Hey, Job. Hi.
So we're back this week aboard Voyager.
It's series 6, episode 25, the haunting of deck 12. and I gather
that this is not a widely loved episode. don't think it's a widely
remembered episode.
Maybe anyone remembers this one at all.
I mean, it's surrounded by stuff like, you know, Unimatrix 0 and
uh, the Return of Cares in Fury, you know, uh, Dr. Zimmerman in
Lifeline, stuff like that.
So, you know, it's a standard Voyager episode, really.
So, you know, it sort of just falls in the pack somewhere.
I thought, though, that it was actually pretty well done.
And now that we're in series six.
Obviously we're kind of repeating stuff that we've done before, but
I thought that this was very well directed.
There's an important story, reason why it needs to make the ship
look strange.
Like it needs to make the ship look different from what we've ever
seen before.
And I think it really manages to do that really well.
So I thought that that was a point in its favour.
And then I actually thought that it sort of hung together
thematically in a way.
Like the central idea is haunting, right?
And a haunting makes home scary.
And so all of this.
Obviously is about making Voyager scary for various reasons in
different ways, but it also makes other homes scary.
We have an alien character whom we never see properly is just a
sort of special effect.
But we do get to interact with them in a way that's also about
making home scary.
But its home is made scary as well, and it appears scary.
And so Voyager, in some senses about that dichotomy, isn't it?
Because they're trying to get home and they're going through a
place that's mostly hostile.
And so I thought all of that hung together really well, and there
are different ways where the show makes things that seem familiar
scary, and that's obviously what horror does.
But then the other thing is the way that storytelling mediates
that, the way we tell a story about a place is what makes it home
or what makes it scary.
And there's the framing story, which isn't like the framing story
I think, in suspicions where it's just there because the story's
underrunning and everything's kind of terrible.
It's actually central to the episode.
And Neelix is narrating, and I think that's one reason why
everyone hates it because people hate Neelix for some reason.
He's wonderful in that. absolutely good.
Then the turbo lift fell at a terrible...
Oh, you haven't eaten your snacks.
Fuck the snacks.
Tell us the story.
Like, that's really great.
And he tells stories within the story.
And other people telling stories as well.
And the way that we talk about things is what makes them home or
what makes them scary.
And so both of those ideas, I think, are there all the way
through.
And so even though it's a sort of, you know, there is something
fairly generic or standard about it, but I think they just give it
a little bit of extra oomph.
And so I found myself kind of thinking about it for quite a bit
afterwards, which is pretty unusual for sure, I think.
I didn't even find myself thinking about it whilst I was watching
so well done.
The other thing too, which I think is really good, is there's a
real central Star Trek idea to it because the haunting of deck 12
that doesn't really come up until the end and the kids believe
that there's a section on deck 12 that's haunted.
But we discovered that the creature isn't haunting deck 12.
It's living there. and it's living there while we take it home.
It, like everyone else on the ship, is on the way home.
And so the lesson that we learn, again, is the stories that we
tell about things make a difference.
If we think of it as haunting the place, it's a threat.
If we think of it as living among us, it's one of us.
And I think that that really Star Trek idea, which doesn't quite
work and we'll get to there at the end, I think.
But that's really central to what Star Trek's about too.
And so I thought it was doing that as well.
So I kind of liked it.
I like that we don't see the alien.
I like that it speaks to us through the ship.
There's things that we see in the ship that we haven't seen before
and there's a lot of Ethan Phillips and he's fabulous.
So I have to say that I found myself liking it much, much more
than I expected.
You know I was far less impressed with this than you was.
Yeah, and I went into thinking it was going to be really fun and
schlocky and kind of a bit Genesis.
And what really surprised me was it did just feel like a standard
Voyager episode.
And that disappoints me because there's an unreliable narrator
here, and we know that because Nigger Nix is getting all the Tokno
Babble wrong when he's telling the story, and we're having our
usual Voyager characters speak the dreadful Tekno Babble, that
he's making them say.
So we know that he's telling a story and the story that we're
seeing is his version of it.
So I'm like, well, you could do anything with this then.
If it's an unreliable narrator.
The last time we had an unreliable narrator on Voyager, it was
living witness.
And everybody was, you know, crazy, evil, you know, evil Janeway
executed members of her crew when they disappoint her.
And the story that he chooses to tell is your stock voyager.
Oh, we've gone through that cloud.
We've taken a little bit of it with us and we've done that about
15 times already.
Oh, it's a live form.
It just wants to get home.
It doesn't want to kill us and we'll get it home the end.
It's like, okay.
And the bit I remember loving, which I talked about last week, is
still great.
Lots of handheld camera work.
Neelix is at his boiling pot.
All the lights are out.
He's in the corridor.
The doors are going crazy.
Juvox there with his extreme close-up with his oxygen mask off
like some scary monster.
I remember this being more like that all the way through.
And that was sort of the only time they did that.
And then otherwise it's sort of turned the lights down, walk
around the corridors, you know, there's a terrible CGI gas cloud
with a face coming at people and things and, you know, it is a
they are trying to do a horror story, but it isn't very scary as
well.
And I was like, you could have gone much further with this. than
you do.
I mean, I think the unreliable narrator thing is definitely not
what it's going for.
And I think that that that little thing is a dig at Voyager's use
of technobabble.
It's kind of an acknowledgement that it doesn't actually matter
what those lines are.
And if Neelix is making them up, it's not going to affect the
story.
And there are other little moments of unreliable narration.
And I think that one of the things that it does, which Star Trek
doesn't do all that often, is show us things from the perspective
of a character that aren't really real.
And so, for instance, the face, you know, a couple of times we see
a gas cloud with a scary face coming at Neelix.
I think that that's meant to be not what is really there, but what
Neelix sees because he's scared.
It's quite funny, you know.
When he has the story, whether the story and it's everybody's
celebrating his birthday and, you know, she goes, my God, she
served up an evil gas cloud on your birthday, you know, but it's
very funny.
It's not scary.
It is quite amusing.
Well, that scene is brilliant and it's really good Neelix
characterisation as well, which I think we'll kind of talk about
when we get there. as well.
Even when Neelix himself is narrating the banter on Voyager.
Fucking hell it's so mundane.
I mean, they just can't juice this terrible dialogue.
Oh, can they?
And I was messaging you at one point where I was like, my God, I
thought there was going to be a little bit of subtext in one
scene.
No.
By the end of the scene.
They spell out exactly what was going on.
Some Texas for cowards.
I think my issue is here is I said to you, I think they are out of
juice at this point.
And whilst the sort of narration that this is hung on.
Neelix is narration.
That is kind of fresh.
But it's kind of not as well because once upon a time was Neelix
comforting a child going for a traumatic situation, you know?
Like I said, Living Witness was an unreliable narrator.
Obviously, we go through gas clouds on Voyager every week and in
the title sequence.
Yeah.
You know, anomalies are us, is Voyager.
You know, we've plunged the ship into darkness in one and done
sort of spooky Voyager there.
So none of this is original.
They're not doing anything new.
And this is their child.
Series 6 is their chance to be the one Star Trek show on the air
you know, push the show into new directions and they're not.
And it is well executed. right.
There is some really good direction in here.
There's a surprising amount of handheld camera work in this, I
noticed.
And lots of, they like showing sort of how big the rooms are from
above and things like that, which is really nice.
And lots of tracking shots through the corridors, things like
that.
So they're pushing the style as much as they can.
I just came out of it at the end going, yes, it's almost like
someone sort of looked at Voyager as a whole.
I went well, I'll have a bit of that.
I have a bit of that.
I have a bit of that. whoosh it all into one and there's our
placeholder before the season finale.
Yeah, I mean, I just thought, like, I thought it was a Voyager
standby, but just done very well.
And because some thought had been given to making the script, have
some resonances so that it ends up being about something, that
ties it all together in a way that I thought was kind of
interesting.
Uh, whereas I had expected it to be a bit like suspicions, uh, with
with Neelix telling us...
All right, we're gonna love it, aren't we?
Yeah, yeah.
But do you know what I mean?
that it's Neelix telling the story is central to what's going on
here.
It's super important and it's not just we were underrunning by 5
minutes or something and we need a framing story.
I think come season six.
They've sort of stopped trying to do interesting things with
Niglix, like making him jealous and having relationships with, you
know, 2 year olds and terrible things that they were doing early
on.
And they just write Neelix as a very charming, funny character
which Ethan Phillips can do effortlessly.
So given him an episode like this, I'm all for that, my, you know
my other big thing, we'll get there was at the end, I really
wanted this story, just to be, a total bullshit story.
I told the kids, just to, they just couldn't do it.
It can't be that because then it doesn't really matter.
Well, that don't matter.
We've been entertained for an hour.
I know, I know.
But for the thing to land.
I think the problem is that what happens is his story gets too
scary.
And so his solution to that is, tell them it never happened, and
then they all go back to sleep, and then he goes to the bridge and
gets the real resolution, and the real resolution is proper Star
Trek.
It's something the kids should be there to hear that it's not a
haunting at all and that is just something that's lost its home
and we're taking it back because, of course, we're Starfleet.
And so I thought that that was a shame.
You know, it doesn't quite work.
I just I wanted Neelix to walk on sort of bridge and go, oh, well
I just told him some bullshit story.
Yeah, you know, all of all of our adventures.
They just can't do it, can they?
I think that's a better ending.
They cannot take the piss out of themselves.
Oh, I do.
Well, because then in the end, what it turns out is the story he's
told the kids is a boring Voyager episode made up of old Voyager
Pass.
Yeah, but I think it's a well-done Voyager episode that tries to
do things that the show's done before only better and that hangs
together really quite well because it has a central idea to it.
And so I don't think it would be solved by him just going in and
throwing the whole thing away.
I think it would have been improved by having the kids see the
ending.
But as it is, it's kind of like, we're not going to tell that
story, that story where our solution is don't worry, it never
happened.
That's a bad solution, here's the proper solution, and we're
helping the thing.
Oh, we can term that, though.
I wouldn't say it never happened.
I'd have just scare them for the sake of that, you know, just to
distract them.
The other thing too, that I think is really great, is that Neelix
is trying to comfort them when the ship goes strange and becomes
dangerous.
Do you know what I mean?
All the power gets turned off.
Everything is sort of strange and weird.
And we get quite a long sequence of all the different sets with
all the lights turning off in a really thorough way.
You know, there's no other lights or anything like that, it just
goes dark.
It is pretty great.
And he's trying to comfort them.
But the way he comforts them, more distracts them, at least is by
making them more scared.
And the other thing that I think is great.
Kids are really good.
Yeah, they are fun.
Really good.
They're probably funny.
So each in a way that they were just terrible in collection.
Yeah, so we did collect it.
So they do 5 episodes, I think, right?
So collective is their arrival.
They do ashes to ashes, which is like that woman that, um, Harry
Kim. a Harry Kim episode about a woman who comes back from the
dead, but she's an alien or whatever.
They do child's play with each Eb's fake parents.
So they're just they're just a B plot, I think, in ashes to
ashes.
They're child's play.
At least they're doing something with something.
Then child's play is about each end particularly and it's got that
guy.
What's his name?
The guy from the X-Files?
Mark Shepard?
Mark Shepard. right.
Yeah.
And then the haunting of deck 12, and then they're gone in
imperfection.
They decide they decide between Caesars.
Yeah, we don't really well.
And it's a voiceover.
Oh, well, we dropped them all off.
We seem to have found all of their colony worlds.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
They're gone.
But what I think is that their participation in the haunting of
deck 12 kind of, that's enough.
Do you know what I mean?
Because they're really great in it.
They're super kind of hostile.
They've taken the cue from 7 that they're kind of not impressed by
any of your shit, you know. and so so they're kind of refusing to
be scared and they're also a little bit morbid as well.
Like, they're kind of funny.
There's that bit where Mazotti, he's got this inset story where he
talks about a talaxianship where they all die and he's telling
that story to Tuvok inside the inset story.
And then he kind of realises, oh, wait, I'm actually also telling
that to these children here, because I'm narrating the story to
too.
I'm also narrating the story to them.
And is that appropriate for them and they're really into it and
they want to know if they were eating each other and stuff from
the end?
So the kids aren't, they're not moppets.
There's not a lot of moppetry, like the 2 little twin boys are a
little bit scared.
Rosotti is great, and so is each have, but I really like them.
I suppose.
Well, he sort of manoeuvres the story around their responses as
well, which is quite fun.
I like the fact that they're Star Trek nerds and they go, well, no
that's terrible Technobam.
You obviously misheard.
All right?
I've got the technical manual, okay?
And that's not a real thing.
Yeah, which is really fun.
And I'll tell you what, but before we go, my one last non-serious
but something I never thought I would say.
And that is, I think there's a scene in here that Kate Mulgrew
bombs.
Oh, wow, okay.
It's a big moment at the climax where she's coughing and wretched
and screaming her head off and it's like, oh, she's clearly had a
long day and she's like, oh, I just got to go for it.
I thought, what are you doing, Kate?
She's going, I'm like, Jesus Christ.
Don't make a cough.
Yeah, yeah.
Very strange.
You know, not quite as bad as when they slathered all that latex
over her face in coarse oblivion.
Nothing, you know, could be as bad as that.
With that lost thing coming out of her nose.
All right.
I think we should go.
Let's watch this old nonsense, shall we?
All right, then.
Well, I will count it in.
Five, four, three, two, one, and we're off.
I do love the title, you know, the haunting of deck 12.
Yeah, well, you see, the thing, interesting thing about it is that
it's not about the haunting of deck 12, and that doesn't actually
get mentioned until later, it does turn it into a ghost story.
It's a ghost story title, isn't it?
But it also puts the haunting central, you know, in what we're
thinking about.
I love thing I wanted to make.
Was it J.
Chatway doing the music?
I really noticed the music in this world, isn't it?
Yeah.
Like this at the beginning here, there's lots of sort of eerie
ominous underscoring of, you know, things aren't what they say.
Oh, here we go.
We're doing the schlocky shock straight away.
Yeah. 7 of 9 walks into a room.
Yes.
Yeah.
So, like, again, you know, we're getting the idea of something
that happened the last time, and this is another thing that I like
and it's a thing that Voyager does quite often and does quite well
is it starts us off in the middle of a situation and just lets us
find out what's happening.
Now, often it just lets us find out what's happening with an info
dump, you know, after the opening credits or whatever.
But here, you know, like, I think that is pretty good.
And what we do get to see.
Like it starts with making the ship scary.
Yeah?
They're not scared of everything on the ship now, and Neelix is
just jumpy because of the darkness and stuff, and presumably
because he was scared of the previous nebula.
Now, here's the thing that fails, I reckon, right?
So you, what?
Kate Mulgrew's hair?
No, it's not my favourite hair, but it's fine.
So that special effect there on the on the screen is supposed to
be scary, but it's quite pretty, isn't it?
isn't.
Yeah.
Harry says it looks like a vampire bat.
Um, uh, uh, Tom Parrow says that it looks like something out of
Edgar Alan Poe.
And then at the end, it's supposed to look inviting.
So it's got to look like something scary and it's got to end up
being home, right, at the end of the episode because that's our
theme.
And it doesn't, doesn't manage it because they can't get the
special effects right.
It's the thought of encuts when Trek could do brilliantly now
isn't it?
Yeah.
But it's just their standard.
Oh, here we go.
I do love all of those things.
Turn the lights down.
All the corridors are going dark.
And even the red alert light goes off, like this where he has to
switch himself off, and as the camera sweeps past the lights turn
off behind him, like the lights, he leaves a, you know, the lights
turn off as the camera moves away.
It's a succession of lights going off in order, isn't it?
That does take some skill to do right.
They must they must have had to have done it a couple of times.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's really good.
Like, I think it is really good, and then you get the scared
reaction.
E chip.
Whatever happened to his eye, E chip.
Oh, they would have made one.
Oh, no, shut down, the poor LE champ.
Maybe rest in peace.
Oh my god, that's the scariest thing in the whole episode.
That close-up on Neelix in the dark, baby.
It's disgusting teeth.
Yeah, so horrible, aren't they?
What did they do to Ethan Phillips?
I mean, all of that latex and that hair on his face?
I know, bless him.
Yeah, so this is much darker and it means that we get just
practical lights on the set and not the normal key lighting that
we normally get.
Say, look, that is just your standard voyager nebula.
They're going for it.
Yeah, it should look scarier.
It should look scarier because look, that that nebula there.
The title sequence is a bit scary.
It's not a nebula.
That's a sun thing.
Corona or something.
Yeah, yeah.
It looks like it's belching though, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's the start.
We got the nebula coming up, which they skid through.
So, yeah, yeah, it's got to go from scary to home.
Do you know what I mean?
Because that becomes home at the end.
And that's the journey, the, you know, the arc that the, um, that
the alien follows.
But yes, they can't do it visually.
They can't properly sell it.
So they're not going to do it on the exterior of the ship.
They do attempt to do it on the interior of the ship.
But like I said, we do plunge Voyager into darkness every 3rd
week.
Yeah, that is true.
And we also make it scary too, like in the killing game or in
deadlock or a twisted.
You know, we make it weird, we make it not home, even basics is
kind of about making the ship not home anymore.
And so in one, they really accentuate, they make 7 small in every
scene.
So you feel that she's in a big space all on her own, you know?
I mean, I don't I don't think the the sort of visual ticks they do
in this are bad.
I think they're effective.
And there are some really fun shots, like properly fun shots.
It is a bit has been, though, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, like I do, I do like hanging out on a creepy
starship, though. like I'm a Star Trek fan, right?
Even though we have been doing this for the last, you know, 15
seasons. 90s trek. that's right That's right.
It's one of the tropes we like.
Just hanging out with our crew in a creepy ship.
Yeah.
Oh, I do like, I do like him turning the light on and making it
like a campfire.
That's really gorgeous.
Yes, and he brings snacks, doesn't he?
Yeah, I think this is really cute.
I do think this is cute.
So shit with the Tenobabble.
We don't want to attract any residual EM radiation, do we?
And that's actually really great, isn't it?
Because it foreshadows the moment where E-Cheb pulls him up for
talking about Nadie on emissions or something.
It is really good.
Especially when he asks the actual character to say his terrible
temper battle.
Oh, he's such a good babysitter as well.
Look, I says, come on, I brought toys and snacks and games.
Let's go.
I'd love for him to be my babysitter.
They're great, aren't they?
There's that shot of all 4 of them, Floddermeads, Trebus.
No, Vlot means the invincible invertebrates.
But look at that shot of them all just standing there impassively
absolutely unimpressed by anything that he's trying to do.
And like they're just standing there judging him.
I think that's great that like having the kids...
Within 5 minutes, Nathan. in the palm of his hands, you know, he's
like, right, I'm going to scare the little fuckers then.
Let's go.
Yeah, here we go.
So Dex 12 comes in earlier than I thought.
She says it's haunted right, you know, right at the beginning.
Oh, Naomi isn't in it too.
I had forgotten that.
And I'm glad she's not. for some reason.
Yeah, so she is braiding Mazotti's hair.
That's why it's braided.
We've learned that.
But I just...
I think Niibi's got too big for her booze since she got an
honourable mention in the 30 under 30s.
You know?
That's right, that's right. being involved in this nonsense
anymore, you know?
I'm somebody now.
The kids, the boys are really cute too.
They get hardly any lines.
The 2 little boys, the twins.
But they're properly scared.
You know, like Mazzotti and Gelchaper are aggressive.
They've given them clothes as well.
I don't know if you remember and collective.
Oh boy.
They're terrible Star Trek clothes.
It's not a tale for the feint of heart, you know.
We were exploring a dark nebula.
Oh, go on, Neelix. yeah Oh, look at these implements sort of
dancing around.
Actually, I really like Neelix's reaction here because again, for
the alien, this is home, but for Neelix, this is a terrifying
place, right?
And it's the windows.
And I think putting curtains in the mess hall.
This is not the only time it gets mentioned, I think.
No, did you not notice later in the episode?
He's holding material. holding material, yeah?
But I really like, because he doesn't, he suggests curtains.
These are just curtains.
Like, um, I think 2 Voggs suggest curtains, doesn't it?
And rather than saying, why?
Often that nephew looks very nice.
You know?
He, he has that thing where you, he, he can't see anything.
And in fact, I actually quite like this because it's another
little story he tells.
So he tells Tuvoka story at this point, the 1st inset story, and
he tells it and it's about how Talaxia got obscured by a nebula
going into the system, and no one could see the sun or the moons
or anything like that for ages.
Did you hear what you said there as well?
The buzzard, choose box.
The buzzard collectors are running at maximum.
Oh, yeah, the hell.
Oh, no, they're a known thing.
They're on themselves.
They collect...
Oh, it sounds like bullshit.
I was like, this is going to be a nice scene because Neelix is
saying that the crew is scared when we can tell that it's Neelix
is scared.
And Truvoc is going to notice and he's going to say, well, you
know, tell the crew that everything's okay and the butter
collectors are working.
No, we don't do none of that, do we?
No, Tuvok goes, I don't think it's the crew.
Because you're scared, Nigelix.
It's you.
Oh boy.
But look at the look at like even we're having the conversation
about installing curtains.
And he goes, that's an excellent idea.
But they're close-up.
Like they're side on and their face is really, really close up and
they're nodding the shot together.
So there's something odd about the way it's directed already, and
it's something that emphasises in particular how Neelix is feeling
but it's right up in his face and right up in Tuvok's face.
Now, because they've set the cameras up in all the ceilings of all
the sets, you know, when the lights went out, we had a high angle
shot.
So now the cameras are up there.
So throughout the episode, now watch, we have lots of shots as we
go back to the veras locations from above, which is quite nice.
Yeah.
Poor Janeway.
I mean, the one quote of this on memory alpha, there was only one
was that Janeway, sorry, Kate Mulgrew quite enjoyed doing this
episode.
Yeah.
But she had no idea what she was talking about because she only
spoke Tetla Babw throughout the entire episode.
Yeah, yeah, it's a bit crap, isn't it?
What a waste of Kate, obviously.
Look at the kids.
Look at the 2 little boys.
They're so enthused.
It's so funny.
I couldn't see any rocks.
No no rocks.
We do have an explanation for those in, um, uh, in lower decks
what they are.
Yeah, I can't remember, but there's a name for them. and they do a
thing on the ship.
There's a reason why there are rocks in all the bulkheads.
It's a thing.
Well, they kill enough people.
I mean, they justify your design decisions.
Okay.
Oh no, there's a sort of little electrical charge snacked on the
ship there.
I'm glad that we don't properly see it ever, and we never interact
with it directly, because it interacts with them by making home
weird, doesn't it?
Like that's what it does.
Did you notice how every single cut into the ad brake was Niglix
given us a little taster?
you know, you didn't realise was we had a stowaway on board this
ship.
Dun, dun, dun.
I really like that.
That's properly holding to the bit, isn't it?
Like, because this is the, this is the story and everything else
is the flashback.
And so all of the cliffhangers...
They're naming all these boring species.
No, it's not that one.
It's species.
It's none of those species that you know, right?
I'm telling the story.
He says, yeah.
Either we can debate comparative xenobiology or I can tell you the
story.
And they both agree.
And look at each ship.
He says it really menacingly.
I said to you, didn't I?
How nice and needless his story.
He manages to insert lots of exterior voyager things as well.
With the ship flying past the camera. shot.
So why are we looking at her through the replicator?
And then she walks off.
It makes this space look really weird.
We will go back to that shock shot.
But that shot is really great, I think.
I think the director took one look at this script and thought, do
you know what?
I've got to juice this up a bit, you know?
I'm going to shoot through the replicator.
He's doing the right thing.
He's got to make the ship look unsettling.
And look at this.
There's the coffee appear, then it splats everywhere. and then the
cup appears after that.
That's great.
I mean, it's the one beat of Jane Mayer.
I truly agree with, you know, if I don't have a cup of coffee in
the morning.
I'm fucking miserable too.
Me too.
So this thing here, where she talks to Voyager.
Now we...
That's such a writerly thing.
We've never had any evidence of it.
And then, like, horrible, poor old medium, Oh, what did you talk
about, she says.
Oh, what did you talk about?
she says.
Oh, that's between the 2 of us.
I'm afraid.
It's like not funny.
That's really me. boring.
But she does talk to it again, but of course, that sets up the
thing where her interaction with the alien is, of course, her
talking to the ship.
So, yeah.
And so the ship goes...
I like to think that Neelix has been paying attention and he knows
that they have these quirks every now and again that get mentioned
and somehow he knows that conversation happened, but like
whatever.
But you remember that time when I was on the bridge and she
touched her badge?
I'll tell you what, I'm going to add a bit of this to the story.
Yeah.
Oh God, here we go.
The worst, Robert.
Shut up, Robert.
He only gets about 3 lines in this, aren't he?
Oh, he does get his face exploded later, which is a bit of a
relief, really, frankly.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So, like, I don't know.
I don't know.
So this is the ship starting to behave oddly, isn't it?
Because it's under the command.
It's like under the control of the thing.
And we later discovered that it's systematically going through all
the systems and trying to learn it and eventually it just becomes
the sheep.
So this isn't the, the, the computer going wrong here.
This is the life form.
Well, identifying everybody that's on the ship.
Well, yeah, identifying everyone, and that, did you all, did your
um, my subtitle said it was Ensign Borak, uh, in somewhere?
But it's clearly Ensign Vorak. from, um, uh, Prime Factors or
whatever?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's another later...
I have sex with Vilana when she was in her Pomfire.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that was a bit boring.
Oh no, Commander Shakotay, the lift took him to the wrong place.
Except that we're saving money here by having Neelix narrated
rather than having Robert Beltran hanging from the ceiling of the
set.
And it's actually much more fun, isn't it?
Because look at the kid's reaction.
The kids are on the edge of their seat.
Even Echeb, who has been really aggressive and kind of
dismissive.
And look at the kids.
Like, their reaction is so cute.
He knows how to cut a cliffhanger and then go, oh, wheat your
snacks.
Come on now.
I prepared these carrots for me.
Doesn't each of reply snacks are irrelevant.
Like it's...
Tell the fucking story, all right?
So his commander Chakotay's still alive.
You know, he said, by the time you got to engineering.
Commander Chakotay was very angry, although I couldn't really tell
any difference from his normal performance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Belcher doesn't do emotion at this point.
Not really, he's given up.
So this is Tal sellers, the Ensign, is she an Ensign?
No, she's a crewman.
She is, yeah.
Yeah, we did our version of sort of lower decks with a bunch of
nobodies that aren't really up to spec in series 6 and she was in
that one.
Yeah, it wasn't prime factors.
What's the episode, what's the episode where Tuvok has its
learning curve is what I'm thinking of.
And so it's so she's in a later episode called Good Shepherd, which
is kind of like learning that.
But later, Janeway takes 4 crew members on a shuttle on a little
mission because all of them are, well, very bad at their jobs.
Oh, look, look at the gel packs.
I bet it's the cheese.
Is that cheese about?
No, no cheese this week.
Are you sure?
Look at it. actually quite a lot of shooting them through.
So this is a little bit like shooting them from out of the
replicator, shooting them through things, having things out of
focus in the fork.
Nathan, this is standard sort of camera work practice.
It's only because we're watching Star Trek and it's usually so
boring.
So we're pointing this out.
But it's also deliberately being done in order to make the ship
weird because we get to see the ship in a way that we've never
seen it before.
I did think this was a mistake though, right?
This bit in a minute with 7 of 9 where she just casually walks
into the corridor and is utterly unimpressed at the danger that
she's in.
I'm like, you're doing a fucking horror story.
You need to be showing people scared She's so like, oh, well, and
pushes a few buttons and it's gone.
I think it's more important not to ruin... singing shock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's quite a good one too, isn't it?
I think it's more important.
You know what it looks like?
What do you think?
That gaseous cloud.
It looks a bit like the sort of era that Species 8472 came from
and it looks like the era of space that the male on were dumping
there.
I think they've got 11 special effect and they just keep using
it.
I think they might.
Um, So, I mean, she's doing a very kind of low-key, slightly
anxious thing, but I wouldn't want to see her scared or
distressed.
It's more important.
Yeah, because it's her.
Look how casually she walks away from it.
There was a concerned eyebrow there.
Yeah, she's not even running.
And now she looks just slightly pissed off. eyebrow.
Yeah, my God, I'm terrified.
Slightly pissed off.
And then look, look how she goes to the floor.
Very sort of gently.
He lies himself gently to the ground.
Jerry Ryan knows this is a filler episode and she's not going to
give it her best.
But yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that we need to be the kids need to be scared for her, but
we don't need to see her scared, I think.
Because she's like their mum, isn't she?
So fair enough, you know.
Yeah.
And I don't want to see 7 scared.
The thing about her is she's fabulously cool.
There we go.
Look, they've done another jump scare in Neelix's face.
I think I'm a few seconds ahead of you, you know. possibly.
Seven was trapped in the force fields, fortunately for her.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Have you noticed how Balana's been using the old crimper on her
hair this season?
I don't like it.
I'm not a big fan.
It is a thing, but I don't know.
I mean, she's clearly I mean, it's all wig, isn't it?
It's all bloody weak.
Well, of course it is because she's got that prosthetic on her
forehead.
Yeah.
I quite like how he just shoots the panel, like, that's pretty
good.
Like, he's just going, fuck it, I'm shooting the panel.
That was hilarious.
I really laughed out loud on that where Neelix starts the scene
going, well, we were all just getting on as usual, oblivious to
what was going on, and the director chooses to have him putting
all these spices in the pan for ages going, la, la, la.
It's really great.
Is that what you spend most of your time doing?
awesome, isn't it?
There again, we're shooting from in the ceiling, you know, like on
the meth or...
Flickering lights.
We're doing sort of standard sort of haunted house effects here
now.
We're coming up to my favourite bit in a minute with the doors.
Now that's great though.
When the lights go out and it's just the flames from the pan.
Yeah, yeah, it looks really good and he just leaves that on.
But, and that look, too, where he's properly scared for a 2nd and
he gives a little facial expression and a little grunt and stuff
that we've never really seen Neelix do before.
I thought that was pretty good.
You know, he couldn't mention the other episodes, you know, he
just went, Voyager was dead in space.
A bit like the episode night, you know, when we had no lights.
Oh, dear.
What's you talking about?
The next M plus planetoid.
I'll give you a nice maintenance overhaul.
I'll actually talk about it.
A nice spa massage.
Yeah.
I mean, she does have a conversation with Voyager in the year of
hell, you know.
She says to the ship, if you get us out of this.
I promise you.
Unfortunately, that entire year is rewritten.
Yes, it never happens.
It never happened.
It happens more often than you think, Voyager, you know.
I'm not sure what's real and what's not.
Oh, it's on Paris about to get hurt.
Yes.
There we go.
Here we go.
Electrocuted in the face.
Ooh, that's kind of nasty.
I think it's a little bit too nasty, actually.
Don't you?
Like, I just think it's a bit too much.
So we supposed to feel at this point that the gaseous cloud is
lashing out.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Like, it's evil, you know.
And it's angry, you know, like it is doing this deliberately.
It's weirding the ship.
Like, it's haunting the ship.
It's making it's scary.
You know, a haunted house. houses where you live.
It's supposed to be where you're safe.
A haunting makes your home scary and that's what it's doing.
Sick Bay is absolutely full of people now that have been affected
by this thing.
But then they all have to go in a minute.
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, what, it's a micro nebula.
Oh, is it?
It's a bit different from you.
That's what you just said. small one.
Oh my god.
It could be an intelligence at work here.
Well, you've not been paying attention to the last 6 years, have
you?
Jesus Christ.
Oh, the doctor's going.
Yep, yep.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, all of this dialogue is cut and pay his Voyager
dialogue.
Transfer is Matrix to the mobile amino, yes.
Yeah, of course, but it's Star Trek, it's going to be the sort of
usual comfortable thing, you know, like, and it's it's not, like
it's a Star Trek show where they're on a ship.
They don't have a lot else kind of going on.
I think this looks great.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
That's the sort of submarine red lighting that's flickering on and
off as well.
Oh, so the way those boring walls look when they're just lit by
his by his torch.
My issue with this scene was the hurricane was so boring.
Because Ensign Serres is sort of going, oh my god.
I think we've been taking over by an evil alien or something like
that, you know, she's having great fun with her scene.
No.
Now, be a professional.
Come on.
We're going to go and find people.
He's so pretty though.
Come on.
Like he's sort of cute.
It's not enough.
It could be pretty and interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he could be. he does manage it sometimes, but
he's not really doing it here.
See, she's been paying attention to previous start.
Hostile aliens.
She goes, they're trying to take her.
She always do that.
Yes.
She's a voyager stand and Sarah's, you know.
She is.
So she's doing a really, really big job in the hope that she'll be
invited back, but she isn't.
She does get a mention in workforce, apparently, but we never see
her again.
Why do they keep doing this though?
They just write out the kids.
They just write out in this season.
They're trying to bulk out the crew a bit, you know, and give us
extra characters.
Do that DS9 thing.
And then they just abandon them all. very, very strange.
And in year seven, it don't matter.
I don't actually hate this scene, though, I actually don't hate
this scene, and I actually found myself thinking, wouldn't it be
nice if they were actually introducing her as a regular character
and you know, someone that we would see?
Because, I mean, you know, we had ashes to ashes a few episodes
ago, like 7 weeks ago.
And, you know, we bring back someone who she who he worked with
but we've never seen...
Sorry to interrupt you.
But I must talk about this scene now. with Neelix.
Well, you know, it's my favourite bit.
Elix on his own, in the mess hold.
The camera sort of pans very dramatically towards the fire.
And he can hear something in the corridor.
What's that noise?
It's the doors going mental.
Like, and then sort of Tuvok suddenly turns up and he's like
clearly been woken up and he hasn't had time to take his CPAP
machine off, I think, is what's...
I think...
Is there gas on the ship?
Oh, well, it's a gap, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's watched enough to know it might go straight up his nose and
take him over, so he's seen the gasoline among us. to keep him
going.
But the way, I mean, it's so camp, the way the camera swings
around and it's this massive close up.
And the music goes, da, da.
It's great.
I thought more of the episode was going to be like this.
Yeah, yeah.
And it isn't really, is it?
Like, this is proper, like, this is like TNG schlock we're doing
now.
Yeah, but yeah, that is great.
I mean, the turbo lift actually looks genuinely hungry right now
the way it's opening and closing its mouth.
Yeah, yeah.
But, and again, it's like the, the, the tension between what's
scary and what's familiar, 2 Valk is immediately scary, but
eventually familiar and actually kind of reassuring.
And I actually think the pairing of Neelix and Tuvok, while it
doesn't always work.
And I think, for instance, rise is bad and kind of overwrought
remember, rise?
Yeah, it's orbital tether.
Yeah, yeah. which has an interesting idea in it and stuff, but
he's a bit overwrought when it comes to dealing with the 2 of
them.
But in this, like, I think they're great.
I think they're really good as it foils to each other.
They don't progress the relationship.
Like, not like Odo and Kork or something like that.
Yeah, it doesn't build to anyone.
Although initially the bit where Neelix leaves and Chewbok steps
forward and does the little dance step is gorgeous.
I was thinking about it.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just nice because the 2 actors work
well together.
Ethan Phillips and Tim and Russ have a nice go.
But they're not given any...
I was watching the scenes of them sort of going up the turbo loafs
and all of that and not the shafts.
I'm like, give them some witty lines.
Give them something fun to say instead of, oh, well, we're off to
deck seven, you know.
Well, to be fair, it's in that section of the episode that we get
the story of the Talaxian ship. that he tells, which I think is
actually pretty good.
Did you see those snacks there he's got for them?
What is that?
Dried fruit?
I don't know. those are so boring.
Kids hate that.
Yeah, so here's the conversation.
I tried passing the time with a little conversation, but Tuvok is
hard to do that with.
Um, he did bring his CPAP machine with him, though.
I can see it's there it is.
I mean, what a conversation.
Oh, look, he goes, I bet you've got some, like, protocol, 1005 or
something.
Yeah, yeah.
If the ship is taken over by hosto electromagnetic life forms, then
dot dot dot.
I mean, this, to us, this is meat and potatoes trek now. crawling
for a Jeffries tube.
Two of our characters in extreme danger.
So, yeah, this is funny, where Neelix says, did it, it's very
standard joke, but Neelix says, did I ever tell you the story of
the Salvoxia?
And and Tuvok says, uh, if I say yes, will that stop you from
telling it?
Which is a good line for Tuvok?
You know, it's actually a pretty good line for him.
Will I be spared the Voyager banter if I say yes?
But the great thing, the thing that I said before, that I like
about this is, again, it's a ship, it's their home, but it becomes
a source of absolute horror.
It's the same space that these people were living in, and then
they're just there and they all die.
And then our Neelix is telling the story, kind of realises that
he's actually telling the story to the kids because he's narrating
it as part of a thing.
And he actually thinks maybe I've gone a bit too far.
Yeah, this, what do the bodies look like?
Did they eat each other when they decomposed?
You know, like...
It's exactly the sort of questions the kids was asked, isn't it?
I shouldn't have told you that.
It's too gruesome.
And that does anticipate the ending where he actually says, no
this has become too scary.
You're all too freaked out by it.
It never happened.
Yeah?
Maybe they ate each other.
The kids are so great, aren't they?
Mazodi in particular is really good.
Like the 2 older kids are really fantastic.
And the 2 little kids are...
Kids love that stuff. love it being a bit gruesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it would be more effective though.
The story is telling of the salvaxia, whatever it's called.
You know, if genuinely Voyager was in a situation of real horror.
They have just turned the lights off.
But it is child friendly horror.
And it is kind of what, you know, like enterprise will do it, won't
it, in series 3 with that Vulcan ship, where everyone's killed one
another?
I can't remember what that's called.
Oh, it's like zombies, isn't it?
It's like the Walking Dead?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Actually, that was quite...
Yeah, yeah.
Creepy discovery.
Do you remember Discovery has the tardigrade slaughtering people
and tearing them to pieces and stuff?
Like, it's really violent and gory.
Uh, strange new worlds on the gore, ripping people down the
corridors and bloody trails.
That's how you do horror, Nathan.
They're never going to do that in 90s track.
It's all very childishly horror.
The DS9, that dreadful episode we watched with all the corpses
hanging on baby growers.
So stupid.
The worst.
They can occasionally get horror right in the 90s.
I think like schisms, you know, when they had the weird insect
things.
But that's kind of weird. conceptual horror as well, because it's
kind of like, you know, you're asleep and you're paralysed and
you're helpless and these things are doing something, like I think
that works pretty well.
So this, I think, is brilliant.
And maybe, so again, because it's the haunting of our home, it's a
haunted house.
And so the only way that the thing has to communicate is using
Michelle Parrot's voice, which is which is reassuring is always on
our side.
And she even says the things that it would normally say.
And I think that's really good.
I think having it patched together her normal diet.
I have done this before.
Have we done, we've done.
Yeah, like in series one of DS9, there was that that puppy that
was on the ship and all things were going wrong and it was
communicating via the computer.
It ain't original.
It's fun.
Yeah.
But it's, you know, I was sort of ticking off my list going with
things like that.
So that episode, but even just the way the dialogue works, do you
know what I mean?
It's just the sort of things that it says.
It's just Captain Janeway report to Astrometrics, unable to
comply.
And at this point, right, at this point, six years into Voyager is
you know, this gaseous cloud trapped from its home using the
computer voice.
Is this good enough?
Well, but what it is doing is what this episode is seeking to do
which is the, you know, it really leans into the idea of
haunting.
And so making something familiar and comforting, frightening, or
hostile, you know, is what it does.
And I think, and we've already primed us for that by having her
talk about the fact that she has conversations with the ship.
So I thought it was pretty good.
Here again, maybe this year this was...
Yeah, it's very nice.
Maybe this was earlier in the run.
I would be... yeah.
I just would expect them to have learnt these lessons by now and
be doing something a bit more original.
But I think what they're doing is like they're doing their
standard voyage. thing, but just doing it a bit better.
And I think that's a reasonable thing to be doing at this point in
the run.
This is great.
We talks about his birthday dinner.
It's so over the top.
So he's narrating this story.
We see it.
Look at Kay.
She's funny. with a plate.
I've got you a bit of cake.
This is like this is how Neelix imagines the ship.
He's surrounded by smiling people who love him. you know, and then
the nebula thing comes out.
And then the kids react. capture Janeway, so people look at it.
I think that's the most convincing acting in the whole thing
because there's one thing they all say in conventions is that all
of those actors loved Ethan Phillips.
So standing around him adoringly, just staring at him going, oh
you're so wonderful.
Like, I laughed out loud. super unexpected. not something that
Star Trek does at all at this point.
You know, but his telling this story and the story just shows us
what he thinks of the crew or what he thinks the crew thinks of
him. everyone loves him.
Look at Astrometrics looking amazing too.
Yeah, that's a great show.
I'm not detecting any of the tension between Kate Mulgrew and
Jerry Ryan at this point. over it by now.
Is that it?
I think she's, you know, are they in the middle of it?
She's in a relationship with Brandon Braga and they also
Shakespeare and herself.
Yeah.
I could get you sacked, you know?
Also, I'm going to get a role in Picard, and you're only going to
be on prodigy or as a voice, all right?
She's not been like otherwise.
Oh, there you go.
The buzzard collector.
I've never heard that.
Yeah, yeah, they mentioned them in Star Trek, the generation.
They're about to take the battles, I think, and they collect.
They collect something that gets turned into fuel.
Okay.
Well, they sort of snug a bit of a nebula and turn it into
energy.
Yeah, yeah. that's what they were doing.
They were collecting deuterium from the nebula, but they collected
so much of it that it collapsed.
They're so stupid.
They know every time they go for a nebula.
There's a life form in there.
It happens every other week.
The coffee, the nebula with coffee, in it?
You remember that time they went into that nebula and snagged a
load of that sperm that stuck to the ship?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No stop going through nebulas.
Oh, well.
But I mean, I like this conversation that she ends up having on
the bridge with the computer.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think the last 10 minutes I was going, all right, let's wrap
this up now.
Yeah.
But I think, so again, you know, like it's the home and the scary
thing and stuff like that, it's all still happening, isn't it?
And, oh, I've just remembered as well, you know.
Do you remember the series one episode Cathexis?
Ah, then it's chicken.
That's a haunting of Voyager. zooming around the ship like a
ghost.
Yeah, that's so much more boring.
Like, I'm really...
I'm glad that the life form, we don't really properly see it.
And it is just a weirdness affecting the ship.
That is the alien life form.
And despite that, we learn that we can help it and we have
something in common with it and we, you know, and it is about we
both want to get home.
You know, like we both want to get home.
You remember those slimer ghosts that they were turning into fuel
and equinox to leap great areas of space?
Yeah, they were supposed to be scary looking as well.
They were quite amusing.
They can't quite do the scares, can they, with the faces?
No, so not showing them is the right choice, I think.
Well, I mean, isn't that always the right choice in a horror
movie?
Yeah, yeah.
Whenever you see the great horror, it's usually a disappointment.
Yeah.
Here we go.
We're shooting through a panel again.
Again, shooting through the thing.
Oh, Chewbox being electrocuted.
And he's got latex on his face as well.
And here's another scene where it's kind of like, no, no, no, you
know, leave me behind.
I'll only slow you down.
You know, but...
Not leaving you here, Nathan.
Logic dictates that you take the balls, Joe. I don't care.
This isn't the Salvaxia.
Oh boy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Were they running the dialogue through AI at this point?
really have AI.
I think it would make it even more boring than this.
Oh, look at that face.
Oh, again, that's, again, that's a kind of German expressionism
thing, isn't it?
That's not really there.
That's just expressing Neelix's fear of the nebular gas, which
he's already said he was scared of in that opening scene in the
mess hall.
It must be an absolute mess on this show if every time they go for
a nebula, he's scared.
That's Christ.
Now, I did criticise Kate Mulcruz's performance in this scene
where, you know, all the gas is coming in.
She's wretching away, but it is nicely shot this.
They just do a great tracking show.
It's really good. actually think she's good here.
I do think at the end when she's kind of finally, you know, about
to dine, she's doing her, you know, yelling and coughing and stuff
that it's all got a bit out of hand.
The only way it could have been worse would have been if they had
have made Avery Brooks do it.
It would have been someone else.
It is oddly fine. when they turn the lights down, isn't it?
Yeah, but also they're moving the camera around in all sorts of
ways.
Wait, it sort of zoomed towards her, then spun around and then
went with her.
It's great.
Now it's following her out.
Yeah.
And here's Neelix wandering into the same shot.
We haven't caught.
You know, that was there we go.
There was our cart.
I wonder, you know, you know, when they do the sort of pre
production meetings.
I wonder if, you know, the cameraman went, what?
You want me to move the camera?
Really?
I'm not sure they do move you know.
That is the right choice, isn't it?
Like, and so this is a well-directed episode.
Like, I think this is...
Without a good direction, I think this would be a bit of a
problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think without the, it's not a framing story, it's the story, but
without it being told by Neelix, I think it would be much worse, um
without making him the focus character, and I think it would be
much worse if...
I really think the, the guy's doing the licing as well, to serve a
lot of cue. because a lot of the atmosphere.
I love this sort of heartbeat effect of the red light coming on
and off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Because it's haunting, isn't it?
There's something possessing the ship.
Yeah, so this bit here.
It's rare for you and me to say that there's visual interest in
90s trek.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, that goes a long way for me, I think.
No, here we go.
Give me back control of my ship.
Yeah, it's coughing and it's like they're sort of standing on her
toes to try and get out of the thing and like it's really just...
I'm trying to deliver like a dialogue.
You can see the director there, cycle.
A bit more, a bit more.
She's like, my God, I've been on set for 14 hours.
Please have mercy on me.
I mean, it would be great if they weren't making it do the
coughing because it's actually a pretty big call.
Do you know what I mean?
It is, she just stands up to and says, I'm not going to do what
you tell me to.
I will die rather than do that.
And she does it so convincingly that she persuades her.
I think we know in the penultimate episode of Voyager's 6th
season.
Well, of course, we are going to lose Captain Janeway.
Yeah, but you know, they're in peril all the time.
That doesn't, the peril doesn't mean, are we worried about Janeway
is she going to be okay?
The ending is so quick.
Did you know this?
I was like, what happened?
Like, it just ends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But so I think this doesn't quite work.
Um, Yeah, so we start to get there. don't we?
We'd have each M say, it's not a monster.
It's an alien life form, but maybe it's a hostile alien life
form.
And then he starts to, he pulls the story because the lights come
back on and he says, let's not go there, but we... starting to, you
know, like, why does he why does he tell them it's not true.
No idea.
What if it wants revenge?
I think it's this, and that's when he says I made up the whole
thing because they're worried, and he doesn't want them to be
worried.
Um, but I think that's a the wrong thing.
Surely somebody, they'll talk to people.
They'll go, you know, 0 my god.
What were you up to when the nebula, you know, tried to kill
everyone on the ship?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they weren't there.
Remember?
They weren't there when the nebula tried to kill.
Oh, this is a pass, isn't it?
Sorry.
Yeah.
But they were here where they dropped it off.
And I just sort of think they start to kind of, I think it's
because the little kid that one of the twins expresses concern
that it might come back for them and he immediately says, oh, it's
not real.
I don't know why he does that.
Why does he not tell them?
Because that's the proper ending, isn't it?
Like, that's the proper ending to this is discovering that, like
us, it just wants to get home and this scary nebula becomes home.
You know, I don't know.
I don't know.
It seems like the wrong.
It seems like the wrong choice.
I mean, I genuinely thought at this point where he goes, oh, I
just had another story to pass the time.
I thought, my God, it really is going to be what I thought.
No, no, because it just is inevitable.
Yeah, look, it's supposed to look good.
Wow.
He says, well, look, it I hope it lives happily ever after.
The thing doesn't look scary anymore, except it does, and then
we're out because we can't do the proper special effect for it.
Couldn't they have done a twilight zone style ending, you know
where unfortunately they took another little bit with them again
you know the danger's still there.
Oh, dear.
Now, I tell you what, I did enjoy watching that back.
And actually watching it divorced of the terrible dialogue and
just watching the visuals.
It did stand out a bit more.
I think where it fails is it just isn't scary.
Yeah, it's not scary, but I think it's got nice Neelix stuff in it
and I do think that it has something to say.
Like it's held together.
It's a thought about in a way.
It's not just a bunch of sort of spaceship that happens.
It does tell a kind of unified story, but I do think there's there
is a slight problem with the ending, I think.
I certainly think it's atmospheric in places.
I think it could be sillier at times. like, you know, schlockier.
But, um, you know, the thought of on a Tuesday morning hanging out
with you in a darkened, you know, voyager.
Under threat from a nebula, you know?
I mean, it's quite a nice way to spend the morning.
No, I thought that was fun.
It sort of makes me feel all the sort of cliches.
It does make you feel quite comforting, doesn't it?
Yeah, you know.
But it's absolutely the sort of episode that they wouldn't ever do
nowadays because they've only got 10 episodes.
They ain't going to waste a whole episode.
With a jigsaw piece episode made out of other episodes that
they've already done.
But I suppose that was their luxury when they were doing 26
episodes a year that they could just put out a, look, here's all
the cliches we're delivering them in a slightly different way.
Have fun with it because next week the Borg are back.
Yeah, and they'll be terrible.
Oh really bad.
The worst cliffhanger ever.
All right, it's the end of the episode.
It's time for us to work out where we're going next.
It's my turn.
I have the helm of the Randomiser, and I have decided that we are
going to do an underserved series of Star Trek, one that we
haven't done a huge proportion of, and it is Star Trek Lower
Decks.
Oh, wow.
I mean, after after a very, very dull episode of Enterprise, and
more fun, but still quite mundane episode of Voyager, I know we're
going to have something great to watch now.
Yeah, brilliant.
I was actually going to say discovery until about 30 seconds ago
but then I thought, let's screw it.
Well, you're living dangerously. improvising.
Discovery is because Discovery's put out a whole new series.
You know what I mean?
It's finished, and we are quite behind in that as well.
But because we just had season 5 of lower decks.
We've fallen behind there too.
So let's pick lowered eggs.
You know what, we do discovery, right?
I do I do like what we do discover because they changed it so
much.
You never know what you're gonna get for one season to the next.
Yeah.
Yeah. each season's so vastly different.
Lower decks, you do know what you're gonna get, but you also know
it's gonna be great.
It is going to be great.
All right.
I'm going to press the button.
Okay, so season three, episode four, which I think we have rolled
before, it's called room for growth.
So there's 2 plots.
There's one where Freeman decides that the engineering staff are
super overworked and highly stressed, and so they go to a
relaxation spa, and then the other one is that the lower deckers
want to get better quarters and they're competing with the, like, I
think Delta shift or something.
So they're both really kind of low key subplots, but in lower
decks, of course, that doesn't matter because it's just going to
be, you know, screamingly hilarious anyway.
I'm going to roll again though.
Will you do me a favour?
Yeah, because, like, I don't think it's going to take you too long
to get there, yeah.
But will you keep rolling, please, until you get one from the last
season?
Because I've not seen any of those.
I've seen a lot of the rest.
I've not even dipped my toes in the last season.
Okay.
Let's see how we go then.
Season three, episode nine, trusted sources.
Room for growth again?
Oh, it really wants us to watch that.
It really does.
Okay.
So this is season five, episode two, Shades of Green.
Oh, no.
Is there a flashback episode?
No, it's not a flashback ever.
It is a genius title though, isn't it?
So at the end of series 4 of Lower Decks, Tandy has to go back to
Orion, and she kind of is being a pirate.
And then in episode one of season five, uh, which is called
Dolceritos.
So it's like 2 Cerritos, one from a parallel dimension.
We discovered that Rutherford is super upset and missing her
terribly and, you know, that becomes a plot point.
Here, shades of green, it resolves that plot.
So it's about her, you know, winning as a pirate and then coming
back to Starfleet.
And it also introduces the blue Orions, who are seen in an episode
of the animated series and who wear very, very silly outfits in
the animated series, which they have here, and they're men, and
they pronounce Orion incorrectly because that also happens in the
animated series.
And attention to detail is staggering, isn't it?
So I did watch it quite recently.
It is really fun.
It's a tandy episode.
It starts with a fantastic heist.
You know, she's absolutely brilliant.
Like, I think she's an unsung hero of the show because she is the
science nerd and stuff.
But her enthusiasm is always sort of delivered with this sort of
undertone of hysteria because she's a cartoon character.
So, you know, sometimes they get actors to beat cartoon characters
and they're just being actors, but she's a proper cartoon
character, actor Noel Wells, and she just does such a great job of
tandy, and I love that character to death.
So I think a Tendi episode is what we want.
You know what?
You remember when we were talking about Rome the other day and
about how they're so rare in Star Trek to just have a character
that's just so lovely all the time.
So, you just love being with them just because they're so nice.
Tendu's that character.
No,adex isn't shit.
Well, in fact, Tandy and Rutherford are both that, I think. that's
what's so wonderful about them.
And the fact that they just kind of love one another is pretty
great.
And so he's super missing her and it will be nice to see them
reunited at the end.
It's pretty good.
Wow, I'm well up for it.
Like I said, I know very little.
So let's do it.
To the Cerritos, we go.
Exactly.
You've been listening to Untitled Star Trek Project with Joe Ford
and Nathan Bottomley.
We're online at untitledstar trekproject.com where you can find
subscription links and links to our social media accounts.
Our podcast artwork is by Kayla Ciceran, and the theme was
composed by Cameron Lam.
This episode was recorded on the 25th of February, 2025 and
released on the 28th of February.
We'll see you next time for Star Trek, Lower Decks, Shades of
Green.
That fucking sad shot at the end. where they're all wearing Borg
makeup and came.
Kate looks like, I told you that I would murder you, Michael
Westmore, if you put that latex on my face again, after course
oblivion, and she's like clearly furious in that final shot, and
they all just look pathetic, like it's just so bad.
And it's that yellow lighting again for the collective.
You know, that terrible light.
But because I actually, before you came on the call, I very
quickly watched the last scene of Metro 0 just because I wanted to
see what came next.
And they all do this.
They all do one robotic...
So bad.
We need you to show everybody that you're a robot.
Okay, even though you're wearing the makeup.
Chewbox like...
Far out.
And it's so pathetic too, because it's like, that was a huge
thing.
And in a way, best of both worlds, part 2 cheats by making it so
easy to turn him back. you know what I mean?
And now it's just like, oh, well, you thought that was great.
His 3 of them or something turned into Borg and he said, ah, yeah
fuck off.
But it's it really shows as well, I think.
It really shows how tired for it feels because it is just doing
that so much worse than the 1st time, you know, when it was a big
moment of drama and we're going to lose this major character and a
huge cliffhanger.
You know, Scorpion is their version of best of both worlds, isn't
it?
Scorpion, parts one and two.
And I didn't think it was as good when we watched it as I thought
it was originally. and still pretty good.
It was a good cliffhanger, though.
Do you remember when...
It's like, oh, Species A472 come out.
They connect up the ship.
Yeah, destroy all the poor cubes that you've never seen before.
Like it's really good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, where it's just these guys, sad fucking guys with latex all
over their heads standing around.
I think for me, like on 1st watch, the only cliffhanger that came
close to best of both worlds was call to arms was when they were
forced off the station and then Dukat goes into Cisco's office
picks up the baseball and goes, he's letting me know.
He'll be back.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really great.
And then it's just a close-up on Cisco's face and all the ships
sort of coming towards the station.
I think Deep State's 9 because Deep State sign doesn't do
cliffhangers as such.
It kind of does, and it finishes an episode, but that episode
changes the status quo in some way.
And in a way, I think that's better.
Like that's a little bit more interesting than peril.
Like do you know what I mean?
We'll be in peril for 6 months or whatever, and then you can watch
it again. less than that, I know.
But like that thing where it's just like, holy shit, what happens
now is so much more interesting.
Like it's a little bit more grown up.
With best of both worlds.
It had never been done before, had it?
So it was like, how the hell are they going to get out of this?
And there's only 2 options here.
One is they don't destroy the ball cube and it goes to the earth
or two, we destroyed the ball cube and we lose Picard.
It feels like a, there's a no way out.
Whereas unimatrix zero.
Well, we know 3 of the main regulars aren't going to be Borg for
the rest of these.
And yeah, and because it's never been out before, and because that
1st episode, and in a sense, the even the meaning of the title
best of both worlds, really applies to like Elizabeth Denahey's
character.
What's she called?
Oh, Shelby, yes.
Shelby.
Do you know what I mean?
I think she's in Lower Deck.
She gets mentioned, obviously.
Excuse me, commander.
She goes, but you're in my way.
Yeah, yeah.
And so it's about, like, it's about, you know, is this Riker
replacing, we don't know?
Is Patrick Stewart back?
We don't even know, you know?
But it's, it's... changing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's why the 2nd episode it does feel like cheap because it's like
oh, okay, no. he's actually a bit shit.
But the 1st episode's magnificent. that cliff thing is
incredible.
I've just thought of another great cliffhanger that we've done.
Um, uh, in Purgatory Shadow. do you remember?
Yeah, yeah.
The wormholes opening, and then all those Dominion ships come
pouring out.
And then it was a massive state of change, wasn't it?
The very next scene is Ducart saying, I'm not fighting the
Dominion fleet. joining them.
Yeah, yeah.
That's pretty good.
God, so good.
So great.
All right.
All right, let's do this.
That's my go.
Okay.
You get jammer.
We might have a tag day, you know, a cliffhanger tag.
Oh, yeah, no, I think we've had that before.
Sometimes we do.
I think we just do that.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's in between the two.
It's not often, but I think that should...
I'm always intrigued as to what bit you're going to choose to go
after the time.
Although the best is still the, obviously the fans.
They're still best.
Just when you're talking about something completely random.
Like sometimes it's just, yeah, anyway.
All right, it's the end of the episode.