The Swarm

Hey, Joe. Hi. We're back this week and we are watching an episode of Star Trek Voyager. It's the 2nd episode that we've done. And you have been watching a lot of Voyager lately, haven't you? I have, yes. And I've reached an epiphany about Voyager that I wish to share with everybody. Oh, excellent. Okay. So recently life's hit a little bit. okay? as it tends to do from time to time. And I had a day where I wanted to drag my duvet at the sofa and not leave. I was there from 7 in the morning till 11 at night. I know they're sad, but and I just needed to lose myself in something for a day that just wasn't my own life. And for some bizarre reason, you know, additional self-harm, I chose Voyager. And I want to say, like, I think this is a good show to kind of switch off from your life. too. And I watched Caretaker and I was suddenly I was on the other side of the galaxy with this great cast of characters and I was having wonderful fun. I was having so much fun. I started live tweeting, images from that episode, and I've continued. I'm at Gitrell at the moment. I'm nearly at the end of season one and that's in less than a week. Right. And I'm live tweeting as I go, taking pictures of the best and the worst of season one of Warrior. And trust me, we veer in both directions in series one. But there is some really good stuff there as well. Anyone that thinks Early Voyager is terrible needs to go back and watch that because there are state of flux, prime factors caretaker, phage. There's some really good stuff in there. But I don't, I don't want to say it's undemanding. Because it does tackle some, you know, some intelligent stuff. But I think there's something to be said for a show that entertains like this, starts competently, consistently. And a show that just sort of takes you away from your own care. And I've used Voyager for that this week. I wouldn't use DS9 for that and I prefer DS9. But DF9 is sort of more hard-hitting and a bit more depressing than Voyager, you know? It's just a good show to lose yourself in. And I think you and I, we had some nice but also disparaging things to say about Voyager in lineage when we were talking about the show, especially me. And I want to retract a little bit of that because I've connected with this show this week on a way that I haven't for quite some time. And I just wanted to share that. The thing about Voyager is that that's kind of what it's aiming for. And I think Deep Space 9 is on a trajectory that leads from sort of Star Trek, the next generation to Battlestar Galactica, where you get more serialised storytelling and a big cast of characters who are all kind of well drawn. We know how they react. And Star Trek was never originally that. It was a group of people who were good at various things solving space problems. And I think Voyager is aiming at that. And it does have more serialisation the next gen. It's got a more specific premise, the next generation as well. And I think that generally it does what it's aiming to reasonably well. And I think that I have often, the description you've given it there. I have said that in a critical way. And the thing that changed this week is I needed it to be that. Yeah. And it turned out to be a positive thing. You know, so it's not the most ambitious Star Trek. Um, you know, and we're going to talk about that in this week's episode as to how, you know, things probably could have been done a little better. But it is fun to watch. And sometimes you just need fun to watch. Yeah, yeah. Look, I mean, we wouldn't be here if we didn't like shows about crews of people solving space problems, you know, that's Star Trek right? And it has occasionally deviated from that and it's gone beyond that, but that's the basic idea. And I think Voyager is very close to that basic idea. Well, I mean, look at it. Discovery. We talked about this in the Discovery episode where it kicked off rejecting that completely. But slowly but surely. Yeah. It's fallen back into the Star Trek pattern for better or for worse. Yeah. And in some ways, for better, I think, you know, in some ways, I think it's, because I did last series one. But it's not quite a lot of series 3, but you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're quite lucky because we are discussing a Dr. Heavy episode this week. Yeah, yeah. And we're a president and treasurer of the Robert Picardo fan club. That's right. I'm the janitor. You're both the treasurer and the president. That's how it works. I think he's one of the best actors ever to be in a Star Trek crew. He's not just the best person on Voyager, probably. He is one of the best people ever. And we have 2 of him this week, which is pretty great. You remember when I said to you, I thought that the cast of Voyager is stronger than the cast of TNG. Like, if you're going to take a batting average across, yeah Picardo raises that average, by about points, you know? I think Picardo, Ryan, and Mulgrew. Raser average to like an insane degree, you know. Yeah, and I, you know, like I think Tim Ross is a great actor. I actually think Ethan Phillips is very good at what he's called upon to do. So sweet that you think that, you know. honestly. really is. Well, there were qualifiers there. So I do think that that's true. And I also think that Star Trek, the Next Generation suffers from being the 1st time we try and do Star Trek in a sort of 80s, 90s TV environment and we don't know really what we're doing. And, you know, eventually I end up having an enormous amount of nostalgic affection for those characters. But I do think that they do sort of slightly better job at assembling a cast once they've already had a go at it once. Yeah, and, you know, they kind of definitely lean into like massive diversity, don't they, in DS9 and Voyager as well, which I really like. Yeah, yeah. And what I really love about the Voyager cars. Sorry, guys, I promise we're all going to... We will go to Saul at some point. Um, is obviously it's the 1st thing our captain, but there are a lot of women in this cast. Yeah. And they're all really competent characters, you know, this ain't your TOS women at a console holding their ears, you know? Well, I mean, but even in Star Trek, the next generation, they give the women doctor and counsellor, you know, caring profession roles. I think in DS 9. Don't get me wrong. Dax, Jazzy Adax, and Kieran and Reese are both. I think they're probably 2 of the strongest female characters we ever had. they're very masculine, aren't they? Like, they're not very feminine at times. Well, you know, Dax is kind of sexually aggressive, but in an absolutely feminine way. And I... Yeah, yeah. And I do think that that Kira's kind of like her aggression and stuff is muted by the fact that she's little and elfin and you know, pretty. Well, I love the fact every time they try and softener every time. None of his some fights against it. And, you know, and so she's like, no, I'm having a new look next year. I'm not having that spray on look anymore, you know, with the shampooed hair that she had in serious form. She cuts all her air off in Sirius 5. She goes, well, I have none of that nonsense. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Shall we go for it? I think we should. Okay, I am going to just get onto the 1st frame. I'm paused on the 1st frame of the video and I am going to count us in. So here goes five, four, three, two, one, and we're off. We are off. Okay, so we get a start date here, which is nice. I always need to know when the stardate is and we don't get ready. You normally drop those at the beginning of the episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. Nope. And it's on the website in case you want to know. We got to start, we got a star date in Discovery the other day and it's massive, huge numbers. Oh, yeah, but we went into the future then, don't we? Oh, no, here we go. The 1st signs of Belana Torres and Tom Paris, and their imminent romance, because that's this season, you know, that's hits this season. So it does strike me as the 1st time. I have a problem with the way that Voyager does this and it is that they're really shit at talking about romantic relationships dialogue is appalling. Awful, just awful. All that Delaney sister stuff and like it's just kind of creepy and like no adults talk like this about their relationship. these horrendous metaphors, like, oh, you know, I was at the layby and you flew by me at warp speed and stuff like that. It's just like... in real life. Although she does have a line here where she goes, Freddie Bristol is a child. I do like that I just like the lime reading. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, she's a, she is very good and I don't know if we said that last time. We certainly definitely should have. Yeah, yeah. She is good. He's less good. But this sort of business where he's kind of asking why she doesn't seem to bang. Like it's just yucky. It's a workplace. Don't do that. What are you doing, you know? business, Tom Paris. Yeah, yeah. Pervert. I watched Caretaker this week. And in one of his 1st scenes, he's chatting up the baiters, or it has taken him to Voyager. I'm like, he's a menace. Yeah, he's a creep. And, but I mean, even at the time, even at a sort of pre-me too era, there's just something pathetic and kind of sophomoric about the, about the, that dialogue whenever they're talking about sex or romantic relationships. I mean, I think most dialogues. Unfortunately, they're about to be knocked unconscious in a painful way, which I think they probably deserve after this conversation. by these strange insectoid aliens who I'm fairly excited. have a massive impact on Voyager after this episode. So that's something that we'll talk about because this episode is named after them. It's called the swarm. warm. Yeah. Sounds enticing, don't you think? It does. It does. I've got a feeling there's not even going to be a B-pot this week. It's just going to be all about the swarm. Yeah. And they're opening attack on Voyager after with the 4 season arc that follows as they head through swarm space. Well, we were talking, we're doing the opening credits at the moment. We were talking about the Videans just before we started recording. So DS are the best race Voyager ever created. Utterly chilling. And Fage introduces them and makes them a sort of like a very, very intermittent kind of feature of... It doesn't make any sense, does it? I never understand this about Voyager. Well, because the Vedigen's feature through series one and series two. And they must have covered a lot of ground in that time. Surely they, they, they head out of Vidian space in that time. Well, I mean, to be fair to Voyager, it does introduce things like the Hirogen and the 8472 and the Vidians and various other things the Melon. And they appear and then they go away after a season because we move out of their space. So I think that actually works. Until series 6 and 7 here. And then though some of those characters turn up again and you're like, well, you were pushed. You were pushed 40,000 light years by kids in the gift. There's a wormhole. You know what? very quickly, must tell you about the mail on, right? Because I was watching an interview with Kate Mongrew the other day and the cast of Voyager and she's going, do you remember those aliens? Those aliens that look like massive turds. She was like, and they all just fall about him. She's like, they were testing us. They were testing our acting ability to act alongside these men that looked like big poos. I was like, oh, Kate Margaret. I can't love you more. All right, so these are things. It's a plot. It's really great. So this? Are you sure this is the A-plot? I think this is the A-plot. I think we're both A plots this week. about a similar amount of time. Well, except that one of them works really well and the other one's super disposable. And I'll let you guess, it's, which is the one that works and... What do you mean clue? One of them is disposable. We're both not about next week. They're both. Well, no, I don't think that. we'll get to that because I have a different opinion about the ending from you, I think. So this was Picardo's idea, I think, the idea that the doctor should be interested in opera, because obviously he's a tanner and he can sing. And so he sort of brings it in. He would be aware, I think, that in previous Star Trek, we got, you know, Jonathan Frakes to play the trombone, because he can do that. And Harry Kim, of course, plays the clarinet and then when they decide to try and make him cool later on, the saxophone. And so, you know, the actors are bringing their own talents. And of course, the other... by Avery books in the best of Jets come in butter being butter bang. What a voice. Yeah. Well, he's got another beautiful tenor voice, I think, of a different kind. And I just love this sort of stuff because whenever they mention someone, like they mentioned famous Soprani, and so they mention like 2 who are real and then a space soprano from the planet Vulcan or something is the 3rd one. Well, I think I think Voyager and Holodecks, or Holo novels, or whatever they call them, is very hit or miss. Yeah. And, um, I don't really like the season long holodeck scenarios that they do because generally I think it's that dreadful beach scenario or dreary Lord Burley's manor house, that Gothic romance or Fairhaven. You know? But when they just like duck into like a single scene like this. This is really fun. And this is Robert Picardo and an opera diva having a bitch fight and what could be more glorious than that? And look how shitty she is with him. Like, she's absolutely contemptuous in a really, really hilarious way. She should have been a recurring character. She was... She's wonderful. Um, but, so this is Picardo can't remember the lyrics and he's a computer program. She's already complained that singing with him is like singing with a computer. And that's the basis of this plot, even though it's not a big deal in this scene. And, you know, the scene is fun just because of the interplay between these 2 sort of rather obnoxious characters. But I think it's a nice, it's a cute way of introducing the idea that he's starting to forget things. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I can't imagine a better way. It's really, really quite good. And Picardo would go on to have, like, he would sing more opera but there's a sequence in someone to watch over me where he and the 7 of 9 sing, You are my sunshine together. It is one of the most beautiful scenes in Star Trek. It is glorious. Because Jerry Ryan sings again, doesn't she? She sings in the Hirogen 2 parter in a way that I think is usually is like honey. It's gorgeous. And so here we're kind of introducing the relationship between Bellana and the doctor, which I think is really great and gets a bit of a go this episode. You know what's sad is when 7 joins in series 4, B'Elana's relationship with Janeway is neglected and it's really important in one to 3 and her relationship with the doctor is neglected in favour of 7 and Janeway and 7 and the doctor. And interestingly, in 5 6 and 7, when we're suffering from a bit of 7 fatigue, because there's been so many episodes about, they start playing about with it again with Balana and Janeway and Blana and the doctor. But yeah, so, but there's that middle period where it's completely forgotten about kind of a shame. Yeah, it is a shame because I think the 2 of them are really good together and we saw them together, of course, a great deal in lineage. And here I think they're really good. There's some really, really great stuff about the doctor's bedside manner, which is already an issue at this point. It's an issue in episode one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know, actually, watching season one, I had forgotten how much of a journey he goes on just in that 1st season, he gets his 1st away mission in heroes and demons, cares, he has that relationship with cares that starts building, and then she starts saying people need to be nicer to you. I've suggested that characters don't develop well on Voyager, but I've been shocked at how well he's developed in a very short space of time. And I think they just realised they had a very valuable actor in the cast. I had to give him something to do. That's right. No one was thinking that about Robert Beltran, were they? Oh, right, for things, really. Actually, you know, they give it up, but it was Lowe's series one. Agonising, I'm saying? He's a good actor. So this is the A-plot that the episode is named after, and this is quite tedious, I think. And it's well, they do this. They do this again in Scorpion. Is this like a dry rum? At the end of this season. It's like, oh, how do we get through this space? Because, you know, this is a dangerous region of space. But in Scorpion, it's genuinely tense and terrifying, whereas here it's just like, well, there's these bugs flying about, you know like... Look, I mean, I have to say that it seems to me that this might have been a dry run for something, that they might have considered having the swarm in it again, because it is very much like the introduction of the other alien species on Voyager. You know, I hate to contradict you, but we've talked about this haven't we? This is the point where Voyager cancelled serialisation. Series one and two, they had the Cesarat going. They had pseudor having a couple of appearances. They had like extra characters like Hogan and Carey and people like that that dipped in and out of episodes in Basics part two. They kill off all those extra characters, including Cesca and Suda and Hogan, who will be back in a later series in sort of dead body form. Oh that's right. distant origin. That's a fabulous episode. But in series 3, it was a deliberate creative choice that we're not doing serialised, and they fired Michael Pillop. Michael Pillow left Voyager after basics part one or basic part two. And does he ever come back? Does him gone? That's him gone from Star Trek. Wow. But he wanted it to be serialised and they didn't want to do that. They absolutely didn't want to do that. So they got rid of him. They brought in Jerry Taylor. And she wants movie of the week. She wants TNG light. And Voyager can do TNG light because this is... well made and entertaining. Yeah, yeah. But I think the show was more interesting at the tail end of series 2, where it had those running plots. I mean Cesca, for God's sake. So great. Hello. Hello, Jakotay. Here's your here's your baby, Chakotay. Oh my gosh, she's right. Ah, do you know, I actually feel, I'm quite be honest with you want to. I think Kaz is a little underrated, you know. Do you know, I was thinking that as well, and I was going to ask you, this little interchange here, where the doctor complains about how all the sopranos are obnoxious and arrogant and dismissing. He's so great. And so she gets a really, really good role here, and I think she does it really well. She's the youngest member of the crew because she's what, 4 or something. sort of super weird. But so she gets to be in the position of his daughter. Like, she's basically the nurse, she's his assistant, and he's been training her, and I think that's a more successful and interesting relationship than the one between her and Neelix, which I think is obnoxious. That is horrendous. In fact, they split up between episodes. They don't even have the scene where they split up. She's just like, no, I've had enough now, you know. Um, I'm not going to say that I think Jennifer at the end is a terrible actress because I think she's good. I don't think she's great. I think she's good, but I think some actors will wait another one is when they're in the proximity of fantastic actors. They raise their game. Yeah. It's the Matthew Waterhouse effect. But she, because she's sort of little and elephant, but she has that deep voice, I think, I think, and she does sort of concern very well. And so here, so this plot is a space plot where the doctor's computer program goes wrong. But it's done, obviously, as sort of, um, a sort of analogy to dementia. And that thing where you end up having to parent your own parents like your parents reach a certain age and they're sick or whatever or they're confused. And then you find yourself having to look after them. And in that scene that we've just had. Because we get the doctor, sort of degenerates during this, during this episode. And what we've just seen is him trying to cover up that his memory is not working properly, trying to hide it. And then you've got her trying to help him out without embarrassing him. And all of that stuff. There's a real proper realism to that. And we talked about this before. It's TV realism, but, you know, I think that's why this lands. Yeah, well, and I think you've got the previous 2 seasons of their developing relationship backing this up and giving it some like you know, emotional wallop. But what I love about her in this is when she gets angry. And when, you know, when she comes at Zimmerman later in the episode and she's like, no, you're going to sort this out, I care about him. And they're all talking about him like, oh, we're just going to delete his subroutines. She's like, no, he's a person, like, like, who's had experiences. And she's the one, she's the one that's fought for that for those 2 years. you know, he's got rights, he's a person. Treat him well, you know. And in return, I watched a lovely episode the other day where she says, oh, I want to study anatomy and he's like, well, it gives her these pads and he's like, well, it's very complicated and he doesn't look at all sure that she's going to, and she comes back the next day and says, well, I've read all those. What else you got? You know? And but that paternal thing of him looking at her. and being like a proud father. It's gorgeous. And I think with cares. When they lean into the accompan thing, it's a bit Star Trek and tedious and, you know, I'm psychic and I've got mental powers and all this, when they do the relationship with her and the doctor she really sings as a character. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I always think those high concept characters end up being a bit of a mistake and I'm happy when they just turn into people. Do you know who's the exception to the rule there? Who? I think Odo might be the exception to the rule. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah. But then you've got an actor of such calibre there. Oh, see, look, this is she is his daughter at this point. And it's worth saying that the doctor's 1st reaction to this problem is that he should be initialised and have his memory wiped and she she's the one who tells him no. And this is a thing that we've litigated on Star Trek before. So series 2 of Star Trek and the Next Generation has Measure of a Man, where data is confirmed to be a human being rather than the property of Starfleet, despite not being a real person, despite being something constructed. The doctor is just a computer program. We don't really relitigated in quite the same way, although towards the end of the show's run, being a hologram becomes, you know, they become oppressed, don't they? There are a lot of. It becomes a rights issue, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like gay rights or kind of racial equality or whatever. So it's uses analogy for that. What changes is his status within this environment. So it's less about how holograms are treated as a whole. They respect him by the end of the series. He's captaining the ship in series 6 and seven, you know? The ECH. That's right. I remember that. Oh, and this. So this is really great as well, because the doctor, the doctor invading her personal space. But he's distressed in a way that he isn't normally too. Like, um, and he complains about her her bedside manner. His comic timing is sublime, isn't it? Like and he's funny with a look. Not all actors can be funny with a look, you know. But despite playing this for comedy, he is also clearly visibly kind of upset and a bit distressed. You know what this could have been, because this is a dementia, and this could have been very part and in extreme port taste. And I think you needed to hand it to one of the better actors on this show for it to land. And it, there's a scene later on, which you and I discussed before where he says, um, in a very childlike way, this is a sick man. This is where sick men come. And that could have been played, like, I can imagine, like, I don't know, Robert Duncan, it was saying those lines. And he plays it with an innocence that is heartbreaking. Like, yeah. I'm pleased. I'm pleased. Picardo's playing this. I think Jennifer Lien also sells that scene. will definitely get to that. So now we're, uh, McKinley's very generic. yeah. It's generic beige next generation era set. Look at all those buttons all over the walls and all the console honestly, what do they all do? I know. You just need a laptop, for God's sake. It does seem unnecessary. Imagine having to walk over there. Oh, you interact with Microsoft Word. When I was a child, this was the most sophisticated technology I could ever imagine in the world, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and look, there is another Robert Picardo just, um, like he rolls into shot. I've got to up his chair back. A question for you. What's the only thing that's better than Robert Picardo being in the scene? Oh, yeah, 2 or three. Did we have that? No, no, we get 2 Rob Micardos and 2 Alexander Siddigs in Dr Bashiro Zoom, which is hilarious. And they do this. this works well enough that they repeat this in series 6 and have a whole episode where it's the doctor in Zimmerman together. So towards the end, and they do kind of regain the idea that they should do some serialisation because we obviously have this ongoing thing with their ability to communicate with Earth. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like they're kind of lent into that a lot more than they do. But whenever they do, it has that kind of emotional resonance, that Voyager lacks a lot of the time. Yeah. And it's got Diana as well, and she's fantastic. Oh, Jesus. Oh. He put his hand on his shoulder there. That's quite well done. Do you remember in Renaissance man in series 7? They do the ultimate Robert Picardo thing where the whole thing is about copies of Robert Picardo all over the ship. And then as I say, he walks into the holodeck and there's literally like 1000s of Robert Picardo. It's the best voyager ever was, a 1000 Robert Kicardos. Very funny. And he really, really differentiates Zimmerman, because Zimmerman is more obnoxious than the doctor. And in this situation, because Zimmerman's got the sort of, you know, crappy, actually I quite like that linen lab coat or whatever he's wearing over his uniform, but he just looks crumpled and his hair's a mess and stuff like that. And so the doctor suddenly becomes the good version of this terrifying is how she plays against the 2 of them as well. Like, there's clearly 2 very different relationships going on. But what I really like as well is Zimmerman. He's only in about 3 scenes in this story, 3 or 4 scenes. He goes on a little journey as well, wherein in the end, like, you know, here, you would never foresee him sacrificing himself to, so the doctor can survive. But by the end, it's very plausible how it's played out. Yeah. So shout out to 2 things. We've talked before about, I'm a doctor, not an ex, which is really Picardo's thing more than McCoy. So McCoy would say, you know, I'm a doctor, not a magician, but one of the comedy, you know, one of the comedy bits that the doctor does is I'm a doctor, not an ex, and there's a whole variety of things. Here we get 2 of them. I think Zimmerman says of the doctor, he's a doctor, not a tenor. And Zimmerman says of himself, I'm a diagnostic tool, not an engineer, which I think is also pretty great. Okay, well, I'm going to say, to the boring B plot. Massively controversial. I think the doctor, Robert Picardo's doctor, is probably the best doctor in of all of Star Trek, all the franchise. And the best actor as well. Tahana? Who's that? The cat, doctor on left. That's not good as Picardo. Even De Forrest Kelly isn't as good as Picardo. Pretty great. Do you know what? I'm actually realising now watching this alongside you, just how dull these scenes are in comparison. Yeah, there's nothing to them. And basically, what that plot's got to recommend is special effect sequences at the end, isn't it? The CGI swarm attacking the ship. But I mean, this is all just techno babble. Like, what are we doing? We're just talking space things here. There's no proper resolution. They press the right buttons and get through the space thing. Like, you know, I said this was, this was like a take one of this idea in Scorpion. The drama is there's no techno-babble. The drama comes from the fact that Janeway is saying we should do this and Jakotay is saying that we shouldn't and they have a massive blowout and it's amazingly good. It's like the tension is terrific. Yeah, there's none of this. Oh, well, you know, we'll push the warp factor too, blah, blah blah, blah, you know, like, this comes with the territory, but this is not, this is not why I watched Archer, though. I know I know people that have tech manuals and things like that and there is that element of fandom here. And trust me, they get, you know, bang for their buck with Next Generation Voyager. But I mean, think about we did the Corba Mite maneuver, which is kind of in a sense the 1st regular episode of Star Trek ever made. And that is them being threatened by space objects and all sitting on the bridge, but the drama doesn't come at all from Technobabble because they haven't really properly invented that yet. It is all about, you know, the kind of standoff and about the sort of mounting tension among the bridge cruise. Mysterious object. You just want to say that line again, don't you? That's what you brought. And now that's Tranya. Sorry. But, but, you know, we're in the same situation here. We're facing an enemy that we don't properly understand. They're super alien. We've got to get through their space, but they're a threat. How do we deal with them? And it seems that we deal with them by sitting around pressing buttons and talking about. Don't they? We've played it out in TNG so many times where it's like, oh, it's an unloaned alien language and yet somehow they managed to decipher it. They get a few lines of like, I don't know, suck the power and attack. They're coming after us. There's an action sequence where they all land on Voyager. They sour the milk the end. It's like, it's just, it's so disposable, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. There's really nothing to her. Um, You're supposed to be off during your off hours. Well, they do they do this a couple of times as well, you know like, um, so we meet holographic characters throughout Voyages Run and there's a comparison made with the experiences that the doctors had and the lack of it. So there's the guy in a message in a bottle. What's his name? Is it Robert Dick? is a comedian. It's the one where they're on... That it. They're on their Romulan ship. And they have the same scene as here where he says, you know, oh you've had sex. You know, you've experienced romance. And you realise how far he's come. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, here it is. He was a program to be a tenor. He was programmed to be a physician. And nothing about cares as well in this season, right? is they let her grow up in this season. So she dumps Neelix. They let her, her hair goes, like she grows her hair and it goes down. She looks like a woman rather than a child. I would have been so interested to see where she would have gone in four, five, 6 and seven. And like there's no reason why they had to write her out to bring Jerry Ryan in. They could have just had more women, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they added a regular character to the cast of Deep Space 9. Like they expanded the cast when Worf arrived. He doesn't replace anyone. Well, look at by the end, the secondary cast is bloated beyond, you know, like this cast is enormous. I have a suspicion that the reason that Kes grows her hair out is to save the makeup artist's time with the ears. Okay. I mean, that does, yeah, that makes sense, but it does, it feels like a progression of her character, though. It does feel like she's growing up. I mean, she starts having like other romances this season and her powers are being explored more. And then in series four, the 2nd episode, the gift. The gift. It's it's one of the most female centred episodes of Star Trek ever because the A plot is Janeway and 7 and the B plot is Janeway and Kez. And it's just brilliant. It's really, really good. And I'm like, oh, this is what the show could have been like, you know, from this point on. All these women. We don't, we don't need to, we don't need to worry about Harry Kim and Tom Harris. Chakotay? Neelix? Sorry, not Neelix. Oh, dear. Yeah, it is a thing, isn't it? I mean, I think Harry's really pretty but he doesn't go anywhere. I think, you know, I don't like Robert Duncan McNeil very much. It's basically the doctor, isn't it? It's the dog so who's the interesting male character in this. And the women. I mean, I think Tim Ross's Tuvok is really pretty great. He said in that Voyager reunion. He said, um, what did I do in that episode? Was I at the tactical console saying they're coming towards us and fire torpedoes? I did that a lot. Yeah, he really did. It was a big waste, wasn't it? Holy shit. Look at this. What is up with that? Okay. This is something I noticed in series one and it's very apparent on the screen right now. is they're taking a bloody piss, aren't they, with some of these aliens? Concepts. This guy is got, I mean, how would you describe his face, Nathan? Well, he looks like a sort of, I don't know, like, I guess he's sort of a bit Klingon skull thing, but he's also kind of like leader of a bikey gang, perhaps as well. Massive hair that looks like it's been crimped. Yes, yeah. It's really shit. I don't know what's going on here. So he's... You know, when Kate Mulgrew said, well, they try to test us as actors. This is one of those things. That's right. Look at look at Kate desperately trying to retain composure while acting opposite this giant lump of latex. It's so terrible. And it's a messenger speech. I mean, you know, we don't get to see their ship get destroyed or anything like that. It's just him saying, oh, and, you know, they killed us all and this is trying to do the stakes, but it's doing it in such a kind of half arse and in that way. People's looking at the other actors in the screen because, you know, she's going to go if she keeps looking at that alien. It's funny too, this, right? Because you've got this undercooked alien plot and you've got quite a well-developed and, you know, reasonable, uh, BB plot. yeah yeah. And they intersect here. And I found myself wondering what the hell they thought the swarm thing was for, because I think they devote too much time to it perhaps. Oh, I can tell you it was four. I can absolutely tell you. do you think it's for? special effects? No, it's to fill to fill time of this episode, you know? Whereas imagine it, it was just the A-plot in this and we explored that a bit more. Well, I mean, the thing is that we need the doctor to have to do medical things during the course of the episode so that we can see how his dementia is affecting his ability to work, right? So he needs for doing that. He could be doing just sort of boring things because, you know someone comes in with a headache or or, you know, something. But instead, we give, we have to give him high stake stuff. And this is this scene here that we were talking about before where the doctor's doing his sort of pack-led thing. You know, it is really heartbreaking. It's the, you know, this this is where sick people come. Shall I use it on the sick man and he doesn't realise that the man is dead. Um, and, like, like, there's a sort of comedy to it, finding the instrument. Yeah, but necessary action. No. Guess his reaction. Like, in a way, it's funny. you know, this is where sick people come. It's kind of funny seeing the doctor like that. And he's sort of trying to wring laughs from it in a way, but it's it's uncomfortable as well. And Cass is really properly selling how terrible it is. And you see we are back in the other plot. Yeah, but this is the 1st point where this plot is, I wouldn't, I'm going to say interesting. That's overselling it. But like we've had a visual now of one of the little swarm ships and it's about to get, it's, you know, visually interesting, if not interesting bull stop. Yeah, I mean, so like the concept is that they're like insects and so they look like kind of cockroaches and they all land on the ship and they're like, they're like a, they're like bees in a way. Speech is someone whose husband's a beekeeper. You know how they say like people came into the office and pitched ideas and that's how these things go. You'd sell an idea. What about, you know, Voyager versus the insect swarm. You know, they probably were like, yes, we can absolutely do something like, we can have 20 minutes of techno babble and then a swarm at the end, you know. But, I mean, so they are xenophobic. They will attack you if you enter their space, so they present an obstacle to Voyager. They are incomprehensible. They're like insects. There's a potential for them to be scary. But there's no voice. So you can't really engage with them. Like, even in the Corp might maneuver. There was that great threatening voice that came in, you know, and so you could have some... Yeah, like the Borg? Yeah, you had Locutus or the Four Queen. This is just that voice. Remember, the voice comes in and says we shall add our technological distinctiveness to your own. Whereas they're doing a little guesswork here, aren't they? And it's like, well, this kind of this ambiguous insect species. What's engaging about that? Were they just a shitty version of the Borg? I mean, because the Borg come in a colony and they have a group intelligence? And when you hear them speak, they sound like a lot of people speaking at once. So maybe this is trying to feel a hole that hasn't that's already been filled by an alien species that's much more interesting. I was going to make a metaphor then, but I was trying to... That's for my other problem. Try to avoid that. This sequence here. Okay, this is really good because he gets really angry with her. Now, mine Nan had dementia and I, you know, I saw that anger quite a lot and it's not really pushed in a very uncomfortable way because we're not here for that. you know, this that's not what Star Trek's trying to do. But I'm glad they added that because they had the sort of the confusion. Then they had the innocence. Now they've got the anger and it is the sort of the various stages of dementia that they're covering. It's very... this one here. Also, he remembers his, like the 1st time he's activated very well but can't remember anything since that. And that dementia thing where your old memories stay, but you have difficulty remembering recent thing. We gave my nan a doll and she remembered my mum being born, whereas she couldn't remember anything from like the last year, you know so that's absolutely a thing. So I don't, I mean, this episode doesn't have anything to say about dementia, you know, dementia is bad or dementia is upsetting. Well, yeah. But can you say it, you know, what can they say? It's horrendous, you know? Yeah. And there's a reset button and inevitably there he is. irritates me no end. Well, I like it better than you do, I think. But... But it does humanise it. The other one is just space things happening to space people and they press buttons to fix the problem. Whereas this is about seeing characters that we know interact in a different way and being pushed into a different situation literally the 2 sides of Star Trek, isn't it? It is the 2 versions of Star Trek. The version I don't like, which is all the techna babble, and the version I love, which is the character drama. Yeah. So we just had the visual going into the ad break of the swarm and here we are out of the ad break with the swarm on the screen. There's some nifty effects. Yeah, agree. great. Yeah. But I don't I don't know if the 15 minutes of boredom is a sacrifice I'm willing to make just for some good special effects. Yeah. And I think so, for instance, discovery does a very good job, I think, of looking spectacular and having incredible special effects. Yeah, without being about the special effects, which is clearly what's happening. Yeah, essentially this is an excuse to do a, you know, a visually exciting set piece, isn't it? And look at TV's visual. I think, you know, being visually exciting, doing visual things that are interesting is something that Voyager managers, as they get better at the technology over the 7 years of the show's run they're eventually able to produce things that look really quite amazing. And that's what TV is for as well. Here, though, I think this is the point where the 2 plots mesh well, and it's not until this point, because they're in a situation of peril on Voyager, Kez has to try and find the solution to the doctor problem on her own. Because they're basically saying, look, we can't afford, we can't afford to give you Bilana, you know, you're going to have to, you know, sorry. And so now she's desperate, she's angry, she's reacting. I actually think that's slightly shit. Like, they're about to lose that. They're about to lose their doctor. It's kind of like B'Elana needs to be in engineering, pressing buttons because no one else can do it. You know, but... But it does mean that Kes has to step up. And it reinforces, you know, how much she cares about him. Yeah. And also, she's angry. She's... Do you remember that one where she's evil, warlord? And she's like this mad, like psychotic, bisexual, murderess. Oh, you could have been like this all the time. That would have been amazing. She could have been like Giorgio. the Giorgio of Voyager, you know? And so they come up with a techno babble solution to the problem but it's one that is comprehensible enough. For a four-year-old. We're gonna sour the milk. But no, no, no. I mean for I mean for this proper plot where they're going to take Zimmerman's holographic matrix and give it to the doctor. And it means we won't see Zimmerman again, but we've got a functioning hologram here and we'll use bits of it to fix the other hologram, is easily comprehensible. But it does make you wonder why they didn't think of this the 1st time they walked in. like, Bilana didn't go, well, we got 2 holograms here. Why don't we just, you know. Didn't they even know? Did they know that, because he just rolls out. He just rolls out from behind a console. I don't know whether they ever knew. I don't mind a simplistic solution. As long as it makes sense. And I think both the swarm plot and the doctor plot have simple solutions, but they both are comprehensible and, you know, they're satisfying. Oh, look at that. Oh, look, that's a great shot, isn't it? Yeah. That's all they were thinking about, you know, when they were writing this, we're going to, we're going to fill the screen full of CGI in six. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I just think I'm really sick to death on this scene already. It's so boring. It is so boring. again. It feels obscene as well because you've got actresses like Roxanne Dawson and Kate Mulgrew and there's just saying this dreadful Techno Babble. How can you waste these actresses, you know? Chakotay's being boring in his chair, but that's 10 what he tends to do, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's had his most interesting episode now. That's resolution in the last season when him and Janeway started banging on the planet. So now it's all downhill from him from here on. That's the last time he gets anything to do. I'm surprising he made the move, you know. He makes the move, not her. Wow, she's Kate Mulgrew though. I know. Anyone would. Yeah, that's right. Do you know, they are very adept at this split screen stuff at this point. I can't see the joins here. Can you? No, no, no, no. I don't think they're doing it like that. Like it's not quite a split. It's not like in bewitched, you know, where you would see a sort of line down the middle of the thing. Do you remember in 2nd chance as they play with that by blocking the scene so the 2 Rikers are on the opposite side of the screen. So you think it's traditional split screen and then one of them walks out of the shot in front of the other one and you kind of go 0 shit, they can do that now. I watched a Sabrina, a teenage witch the other day, where there was 2 of her, and the way they got around it was every time she walked out of the room, the other one walked in. Like a 2nd later, I thought, that's genius. That is genius. Ah, look, and Zimmerman's actually quite, he's a little bit more like the doctor now at the end that he is sort of sacrificing himself to save the doctor, and suddenly he's a little bit less irascible and a little bit more the sort of sweet, charming man you know, the doctor to be. do that. He can introduce his character as a right fucking grump. And then softening throughout the course. Interestingly, when we come back to him in Lifeline in series 6 when he's an older man, he's the grumpiest the doctor's ever been wonderful. Yeah, well, that's great. The camera's zooming about the bridge trying to make this as dramatic as possible. There's a lattice apparently. Harry Kim is under lit. So his face looks hugely dramatic. But really. It's all a bit tedious, isn't it? There's every chance the interferometric pulse will blah, blah blah, blah, blah. I'm getting hard. You're saying there's 10 about, honestly. So bad. It's so boring. Here they are. Oh, now there's some punching on the bridge. I'm telling you, series 3 is full of these episodes, full of technobabble, full of, you know, threat of the week. Oh, Robbie. Oh, there you go. There you go. Kate gets to shoot someone. Robbie gets to crash tackle them. Oh, look, even Chakotay, Chakotay. He disintegrated one of them. Or maybe he beamed back, actually. Maybe that's what happened. That's rubbish, isn't it? They're cool sitting there. The 2nd you shoot him, they vanish. Yeah, they don't want corpses all over the place. Look, they're all blowing up. And they're all going, oh, no, Janeway's got her crisis here, the bun has sort of come out. No, you can gauge every dramatic situation on how much disarray her hair is in. The caretaker. It's all over the place. So it never happened to Avery. She said, no, I can't say this because she said, no, I need to watch more of these behind the scenes documentaries now, because she's got some great information, that the suits, the Paramount suits were watching her for the 1st 6 months. They were all on the side of the set watching every move she made for about 6 months, right? And the thing they were most obsessed about was her hair. Yeah. Like, it's got to be tied back. It's got to be more masculine. She's too feminine and they would have makeup artists come in on every scene and like touch up her hair and tie it back, you know? Maddie. Do you know, though, I think that that hair is the classic Janeway hair? And when it turns into a sort of fairly standard bob later on, I'm slightly bored. No, because she looks so, she looks really mumsy. You know, I wanted I wanted to take it to her bosom when she's got a haircut. But she's got a Catherine Hepburn thing going with the hair up and you know, like that's Catherine Janeway, isn't it? She's virtually... Only only 2 people have that voice, you know, and that's... JJ Wayne and Catherine Hepburn. Exactly. And so the doctor is back, but his memory isn't back. And we weren't sure whether that was going to happen or not. And so it looks now like he's lost his memory. You come on, you justify this because we never hear from this again. We never hear about Henry being lost. Because it didn't get lost. That came back. It worked. And so, but instead of just having a scene where everything's okay and we're all back to normal, we do it with a call back to the very, very funny scene at the beginning. We see the doctor do the thing that makes him human. The thing that, you know, more than anything else, has in this episode typified him moving beyond the constraints of his program. And so that is the way of telling us that this worked. And so the assumption is... Just for them to give us something in the next episode that he that this is, I don't know. But it's a problem long term because nothing sticks. Yeah, yeah. But, but that's very clear. It's a very clear way to indicate that his humanity is ineradicable and we can do the space things to him to fix the giga quads of memory corruption or whatever. Do you remember, I keep talking about Scorpion. All right. At the end of Scorpion episode two. and Arthur ship's destroyed and they've got Borg bits all graft onto... No, in the gift. It opens up. I nearly fell off my bloody chair. I was like, my God. Consequences. I secretly hoped they would keep those Borg things. amazing. It would have been amazing. And I just, like, that is my biggest issue with, I would like to see more consequences. And I know this is a knock on effect from TNG, isn't it? Yeah. Well, in fact, in fact, it's a knock-on effect from original Star Trek, where Spock loses his memory and we see him in bed with Ahura teaching him how to read or something at the end of the episode and he's fine next time. This one, where I think he just hasn't lost his memory, because that's, you know, that's who he is and you can't just eradicate that. And he's a, you know, like whatever, he's a space character. But I like that ending. Rutherford loses his memory at the end of series one of lower decks, and they deal with that very well. Well, over time. In series two. Yeah, he doesn't get it back. He loses his memory. You see, it has potential. I think the worst example of this, weirdly enough, is in one of the best ever episodes of Star Trek, is hard time, DS9 is 4 season the one where O'Brien has a 20-year prison sentence jammed into his brain and goes suicidal and tries to hit Molly and terrible things happen. And it's a fantastic showcase for Columini. brilliantly directed as well. But at the end, but she was like, you know, I can't take these memories out of your head, you're going to have to learn to live with them. And then we never... And then he's, I think he's in, you know, going down the rapids in the next episode or something. It's like nothing ever happens, you know? You think like just some coolbacks that, but like, And it's especially egregious for DS9 because DS9 will deal with consequences. Look at Kira and her sort of PTSD throughout series one and two post the occupation. You know it will deal with that. Whereas you can kind of forgive him more with Voyager because that's Voyager's theme. Except, except I guess that in hard times, it's a dumb space thing that happened to O'Brien. It would be tedious. Like if he'd been sort of, if he'd really been in prison for 20 years, we could have put up with his PTSD, but it's kind of like we'd be there going, oh, for God's sake, it was 20 seconds and it was all over by the opening credits, just man up, your fucking baby and get over it. What are you talking about? You have just summed up Star Trek in a nutshell when you say this. It's just a dumb space thing. That's every episode. that's right And we're doing a podcast about it. All right, so it's time for us to choose the next Star Trek episode that we're going to watch, and so I am here at Untitled Star Trek project.com slash randomiser. And which series are we choosing from this time and why, Joe? I'm tempted to say we're choosing the Drakes. This is cruel. What we haven't selected so far, which I think is fair because we've started to dip like double dip into some shows now, haven't we? We've sadly neglected. And there's a reason is there's not many episodes of these shows which is why, you know, by sheer odds, they're not really going to show up. So we've got the animated series, which is what, one season? Two, I think, but one of them's quite short. They won't get rid of that. Um, Picard, Prodigy, and short tricks, which I've never seen. So I literally have no clue what that's all about. I'm secretly hoping for a short trick, I have to say. I really like them. All right. I'm hoping for an animated series after you think about BEM. I want... All right, okay. So my finger is hovering over the button and we're off. It is an episode of Star Trek, the animated series. It is Mud's Passion. So this is a secret. It's going to be dreadfully sexist, isn't it? Yeah, it's going to be hideous. Do you want to do you want to roll again? I don't know. I'm almost tempted We've had we've had the horribly racist enterprise episode. The horrible sexist TOS one. T-A-N. To be fair to Enterprise, It was horribly sexist as well. Okay, so let's try another one. Yeah go on. And then we can decide between a couple. Come on. Um, not sure about that principle, but all right. So this is season one, episode three. So it's actually the 1st regular episode of Star Trek Prodigy, and it's called Starstruck. Now, that's going to be weird because I've not seen any of them. So to come in on the 3rd episode will be very strange. So I think that the pilot, which is called Lost and Found, is actually episodes one and two. It's a double length episode, which means it's about 45 minutes. And so that makes this the 1st regular episode, which is actually quite an interesting place to come in. Well, then lower decks will no longer be our most upstate episode that we've watched, will it? No, this was 1st broadcast on Thursday, the 4th of November. Yeah, yeah. This is about as up to date as we get. I think we should go for that one. Well, that's right. Apology. Hang on. Can you do me a favour though? What the hell is that about? don't really know. Oh, well, you'll find that out, I think. I might actually rewatch the pilot, which is currently the only thing that I've watched so far, and it is only 40 minutes. Well, I watch that as well. I feel like I need some context before I dip into episode three. Is this the one with Janeway? Yeah, yeah. like the gelatinous blob. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a Tellorite played by Jason Manzukas from The Good Place. He's Derek from The Good Place. Good squarely at children. Yeah. But I think that it's, you know, probably teenage children, it's a little bit like the Star Wars animations. So it's 3D animated. It's super weird. It's visually, really interesting. And I think it's going to be quite fun. Okay. So like if we were talking the Doctor Who universe, are we talking the Sarah Jane Avengers or Doctor Who? Doctor Who, I think. I think it is, you know, it's a bit, it's a little bit dark, but it is a lot more sort of fun and relaxed, and the main characters are all kind of children. So. And it's CG animation, right? Yeah, yeah. 3D CG animation. And it's impressive looking, I think. That's amazing. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's do that then. Brilliant. You've been listening to untitled Star Trek Project with Joe Ford and Nathan Bottomley. You can find us online at untitledstar trekproject.com where you can find links to our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube channel. Our podcast artwork is by Kayla Ciceran and the themeless composed by Cameron Lamb. This episode was recorded on the 21st of December 2021 and released on the 31st of December. We'll see you next time for prodigies starstruck.