The Delta Flyers - Trials and Tribble-ations

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.This week’s episode, Trials and Tribble-ations, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell, Armin Shimerman, and special guest Jonathan West.Trials and Tribble-ations: A Klingon spy takes the Defiant back in time to plant an exploding tribble on the original starship Enterprise; the crew must stop the fiendish plot while not arousing the suspicions of the original Enterprise's crew.We would like to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers, Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Sandra Stengel, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, Roxane Ray, Andrew Duncan, Tim Neumark, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Jenny Cordina, Izzy Jaffer, Andrew Cano, Francesca Garibaldi, Jonathan Capps, Chris Dellman, Chris Garis, Sean T, Cindy Woodford, Interstellar Tess, & Tamara Evans. Our Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sarah A Gubbins, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Cindy Ring, Lee Lisle, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, David Wei Liu, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Randy Hawke, Penny Liu, Matt Norris, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Heath K., Ryan Mahieu, Robby Hill, Kevin Harlow, Megan Doyle, Jeff Allen, & Linda Paiges. And our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Jake Barrett, Sab Ewell, Ann Harding, Trip Lives, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carl Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Chad Awkerman, AJ Provance, Maxine Soloway, Heidi McLellan, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Kelly Brown, Sarah Thompson, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Renee Wiley, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Sarah, Dominique Weidle, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, Heather Selig, Steph Davies, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, Annie Davey, Jeremy Gaskin, Sarah Dunnevant, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Eddie Dawson, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, PJ Pick, Preston M, Rebecca Leary, SnazzyO, Karen Galleski, Jan Hanford, Katelynn Burmark, Timothy McMichens, Cassandra Girard, Andrea Wilson, Slacktwaddle, Willow Whitcomb, Mo, Leslie Ford, Jim Poesl, Daniel Chu, Scott Bowling, Michael Jones, Ed Jarot, James Vanhaerent, Nick Cook-West, Brian Heckathorne, Kilian Trapp, Katherine M. Prioli, Nelson Silveira, Kit Marie Rackley, Gordon Watson, Andy Bruce, Durrell Bishop, Andrew Golden, & Ryan Tomei.Thank you for your support!This Podcast is recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.“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, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] Sponsors:* Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers journey through the wormhole with Quark, Dax, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we make our way through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your host for today are my fellow Trek actors, Armand Shimmerman, Robert Duncan McNeil, Garrett Wong, and special, special guest, one of my favorite people on the planet, Jonathan West. Well, and of course, myself, Terry Farrell. Grand. Welcome, welcome, Jonathan. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks, everybody.

Oh, boy. For the complete and exciting version of this podcast, please check out patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers and sign up to become a patron today. You won't regret it. All right. Jonathan, welcome. We are so excited to have you here. Thank you. I am too. It's been a lot of years since we really discussed this at detail. And I really have never discussed it in detail on camera. This is the place. It's like breaking news on the Delta Flyers. We're going to get the scoop for everybody. I brought a friend.

Yeah. That's in trouble. Is that from the episode? From the episode, yeah. It's the only one I got. And you know, it's been in storage for 30 years or so. And it hasn't multiplied yet. I'm waiting.

Oh, lucky you. I don't get it. That looks like the one that had the tricobalt device in it. Yeah, it does. It's kind of that brownish color. It might be the one. Yeah. It's the eunuch treble.

The unique trouble. I love it. It's unique anyway. Yes. All right. For all of our listeners out there, just so you know how this happened in terms of how did we get Jonathan West, we had Jonathan on as one of our special interviews, and that's only available to our Patreon patron.

So that's another reason to check it out. Robbie and I and Armin had an amazing interview with Jonathan. And we came to the realization that he directed the Trials and Tribulations episode. But during that time that he was directing it, nobody interviewed him. It's crazy. It's crazy to me. Periodically? Sinafantastique magazine devoted something like 20 pages of their sci-fi magazine to this episode alone.

They talked to everybody, wardrobe supervisor, stunt coordinator, every single person but Jonathan West. Robbie and I said, and we said, look, we're going to have you on as our special guests when we talk about recap and discuss this episode because you have to have the time, the spotlight to be able to talk about this episode. Oh, we're not going to let him say a word. Not a word. Stop right there. Stop right there.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. So this is the scoop. Everybody listening, this is, you're getting the scoop, the first time interview on this episode from Jonathan's memories and his story. So this is very exciting. And the Delta Flyers have brought this moment to you. So we're so happy to have Jonathan here. Delta Flyers.

Yeah, he's wearing the hat too. He's got the shirt. Look at that. He's got the merch. Excellent. All right. Before we get into it, let's do some birthdays real quick. Let's do.

I want to shout out to Jonathan Brooks on January 12th. Happy birthday, Jonathan. Happy birthday, Jonathan. Happy birthday, Jonathan. Happy birthday, Jonathan. I don't know you, but happy birthday. The same name, but you share the same name. Yes, you do.

Happy birthday. Birthday, Jonathan, January 12th. And next we have Seth Carlson, January 14th. A very happy birthday to you, Seth. Happy birthday, Seth. Ditto, Seth. Happy birthday, Seth. Happy birthday, Seth.

Next up, we have on January 17th, that's the birthday of Jeremy Gaskin. Happy birthday, Jeremy. Happy birthday, Jeremy. Happy birthday, Jeremy. Happy, happy birthday, Jeremy. And finally, a big happy birthday to death. Dat, cow. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly on January 18th. Happy birthday, Dad.

Happy birthday, Dad. Happy birthday, Dad. Happy birthday, Dad. Happy birthday, Dad. All righty, there we go. Those are our birthdays. We also have a new profit. So we just want to, he's not a new subscriber. He's been subscribing for a while. He's been a Patreon patron, but he has now moved to the profit level. So congratulations. Wow. He's a God. Welcome. He's made a commitment. He's made a big, commitment. Welcome to Chris Delman for being a new profit. Thank you, Chris, and welcome. Welcome, Chris. Welcome, Chris. Great to have you here. Yeah, welcome, Chris. Now tell me my future. Exactly. All right, it's now time for our poetry synopsis breakdown of this episode, and we'll start

with Robbie's Limerick, and I will follow with my haiku. And Terry's got a little poetry. Terry has a little Okay. Armands got a little. This is going to be an... Etymology. Yes, a class in arts and sciences. Here we go. My Limerick. A time travel orb sent them back through time and space,

sending Dax into her very nostalgic place. She swooned over Spock. Cisco stayed steady as a rock, keeping Kirk alive and tribbles safe on the base. Nice. Good job. Thank you. Very nice.

Terry, what's your poetry? What's your arts and sciences? My little arts and sciences? Yes. Get to play dress-up in 1967. Our gangs in Starfleet heaven, drooling to meet Spock and Kirk. Can't be.

Disrupt the timeline jerk. Disrupt is a really hard word for me, clearly. That's a good, that's a very good poem. It is. How many poems do we get with the word? jerk, rhyming the word jerk. Well, how many times do you bring Kirk into it? But, I mean, there is not another opportunity in this show, I don't think.

This is Kirk's only appearance in DS9 that I'm aware of. Kirk and Spock's only appearance. Yeah, we have a lot. I think so. Yeah. Here's my haiku for the episode trials and tribulations. Temporal agents. Our heroes join past heroes.

Trib bomb found. Kirk, good. I love. Thanks you. Wow. Hey. Good stuff. You like how I took Tribal and made it Tribalm instead?

Yes. Yeah. All right. Armand, what is your etymology? Well, for this episode, I have three words. Okay, we'll start with trial, which is from the Scottish triel. or try all. And the definition is the examination and determination of a cause by a judicial tribunal,

determination of the guilt or innocence of an accused person by a court. The second word is tribulation. And that's from the old French word, tribulation from the 12th century. A condition of a great affliction, oppression or me. misery. Tribble, there's no word in the old English dictionary for Tribble. Really? It just is what it is. But I just am putting this together.

The word Tribal that they invented, tribles are a tribulation. They're like a pox, a curse. Well, I'm sure that's part of the triple life. They used it. Tribulation, yeah. Maybe Jonathan knows. Jonathan, you know why they chose? Well, Tribble was already in the 1967 episode.

So yeah. But maybe it came originally from tribulation, that it was a curse of something. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. We'd have to ask the original writer, David Gerald, about that problem. He's still around, isn't he? I think I have his phone number.

Should we call him? Yes, we should. Oh. At his house. Probably not. I don't have anything poetic because I didn't know I was supposed to. You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to.

No, no. I just brought to the table this stuff. that I... Yeah, exactly. You have a lot to contribute, Jonathan. I don't think you need to worry about adding more. There is verse and there's etymology, but you have the Bible. True.

All right. Let's talk about the story. This story is by Iris Stephen Bear and Hans Bimler and Robert Hewitt Wolf. All those ends are ampersand ans. Tell a play by Ronald D. Moore and Renner. a Schiavera, directed by our esteemed friend, Jonathan West. And yes, guest stars. And if anyone has any comments about any of these people, please chime in.

First of all, we have Jack Blessing as Domer, one of the temporal agents, James W. Jansen as the other temporal agent. Better known as Jim Jensen, he and I were a tag team on a movie of the week together. Oh, that's great. His height and my shortness were just fine. Wow. And after we did the Star Trek episode, I did an independent feature film that I directed and produced, and I cast Jim as a U.S. Republican senator at a convention, and he lent some beautiful work on that. Oh, nice.

I can totally see him doing that. Yeah. Look at that. I don't know if you guys notice their character names, but it is actually a tributtal. to the television show X-Files. The two main characters are Molder and Scully. Those are the FBI agents. And if you look at Domer,

Domer, if you reverse the word. The syllable, yeah. It's Molder. And so it's based, and then Luxley is actually Scully, kind of reversed a jumbled up words there. So they use the same letters and they turned it into a new names. It's called the Anagram. It's going to say, isn't there a name for that?

There is. But it's not a... Listen to Jonathan, he just told you. It's all the stuff I didn't learn in the senior year of high school. Right. You were working. You were working. Exactly.

We also have Charlie Brill reprising his role as Arne Darwin from the original series episode. So it's amazing that he was so excited. Was he? Yes. So thrilled. Is this wife's name Mitzie? Mitzie.

And they were a tag team. on laugh-in, by the way. Yes. They were so much fun to have on the set because they're so kind and excited and they shared great stories, just really, really sweet people. Yeah. And I suppose you're friends with them, aren't you, Armin? I am.

Yeah, Armin knows Charlie. All right. Co-stars, we have Leslie Ackerman. Leslie Ackerman played the waitress in the bar or whatever you call it on K-7. space K-7. I was close friends with Leslie at the time. She was in the middle of doing a TV movie and I knew this part was coming up. She had been doing so much work over the years at Universal, practically guest starring at every thing that they did. But her career was kind of winding down a little bit and I asked her if she would audition for this role. Later on, we became

co-producers together on that feature I was discussing. And then in 2002 she became my manager she's been my manager for the last 20 some odd years oh so we're still close friends yeah so leslie is very talented actress and she was kind of yeah she was great she was great her bravo from us she got the the tone of the period just perfect so between her acting and your directing it was just perfect and arman she worked with you on women at west point oh look at arm's face oh i love that you don't see that look on his face very often. No.

She was the second banana. That is the first time I ever worked on camera. Oh, really? Whoa. Wow. Wow. I just had moved to New York and got cast in that and they shipped me to West Point. If we work together.

Oh, you talked about this job before. Her and Linda Pearl were like the two leads. I loved Linda Pearl. And you were the instructor. I was a teacher. You were the instructor in the math class. Yeah, I won't go into it. Oh my God.

That is years ago. I wanted to add, I watched the original series Trouble with Tribbles and specifically wanted to check out her costume of the original. And yeah, and it was remarkable how well she captured the tone and everything. Because for a minute watching it, I thought, is that cut out from the original show? I watched our show first and then I watched the original. But she, even, it was crazy. It looked like you pulled her right out of time. She did such an amazing job.

Good, good. She'll appreciate that comment. Oh, yeah. Amazing. All right. Next up on the co-star list, we have Charles S. Chun as the engineer, who also did a really good job. So this is a char-I don't know Charlie Brill, but I know Charlie Chun. Charlie Chun is another Asian-American actor that was auditioning for the same roles that I was auditioning. for at the time. Charlie and I actually had an acting workshop together that we attended at one point.

And I was so surprised to see him. And again, he also captured that 60s era sort of dialogue. He did. He was great. So I can't wait to bump into Charlie to say congrats. Oh, yeah. And especially he's such a small part. It's always harder to come in and have it all full. And he did. He was great. Oh, yeah. He's the new kid in school, basically. Anyone guest starring, right? So coming in like that and pulling it off is good job for Charlie. Yeah. We also have Deidre L. Emershine as Lieutenant Watley. Right.

Now I know her. Okay. Her husband is Joe Hage. So her last name now is Hage, H-A-J. Joe Hage, for those theater of nerves out there, runs the Guthrie Theater. Oh, wow. Oh, in Minnesota. Okay.

Yeah. Wow. And for those of you who don't know the Guthrie Theater, and the reason we got these reality, actions from everybody here is the Guthrie Theater is the premier regional theater in the country. It's the next step down below Broadway. So, uh, and Joe has been the artistic director there for several years. He cast me as the fool in King Lear and it was a glorious production. And I'm sure Deidre and I must have crossed paths. I just don't remember. But when I found out she was Joe's wife,

I was, I was gobsmacked. Wow. Is she still acting? I don't know. I don't know. I would hope that Joe puts her in a production or two. I'm sure he does. Well, Armin, the Guthrie, if I'm not mistaken, is probably the most well-endowed regional theater in the country in terms of their funding from what I've heard. Minnesota is incredibly kind about the arts, and I don't want to go on too much about this,

but if I remember correctly, 3% of the state budget goes to the arts. Wow. And the Guthrie is the primary artistic venture in Minnesota. soda. There may be others who would argue with me, but that is, and the Guthrie Theater is, is, it has four theaters, three restaurants, it's an institution. Wow. Is it in Minneapolis? Yes, it's in Minneapolis. Right on the Mississippi River, right on the Mississippi River. Oh, wow. I've never been. That would be a good journeyman's trip to just experience it. And just to put a fine point on

it, there's, there's an actor who works there all the time. His name is. name is Remy Obert Junaway. You can see the connection. Oh my gosh. He's so sweet. And Remy works and his wife, they all work at the Guthrie on a regular basis. Oh my gosh. Okay.

All right. Time for a little bit of trivia. This episode, Trials and Tribulations, was conceived as a tribute to Star Trek the original series. This was to coincide with Star Trek's 30th anniversary. So Paramount actually asked executive producer Iris Stephen Bear to come up. with a suitable story to mark the event, the 30th anniversary of Star Trek.

So the writing staff got together, and they started brainstorming, and they started thinking about what episodes from the original series that they can hearken back to. Iris Stephen Bear really loved the episode Charlie X. And then it was, I think it was René Ischavaria, because Ron Moore also liked an episode

called A Piece of the Action. That was the original series. So they were fighting over which episode. Renee Ischavaria was the one. who said that, hey, we can possibly revisit a classic episode using original footage from that episode. And so they were sitting here discussing this actually at a pizza restaurant. And as they're sitting there, Charlie Brill was also eating at the bar with his wife. And so can you believe?

Charlie and Mitsu were at the same place. At the same place because they had actually said, why don't we try the trouble with triples? And as they said that, someone looked at. looked up and go, is that the actor from trouble with dribbles? And they're like, it is. And so they walked up to him and said, hey, we are thinking of possibly using, you know, the episode you worked on many, many moons ago as our episode, we're going to base our Deep Space Nine episode.

And Charlie was thrilled. I mean, he's like, what? You want to read? I get another shot at this. So, I mean, it was just kismet, basically, that this happened. Wow. Yeah, that was Ira who looked up and saw him. Was it Ira who saw him?

Yeah. Did they talk, tell you about this at the time, Jonathan? Yeah, did you know? No, I know after the fact when we were doing the deep space nine retrospective documentaries, I found out about it then. That was in 2016. It makes sense, though, because we had to scramble. It was so much work.

It's funny because Bear, Irish Stephen Bear was joking in a DVD audio commentary that because of them seeing Brill at the restaurant, that that proved that God was a Deep Space Nine fan. That's what I talked about. And then Charlie Brill joked the fact that he was happy that him and his wife decided not to go to Chinese food and went to the pizza place. Because if they went to half Chinese, they never would have been part of this whole thing. It's a Star Trek miracle. It is.

And we wouldn't be doing this. They would have tried to find him probably. Or somebody. Yeah. But still, it's pretty cool how they. I do have something to add to this, though. Yes. Please.

We made television history by doing this episode. never before had two franchise shows been married in the same episode. Wow. And the technology doing it and how they did such a great job. Jonathan West did such a great job. The writers, everybody. I think we had two or three days of green screen doing the stuff that we were doing on the bridge alone. Wow.

But it was so well done. but just the pride of being not only part of Star Trek, but Star Trek living up to the legacy of having ideas that turn into advanced technology for us, that we did something in film that was, you know. A first. A first. Yes, it just gives me goosebumps.

It makes me so proud of everybody who's a part of Star Trek and so proud to be a part of it. Yeah. And to add to that, if I may ask Jonathan, if I may ask Jonathan, So Terry just talked about how much it was a first. I want you to tell us now about what are the things you had to do as far as to make it work, to make us make the actors fit into the old footage.

Well, I'll preface it by saying I have to give a huge nod to Gary Hutzel, the late Gary Hutzel, unfortunately. But he was the visual effects supervisor. He's the one after I got the job, which I questioned why I was getting it. And then I soon found out why, because it was such a technical piece of work that had to be accomplished in the short amount of time. They figured since I was a cinematographer and a director, I would kind of get that shorthand really fast. And a DP. Yeah, it's, well, and a deep. You're like you're the trifecta.

Yeah. But Gary came in, and they had done a list. Like, this is the list of clips that they were going to use in that show. There were 56 different clips, and 36 of them were going to be visual effects. shots. Not all of them, blue screen or green screen, but it leaves visual effects. So they knew in advance coming into it, they had storyboarded in the writer's room or something, the types of shots that they were going to match to. They had it say, oh, we're going to write the scene, and it's going to work with this shot and that shot, and we'll put our characters here. So they

kind of had that in mind already. Gary and I then poured over that, and the production schedule was made around that, then I was responsible for the rest of the scenes. I had to formulate or figure out visually all of the scenes that were the threads, the glue that put all of these together. I can't believe they didn't interview that's so f*** up. I just, it's mind-blowing how you're so integral to all of this working. And the lighting is insane too. Did Chris just Crossgrove do that on his own, or did you help him with that specific lighting?

First of all, I was the cinematographer, but I didn't want to do both jobs. So I moved up Chris Crosscove, our camera operator, and he became the director of photography. And needless to say, he and I both watched all the clips. We watched the original episode and then all the clips we were going to use. And then figured out, okay, we have to add these elements. We have to add these actors to this particular thing. Plus the new shots that they did with all of the sets that were built. I mean, they built two or three corridors and part of the bridge and the K-7 lounge.

And all of that had to be matched, I mean, perfectly. So Chris and I used, we use a different film stock. It was a finer grain, slower film stock, which closer matched the color quality that you would get back in the late 60s like that. And then all the lighting. I mean, Chris, in the middle of it, Chris, would say, John, I need another light because I have to put another shadow on the wall. Yeah, yeah. Because this is what we were matching.

You know, Kirk would cross down and he'd have two shadows over here and two shadows over there, and he's walking through these primary colors, you know. Yeah, which for people listening, just so you know, when Jonathan's talking about shadows, we try to avoid shadows. You don't want your movie lights to be creating a shadow these days. But back in the original series, it was just, just probably less, you know, a lower quality TV. So they didn't worry about shadows quite as much.

And they didn't have time or money to deal with it. It also had to do, Robbie, just to add to that moment, it required a lot more light back then. And so you were using studio lamps that were the fernel kind of lamps that projected light. There was no such thing as bounce lighting, you know, and the sets were hotter. So every time you have a hard light, something's going to cast a shadow. And as they move, they walk from one light to the other, so the shadows have a tendency to follow them. Whereas when we were doing our show, it was probably an eighth of the amount of lighting as far as intense.

I would say less. Right? Well, yeah. And those beautiful silk things you'd put up for us? Yeah, all that stuff that bounces and the lower light levels and the faster film and the faster lenses that needed less light to expose properly. all of that contributes to the more modern approach that we have. And even today, it's even less. And speaking of lenses, Jonathan, so these days, there's record keeping of the lenses that you use

in case you have to go back and pick something up or match to something. Did you have any of that information from the original series, the lenses or any of the technical? I didn't bring, I didn't have, I don't have any of the visual effects notes. That was all Gary Hutzel. So he may have guessed at, I would. think. Oh, no, we kept notes. Gary was on the set.

You kept notes, but I'm saying to match, you didn't have the original information from the original. Oh, no, from the original. No, no, no. Gary guessed and I guessed. And you both guessed about angles as well. I mean, it's not only the lenses,

but it's how you look at the actors. What's the angle? Eye lines. Angle, the distance of the actor, the eye line, all that. But, you know, it's funny. As you shoot more in your life as a camera person, you can kind of figure out

where the height is, the horizon line is in any shot that you look at just by knowing optics and lenses. So it wasn't that tough. And plus, we also had the playback. So we were able to take those clips on a monitor. It wasn't an HD monitor, but it was just a regular television monitor and project that image and play it back. And then we could line up our cameras with that.

So we said, oh, you know what? We need to be a little closer here. We need to be a little wider, a little more zoomed in. or whatever. So we were able to match it pretty close. And the tool that you use, just so everybody listening, who's not familiar with film, the tool you use is a switcher. So you have the old footage and your new thing that you're filming, your shot that you're filming. And then they kind of can cross fade. If you can imagine sort of superimposing the old shot over that new shot with a switcher, a video switcher. So they can fade in and out. So you can kind of find the best

optical match so that you line things out well. Yeah. And is it even better now, Robbie, 30 years later? I would imagine it must be. I would think so. The detail. The playback and the two. Yeah. I have a question that's a little bit touchy, not too. Because of all this that you were just saying, Jonathan, and because this all had to be done, was there any discussion of the episode being shot in nine days instead of eight days? Not to me. So they forced you to do it. extra work but in the time frame of an episode that didn't require this extra work. Yes. I guess our hours probably showed that, I would imagine. I don't have all the hours

written down here, but I do remember one evening we had wrapped or we were going to wrap. We'd done 12 hours and it was about nine at night on a Friday. And we got notes sent down from the office and said, stop everything. Stay there. Everybody don't move. And they gave us three more pages to shoot in the turbo lift with Bashir and O'Brien and that we were done at one in the morning at that point. Yeah. So I think we all pushed, getting back to the visual effects, though, the only things that really were so critical, Terry, when you were on the bridge with Kirk, and you walked down

on the frame, you walked behind him as he got up. Yes. We hadn't been doing a lot of tracking shots up until that point. television, you know, most of the green screen and blue screen work was just the camera was locked off, nailed to the ground. And this was one of the first episodes where the camera was moving. So even though you weren't moving on the green screen steps, Gary then had to take your shot and move it at one frame at a time to match the steps that were in the background in the old film. And it was all superimposed and, you know, composited that way. And we did that in the green screen.

And the bridge, it was all green. They made it all green. So when you walked in, it looks super weird, right? But the steps were green. The console was green. The chair that Kirk would have been in was green. And I was really grateful that we'd already spent so many years doing all of this. You know, I'd already played two dakses at the same time.

We'd already done all of these, like, look at the spot and pretend it's whatever. So we all had a lot of confidence. confidence during those green screen days. So it was fun. It wasn't like, oh, gosh, I hope we get this. It was just you paid attention, you focused, you got it done. And it was fun. It was actually really fun not being on the lot, too. It was fun being in this different studio. It was in a different studio. Well, one of it was on the lot. The steps were on the lot, but the one with you in Cisco. The green screen scum, the stuff wasn't on the lot. Some of it, some of it was. Some of it was.

But there was a day that we shot. At Image G. There we go. Image G. When Kirk and Spock were walking down the hallway, and you were in the background, you were in the background as the camera dollied around and revealed you in the background. That was a meticulous shot because this huge, monstrous motion control camera was what they had to use back then. And they had hand programmed each of the moves to match the dolly moves that the camera made back in 1966.

or 68 from the episode. And every frame was put into the computer so that when the motion control camera was here, you were waiting to get on and the motion control camera came around photographing nothing. And all of a sudden you came in from the left side of frame. And it matched perfectly when they composited with the original footage. Wow, wow. That was the toughest thing. See how good I am?

Do you see how good I? That was the toughest shot. You guys are amazing. And the other tough shot was O'Brien. But are we going through every season? We will. We'll get to that. We can probably start the show?

Oh, you mean we haven't started? I want to say this truly was a Herculean effort to get this done. This was probably the most expensive Star Trek episode to date at this point. They put so much money into this one. They even wanted to do at the end, the end credits, they wanted to show original series letter on. But they couldn't even, they spent so much money. They couldn't even do that. They were like, oh, we can't.

can't get that done. But I wanted to bring up from our interview that we had with you, Jonathan, one of the things that I thought was amazing, other than the fact that you guys had to eyeball everything to match the lenses, the color, the lighting. Costumes. Everything. Yes, but you also had to match when the Dolly, the original series Dolly hit a bump, you had to match that too. You were talking about that. Do you recall the- Yeah, that was the motion control camera. That's the motion control. Oh, wow. Yeah. They actually had to program every bump. Nowadays, you can track it on your laptop. You get a piece of editing software, and there's tracking involved.

So you could have done this shot for $18 instead of $27,000. Oh, my gosh. So crazy. Technology. All right. The last few bits of trivia. Sir Rock Lofton, obviously, does not appear in this episode. Unfortunately, George Dick...

And I just barely made it in it. Yeah, you barely made it. Speaking of Armin. Scene 153. Speaking of Armin, this is the only time. But the picture of you with tribles always. over the place with everywhere. This is the only time

that Cork appears on camera without a line in the entire series. Oh, wow. That's the only time. Epic. Yes, George Decay does not appear in this episode. We did not rehearse at my house that week. Yes, no rehearsal.

Rehearsals called off. George Decay does not appear in this episode, but he also did not appear in the Trouble with Triples, the original series episode either. But he did appear in Voyage and, tribute to the 30th anniversary of Star Trek, which was the episode flashback, Robbie, if you recall, we had him there. So he got his chance. Yeah, the big Tuvok episode. So we paid tribute to him in that episode. It took three months to negotiate the use of the original series

actors' performances in this episode. Walter Koenig stated that he was paid eight times more for the use of his likeness than what he was paid to film the original episode. Wow. Good agenting. Good agenting. Good agenting. Final bit of trivia. David Gerald who wrote the original series episode, Trouble with Tribles, can be seen in this episode twice, two scenes. When Cisco and Dax are dealing with Red Alert, we see across with David Gerald,

and later Bashir and O'Brien see him in the corridor, petting a Tribble. And that Tribal that he's petting is an actual Tribal from the original series episode that David Cheryl brought with him, yes. So sweet. Harmon, just to comment on your not, no dialogue, as they always say,

They won pictures worth a thousand words. You wrapped the show. It was the tag of the whole episode. It was a lot of. It was a great shot. Yeah, yeah. It was a great shot. There are two other actors that we haven't mentioned

who are in the background, who are intrinsic to my life. One is Bill Shalert, who appeared in our show early on in the first season. He was, if you remember, he was the floutest? The floutist, exactly. He was the floutest? Was that with the Dax episode?

I don't remember. Was that the Dax episode? episode. It was called Dax. So Bill was in this episode in the original. And so is a man named Whit Bissell. And I know Whit Bissell because his daughter is responsible for my being an actor. Really? Wow. I can't put it any other way. She discovered me in high school. Oh my word. And her mother was an acting teacher, got her mother interested in me. And she was my first acting teacher. And she was married to Whit Bissell. The lady I went to school with is called, her name is Victoria Bissell. And what did Witt Bissell play in this one? What was he? I don't know, because I'm watching the

show, I'm watching the show, and I see him there. And I don't know which character he played. He may be the person that Kirk is talking to at one point about the Klingon guards. Oh, he played Lurie, Lurie, Lurie, the station manager guy. Yeah. He was in the original episode. He was in the original. I see. I thought you meant that he was in your, with you, but he was in. No, no, no, no, no. He was in the original. And both Bill Shalett, Bill Shouder, by the way, who was the president of Screen Actors Guild for many years. That's where I first met him. Bill and Witt both did over 300 episodes of different TV shows along the way.

They both had huge careers in television. Wow. I met William Shalert back about a year before we did the Triple Show. No, I mean, before they did the Triple Show, I should say back in 1967. I had been in acting, mostly in college and small theater. And I got a call from William Shalert saying, I saw your performance, blah, blah, blah. We're having a reading at Theater West of a play,

and we need a teenager. Can you come and read it? It's just a read-around, you know? And I went, huh, okay. And so I showed up, and Betty Garrett's there, and William Shalers there, and all of these actors that I knew from movies that I had seen. Yeah, heavy hitters.

Heavy hitters. And I got to at least do the reading with him. but play didn't get produced, but it was a thrill. It was a real thrill. So, Robbie, you remember, Robbie, when we watched the original episode, we talked about how there's a station manager. He's not even part of Starfleet. That's the guy that Whit Bissell played, the manager of the station.

Nice. Okay. All right, Robbie, jump into this episode at the beginning. All right, let's dive into this episode, scene by scene, and break it down and get all of Jonathan and Terry and Armand's memories. I'm so excited. The first scene starts in ops. We see a pair of strangers.

We haven't met these men, Dolmer and Luxley. They're from temporal investigations we learn. And we also learn they do not have a sense of humor, I noticed. Yeah, we learn that very quickly. Yeah, Dax tries to make a joke, and they don't laugh. They head right off to find Cisco. They seem very serious. And a nice look there at the end between Kira and Dax in the scene.

I like that sort of those non- unverbal kind of performances. It was great. Yeah. It set the mood, too. It set the tone for what we're about to enter because it was a little lighter than normal in terms of how you reacted to one another and working another. And even with Cisco, too, once they get into the interview with Cisco, which you haven't gotten to yet. But the fact was that you had those looks were not something that you were used to doing with one another. But saying it was a different tone is a perfect way to describe it. I mean, technically it's the right way to describe it, but it really was. It was more fun, lighter. So to that, forgive me for interrupting, because that just intrigues me. So Nana and Terry were used to playing their characters. You were used to seeing them play a certain way.

You're right. In this scene, they're not playing the characters as we normally see them. Was that the actor's choice or was that the director's choice? I was looking for it, but I don't think I really had to say anything. Say anything. It was how it was written too. Yeah, right, exactly. I just had to watch out.

As we talked about in the past, I was looking for beats as we went along. And I had had that tone meeting with Ira, where we went through the entire script, getting a sense of that tone, because the original had that tone also. The original was a balance. Oh, more farcical. Yeah. Yeah. Really doing that balance. And we wanted to be able to fit into that.

To fit into the existing footage. Well, it was great. Yeah. He was great. Well, we go into Cisco's office. We learn they're the Time Police. I'm going to call them the Time Police, these guys. They want Cisco to explain what the heck happened.

We don't know what happened yet. It's, you know, a mystery to us. And clearly, they're asking about something that has happened that we didn't see. So Cisco's going to talk us through it. And at the end of the scene, he starts. talking them through it, talking about this orb of prophecy, that it's a sacred Bajoran object that they went to investigate, and the one that they received from the Cardassians was the orb of time, and they didn't realize it at first. And he says, when the defiant arrived at Cardassia Prime,

we weren't sure if we were dealing with a genuine orb or one of the fakes that have cropped up. They secured it in some quarters. Before they left, they took on this passenger. This guy waddle. And so that's what we, basically in Cisco's office, start to get into the episode and the story of the episode. Right. And one of the things that Cisco knows already is what's happened. He's already experienced all of this.

And one of his driving forces is to deal with these guys, make sure they get the truth, get the information, but not necessarily all the truth. He has to hold back a little bit. what he's experienced and especially uh he already knows how our episode ends i mean he knows that so uh there's a certain a bit of uh charm and and humor to his uh his personality at that that point yeah he you know he's in on it he's in on it but he has to be uh protective of letting too much actual information out to the guys so i have a question um yes i understand uh Cisco knows how the episode's going to end, and of course he's played Cisco now for five years.

But Jim and Jack are new to the set. These are new characters to them. They don't necessarily know what they've gotten themselves into. Yet you got, or they got, this wonderful Sergeant Friday, that's all I can call it, for people who are as old as I am. I have Dragnet in my notes. Yeah, Dragnet is actually in my notes. So this sort of Sergeant Friday Dragnet attitude,

and delivery. One of the funniest things in the episode is Jim saying it's a Friday. Started such and such and such and it's a Friday. But the delivery was right on, and again, is that the actors or is that you saying to them, can I get it a little sharper?

Can I get it a little bit more like Dragnet? The guys were prepared. I have to tell you those two actors, it's like they rehearsed it. And we don't get rehearsals before. Well, you don't. We have to do in our trailers. Yeah.

You do it in your trailers. They worked it out. And it's partially in the writing, too. I mean, the timing is there in the dialogue, kind of just the facts, man, by attitude. So, again, I was watching for it. If it wasn't there, I would have made a note. But they were there. They were right on it.

Were the writers, I have a question. Were the writers down for this special episode? Because I know they didn't normally come, but was this episode where maybe they came to set a little more? Wow. That's shocking. Hardly at all. That is shocking. Yeah, I don't remember.

Of course, I could have been so focused on what I was doing that I wouldn't know who was out there, you know, watching from afar. You would have thought that this episode that was asked for by Paramount would have had executives sort of checking in every night. I would ask not only were the writers there, was Berman there, and I know the answer to that. But Berman wasn't there either, I imagine. Correct, correct.

Well, we've been doing it for a while, though. I mean, we are in season five. This episode asked for by paramount. This is a big deal. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying that it's not. I'm just saying that I think at a certain point they trust that all the ducks are in order. Yes and no.

I mean, honestly, like nowadays, writers on set is the most common way to do things, to have a writer on set. Sure. Not just season one and then they disappear all the way through the finale. They're there every episode. And it's so. I remember doing TV movies and the. writer was there. I remember doing guest stars and the writers were there. Our show didn't have the writers there. In general, they weren't there. Exactly. And I think that's before some of the

contractual things changed with the writer's guild. Yeah, maybe. Ten years ago. So the next scene, we're in the mess hall of the defiant. We meet Waddle, this human. He says, call him Barry. And he says he was trapped on Cardassia when the Klingon's attacked. And he goes to make some Ractogino in this and accidentally insults Wharf's smell. Talks about Klingons and how they smell. That's kind of ironic. Yes. But Bashir and O'Brien say, you know, they like the way he smells.

It's sort of earthy, peedy aroma with a touch of lilac. I found that very descriptive. I've never thought about the way Klingon smell, but I like that detail. I'll be honest. I thought that would be a great t-shirt, a Wharf t-shirt. just warth face and underneath in letters, earthy, p.D. With the touch of lilac underneath would be awesome.

Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, it was a fun, it was a fun scene. And tonally, to have this actor in the scene, it was just, it was fun. Again, you're keeping that comedic lighter tone, even in the scenes with our regulars. It was great. It was a lot of fun. And remember that Charlie is a comic.

He's a comic. I don't know how I was to put it, but he and his wife are a comic team. As I said earlier, they were on Lafayn for years. They've done a ton of comedy together. So what's interesting is to see this comic actor with comic impulses working in what's basically a dramatic series. Yeah. But I think he brought out good stuff in the regulars.

I think he brought out, even in Michael with his silent looks and things, it was just, There was a lightness to it. And you brought that out, Jonathan, as well. Well, thanks. And it felt real. It felt real. And that was one of, some of my notes were keep it real, keep it honest, no tongue and cheek for the humor.

The characters have to believe what they're doing. And the comedy comes out of the situation and the writing. Oh, I did have a note. Be careful of Charlie, not too much schick. Right there. Funny that you mentioned that. Yeah. Are these notes that you wrote?

in your script from a tone meeting is this work concerns the writers had that you wrote down or are these your thoughts or hard to remember that particular note was on a back page so i think it was with ire because uh most of my notes i had typed out but then some of the stuff i did in the tone meeting i just scribbled as ire and i were going through it and that was a scribbled note on the back saying watch out for the schick so yeah it must have been from from ire and the reason i brought it up is because birds of a feather flocked again. Oh, the Charlie thing was also an optical effect. We had to burn in the stuff that was on the screen because it wasn't prepared yet.

So that had a lock-offsy, yeah. Yeah, a lot of that stuff with the monitors that our audience, when you're watching an episode, you'll see graphics and things. Those weren't ready. And so often that was, sometimes they were ready, but often the actors are just pointing to a green screen. Yeah, especially if there's something different than just a graphic in that. Yeah. If there's movement like it was Charlie's picture and things like that, that wasn't set up yet.

The lightness from that scene in the mess hall continues onto the bridge. The banter continues. Even though Brian talks about, next time you see him, just sniff the air and go, is that lilac? So lilac continues. Dax says, find somebody else. I have my own ways of torturing wharf, so she can torture him in her own ways. But it's also very, very, again, I love the banter here. All of a sudden, O'Brien picks up a massive surge in chronotone radiation.

Anytime we hear chrononton radiation, we know it's a time jump. It's not good. Everything flickers and all sudden we have, I guess, is that a filter that you put in there? Or is that all in post-production that little? We might have had a few lights change in intensity, but the orange glow that was throughout was all visual effects at the end in post-production. Well, they've jumped 200 light years from their last position, so that can't be good. Yeah, what do you expect? It's going to go orange, right? Is that orange alert when they go 200 light years?

But then they see the classic enterprise on the view screen flying by, oh boy, we know we're in for some fun there. Yay! Yeah, the actual original enterprise is sitting in the Smithsonian. So they had to build their own enterprise for this one. They did. It was a scale-down model. It wasn't as large as the one from the original, which was, I think, 11 or 12 feet. This one was about 5.5 feet, but it was a model that they actually shot with motion control

and did their normal. It was so great because they were using models on Star Trek up until the very end of the series. Then it went digital. So cool to watch them work. Yeah, yeah. It looked great, though. That model looked amazing. And that was, you know, there was a dolly move over Dax's shoulder. She was, it started with her in the frame, and then we pushed past her.

And that was a no-no on our show and on Next Generation. As I said, you always lock the camera down and not move a thing. And all of a sudden they say, I said, well, can't we, can't we dolly in? It's an accent moment, you know? Yeah. And Gary Hutzel kind of went, oh, okay, we'll make it work. And, you know, so we'd made the Dolly move. And that was a first for us.

Wow. Good for you. Yeah. Well, it's more expensive. It's more expensive to do the camera move because you have to match that on the model for the focal length and the tracking and all of that. So that's why it was a no-no. It was just money. Can I point out something that I saw that I really was tickled by before the Enterprise shows up on the video screen?

The video screen does all that stuff that my generation was. Static. My generation was used to seeing when a channel went off the air. Yeah. And I don't think I'd ever seen that on a screen on our show before. And I went, yeah, that sort of tells me I'm going back in time. Yeah, we are already been back in time. That's right.

Oh, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? That's right. That's right. I remember thinking, I know where I am. I'm sitting here watching TV. I don't know where our parents are. And was that a choice, too, to give us that graphic of the channel going off the air?

It was not my choice. It was probably either Ira, Gary or Gary, yeah. They kind of covered the move, too. If you notice, it finally cleared up to the Enterprise just at the end of the Dolly moves. Didn't have to track it that much. We go back to the Cisco's office to the present time. We're back to our story. And one thing I loved in this scene was that we learned

that James T. Kirk was the biggest time violator of all. 17 separate temporal violations. That was a funny little detail. And it also showed a little bit of what Cisco was all about in terms of his reverence or his interest in Kirk, because when his name is mentioned, you saw Avery kind of light up, light up there. Because he had already experienced something

that he was remembering at that point. Our time, police asked, This is where they mentioned Friday, by the way, in this scene. Dalmer says, that man was a menace talking about Kirk. What was the date of your arrival? Cisco gives him the date. He says 105 years, one month and 12 days ago. And Luxley says, a Friday.

But, yeah, Cisco says that the enterprise was orbiting one of the old deep space stations, K-7, near the Klingon border. So this goes back to the original episode where we, We talked about this, Jonathan, in our separate interview with you, about the original K-7. K-7. Yeah, that was the original stations. And we talked about, I think, Garrett, you and I talked about how in the windows of K-7, in the original episode, you saw the model of the enterprise just like in multiple scenes. I don't know if you remember this, Jonathan. And in the original series, you saw the model flying by slowly in the background.

They must have hung it on like fishing line or something. Yeah. It was very funny. You think it was an actual model in the shot or was it a visual effect at that? I think it was in the shot. I think it was in the shots. Really? With the fishing.

Very old school. Very much. But I want to say when they did show, when you guys did show exterior shots of the D-Space K-7 station, it looked really good. It was actually improved upon from what you see in the original series episode. It looks really good. It was a great match, but it was more detailed than finished. Yeah, it was more detail. I don't know how long they worked on that before or afterwards.

I mean, it had to have been weeks. Well, we learned from Cisco after this cool shot of the original station, that K-7 station, that inside the defiant, the orb had been taken by Barry. Barry. Barry took the orb. Barry took it. We learned that someone stunned the deputy and took the orb.

And that was a cool shot, I thought, when you showed sort of where it was missing from there. It was nice to cover that voice over there, Jonathan. I don't know if you remember that shot, but... Give me a quick clue. What was a shot of? It was like where the orb had been taken from, and you kind of saw,

it was like a montagee kind of piece. But at least on Voyager, we didn't often do a lot of montages. So it was nice to have that opportunity just visually to tell a story there. We did a couple of many montages on that episode. Yeah. I have another question, slightly sticky.

So in that montage, we have Kira sort of overseeing things. What was the protocol? for shooting Nana in the last stage of pregnancy. Yeah. Oh, was she pregnant? Not me. Was she pregnant in this episode?

Protocol. She was supposed to be pregnant, though. Yeah, she was supposed to be pregnant. Yeah, they weren't hiding it. They weren't hiding. She was not a... She has a special uniform. There's one or two shots where you can see she's very pregnant,

but there's a lot of shots where you don't. Yeah. Did you remember? Did you try to minimize that, those kind of wider shots? No? No. Not a big... as long as it was in the script it was all you know all fair yeah that scene that you were referring to

was that the that's the one where you started on the uh the crew member that was on the on the floor yes on the floor yeah i just i just a quick note i decided to do that as one shot if you notice you started there and then we pushed pull it in and then we saw something else and then somebody somebody's taking it or about uh yeah yeah and then we go to kira uh so it was designed as one shot because I didn't have time to split it up. So I just said, well, let's see what we can choreograph. It was beautiful. I love it. Just exactly how it is. It's great. We go to the mess hall in the Defiant Next. There's Wharf, Dax, Odo, O'Brien talking. We learned that Barry was a clingon in disguise. Barry. And he was really named Darwin back in this, the time, you know,

the time job. That was his fake human name though. Yes. And he was the bad guy that tried to poison the grain that was going to go to the colonies. So it starts tying into the Tribbles episode. We start to realize what this whole premise is. And because he was disgraced and Kirk had busted him, he was, you know, banished or whatever. He was just shamed. Yeah, exiled, basically. from the Klingon Empire, and he just eeked out this living as a human merchant. But this is something I didn't realize, Robbie, that Klingons live a long time. That was over a hundred years ago. I was a what?

They're like Vulcans. Vulcans lived for. Forever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But he wants to go back to that time on K-7 and alter history and maybe even kill Kirk. Well, is Dax is the one who comes up with that.

that she picks it right she goes maybe he could be planning to kill Kirk which is right on the money so yeah job Dax yeah it was great and that brought that story point around and it provided the motivation for the antagonist that's why we're got to stop this

it's important we got to move on yes yeah it was great it was really well written and well played by all of you and really well directed Jonathan like the clarity of these stories coming together was never in doubt you always knew you were always oriented and you knew where you were. So it was in the script. It was in the script for sure.

Very well written. Well, they decided they've got to stop Darwin. He can't change history. And they don't know where he beamed to because he wiped out the transporter logs before he beamed out. He's either going to be on the enterprise, the old enterprise, or on K7 that station. So they split up to search for him and they don't want to arouse any suspicion or alter anything in the timeline. That's very important. And I like how Cisco says, the last thing I want is a visit from the temporal investigations when we get home. We know they've already shown up. Oh, well. Oh, well. Yes.

Exactly. And then the fun starts. Yes. And another montage here. This is where everybody's changing. We see Dax is taking her spots off. I don't think it's Dax. And that's what I have to ask, Terry.

I don't, when I watched it, I thought, is that Dax doing that? Or is that Bashir doing? No, taking the dots off your... Oh, his hands. Oh, maybe. I don't... I thought the only one capable of doing that is Bashir. The hands that I saw looked more like Kathy DeBono's hands than my hands.

So it could have been somebody else. Yeah. I didn't think it was Terry doing it. I thought... Sometimes it used to really bother me. I really wanted to do the things that were... Because there was something in the first season where somebody had fingernails. And I was like, I'm a scientist.

I don't have fingerprints. What the hell? You know what I mean? It was like, yeah. And, you know, from acting class and everything, get really like, you want to own everything. You want to do your own inserts. Yes, you do. But then you just, the machine that is doing an action drama, you just have to let that go and go, okay, not my hands. The fact that it was a visual effect shot also, because you had to, I think we had to do it twice, one with and when without. Yeah. So, Terry, was Kathy D.C. De Bono, your normal hand model?

No, she was Terry standing. Oh, her standing? Okay, okay. Yeah. And it wasn't her hands with the nails either. She wasn't working on deep space at that time. But the truth is your stand and does a lot of stuff for you when they have to send you home because of a nine and a half hour turnaround. It's more important for me to get back to work than it is for me to stay for those little things. I don't remember. Did Kathy have to wear your spots too at times? Were they ever over her shoulder? Probably. Maybe. I don't remember that specifically. I don't either.

But I mean, gosh, it was awfully long time ago. Yeah. I think you said tall. Like you said, Jonathan, it could have been two different shots put together for that visual effect of the spots coming off. Could have been a shot of Terry and then maybe hands in front of green or shot separately that, you know, because if the hands drew your attention, Armand, then maybe that's why. Maybe because it didn't draw my attention. It I just, it piqued my interest that I didn't think the Dax could do that. Story-wise. I thought, since we have a doctor on board, that the doctor would be doing that.

Oh. But as it turns out, it was Kathy DeBono. Well, we don't know for sure. I'm just guessing. Armand, I don't know. I don't even know who did it when we shot it, whether it was a visual effect. And he's the director. And honestly, I thought I just put makeup on them so that, so I don't remember, I must have

blinked when that shot happened. I just remember seeing hair go up and thinking, I don't think that's my hair. Okay. Yeah, maybe. You know, it's almost like B-roll kind of stuff. Here's my comment about the whole montage, Jonathan. I loved your shots. I loved the sequence of all of them, but I didn't like the music, the score. It was very sort of regal and it was, and I felt like the way that you shot it, the way the actors had been playing the episode so far, there was a sense of fun. It felt like a romp. And I wish the music had been a little more like, here we go, it's going to be fun. And instead, it was this sort of ominous regal. Yeah, I didn't like the match of the music. I wish I would have had some input. I know. Unfortunately, that happened way

after I was probably three episodes later. Yeah, I'm sure. And why not have some more of the actual 60s version, a little more of the 60s sound happening? That would have been fun. Yeah. And to your point, Robbie, this is a quote from Ronald D. Moore. He commented, my only real gripe about this episode was the music. I had hoped it would be more like the original score. And I thought it hurt the show, particularly during the bar room brawl by changing it to this other type of music. So he completely feels the same way that you did. So the tone of the scene changes because of the music.

So is that a Rick Berman? This is a Ron Moore that said this, actually. Well, Rick has to approve the music, doesn't he? Yes, and no. I mean, he's executive producer. Usually the way that, and Jonathan, correct me if I'm wrong, but on Star Trek shows, they would use old library as temporary placeholders. So the editors would pick some old score from previous episodes, and they'd put it in there

as a placeholder, and then the composer would come in and listen to what the editor put in and try to match that. And so there's a couple of places where you could go. go off the rails, in my opinion, because the editor may be putting something in. If the showrunner doesn't call it out and say, nope, that music is wrong, even though you're going to replace it, don't put that as a placeholder, because we don't want it to sound like that. Right. We don't want them to misunderstand. We're just a placeholder. Yeah. And if they don't do that in the editing process, then when the composer gets it, they're just kind of matching, they're writing something new,

but it's based on the tone that they've been given by the editor. And that should have been covered with a spotting session. Exactly. Spotting session meaning to people out there. They go through the whole episode and decide what needs music and what style of music. And that way the composer knows where he's headed. Yeah, usually a spotting session involves the post-production coordinator, the editor, the composer, the showrunner, or the showrunner's representative.

and they will sit and make sure that everyone agrees that, yes, this suggestion, we want to stay like this, or we don't like this suggestion, can you do something different? Did they have time to do all of those steps you're just mentioning during our soundtrack shows? They would have done it? Because that's their job. We had full orchestras for our start. Yeah, yeah. I know. I went to a scoring sessions.

It was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. I bet. Oh, I wish I could have seen that. That stage doesn't exist anymore. It's not a, it's not a. It's gone. On?

They tore it down. Star Trek was one of the last shows that used that scoring stage. Yeah. That's sad. I know. It really is. I know. There's very few scoring stages in Hollywood now.

Fox has one. Sony has one. And Warner Brothers. That's it. Wow. Terry, when we did that thing where you were changing into the outfits, it was an excitement there in your character that was expecting something. What can you extrapolate on that?

Oh, I just, I, this was what I played when I was in elementary school. We watched Star Trek and we had chestnut trees in the back where we had our playground and we had a playground and then we had this kind of woodsy area that we could play in. And we would scoop the leaves together to make the enterprise. Oh, my God. And honestly, I wish, I think his name was Grant. He was, I was the tallest kid in school. And he was the shortest, and he was Captain Kirk, and I was always, I was the alien from another planet. So when I had to put the uniform and everything on, it was like this magical dream come true for me.

I got to be little me in my woman body getting to be on Star Trek. And oh my God, I'm on Star Trek, but I'm getting to do it how I fell in love with the show. And I remember coming out, this is how I remember it anyway, I remember coming out and showing Jonathan my outfit and I turned, I was like, look, I was like so excited. And he goes, do that. Do that. Did I remember that right? Yeah. And it worked for Dax. It worked for Dax. She's remembering her past. She says it later on. She says, I love this period. Yeah. Oh, it was the easiest episode ever for me because I just got to be a kid.

kid in the candy store, playing dress up, playing pretend, and it was so much fun. Yeah. And then Bashir buttons the scene, I think I'm going to like history. Oh, and the woman wore less. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When he sees.

That was alarmingly short. It was a lot. And they did have funder pants. We had special black underpants to wear. And I actually almost knocked, I had go-go boots on. And when I left my trailer the first time, I had, forgot about my beehive and I I the doorframe stopped my hair stopped me and then yeah it was crazy I also liked how Bashir got a little call back to the original series in the scene when O'Brien says do you know anything about

this time period and Bashir goes I'm a doctor not a historian not a historian written so it was so the details the devil in the details they had all the details it's just beautiful forgive me Sid forgive me. I caught that as well, and I thought, I don't think Sid knows the reference. Really? Wow. Oh, maybe he didn't. Oh, I thought he was just underplaying it. Really? I just, he said it and I thought, no, he might not have. I don't think he knows the difference. Maybe it's better that he didn't. I don't know, Jonathan, you were there, and it was a long time ago, but I watched it and I went, I don't think he knows the reference. I thought the same thing, Armin. Did you? Well, yeah, because just because of watching the original series as a kid, there was a specific way that Bones would say stuff like that.

Yes. Yeah. And I never expressed it to, to Sid. Really? Because if you hit the nail on the head, would that work better than what he did? Because... I think it would have. I think because it's such a nod to the original show, almost the entire episode,

so that I just got the feeling he just didn't... He did it fine. He did it, you know, Jonathan said earlier. He wanted to be real. It was real. It was absolutely real. There's no fault in the acting. But I just thought the actor doesn't understand the reference.

Okay. Yeah, it would have been fun to take a, you know, one pass and see how it felt if he was aware of the irony of the line. Just so you know, Jonathan, I've heard, I've heard this about my friend Armand Shimmerman. He is the nitpick king. The nitpick king is. It's not personal, right? I'm going to say something later too, but it's not personal. It's just the things that we all notice, right?

I do want to say, Terry, thank you for sharing that story about your childhood, about how you made the enterprise out of leaves. And now I know if there's any a time that you're feeling blue, I'm going to show up at your house and make an enterprise out of leaves in front of your yard. Oh, you think you think about it. Yes. Well, I want to thank Jonathan. for setting me up on that one.

Here you go. This was a big deal for me. There you go. Okay. Well, the next scene, we go in the transporter bay. We learn in the scene that they can decloak for three seconds only. And they have to avoid contact with people or changing, you know, the timeline. And this is where they're splitting up.

So they're going to go to the station, look in the storage areas. I just see an enterprise corridor note. Dax and Cisco come out of TurboLift 7 to a bit of. busy corridor. In all capital letters, Terry in heels is the tallest one in the hallway. That's my note. I made a note. Yeah, Dax and Cisco come out of the turban lift. And as you see them walking away from us, literally Terry is like a foot taller. She's got heels on, which she normally doesn't. No, I had the flattest shoes in Starfleet for a reason. Not as flat as mine. Not as mine. No, mine were flatter than yours. I don't think so. I had a piece.

of leather. That's all I had. Well, we had the same. In this episode, Terry, for different reasons. For different reasons. In this episode, you have the go-go boots with a big tall heels. Yes, I do. And you literally were a foot taller than everybody else. I know, but didn't I look good? You look good? Right? But you couldn't clear a door frame. That's the only thing. No, I could not. I could not. But I had, at least I had cushion generally when I hit, because I would walk through those doors. And I don't know why. Like, I'd step on the sill. And then I hit my head and the guys would go, watch your head, Terry. Watch your head. Yeah, a little late. Have a Terry note.

Well, that's what was funny, right? Oh, as before you, before you appeared in the hallway, as you were stepping on to the transporter, the scene. And you said about Robbie that everybody was breaking apart going off at the end of that scene. There's a line in the script. and we shot it and it's another angle that never got used. Just as you are splitting up and going towards the transporter, Dax says to Michael Dorn, nice hat.

Oh, that's not in there. That's not in there. He was so mad about that hat. Do you remember that? He kept trying to get out, I'm a Klingon. I shouldn't be here. The Tribbles will know I'm here. I look different than all the other Klingons.

And it was just like, oh, my God, oh, my God. It's like, do you want a vacation, Michael? Seriously. That comment is a callback. It's a callback to when Wharf said that to Kira. Remember when they came out of the hall deck? It was Dax and Kira. And when they were wearing that nice hat.

Yeah, nice hat. Same comment. Yep. Very funny. Well, maybe that's why they took it out. Yeah, they were like, we already talked about that. Okay. All right. That's funny.

Well, yes, after Terry is the tallest one in the cast, we go to the Enterprise. and Bashir and O'Brien beam into it inside a turbo lift over there. Miles tries to talk to the computer. It's not listening. He says, deck 21, deck 21. I said deck 21. Nothing's happening than a woman enters.

She grabs the handle and they realize, oh, yes, that's what you got to do. And she's going to deck 15. And so they grab the handles as well. I love that little detail of the original series. the difference between old tech and the new tech. That was Deidre. That was Deidre. Yeah.

She's great. She's a lot of fun. She's beautiful, too. Beautiful. Wow. The period was perfect for her. Yeah. Yeah.

She got it. You know, all of those sets were built on stage 11, by the way, in case anybody wants to know, wasn't our normal sets. Yeah. No. Well, I was just thinking, Armin and I were both in Ticonderoga this summer. And I remember being on the set, and it felt the same as going to Ticonderoga and just being in it, being on the enterprise.

What Terry is alluding to, forgive me, Terry, but No, no, help me out. At Ticonderoga, they have replicated the original show's sets. So that's what we were working on, and that's what Terry's referring to. And they put them together in such a way that it makes you, there's no interruption of a set. The set is connected. All connected.

It's continuous. Yeah. It's, thank you, continuous. So you feel like, wow, This must be how it feels to be on the enterprise. It's really extraordinary. That's interesting because we didn't have that. We had pieces.

As a matter of fact, I think it's the scene when you and Cisco, I don't know if it's the previous one, but you and Cisco walk in. And if you look out the door, you're walking into a turbo lift, you look out the hallway and the hallway is curving to the right. You do your scene. And as you exit, they changed it. We move the turbo lift because the background is now moving to the hallway is not going that way. So that kind of detail, it just goes past you as you're watching the show, but we actually physically had to move the turbo lift in the middle of shooting your scene in there to be able to open the doors again for you to leave into another level, another deck.

Well, we go out into a corridor on the Enterprise, Dax and Cisco are searching, and they find this communication juncture, and Cisco says he's going to pretend to repair it. And Dax is just in awe of all this technology that she used to love. Because she's used that same tech in a prior life. She's like, oh, I had one of these. And this is my homage to the nitpick. This is my homage to the nitpick king, Armin.

In the shot where Tari is, Dax is actually touching the, The scanner. Those are not her hands there. I know that's, I was like, that is not a Terry. Those look like Kathy's hands,

not mine. Her hands were bigger than mine. They just didn't look like your hands. And that's what I wanted to ask you, those were probably not yours, right? That insert. Not my hands. And in reference to the Tri-Corner,

because I'd heard this, and I just want people to know this, they had to scramble, the prop department had to scramble really hard to find these props from that time in that show. It was not just that they went into the back room. They had to find these things.

Yeah, and they had to make things. No, all of it was gone. I'm surprised that Paramount didn't own any of that stuff. Yeah, that's a little shocking. Wow. Well, it was a long time before, right? And they probably sold it off to make money. Like the costumes just they weren't around anymore.

They had to watch, they all had to watch the old episode. episode to recreate everything the consoles yeah everything the consoles even the braiding around they could they could only look at what it was on the TV

show and then try to find the exact match but not from old uniforms so everybody eyeballed it yes everybody eyeballed Jonathan I have a question for you about the original footage so my memory watching Star Trek

on television is it looked a little grainyer it looked a little like this footage whatever you did with film stock changes and lighting and all that the original series looked better than i've ever seen it it looked really sharp and really poppy and you know why robbie we weren't working from tapes or old old footage we went to the negatives oh went to the original negatives they found and transferred those to uh to digital digital you can tell It wasn't HD, but it was digital, yeah. Yeah. You can tell in this episode because all the Kirk scenes, all the Spock scene, all that stuff looked better than I've ever seen it.

Yeah, crystal clear, pristine. And consequently, we were able to match those colors with our footage a lot easier because we didn't make negative to work. Did you win any awards? Did I win any awards? Yeah, for this episode. There were nominations in multiple departments, but no awards were won. for the year. Oh, we were nominated for a Hugo Award. Oh, good. Science Fiction Award, yeah. Wow. Yeah, but we lost it to a big feature film that Jack Nicholson was in, and I don't remember the name of it.

Oh, well, he stinks. He's been celebrated enough. Yeah, but Trivilles was nominated. One of the awards that this episode was nominated for Robbie, they were beat out by a Voyager episode, actually. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Congratulations to you guys. Oh, no, you should have won. This is a great. It was the episode Fair Trade, which I don't think is a really good at Voyager episode at all. So I'm shocked that that one beat out this episode.

I wonder if it was makeup or something because of all the Ferengis maybe or something like that. You know what? You have to nominate it. You have to enter the nomination process in order to get nominated. Yeah, that's true, too. I went years without putting up a show for anything that I did. Yeah. Well, the next scene is in the K7 bar, and I will reiterate, the K7 bar scenes from the original footage looked phenomenal.

I was like, wait, did they reshoot? How did they do this? The colors. It looks so much better than I've ever seen the original series looks. And now we know why. Yeah. And they built quite a bit of the set. They didn't build the bar, but they built the big windows and they built...

Like the entrance. Yeah, the entrance and where the guys were seated. Yeah. It was great. Well, Odo comes in. He finds an empty table and starts using a Bajoran tricorder here. I would be careful pulling out Bajoran tack Odo in the middle of the bar. And then we see Chekhov and O'Hura come by. And they head to the bar. And then Odo wants to order a rack to gino. The waitress is like, I don't know what that is. She says some other guy came in about an hour ago and ordered the same thing. And he said he'd be back.

soon. So this is the scene where we see our first intercut between old footage and the stuff that you shot. Right. And as we said, it's just done so elegantly and great. Herman's production designer and art department were quite good at matching just about everything. I mean, look at the furniture. Look at the chairs, the 60s chairs and tables match. Exactly. I don't know what they found those things, you know. It was just just well done. But we plan. planned those shots ahead of time. You would have to. We knew that Odo was going to be in front of a green screen or a blue screen.

I can't remember if it was a blue or green at that point on him. But when they walked by and when O'Hara walked by, that was a tail end of a scene that they had with Kirk, that they just used the cross in order to see Odo there. But he was on a green screen and they just lined him up and matted it. And kudos to you, Jonathan. The framing of the shot was nostalgic as well. Usually we're a lot tighter on our actors, our characters.

But this was a rather large theatrical sort of framing where you could see, you know, everything. And it fit into the old show's modus operandi really well. I thought, good for you, Jonathan. You're not only shooting the show, but you're giving respect to what had come before. Hence the word tribute, I guess. Yes. I wonder, Jonathan, you know, because you knew you were going back in time to an original episode, did you look at the framing to Armand's point? Did you kind of consciously use different lenses and different kind of framing sizes, not just for the scenes where you had to match to old footage, but even the scenes that lived on their own that you were shooting?

Yeah. Did you try to shoot it all of those scenes in the style of the original series? We made a grand attempt, I mean, between the lighting and the... and the production design and the choice of lenses, camera placement. You know, so many times on our show, deep space normally, we would use either longer lenses or we'd have higher or lower angles and stuff. But the Star Trek of the past seemed to all be at eye level or just maybe below eye level. I think it was very effective.

You felt I felt as I watched it like I had gone back in time, back into that original series. Right. And it could have been so much worse if you hadn't done that. It would have It would not have worked at all. What makes this work is the subtlety that the audience doesn't realize they're being involved in

that all those tribulations that you went through of paid off. Yeah, to create the fourth wall meshing with the one from the 60s. It's just gorgeous details. Seameless. Seamless is our attempt, not only in the visuals,

but in the performance levels. and the tone of the show, we tried to match the Tribal show. I think you achieved that. The end of this scene, we see our first Tribbles, O'Hura comments on how cute they are. She wants to hold it. What is it? She says.

We're currently in the Enterprise Corridor. O'Brien has a panel open, and he's looking at it. And this, everything is, it's Greek to him. He's like, what is going on? Everything is just cross-circuited. It just looks like nothing that he's used to at all. It's 100 years. It's tech from 100 years ago, basically.

And also we have Bashir there who is scanning to see if he can find Darwin with his little medical tricorder. And as they're looking at what's going on inside of this panel, that's when Charlie Chun. Charlie Chun shows up, the engineer, and he's like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be working on this area. Scotty told me to do this. What are you guys doing here? And Bashir is sitting there just hymning and highing. oh, well, you know, making up any type of story he can come up with. But basically, at the very end, we find out that they pass all the work on to our engineer to finish up and they exit the scene, saying that O'Brien is sick and he doesn't feel very good.

And so the last thing that we have is the engineer is saying, no problem. Hope you feel better, which is a cute. I'm so glad he said that that was really sweet. Yeah, it was. I thought Sid did a great job of kind of vamping a bit and going on and doing this study. I'm just studying him as he works, you know, having some problems. And then, of course, Miles is completely clueless, which fits Bashir's story of, yeah, he's been having some trouble. That's why I'm doing a study.

It was great. And it was cute when O'Brien tries to do something and puts his hand in and everything goes up. You know, maybe I don't want to do that. All the lights go off in the corridor. Oops. Very funny. And that was like two shots, two setups. Maybe a little tighter at one point, but it was a relatively easy one to shoot, you know,

because he was all about the interaction between it. Did you give Charlie any acting instructions there? Did he come ready to go with his? He was ready to go. Yeah, that's it was great. Yeah. Okay. Well, we go back to the bar.

Worf enters, finds Odo, and Odo reveals a Tribble from his lap. Robbie, isn't this scene an homage to when we watched the original episode of Spock being all mesmerized? Remember that? Like, he's all mesmerized by the Tribble. And now Odo is playing the same role in this scene. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it was great.

Great wide-angle lens on that Tribble shot, by the way. Thanks. And, yeah, again, it was just trying to match the feeling and getting a lot of it. So that people wouldn't say, oh, that was shot then. Oh, no, this is shot before, you know, everybody. It all felt like a uniform and, you know, a cohesive story, even though you were having to match old footage. It all fit together beautifully. Good, good.

We come back, and Worf is disgusted by this Tribble. He finds it just completely reprehensible. He says, we learn that Tribbles were the mortal enemies of the Klingon Empire, which Wow, you never would have thought the Tribles could have caused them that much trouble. But they are dramatic. Yes. Yes. We learned they were an ecological menace to the Clingon people, and the Clingons obliterated the Tribal homeworld.

They went to war with the Tribles and destroyed them all. I love Odo's responses here. Yeah. Go ahead. Another glorious chapter of Clingon history. Tell me, did they sing songs, still sing songs of the great. Tribble hunt. This poor little thing in his hands, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like a little baby bunny. Robbie, you nailed the scene right there. No comment. No comment there. There is a red alert at the end of the scene. We cut out to the corridor to Dax and Cisco and it alarms here.

And Cisco says, Dax is like, well, what do we do? Just goes like, get to battle stations. What a red alert? Where are they? Is this where David Gerald crosses camera here? Is this the red alert scene? Yeah, I think it is.

Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, he opens the scene coming down the hall. And as he passes, we lock on to the two of them. Okay. Robbie, just going back to that final line of Odo, tell me, do they sing songs of the Great Triple Hunt? Now I started thinking about Star Trek, the musical. That could be one of the numbers.

That could be one of the numbers. The Great Tribal Hunt. They start singing about the Great Triple Hunt. It'd be really, really fun. That would be very fun. Are you working on that? I'm going to work on it. Yes.

The Broadway and I. The Delta Flyers presents Star Trek to musical. Star Trek Broadway. Oh, my word. I'm going to start voice lessons tomorrow. We go to the turbo lift and Cisco and Dax. Enter the turbo lift. He stops it, though.

He tries to try his combat. I like this moment. Yeah, that was funny. Wait a minute. Pulls out a communicator, calls the define. Kira says that it's a Klingon ship approaching. It is the I-K-S-Groth. And Dax knows this ship.

It's Koloth's ship. He's the boss of that ship. And that's Dax's old friend. And she's very excited. She remembers Koloth telling her this story. So again, the old episode is coming together with our characters. I love this, that they can use Dax, who's had these multiple lifetimes. Yeah.

To somehow have dovetailed. with that original episode because of her friendship with Koloth. Yeah. Yeah, and we've already had the Blood Oath where I've talked all of those three Klingons into. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. So Terry, when you suggest that you go meet him, Yes.

Cisco says, oh, I don't know about that going to happen. He's not going to recognize me. But the fact that if he doesn't, you're not taller than Perzon. This is my job. was a foot shorter than you. This is my job through the whole thing to be like, like in my poem. I want to go say hi. I want to go.

I want to be in it and I can't be in it. That's some of my notes, Terry, that you wanted the adventure and Cisco's on the job. He's on a mission. And he can't allow that to happen because it might change the future. Right. Yes, that's so true. Yeah. But I think what's nice is the Cisco is kinder and more jovial than he normally is about stopping me from these things.

It's a very sweet energy that the two of us are dynamic the two of us have together. Yeah. Like he's my big brother going, Terry. Yeah. You know. Oh, and that's the scene, by the way, that has the different hallways. That's the one I was referring. Oh, that you were talking about.

At the beginning at the end, yeah, yeah. So somewhere along the line, we split that scene up and moved everything to another hall. Armand, were you going to say something? Just me being a asshole. You can cut that out if you like. But I don't think you should. I didn't recognize Cisco in this episode. Interesting.

Because of that lightness, because he was just kind of swashbuckling. Oh, well, you probably didn't get to encounter him with that part of his personality either. That's true. Yeah. Because I feel like my character kind of got some of that. Yeah, I mean, it may have. But I've watched enough of the episodes to know what he did. Sure.

There was something about his performance and went, that's Avery, but that's not Cisco to me. Right. I agree with you, Armin. I felt that way too. And yet went with it because of the circumstances. And I justified it in my head that Cisco was. was enthralled with the idea of meeting Kirk eventually. I mean, he wanted to meet Kirk.

And we'll talk about that at the end. Yeah, yeah. You know, he found, he found this something interesting to. He felt magical about the, he had to stop me, but he was probably just as curious and excited as I was. He just had to be the person that stayed in control because obviously I was not. Right. He's the reality check.

You're the dreamer. Yeah. But you're right, Armand, it was a change. It was different. It did feel different. Yeah. All right. Next scene is in the Enterprise Corridor.

Kira tells Miles and Bashir to beam in three minutes. The next band shift of the Enterprise scan cycle will be in three minutes. And so they'll be ready to go and beam over to the station. Dax wants to beam over. Cisco says, no, not a good idea. So he instead sends Bashir and Miles. Yeah, he's much better put. clear. So he's going to send him over in three minutes when the, when the band shift happens.

Bashir says, let's find a turbo lift to go and get beamed from. They go to a turbo lift and it's the same woman as before. Wattley. Oh, I love this scene. Wadley. Yeah. Very funny. She says that Bashir's flap is open, which I thought was very funny. Yeah. Yeah, that was like, oh, I don't remember their pants having flaps. That's my first thought. That was my first thought. Yeah, me too. My quarter flap is open. It's going to drain the power. She's a little flirty here. She mentioned she's coming in for a physical at 1,500.

And then she turns around. Her name is Lieutenant Watley. So very flirty here with Bashir. And then Bashir, she leaves. And Bashir's like, wait, Wadley, that could be my great-grandmother. That was my great-grandmother's name. And suddenly his mind is going that maybe he's his own grandfather. Yeah, because she was giving him.

the eye, right? Yes. Miles says absolutely not. I don't even want to think about it. I wrote down, Me Too. I don't want to think about it either. It's a little disturbing. He talks about a pre-destination paradox that he may be his own great-great-grandfather. And honestly, this whole energy of how Bashir is playing this was so similar to instances in my own life. I was like, oh my God, this is so me right now, just going crazy about something that... Some paradox? No control over. Yeah, some paradox you have no control.

But then when Bashir says, all right, fine, but I can't wait to get back to Deep Space Nine and see your face when you find out that I never existed. It was just like, yes, I want to see that happened. Yeah, if you don't let me check this out, I may not exist. You're going to lose your best friend, is what he's trying to say. Love it. So funny.

Very funny. We go to an Enterprise Corridor, back with... Cisco and Dax and they've resumed their research when they see Kirk and Spock in the foreground. This is the shot you were talking about earlier, Jonathan. Yes, yes. Great integration of that old footage and new stuff. Really gorgeous. Beautiful.

I made a note, have Jonathan explain these setups because they are so well done. But you've talked about it a little bit, a motion control camera for Dax in the background. Anything else you remember about integrating this scene with Kirk and Spock? I was laughing at the fact that she liked Spock instead of Kirk. It just went so from all the stories that went around about Kirk being the ladiesman, and then she falls for Spock. I thought that was a great part of the scene. That was a payoff.

As far as technical, I think I've already gone over it. It was just a marvelous thing that Gary Hutzel put together and managed. They used to do all the optical work on optical printers. film on film on film. This is one of the first times that they decided to go digital on everything. So everything we shot was transferred to digital tape. And then worked in post-production as far as aligning the shots. It was done on a computer, basically.

It's amazing that this was some of the first digital work they did. And it is so good. It's better than some of the stuff we see on television now, honestly. It really is. And they were led by a 14th. gump i mean that's the forest gump look is getting you know tom hanks in there with president kennedy and yeah that that was the inspiration for doing this kind of stuff oh that's great i didn't know that but that's a yeah it's a great it's a great detail that you bring up i hadn't heard that but

you're right forrest gump was right around this 94 95 it had been a huge mega hit yeah and everybody was talking about that movie so for television to do that it was a big deal because it was so expensive and time-consuming. Yeah. And we did it in eight days. I wonder how long it took him to do Forrest Gump. More than eight days. A lot more than eight days.

Actually, we had a seven-day schedule on this one. Seven days. Yeah, but then there was second unit for a day or two. Yeah. Well, we cut to the K-7 bar, Bashir O'Brien joined Warf and Odo at the table. Very funny scene that intercuts lots of old footage in this scene. This must have been the hard one for you, Jonathan. the fight had to be the hardest thing you had to shoot.

I have to admit, I did get some information prior to my prep time. So on our last interview, I said I had eight days of prep. I actually had almost a month to work with this stuff on my own. I was given the sequences that we were going to do. And during that time, I didn't have a script yet, but I knew that we had to come up with a fight scene there. So once I did get the script, I realized that we had to have the action. flowing from 1968 to now coming in and out of it in and out of frame and then some of

those were compounded like when O'Brien hits a particular guy we did that in front of a green screen as opposed to our set so we had that 1968 action going on in the background and our guys on the foreground trading punches and on top of that O'Brien had to pull back and we had another green screen of a chair going that was brilliant brilliant yeah yeah that kind of stuff I tended I'd put that together but generally it was just trying to piece it so that it worked and I think I made a note last time but I'll repeat myself that when the I saw the cut that the editor had done he didn't do it in the order that I had envisioned it or shot it in

so we went back and recut that sequence pretty much from the get-go to make sure that it flowed from one moment to the next yeah I think of that scene as the crown jewel of this episode. It is just brilliant. It's just brilliant. Seriously. There are fight scenes that we do, that we've seen and talked about, that aren't nearly as complex and are not done as well. We're like, we've talked about this in episodes, and this one was, it really was outstanding. Thanks, Terry. There was one mismatch just before the fight started. When Bershear first walks in is talking to them, and then turns around to grab a chair, and then he brings the chair back to the table to sit down.

I did that so that the chair shot, he would come back into frame, and in the background, he was on a blue screen, and in the background, you'd see other people entering behind him from the old show. So we needed to get him to make that move and come back with the chair in order to be able to cut to him. Well, the cut didn't match. He picks up the chair in a wide shot with his hands down like this, and when you cut to him turning and being in his medium close-up,

he's holding the chair like this. And it made the movie. It made the movie. We didn't catch that. It's fine. What was Judy Brown doing? It drove me now. It was Judy Brown to.

I said, isn't there another take? Oh, dang. When Robbie and I watched the original series episode, one of the comments that I made to Robbie was how funny it was right when the fight begins, the Klingons, the Starfleet, Everyone gets up and shoves it. They stands up and they shove their seats backwards. And you did the same thing with Sid.

Sid does that when he stands up. He pushes that seat backwards just like in the original series. Though flawless, it was great. Oh, good. And we had our own old Klingons in the background, too. They weren't from 1968. They were our guys. Yes.

They were great. The blend. It was Madelon there too? Dennis Madeline. Yeah, yeah. I love the fact that O'Brien thinks he sees Kirk. He swears. I know when it wasn't.

I was like, what's wrong with him? Yeah, that's good writing. That's good writing. Yes, isn't it? Yeah, that actually, that actor, the one that he thinks is Kirk, is, has, was used as Shatner's like stunt double and a lot of stuff. Oh, was he? Oh, that's sweet. Oh, that was a great.

And funny, too, yeah, to think of it that way. See, this episode was amazing. Yeah, yeah. I also like when Wharf, uh, You know, they realize that they say the Klingons over there are ordered the Ractogeno. And they're like, where's the, we don't see any Klingons. They're right there. And then Worf says, we can't talk about it.

It's a long story, what happened. We don't talk about it without sighters. That is my favorite line in the show. That is my absolute favorite line in the episode. And I believe I'm not the only one that feels that way. It is a brilliant way to explain the difference. Oh, God. And Michael was so hot about the whole thing.

It was hilarious. Was he hot about it? Meaning he didn't want to be there. It was just so funny. It was so mad about the scarf. The hat. Oh, my God. The waitress was very funny, too.

Because when they realize like, what Klingon's where? She's like, right there. It's like, what? That's when the waitress says, you guys have had too much to drink. Because clearly, you can't even see. Yeah, that was great. So funny. Yeah.

Odo does spot Darwin outside the door at the very end, and he helps Worf finish off his part of the fight, and they go out to get Darwin. Miles and Bashir are arrested by security at the end of this fight, and then we cut, I think, do we go to the captain's office? I think so, yeah. Oh, my gosh, that lineup. I'm so happy I watched the original after I watched the first. Just how you fit the guys in that lineup with Captain Kirk. It's insane how. It's perfect.

How did you do that? How did you do it? Well, number one, we had the playback of the original. And then we had the two guys on in front of a green screen. But we actually did a Dolly move that tried to match it as well as we could. And we did another one. Oh, yeah, we did the Dolly move. It wasn't in one shot, obviously.

But there was a moment when Kirk comes in front of the camera and he's looking at Miles. And then he moves on to the other character next. to him which was a checkoff check off he goes over to checkoff and you see miles kind of go this way in the shot and he's got a shadow on him from kirk shadow oh all that had to be that had to be drawn in in post-production the shadow was incredible along with the camera move had to be matched matched up frame by frame so that's that's what you could do digitally then you know you could match it so it wasn't like we had to have the timing exact on the set we just had to have the timing exact on the set we just had to get them in the right spots.

But we did have to time it when everybody does a left turn and walks out. Our boys had to match the moment with the rest of the guys in the line had to make the turn. And then they had to cover the guys that were underneath the shot, because our boys were put in front of two other characters. From the original footage. From the original.

So Gary had to make sure he covered all of that movement or any shoulders. Nothing could pop out. Wow. Jonathan, I just want to go back just very quickly at the end of the bar scene, the bar fight scene when Starfleet security comes in. When you watch the original series

episode, you see a line of them run in there. And they're all quite spelt guys, but the guy that stopped O'Brien, it's like an NFL line, he's like an NFL offensive tackle. It was like, who's that guy? Where did he come from? Yeah, did you cast that guy?

No, it was probably Madelone. I was a Madelone guy. I was a Madelow. So one of Madelone's buddies came in and this guy's massive. I've never seen a bigger human being on TV. And I didn't, again, I didn't question it because the decision had been made to say yes. I mean, he was in a uniform. It's not like they just brought him in at the last second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So somebody upstairs said, oh yeah, let's get the big guy. Let's get him.

Okay. All right. That's funny. Yeah, there's some things you just have to work with. Well, at the end of our lineup scene, they'll march out. Kirk has confined them all to quarters. So they're dismissed. And we go out to a corridor. Miles is commenting that Kirk spoke to him. He asked me a question. He's just amazed. And that's when Bashir steps on a treble on the floor. And then Miles looks around the corner and there are dozens of them there. That's when it's revealed to us that they're starting to multiply. Starting to multiply. We go back to the transporter bay, Otow Wharf and the old Darwin are beamed in. And Odo and Worf have Darwin, but he's very confident in this scene.

He thinks that he'll have a statue of himself in the Hall of Heroes once his plan is put into motion. And he mentions here that Kirk's death will have a bit of poetic justice. And he laughs. So Darwin has done something. We don't know what yet. One thing I missed that I think we could have done it. We never saw them actually capture Darwin in the old ship. All we see is Odo's...

They see him in the hall, right. They see them in there, and the next thing, you know, maybe we cut away to the two guys, but then the next thing you know, they're in the transporter room back on the Defiant. I thought about it as time passing. Yeah. So it didn't disrupt it for me.

Yeah, it's okay. Yeah. Same for me. Not a distraction. I mean, it's like you can't show every single, some things you have to assume. Yeah. Well, even the next...

They've happened. Even the next scene, we jump to a corridor. Odo's telling Cisco that there's a bomb and a triple. So we know that whatever dark, Marvin was referring to the poetic justice. We'd jump ahead in our story and there's a bomb and a Tribble. Darwin said that it's set to go off in an hour we learn. And back in the corridor, Dax thinks that they need to get on the bridge,

scan the entire ship with the internal sensors of the enterprise. And Cisco agrees. They're going to have to go ahead. Because it would be much faster. Yep. And so they're going to go do that on the bridge while they send the rest of the team searching for this Tribble that's got a bomb in it. We cut to Odo in the transporter.

Bay saying Worf is allergic. We'll send the rest of the team, but not Warf. Don't send Warf. It seems he's allergic to triples. And Cisco's like, he's allergic to tribles? Oh my goodness. Okay.

Odo was sensitive enough to Warf's issue, but he didn't want to belittle him. That was very nice of him. It was very nice. This is the new softer human Oddo. Solid Odo. softer side of Odo.

Softer side of Odo. Yes, we go back to the corridor, and I like this funny bit of Dax listing her mathing of how many tribles there are. Very Spock-like. Well, it's exactly what Spock says in the original. Later on. Same number, right? Great setup.

Great minds. How did she find out? She actually deduced that herself, or did she know other information from the past? Oh, I think she must just deduce it. Oh, no. I think she, yeah, that's how smart she is. Yeah. She can math.

She knows how to math. She's good at math. She knows how to math. Yeah. I could not do that for you. None of us can do that. It's not in my skill set. I did like Avery's thank you at the end of that.

When he cuts her off. Yes, to cut me off. She said, that's starting with one triple with an average litter of 10 every 12 hours. After three days, he goes, thank you. No more math. And when you watch the original, Spock explains the whole thing. I'm saying exactly his lines. Were you aware of that when you shot this scene?

No, because also, I don't think we could pull the old show up. Not like we can now. No, we didn't have a computer. That's true. No. Yeah. I saw the whole show. Maybe I saw it on tape. It's possible.

You probably did. One of those great VAT. You had to see it. I remembered the episode from seeing it as a kid over and over again, but not. It didn't matter. It didn't really matter because I was already a fan. I already knew it. You know what I mean?

Terry, did you build your spaceship out of leaves and play the Tribles episode? I did. I did. Good. Yes. Speaking of the original, we go to the Enterprise Bridge. This is that scene you were talking about before. Jonathan, great integration of the old and the new footage.

I wrote down, you know, was this a set extension? Was it all green? You know, what do you remember about this? We, they built part of the front doors, and they also did the, where Cisco was sitting, and Terry was behind him. It was the side of the building next to the computer. Kind of that cutaway to the side of the bridge. They built that set.

Yeah, that was built. That, as opposed to the green screen, when Terry was walking behind Kirk, that was all green screen. And we used the original footage. on that. But yeah, they built quite a bit of it. I was impressed with the look. It had the same dimensions, the same color. In your Bible, Jonathan, is there any mention of how much this episode cost? I'd never, never got to break down. They just said it costs a lot of money. You know, maybe an extra. Did you find it, Gawa? Maybe an extra $400,000 for visual effects, something like that. I read somewhere, this was the most expensive to date at this point.

any DS9 episodes or any Trek episode. I would guess any track episode. Any Trek episode. It was the visual effects. Yeah. You know, every time they cut to a blue screen, even if it was the same angle, it was intercut with a scene. Every time they would cut to that angle, it was a separate deal. They didn't just do the green screen or blue screen on the entire take and then cut it up.

Every time they cut, it was a new shot that had a new price tag. A new price tag on every one. And I asked Dan Curry, how come you did it that way? He goes, just the way we used to do it. Yeah. I mean, that's how they still do it. I mean, when I work on shows, every time you get a green screen cut, they add them up and it's, you know, two grand, five grand, a shot. A shot.

A shot. Even if it's a close up, still. Even today. Sometimes they'll do you a favor and they'll put something, they'll say, hey, if you cut this, give it to us as one cut, we'll do it all as one price and you can cut it up later. Wow. You know, but it's always a negotiation. I'm wondering if because of the cost of all of that is why they made it a seven-day shoot, I am flabbergasted if that was a seven-day shoot because I remember eight-day shoots.

I only remember eight-day shoots. That's funny. I remember there were a few eight-day shoots. Me too. I remember them all being eight-day shoot. Well, maybe they were mostly your episodes. Yes, because a lot of takes. Fairly, that would make sense why you would see it that way.

way. And considering how many Ferengue were usually with you when you were, that's a lot of hair and makeup. I mean, make- Not hair, not hair. Not hair. I amended. I amended. But it's a lot. It takes a lot of time. And perhaps I'm wrong. I'll go back and look at, I have some shooting schedules as well. Oh, good. But I always remember it as eight, but maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe later in the run, we got a few extra eights. In the beginning, I was, that's why we worked such long hours. I said, how do you cram eight and a half pages into it one day three times in an episode i was wondering so as kirk calls for uh mccoy dr mccoy and he comes up on the bridge you had mentioned before garrett that they had to make deals it took them months to make deals with the actors but was de force kelly still

alive his estate take it from the union rep yeah is a state they would have had to negotiate with his whoever his heirs were right that's right and and and and his Chekhov said they must have jacked up the price. Oh, Walter. Walter must have said. And I would imagine if Walter jacked up the price, you can imagine what Leonard. The estate or? Yeah.

Leonard and Jack. Right. So if, yeah. If Chekhov got eight times more, Spock probably got 20 times more, and then Kirk probably got 30 times more. And it just, yeah. Unless all those actors got together. Yes, of course it did. Yes, it did. So expensive. Unless all the actors got together.

And DeForest Kelly was still alive. I just looked it up. He was still alive in 1999. But more than likely, each agent negotiated each actor's salary on their own. In this scene, we do learn that Dax has already met McCoy. She has, in fact, she met him when he was at Ole Miss. Did you catch that? I was like, what? He went to Ole Miss. Robby's rival school, one of Robbie's rival schools in the SEC. Robbie's a big Georgia, Georgia fan. Yeah, they're an SEC team.

Yes. I did like that detail that he was from, you know, a classic southern kind of college. It just fits DeForest Kelly. Yes. Yes. Very much so. And by the way, DeForest Kelly is from Georgia originally. That's where I do.

Really? Yes, he's from Toccoa, Georgia. So they should have said he went to, that he was a bolder. University of Georgia. Yes, you should have. They should have said that. Well, they should have. didn't. They did not. All right. But Dax met him at the university and she more than met him.

Let's be honest. I got cozy with him. She got cozy. She knows he had the hands of a surgeon, she mentioned. I like that. Oh, my. Well, I think that. I think that's all Cisco could take. Yes. I did like Avery's reaction when you mentioned he had the hands of a surgeon. He knows what you're about it was very funny reaction very funny reaction did he play that all right arman yes sir he did the end of this scene they basically realized the bomb is not aboard the enterprise and dach says well it must be somewhere on k7 yep yeah uh we do have a shot don't we have a shot at this point of a k7 uh storage grain storage area where we goes over all the troubles all the tribles and then slowly focuses in on one brown triple, very similar to the one triple that you showed us earlier

at the beginning of this podcast. That may be the one. That's the guest. That's the good one. Do you have a name for him? Do you have a name for him? No, you can name him for me. Oh, my good.

I did talk to Chris today, actually, before this, about that shot, that specific shot. He says hello to everybody, by the way. Hi, Chris. Yeah. I said, Chris, what did we use? I know we had an underslung. camera and you were the DP so we had a different operator. He wasn't on the camera doing that shot. What did we use? He goes, I think we had a remote head, one of the early remote head cameras,

and it was suspended underneath with a couple of risers on a regular stage crane or one of those smaller cranes that we just rented for the day. But low tech, you know, kind of stuff. We just kind of dropped it down. Oh, he also said he thought that the set was built on a platform to allow It's a different height. So you weren't like hurting your backs. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it's the kind of shot you wouldn't assume if you're not a filmmaker.

That's a hard shot to do to fly the camera over all of that stuff. Yeah. And I think it was either a 21 or a 14 millimeter lens looking straight down at the beginning as we go down the ladder and then it pan. And then make the turn and fly over close to the tribles. Great. Yeah. We go to the K7 bar next. Bashir, O'Brien, Odo, are scanning all the tribbles.

No luck yet. Sisko says it's got to be here. He's in the turbo lift. And the problem is they're running out of time. I mean, because there's so many troubles. And they're always reproducing, so they don't know what's going on. But I come to save the day. Yes, you do.

Because it makes sense he would put it where he would know Kirk would be. Yes. In the next half hour. Yep. That's got a half hour left. Daxon Sisko. say they're going to stay close to Kirk. We go to the rec room and Kirk has ordered some soup, but there's tribbles in his soup and he's just had enough. He says he wants to meet him on K-7

near the storage compartments. And Kirk goes to beam down to K-7 to the storage compartments. And this is where Cisco overhears that. So he knows that's where they've got to be. There's a quick nod to the original episode because in the original episode, it's Kirk that says storage compartments, storage compartment. He repeats the line again. And here, Cisco is the one that says storage compartments. Oh, that's right. Storage compartments.

So there's a bit of a parallel here too. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Remember that. Great integration. We cut to the storage compartments. It's the grain storage hopper.

Dax and Cisco climb down inside. They're searching. They only find some faint traces. But how will they ever find which one is there? you hear the sound of a locker being opened and we cut outside to the famous scene where Kirk is trying the doors and he opens one and the tribles fall all over him

and the best part of this scene, Robbie, is clearly after the biggest part falls down. Now, and we talked about this, there's intermittently a random triple will fall out and every cutaway, right? and they utilize what was really happened because it's tax and Cisco going this ain't it they throw it out matched perfectly it was so funny I was on the floor oh genius the guys were were great there's one issue I had with that entire thing is that we didn't have the same amount

of treble colors like in the original they were mainly brown with a few whites turned in and then when we cut upstairs inside the unit with dachs and cisco there weren't as many brown ones there were more white and gray and i said god when it fell they should have been the same color yeah i mean most people wouldn't notice because our guys were in the dark kind of but it bothered me when we were shooting but the prop guys said well that's all we got john it didn't pull us out though it didn't pull us out i think we're not yeah we're still locked in yeah the nitpicker didn't see that. Even the nip picker missed it. Oh, my goodness. Oh, good. Thank you. Did you blink? I love how Dax, when she overhears Kirk, or Spock, sorry, mentioning his math, she sort of looks to Cisco. Very gloaty. And, yeah,

that was a nice moment. Well, you guys found all that. That wasn't in the script. That's just the responses that you had. I love it. It was great. Cisco eventually finally. the one with the bomb inside of it. He calls Kira, tells her to lock on to his tricorder, beaming into space. He puts the tributle on top of the tricorder. It gets beamed out into space. This poor tribble, very sad moment out in space where the triple explodes. Boom.

That was Ralph's stand-in. That wasn't this one. No tribbles were harmed in the making of this show. Ralph's Stand-in. So now he does have a name. named him. He named him Ralph. I feel better now. Yeah. I like it after the explosion, Dax is left with one treble in her hand and at the button of the scene she tosses that triple and it's another shot back to her. Very funny. So good. We go to the station manager's office

next and it's the classic scene where Darwin is busted. We cut back to the orb cabin. Kira opens the orb case and figures out how to get them back in time. As Cisco narrates this, says that Major Kira has discovered how to use the orb to bring us back to our own time. And now we're back with Cisco for a moment. He says there's one, he did one thing before going home. And we cut to the Enterprise Bridge. And we see Cisco asking Kirk to sign the duty roster here. And he says he's headed back, but it's been an honor serving with him. So I love that, that moment that Cisco has. as with Kirk there.

More integration. That footage of what we just saw is not from the original series episode. It's from it, yeah, it's from another original series episode called Mirror Mirror. Mirror, exactly. Oh, great. This was my one nitpick. Yeah. Cisco's head looks so tiny next to Kirk's.

Oh, really? It didn't feel like, I didn't catch that. You didn't notice. For me, it was like, oh, Sisko. I mean, like too small in the scene. Right.

And after working with him for so long, you know how big his head is, right? I do. But I also know how big Bill's head is. Right.

So you know both. So they should look about the same. But anyway, it was just one of those. I went, oh, ugh.

Yeah. You know. That was a matching, that was a matching thing in visual effects. They could have blown up Cisco just a little bit more. Yeah.

But maybe they were hindered because the hands didn't match or the arms didn't match. Okay. Sure. It had to be a technical thing. Yeah. Well, we go back to Cisco's office. He tells the time police, you know, reprimand me if you have to. And Dolmar says here, you know what?

I probably would have done the same thing. I would have gotten Kirk to sign the duty roster. Like, if I could meet him, that would be cool. Yeah. Despite his 27 violations. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. But evidently, Cisco covered himself enough telling the story that they gave him. Yeah. Yeah. Truly. We go to ops as the time cops leave. Dax says, so it went well. And Kira says, yes, the constable wants to see us, though, in the promenade.

And we cut down to the promenade. Reveal tribbles are everywhere. Cisco did not mention that part. And we see Quark in his residual scene here with the triple on his head. the place is full of them. The button. So who brought it back? Is Armand's face.

Beautiful face. Who brought the Tribble back? It was so sweet. I don't know. Thank you. That's my huge. Probably Odo. You think Odo?

Probably Odo. Well, Odo really liked him. That makes sense. It certainly wasn't Worf. No. No. But that's my huge nitpick. That's where the temporal guys should have busted Siska.

Because if there are troubles everywhere, obviously. No, hold on, let me explain it. Then you guys can all take it apart. Okay. Dwarf explains in an earlier scene that all the tribles have been obliterated. There are no tribles left in the universe. Now, 200 years later, there are tribles multiplying on Deep Space Nine. The timeline has been violated.

Yeah. That's the point I think with Cisco not mentioning it because he knew the tribles were down there. This wasn't a surprise to him. So why, yeah. Go ahead. And I can I can counter that as well. All right. Go ahead and finish Jonathan. No, just saying that he covered his ass on that one by not mentioning it, knowing full well that the timeline, time continuum was changed. Yeah, it was changed. But here's my counter to that. The two guys have to go from Cisco's office down to their shuttle. have to pass through the promenade. Oh, they would have seen all the tribals. Okay, I got it. Maybe.

Oh, Jonathan, you were on the set long enough, so was I. Every time somebody came in, they went through a portal and entered the promenade. Yeah. They did. But wait, there were times, though, wait, wait, wait. It's an epic. It's an epic. There were times, though, when we were in those hallways, and it wasn't on the promenade where people came in.

I do remember that. The thing was the big gear doors that would open up and then you'd go down a hall and you'd end up in a quarters area. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. You guys have won the argument. But the argument of the tribles are a menace and like infestation in the universe. Now what? Now we're in trouble because the Klingons are terrified of them. Well, with all due respect to the episode, then Bashir should have disappeared.

Yeah, true. Oh, my gosh. No, I think he was wrong. I don't want to think too hard about that. No. Maybe Bashir did happen a thing with her. We don't know. We don't know that.

I don't want to think about it, Jonathan. I don't want to think about it. If he did, good for him. I'm going to talk to Joe Hage. That's what I'm going. Just good for Bashir. I like Dax's suggestion at the very end to deal with the tribals. We could build another station.

Yes. But the question, And not nitpicking, just going on what you guys said. I would be fascinated to find out who brought it back. And I think Terry's right. I think it was over. Oh, no, is a great explanation. Yeah.

It's the only person I can think of. He was the only one holding it in the bar, liking it so much. Ennourred with it. I can see him. Enhammered with it. Thank you. And he is human now. So maybe it's just tucked it in his jacket.

Because he's human now. That's a great explanation. And he's the one at the top of the scene who asked Cisco, did you tell them? So it does suggest that, you know, did you tell them that I brought this back? Yeah. Right. Oh, okay. But that final shot on Cork duplicating the bartender of the original series with the triple on top of his head is just classic. Great episode, Jonathan. I think I had that. Oh, yeah. That's the scene you're referring to. That was one of the shots that we were matching to on something. Yeah. Right. Wow. Oh, wow. That's all the tribbles in 1968.

Yeah, that's the frame. Wow. I love that you've kept this, Jonathan. I love that you've got. I have very few scripts. I just was going through my closet recently, and I was thinking to myself, boy, I wish I had saved more things.

So good for you. I didn't save them all. I mean, this is a classic one, and I say it was a special, special episode. Good for you. Thank you for sharing it with us, too. We do a thing now where we talk about the lesson, the theme or the moral that you take away. Star Trek often has a moral lesson that we can all take away.

My theme slash moral slash lesson of this episode, I have two of them. One is changing the past is not as simple as you might think. That's one lesson I have. The other lesson is just nostalgia is fun. This was a really fun episode. And that's my lesson. Sometimes just nostalgia can be fun. I like it.

Armin and then Terfair. So I have two too, and my second one is identical to Robbie's. I wrote down, it is strange how we hold on to pieces of the past. And then the second one is there's a yearning for innocence and simpler times. I like that. Terfair. Oh, I like that a lot.

I wrote Carpet Diem. Yeah, yeah, Carpet. Yes, exactly. Life's an adventure. If you are willing to be present and just enjoy whatever gloriousness is in front of you, just do your best to be present. And then it's magical every moment because you're really in it. And Terry, if I may, you brought that to this episode.

Yes, you did. Yeah. Thank you. you, thank you. Well, it was definitely in my heart. I didn't have to work at it. They even sent me on a promo tour just because it was like, oh my gosh, she's so excited. We got to get her out there. Yeah. Oh, that's great. On that episode for that episode? Yeah, we went down to the subways and in L.A. Because they were new. And we took boxes and boxes of tribbles and just put them everywhere. Oh, my God. I had no idea.

Yeah. Yeah, I did interviews and stuff too. And I, uh, wow. Which was kind of remarkable because we didn't do very much press for the show. Yeah. The show was the star. They really wanted to make this 30th anniversary a big one. So they made you do all this extra PR for it. So that's really cool. Made me. I was so excited. Yeah, you love doing it. That's good. Well, honestly, that's the easiest stuff in the world to do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jonathan West, what is your lesson or takeaway or moral of this? I don't have a story moral, but I have just the image of bringing back, it is a tribute to the original Star Trek.

And if it wasn't for the qualities in that series, the short three-year life ended up being 60 years worth of Star Trek. I still question how that happened. Yeah. It's quite amazing that the franchise has continued to grow and develop. And it does now, too, even with the new Star Trek shows that we haven't talked about too much. But I think it's a once in a lifetime experience for me as a worker, whether it was as a director or a cinematographer, things that I'll never do twice in my life. Nobody can say, what did you do? Once you mentioned you spent all that time on the Star Trek's, they go, oh, well, that's great.

Anybody around the world. So it's been my great pleasure. Yeah. It's awesome to hear. And my quick theme slash lesson for this episode would be, if you have a chance to bring back a species that's been extinct for 104 years, go for it! Yeah, Spielberg expanded on that theme, didn't he?

Yes, he did. With Jurassic Park. And Jurassic. Oh, my gosh, yeah. It's true. Jurassic. And Gene Roddenberry. for those three years you're talking about,

but to create NextGen, that's what brought us all back, that he was alive and he created Next Generation, gave us the opportunity to grow from there. So he kind of brought some, yeah, something that was kind of extinct as well, right? Star Trek at the time, bring it back. Yeah, but he also, like, he,

the idea kept getting bigger, right? So it's just, So wonderful how hard Gene Roddenberry worked on making that come to life. Yeah. And Michael Piller and Rick were no slouches either when they created Deep Space. They went off in a slightly different search for humanity. To say that humanity isn't always positive, but what Gene had hoped for that by the time the 23rd century rolled around that we had all had our ducks in a row as human beings,

Deep Space Nine said, no, that may not be the case. in the universe, you know. Yeah. They explored a lot of noir themes that I thought were pretty good. Which was very brave of both of them, because, as we all know, the fans really didn't want to see that. But in time has proven them right, over time. Yeah. 100%.

And it's, we're human. We're never going to be completely without lessons to learn and things to grow from and complicated brains we have. And dark sides and light sides. Dark sides and light sides. Yeah. These episodes are evergreen. You know, they're kind of timeless in their own way.

And this episode in particular, putting such different generations of Trek together and coming out with a great story like this, proof is testament to that, that it's just timeless. Yeah, our producer writers need to. Oh, yes. Oh, this is so well written.

And well shot. And very well directed. What is our Patreon poll winner theme lesson for this episode, Terry? Submitted by Andrew Kaplan. Don't ever insult the enterprise in front of Scotty. We will let that be. Well said. Well said.

All right, everyone. We have come to the end of our free podcast. And we want to thank once again our very, very, very. very special guest. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure. Yes.

Love you so much. Thank you. And also thank you to both Terry and Armin for being here together. It's always nice to have that synergy of all of us together. It's wonderful. And please join us next time

and we'll be recapping and discussing the episode Let He Who is Without Sin, and that will be with Terry and Armin yet again. So that'll be an exciting time. For all of our Patreon patrons, please stay tuned for your bonus material. For everyone else, see you next time. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.