And the departments leaned in. like makeup, hair, wardrobe, all those departments. They all were putting on their best, their best that they had. And not for money, but for love.

Yeah, and the whole point of this. You're right. If you, if you half asked anything, that episode could have flopped. It could have been the worst episode you'd ever seen, right? I saw it for that. When I read it, I thought, this is a great opportunity. It's also, there's risk here. And which is why when Mary Howard said cert to Saleh, you know, a giant weight,

huge weight came off my shoulders because she had an answer that was so elegant because we could go one phone call and get, you know, and I don't know whether they were all Cirque to Saleh. They probably, I don't think they were. I think we had six or seven and we had other but that informed every other

decision to be made. Yeah. You know, can you juggle? Can you do this? Can you do the the line, whatever that, the ribbon thing? Rivens, yeah. Of that stuff, there was a number of places where you know, like, what was the line I wrote down?

A virus, a virus. He thinks I am a virus. And they were doing like, choreography. And they're performing, and the background artists are performing the emotional continuity of the character's lines. Yeah. I love that. They're playing.

Was that scripted or was that you? That was not scripted. Oh, what I told them, what I told them, don't quote me, my memory is not. I remember what I told them. I said, all of you people are one person. all the clown. Right. You're aspects of his personality. Yeah. And so you're not independent. You're dependent. You are him and he is you. So when he does something or says something, you know, you're reactive instantaneously to what his mood and emotion is. Yeah. You're him. So I said when

he says something, play that, play that. If you're a mind, play that. You know. I thought that was really great, this sort of almost choreographed, and Michael McKin, I thought, did a beautiful job of working in, you know, connection with the background artist. Michael, Michael was part of that conversation. It's great. The background artists. So Michael then had a chance to talk to them, which I gave him permission. It wasn't literal permission. I just simply, I said it loud enough for everyone to hear. Yeah. And then he was working things out a little bit. And there were two or three of them that were better than others, but there was a couple that were real mimes. They were mined. And I said, I just said, mine the scene. You know, your mimes, mime it. And they did. And,

and, you know, your audience sees that. And it's not a, it's not a real world. It's a crazy world. And it's, it's all because it's one character. Yeah. They're one, they're the one character. If you think about it, that money, that the exorbitant amount of funds that were spent on the Cirque de Soleil performance was well worth it. Because if you had just average, day background artists come in to play that. You couldn't have talked to them and because these Cirque to Saleh artists, they're already professionals. They already kind of

you know, they're a step ahead as opposed to somebody who just signed up with central casting the day before because everyone has seen a TV show or a movie where the background actors are awkwardly moving around in the back and they just don't seem to feel at home or they're not very comfortable and you don't buy it and you definitely bought

it with these background guys. Well also there's something else to consider. Technically the director is not allowed to give direction to the background. I didn't know that. Right, Bobby? You know that. That's true. There's an easy way to do it. You talk loud enough to the actor about what the background is going to be doing. I do that with the ADs all the time because the AD is supposed to talk to the to the background, but I will sometimes stand in the middle of a crowd talking to the first AD and say,

hey, Mike, tell the background that I need them all to be nodding when this happens. and I just say it really loudly. Same idea. Yeah, so they're all going to nod, right, Mike, when the thing happens. Yeah, well, I have to give credit. Adele let me have some rope in that situation. I think she also got it, you know, that there need to be a unified voice. There needs to be, you know, a common theme that the actors in the background really are

this one character. They really are elements of the lead, you know, our guest star, Michael McKin. So anyway, she gave. gave me some rope, but technically you're not supposed to do that. But also, we hired really bright people like Garrett was saying, you know, that we hired experts. Oh, yeah. Real experts. Yeah. And we gave them permission to do their job. And they did it. Yeah. And I could give a suggestion, but I could never have taken the time, let alone do I have the skill. I'm not a mine. Yeah. You know, I know what a mine is. Yeah. I know how to spell it. I don't know how to do it.

I got to say, this was such a great episode. We sort of fell out of our normal format of going through scene by scene, just to sum it up, I'll jump to the end in my experience of where this all led us. We talked already about sort of the big ideas of fear and how it can be an ally for us and fear of how we ultimately have to find our way, our way of conquering, as Janeway says, or dealing with our own fear. And I think to me, that was the theme of this episode. was recognizing the strength and the danger of fear that there can be, the value is the better word. To me, the theme is recognizing the value and the dangers of becoming controlled by your fears.

Well, Janeway's final speech, when she extinguishes fear, you know, and I love the last line, which I think Michael McKeon wrote. He said, darn, or something like that. What did he say? he said drat drat that's what it was i couldn't hear it i was like what was he saying drat that's right drat and i'm pretty sure he wrote that it was beautifully shot it was beautifully conceived i think kate and michael both did a great job and just seeing the world shrink to to avoid remember the big piece of fabric that's spinning behind him yeah and he finally realizes that he's hosed you know

the world behind him is spinning so we had this giant wheel of fabrics made but on an arm and broomed it out and the next time we cut back to him, this thing is just slowly spinning behind him, you know? And it's just a bunch of fabric on an armature. That was your idea or is that in the script? No, it's mine. I thought, you know, we needed to, again, continuity. The wall was not the wall. Yeah. The wall is a projection. It's a thing that's created by him. Yeah. Yeah. The program is going out of control. And so, you know, that was just a way to visually communicate that, you know, again, without spending a lot of money. That was a cool. I loved it. I loved it. Did you have a theme, Garrett? Did you have a theme for?

I think the theme really, Marvin already hit upon it, you know, what he was talking about this whole time, that fear, you know, in a certain amount of fear is good. You need that fear. But then if you allow it to consume you, then you will die from that fear. You know, you will lose it all. So it really is, it's a lesson again in moderation and a lesson in understanding that you need to control with the fear. This is an excellent episode that will stand the test of time and it will last forever in terms of being this allegory that people need to understand and watch this episode. And I really enjoyed being invited to join you guys. That was a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun. Yes, it has. It's been really special. I had a great time, honestly, did. And I'm sure

there's some episodes that where I have something to bear that would be useful if you feel that that's i'm happy to do it you know well we not we would really appreciate that we would i know the fans would really love it we've had such a just an outpouring of kindness and uh excitement and enthusiasm for this podcast and kind of going back through it as the three of us did on this episode so it's always fun well the show still on the air yeah that's right yeah somewhere think about that think about how many shows are not on the air correct yeah right how many shows in your lifetime You know, you're both watching and also being on it or working on them. We're not on the air, like forever.

You're right. And Voyager's on the air and has been, I think, nonstop for, what, 20 years? 25 years. 25 years. 25 years still in the air. So either everybody that watches it as an idiot, which they're not, or it's actually pretty good. And also has something relevant to say. Yes.

You know, it's not trivia. Right. It's not junk. Right. It's not a procedural. So we want to thank you, Marvin, and we would thank all the fans for listening into this episode. Stay tuned next week when we review Tuvix.

All right, guys. Great. Thanks. See you next week. So long. The Bhopal, Bhopal,

Bhopal, B. Bhopal, B, Bhopi. Bhop, Bhop, B,

Bhop. B, B'am. I'm going to be able to be.