The Delta Flyers - The Voyager Conspiracy

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch & recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang & Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at the very beginning. This week’s episode is The Voyager Conspiracy. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.The Voyager Conspiracy:Seven of Nine begins a new method of data analysis that makes her craft a conspiracy theory that Janeway and Tuvok intentionally stranded Voyager in the Delta Quadrant.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise & Rebecca McNeillAnd a special thanks to our Ambassadors, the guests who keep coming back, giving their time and energy into making this podcast better and better with their thoughts, input, and inside knowledge: Lisa Klink, Martha Hackett, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Brannon Braga, & Bryan FullerAdditionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co-Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve England, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Daniel de Rooy, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Courtney Lucas, Matthew Gravens, Elaine Ferguson, Brian Barrow, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, John Espinosa, James Zugg, Deike Hoffmann, Mike Gu, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Lee Lisle, Mary Beth Lowe, William McEvoy, Sarah Thompson, Samantha Hunter, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Ashley Stokey, Lori Tharpe, Mary Burch, Nicholaus Russell, Dominique Weidle, Lisa Robinson, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlmann, Darryl Cheng, Alex Mednis, AJ Freeburg, Elizabeth Stanton, Kayla Knilans, Barbara S., Tim Beach, Ariana, Meg Johnson, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, Holly Schmitt, James H. Morrow, Christopher Arzeberger, Megan Chowning, Tae Phoenix, Nicole Anne Toma, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Daniel O’Brien, Bronwen Duffield, Brandon May, Andrew Duncan, David Buck, Jeremy Mcgraw, Jason Bonnett, Ali S, Danie Crofoot, Ian Ramsey, Susan V. Gruner, Andrew Evans, & Michael DismukeAnd our Producers:James Amey, Patrick Carlin, Richard Banaski, Ann Harding, Ann Marie Segal, Chloe E, Nathanial Moon, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Mike Schaible, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Claire Deans, Matthew Cutler, Maxine Soloway, Joshua L Phillips, Barbara Beck, Species 2571, Aithne Loeblich, Dat Cao, Scott Lakes, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Tara Polen, Jenna Appleton, Jason Potvin, Cindy Ring, Andrei Dunca, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Amber Nighbor, Jamason Isenburg, Mark G Hamilton, Rob Johnson, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Jennifer Jelf, Justin Weir, Mike Chow, Rachel Shapiro, Eric Kau, Megan Moore, Melissa A. Nathan, Captain Jak Greymoon, David Wei Liu, David J Manske, Roxane Ray, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Cindy Holland, Craig M. Nakashian, Will Forg, Max Wilson, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Carmen Puente-Garza, Russell Nemhauser, Lawrence Green, Jordan Marie Benko, Christian Koch, Lisa Gunn, & Wendy WeatherholtzThank you for your support!“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail].”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 my fellow Trek actor, who is also set to star in the feature film School Ties until the original director had to drop out and the new director unceremoniously replaced him with Brendan Frazier, Mr. Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself. Your favorite Eternal Ensign Garrett-Wa. Like that intro? Bringing up a heartbreaking loss of a job. I know. But if you didn't lose it, there's a good chance you wouldn't have been on Voyager and you probably would not be doing this podcast.

That's true. That's why I bring it. Okay. But I also bring it up because I'm just saying that you were basically in the same league as Brendan Frazier because you booked the role before he did. Yeah. So I got this movie school ties, the lead role. and then the director fell out.

Stanley Jaffe was the original director. And he fell out because of a conflict with some other things. So we were kind of on hold for a few months. And in the meantime, they found a new director, Robert Mandel. But when he came on board, he saw the role a very different way. And so he recast a couple of roles, but he recast mine. So Brendan Fraser got the job. And I was out.

I know. But, you know, like I said, there's a good chance you may not have been on Voyager if you took that role. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Okay. All right. So let's talk about our contest coming up. Yes. Costume contest. We've decided to do a Delta Flyers Halloween costume contest. You do a, you do a costume contest at DragonCon every year. Yeah, well, we do a, yeah, there's a costume contest. We do a Star Trek universe contest. So, you know, we have a lot of different contests of Dragon Company. Yeah.

So this is our Delta Flyers version of a Halloween contest. All right. So let me just give the breakdown. Let me give the 4-1-1 the information. You have to submit a photo of yourself or your kids or your pet in a Trek-related costume. And to keep everyone honest in terms of, you know, so you don't pull up some photo from 1999 or something, the photo must contain a handwritten sign or note with hashtag TDF. for the Delta Flyers in the photo.

Hashtag TDF. Someone's got to hold that in the photo. And those submissions can be mailed to the Delta Flyers at gmail.com. Make sure your submission is in by November the 3rd, because that's right around the corner. You've got about a couple of weeks, I think, a little less than two weeks to get that submission in. There's going to be how many winners, Robbie? Three winners. We're going to have three different prizes.

One in each of these categories. We'll have a winner for most creative. Yep. We'll have a winner for most realistic. And we'll have a winner for cutest, of course, because cute, cuteness is deserve a prize. Winners will be announced on our podcast, and they'll also be featured in our social media accounts. Yes. And winners will be mailed an autographed photo from Tom and Harry.

Tom Paris and Harry Kim will send you an autographed. photo as a prize for your costume. We'll email all the winners to get an address to send the photos to. So get your submissions in for the Delta Flyers Halloween Star Trek costume contest. It's going to be fun. I can't wait to see what people do. Me too. Very exciting.

All righty. So are you ready for this week's episode? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. All right. Well, this week's episode is unique in that it has the name of the ship that we are on in the title of the episode. It's the Voyager Conspiracy. So that's rare. We never have that. Very rare. Yeah. All right. So let us, without further ado, go watch this episode and come

right back with our recap and discussion of the Voyager Conspiracy. All of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. Okay, everybody, we are back from watching The Voyager Conspiracy. Yes, we are. Oh, my God. God, seven went crazy. She started a dark rabbit hole. She did, but you know, I'm really impressed with Jerry Ryan for knowing all that dialogue. I mean, I'm going to say that this is probably the most dialogue heavy for any series regular of any episode up until now. I don't know of anyone who had to spout that much techno babble out.

Lists and lists of evidence. And, yeah, it was a lot. You just imagine memorizing all that? And by the way, it wasn't easy for me taking notes in this episode for our podcast. Because of all that incredible. I just want a shout out to me. I'm going to give you a shout out. Robbie McNeil, you are so impressive in that you took notes through this very dense, dense dialogue episode.

It's the hardest kind of episode to review on. the podcast because you're like, wait, do I need to note that and that? Oh my God, there's more information? Do I need to note all this information? Is that important for the podcast? I think my job was harder than Jerry's. I agree. That's what I'm saying. I'm not going to argue with you on that. But yeah, I mean, if you look at the amount of dialogue, they threw everything at her, including the kitchen sink. It's like unbelievable. Okay. Let's start off with our poetry synopsis. And here's my haiku for the Voyager conspiracy. Okay.

Seven overloads. Paranoid questions abound. Janeway brings her back. That's nice. Yeah. That was a nice haiku. Thank you. Thank you.

That's a very, it like covers the story in a very elegant and succinct way. And poetic. Poetic. And very poetic. Paranoid questions abound. Yes. Okay. All right.

This was a tough one, limerick-wise, because because of what you said, there was so much information. Yeah. It's hard for me to be funny on this one. I get it. But I tried to capture the story, too. So let's see. But I'm just going to say, before you begin, that I don't think any limerick is too hard for

Rebecca. I don't think so. Rebecca is good at everything. The two of you together. All right. Okay. Let's hear it. Voyager discovers a way to shorten their trip duration,

Meanwhile, seven is consuming a lot of information. First she accused Janeway. Then she turned on Chacote. In the end, the captain laid out the factual narration. Nice. Very good. Yeah, it's pretty good. I like that a lot.

Oh, good. That's very catchy and very creative. And I'm always impressed with your limerick. So, good job. Thank you, sir. This was written by Joe Mnowski. I think you called it on that one. I completely guessed that one, and I got lucky.

Did we get the... No, Terry Wendell is the director. Yeah. How many do you think you did? Did a few. I don't know how many you did. We can look that up, but I want to say three or four. Yeah.

This is one of his. He kind of came in late in the show, and that was hard for a lot of the directors that came in late on our show, because we were so set in our ways. I think anybody coming in with, you know, just a different energy or different approach,

I think sometimes either they struggled or we struggled. I felt a little bit of that with Terry sometimes. Okay. You know, there were some directors like Alan Craker, who I love. Right. You know, Les Landau, Uncle Les that we love so much. Yeah. Terry is one that I don't remember a lot about,

but I do remember feeling like he came in late and we were set in our ways. Well, I still think he was easy to work with, though. I don't think he was, you know, he didn't rub anybody the wrong way like that. But you're right. When you come in that late in the game. Everybody's in their rhythm. Everybody's in their groove already. So it gets, it gets to be kind of difficult.

It's a tougher job for those directors to. I agree. Our guest star is Albie, Selsnick, who we have had before. Yeah. So if you recall, he was one of the tech, tech, tech, he was the tech tech console, the aliens that kind of spoke with their hands and their body movements in the episode macrocosm. Which is funny because he did a little of that in this episode. He did, which is, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it kind of bled over a little bit. It was like the farewells and, you know, good luck. See you on the other side. His hands were. He did some type of little like heart thing. I don't know what that was, that goodbye that he did. It was very interesting. It's interesting because when I looked at his resume, he's a movement specialist.

He must have trained as a movement dance acrobatics guy. In fact, he's. His very first job, go ahead, Garrett. Yes, his very first job was the feature film, Zanadu. Yes. Zanadu with Olivia, Newton, John. Do you remember watching that movie in the theater? Me too, me too.

And he played, he did some type of, what was he a tightrope walker or something like that? He was a tightrope walker, exactly. Correct. And his first Star Trek credit is TNG, the episode Cost of Living, where he played a juggler. So again, more movement type of based roles that Albi took on in the beginning. Yeah. And then, of course, the tack-tack console. And now the role of Tash or Tosh.

I don't know how you want to. I think Tash. Okay. Tash is what I went with. Do a heavy A. We'll say Tash. So, yeah. So, I'll be, honestly, I think he looked great in that new makeup of this episode.

Fabulous. And yes, and that's what we have for Mr. Alby Selsnick. Did you have any other guest stars? That was it, right? Well, Scarlet Palmer's again, Naomi, Naomi Wildman. And since we've talked about her before, I just went into a little more depth on her rock band life. Oh, please.

So Scarlett, after Star Trek and after Riba, I think, was her show. Yeah, that's right. Sitcom, she started a rock band. Or she had a career or a time where she was doing rock and roll music. she was appearing on like New Year's Eve specials and like she was getting no traction there and it was very sort of like hardcore I wouldn't call it metal but her band was it punk was it wasn't it was kind of like um a little emo rock I don't know it was that kind of skater skater rock back in the day all right okay and I had that vibe to it yeah but her her band was

called scarlet was the name of the band interesting okay and I did find a music video called insane. Wow. The song title was insane. And it's, you can find it online. You can find a live performance of her performing that song. Nice. So you get a taste of her music. So I thought I'd bring that up since we often blow by her since now we've, you know, she's been on the show quite a few times. Yeah, that's, that's definitely interesting information on her. And another interesting fact is that her television mom is also a musician and started a band. called wench. So we're talking about, you know, Nancy Hauer, who played Naomi Wildman's mother, Samantha. Must run in the family. It has to. It runs in the television family in that in that

twosom. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah, that's super cool. And I now want to go watch the insane music video for her band Scarlet. Yes. I'll check it out. Okay. So let's jump right into this episode. We start off in Cargo Bay One. Naomi Wildman is Was it Cargo Bay 1? Was it Cargo Bay 2? Let's just say Cargo Bay 2. Cargo Bay 2. Cargo Bay 2.

We start off in Cargo Bay 2. Naomi Wildman is waiting for 7 in a regeneration alcove. She even has her eyes closed like she's simulating regeneration. And she is meeting 7 for their weekly game of Caddiscot. Seven says, you know what? I've got to reschedule. I'm busy. She's modifying her alcove to function as a cortical processing subunit.

And, you know, little Naomi has no. clue what that is. So Seven explains to her that on Borg vessels, each Unimatrix has their very own cortical processing subunit, which downloads newly assimilated data to all the drones. And so now Seven's going to be more efficient because she's going to download, download. Well, hey, let's download it. She doesn't lay down. She stands up when she does it. She does. She's going to downstand. It's going to download all the information to the alcove, like sensor information, status reports, everything, logs, everything,

personal logs, every single thing that the ship's computer has, she's going to down. Yeah, yeah. And then a couple, couple things I noticed in here. So this cortical processing unit looks like an old-fashioned hard drive.

It's like a big box, like the size of a shoe box, that she's plugging in to the side. She's adapted it. Yeah. And as she puts on the giant hard drive onto the side of her thing, Jerry's,

Jerry goes and stands at a monitor and while she's talking with Naomi I noticed she kept pushing the same two buttons like literally because she had so much work to do she was just going like top bottom top bottom top bottom top bottom top bottom

I was like isn't it a little more complicated than just I don't know or maybe she had to like input one at the time the same move I don't know but I was like why are you just pushing two of those 25 buttons

when she's doing that Is she next to a graphic? Is there a graphic? Yes. Okay, so that graphic is the same repeated graphic over and over. Maybe that's what you watch that. She does. Yeah, that makes sense.

It's just like up down, up down, up down. I've done that before. I've done the same thing, push the same two buttons. But, you know, I'm not going to criticize. I'm not judging seven because, or I'm going to say Jerry Ryan, because the amount of dialogue that she has, it's understandable. it's understandable. Even little Naomi says that she wants to try downloading this information.

And Seven says, oh, no, our physiology is different. And then Seven says that she'll see Naomi tomorrow for their Cat has caught appointment. And Naomi then asks if she can watch the downloading if we go in process. And Seven just gives her a very funny look there. I don't know what the look was, but it made me laugh. It was a funny. a look of like of death of the it wasn't the same it was her school teacher i get it the look of death you think she gave her the look of death yeah it was a look of death it was the to me it was a look

of reprimand so you can stick with death which is a little harsh for a little girl but you know it was death and it made me laugh if she wanted to kill the child literally okay so that's what made you laugh you l-o-l because it was a look of death okay got you we're in janeway's quarter next. But at Janeway's quarters, yes. Dinner with Chakotay. Goes over to pick up a, like a casserole

or something out of the replicator. She says to Chikote, yeah, they're having a dinner, nice romantic dinner in Janeway's quarter. And she says, Chacote, I have been slaving over this replicator program for hours. And I laughed out loud. That is funny. What a great quote.

Yeah. Slaving over a replicator program. I got to say, Monoski's added some zingers in this one. Yeah, there's got to some good, clever little comedic moments in this episode for sure. Well, she brings up this rumor, this rumor about half the crew on deck five getting pregnant, which was started by none other than yours truly, Tom Paris. You were in sickbay with the doctor who was running generational projections on the sick bay computer. He was just doing some experiments. I looked over at the monitor

and I'm like, oh my God, half of deck five is pregnant. So I jumped to conclusions, Chacote says. And then Neelix found out and he wanted to convert a car. Bay into a nursery. And so there's a whole thing about jumping to conclusions, which is interesting because that's what this episode is about. It pretty much is. It's a nice little, like, it's foreshadowing. It's foreshadowing. Yeah, yeah. I agree. What it's going to be about, the rumors, the jump into conclusions. By the way, I noticed as the credits were going over the scene, I don't know when it happened. It may have been all season, but I saw Jerry Taylor's credit said creative consultant. Oh. And I hadn't noticed that.

before. But I do remember in season six, she was not a full-time member of our writing staff. Michael Miller had left. Then Jerry left. And Jerry was credited as a creative consultant this season. So I don't know how involved. She had vacated her office at this point. Yep. Okay. So she left a lot. She had gone up to her retirement home and was sending emails from a distance. Yes. Yeah. I even think that didn't she open like some antique. bookstore. Does that sound right? Maybe.

I thought that's what happened. Maybe. Okay. Yeah. So Chikote asked permission to take a look at a nearby class K nebula, which is about 25 light years off of Starboard. So it is a detour, but Janeway approves the detour. Some more little witty dialogue and then we move on to Cargo Bay.

He says, yeah, the witty dialogue is basically like Janeway says, well, we are explorers, right? Yeah. And then she asked Chikovie. If he's ready for her home cooking. Yeah. And she remarks it's a recipe. She's never tried. And she says, well, Chacote, we are explorers, right?

Exactly. About her food. That's right. Because he had said we are explorers earlier in his request to see this nebula. Yes, exactly. She was hemming and highing. So she kind of reiterates her, again, brings up the same line, which is nice, sweetie. The replicator program that she's been slaving over for hours.

We go back to her seven's regeneration pod. and seven wakes up and as the camera pushes in. She's concerned. You see the concern on her face and she calls Balana. And Balana's response is you can, it's 0,200.

It's two in the morning. And Rolana's like, this better be important. I have to tell, I have to say to you right now, Roxanne Dawson knocked that VO out of the park. I don't know if she, you know,

woke up right before she did that VO or whatever exercise she did to sound like she had just woke up and was annoyed as hell. It was there entirely in that very brief voiceover that she did. Good job, Torres. We see a space shot of the ship at Warp,

and then we go onto the bridge, and there's Janeway drinking some coffee. Yeah. So it's 0200, and Janeway is on the bridge, which kind of surprised me that she's there. Yeah, after her romantic dinner, it's just the time. I got a little confused about timeline,

but, you know, the ship's. got to work 24-7s. Or could at 0200, maybe that's when the discussion began with 7 about what's going on. And maybe maybe a few hours later, you know, at 5 a.m. or 0500 that we have. Yeah. Okay. Maybe that's why she's got coffee. Yeah.

It's 5.000 the morning, 7 in the morning. Okay. But Janeway is drinking coffee. She sees an interesting graviton fluctuation. Yeah. On sensors, wants to go there instead of Chikote's nebula. Right. Yeah, Tom, you're the one that brings it up. Like, well, aren't we still heading to Chacote's Nebula?

And she says, that can wait. We have to go check out these fluctuations. By the way, when Tom says down front, he says, you know, Chacote's going to be disappointed. The camera is down front. And it's pushing in to Tom as the focus shifts from Janeway in the background to Tom in the foreground and then back to Janeway. Yeah.

And it was out of focus, I'll be honest. Oh. It was not technically. a great executed shot and i just wanted to say if people notice that that tom's a little out of focus he's like in and out for a second yeah that's a hard move to do for the camera to be pushing forward so your focus is moving as the camera moves right and then the focus puller has to guess at janeway walking towards tom in the background where she in focus so she's moving the camera's moving yeah and then roll focus to tom and then roll back to janeway all as the

the camera's moving and Janeway's moving. It's a hard move. And I feel like when I saw that out of focus, I feel like I remember that being a hard move. I remember that shot. And it came back to me like Chris kept going, nope, I don't have it. I don't have it.

Chris Ishi our assistant. He kept going, no, I don't have it. He was getting really frustrated. I remember Marvin coming over. Yeah. It's okay. This is a hard move. Yeah.

It's a simple little shot. But it all of a sudden I just went, Oh, I remember that moment. Chris being very frustrated. Yeah, that makes sense. So Balana and Seven enter from the turbo lift. And Balana basically tells the captain she wants to shut down the sensor network. Censor grid.

The sensor grid. She believes that there's a pair of photonic fleas that have gotten on the ship. And possibly their offspring have made their home in this sensor grid. Yeah. And Seven explains that using her new cortical. processing unit. She's assimilated several terraquads of Voyager's database already in her alco. And she constructed this chain of events that brought the flees. Right. And I love Paris's line. He goes, oh, learn while you sleep. I tried that once. Gave me a headache. Thanks, Joe. I love

it. Good little dad jokes off to the side. But even better was Torres's reaction to your joke, which was she didn't even deadpan. Yeah, so deadpan. It was like, wait a minute. This is your boyfriend. You're supposed to laugh at your boyfriend's jokes, but no. Okay. No, it didn't happen.

But Seven goes through her version for the captain. She goes through this list. Now, this is the beginning of what you were talking about, these long lists of evidence. So she starts talking through, and we have these flashbacks to all these different events. All the things that happened. Yeah. Of Nelix, making a deal. for these spices and right uh there's a there's a shot in the mess hall yeah i thought was a weird

shot of like of the the camera was kind of dutched off of neelix with the spices to replicate the flies correct the fleas is what i guess it was kind of like the fleas path yeah but i have to say that that device in this episode i didn't think it was well done it's not a bad idea but i didn't think the flashbacks felt dynamic right we It just sort of went off of a close-up of seven talking, and then it was just a hard-hick in the cargo bay, right? Yeah, there was no, like, sometimes with those things, when people are listing off things that happened, you'll have like a flash frame, it'll flash, or it'll whip pan, or it'll do something to tell you, oh, we're jumping in time. this just had these weird cuts and I didn't feel like there were strong transitions

so I didn't love that device in this episode whenever she, and there were a lot of them where we flash back to her version of the story I didn't think it was well, it didn't play well for me. Maybe there was so much to do for Terry that he couldn't really give it adequate time, you know? I don't know. I mean, it's interesting.

Thinking back to the previous episode where Bob Picardo directed and had inside, detail every scene transition was pre-thought out and it was for a reason you know going in and out of flashbacks to the to the NASA you know ship or whatever everything was very elegantly transitioned and I and I found coming into this episode it was it was just pretty basic and yeah I thought it it needed a little more style right flashbacks anyway okay no and that's I can I can definitely see that as well um so near So Harry was basically repairing a replicator in the mess hall,

and that's how these little flies ended up attaching to the sensor grid over there. The conduit in the nearby sensor grid has an unlimited supply of these plasma particles, which is the primary food source for these fleas. So every time the fleas tap into the sensor grid whenever they need food, the sensor emitters momentarily lose their resolution, which is bad. So we now- And Tuvok is skeptical on the bridge. You know, everybody's kind of skeptical.

Right. Even me as an audience member, I was like, oh, sevens, you know, something's fritzing and seven's thing. She's wrong. She's got to be wrong. There's something. Something is up. Yeah, we go to the Jeffries tubes. Yes.

We see them climbing up the ladder. I always love when we use that vertical Jeffries tube to climb up. It just makes the ship feel more three-dimensional. It does. But they do climb. So they is seven, Bologna and Janeway. That's right. They climb down this Jeffries tube, open up a panel, and sure enough.

there are fleas yeah mature fleas everyone was right they're everywhere yeah so jayway's happy like her reaction is like oh wow yeah she's like look at you yeah so yeah so at the outset janeway's kind of excited about this new uh downloading of information that seven's doing because it's it's kind of catching things that we couldn't catch on her own now we jump to the bridge and we find the source of the graviton fluctuations we are now hailed by an alien that tells us, you better boost your shields now. We detect a massive graviton surge coming at Voyager. We raise shields.

Voyager is rocked. And the device we find out that is causing this surge, it actually catapults a vessel across space. And Janeway's interest is now peaked. And she says, I can offer you help in repairing the power core, which is now causing all these crazy surges. And we jump over to the briefing room. And by the way, we jumped to the briefing room.

So Tash now has a hoodie on. Yes. He's got a hoodie on. I was like, why is Tash? We just saw him on the view screen. He didn't have a hoodie on. It was a great makeup. Why does he have a hoodie on?

Why is he covered up exactly? I was usually when we have hoodies, it's because it's unfinished in the back. Yeah. It stops right here at the edge. So in this case, they gave him a hoodie. to give him a hoodie, which is fine, I suppose, but not needed, really, to be honest. Yeah.

So we learned that the core, the power core sends a graviton surge through the projectors, which locks onto a ship, and then it sends it hurtling through what he calls null space, which we call subspace, I guess. He's explaining this with some props. He's got like a little thermos and a coffee cup, and he slides it as he explains this catapult.

he slides it down the side of the table into Chocote's hand, which I thought was a cool shot. Yeah. I thought that was a very cool way of visually explaining this catapult. Yeah, that was, I mean, I like that. I like that use of props by, because we don't really do that on our show. We don't use a lot of props that are not specifically props, like tricorders or whatever, but using coffee cups and thermoses is a new thing here.

And by the way, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, But one time when I was at a convention, it was a Star Trek space celebration in Huntsville, Alabama at the Space Center. And that's where I got to interview Buzz Aldrin on stage. I got to moderate a panel. And I remember one of the questions from the audience was, what does he think the future of space travel is going to be? Oh. Buzz's answer was he said, well, there's a couple of things. There's two in particular that at the time, he said, I think one will be like a sailboat where we'll be shooting.

energy into a sail that will pull us through space at a faster rate. But the other, he described, was a catapult concept. He said there's, you know, tests and experiments now on this idea of taking a bunch of energy and catapulting spaceships. And he was talking about real life. Right. I wonder, as I watched this episode, I was like, I wonder if our writers were at the time on top of the same sorts of experiments and that's where they got this idea of a catapult i don't know

or did joe monoski see a recording of that panel of that panel i don't know yeah yeah that's very very cool yeah even buzz was talking about it okay all right so this um this device this catapult evidently will send a vessel hundreds if not thousands of light years away jenway asked if he's tested it or not he says yeah i sent a probe nearly 600 light years, but in the process, the core was destabilized. And he's been trying to fix it ever since. Chacote suggests sending an engineering team over too dangerous. He says, Torres says a few well-timed graviton surges from our reflector dish might adjust the core reaction from afar. And he says, well, yeah, that'd be wonderful, but I have nothing to give you guys for

your help. And Jamie says, no, it's okay. We don't need to get anything from this. But then he comes up with a brilliant offer of, you guys can use the catapult after I use it. So, you know, it's very enticest. It seems like a win-win. Like, yeah, we could cut some time off of our journey home. Agreed. And by the way, at the end of the, at the end of the scene, he's very happy. And we've made this deal. And we're going to help him out. And I love the way he works his nose prosthetic. Yeah, he does that little. He does a little. Yeah. Again, he's a physical clown type actor he's done all this you know movement and acrobatic work so i love the way he worked the prosthetic into some real character choices i like that a lot and the makeup department

also did what you like them to do which is make the hands look like yeah in hands they didn't leave it as human hands so that's that's one plus there as well hey garrett have you been traveling this summer oh my gosh so much already i don't always travel but this summer's been insane trip after trip. You've been doing your impersonation of me. Yes. You know what doesn't belong in everyone's epic summer plans, though? What? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. So while you're planning your beach trips and your barbecues and your three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. Well, that is why I made the switch to Mitt Mobile. The coverage and speed are the same as I'm used to, but the savings. That is the difference. The savings are

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Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. All right. So we do have a shot of seven regenerating in the cargo bay before we move on to Janeway's quarters. And in that download, this time you see on the monitor the space station, this catapult. That's right. You see that she's downloading everything that we've just made this deal with Tash or Tash.

We've made this deal with him, and we've got all this information on the ship's computer. So now she's downloading all of that knowledge into her board systems. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So now we go to Janeway's quarters, and I love this opening line. Seven comes in, and then Janeway says, good morning. And Seven's response, perhaps not.

Good morning. Perhaps not. So Seven says that Tash is trying to deceive us and that his catapult uses the same. technology that was used to trap Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. Jamie says that she didn't pick up anything unusual. And Seven comes up with this theory. She says when the catapult destabilized yesterday, astrometric sensors detected a burst of epsilon radiation, which is one of the byproducts of a tetrion reactor.

Then she then says a coherent tetrion beam is what locked onto Voyager in the alpha quadrant, Voyager was hit by a massive displacement wave, which then pulled Voyager across 70,000 light years in minutes. And the source of that Tetrion beam was the caretakers array. And Tash's catapult essentially does the same thing. Same thing. Janeway considers all this, but she's still skeptical. She is.

Then Seven says he didn't want you to send a repair team over there. Yes. Yes. Right? Yes. Yes. And that's when Janeway's like, oh, so connecting those dogs. 7 maybe you're right maybe he is suspicious trying to hide that tetran reactor so you know now now she's

hooked janeway seven's hook janeway on her on her theories yeah she's at least the beginning of this right she's she's she's put doubt in her mind so she's so the next thing we we see is uh we're in engineering tash is there and the doctor is scanning him yeah well he protests in the beginning he's like is this how you treat a co-worker yeah so he's not happy he's not he's not happy, but the doctor scans him basically says there's no caretaker DNA. We have that in our database, the caretaker info, and there's no DNA, so he's not related to the caretaker in any way. So they ask him about, you know, why didn't he share this information about the Tetrion

beam and the epsilon radiation? Yeah. You know, when we share that, the reactor, and he says, well, he hit it because there were, there's many species out here who would try to steal this. technology and Janeway believes him. She trusts him and she decides to keep going. And she says carry on, right? But she walks away with seven to the side.

And seven's like, well, here's another theory. It wasn't completely destroyed. The array, caretakers' array wasn't completely destroyed. And maybe the reactor actually was, you know, extracted from the array before. Stolen somehow. or stolen, exactly. Yeah, when we destroyed it, maybe someone stole the technology or the parts that they needed to build an array like this.

And so maybe it's not the caretaker himself, but it's someone who stole it. Right. And Seven wants to do more research. And after her success about the photonic fleas, Janeway says, go right ahead. Go do that research. Analyze the debris in our database of the array being destroyed. So we go to astrometrics. And there she is looking at images of the array destruction.

And this is one of those sequences. She's all by herself. Yeah. And she keeps talking to the computer asking techno babble. I wrote seven interrogates the computer. Yes. Yes. But after all those questions, it boils down to she sees possible evidence of a tractor beam that's going on right when the explosion is happening.

Just as the torpedo is exploding, yeah, the array. She finds in an extreme blowup of. the image in the moment as it's being destroyed. What could be a tiny tractor beam. Right. And she does get the information out of this interrogation of the computer. Yes. That the torpedo that was used

had a much higher yield than was necessary. So she does find that out here. Yeah. She goes to the bridge. Seven appears. Yeah. She walks in and interrogates Tuvok in Paris about the destruction of the arrest. But didn't you, to me,

at this point, I said, okay, this is Voyager's episode of suits. These are basically, she's an attorney, she's gathering information for her deposition, and she's going through everything. It's unbelievable. She's also, when she's interrogating Tuvac, I wrote down,

how does he remember the exact yield that he used? Off the top of my head, I remember exactly the, you know, the settings that I have. I can't even remember the settings on my coffee mug this morning. Clearly, you know, clearly Tuvac has a photographic memory.

That's the excuse. Jesus. The, she says that the, the charge that was detonated, basically opened up a hole in subspace. And then she proposes her theory about the tractor beam,

which Tuvok is doubtful. And he says, well, I'm going to need proof. Because until you can show the vessel, yeah, she does, she's like,

oh, okay, let me go and see if I can find more. But yeah, this, this questioning bit, all throughout this episode, I kept thinking everyone is being so nice to seven and just cooperating with her.

No one sitting there going like, I don't need to answer these questions from you. You're really annoying. No one says that at all. And whenever seven hails anybody, like you need to meet me now in astometrics. Everyone's like, sure, I'll be right there. Like nobody says, you come see us. Why are we going to see you? So it was a very interesting.

I want my lawyer. I'm not talking to you unless I have my lawyer. Yes, yes. That's what Tom would have said. That's what Tom. set. But it was kind of, you know, that annoyed me. That was something that kind of got under my skin was the fact that it didn't matter where it was, what time it was, you know, she's barking out commands, like she's the captain, basically, and interrogating everyone. It's

unbelievable. So now we're in the mess hall and Seven is now questioning or interrogating Neelix trying to corroborate her theory. Neelix first says, hey, seven, looking for a midnight snack. I was like, I'm always looking for a midnight snack. Tom is probably, my guess is Tom is in there every night looking for a midnight snack because honestly, in my real life, I love a midnight snack. And the reason why you don't see. I wake up in the morning and there's like crumbs on the counter. I'm like, what happened last night?

Oh, the granola bar. Are you trying to say you sleep eat? Is that what you're saying? And instead of sleep walking, you sleep eat. Yeah, I'll just wake up. I'll go get a sip of juice. I'll have a bite of that cookie. Sure.

All right. I'm so I'm going to say. problem. Tom was already in the mess hall at this point. We could not see him because he's in the refrigerator. That's how he's just getting some juice, midnight juice. Yeah, midnight juice. That sounds naughty. Okay. So Neelix says that Kess always felt something else was going on with the caretaker in the array. And then seven talks about maybe there was a third cloaked ship that was present.

Voyager's sensor logs unfortunately were damaged during the attack so she cannot be sure. and then Neelix says, wait a minute, my vessel. My logs are still intact. I have sensor records. You can have mine. Yes, yes. Thanks, Neelix. Yeah, Neelix, you're a savior.

And then we see the next scene in Cargo Bay with seven downloading Neelix's sensor logs. Another giant hard drive like a shoebox. Really big. Speaking of large technology, every time I see the doctor's hollow emitter, I go, gosh, that thing is bigger than a Polaroid camera. It's like, my goodness, it's too big. Seven's Alcove. She's doing the thing.

And then we go to the space. We see the space station and Voyager outside, which was a cool shot. Back to the bridge and we're about to catapult, Tash. And so we're getting all systems ready. And he finally says, goodbye to you all. And he does that wave that I thought was. It's a very sort of formal, goodbye to you all and sort of swings it around or something. Yes.

Yes. Well, I just want to bring up, looking at Tash on the view screen, his makeup kind of resembles Threshold Paris a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. He's a little bit more dinosaur. He's a little more dinosaur, but he could be a cousin of Threshold Paris. Yeah. And then his garment looks a heck of a lot like Captain Proton's leather bomber jacket. It does. It does. So there's, again, that similarity. The Paris influence always. Yeah, but good job on the visual effects of the catapult. Cool slingshot. Super cool with everything, kind of the energy kind of building up there. That's what Buzz Aldrin thinks the future is.

I'm telling you. Yeah, if you look closely, Buzz is actually there in that scene, I think. Seven Hills, Chacote. He takes off. We go back to the bridge and they're like, okay, it's going to be another couple of hours before we hear from him to see if he even survives, if this worked. Then seven calls Chacote on the brooch in need of his assistance. In astrametrics.

Yes, Chacote pops up and we go to astrometrics. And he walks in and immediately seven says to the computer, computer, seal the doors, deactivate all sensors. Okay, so what's your first thought when someone does that? Romance? No, that they're going to kill you. Oh, yeah. I go to romance.

You went to romance. I went to death because you said the death. stare earlier so i'm in the death you know i'm in that she's a killer yeah she is trouble for sure she's trouble yeah okay um basically she says in this moment jay way stranded us intentionally yes and you intentionally here yeah yeah and i went this is the beginning of seven trying to break up j c shippers seven is trying to well let's be rash talk janeway she is and they is and they're and they They've just been having romantic meals with Janeway slaving over computer programs all day. Yeah, yeah.

And here's those seven starting to break it up. Driving a wedge between the J.C. connection. And again, she kind of, the information she gives, she doesn't come right out and say Janeway. She says, you and the crew have been stranded in the Delta Quadrant intentionally. And then Chikote goes, by who? And she goes, Captain Janeway. And that's when we have the music, the tense music. And we cut to commercials right there, the commercial break.

So we come back from commercial break, and seven continues to say that the captain and Tuvac are involved in a federation conspiracy in collusion with the caretaker and possibly the Cardassians. Cardassians. Yeah. This is crazy talk. Crazy talk with the whole purpose of establishing a military presence in the Delta quadrant. Chikote mentions the Junkata Accord where no species will enter another quadrant for the purpose of territorial expansion. The Federation has signed it. The Cardassians have signed it.

Janeway would never, in a million years, violate that, Chakote says, but the seven starts giving her proof. Gives another long list of proof. But the main thing is that Neelix's sensor logs from his ship shows that a Cardassian warship was there. The caretaker brought a Cardassian over right before Voyager. Right. And that's something new.

It is new. And that it vanished as well. Yeah. Instead of being destroyed. when the caretaker couldn't find a mate, it just vanished. Yeah, so it was returned to the Alpha Quadrant, according to her theory,

to deliver strategic information about the Delta Quadrant. She said that Janeway is using the catapult to bring more ships to the Delta Quadrant, a Federation Cardassian invasion force. Seven asked if Chikote can be certain that she is wrong, and he says, no, he cannot absolutely be certain. So she now sows the seeds of doubt in Chakotay's mind. Yeah, so unfortunate that she talks about that they that they fired tricobalt weapons.

Oh, yeah. He just bring that up. Is this standard on any, and the starship? And he says, no, we don't have those weapons. We don't normally have tricobal weapons. So why did Voyager have those? Yeah. And it's the only weapon that is capable of creating a tear in space.

That's right. So this is all looking like maybe seven's making sense here. Oh, yeah. And she says Janeway and Tuvok knew about these. trichol ball lands so they knew that they could possibly tear make a tear in space yeah um she also thinks that uh kess was suspicious and is that why she was gotten rid of yes that maybe you know which i think is interesting that the writers sort of rewrite history a bit here as if as if you know the interpretation that kess

left the show because of some suspicion and you know whereas No, Kess left the show because of the writers were writing that character off, and they created a story of her, you know, Ocampon evolution and where she was in her life cycle and all of that. But really, it's interesting that you can take almost any situation or any chain of events and make it suit your theory and say, look, this is clearly what's going on. And that is that's happening over and over again. right now with seven there was a lot of by the way seven with all of these long monologues she had and i too was very impressed with the amount of dialogue and information she was able to remember

but a lot of it was staged in a way that she was just pacing do you remember yes oh yeah and i didn't like the pacing i felt like that was unnecessary it was no and i i think he also you don't like it because subconsciously that's what you do when georgia is not doing what you want them. Right. That's true. So my football team is losing as they were for most of the game this last week. Yeah. You pace. You pace. You pace. You're a pacer. And so subconsciously seeing seven pace makes you think of Georgia losing. Gives me football anxiety. Yeah. It gives you the hebe jibis. Okay. Basically we end the scene though with Chukote saying, well, he can't be certain. He admits it can't be certain that her theory is wrong. That's right. And seven says just don't let her

take control of the catapult. Right. And that's how we go out on that scene. So, sewing the seeds of doubt. So we go to the bridge, and the first thing I noticed in this scene, Chakotay's back on the bridge, and there's kind of a side angle on a close-up on him. Yeah. I noticed his tattoo was very faded. And do you remember that, you know, that was-

What are you talking about? His tattoo on the face tattoo, the Chikote tattoo. Oh, I thought you said, Tukotu. Oh, I thought you said Tuvok's tattoo was very faded. No, Chikote. Okay, Chikote's, you know, forehead tattoo was very faded and all of a sudden I went well why was it faded because it was put by hand every day correct um Michael Westmore did it himself correct and the only time it ever

got faded was when we were on the bridge for lots and lots of scenes yeah and at near the end of the day it would just you know the perspiration or body oil everything oil whatever repelled the so this scene must have been filmed at the end of a long day because that tattoo was very very faded yes agree good catch good catch but we do find out on the bridge that tash has has had success he made it yeah and we get some communications now from him he's going to send the modifications shield modifications so that we can use this technology right and he does a he says at the end he says good luck and he does this hand gesture this like clasped hand gesture i don't know what he was doing yeah he does it was

like good luck i don't know he kind of was like that it was like that it was like like good luck yeah it was like trying to i don't know what he was doing but it was it was definitely a holdover from acrocosm yeah i wonder if any of that was scripted or if albie just did this himself yeah you know question probably probably did it himself i doubt those gestures were suggested in the script i think it's something you probably added i think so too yeah i think so too So it's interesting because, you know, all that information, you know, is on a pad and Harry's going to take it down. But then Chakotay's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, give that to me. So now, you know, Kim, Kim kind of gives him a bit of a look.

He's like, what's happening here? I'm not sure. But, you know, he doesn't question it. He hands Chacote the pad and he heads over with the telemetry to engineering. He does. When he walks into engineering, by the way, his tattoo is dark. darker again. So this must have been an early scene in the day that was filmed because from the bridge

to engineering, which is supposed to be moments later, the tattoo changes very distinctly. Now you see. But he says to Bologna, he says he wants a small change, like a 0.03 variance in the shield modification. And basically, he's trying to disrupt the plan of us using this. so he doesn't want the captain to be able to use it yet. Yeah. So he's basically asking Bala to fudge the numbers is what he's doing so that it'll cause

some issues where they have to spend hours to fix it again. So that's what he's trying to do. We go to space. I think this is another commercial break. They talk about it and she thinks that she should go talk to the captain. Balana says she thinks she should go talk to the captain. Right. And he says, no, no, no, let's just buy some time.

Don't talk to her directly about this. And then Harry comes in. Yeah. And Harry says, hey, the captain sent me down to help you guys. And Chocote is like, no, thanks, Harry, too many cooks in the kitchen. We've got this covered. We don't need your help. Go, go away.

I felt bad for you. You sort of look back and you, like, climbed up the stairs again. I did. Did you notice what I did when I was walking up the stairs? Uh-uh. I hike up the pant leg of, I had just. my uniform because it doesn't bend it doesn't stretch no because and also those steps were the gaps between each step were pretty high yeah they were high so I was afraid that I was going to tear

my uniform in the crotch of the pants I thought it was you know and it's because it's more like a ladder than stairs yeah so I had to do that little adjustment for every take because I felt like oh my gosh it's going to my pants they're going to split right in the butt and every single, because I feel like all of us tore our pants. At one point in another, yes, we did tear our pants. Yes. So that was an actual concern of mine to exit that scene to not tear my pants. Exactly.

And I, and I remembered it from watching. I was like, that's what I was doing. I forgot because I, you see my hand kind of move across my uniform. Like, it's pulling it up a certain way. And that's what I was doing. That's what it is. Yeah.

We go to Sevens Alcove next. And there's another download. And then she wakes up. up and Seven calls Janeway this time. It's urgent. Yeah. I need to speak with you in the astrometrics lab. And Janeway says she's on her way. And when Janeway does arrive to astrometrics, seven has already made her way over there from Cargo Bay 2. And she again says exactly the same thing. She says computer, seal the door and deactivate internal sensors in this room and computer acknowledges. And Janeway is confused. And now she just again, just lays it out there.

She says Chikote and the other Maki crew are trying to start a rebellion. Another wedge between the J.C. romance. But Janeway thinks she's joking. She thinks she's joking because, yeah, she goes, wait a minute, did Chacote put you up to this? She has sort of a winky eye that I thought was great. It's amazing.

She's like, come on, really? It's funny. Cusca's gone, really? Come on now. but seven basically uses all the same evidence yes she kind of repeats herself that she used with chokote but this time instead of accusing janeway like she did with chokote she's accusing chokote in the monkee yeah and uh i i just i think it's yeah it's amazing like you said before how you can take the same pieces of evidence and look at them from a different angle and it sounds like

you're justified when it's all just assumptions. Yeah, completely. So she's saying that Chikote and the Maki are going to use the catapult against the Cardassian and Federation ships. So they're going to attack the Federation and the Cardassians. So it's kind of like, oh, my goodness, you know, she's making all this stuff up again. And she also says to Janeway that this time in her evidence, she says Tuvok was collaborating with Chikotel.

And they tried to take control of the array, but they failed. And James was like, that's not possible seven. But then seven has more evidence that Tuvonk assisted Chikote in plotting a course, you know. And it's unbelievable, exact same information. Tricobalt devices, the same thing with a theory about the tractor beam being there and the cloak ship. And that Tuvok did this on purpose because he was trying to deliver the catapult to Tash who was waiting for it. They were in a deal with him. Yeah.

And Jamie's like trying to convince her that she's making a mountain out of a mole here. She even says to seven in the scene, she says, there is no one that I trust more than Chukotay. Right. And I was like, yes. That's my JCPers. That's my JCP attitude. Yes. Yeah, but she goes into this long list of things, including his involvement with CESCA and how he was not completely transparent about that.

Yeah. In fact, doesn't the scene end with her just mid-talk? She's still like spewing all this information out. Yeah. He's out on that. And Janeway listening to Seven, just going down this list of, you know, the trades with a collari and touch around power cells. And you can see Janeway's getting, as this list goes on and on, Janeway's starting to be

shaken by it a bit. Yeah. It's getting under her skin for sure. We go to the hallway next. And Naomi catches Seven walking down the hallway. And immediately, Naomi's like, what's wrong? And Seven is nasty. to her she's like your father was cartarian right she's like yeah so and and seven's like they sympathize

with the marquee naomi's like what are you talking about yeah seven is so paranoid she's she's gonna kill this child yeah yeah and then when she says who are you working for jacote or the captain because up until this point until this scene i thought well maybe she isn't malfunctioning maybe she is discovering things. No, she's not functioning. She's completely malfunctioning. We go to Cargo Bay and Chacote's there and Janeway enters and Chacote says, oh, I was here to check on a power surge that I detected. And Janeway comes in and says, me too. I think the same thing. They're very suspicious of each other. And they come clean. They accuse each other of like. But again, very, very, very well written and very creatively, you know, laid out in this scene and how they come clean to each other. They come

clean they realize that this is all seven's paranoia and as they're leaving i like when janeway says let's just keep this one out of our logs shall we they agree and she does put her hand on his chest which i've always said is that romantic gesture there you go there you go the jc lovers out there yeah the hand on the chest happens yeah and before the hand on the chest and before the let's not put this in our logs we do get harry kim hailing captain janeway bridge captain janeway he just picked up an unauthorized launch of the Delta Flyer with 7 at the helm. So that's what kind of, you know, facilitates it. Yes, it gets them out of this scene.

Exactly. Yeah. We cut over to the Delta Flyer for a minute and 7 is piloting the Delta Flyer. Yeah. And by the way, does everybody pilot everything now? Anybody can fly in it? Like, there's 7. She's like using the knobs that Tom put in there that are the tactile, you know, controls.

she's using the knobs even to fly the thing. Anybody can fly anything now, I guess. Oh, my gosh. I was a little jealous. Is it worry you a little bit? It does. It does. It's job security.

We go to the bridge, Janeway and Chiquote, enter. Do you hear what I said to you before that? I was like, that's because you left the keys in the Delta Flyer. You're not supposed to leave the keys there for her to take it. You're right. You're right. Okay. All right.

Continue. you? Yeah, we're on the bridge. We're on the bridge. Janeway and Chikote enter. Tuvac says that seven is headed towards the catapult. Yeah. Harry says that she's altered her biosignature. So we can't beam her out. Can't even get a lock on her because she's changed her biosignature. Janeway says fire at her. Like stop her. We go to space. We see that she avoids the shot. And then the doctor calls the bridge and basically says he's down in the regeneration alcove analyzing what's been going on. And he realizes that there's just too much data in her cortical implants. And she's trying to make sense of all this information, but it's more than she can process. She's overloaded

her systems. And then Chikote says he wants to go. Yeah, Janeway says she's going to beam over the Delta Flyer. Chkote says, look, I'm going with you. She's like, no, no, no, no. I think I have a about a chance of getting through to her by myself, not with you there. And then Chikotay, yeah, he goes, oh, this isn't part of your mission, is it? So they're still giving each other crap, which is kind of funny. And Janeway is like, oh, is it part of yours? Is this part of your mission? So they're still suspicious.

They can't quite shake it. No, it's very funny. We go over to the Delta Flyer, Janeway beams in, tries to step forward, and there's a force field. Seven set up a force field. So Jamie can't get to her physically. Yeah, it was very graceful how Kate got stopped by that force field. Yes.

Like typically when I've done scenes where a force field's there, I bounce off of it. Like, whoa, Janeway's like kind of gracefully ballet like kind of coming in. Well, and she stops. We know that Janeway has done the dying swan ballet. The dying swan ballet helps her when she walks into Forstfield. That little reference in an earlier episode has explained so much to me that Janeway has ballet training and has this elegant, very sophisticated way of movement. It just explains so much.

Okay, good. You know, Janeway says there is no conspiracy seven. Right. And seven goes into this long, yes, there is a conspiracy. And she goes through this evidence that ultimately says, this is a new one, that now she's decided that seven is the captain's mission, that they want to, that everything they've done has been to get seven captured and send her back to the AlphaQuire. so she can get dissected.

Yeah. So they're going to cut her to pieces to sort of get more, you know, information on Borg drones so they can fight Borg drones more effectively. It's just completely off the deep end at this point. And Janeway says, no, this is a conspiracy of one. It's you. It's you're creating these. You're generating theory after theory to deal with the chaos of the overload of your systems.

You've dumped too much data into your, your system yeah and janeway says anything i say gets woven into your paranoia right that was a great line yeah because i've been in that situation with in real life yeah they're like i can't talk my way out of what someone else has already decided they have decided and whatever i say just gets woven into that same story agreed people get so attached to their stories agreed but i do i do like joe's writing here because he then you know the way he has Janeway get through to seven is really kind of she starts taking. Yeah, she's using her own medicine.

She's kind of using that she becomes the interrogator. She becomes the prosecutor, the head, the lead DA in this case and starts. But when she says it, though, the difference, Robbie, I felt was that everything coming out of Janeway is very soft, very calm, very relaxed. There isn't that that seven of nine sort of manic sort of. And where were you on the night of the 30th? know and you did this and then jane was just like and then you know janeway you know told seven to do and so she's talking in third person in this she's talking in third person she's going through this timeline and

i love that janeway could remember all these specific star dates yeah star date blah blah blah blah this happened and star date blah blah blah blah blah blah blah well i love i showed you love this way yeah she messed She gets to the very end. She does ultimately say, trust me, trust me, seven. Right. Seven, obviously, Janeway got through to her. Yeah, seven's response is, it was star date 5-2-8-42 at 0,600 hours in the mess hall. And we had just finished breakfast.

Yes. She remembers. Yeah. Of the point when she first said, thank you to Captain Janeway. So very moving scene. It actually was. Yeah. I think if the music was a little bit better, I might have had some tears.

Sometimes that'll push me over, but yeah. Anyway, but seven lowers the force field. Jane would say, trust me, she lowers the force field. Yeah. And then we go to space. We hear a captain's log that we did use the catapult. Yeah. Bridger used it.

We catapulted three years. Three years off her journey. Ahead of our journey after we get the captain's log and all is good. We go to cargo bay two and seven has been repaired and she's working in there and Naomi entered. Yeah. And Naomi tells her that she has assimilated, she says, I have assimilated three books and 10 reports, seven.

And then Naomi says, hey, what are you doing? Are you taking your alcove apart? Yeah. And seven responds. She says, no, it's not broken. It worked, but I didn't function properly. Yeah. And seven tells Naomi that it's important to learn slowly.

Yeah. So that information can be digested and appreciated. and appreciated properly. Yeah. And she then says, like playing Catascot. Meet me in Mess Hall. And Naomi runs off to go wait for her to play Catascott.

And we go off a seven there. It's a very sweet ending. I love the bookend with Naomi. I love having a kid on the show. I wish we had more Naomi Wildman scenes with everybody. It just brings out great stuff. Yeah. So the very last scene,

we're now in Jamway's quarters. and we have a little bit more, a little repartee between Janeway, Chacote. Janeway talks about saying that she heard the strangest rumor today, and apparently the captain, the first officer, almost came to blows. Chacote says, mutiny? And Janeway says, well, the first officer walked the plank, so I heard.

So I, again, really just creative dialogue, lighthearted, you know, still sort of like not entirely trusting the other person, but still throwing those little barbs out. left and right. But then they sort of come to a reckoning, you know. Chacote says, well, seven was malfunctioning, but we don't have that excuse. And Janeway's like, yeah, you know, you're right. We've been through so much together.

We need to make sure that we keep trust each other, you know? And Chocote goes, yeah, you didn't poison the coffee, did you? So it's still happening. And Janeway's like not any more than I usually do. And again, very funny. The job with Joe Monoskey and his dialogue. Yeah. My theme, my lesson for this episode is that sometimes too much information can create confusion.

Yeah. Just to go slowly and verify. You know, just like Seven tells Naomi to, you know, go slowly so you can digest the information and appreciate it and process it properly. You can't just like Google a million things to verify, to, you know, to line up with whatever you believe to begin with because anybody can, you know, I think we've all learned that and with the, you know, the internet these days is you can find something that will verify a story if you want to. Okay. So go slowly, verify that you're finding things that are really true and digest it. So you can, you know, you can act properly. Yeah. What about you?

What's your theme? Yeah. Um, similar. Similar. It's sort of the age old fable of the tortoise and the hair in that race and slow and steady wins the race slow and steady wins the race moderation is key instead of you know engaging in this excessive behavior because really she was trying to cut down the she was trying to be more efficient and she was trying to to basically do things faster you know and sometimes faster is not the way to go because whenever you rush yourself guess what happens You overlook things, right? You miss things.

You don't smell the roses. You're just rushing around like a rat in a maze. And so really, I think the lesson here is just to take it easy, you know. Moderation is key. Don't rush because you're going to make a mistake. It reminds me of, I remember when my kids were young, the school that they went to was a bit of a different kind of unconventional kind of learning. Crossroads?

Yeah. They went to Wildwood. Wildwood, yes. But I remember one night that, the head of the school was talking about in the high school as they were just opening this high school. It had been in elementary school first and they were opening a high school and they wanted to do things a little differently. And they said, look, in high school, a normal high school as a freshman, you might read, you know, six books in English class that year and do reports on the

six books and blah, blah, blah. She said, we're only going to read one book, but we're going to dive deeply into that one book. Wow. And we're going to cross it over into when that book was written. We'll study the history of that time when that book was written. So that you're not only reading the book for its literature value, but you're reading it in the context of learning in your history lessons, about the time it was written.

And then we're going to use math. We're going to find ways of crossing math into it. So our math lessons will relate to some of the theme. So they're only going to read one. book all year. So don't be panicked when they're not reading six or eight books. Yeah. But they're going to learn how to think deeper. And I love that, that way of thinking of, you know, just because you read 100 books doesn't mean you've thought about them deeply. You know, it's better to read one book and really squeeze every ounce and every lesson out of it and know the context and all

that. So I, that just comes to mind as we're talking about Seven's lesson in this episode. Yeah. No, that's an interesting story. And on that note, Robbie and I are only going to review one episode from season seven. And we're going to just go deep dive into that episode. And then we're going to learn math and history from that one episode. We're not going to do that. But still, it's very interesting because you don't, you're right, you don't do that in high school. You expose yourself to a lot of different books and to be able to have one for that freshman year.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So time for our ratings. Your rating and my rating of this episode. Yes.

So what do you give this episode? Even though I like the lesson of this episode, the intellectual idea of it. And even though I'm very impressed with Jerry Ryan's performance and a lot of performances, it did not grab me this episode. I struggled to stay along for the ride. I'm going to give it a 6.8. Okay.

And a lot of it had to do with the transitions as well. They didn't jump this. Yeah, just the, yeah, I think the, to feel more dynamic and emotionally engaging or visually engaging, that could have helped for sure. Okay. So 6.8. All right. I'm going to give it a 7.1. So I'll give it a little bit, a little bit higher than you. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Well, here we go with our Admiral and Captain average rating for the Voyager conspiracy. 7.7. Oh, 7.7. Wow. Oh, they liked it.

They did. They liked it. I'm kind of surprised. Yeah, I mean, but I'm surprised, but I'm not surprised because the format of this show is so different from everything else that I think that there's some people that gravitated towards it saying, oh, I like this episode. It's so different from every other Voyager episode.

Yeah, 7.7. All right, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to our recap and discussion of the, Voyager Conspiracy. Join Robbie and I next week when we talk about the episode Pathfinder. For all of you, Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material.