The Delta Flyers - Twisted

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

The Delta Flyers is a weekly Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and recap podcast hosted by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill. Each week Garrett and Robert will rewatch an episode of Voyager starting at ...the very beginning. This week’s episode is Twisted. Garrett and Robbie recap and discuss the episode, and share their insight as series regulars.Twisted:A spatial distortion phenomenon occurring inside the ship changes Voyager's structural layout by twisting and compressing it.We want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Executive producers Megan Elise, and Rebecca Jayne, and our Post Producer Jessey Miller.Additionally we could not make this podcast available without our Co- Executive Producers: Stephanie Baker, Philipp Havrilla, Kelton Rochelle, Liz Scott, Eve Mercer, Sarah A Gubbins, Ann Marie Segal, Jason M Okun, Marie Burgoyne, Jason Self, Daniel Adam, Chris Knapp, Michelle Zamanian, Matthew Gravens, Brian Barrow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Megan Hurwitt, James Zugg, Mike Gu, and Shannyn Bourke.And our Producers: Chris Tribuzio, Jim Guckin, Peter Patch, Steph Dawe Holland, James Amey, Katherine Hedrick, Deborah Schander, Eleanor Lamb, Thomas Melfi, Breana Harris, Richard Banaski, Eve England, Father Andrew Kinstetter, Ann Harding, Gay Kleven-Lundstrom, Gregory Kinstetter, Laura Swanson, Ryan Watkins, Máia W, Luz R, Charity Ponton, Josh Johnson, Chloe E, Kathleen Baxter, Katie Johnson, Craig Sweaton, Maggie Moore, Ryan Hammond, Nathanial Moon, Warren Stine, York Lee, Mike Schaible, Kelley Smelser, Dave Grad, AJ Provance, Captain Nancy Stout, Katherine Puterbaugh, Claire Deans, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Matthew Cutler, Crystal Komenda, Joshua L Phillips,  Barbara Beck, Mary O'Neal, Aithne Loeblich, Captain Jeremiah Brown, Heidi Mclellan, Dat Cao, Cody Crockett, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Oliver Campbell, Selina Zhong, Anna Post, Evette Rowley, Robert Hess, Cindy Ring, Nathan Butler, Terry Lee Hammons, Andrei Dunca, Paul Whitsett, James Keel, Daniel Owen, Brian Jordan, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, and Amber Nighbor. Thank you for your support!Our Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Delta Flyers. We are a weekly podcast that discusses episodes of Star Trek Voyager in chronological order. Your two fantastic hosts along this podcast journey are myself, Gerard Wong, aka Ensign Harry Kim, and Robert Duncan McNeil, who portrayed Lieutenant Thomas Eugene Paris. If you are interested in either an extended version of this podcast or the extended video version of this podcast, both of which include added, amazing bonus segments.
Starting point is 00:00:37 Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash the Delta Flyers and sign up to become a patron. Amazing. That was amazing. I've really, really just trying to get more ASMR kind of more gentle kind of delivery. Yes. Yeah, I moved, you know, here's the thing, Garrett. I can tell something already because I'm in Vancouver right now.
Starting point is 00:01:01 And I'm in my new apartment. I'm here for the year to work. And I have a new setup. And I'm very happy with it. I'm very happy with my listen to the sounds of my microphone. I feel like this is a good setup I got going right here. You know, it's a marked difference between where you were at your temporary digs in Vancouver before this. I could tell you had sort of a gloomy kind of outlook.
Starting point is 00:01:30 It was, not happy. That was bad. It was so depressing. Horrible jazz was being played outside of your window. Oh, I forgot about that, yeah. The other thing is like my house in Atlanta in Dunwoody, Georgia, which I just sold. Congratulations. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:01:47 But when we would record there, my office was in the back corner, and my neighbor had a bunch of chickens. And she even had geese for a while. So I don't know if you remember, like you could hear the chickens. I did not hear chicken. It wasn't that far away. You could hear the chickens. You could hear the geese. It was right back in the corner.
Starting point is 00:02:06 And so here I am in Vancouver in a beautiful, quiet, very comfortable place. And I can hear the difference. I can hear the positivity in my voice. I'm guessing that you're fairly close to a retail district. Is that correct? Because you mentioned Nordstrom's earlier. You were at Nordstrom earlier. Yeah, we're not too far.
Starting point is 00:02:29 We're in the center of everything. We can walk to everything. It's really great. I love where we are. It's really nice. You can't beat that. Yeah, very happy. Yes, in fact, we're both in Canada, actually.
Starting point is 00:02:40 I know. I'm in California right now and you're in Vancouver right now. That's crazy. Please tell me, what hat are you wearing? This is a hat, Rebecca, got me for some holiday. Something. This is Vancouver Royals. Yeah, this was an old vintage baseball hat from the minor league baseball team, I think, that was played here in Vancouver.
Starting point is 00:03:03 So, yeah, it's a nice wool, old school vintage hat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how apropos that I am wearing the Major League Canadian baseball team. Yes. We're both wearing Canadian baseball hats. One minor league, one major league.
Starting point is 00:03:22 Yeah. All right. So right now, most of you're familiar with our format. Robbie and I are going to go ahead and go off and watch the episode. We're going to talk about. Yeah, we're going to go watch it. We're going to go watch it and come back. But for our Patreon patrons, we're actually going to play a little game
Starting point is 00:03:38 where we kind of go through what we remember just from the title and the brief synopsis that Netflix will provide for us. So thank you, everyone. We'll see you soon. Hey, guys. back from watching this week's episode, Twisted. Twisted. Teleplay by Ken Biller,
Starting point is 00:04:02 storied by Arnold Rudnick and Rich Hosek, directed by, and you were right, Robbie McNeil, Kim Friedman, directed this episode. And, yeah,
Starting point is 00:04:12 this was a confusing episode. Do you want to give your synopsis? And then I'll do my, I'll do my, I'll do a little synopsis. I would say that this episode is about we're cruising along. It's Kess's birthday. And Tuvok and Harry noticed something on the bridge that there's some sort of anomaly up ahead. And this, whatever it is, this energy starts to
Starting point is 00:04:36 literally and physically change the structure of the ship. You know, decks are moving around, rooms are moving around. We can't seem to get anywhere. We try a couple of things. And then eventually we just decide to let it happen. There's nothing we can do. Let's just let this happen. We let it happen. Everyone survives. And we're still baffled by what it was, but there is a big data dump on the ships' computers and a big download of our own information, but we don't really know much more than that, that there was just a certain amount of data downloaded and a certain amount put on. we don't. And that's that. A pretty thin plot, I would say. Okay, here's my haiku. Okay, let's hear it. Distortion ring here. Balana suggests shock pulse. Tuvac says, don't act.
Starting point is 00:05:43 Yeah, that makes more sense than the plot of the episode. Thank you. Yes, you did better. You should have been a credited writer. Yeah, this is a mess, this one. I think our, I think our, I mean, here's the thing. Here's what I'll say about it. As I watched it, I started realizing this feels like what they were trying to do was a classic disaster movie, like earthquake or the Poseidon adventure or Titanic. A disaster movie has a certain plot elements and certain tropes.
Starting point is 00:06:19 or structures that you have to include, otherwise you're not really making a disaster movie. And I sort of looked up, like, what are some of the rules of disaster films? So, like, one of the rules is an impending natural disaster, something that we know is greater than all of our power. It's a natural disaster that we can't control, and there are certain consequences to that natural disaster so let's see did we do that in this episode not exactly because we never defined exactly what that impending wave was it was like just a lot of confusion so i say no we did not have an impending natural disaster it was there a build-up in the plot or was this an
Starting point is 00:07:15 aftermath event sometimes the natural disaster movies are like the thing happens early on and then how do we rebuild from the natural disaster, right? Was there a buildup or an aftermath plot point? No, not really, because there was no ticking clock. There was no concrete awareness of what the natural disaster was. So no buildup, no aftermath. I say no. Was there an individual or a family displaying survival tactics that we focused on, that we invested in? No, I don't think so. All of these things I've said so far, I think we could have had, but we didn't. Were there multiple plot lines that often in the natural disaster movies, like the Titanic, you'll have a number of different characters that you follow their journey
Starting point is 00:08:01 through the natural disaster. Not really. Everybody was kind of focused on the same plot. So there weren't, I mean, there was a birthday party, and then there was this anomaly. I guess those were the two plot points, they didn't really feed back into the natural disaster. So I say, no, is an evil or selfish character who faces justice because of this? No. No, there was nobody. No. So, you know, I say for all of the strengths of a natural disaster movie, this episode, if that's what they were trying to do, failed on every level. It just didn't have those elements. And like I said, some of the examples are like Titanic or Deep Impact is another one. Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, even the Evil Dead movie is a natural disaster.
Starting point is 00:08:49 You know, those movies all exemplify that story structure in a really good way, and that's why they're so successful. And this episode didn't seem to adhere to that genre if that's what they were trying to do. And I don't know that they were trying to do it, but I can't, that was the closest I could come is this was an attempt at a natural disaster movie on, you know, a Titanic version of Voyager that just didn't have the stakes. It just, you know, anyway, we'll get into that. But I felt like half the episode, people are walking around with tricorders, kind of wandering
Starting point is 00:09:25 around, don't really know what they're looking for or what, there were no stakes. That's where I started wrapping my head around why this was not successful for me. I could not fit it into a genre that seemed to make dramatic sense in any way, yeah. I mean, I think the title of this episode should have been confusion. That makes more sense, you know? Although I do want to, I do want a little props to Paris there. Paris's line later in the episode says, Paris says the entire ship has been compressed and twisted.
Starting point is 00:10:02 So it's really off of your lines that we have the title of this episode. I think Chacote also used the word twisted. I did notice that Paris said it, and then I think Chacote used it later on as well. Yeah, but you coined it first, though. I think Paris came up with the first, which is cool. The birthday party, to start off with, I've always felt that our birthday cakes or any cake that we show on Voyager is so odd looking. It just looked like a piece of styrofoam painted like the galaxy, like that. But we use that same looking cake in everybody's birthday or everybody's celebration.
Starting point is 00:10:40 Why? I think I don't know, but I will say when I saw that cake, I think they did have a styrofoam version so that it was safe, you know, that it wouldn't get damaged. But I remember that was a really good cake. I remember waiting to eat it. And I was like, are we done with the cake? Are we going to cut it up now? Can we eat it? It was really good.
Starting point is 00:11:02 It was, I have to say, it was pretty good. You actually remember eating that cake? Yes, that cake in that episode. Yeah, that was something to look forward to. It was exciting. Oh my God, Robbie, for your memory being, you know, so spotty in terms of what do we remember and not knowing what's going on in a lot of the episodes. It's triggered a memory of eating it and going, oh my God, this is melting in my mouth. It was so good. I know what we're eating it on. I will say so, yeah, we do the birthday party, we start the birthday party at the beginning
Starting point is 00:11:38 of the episode, then we go to the bridge, there's you and Tuvok, and you see the thing, and you really want to get down to the party, Tuvok sees this, and you're about to go out and then the anomaly shows up, and Tuvok's like, no, you're not going anywhere. But I got to say, you had a lot of, you had, like, beauty makeup on in that scene, that first scene. What do you mean? I had rarely seen you, Garrett, with the makeup where your cheekbones were so highlighted with the blush in just the right way. It was like, it was like glamour. It was like Harry Kim glamour.
Starting point is 00:12:16 Maybe you got dolled up for the party. Maybe Harry put on a little, he put on a little something to get ready for the party. Because you looked, you were glowing. I don't know what was going on, but you were glowing in that first scene. Well, you know, what's interesting is that sometimes we wouldn't get, we wouldn't have our normal makeup artists working on our face. Sometimes somebody would fill in for us. They weren't used to doing our makeup. And I do remember there was a time or two that someone would do my makeup. And I would think, oh my God, like I feel like David Bowie before doing his, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:53 some music video, it would be extra makeup, you know. And I wouldn't say anything. I wouldn't be like, hey, what are you doing? And I just rolled with it and I just showed up on set with whatever they decided. So if I was extra beautiful or extra beauty make-dept in this episode. Wow. Just the perfect. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:17 Yeah. I didn't notice. Okay. You noticed that when I was on the bridge. I noticed my hair. Really? Yeah, because it was extra quaffy, you know, for some reason. And what a lot of people don't know, and you probably don't remember this, but Jose Normand, our head of hair, the hair department chair, or whatever you want to call her, she did my hair.
Starting point is 00:13:42 And in the beginning, you know, they did all kinds of things that tried to make it, you know, stay and where it's supposed to stay and not fall. And then they started using curlers. Like I would have to show. Yes. Oh, my God. I would have to show up extra early to make you had curlers why don't I remember this yeah that's what I'm saying a lot of people don't know this they had to put curlers in my you know women would curl put curls in her hair so she put these curlers in sort of like back and directional and to get some fluff into it to see some body to it to make it yeah and then once the curlers were done then then the brush with the hair dryer and hair spray and tons of you know but it's all started with the curlers and it was this this steam-based curler thing that, you know, they'd put in. And I would have to do that every day.
Starting point is 00:14:34 As well as getting my hair cut, and you probably got your haircut the same time I did, which was once a week, right? Didn't you get a trim once a week? Usually once a week or once an episode, which is about every seven days. Yeah, every seven work days. Yeah. Yeah, usually at the beginning of each episode, they'd trim it up a little. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:51 My hair doesn't grow that fast, so they'd hardly do anything. Right, right. But still, I always felt like, boy, that's that's the one great thing that that about this show is that we don't have to go to a salon or a barber shop and get our haircut like they're going to take care of it every time and so for seven years you know pretty much no expense was was spent on a barber or a salon so I'm like that much about it um but yeah but thank you for bringing up my beauty makeup I didn't know it was beautiful it was really beautiful you were you're a beautiful man so at the end of the of the teaser
Starting point is 00:15:25 there's a, you know, you guys make a call from the bridge and the word phenomenon, phenomenon, phenomenon, phenomenon. And I was thinking of the Muppets, Manamana. Manamana. Manamana. Manam. Yeah. I kind of did that.
Starting point is 00:15:43 And I was kind of, and then later on, I was like, wait a minute, why is, so that it was cool, it was weird and it was surreal and like, why didn't that happen more? Like, if they were trying to create a horror show, and a fun house or a weird house of, you know, craziness. Yeah. Why weren't all of our communications distorted and twisted? Like, it just never, there were these kind of little moments where I was like, ooh, that's weird and what's going on?
Starting point is 00:16:10 But then it never sustained. So I wish we had done more of that kind of like weird sound, weird visuals, weird. It just wasn't weird enough. My notes on the phenomenon line when Tuvok, you know, Tuvok comes on the calm and says we've encountered. unusual phenomenon phenomenon when i heard that i didn't hear muppets i heard some type of electronica track you know so this to me was was the beginnings of you know i'm at a rave basically right that i heard like it was and i'm waiting for the base to drop at that point but it was uh um definitely
Starting point is 00:16:43 a nightclubby kind of thing feeling when i got when i heard the phenomenon um the the the gift that you give uh casks it two weeks of replicator rations you get which which, you know, clearly, that's a lot of replicator rations. And of course, that's the way that we had to set up the jealousy issue. Once again, but, you know, this time it was great because it wasn't just jealousy towards you. You remember this, they were in the hallway trying to find Kess's quarters. And all of a sudden, Neelik starts wondering, how do you know where Ayala is? How do you know where Baxter lives?
Starting point is 00:17:15 How do you know where any of these guys live? Like, it was kind of like, whoa, you're really super going off the deep end there. Yeah. You're thinking that Kess is hooking up with every member of the crew now because she's, knows where their quarter is. Well, he did say later on to Chacote, he's like the green-eyed monster of jealousy. Like, yeah, understand it, it's taking over.
Starting point is 00:17:35 Actually, he called the, didn't he call it the green-eyed puss hog or something like that? He had a really descriptive term for that. So, yeah, and it's nice that he got some advice from Chikote. Yeah, that was a nice little, kind of help him out. Unexpected moment. I like that. Yeah. Oh, and then Tom Virtue shows up, right?
Starting point is 00:17:51 Tom Bertue, who plays, I like, I just like his name, Virtue, who plays Lieutenant. Baxter. We saw him way back in the episode where he disses the doctor and talks only to Kess, right? So I thought that was the only time we really saw him, but here he is and twisted. I was just going to say we get into the act and we realize there's a spatial distortion wave and it's got EM radiation and things like that. And Tuvok chooses to try to go through it, which I think is a very risky move. And he explains why. And his logic seems sound, but yet he makes a quick decision that sort of leads us.
Starting point is 00:18:25 to this plot. I feel like it was a bad choice. And there was, you know, we didn't really follow that up. We're like, dude, you got us into this mess. Like, we could have tried to turn around and reverse course really quicker. There were a number of other options, but instead he's like, nah, let's just barrel through. So you know when he says, let's go through warp three. And then I say, oh, wait a minute, the warp core is, you know, is malfunction. But we actually, yeah, so we actually didn't move at all, I don't think, is what I'm thinking. Right. So, but yes, he could have said full you know full reverse yeah reverse yeah but i i find whoever's in that command position usually janeway often making choices where i'm like oh boy here we go you had a couple options
Starting point is 00:19:08 and you chose the one that's going to cause trouble uh boy yeah who was it it was janeway and paris and chokote i think we're trying to get to the bridge there was a moment where we go out we're on the wrong deck and we come back and we come back in and Paris is the last one coming back into the turbo lift and as Paris comes by the the camera I said to Rebecca's were watching and I was like you know I made some face like hmm as I walked by the camera and I was like why do I have to give extra all the time like why can't I just walk in why do I have to make like a here we go it's like they're getting extra I did not see that so you made it I made like here we faces I try to do like sitcom moments like
Starting point is 00:19:55 Like, oh boy, here we go. Yeah, walking by the camera. I noticed it a lot in this episode, like these little extra Paris eyebrows or line readings. I was like, calm down, buddy. Hey, Garrett, have you been traveling this summer? Oh, my gosh, so much already. I don't always travel, but this summer's been insane. Trip after trip.
Starting point is 00:20:18 You've been doing your impersonation of me. Yes. You know what doesn't belong in everyone's epic summer plans, though? What? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. So while you're planning your beach trips and your barbecues and your three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. Well, that is why I made the switch to Mint Mobile.
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Starting point is 00:21:08 That's mintmobile.com slash TDF. Up front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Were you facial mugging? I was totally facial mugging. I had no idea.
Starting point is 00:21:29 I was such a mugger. Everybody blames like, you know, Picardo or something on that. But I was a cheeseball, like, all the time. Just for the listeners out there, when you're training to be an actor, one of the things that your basic acting teacher teaches is like, you know, stay away from facial mugging. And meaning don't act with your eyes. eyebrows. Don't, you know, don't do all this extra stuff because you don't need it. And I remember
Starting point is 00:21:57 my intro to acting teacher in college, she was talking about how she had a student where she literally had to tape his eyebrows down while he was doing his scene because he was so, he was so overacting with his eyebrows. Overanimated. You don't need anything. That was me. You did that. It's funny. I didn't notice Paris doing that. I really noticed Chacote's reactions. Like Really? Yeah, because when Neelik suggests in Sandrine's, he suggests, I can go ahead and accompany Commander Chakotay because I am, you know, such a good guide and I know everything about, you know, I'm a tracker.
Starting point is 00:22:34 And then it cuts to Chocote's face and Chacotas is like, Oh, yeah, I do remember that moment. He just has this look of like, oh my God, like really? I do, this reminds me as you say that. Like, I noticed as we were watching this, I noticed that we were all together. for a lot of this episode in Sandrine's or somewhere. And I do remember that now, after watching it again, that we were all together a lot more than usual.
Starting point is 00:23:04 And I think all of our frustration, we were kind of winding each other up. I mean, you know, if we were waiting to film scenes, like, boy, this makes no sense. Boy, what are we gonna do with the scene? Yeah, yeah. By the way, so Kess and Neelix are walking down the hallway, looking for her, for her quarters, and they get up there and they barely look at the door.
Starting point is 00:23:26 They just kind of glance over and Kess goes, oh, we're in the wrong room. This is somebody else's quarter. And my first thought was like, how do you know that? Every door looks exactly the same. Like, how would you? I mean, I know there's a little bit of writing there or something. But for the fans out there, you know, we talk about on the show, we talk about like deck 11, deck six, deck one, you know, here or there.
Starting point is 00:23:51 you know, somebody's quarters, somebody else's, we had one hallway. We had one set that was a hallway with, you know, five or six doors on it. And that's it. That was every deck, every hall, every quarters was right off that one hallway. And we just keep going back and forth, making it look like it was bigger. So I don't know how anybody knew where they thought they were at any given time, because it all looks the same because it's the same hallway. Yeah, but when Kess and Neil,
Starting point is 00:24:21 Felix are walking around, like, you can see that they're looking at the door as if there's an inscription saying the person's name on each room, like, who's staying there. But that wasn't, that wasn't the case. There was no, there was no, it didn't say Tom Paris, you know, on the door where your reporters were. It was just a door with some markings and some numbers. It did have some numbers, but they were, it was like a complicated code. Like that's a code. That's it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that. A bunch of numbers with a dash and more numbers and like, I don't know how you would memorize everybody's, you know, long-form quarters code. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:56 You wouldn't know that. That's impossible. It's longer than a telephone number, far longer. Yeah. And with letters, too. So, no, I don't think that was realistic. I just want to go to when Belana and you are in sick bay. No, Belana and you were in engineering.
Starting point is 00:25:12 Engineering, yeah. Yes. And then she walks towards a door, which is sort of like a side door of engineering or something. opens up and you see non-Tampoya, my stand-in. Yes. Topless. Who was, who by the way, he was in shape, dude. He was like, he must, I didn't know he lifted like that.
Starting point is 00:25:30 Like, yeah. I was like, whoa, good for you. He told me that. He just sort of froze there. She's like, as you were or something. And he just, well, he told me, he said production actually approached him and said, we need somebody to be in a scene with their shirt off. Do you mind, can we look at, we're thinking we want to use you, John.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Do you mind taking your shirt off? And he said, he took his shirt off in front of, you know, the producers. And like Mary Howard let out like a gas blow, which I saw his, you know. Yeah, she was like a mini, a mini corner, you know, going, oh my God, like that. That's funny. So muscular. Like they really, you know, that she had an audible, audible reaction to his shirt coming off, which she felt very flattered by.
Starting point is 00:26:19 He was like, yeah, I've been working out. So, yeah, so that was an odd scene. I completely forgot about that scene entirely. And Bologna, who's like this tough character who can handle the toughest situations, she sees John Tampoya with the shruff, and she falls back against the wall, like, oh, the vapos. I've got the vapors.
Starting point is 00:26:39 She was like, she was a mess. And then you make fun of her, too, which was good. Yeah, that little line there. Oh, yeah, another zinger. from Tom, another TV face mugging. Oh, it was so funny, another, we find Neelix and Kess back in the hallway again, lost. And Neelix gets kind of wound up and Kess walks away.
Starting point is 00:27:02 And as Neelix walked off, he was like banging his hands. Yes, inside like this. And I thought, oh, my God, nobody else can get away with that big of a performance. Like if Tom Paris went, well, Harry, I don't know what I was like wow he he went for it banging his hands that piece of physical comedy was just so quintessential Ethan Phillips and for him to do it and get away with it only he could do it that's so true yeah the I felt the only comedic scene was when Judy Gieson's character is just macking on the doctor Sandrine is just just smooching all over the doctor which I you know but we'd had to have some comedic levity in the The doctor at this point has gotten more women than
Starting point is 00:27:52 more action than Harry or Tom or Janeway or anyway the holographic doctor already by early season two is getting all kinds of business so yeah he is he is oh I also like the way Neelix pronounced Ayala's name he was like Ayala if you remember that
Starting point is 00:28:13 he was like this is where Ayala lives I felt like Bala in this episode was transitioning from her early Chakote pronunciation, which was Chakote. Chacote. Chacote. To Chacote. She had both versions in this episode, I noticed when she talked to him. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You know what? We should ask her that when we have her guest on this. I'm curious. Yeah. She called you Starfleet in this episode. She did. She did. She said, which is reference to the pilot. The pilot. I loved it. I wish she did that for all seven years, that would have been a great runner. I do like that interaction with Kim and Torres. The Jeffries Tube, Kim and Janeway in the Jeffries Tube, again, that was not an
Starting point is 00:29:02 easy scene to film. I think we spoke, at least I have spoken about the Jeffries Tube in the past episodes that the way that they built those Jeffrey's tubes with those really hard rubber or I don't even know if it's yeah it's probably rubber but the flooring the flooring of the tube is like is like a great plastic great right and it would go oh yeah it would have hurt your your bones yeah yeah yeah yeah so then the suggestion was by production was okay if it's that painful for you guys we're going to go ahead and put knee pads on you but then So then danger, you know, our stunt coordinator showed up with a bunch of knee pads. And when we suck them on, they ended up kind of making the suit, the uniform look weird.
Starting point is 00:29:48 You know what I'm saying? It didn't, it was so bulky underneath that it looked odd. So then we took them off again and then just did the scenes on our knees again. I just kept thinking, there's got to be a better way to do this. You know, we could have made it out of foam or just something that wasn't so hard on the knees. Well, you saved Janeway's life in this episode. You know, she gets, she opens that door and starts to get sucked through with this twisted thing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:15 And then, and then you grab her from behind. You're pulling her back, which, by the way, was a little awkward for me to see your positioning behind her and both of your expressions. I'm not going to go into why, but it was awkward. I'll just say it was awkward. I'll tell you, as an actor, it was awkward for me to film that, too. I kept thinking, man, this doesn't look right. I'm going to be, someone's going to look at this and go, what the hell is going to. going on here.
Starting point is 00:30:39 I did right here. I looked at it and was like, whoa, whoa, now. Calm down, people. So I'm pulling on her hips and everything and I fall back. And I seem to recall this may have been one of the episodes where I split my pants right down the middle, like that, that pulling. And then when she finally gets free of the distortion, I fell back and landed on the great, the hard grate.
Starting point is 00:31:01 And I think I might have split my pants. She said, Mr. Kim, you have been one of the bright spots of the story. whole mission. You've exceeded any expectations I might have had of you. This is like the only time that I recall Janeway complimenting Kim like that. That was a big deal. I didn't even remember this scene. I mean, I watched that and I was like, what? Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty cool. I do like that. We've got a scene after that with Tuvok and Chukotay talking about chaos and patterns and should they go this way. Tuvok's got a plan that I found that to be the epitial. of the problem of this episode.
Starting point is 00:31:41 It's like they're arguing this sort of intellectual analysis of patterns and chaos. And I'm like, why don't they write scenes where we see them doing something and the consequent, like the drama of that, rather than just standing in a hallway talking. To me, that scene, not that they did a bad job, it just was, there's no way to do a dramatic job of that, because you're just sitting there like in a, you know, in a classroom. debating philosophy and nothing's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you find the scene where Chacote dresses down Tuvac and says, I'm the commander. Yeah, yeah. I'm in charge now. Did you find that kind of off-putting
Starting point is 00:32:24 or odd or are you okay with that? Well, I just wanted some drama in the episode. I felt like there was for an episode that was supposedly about, like I said, a disaster event where the ship could have been destroyed and compressed and people changed at their core or dying or all of that there was not much conflict and drama it was very it was very strange it was a very strange yeah so i didn't mind that i felt like oh well at least there's something dramatic happening and right yeah it's just the whole episode felt like techno babble all the time and techno babble can be fine to sort of be some glue that we can move on to the next dramatic scene but this was like the techno babble became the whole episode.
Starting point is 00:33:10 Yeah. It's just, that's not enough. I seem to recall we had a little bit of a good laugh on set after Kate, you know, had a couple of times when she woke up out of her coma and said just gibberish. Oh my God. I think Kate, like, laughed at the end, like, dog cop, and she's just like, doody, doggy, dody, doggy, dody da. Yeah. I was, I was speechless when that happened.
Starting point is 00:33:35 poor Kate, how did she do it? Doggy do-di-dody-doddy-d-d-d-d-do. And again, all of this stuff that was going on in the whole episode, none of it was ever really explained. Like, even at the end of the episode, we kind of go, yeah, something happened, and there's some data. Cool. Credits.
Starting point is 00:33:57 What? Well, that was crazy, because you're right. We get 20 million gigacquads. Yeah. Is that right? Something like that, yeah. I mean, just huge amount of information is deposited by this alien entity, basically. I don't think we'll ever talk about it again.
Starting point is 00:34:16 We don't tell. Yeah. What did they tell us? Like, maybe it was a secret to getting back to the Alpha Quadrant. Who knows? Who are they? And I just don't think there's any connection to anything. It was like, I think, I feel like I remember.
Starting point is 00:34:31 at some point someone's saying that this episode almost didn't get aired or like they were they didn't they weren't happy with the script and then we made it and then they weren't happy with the episode and they were like do we even air it and i don't know it's i get why that that lack of confidence in this episode was there i almost feel because you know typically when you get a a script written by a teleplays written by ken bill or you've got some usually a smart writer he's a smart writer he's a definitely a smart writer, but I almost feel like maybe there was some type of personal crisis that he had to deal with at home. And he sat there and said, I'm going to have to phone this one in. I'm just going to just write whatever the heck I can do. Yeah, but the thing about writers in television is
Starting point is 00:35:13 you can't blame or credit the person whose name is on it necessarily because it's a team effort. Like writing staffs, you know, the writing staff works as a team. And so a lot of times writers are handed an outline and they're told write this scene by scene. Here's the, the outlined for the episode. We want you just to write this. And Ken was at that point still a pretty junior writer. And I'm sure if he got that assignment, he just wrote what they told him. It's kind of like us as actors, like they hand us a script. I can't say to them, this makes no sense. Like, that's not my job is to say, this writing is horrible. My job as an actor is to go, all right, how can I do this and make it watchable and entertaining?
Starting point is 00:35:55 and, you know, in what circumstance would I act this way and say these things? Why is he doing it? Yeah. And I really felt that the stakes, they weren't very high at the end. You know, for the actual end of this episode, when we've all sort of put our faith in Tuvok's suggestion of just let it encompass you, let it wash over you, just don't do anything. And so then we all have this moment of like, okay,
Starting point is 00:36:25 we might die. So let's sort of have this bonding the last, you know, moment of consciousness. And you see Bolana connecting with Chakotay about the spirit guide. And then she kind of holds his hand. Then you cut to Paris and Kim.
Starting point is 00:36:45 And Paris, you know, Kim asked, you know, Paris, hey, are you scared? And then you're kind of like, yep. And then I'm like, me too. Like both of us are sort of like, you know, there's no, everyone is so calm in the face of death that I'm thinking, hmm, that's, where's the, you know, where's the nerves? Where's the like, ugh, I'm going to die? You know what I'm saying? There should have been a little bit of more of that, right? And so you have that connection of Chikote and Bologna, Paris and Kim. And then the doctor does this full hug with, with Kess, you know, Neelix definitely should have been pissed about that, but he wasn't in the room. And then, and then you have that. And then you have that. that weird connection where Tuvok doesn't put his hand on Janeway's shoulder. He puts his hand on the Shez Lounge. Yeah. Right? Near, near her. I mean, this is the thing is like, what does that say that moment? When I ask you, hey, are you afraid or whatever? Yeah. You put your
Starting point is 00:37:44 hand on me. And then that's when Megan said, see, see, you two do have a secret relationship. Yeah. Yeah. You did the little thing. I touched you. You touch physically touched. We have a physical relationship. We do have a physical. Okay. So what is your, yeah, what's your theme? What's the underlying message? The only thing I could come up with was Tuvok's advice for what we should do, which is just to let it happen, to trust in the unknown, to trust that even though something is very scary and you can't explain it. And you may not even know everything. about it that having some faith and having support of people around you is important and it's going to be okay. So that was the, that was for me the underlying theme. The problem is if that's where you end up, often when I was an actor and often when I'm a director, I will jump to the last five pages or so of a script and I'll go, what's happening at the end? Like what is the lesson that they're talking about at the end of this story.
Starting point is 00:38:54 Before I even read the story, like they're talking about friendship or they're talking about faith or whatever the thing is. So I get a little hint of what that may be. And then I'll go back and I'll read it with that in mind because I'm looking for how do they set up that idea, the lesson they learned in the end.
Starting point is 00:39:11 The classic hero's journey is you leave your normal world, you go through these challenges, you nearly die, and you come back from this adventure with something new, some new wisdom, some new gold of some kind, right? That's the hero's journey. Yes. So if Tuvok's lesson, the bigger idea is you've got to have some faith, you've got to trust the unknown, you've got to have good support around you, but ultimately let go of trying
Starting point is 00:39:40 to control life, then they should have set that up a little earlier. And maybe that was set up in Nelix's jealousy in some weird way. like he's just got to trust that Cass loves him and stop trying to control it or I don't know maybe I'm stretching here but it just didn't feel like all these characters had been set up in this disaster movie in that way to learn this lesson to survive because of their cleverness and their survival skills I don't know it just it felt like a big a big nothing burger this episode
Starting point is 00:40:14 but I did love I did love Janeway going doody doggy doody dog I would, I almost feel like maybe the setup was a victim of a rewrite. Maybe there were scenes that set it up better earlier in this episode that just got canned and we didn't even know about it. But yeah, but my theme would be probably the same thing along the same lines. It's just instead of fighting, sometimes instead of fighting things tooth and nail, sometimes we need to just let it happen and not fight. You know, take the pacifist version and just let it happen.
Starting point is 00:40:50 To be perfectly honest, most people don't do that. Most people don't let it happen. Most people always try to be reactive or be or do something, take some type of action just to solve something. And really, the solution. Sometimes it's beyond your control. It's beyond your control. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:41:07 You just got to let it happen. Okay. So that's, uh, yeah, that's good. That's twisted. Yeah, that's twisted. That's confusion. That's confused, a.k.a. confusion. All right, guys. Well, that's our, that's our review of this episode this week.
Starting point is 00:41:25 Yes, it is. This is not our favorite episode. Next week, we will be reviewing parturition. So that's almost a tough twister. Parturition, Parturition. So thank you for listening in. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited about that. That was a fun. I'm excited, too. That should be a good one.
Starting point is 00:41:42 All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you, guys. See you soon. Thank you.

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