S2E15 - Threshold

Yep…this episode...Today we’re covering Threshold — the episode where Tom Paris breaks warp 10, and then the writers break every viewer’s will to live when he evolves into…a…moist… salamander?
Today we’ll confront the moral, scientific, and narrative abyss that is this episode. In the words of David Attenborough
“In the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, we observe one of nature’s most puzzling spectacles.
Here, the humble Starfleet officer Tom Paris has recently shattered the laws of physics — and, as a result, begun shedding his humanity like an inconvenient winter coat.
Watch closely as he kidnaps his captain, transforms her into a damp, bewildered amphibian, and together they slither off to repopulate a muddy swamp in what experts agree is not an ideal breeding program.
A chilling reminder that evolution is not always grandeur — sometimes it’s the universe dryly suggesting, ‘Please stop experimenting, you are clearly not ready.’”
So buckle up, grab your Paris Delight™ coffee and join us as we ask the only question that matters:
What. The. Actual. Hell. Did we just watch?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Hey listeners, I'm your co-host Audrey. And I'm your co-host Terry. Welcome to the Voicast, your home in the Delta Quadrant for all things Star Trek Voyager. Today we're covering Threshold. The episode where Tom Paris breaks Warp 10, and then the writers break every viewer's will to live when he evolves into a moist alamander. Moist. Very moist. Today we'll confront the moral, scientific, and narrative abyss that is this episode. In the words of David Attenborough, you can do it. In the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, we observe one of nature's most puzzling spectacles. Here, the Starfleet officer Tom Paris has recently shattered the laws of physics, and as a result, begun shedding his humanity, kidnaps his captain, transforms her into a salamander, and together they slither off to repopulate a muddy swamp on a far-off planet. A chilling reminder that evolution is not always grand. Sometimes it's the universe.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

You did so good.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

So buckle up, grab your Paris Delight Coffee, and join us as we ask the only question that matters what the actual hell did we just launch?

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Applause a fitting intro for a very interesting episode.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Yeah, I'd have fun with this one. Yeah. This episode was written by Brahman Braga and Michael DeLuzza. Directed by Alexander Singer. Why? Why would you do this, Brandon and Michael? And also I assume, Alexander, you had some sort of input.

SPEAKER_04 2:58

There this episode had potential. There were parts of it that were intriguing and exciting and relevant. And then there was the last 30 minutes of the episode.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

You know it's weird, like objectively, this episode is bad, but I actually really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

I mean, we felt similarly, I mean, especially for the first half of it.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

I thought it was just like like we've had some really weird, like, you know, we talk about like a fever dream episode and episodes that make no sense, and then the like boring episodes, and then and then there's anything with the K's on. So this episode was just like whack. Yes, just really like somehow worse than the cuss episode where she has to have sex with her hands. It was like so insane how any of this was ever a concept that made it like to the cutting room floor. I mean, it's it's like, yeah, Star Trek is weird, and I actually did enjoy how absurd this episode was. It was like an unhinged episode of Rick and Morty.

unknown 4:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

So true. But it was like so weird and like uncomfortable. I think, I think I wasn't that uncomfortable, but I could tell like the cast was uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_04 4:48

It just was generally how could how could one not be uncomfortable when involved with this?

SPEAKER_03 4:57

One of my favorite things about this episode is they're becoming quickly becoming my favorite cast members. I'm sure seven of nine will level up when she's introduced for sure. But I love Bellana and I love the actress that plays her. She's now a well-known director. Is Robbie McNeil plays Tom Paris, a director now, too. And then there's Robert Picardo, who plays the doctor. Like all three of these for most of the episode are the focus. And they're awesome and they're so great together, right? Like, I feel like Bellana is so like comfortable in her role. And there were some really like classic doctor moments where he's just like, Yeah, he's asleep. Should we wake him up? Wake up, just like screams into an like an unconscious Tom Paris to wake him up. I love that. That stuff is great. And then, you know, there were all these quippy comments like Paris is dying and he's still being sarcastic. Of course, on his deathbed. Well, I mean, Paris was being kind of pathetic.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

The doctor was being sarcastic. I see. What what to say?

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Yeah. Well, I mean, we could just let's cruise in let's get in there.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Let's cruise through the city. We we open with Tom Paris captaining a shuttle.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

And he looks a little nervous.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Looks a little nervous, and then the nacelles rip off, and then he dies and explodes. And then I was like, cool, that's a wrap. That's definitely the end. And then they're in the holodeck. It was a holodeck program. Honestly, I like that though. I like that they did this whole like, we haven't seen them use the holodeck like this in an episode before where they're testing actual scenarios and something goes wrong, right? It's it's so real, right? Like Paris is like sweating.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Yeah, but at the same time, I was wondering why he was pushing it so hard. Because he's he's trying to go real fast, and then they're like, the nay cells are gonna break up, and he keeps going. And I was like, What why exactly? I was like, Oh, because it's not real. He was still freaked out.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Yeah. And then Balana's like, you're dead. Mm-hmm. I uh I did enjoy, I love the like relationship. You see this relationship between them, and also we haven't had Paris like fully in an episode about Paris where he's the main lead all season, literally all season. I don't think. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so. It feels like it's been a while since we've seen a whole lot from Paris, and he nails it. Yeah, he does. Uh and also I feel bad for Robbie McNeil because he has to wear these like horrible like prosthetics and stuff. It looks so itchy. Yeah, it does not look fun. It looks like they slapped a bunch of like silicon layers all over him. Mm-hmm. Like a bunch of them. Like a bunch. And like not in like a clean way either. Well, no, that was not the point. So we see Bolana, Harris, and Harry in the Mass Hall talking about their experiments with quantum warp theory and what they're calling the multi-spectral subspace engine design, which is, you know, as we all know, the SED that we grew up learning about. Yeah. And it's uh they're trying to solve this issue, which is the uh nay cells rip off whenever they get close to breaking the, are they calling it the trans warp barrier or just the warp barrier? I didn't write down the exact language. I think it was basically they found a new form of dilithium that they think will allow them to create a stable higher warp frequency and achieve warp 10, which as we all know, is not possible to achieve because we would all be traveling at infinite velocity.

SPEAKER_04 9:44

Infinite velocity, yeah. We would occupy every point in the universe simultaneously.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

Honestly, I feel like I do that sometimes.

unknown 9:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:55

We certainly try. Uh Neelix wants to help, and they're basically like, no, Neelix, you're dumb.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

I mean, they're nice. They're just like, I would have the same reaction if Nelix came over and was like, hey, I'm gonna offer some design advice and be like, no, you're not.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

This is so over your head, Neelix. But then he tells a story that somehow helps.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Which I thought it was cute that they chewhorned Neelix into this episode. Yes. To use a word that I never use, but I think is fun. So he tells a story about this one time that he was out somewhere going through a dark matter nebula, and there was an issue with something, and this is why I did not write down his story. No, but anyway, Harry is like, oh my god, wait, what if it was just that classic moment in a TV show where someone says something and you're like, you're a genius. He literally says, You're a genius. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:08

It was not a cliche at all, but I enjoyed it. But I guess what Neelix made them realize is that the nay cells are not ripping off the ship. The ship is ripping away from the nacelles. Yeah. The important distinction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

So they they're able, that's the breakthrough, right? That they're looking for, and they're able to kind of adjust their calculations, make adjustments to the shuttle, and they're in the briefing room and they're like, hey, we can do this. Janeway gives the okay. She says, You're gonna be famous, you're gonna be in line with Orville and Armstrong and Zephyrem Cochrane.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Yeah, specifically to Paris. She says that he'll he'll join the elite pilots in history, which is yeah, so big for him.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

It is. He's this is a huge thing that is all of a sudden something he's thinking about, right? And they actually named, they renamed the shuttle the Cochrane, and they set off, or they're they're going to set off the next day, right? And then that night, Paris is like I've never seen Paris' legs before. It's just very jarring for me.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

He's just in a bathrobe in his quarters, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

And Jane Wig just kind of walks and uh sits down, and uh it's like, hey, the doctor thinks that there's a 2% chance that you could have a brain hemorrhage. So we want, we think it'd be better if Harry made the maiden voyage of this. And Paris, I mean, if I was in Paris's shoes, I'd be pissed too, right? I'm like, no, this is my chance and been working all my life to prove myself and redeem myself. I mean, this is huge for for Harris because he needs, he feels this need to redeem himself to Starfleet, to himself personally, to his father. He's always talking about his father. Sounds like a dick. And so he pushes back super hard.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

And kind and kind of pathetically, he's basically. I wrote, Daddy used to tell him he was special. And then daddy stopped telling him he was scary. That's told him he was a failure. This is exactly what happened, though. He basically begs to be allowed to do this flight.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

He does. And and Janeway like gives the like, okay, that's fine, as if she knew this was gonna happen anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

So I'm like, well, like, why did she even approach it? He wanted him to be informed if they if they knew there's something that Tom specifically has like an imbalance in his cerebellum, an enzymatic imbalance. So once they figured that out, I think it makes sense that he should at least know that and that there's a concern.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Yeah, but I don't know. I thought the way the way she did it is a little different than how I would do it. I would have just said, hey, you have an imbalance, there's a 2% chance you're gonna have a brain hemorrhage. Informative, but I'm not wanting to I'm not like approaching him like, hey, you're not gonna do it because Yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

It was almost like designed to make him want it more.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

She set him up to be pathetic.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Um but he gets to pilot the shuttle. He gets his way.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Which we all knew because someone's gotta turn into a salamander. Harry.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

And it's not gonna be Harry. No, Harry's had too many brushes with insanity and death.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Yeah, that that is so season one, Harry. It's really turned a new leaf. He's basically not in anything anymore. So yeah, anyway, the the next day, the next day they um depart uh and we're thrown right into it. And uh Tom, you know, levels up the through the warps and crosses the warp tin trans warp threshold and does it. He does it. And they're like, yay! And then all of a sudden he's gone. Like he's off their sensors and there's no communication, and everyone kind of uh loses their cool for a minute, and then which I was like, what did they think would happen when he occupies everywhere all at once?

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Like, did they think they'd be able to continue talking to him or seeing where he like they didn't they didn't think this through at all.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Yeah, I mean Chicote acted like so shocked. I'm like, no, dude, like he's going or 10, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

You had no idea what would happen. It's like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they have the button on that ship.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Yes, the uh improbability drive.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

Yes. It's just like it's like hitting the improbability drive. You have no freaking clue what was gonna happen, and you did it anyway, and then you act surprised. I should re-watch that movie. That's so good.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

It's pretty good. Books are good too. I mean, the book is better, but yeah. Yeah, so it's rough.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Yeah, and and then all of a sudden, uh the shuttle reappears and uh he's fine, right? Uh, but he's unconscious. He's sleeping, yeah. Um they bring him into sick bay, and the doctor's like, yeah, he's fine, he's just asleep. She's like, Cool, wake him up. And he leans in real close. He's like, Wake up.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

You expect him to use a hypospray or something, but no, he just yells at him. When Tom wakes up, he kind of he tries to describe being everywhere and how he saw himself inside of the shuttle, and then he saw the shuttle, and then he saw Voyager, and then he saw the Kazon, and he saw back home, and it like he saw the Klingons.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

It was really cool, actually. I think the whole concept of him being everywhere at once made absolutely no sense, and as it should has no grounding in any of the physics that they discussed prior to this voyage. They talked about going infinite speed, not literally being in every place everywhere at once. That is a completely different kind of thing. So, okay, sure, we'll go with this. And that's what happened. Tom was there. And Tom was like, and that's how I knew that you were looking for me. It's like, yeah, no shit, they're looking for you, dude. And the doctor goes, Well, I'm glad you had a good time. Every line from Robert Picardo was hilarious. Yeah. Just so like later in the episode, he's like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

They're downloading the shuttle logs.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Oh my god, and they have like every, like all the information ever.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

I don't know how much information she says it was, but it was five million giga quads of information.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Did you happen to look that up?

SPEAKER_04 19:18

No.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

A giga quad. Giga quad is a fictional unit of computer data measured measurement used in Star Trek Universe to quantify massive amounts of information.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

There we go. It's of the data. And that's really cool because now they can make a star chart of the entire Delta quadrant. Like, this is amazing what they just did.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Yeah, and while Balana's looking over this stuff with the captain, you see like some random ensign or lieutenant kind of like peek over and look like off-frame at them. And I like honed in on that and was like, that seems sus. I didn't notice. Yeah. And this guy, just spoiler alert, because we can warp right through most of this episode. He is a Kazon spy, or he's he's working, he's the spy from one of the previous episodes, and he's giving information to one of the Kazon leaders, and seems like an asshole. And also kind of like a little bitch. He's like, Have I proven myself to you? Just like, oh, what a piece of shit.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

That's a perfect description of him.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

But yes, I did when I saw him on the computer conversing with the Kazon, which is a whole like maybe 15 seconds of this episode. I was like, oh yeah, he back when they were trying to meet with the Kazon and that all up, he was the one that at some point was like trying to contact them. So he's that's still happening. We have another traitor.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Yep, what an asshole. Right around this time, uh Paris um loses the ability to breathe. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna zoom through this real fast. We're not gonna do a step-by-step. We don't need to because the next 15 minutes of the episode is essentially he loses the ability to breathe because his lungs are transmuting and he's to water. He has some of like Neelix Neelix gives him some coffee that he calls the Tom Paris coffee or something. And he has an allergic reaction to the water. And this is, I think the doctor was like, Oh, well, it's lucky he's alive at all.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

He drinks some of Neelix's coffee. I I thought that was hilarious, but then I also was. Like the doctor's never eaten or drank anything, so it's kind of silly that this is like second-hand sarcasm.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

He did in um he did in the Viking era.

SPEAKER_04 22:11

He was still a I guess maybe. But he's never consumed anything that Neelix has made. No. He just knows about it.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Yeah, he he knows the general the general one-star review of all of Neelix's stuff. Poor Neelix. Basically every part of Tom's body starts to mutate. He loses the ability to breathe oxygen. So the doctor has to change the hiccups. The gas uh mixture that he's breathing, and then other things start to mutate, and he he starts to have like all these veins and stuff all over his body and his face. And then we keep like doing these cutback scenes where like every time we see him, he has more random like layers of like skin and things, and then at some point he dies, and then they're like, All right, we'll do an autopsy in the morning.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

And then Which is where I stopped watching the episode the first time, and then I was looking back at my notes and I was like, Wait, why'd you say that can't be where you just watching it?

SPEAKER_03 23:36

Were you like on my must-be must be?

SPEAKER_04 23:38

I was like watching it on my lunch hour and I had to stop. And I just and this was like a week and a half ago. So I just was like, Oh yeah, I watched that episode. And then I was looking at my notes and I was like, wait a minute. Tom didn't just die, right? That isn't the end of the episode, is it? Terry wrote Tom is dead, and then was like that cool. My work here is yeah, no, the last line is just flat line. And I was like, hold on. But you're right, the Tom is kind of a baby on his deathbed. He's say he wants a pepperoni pizza. He wants Kess to kiss him.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

Or yeah, Kess to kiss him. This is like, fuck no.

SPEAKER_04 24:17

He wants the doctor to call Starfleet headquarters and tell his dad that he broke the warp barrier. It's like, oh my god, Tom.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

And the doctor comes in the middle of the night. Oh yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 24:31

Just another quip from the doctor as Tom is dying. He says, You're too stubborn to die, Thomas. And then he does.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

So that'll show the doctor. And then he doesn't because he randomly comes back to life that night. Um, and the doctor comes in, like, hears weird scratching sounds and pulls the I don't know why they like left him on the table and just put a plastic tarp over him.

SPEAKER_04 25:01

They're gonna do an autopsy on him in the morning.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Why put him away? Yeah, but like, isn't there an autopsy table? Like, you're not gonna do an autopsy on him on the patient table. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 25:16

I have some uh concerns. Is alive and all of his internal organs are now functioning, and he has two hearts.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Two hearts. And as the episode goes on, his like other organs, some of them are like atrophying and disappearing, and he's like gaining some other organs, and then it's honestly just a crazy blur, but this whole process, he's like weirdly erratic. He's happy and normal, quicky self, and then he's accepting, and then he's depressed, and then he's super violent, and um jumps at at uh Janeway at some point.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

Yeah, she comes to visit him and he starts off seeming normal, and then he's just like, You're trying to stop me from turning into what I whatever I'm becoming, and it's gonna be better than I was, and you were always jealous, and then he tries to jump at her, and it's just like and it's just kind of out of control. And Janeway's like, Yeah, I can't really do anything here, actually. Yeah. And then he vomits out his tongue.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Yeah, so this is where my mind started to try to check out. I'm gonna say it that way because I really didn't want to be watching anything that was happening at this point. But I was too like morbidly curious to stop watching.

SPEAKER_04 26:52

It's like a car crash.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Right. It's like a car crash, but but it's, you know, intentionally fucking written out on paper. Then they throw hundreds of thousands, if not at back in the 90s, to create said script. And then many, many people have to build the sets, and the actors have to come in, they have to act this, and the makeup people have to come in and like makeup stuff and lighting people, and the director has to direct it, and the writers have to come in for rewrites, and then they have to produce it, and then they have to publish the marketing for the episode, and they have to release the episode on air for living humans to have to watch between commercial breaks just to understand why why.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

So he throws up his tongue. Well, that rant is gonna go in a reel.

SPEAKER_04 27:56

He's looking more and more alien. The actor is like trying to talk without his tongue in the next few scenes, but I can definitely see his tongue in there, so that's all just kind of strange.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

But he escapes like a crazy alien. Like he escapes, and there's some like there's a scene where you don't, you just hear like crashing and screaming, and then through an open corridor, you see a bunch of like laser beams, like phaser blasts going across, like, but like out of shot, you don't see anyone, and then you don't see who's shooting or who's being shot, and then you just hear the screaming stop, and then and then all of a sudden he has Geneway, he's on the shuttle and flies out at warp 10.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 28:51

And they lose him. This like, wow.

SPEAKER_04 28:55

The doctor had come up with a plan that he thought was gonna work where he was gonna kill off the new cells in Tom so that his old DNA could take over. And this is when Tom escaped. So there was some sort of like attempt to fix this, but Tom was like, I gotta get out of here. And he he did, and for some reason, he's just like, the captain's coming with me.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Yeah, and this is when you actually see what Tom has like fully become, and he literally looks like a lizard, alien. Like he looks almost exactly like the Gorn in the original Star Trek series. That's like almost exactly. Thank you. I was what I was like, this looks so familiar. But then we find out for some reason, somehow, I was like, oh, it must be something like he's de-evolving or just evolving into another alien, right? Like a higher life form, and for some reason that's what everyone becomes when they hit warp 10. Uh no, he's evolving forward in time. And let's not, you know, pretend that this is how evolution works because it isn't. And we all know that Jesus Christ, our Lord, God, and Savior, put us on this earth after the monkeys and the aliens. Anyway, no, it's it he's they're postulating that he's evolved into like what humans will become in millions of years.

SPEAKER_04 30:32

Yeah, the doctor says this is natural human evolutionary process just accelerated. So And I was like, no, it's not. It's basically going backwards, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Well, I guess we were So is it like a like a loop lizard? You just you let salamander alien eats its tail kind of thing, but like on an interstellar evolution level where like you started out as salamanders crawling out of the ocean onto land, and the human race will at some distant uh point in the future become salamanders again. Maybe just super, super smart salamanders.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

Maybe if I don't know that that'll help too much with evolution at that point. It's alright. I'm okay with being a dumbass salamander and going back to live in the water.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Can't be much worse than what we are now. Nope. Can't be much stupider either.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

Noting that so This is why we need ridiculous episodes of Star Trek in this moment. Yeah. They they track the shuttle. They track the shell. Three days later, they find it on a planet. They go down to the planet, there's two moist salamanders on the beach. The away team immediately stuns them with phasers.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

Please, Chivok and Jacote walk up to these salamanders, and the first one kind of like shuffles forward, and he just like dead-eyed, like both of them have like a dead-eyed like stare, and he just and the thing just falls, and then and then the other one shuffles forward and he goes, and then they walk up to it, and then he looks at Jakote, and then Tuvok looks at her and Chakote looks at Tuvok, and Tuvok looks at Chakote, and then it's like must has human DNA, and it's like I'm not sure which one is the captain.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

And Tuvok is like well, obviously the female Dutch. Come on.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

I was like, I think that's actually the first dry sarcastic joke that I've ever heard out of Tuvok, and I love him for it so much. We have definitely heard Water. Okay, it's the first one I recall really like laughing at.

SPEAKER_04 33:31

Gotcha. I gotcha. It also I don't feel like mattered which one was the captain. They were gonna take them both back anyway, but once he says the female, we then see, oh no. No, there's a whole nest of little baby salamanders.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

All baby salamander aliens. They're really cute. They fucked. Whatever that song is.

unknown 34:04

What?

SPEAKER_04 34:05

You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals? Is that what she were going for?

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 34:10

Okay. Cause these are I don't know if these are mammals anymore. Okay, well. But these babies are far more mobile than their parents, and so they climb up out of this hole and they shoot out into the water. And I'm like, oh my, we've now released alien human hybrid babies into this. Here it is. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals.

SPEAKER_04 34:39

Do it like we do on the Discovery Channel.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

You and me, baby, ain't nothing but moist salamander alien.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

I I love that I literally made you do a spit take. You were drinking water. Why were you drinking water at that moment?

SPEAKER_03 35:00

It's all this talk of moist.

SPEAKER_04 35:02

Yeah, my mouth is not moist enough. This episode just gives and gives. It does, because it gets better. It's so good. I mean, I was really concerned about the fact that these babies are running away. And we're just back on Voyager and Chicote's log, he's like, I decided to let them stay in their new habitat. And I was like, this is so, this feels so against the prime directive. I don't know that you were supposed to kill them, but I feel like just letting them grow up there is not okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Honestly, it feels so real because which part Dakota. And I think I think he and Tuvac were like, we must never speak of this again. Yeah. Like, like they were in that state of mind. They're like, get us off of this planet. I don't care. We're not touching whatever that is. Yep. Let's get back as fast as possible. Please burn this out of my memory forever. How can we do this? Tuvok, please give me a mind meld, remove all of this from my memory if possible, or just kill me. And that's why they left the little babies. So and you hear in like a mission log from Chicoti, is like, and you know, we've returned the captain in Paris, and we've left the babies on the planet because we didn't want to deal with that shit. And then we have this awesome conversation between Paris and Janeway.

SPEAKER_04 36:43

They've been returned to their human selves using the method that the doctor came up with earlier. And Janeway just kind of just kind of confronts it head on. Cause I'm just, I'm still sitting there going, oh my god, Janeway and Tom had babies. They fucked. And Jane Wei just like walks right up to Paris and she's like, I've thought about having children, but I had not considered doing it with you.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Laughed so hard. I laughed so hard. I and the way she says it is like so coy, like gene way, coy, but it's like coy in like an almost sexy way. And I'm just like, God, I can't do this right now.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

They fucked.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

Yeah. And yeah. And then he's like, I am so sorry, Captain. I just I don't remember much. You know, it's kind of like the frat boy the morning after I was too drunk. And she's like, Who says it wasn't my idea? Yeah, that was all. In some species, the female is the one that initiates. And I was just like.

SPEAKER_04 37:58

No, he kidnapped her, actually, though. Like, knocked her out and dragged her onto a shovel to take care of it.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

They're not talking about that anymore. They're talking about how when they were both salamanders, which one decided to fuck?

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Sure, but like, why what other reason did Paris have of kidnapping her, other than like, ooh, female, I need to mate, take her with me.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Who's to say that if Janeway hadn't transformed first, she wouldn't have done the same to Tom Paris? Absolutely. Or Chicote, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

One of the other attractive men on the ship. Also, maybe she was just the first female that he ran into on the way to the shuttle.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Maybe.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

I don't know. We we don't really get to see much of that interaction. But I'm glad that she at least aired that out and brought it up because all of us were just like, oh, are we just we're just not going to address this?

SPEAKER_03 38:59

This is maybe the first, I actually do think it's the first like infamous episode we've watched. Like, there's a lot of episodes that everyone knows, but like there were a few episodes that I knew about going into this season that I have that have been referenced in like lower decks and by followers of the podcast and other people, friends of ours that have watched Voyager and like made little nods to these episodes. And this is this is the salamander sex episode.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah, I mean we had to watch it at some point.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

But okay, but the bay the baby salamanders, there has to be real lasting consequences. This has to be there has to be a reason that they exist. Otherwise, I'm very mad that they even did this. Sure. Turn the turn them into salamanders, but make them have salamander babies, that had better come back later in the show, or I will be pissed off.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Not gonna lie, Terry, you have a lot of faith in Brandon Braga right now.

SPEAKER_04 40:22

I won't actually say that I think that it'll happen. It's actually more likely that I'll be pissed off that this is never mentioned again. But I guess we'll find out. I mean Yeah. I will be keeping an eye out for the consequences of these two lovers' actions.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

I mean, maybe, maybe they become a super race of super advanced human salamander aliens and who knows. Yeah.

unknown 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:57

Jane Wade does she does tell Paris that she's putting up for putting him up for commendation for getting over the threshold or whatever. Awesome sex.

SPEAKER_03 41:06

Just real good bang. Just the best salamander bang possible.

SPEAKER_04 41:11

For being the father of her children. Which, okay, so now can we say she has cheated on her fiance, Mark or Matt, or whatever his name is?

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Mark, I think, I don't know. Um. So in the most bizarre of ways, Janeway has had sex with Ton and Jacote is having a baby with Saska.

SPEAKER_04 41:40

Yeah. Voyager is spreading its seed all over the Delta Quadra. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

You say seed, it just sounds so gross.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Cause it is.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

Alright, alright, alright. I'm done with this episode.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Okay, just one more thing. And that is that Paris has come to a little bit of a mature maturation through all of this, and that he's starting to realize he shouldn't be so dependent on other people's opinions. He should be caring only about what he thinks about himself. And it only took him evolving into a salamander, having children. With your boss, with his boss, dying, coming back to life, being everywhere all at once. Terry now he's figured it out.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

Terry, the professional development journey is different for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

You're drinking water again.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

I'm just watching you take spit take. You're just waiting for me to drink water at this point. Yeah, no, you're right. Personal development takes uh it's different timelines, different different roads.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Leadership training, people do it. It's important. And not the way that Tom did it. Lesson. Learn, learn, learn from these episodes full of wisdom for your life and your career. Probably not your relationship.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

Do not repeat their mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Okay, and that's this episode. Now we're done. In season two, episode 16, meld. Tuvok is plagued by the senselessness of a murderer aboard Voyager. Hmm. It must not make sense. So we have Detective Tuvok once again. Um, and this idea is melding maybe a lot. A lot of melding, maybe in this next episode. I assume, based on the title. A lot.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

I hope so. But who fucking knows at this point?

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Who knows? Who knows what's gonna happen? Maybe this is episode two in a three episode arc related to the salamanders.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

You never know. Apparently not. Well, if you held on for this long, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week on the voices. Bye.