Deadlock

This week on The Voycast, Harry Kim is dead, then alive again. Samantha Wildman goes into labor and we get a whole bunch of dimensional duplication, catastrophic hull breaches, dead crew members, organ-harvesting Vidiians, and a serious debate over which Harry Kim counts as the original. Congratulations, it's a boy. Also, Voyager tears a hole in the space-time continuum.​‌

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey listeners, I'm your co-host Audrey. And I'm your co-host Terry. Welcome to the Voikast, your home in the Delta Quadrant for All Things Star Trek Voyager. Today we are watching season two, episode 21, Deadlock. Janeway helps the Mirror Universe version of herself self-destruct the other version of The Voyager to stop Videans from harvesting two box organs. Essentially. And literally so many other things happen.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

I feel like this episode is paralleling our lives right now with the amount of chaos.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Oh my god, it was insane. And it didn't help that I was watching it like in between the chaos of my own life. Right. It's like run this errand, do this, go on a bike ride, come back. Oh my god, you're here. I haven't eaten yet eat food. Still watching the episode. Crazy. I'm like, I there's probably whole swaths of this episode. I'm gonna have to have you explain and I'll ask questions.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

I hope that I can, because I was watching it going, I don't have room in my brain for everything they just threw at me.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Well, luckily they they distill it down to one sentence summary for us. While trying to avoid Vedean territory, Voyager is nearly destroyed by Proton Bursts, coming from an unknown source. I feel like that understates everything that happens in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, because also Voyager does get destroyed. Well, one of them does.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah. What was it that she said? She's like, it's like they're overlaying each other, but they're both drawing energy from the same source. I was like, that doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Well, they tried to explain it. They they duplicated, and it could duplicate everything that was matter, but it couldn't duplicate antimatter. So both ships were trying to use the same antimatter.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, that didn't help, Terry. Well, that's as good as they did.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

So you can take it up with whoever wrote this episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

This episode was written by Braun and Braga. Oh, him again. And directed by David Livingston. Okay. Him again. Interesting. The classics.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah, this didn't feel classic to me. I mean, I I actually genuinely really liked this episode quite a lot, but it made me feel even more panicked than I do normally.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, if I want to feel panic, all I do is turn on CNN and look at what the current administration is doing. And I try not to do that. I try not to do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

At least this was entertaining.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah. Luckily, this this brought me the same amount of panic, but in a more like entertaining tension. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

So let's not talk about the state of the world.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Hey, you know what? You're the one moving out of country for a while. So Yeah, get me the hell out of here. So at the beginning of the episode, Neelix is in a huff or no, he's not mad. He's just like, everything's falling apart. My oven doesn't work. Or sorry, it's not an oven, it's a It's a hot thing in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Oven is fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Some sort of heating element in the food replicator.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

And he's asking Ensign Wolfman to look at these things for him.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Ensign, some man, the wolf man. Yeah. Who is very pregnant at this point.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Oh, so pregnant. He also says the replicator's having issues, and he explains that um he's been having to replicate some vegetables because the hydroponics have been a little bit low lately. And I was like, oh, do you mean do you mean since Kess torched the place?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Oh, yeah. That's what was that like five or six episodes ago? Multiple episodes ago, and no one ever said anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

And I was like, is this a little a little hint? That's fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Uh yeah. It's like that scene in the Martian where uh Matt Damon explodes all of his potatoes.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah. Yeah. It should have had much farther reaching consequences.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Terry's over here, like, yeah, I've definitely seen that movie.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I have seen the potatoes explode. And that, but before you said that, I probably would have said, I don't think I've seen the Martian.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

That's like her response to every time I quote a movie. Yes. Well, this is exciting. So Wildman, Wild Wolfman, goes into in a labor. In a labor. Yeah. And suddenly. So they bring her down to the doctor and they walk to Sick Bay, I would like to point out.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

They kind of speed walk, but they have other ways to do that, but much less stressful.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Uh yeah. In about like five seconds, they literally transport a baby out of her body. Which which I'm like, whoa.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Well, okay. So many things here. First of all, she is she is going through a long, hard labor here. They mention it's been seven hours. She is in so much pain.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

And I'm like, so much god damn it. Just if you can transport a fucking baby out of her, why didn't you do that? Like, why why wouldn't you want that in the first place? Like, hey, can you just, you know, get this thing out of me? Yes. Uh, I don't want any of this pain.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

And the idea that we're in the future, and this is still how childbirth is is treated, and this is still what women have to go through. I was like, oh my god, is women's health still like the last priority in the future? This is bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

I know. I was like, I can't tell if she like wanted, like, I guess they could have been like, she just wanted a natural childbirth. Right. They did not say that. Very clearly not what she was in at least enjoying. God, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

But they only be they only beam the child out because there's complications.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah. The child has horns, by the way. So she's like, she's like, the horns have gone into her uh the like lining of the house the the uterine wall. And and and I'm like, let's rewind. Okay, right. It's a an alien like husband, and the doctor's like, this is a very rare complication.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

I was like, you think so many okay, and then all right, then they beam the child out, and I'm like, oh, did that baby have a calm badge? Because I believe it was in the very last episode where we established if you try to beam someone that doesn't wear a calm badge.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Look, we've talked about women's health before, Terry. Uh, all babies in the future are genetically engineered to at least have a calm badge.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Oh, okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

They some of them come out with uniforms, some of them come out as civilians.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Like Harry Kim definitely came out with a uniform.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Oh, poor Harry gets sucked into space in a few minutes. Oh my god, he dies again. Yeah, like this version of Harry truly dies. Like, he's just like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Just the slurping noise of death.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

So while this childbirth is taking place before the baby is beamed out of Insign Wildman, we get the scene on the bridge where the senior staff are like, Tom's like, oh, why is it taking so long? Janeway's like, uh, because stupid, sometimes births take a while. This is takes as long as it takes. And then my personal favorite, well, T Fox, like, oh, my wife once was in labor for 96 hours. I was like, that's insane. Four days. Harry points out that it's four days. I was like, okay, dude, yeah, we can put the math together.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Oh, I couldn't. I'm very thankful that Harry did that for me.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

My favorite part is when Chicote is like, oh, I'm so nervous, and it's not even my baby. I was like, yeah, we know, buddy. We know exactly where your baby is.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Uh-huh. Well, it's also some foreshadowing. Maybe we will see when Sesca gives birth, and maybe Tuvok, Tuvok, maybe Chicote will be extremely nervous. Maybe Tuvok will be too nervous. I yeah, probably not. I don't, he doesn't give me nervous vibes. It was kind of cute. They were like, This is the first baby born on Voyager. They're all really apprehensive about it. They don't know what kind of life they're gonna be giving it.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

So he gives this like serious little speech where she's just like, Voyager certainly isn't everyone's picture of a place to raise a baby. She's like, it's not exactly a nursery. I was like, okay, but you you guys have had like nine months planned for that.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

To make a nursery, you are that's a great point, actually. I guess they've been doing other other shit. They've done a few things in the last uh 20 episodes. Uh just a few. But they do more than a few in this episode.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

So we hear that we're Videans. Yes. We hear we see that we are approaching some inhabited planets, and we see a lot of Videan ships, and they're like, shit, this must be like where they live, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

And well, they're like two planets are full of Videans. Yeah. There's like 20-something ships. Yeah. There's a weird rift in space randomly that we are just normally we would avoid, but yeah, let's just drive into it. That'll solve all our problems.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

It'll keep the Videans from seeing them, was the idea. And what is it that Janeway says when they realize that this is where the Videans are?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Oh, yeah. I don't know who she talks to. Maybe Harris is like, Harry, give me some options. We're out of time, and I've got no organs to donate today.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

It's like, wow, that's great. Quirky and cute.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

So red alert, and they go into this plasma drift. And you know what? What is that exactly? Let's find out. It's gotta be Star Trek Voyager.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Tech Babble. The amount of tech babble in this episode, I just want to say, eclipses all other episodes. And it is complete babble. It's all of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

It's not trucknology. Right. And it's not even just tech babble. Like they're just the the writers got high on Coke and just came up with some real bullshit. Yep. And it's fantastic. Yeah, I love all of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

It moves fast enough that you don't stop to question if that really makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

You don't you can't question anything, let alone understand what's happening in half the episode.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

In like the best of ways. Don't get me wrong.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Oh, yeah. In the most fun, we're on a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I can't stop way. Okay, are you ready? So a plasma drift is a nebula-like interstellar phenomenon. Oh no, not a nebula. Uh-huh. A large plasma drift, not a small one, moved through the Talaxian system when Nelix was a child. Oh. Blocking out stars and moons for months. Blah blah blah. And uh, yep, there it we literally don't know what it is. Yeah, so all hell breaks loose.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Literally in every possible way. Oh, yeah. Like we have it, it was actually, I was literally my jaw was on the floor for like five minutes. Yes. Because they don't like mess around. So something antimatter related explodes in engineering and kills like 12 people. Yeah. The warp engines stall. What the hell does that even mean? Like it's stalled, like it's like doesn't have enough gas, too much gas. Like Taurus is running around trying to like figure something out. There's some proton bursts happening, their power's being drained. People are running through, like, what are what are the like tubes called? The Jeffries tubes? Jeffries tubes. And there it's like there's ash and rubble.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah, we have like full-on fire happening, like more fire than I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

So much fun. More than like the pilot episode fire. Yeah. Like this is literally, they're ripping the sets apart. The most fire. Harry is running around in the Jeffries tubes with Balana, and a huge part of the whole of the ship gets like ripped off, and he just gets sucked. He's like coming on. Yeah, they're like holding hands. And and Taurus is like, no, Harry.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

And then Harry's just like, goodbye. And that's when my jaw hit the floor. It was like, fuck like that. Harry's actually dead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

There's no there was no like, oh, he's in an alien capsule. And you don't come back from that. He was in space, gone.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah. Pan, like panels are exploding. There's a coolant leak. Oh my gosh. Wounded people are flooding sick bay while the doctor is trying to basically incubate this infant that he has just beamed out of its mother.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

The baby is dying.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, it has some complications from being beamed, which normally he would have been able to take care of, but now they don't have power.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

No power, uh, well, power enough to power him, but he's he's also it reminded me of that. Okay. Full disclosure, Pearl Harbor is a guilty pleasure movie of mine. Oh. Everyone hates this movie. I actually love this movie so much. I understand it's bad. Okay. There's that scene in there where like nurses are running around triaging like hundreds of nearly dead airmen. This was that scene. The doctor was like walking through, like, no spine, he's dead. This guy has no lungs. Uh, somehow the Vedeans took his organs already and they're not even on the ship.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Like, it was just yeah, it's just the doctor and Kess. And I, yeah, I wrote, I've never seen Sick Bay look this bad. Like, this is really overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Pole breach on deck 15 and 29. Emergency force fields are offline. The baby dies.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Yep. The baby dies. There's a guy in engineering that gets badly wounded and he requests medical help. So Kess goes down to help him instead of them beaming him up into sick bay, which I guess they couldn't beam, maybe at this point.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

This is when Harry dies, and Balana is in these like completely destroyed Jeffrey's tubes or hallways or wherever. Yeah, those the hallways, but it just I honestly couldn't.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

It looked so fucked. It was just I've never seen them make this kind of mess on the set before. Yeah, it was crazy. It was like there was dirt all over the floor.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, like ash. And Cass is running towards where Balana is. She just crawled out of the Jeffree's tube and just disappears in like a, you know, like a gooey mirror effect. It's like a Stargate. You go through the Stargate. Yeah, yeah. It looked like that, only as like more transparency. And she just disappears. And I'm like, okay, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Is happening. Right. Right. I'm like, now at this point, I'm like, is this someone's dream? Is this a nightmare? Like, how do we how do we recover from this?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

I I think my mind was, okay, this is an alternate. It's like one of those episodes where there's a mirror ship or alternate version of the Enterprise meets the Enterprise, or some random thing is now. I yeah. There's some weird things happening here.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Yeah, and once Kest disappeared, I was like, spatial rift?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Maybe Terry actually called me. She's like spatial.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

I did think so many times about just sending you a message being like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

This episode. Yeah. Little did she know I was like running around this afternoon watching pieces of it. Okay, guys. At one point, I was driving back from my mountain bike ride and like was just listening to the episode while I was driving.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

That sounds just so discombobulating. The all right, the computer core is failing.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Oh, is that all?

SPEAKER_02 17:31

No, no, on top of everything. And then Tuvok reports to Jane Wayne, and it's like, it's bad. We've, you know, we've lost tons of people. Everything on the ship is busted, and um and and sh they've temporarily tried to magnetize the hull to keep it together.

unknown 17:52

What?

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Yeah, I don't fuck you know, man.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

What do you how do you No, we're not we're not asking questions.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

It's just happening. That was like someone said that, and they're like, nope, it's not working, and they move on and magnetise.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

You can't explain these things, Sadry. What how do you magnetize a hole? I I can oh, okay, so the plating on the hole is polarized, obviously. Of course it is. So that no, but why is it? Star Trek. How do you magnetize a hole? A hole. Hole magnetizing a hole in Star Trek is typically achieved by polarizing the hole plating using electromagnetic energy.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Yeah, that's just what magnetizing the hole means.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

A process that acts as a defensive shield by hardening the hole against damage or allowing ships to adhere to objects. What? Why would the ship be adhering to objects?

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Because it's polarized, apparently. Why did they want that? That was my question.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

You wouldn't want two ships with magnetic holes to like, you know, stick together.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, so they've got to repel each other. That's how they do formation flying in the Space Navy. You just get as close as possible and they just are forced apart.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

I don't even want to know like all the crazy stuff they did with Star Trek Discovery, which I know you haven't watched, and I've barely watched the first few seasons, but they have like ships with nay cells that don't have any actual structure between that and the ship. They're like magnetic. Oh, okay. Or something. They just stick on there. No, they're not even touching.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Wait, they float.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

They just float outside of like their separate entities.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Okay, yeah. Magnets. I think it's really stupid. Um, shit is like just the bridge is on fire, shit's falling down, it looks awful. Everyone's trying to get off the bridge, except Jane Way. She's sitting there trying to, she thinks she can do something.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

They magnetize the hole.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Yeah, and that works for a second. Then it no longer works. Then the whole bridge is falling apart.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah, like everything is insane. Again, all of this, by the way, has happened in the span of five minutes. Yeah, this is just like the literally start to like, yeah, this is right after the credits. The credits happen in like um, oh my god, oh my god, we're there's a baby. Okay, yes, not really a dun dun dun. Like, I feel like the they should have like kept the kept it rolling, and then like everyone dies, and then credits credits, dun dun, dun. Like that is when it should have just been a 10-minute long like opening before credits.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

That would have been fun. I mean, but that's basically what happens now. Every people are evacuating the bridge. Jane Way stays behind and is the last to leave. And as she leaves, we fade to another scene of Jane Way sitting on the undamaged bridge, watching herself run off the bridge.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

It kind of had yesterday's Enterprise vibes. Sure. The bridge was in like war mode.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Like it's not like a warmly lit bridge like The Enterprise D. It is like kind of cold, it's dark, and we have this like weird shift where it's very clear that this is a different reality. And Janeway just watches a ghost version of herself walk off the bridge, and she I'm sure I would make the same face. Seriously, she's like, uh, she like looks over at Tuvok and then looks down and looks back over, and she's like um.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

And then she's like, I want everyone to do scans of everything right now. Bolana's like, why would you? She's like, duh, duh, it's just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Well, she does say, like, don't talk to me right now. I just watched myself run off the bridge. Um, which is really, is really interesting that I feel like if in the real world, if you say something like that, you either think you're crazy or you think you're gonna be called crazy. And other people think you're crazy. But in Star Trek world, especially on Voyager, Janeway sees something like that. They're like, oh, something is happening right now. This is real.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah, I guess it depends on how the episode is written. But yeah, in this one, everyone's like, oh shit, okay, sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yeah, let's let's look into it. Got a got a bridge ghost. So Janeway runs down to Sick Bay ostensibly to check in on the baby who was delivered without incident and is perfectly healthy. And while she's there, she's like, How is our other patient doing?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

And I was immediately like, okay, they have cuss.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Oh, you were. I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

I guess it wasn't. I was like, that's they've got Kuss. And it was Kuss.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Yep. So Kess is there on. Well, she's also there assisting the doctor.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

So Kess was immediately like, she's basically me, but like a little her atomic matrix is a little different or something.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

It I wasn't catching everything that they were throwing at me, Audrey.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Well, it's like I mean, it's it's like that episode of TNG where there's like a future version of Picard and his like his cellular scan is a little off.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yes, just slightly.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It was like that. I'm you're gonna have the way.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

So they they wake the other kiss up and she tells them what was happening um on her Voyager. And she describes that like they were getting attacked by random proton bursts. And Jane We was like, oh, we were making random proton bursts to to protect ourselves from this plasma thing that they went into. And so she starts to see, like, oh, that what we were doing was harming this other ship. So she orders those plasma bursts to be stopped immediately. So we're stopping some of the destruction on other Voyager.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

I'm so confused. Yeah. How can there be another ship? I don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Well, then they explain it, and there's a graphic.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Oh, thank God.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

And the graphic shows shows one ship become become two ship, just slightly on top of each other, essentially. And did that explain it for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, I mean, without the visual. Pretend you're Oppenheimer and I'm the Matt Damon's military general character. And I walk in, I'm like, Terry Oppenheimer, how is it that this nuclear weapon works? And you're like, you know what? Glad you asked. Here's a piece of paper. Uh I'm gonna.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Here is Le Bomb.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I I I'm gonna crumple this paper into a little ball, and and then I'm gonna attach the string, and the string uh is now the the ball is the bomb, and um that's how we did it.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

I'm convinced. That's what this graphic does for me.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

They they do put some some tech babble in there, but at this point I had given up trying to remember or write down what they were saying. I it was so overwhelming. I just was like, okay, yep, sure. There's two ships. And they decide that the two ships are actually exactly on top of each other. They are occupying the exact same time and place, but when they were duplicated, it could not duplicate antimatter.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

What could not duplicate antimatter? The thing that duplicated the ship that is duplicated. How what is duplicating anything?

SPEAKER_02 26:35

I think that I need to re-watch the episode in order to tell you.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

The amount of times that the words plasma drift, hold on, photon burst, and divergence field are thrown out in this episode. Literally makes me want to throw up.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Probably the divergence field that caused them to duplicate. Oh, throwing that out there.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Should have known.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

So immediately they're like, oh, we gotta, we gotta communicate with this other Voyager. So Janeway's down in engineering with Balana, and they were like, I the other ship doesn't have like a lot of power. We don't know how we can communicate with them, especially if they're not trying to communicate with us, and they're like, fuck it, we'll just send out a sound on every channel and every wavelength that we can, which just happens to be a really annoying, high-pitched noise.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Uh can I point something out, please? I didn't really catch any of that, I'll be completely honest. I was it's cool. Driving or something, but I did catch something random. Janeway says very specifically, a Kent State University experiment in which a quantum theorist duplicated a particle of matter, blah blah blah, divergent subspace fields, blah blah blah, photon bursts, I don't know. And I I literally have no idea what that has to do with anything they were doing, but I can tell you Kent State University is a real university in Ohio.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

In Ohio, and is it well known for its research in quantum physics?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Fuck if I know. But it's real. And I'm like, okay, which writer went to Kent State University? Why did they choose this specific? So ran, so like very particular.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

That was a and that was a detail that honestly was not necessarily even needed. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

In this episode, it was just there was a they could have said there was a study done by like Starfleet.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

I don't even know if they needed to talk about the study, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

It oh, you didn't think this episode needed more shit in it?

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yeah, that is what I'm saying. I the idea was that like this had this had happened before. They had been able to duplicate something in the same space and time. Uh but that didn't really seem to guide any of what Jane Way was doing. So I don't know that it matters that she knew about this study.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

I was like, did Kent State donate money to this episode?

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Like so the busted ass Voyager hears this shrill noise, and Jane Way on that ship is immediately like, oh, where's it coming from? We gotta figure this out. So basically she just I guess this makes sense. Jane Way thought Jane Way would know that Jane Way was trying to communicate with Jane Way, and Jane Way did.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Right. They use something called, and I wrote it down because it sounds dumb. It's called a phase discriminator. And I was like, rude. You shouldn't be discriminating phases. I thought we were past this phase in human.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

But they they go through like three rounds of trying to get this communication to work, which again, I'm just like, how did they fit this in this fucking episode and why? But eventually they managed to to get like Zoom communication working.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Well, also in my notes, like when I was actually writing notes, I had to like differentiate between wildman number two, doctor number two, pest number two.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

But which one did you feel was number two?

SPEAKER_01 30:40

I honestly don't care.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

I I thought it was interesting because this whole time I felt like the Voyager that was getting destroyed was the original.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Just like the way that they did the way they filmed it, it felt like the original.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Yeah. Which wait, no.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

So so what happened is is they don't no one knows what the original was. Right. But because it was just cloned, like, okay, this is the movie I was thinking of. For any of the other nerds listening, uh, so my dad raised me. I was well, obviously, I was the oldest by a bit. And so when I grew up, he not only raised me on Star Trek, he raised me on every action movie possible. Oh, yeah. And that's like 80s and 90s action movies, Sylvester Sallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, some really terrible fandam movies like Time Cop. And there's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the early 2000s called The Sixth Day. It's terrible and it's amazing. I I highly recommend watching it really stoned. Basically, Arnold gets cloned. He doesn't realize he gets cloned, and his clone doesn't know he's a clone, and he thinks he's the real one, but he's the clone. That's this situation right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Yes, totally. And you're right. Like, if the real Voyager diverged at one point in time, like neither of them and both of them are the original Voyager. I just brought that up because I identified with one Voyager more than the other and just like felt like it was the original for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

I know why. You want to know why? Because Harry died.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Oh, yeah. So I didn't want that one to be the real one.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Well, I knew that one was the real one because Harry died.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

But Harry always dies.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

That's fair. That was the true timeline.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

I was like, hmm, yeah, that tracks.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Okay, yeah. So after Janeway one convinces Janeway too that she is actually Jane Way and that there are two Voyagers, which we had a whole scene about, which how the hell did that fit? Decide they're gonna try and merge the two ships back together.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

It's uh how and why.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Well, I guess this would if so, if they don't do this, they can't both go on because they're trying to share the same amount of antimatter. So both of them can't continue unless they become one again. And neither Janeway wants to like abandon the other crew, so we smush them back together.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

I mean, we've all I mean, I already talked about time cop. Yep. We all know that the same matter cannot occupy occupy, thank you. Occupy the same time and space, yeah. Yeah, that can't that can't be a thing. You you turn into a gooey mirror-looking silvery blob and then die.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

But that's that is precisely what is happening here, supposedly. Um, I don't remember how they tried to merge the ships, I just know that it failed.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Uh yeah, I don't really think my brain was fully capable of understanding. My brain was phasing in and out here.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Like this was not. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

I was like, uh what okay, okay, you're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

I did at this point write down this is the most tech babble episode ever.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Oh my god. Okay, so I did, I went back and like looked up some of the other terms that they were using. Good. Even though I have no idea what's happening at this point. So the technobabble, we've already listed a few. I'll add a depolarization pulse. Uh we have hyperthermic charge.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

We've got um there's also hemouterine levels.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Hemo your uterine levels, obviously, for the baby.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Which we looked up and is specifically a Star Trek thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Uh something called a hemocythemia, which I have no idea if that's a real thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Gonna bet not.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Am I missing?

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Oh, I am absolutely certain you are.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

I think that's what I got, actually. I think that's the rest. It was a lot.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

It was rough. But they've they fail to merge. And they lose their calm link. And now Balana is like, if we don't restart the proton bursts, we're gonna lose all of our antimatter. And Janeway's like, absolutely do not do that. That will continue to destroy the other ship. And then Janeway's like, I'm going over there because I can't make decisions for their crew and my crew.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Well, they talk about like transporting all the crew.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

They try yeah. They talked about what if we put everyone through the rift? And I think they said something like, if we did more than 15 people, it would oh, maybe this is where the Kent State thing came into play. Because I think they were talking about they thought if they sent too many people through, then basically they would both cease to exist. Um, and that was based on the results of that study that was done.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah. Yeah. Sure, we'll go with that.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

But Janeway does go over to the other ship, so we get to see Jane Way and Jane Way converse with each other and call each other captain.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

It's so weird. One of them is like super haggard.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Yeah. Hair just all over the place. She's got a big scratch on her face. And I was like, I get I guess two Jane Ways are better than one, I suppose. Oh, yeah. And so they talk about like, well, what if we tried to separate those ships instead of squish them together? And that's when they were like, no, if we do that, we will cease to exist.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

I I think it makes sense in the terms of the story. Also, okay, can we um can we back up a bit? Yeah. If you're the captain, your captain, Terry, if you met yourself, would it literally drive you insane? Because I think I would drive myself insane.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

I honestly think it would become a Highlander situation and I would try to murder myself.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

Yeah, I think eventually, given enough time, I would try to kill myself.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Oh, I think that would be my immediate reaction. Just pull out your face and just be like, hell no. And then it would just be which one of us was faster, you know? And that's the true one. And then it becomes like the okay corral. Just a shootout. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Yeah, I mean, if if the whole crew of the other ship had actually gone over to Voyager, Voyager 2 went to Voyager 1. I feel like some of the reactions would be like, yeah, I killed my other person.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

And then some of the reactions would be like, we're just gonna light some candles and see what happens. It would absolutely run the gamut. It would be fucking wild. But then the poor people where like their counterpart died wouldn't have a duplicate.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Honestly, I wouldn't. That'd be like a release.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Uh yeah, I agree. That would be so weird.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Uh, fan fiction.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

All right, so I have no idea where I am.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

So the the Janeway of the busted ship says she wants to just self-destruct her ship. Um, that will allow the non-busted voyager to use all of the all of the antimatter, and they continue to can continue doing their proton bursts, and so she's just like, this is this is what makes sense. And I was kind of like, yeah, I think this is what makes sense. But um original Janeway is like, give me 15 minutes to try and fix this before you do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Before they do that, auto destruction.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yes. So she gets back to her ship, and now there's a big Vedian ship approaching, which is just what we need.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Yeah. Huge.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Yeah, literally enormous.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Twice the size. Terrifying. Cool model though. I don't know if it was like a physical or like a computer model, but it looked physical later. It probably was. I mean, it was cheaper to build a physical model than it was to at least back then.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Um, we confirmed both Voyagers don't have any weapons at this point. Like they're just completely fucked. Um, this is where the hypothermic charge comes in. That's what the Vidine ship shoots at Voyager, but they only hit the pristine Voyager and not the busted ass one. Then they cut an access hole in the hull and start boarding. And they immediately like shoot down Tuvok who goes to meet them, and they were like, oh, it damaged one of his could neat kidneys, but the other one's fine. And they immediately get out their little phaser.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah, it's like, oh my god, yawn. I hate you. I hate the Brandon Braga. I love you. Let's have a chat. But um, I don't know if it was you or someone else. I mean, technically you're one of the showrunners, so I blame you. Uh the Videans and the um what are the other ones called?

SPEAKER_02 40:53

The other oh, the Kazon? Kazon. Yeah. So the bad guys in this show.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

The Kazon and the Videans.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Are the worst. They're horrible. They're terrible. I they're not terrible in a good way.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Okay, I was gonna say, isn't that how you're not like supposed to feel?

SPEAKER_01 41:11

These are so bad. I hate everything about them. Yeah. As in not in a good way. Yeah, I hate the character that you've created. I hate the alien society that you thought was great as like a villain in this series. I hate everything about them. Like, it's it's not like, oh man, we're gonna have a cool like episode where the Voyager faces off against a really fascinating, evil, like alien race. No, like I am actively angry at you in particular, or whoever wrote these alien, like whoever did the world building for the culture, really not okay. Like, just bad.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

There could have been much better villains.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

I mean, how predictable is it? Like the Vedeans are like, oh yeah, we just gotta harvest some more organs to get your organs.

SPEAKER_02 42:14

And they're not even being like, they're just targeting people for a single organ. Like you could you could take all of the all of two VOGs.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Also, again, like there's totally technology to overcome your little like leprosy plans.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

No, they just like harvesting organs at this point. It's bullshit. So they also run down to Sick Bay and start harvesting organs from people there.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

They're like, oh, it looks like this one's had a baby recently.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yes, and the doctor is like hiding with the baby, and he says he's gonna hide the baby in an access port. And I was like, are they not gonna hear it crying? How is that gonna work? So now Tuvok informs everyone that there are 347 Vedeans on the ship.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah. What?

SPEAKER_02 43:03

How many people are on Voyager? Didn't we decide it was sub-100?

SPEAKER_01 43:08

It was 100 and like sub-150.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Oh, I thought it was like 80 or something.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

No, I thought it was like 150 or something, but definitely not a thousand like the Enterprise.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

No. Also, why? Right. Right. That's like all that's so many.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Also, you guys transport it down. Like if you really want the organs, uh, we just saw that you can transport a a baby out of someone. Suck, suck the organs.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

So now both Jane Ways want to destroy their ship.

unknown 43:43

So too.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

They have like the weirdest conversation. It's so weird. I don't even remember where it takes place, but they're just like, we should blow up Voyager. She's like, You're right. Which Voyager do we blow up? Both? I don't Know maybe maybe we just blow up yours. Yours is already kind of fucked up. Right. Like, yeah, you're right. Let's just blow up.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Except that's not the one they end up blowing up, which was ridiculous, but because having the Videans board and basically murder everyone and take their organs really changed the tides for the Voyagers here. Um, and one became at least as bad off as the other. So, yeah, the Janeway of the pristine ship is like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna destroy our ship. Before we do that, I'm gonna give Harry this baby, and he's gonna run through this gooey force field and come to you so he can replace the Harry and child that have died on your ship. Although I'd like to point out there were a lot more people that died on that ship.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Yeah, I was like, can we maybe at least do like a quick census of like all the other people that have died so that they can replace, but then it's like, hey, I don't want to die even though there's another version of me?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

That's true. You can't just tell everyone I'm gonna destroy the ship and you could go to the other one.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

I mean, obviously, we need Harry, but it kind of bothers me when the writing of an episode is so blatantly obvious.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

What was obvious?

SPEAKER_01 45:20

They're like, Harry can't die. We'll just send Harry.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Yeah, but I mean, they had to do that. There was no other way at this point to recover.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Harry, I want you to live. I'm just saying I feel like other people could have lived too.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Right, yes. I I think we had established at some point that they could have sent some more people. But you're right, this would cause panic. This was a good executive decision that that Jane Way made. And Jane Way makes busted up Jane Way promise that she will get her crew home. And she says, I will, I promise. And I almost cried. And I don't know if it was really fully because of the episode and what was just said, or if I was like, man, there's so much happening.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

It was a super emotionally intense episode. And then we get my favorite scene. Like two of the Videans come onto the bridge. Jinji's like, Welcome to the bridge, motherfucker. And then she blows it up.

SPEAKER_02 46:16

It was so amazing they burst on there. She's sitting there calmly. She stands up and goes, Hello.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yippie Kai.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

I'm not just welcome to the bridge. And then it just fucking explodes.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

And it takes the Vedean ship with it, which explodes. And then there's another Voyager.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Just unwell, not unharmed, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

The Voyager that remains was the one that was pretty fucked up. For a minute though, I was like, wait, did not did Voyager not blow up?

SPEAKER_02 46:48

How I don't know how it blew up and didn't affect the other Voyager. And now we're supposed to assume that that Voyager is real, even though it survives something like that.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

There are many things we're meant to assume.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Ugh. Fine.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

It was such a fun episode, but it was also one of those things where it's just like, it's just meant to be silly fun.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Yeah, but it wasn't silly really. I mean, parts of it that I really loved were.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Like gist of it is it doesn't matter how we arrived at this point.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

But the other part of my brain is like okay. I'm just can we rewind? Because I've read like I took like astrophysics courses in college, and I'm just trying to like think back to like basically too much knowledge to be watching Star Trek then, Audrey. Well, I usually try to turn the brain off. Yeah. Uh, but this was a little bit this strayed. This strayed. Because my brain was like, okay, what is happening? Neil deGrasse Tyson, help me.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

Yeah, please please explain this. At the end, we do see Harry talking with his new captain, and he's just kind of like, I'm confused, because you're not my chainway, and this isn't my Voyager, but like it is, it's the same thing. And I'm just like, yeah, me too, Harry.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

I don't like every day, man. Go have a drink.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Yeah. Harry definitely needs a drink at this point. But other besides the fact that we hate the villains and that this particular episode was so jam-packed full of bullshit, I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Oh, so wild. Just insane.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

I feel like we've actually gotten to a couple episodes recently that I would actually go back and rewatch. And that's not a thing that I do.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Is this an episode you'd read?

SPEAKER_02 48:53

I think I would just because I'd like to pick up on some of what the hell they were doing and saying because there was so much.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

It was a really good episode. I had to like nitpick the insanity on this one just for fun, but it was solid. Yeah. I mean, no, it was full of holes, but okay, it was uh solid like Swiss cheese is yummy.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

That is debatable.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Okay, we're not even no, we're not doing that.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

You get what we're saying.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Let us know in the comments if you like Swiss cheese or not. Yes, and also any thoughts on the actual episode. Our next episode, season two, episode 22. Tuvok is trapped on a moon with a group of alien children. Oh my god, that's my worst nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

That's Tuvok's worst nightmare, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Who are disappearing one by one. Okay, so maybe not his worst nightmare. Maybe he's like, oh thank god, they're disappearing.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Maybe he's more of a kid person than we think. He does have children, but he's also chosen not necessarily to be this far away out of Starship, but he did choose to go on this mission.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

So there's uh an image here uh from the episode that shows the group of children. Okay, and it looks like it's straight out of an episode of reading Rainbow, but LeVar Burton has like pissed the children off in some way.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

What? Oh no, they're all so disappointed in Tufa.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

I can't wait. Wow. Yeah, that was that was an episode. We did it, guys. We did it, we made it through, and I assume we edited this down a little.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

I sure I can help so.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on the voices. Bye.