Two Hundred A Day - Episode 81: Star Trek Voyager - Bride of Chaotica!

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Welcome to Twenty Dollars a Day, the podcast where we explore our favorite fictional characters in the Star Trek universe! Nathan and Eppy discuss the adventures of Captain Proton in Voyager S5E12 Bride of Chaotica! Tom Paris and Harry Kim just want to have a nice time playing out the latest chapter of the Captain Proton holonovel, but the ship runs afoul of photonic beings that think the black-and-white pulp is real. Of course, the only way to solve this mess is for Captain Janeway to take on the role of Arachnia in order to bring the vile Dr. Chaotica down before the program causes real destruction to the photonic visitors. Everyone in this one is clearly having a blast, and we really enjoyed talking about it! Happy April, everyone! This is our fourth look at a Star Trek holodeck episode that follows on the themes of our first love, The Rockford FIles. Hope you enjoy it! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Kevin Brown * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Kip Holley, Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Dave P, Dale Church and Dave Otterson! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Welcome to $20 a Day, the podcast where we discuss the holodeck episodes of the Star Trek franchise. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. And this time on $20 a Day, we're going even farther afield from our original focus on the detective holodeck episodes of the next generation era yes and taking a trip to uh star trek voyager and the world of captain proton in voyager season 5 episode 12 bride of chaotica this is uh voyagers you um or no sorry not voyagers voyager star trek voyager voyagers with an exclamation point is a different is a different show uh it fell to me to choose this up to choose an episode and then i deferred to you to give me options and then i chose this one because i remember this one

i don't remember i didn't remember like all of it but i remember you know enjoying it uh this takes place uh deep in season five so uh in the last quarter of the voyager run which i think is kind of important to the enjoyment of this episode because uh you need i think uh uh a core element of this episode is taking janeway out of her element and putting her in uh the role that she has to adopt to do this right yeah so i feel like i must have seen this because i know for a fact that i watched voyager like i started a full watch of voyager at some point and i made it through the middle of the sixth season and then i kind of fell off um i think that's where i am too that's a lot of voyager and like yeah there's only seven only i mean there's seven seasons but

for some reason like i feel like the highs of voyager are very high like like the good episodes are very good and i like the premise of voyager a lot i do like the good episodes are very good and i like the premise of voyager a lot i do feel like it kind of ended up in the i think this is in in uh the same vein as you were saying how like being deep in the middle of the season kind of matters for this because it's like yeah i feel like a lot of i feel like this is very much a uh story of the week phase of the show and the show is. And the show is always more, the show is always more like next generation than a, than like DS nine.

Right. Right. Which is fine. But there is a lot, there are a lot of, here's the wacky adventure of this week. And here's the wacky adventure of this week. And this is very much a,

let's go on an extra wacky adventure for this particular, this particular episode.'s funny you should mention because like i logged into netflix to watch this and uh went to voyager and it put me right in the middle of season six because that's where i'd left off it might be early season six i might have watched the the first couple episodes like two years ago and then just faded into something else i don't think we stopped for any particular reason i don't there's nothing keeping us from going back i think it was just like like you said there's a lot there we had already done five seasons of the show and then we were just moving on to watching other things um this was a seven season show that probably could have been five

seasons yeah yeah kind of like cutting out some of the dead weight yeah i i liked voyager as a whole i'm um one of my favorite things about voyager is sort of the arc of janeway yeah um we joke about you could tell how far along they are in the series and if she was drinking i think she started off drinking vegetable broth that was her you know because obviously since picard you know earl gray hot that like that was his thing since then every star trek captain has to have a drink right i don't know if that's the case. But Janeway's was vegetable broth because it's nice and warm and comforting. And then at some point, partway through,

that becomes black coffee. Like, I need to stay awake to keep this crew alive. And there's a little bit about that in this that we'll get to. But it's fun. I know that Tom Paris is maybe not everyone's favorite character. And he's sort of central to, I'm just trying to be super diplomatic. Despite the fact that the actor was one of the leads in the He-Man and the Matrix Universe movie.

For some reason, people didn't quite care for him in Voyager. But I don't think he's egregious in this at all. No, he's fine. I think my thing with, I don't particularly like Tom Perrott. Like, of the Voyager crew, he's kind of like dead center. Like, he's not the worst, but I like most of the other characters more than him. So maybe lower than center is yeah yeah i was gonna say that's not unless your your chart is a v right right and the center is the

anyways go on we'll add a diagram it's in it's a subspace uh relationship you know there's different layers of reality um no but i think it's more about like the act he never i don't know if it's the actor or if it's here's how this character is and he's just really good at inhabiting that but like he seems like a person saying lines to me most of the time he doesn't seem like he inhabits the same universe as everyone else just like as a character to me and maybe it's that that's just from an early impression that just carried through the whole rest of the series but yeah all right so let, let's do a Tom Paris deep dive. Welcome to the Tom Paris,

the Paris accord, the Paris. Nice. That's good. That's, that's our spinoff podcast. All about Tom Paris, the Paris accord.

Yes. Yeah. Uh, no, I, I agree. Like, um,

the impression I get is that he's supposed to have an ironic distance that most of the others don't. And that's, I think in opposition to um harry kim who has uh not a golly gee willikers thing going but like a little more of uh he's he's more earnest and more invested in like being the kind of person that he sees his role models as being i guess which is itself kind of ironic because Harry Kim also not very interesting to me. So Harry Kim's interesting to me in so far as I think he has seen more dark stuff than anyone else.

That's true. So the Harry Kim by this time, this Harry Kim is from a different universe wherein his entire crew has died. And the Harry Kim of this universe has died and they swapped. So there's an episode where that happened, where they've just replaced their Harry Kim with a Harry Kim from a ship, a parallel ship wherein all the rest of the crew has perished. And then it's never talked of again yeah like many star trek things this huge character defining universe universe relevant thing that is never spoken of again yeah yeah i mean i get we and i think i've i may have brought this up before but like tom paris and uh janeway right they turn into like lizards into lizards that like started

all of evolution or something or so they they they definitely bred so there are they have lizards face lizard children out there somewhere right uh and again nobody acknowledges any of that uh because how could you right Like you can't look at that. That's the thing you can't, you can't internalize them. So one of the things I really like about Voyager is just how bizarro this stuff goes. It's a little like kind of comic booky,

right? Where it's like, here's this weird, crazy thing that happened two issues ago. And it is not relevant because we just reset every, you know, every issue is for a fresh audience and they don't need to go back and learn the continuity like there's no point there is like there is like a sort of continuity here in case any of our listeners uh haven't

watched any voyagers what voyager oh my god i'm gonna keep doing that i happen to be watching a lot of voyagers lately uh in case any of our listeners haven't watched voyager recently one of the sort of contextual things to kind of understand what's going on here is that the premise of the show is that it's a ship that was thrown into a whole another quadrant of the galaxy or universe i'm not entirely sure what the scale of Star Trek is. I'm a bad sci-fi geek. So they're out of touch with humanity, the Federation. They can't get back to that, or they're trying to get back home. At their top speed, it will take hundreds of years to return to their section of space.

Yeah. But they're still going to try, right? Because that's what a good captain does. And separated from the Starfleet that way, they have to operate in a way that other Star Trek vessels don't. Because other Star Trek vessels go into dry dock and get repaired. And other Star Trek vessels get resupplies. Almost all the time it's off screen, right? Like it's between episodes or whatever. But that's not the case with the voyager voyager

is kind of limping along they're they're constantly um at war with you know species they've never uh ran into before and then they have to repair their ship um i think at this time part of their ship has bork technology to keep it running probably yeah because this is well into after seven of nine has been introduced and yeah they don't have supplies like they have they have uh power concerns they have to do like real resource management and that's a lot of the episodes are concerned about we're out of this thing how are we going to get more and that is what leads into you know whatever yeah hijinks ensue and and that's in the background of this episode and it actually has some of the more interesting bits i think about this episode we'll talk about that when we get to it what's

interesting to me about the best episodes of voyager is how that extends to the um the ethical and logistical concerns of Janeway and her crew. Yes. She's the only authority, basically. Like, other captains can talk to Starfleet, can get an admiral involved or bounce a concern off of the Federation Council or whatever. And she can't. She can't communicate with anyone. So all she has is like Starfleet regulations

that she has to interpret. She's basically, she's like a this is a little grandiose, but like, she's like a pope where God is dead. Yeah. She still has to maintain this flock, but the authority that she can appeal to is just blank. Like, just has

no way of contacting. So her interpretations carry more weight than another captain's might, which is concerning in some episodes where they don't care about that. And it's like, yeah, that seems like a weird choice in this episode. It's a little there's some weird choices in this episode. I want I want to talk about it when we get to them, because I think but'm glad you brought that up because that is definitely an important part of it and i think the other sort of uh little attached detail is that they are probably and i know it's hard to tell but like they're probably encountering brand new life forms that the Federation have never encountered at a rate that is just beyond what the whole Starfleet mission was built for, right? Like they're out of scope for what they're,

and I don't think the show emphasizes that too much, but I think it does show up. And like, this is definitely one of those ones where that shows up. All right. So I think that's probably enough preamble. As we say, we should get into it. Yeah. This episode, the story and half of the teleplay credit is Brian Fuller. Brian Fuller is a very well-known showrunner who has done all of these shows that my friends love and I have never seen, such as Hannibal. Right.

Yeah. my friends love and I have never seen, such as Hannibal. Right, yeah. But I guess he got his start on DS9 and Voyager as a creative voice. So my understanding is that the Brian Fuller fans out there have a conception of the Brian Fuller-verse, where all of his shows are kind of in the same world. I don't know if that extends to a Star Trek work, but if any of them do, you know, let us know. Yeah, I'd like to see what whatever episode of Pushing Daisies has a relationship with this holodeck episode. That would be great. The other teleplay credit is Michael Taylor,

who is another DS9 slash Voyager person who worked with Brian Fuller a lot, according to the credits that I was able to dig up. And this episode is directed, I think, with, I was going to say with some flair, but also with some, like, tongue-in-cheek-ness. Yeah. By Alan Croker, who directed 38 total episodes of Star Trek,

including the series finales of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. Oh, wow. If you want to end a Star Trek show, you get him. Also, interestingly, two episodes of Friday the 13th, the series. Oh, well then, hold on. Now you're interested. Yeah. This whole episode is very much a fun episode, right?

Like, the actors are having fun. The way that it is written and shot and everything is like, let's have a fun one. Yeah. The stakes are not particularly that like, I think this is kind of the thing about Voyager where it's like, because the stakes are kind of always like, well, if this doesn't go well, we're just dead in space, right? Yes. Those are kind of like the default stakes of every episode. If the thing

that we need to happen doesn't happen, we're just dead. So this doesn't really change those. Therefore, it doesn't feel like it has any higher stakes than any other episode, even though those are themselves, you know, fairly dire. I got he directed maybe my favorite episode of Friday the 13th, the series, The Long Road Home. And I just want to say that. I just want to put that out there. I don't know how much of his direction makes it my favorite. Part of why it's my favorite is that it breaks the formula of that show in a very interesting way where it sort of does. It starts where all the other episodes would normally end in that formula and then it goes

on to be kind of a uh texas chainsaw massacre style homage and i really enjoy that nice all right sorry i'm back with you all right and agree with everything you just said hello listeners this is a quick break before we get into the episode to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day this show is free to all but the support from patrons really goes a long way so we always extend a special thanks to our gumshoes this time we say thank you to chuck from what you're reading.com check out the site for reviews of books games movies comics and more pa Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops

Serial Killers of Color at FruitLoopsPod.com. Shane Liebling you're playing games online, so check out his dice rolling app Roll For Your Party at RollForYour.Party Jay Adan, check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at JayAdan.com. Dylan

Winslow, Dale Norwood, Dave P, Dale Church, Kip Hawley and at jadon.com dylan winslow dale norwood dave p dale church kip holly and dave otterson and finally we cannot thank our detective patrons enough for their generous support big thanks to eric antenner at antenna on twitter brian perera at thermoware bill anderson at bill and 88 and of course richard haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them too at 200pod. Why become a patron for as little as $1 an episode? In addition to supporting the show and exclusive episode previews, our

patrons get plus expenses. A bonus podcast where we casually chat about all the media we're currently enjoying and things going on in our lives. Help out the show by leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. Tell a friend who you think would like it and check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you uh so like all star trek episodes we start with our cold open uh which has a delightful title screen in black and white, The Adventures of Captain Proton, chapter 18, Bride of Chaotica!

Exclamation point. I will note that the Memory Alpha entry has the exclamation point, but the IMDb entry does not. So I'm going to go with Memory Alpha on this kind of stuff, but in case you're trying to look it up,

this is the one with the exclamation point. Not the other Bride of Chaotica. So everything is black and white. So, you know, for those of us who have been watching the show, Captain Proton has come up before. It is Tom Paris's kind of serial sci-fi Flash Gordon send-up holodeck adventure. Holodeck adventures are a little weird to me uh given how scripted they are well so this i think is technically a what they call in the show a hollow novel oh okay which comes up other times yeah um but anyway this is cheesy sci-fi um yeah of like the 30s and 40s is what they keep referencing of the 20th century.

Right. But Chaotica or Dr. Chaotica. Dr. Chaotica. Yeah, Dr. Chaotica is the villain. He has Captain Proton's, quote, secretary, Miss Goodheart, tied up and is going to sacrifice her to Queen arachnia so there's a little recap and then we go to harry kim and tom paris in the hollow novel as captain proton and whoever harry kim is supposed to be yeah um and we get a little lampshading where he's like we didn't burst into flames in the last chapter why are these recaps always so inaccurate well they brought people back to the theaters cliffhangers the lost art of hyperbole kind of like this little bit here uh because i it it does this thing where it tells me that the people the who wrote this episode

have actually watched flash gordon serials right rather than have absorbed it through osmosis through the uh because yeah that that is how they are. You see the beginning of the next episode and you're like, that's not where we left off. Right. The thing that in the previous episode that was so dire is just done. They just finished it. We've moved on. Yeah, we moved on. So once Tom Paris explains this to Harry, he starts hamming it up as they discuss what they're going to, what they're going to do in the episode.

They're like, here are the story beats of this episode of this hollow novel. He is very excited to free what they call chaotic as harem, which is a little like, yeah, there's a little bit of that when it comes to all of this, but yeah, especially those two Tom Paris and Harry Kim as a Voyager watcher.

Harry Kim has this very frustrated sexual energy that he doesn't know how to deal with, which kind of becomes his only character trait at times and is not great. It's not great. There's this whole bit about these sisters that they try to date. And I'm like, can you imagine being trapped on a starship, let alone one so far from home, you'll die before you get home. Right. And then you have to deal with Harry Kim trying to date you. Yeah. Nothing against the guy, but just like, you know, that's definitely part of this unexamined aspect of this.

And yeah, that definitely comes up when he's like, tell me more about the slave girls. Right. Okay. Oh, boy. We'll let that go. Thankfully, it doesn't come up again. Really? Like, I mean, it's just that line, but it's like, oh, yeah, Harry Kim.

Maybe we'll just contrast because we don't see her. She's not really a character, but this good heart who is this like buxom Hollywood blonde who just screams all the time. That's her only line. That's her only line. That's her only line. Screaming. So that's presented as an element of the hollow novel, right? Yeah. Which is kind of like, well, this is just the kinds of stories that these were about. And then Harry Kim's like, yeah, let's have more of that kind of story.

It's like, come on, buddy. Yeah. Well, and I think around this time last year, we got into this with another, if you remember, when we did an episode of this podcast about the Deep Space Nine. The heist, the heist one. Yeah. What's the name of Vic? No, not Vic. Yeah. Vic Fontaine. Vic Fontaine, yes. And Captain Sisko goes into like, okay, this fiction that you're enjoying, it's a product of its time and that makes it problematic. Right, yeah. It's a product of a racially segregated time and celebrating it isn't something I'm interested in.

And there's like dialogue about that. Yeah. And we don't get that here. Yeah, this is not examined in that way. And we are spending way more time on it than the episode does. It's a throwaway line. And then we move on to the plot, which is the ground starts shaking, even though there's not supposed to be a volcano in this one. And then they see some glowing energy in color coming kind of through the holodeck.

We end our cold open on an ominous definitely not chaotica we have our credits which are a a lovely orchestral score of the the voyager credits i haven't heard it for a while so i did not skip i let it play i was like oh yeah i like the voyager credits um so uh when we get into our our episode proper we're cutting back and forth from the holodeck to the bridge on the holodeck of course they can't end the program the controls are offline and they can't raise the bridge so they have to go back to proton's rocket to find the manual overrides because that's where the hatch is i guess um yeah on the bridge uh voyager has dropped out of warp for an unknown reason and gravimetric forces are interfering with their warp power and they're losing systems all over

the ship including communications and uh you know presumably holodeck controls yeah back on the holodeck uh getting back to their rocket they're interrupted by chaotica's goons um including a a main goon in a big headdress lonz and then a couple a couple uh uh i would call them red shirts but that seems a little uh inappropriate in the black and white universe hold on let's talk about that for a second then because okay now that i know where i am in my notes okay then the things that i wanted to say they're related to this a little bit. There's a moment where Harry Kim makes a comment. It says, Planet X looks kind of familiar. And they talk about how they couldn't afford extra sets or whatever.

It's the same set as The Last Adventure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's got to be a comment on early Trek as well. Absolutely. Because not only does it look familiar, it looks a lot like early Trek. And it also looks a lot like places they've been in Voyager. Like this is a very common planet

scape in Voyager. So apparently, according to Memory Alpha, one reason this episode exists, like one reason it was written to have so much of it be on the holodeck, is that the main portions of the main voyager set were damaged in a fire and so they in order to like get those repaired and everything they they couldn't have the full production schedules on them for some amount of time during this season and i watched the next episode too i just kind of let it play after i was done with my notes and the next episode takes place almost entirely in flashback and on a planet uh apparently not super serious but like a light exploded and

set some of the set on fire then the sprinkler system damaged stuff and replacing all the damage stuff is what you know kept them from from using the sets well that's good the other note i want to point out this i think is maybe my favorite Tom Paris moment. And that's when these shimmering blue lights show up and they realize it's contact with an alien species or something. This isn't the holodeck. This isn't the holodeck. Tom's reaction, I didn't write down the exact words he said, but his demeanor during it was how utterly disappointed he was that he would have to return to his day job yeah of dealing with these strange and wondrous new worlds instead of continuing with this holodeck of this old space fantasy so it just it was i i that part i found quite humorous

i don't know how intentional any of it was but it just had this feel of like oh yeah it's good gotta go back to the best job in the world um when lonzac shows up his line is you thought i perished in the den of crocodiles yes uh and then uh our heroes shoot down the goons with their ray guns uh so that they can get back to the rocket they cannot disengage the program even with the manual overrides and the distortions keep growing but tom can get back to the rocket. They cannot disengage the program, even with the manual overrides and the distortions keep growing. But Tom can get access to the transporter, so they can do a site-to-site transport to get off the holodeck, which is great. And also, I probably spent the first three seasons of Voyager

thinking they called it a side-to-side transport. Oh, yeah. Which also makes sense. We'll talk about those site-to-site transport. Oh, yeah. Which also makes sense. Yeah. We'll talk about those side-to-side transports a little later on because I have a theory about them

that this episode kind of blows holes through. Okay. We'll get to that. So apparently they have entered a layer of subspace that is disrupting their warp field and no matter how hot they push the engine they cannot get out of this subspace that is disrupting their warp field. And no matter how hot they push the engine,

they cannot get out of this subspace layer. All right. So once off the holodeck, the crew gathers in astrometrics to analyze the situation. I'm looking at my notes. I'm like, how much of this is actually important? Right, yeah. The metaphor they use is that they've run aground on a subspace sandbar.

Yeah. And so they're stuck on this region of subspace Janeway is recalling analogous situations like navigating through a protostar or whatever or a nebula or something where their own warp field generates resistance so they have to shut the engines down in order to move Seven of Nine jumps on that with offering the solution that Janeway was building up to.

The holodeck distortions are dismissed as random energy fluctuations with no relationship to what their situation is. The casual dismissal of stuff like that on Star Trek always amuses me because it's like, I might have said this when we did our

in that same DS9 episode, but it's like uh i might have said this when we did our uh in that same ds9 episode but it's like after a certain point as a captain or a commander or something i would have a checklist right of like yeah something is happening are there random energy fluctuations is there a space virus are we yes caught in some kind of field like just like check check check and then like whatever's unchecked you're like okay we have weird variations here we're stuck in a place here hmm how many times do we go through this kind of thing and those aren't related right obviously we're not seeing the off-screen stuff like it could be that this stuff happens all the time sure but yeah i i am with you with it one of the things that i enjoy now that i don't think i've ever really enjoyed in star trek not i had

no it just didn't matter to me one way or the other but there's a point where janeway is like okay shut down the power to this this and this and increase power to the structural integrity field and i as a homeowner i have to say if i could just switch the power to the structural integrity field, say during a windstorm or, you know, just just yeah, just something that increases the structural integrity of of the object I'm in. You can run your lights at 50 percent power if it means that you can add a little structural integrity during key moments like that's OK. It means that you can add a little structural integrity during key moments. Like, that's okay. We'll pull out the candles and we'll light those and we'll shift all the power to the sump pump and to the structural integrity field so we don't lose any shingles. Oh, my God.

If only. That would be such a delight. So I look forward to the Star Trek feature for that alone. We go back to the holodeck to witness an entirely hollow scene where this is all hollow characters interacting. So for us, it's weird that it's still running, but they couldn't shut it down. So whatever. Yeah, that reminds me of the text editors from the 70s I've been playing with. But that's neither here nor there.

but that's neither here nor there two of the energy distortions transform into gangster looking characters with angled faces and fedoras yeah i wrote down g men a little bit yeah uh but also like men in black right before the the movie this is sort of what men in black were said to have looked like oh Oh, interesting. Nondescript government, you know, in suits and things like that. Yeah, I kind of, I read them as gangsters, but maybe it was just the hats. Yeah, the hats definitely play into that. But I think part of this, okay, so one way to read this episode is to think of it as a clash in eras of sci-fi yeah and this is the clash of the the black and white where it's the 30s versus the sort of 50s like the twilight zone yeah they're more they're more twilight zone that's a good way to put it yeah they're not

from another planet they're from another dimension right so these are these are as we will learn these uh photonic aliens that are taking this form because they they have discovered well so so they they coalesce into these these like kind of g-men as you say yeah and then the chaotic goons who are no longer shot down by ray guns because it's pulp sci-fi show up again and they seize them as if they're part of the program. Yeah. They're seeing these visitors as part of their internal world. Right.

Lonzac, uh, comes to, uh, Chaotica and tells them that proton escaped, but he captured some prisoners who claim they're from another dimension. They bring them in to bow at the feet of Chaotica, who is played with devilish glee. Yeah.

With the full, like, widow's peak, slicked down hair, lightning bolts on his sleeves, kind of, like, big puffy robe, you know, ruler of the universe kind of look. Yeah, he's definitely a Ming the Merciless character. He wants to know why these visitors have invaded his planet. And they say that they're here to contact and learn from other photonic life forms. They're explorers. That word photonic is forms. Yes. They're explorers. That word photonic is very important, as we will get to. There's a great line where they're just like, we intend no harm. It's just like that.

It's a great classic sci-fi moment or whatever. It's interesting that they should specify photonic when later it's established that they don't know of biochemical life forms. Right. Yeah. It's possible that there's yet another type of life form, you know? Sure. But like, yeah, like the Enterprise doesn't go around being like, we are trying to make contact with other biochemical life.

Yeah. I mean, I think that is a plucking, you know, that is a giving us that word photonic so that when it comes back later, we know what's going on. So we know that they're photonic. Right, right. That's the main thing. Chaotica waxes on about how he's going to destroy the invaders. And the main G-Man says, they're hostile. Terminate this contact.

But then Lonzac shoots the one that is spoken to and he evaporates and the main one hits his little tricorder looking thing and transports out in the same cloud of color that he coalesced from originally. He'll learn there's no escape from Chaotica. Gather my space force. Power the death ray. At once, majesty. As together he and Arachnia will defeat this invasion from the fifth dimension uh of note here uh so lonzac the goon he's played by an actor named nicholas worth who is a character actor who's been all over the place from from shows from the 70s to the early 2000s including including two appearances, one uncredited, on a little show called The Rockford Files.

Oh, delightful. We keep running into that show. I should watch it at some point. It's weird how that keeps coming up. Oh, uncredited. Chicken Little is a Little Chicken, which I've heard is an excellent episode of The Rockford Files, and I should watch it.

I'm willing to bet that he was perhaps a gangster in the background. Yes. Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs is an episode of the Rockford Files that I, along with all the others, have not yet seen. Yeah. So this is fun. Obviously, a lot of it is done for our benefit, which is sort of the conceit of the holodeck anyways right but uh i you know i like the idea of a alien species trying to make contact and accidentally making contact with the holodeck yeah i feel like there's a lot of stories about that where aliens come to earth and the first thing they meet is a dog and so that they assume that dogs are the, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, no, it's fun.

More specifically, one that we can all relate to is on Sesame Street the aliens that come and meet the telephone and try and communicate with it. That's the trope that's being played on here. That's the trope, yeah. Captain's log, they have been stuck in this region for three

days and their systems are slowly all going offline as Yeah, yeah. Captain's log, they have been stuck in this region for three days, and their systems are slowly all going offline as their power is being consumed. And as you were alluding to earlier, Captain Janeway needs her coffee. So we have a short scene here in the mess, or the commissary, I forget what it's called, with Neelix, who is probably my least favorite character on the show. Well, this is a good episode for you, then. Yeah. So it's just in this one. And also his role here is actually quite fun.

Just along the lines of, you know, you'd like to increase the structural integrity of your house. Yeah. I always appreciate when there's a little bit of like here's stuff about spaceships that the other shows just don't talk about or care about right that actually are relevant to voyager to wit that there are only four functioning lavatories for 150 people on this spaceship the boleans are apparently a big problem in this situation so this gets into okay a couple things about this scene first her coffee is such a classic scene where she comes in demands a coffee from neelix it's like a it's a sitcom scene yeah yeah she's like i need a coffee neelix is about to tell her he like he can't and then she's like you have to give me a coffee so that he goes over to the

replicator and asks for a coffee. Like, Neelix doesn't have to be in that negotiation. I was just talking to Liz about this the other night because we're watching a Next Generation episode. It's always so funny to me how at 10 forward on the Enterprise, there's people who are civilians that work at the bar. And so you give them your order. So they just turn around and give the order to the replicator behind them and turn around and give you what you just

ordered. And it's like, in the far future, where there is no money and everyone can live their most fulfilling life, there's still this need to be served. That must be fulfilled. And so with Voyager, it's been established that Neelix actually cooks. And that's actually kind of important because the replicators take up energy.

And it's also important that you're not using the replicators willy-nilly. Yes. It is important that there is kind of a central point of like someone apportioning replicator use because there's always so much energy of some sort yeah yeah it makes sense on voyager yeah no way um and so like that's nice and that's the thing and and uh i just saw a movie i think it's like called space station 76 or something like that but it like it has this it came out like in the past couple of years and

it's a got a retro uh sci-fi feel to it that like it's obviously playing off of that and there's a character in it it turns out her entire job is just to go to the computer every morning and select the meal that everyone's going to get that day. And it's just there and available. And it's not like anyone else can't just select a meal, but it's, yeah. Anyways, it's part of a joke in that show,

but this is kind of a funny way to handle that here. And, and it plays into that whole coffee thing. But then the other kind of important bit to me is like you said, the lavatory. So we don't hear about this in Star Trek ever. But here's the thing. And this is a fan theory I had for a long time that this episode dismisses or doesn't.

We often see like O'Brien or even going further back. Scotty. Scotty. Thank you. Standing or some technicians standing in the teleporter room at that panel right now it makes some sense that you might have someone there when you're doing important transports back and forth but when you think about a cat a crew of 150 or in the case of the enterprise considerably more than that that. I don't know how, what the... It's like a thousand and something.

Yeah. One thing that might be going on there is you'd be doing a lot of site-to-site transportations. Anyways, I had this theory that nobody goes to the bathroom in Star Trek because there's a teleport technician who just takes care of that for you. Who just teleports the waste out of your body. Oh, so you don't even evacuate. It's just lock onto your bowels. Yeah, it's just kind of like on a schedule going through the whole crew and just doing that over and over again.

But then, of course, if you're on Voyager, you don't have that kind of power to waste. That's true. So, no pun intended. So you would have to actually create lavatories. Anyways, this is my whole thing. I really worry about how you poop on a spaceship. I once asked an actual astronaut how that happened. And I got a delightful answer.

They actually have to strap in. They have to use, on the space station station they have to use a mirror to make sure that they're lining up correctly think about that next time you think about an astronaut anyways well moving on um genuinely leaves this serious problem in neelix's capable hands whatever it takes and we do not see neelix again for the rest of the episode. So perfect amount of Neelix for me. He's obviously killed people to reduce the cost. Those booleans, they're apparently the real problem. So they've been adrift for three days.

Apparently it's taken three days to power down the warp core. Yeah. Which, okay, sure. Yeah. I guess that's different from just turning it off. I don't know. I don't know how spaceships work. So they do finally get some movement using thruster power only.

But then when they get close to the subspace boundary, they slow down again and they cannot escape. Yeah. They then start detecting power signatures of weapons fire from within the ship. It's from the holodeck. That thing we ignored. from within the ship. It's from the holodeck. That thing we ignored. This is where Janeway learns that the Captain Proton program has been running for the last three days because they were unable to shut it down. And so Janeway sends Tuvok and Tom

to check it out and shut it down. So we get onto the holodeck into a horrible battle ravaged war scene. Well, I want to point out that the fact that Janeway says Tom is great. Like go pick up your toys. Acknowledging that if you're going to deal with this fiction in the holodeck, you need an expert in that fiction. Sure, yeah. It's really weird because when we have technical problems, say you're trying to play a video game and it keeps crashing or something happening. You don't ask somebody who's an expert on the fiction in the world of that video game to solve the problem. You're not like, I need the foremost Yoshi expert on the planet to figure out why Yoshi's Island keeps crashing or whatever.

Yes. On the planet to figure out why Yoshi's Island keeps crashing or whatever. No, you talk to somebody who knows something about the hardware or the software that's running it. But not if you're dealing with the holodeck. Right. And that is important. Back to Planet X. Mrs. Goodheart is dead. She's just lying there dead on the ground.

Poor character. I know. lying there dead on the ground. Poor character. I know. This shakes Tom, not because of any personal connection, really, but that she's not supposed to die.

She's one of the good guys, and good guys don't die in these stories. Yeah. They then run into the damaged Satan's robot, which is one of Chaotica's minions. Great. Once Tom repairs the vocalizer, it tells them that the invaders from the fifth dimension

have attacked. There's a good line where Tuvok is the I think of him as the security officer technically. He has some other title. He's a Vulcan and he's very dry and so there's a good humorous line where he goes, your knowledge of this technology is most impressive. One of the things I'm loving, because this is another peek into the Star Trek world. I think we might have discussed this at some time in a previous episode, but like how Star Trek doesn't seem to have any fuses.

how Star Trek doesn't seem to have any fuses because whenever anything happens to the ship, people get electrocuted at the right, the control panels. Yeah. It's all like isolinear chips or whatever, which apparently just pass current straight through at all times. And so when he mentions a resistor, Tuvok is like,

what's that? And it's like, Oh, okay. And they're talking about the neutronic circuitry that they, that they deal with. I'm like, okay, it's all kind of coming together now. Like this is like, what's that? And it's like, oh, okay. And they're talking about the neutronic circuitry that they deal with. I'm like, okay, it's all kind of coming together now. Like this is a completely different technology that doesn't have any of the safety measures that we have. Apparently that's what you need to voyage the stars.

You're shifting power around all the time. You're reinforcing the structural integrity field. If fuses were blowing you know you'd always you'd be replacing them non-stop um so uh aliens uh or invaders from the fifth dimension aren't in this story so tom uh figures that perhaps those distortions that he saw are where the invaders are coming from and sure enough as they find there's more of them there's like five or six. There are these like hovering, glowing little swirls.

And then lightning starts shooting out of them. Or balls of energy shoot out of them. And there's lightning also. But those are the photonic charges. And those are the weapons fire that was detected. Tom needs to get to the rocket ship. It may have sensors that can detect what Voyagers cannot, which again, the logic of the holodeck, you know, it's too recursive.

It's like the holodeck has created a thing that can only detect certain things on the holodeck that the ship itself cannot, whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah. My only defense of that, not that I need to defend it or anything like that, but I have found moments in my life where i'm like i know that there's a way to do this but instead i'm just going to pop into the software that sure yeah you know like like maybe this is just the the easy way to do it or whatever

and as we'll learn it doesn't actually it's not like you actually learned something that no um we have a brief scene where seven of nine and Harry Kim established visual. So they basically can watch it on a screen like they're watching TV. Uh, we see that the attack is coming from the subspace layer and that chaotic is using his death ray to fight back so they can interact with each other, which is the important thing here. Uh,

but that queen Arachnia has not joined him. And that's probably why he's losing. This is Harry Kim filling in the plot from this chapter. And Seven of Nine is not impressed with this, quote, harmless entertainment. Back on Proton's rocket, he does have telegrams that have come in from planet Earth. Those are his special sensors, through which he surmises that the invaders came in through the distortions. Like, okay, now we all know.

Yeah, I think we knew that from the get-go, but yes. Our G-Man enters the rocket. I forget how this is framed, but he kind of comes in after them and says that 53 of his people have been killed. Yes. Tuvok tries to explain that this isn't real. It's a photonically based projection. And we get the great lines.

All life is photonic. We are not. We are biochemical life forms. I'm not familiar with biochemical. And then the alien has his little tricorder thing and it does not register Tom and Tuvok as life form. They're the illusions. And so we get the, you know, the twist here that the photonic aliens only view the holodeck as real and they can't even detect the biochemical, you know, stuff.

I'm going to harp on this a little bit from this point on. Okay. But this gets into that moral thing that you were talking about, right? So they've established now that these people, 53 of which have died because of contact with the Voyager crew. They're a form of life. They're a photonic form of life. We're going to very soon meet the Doctor again, who is also a photonic form of life so it's something that they are aware of but their relationship with the doctor is really weird yeah and uh here it's

the same thing like so the relationship with the doctor is really weird but maybe possibly forgivable because the doctor is in fact a program right so he he's a very sophisticated like data is very sophisticated program uh but fundamentally similar to what's going on in the holodeck and all the people they interact with the holodeck right like but this did not come from the holodeck this is actual life that exists outside of of their they're from like a different layer of reality. Yeah. They're going to be tremendously cavalier about this in a way that's just like,

you might not be the good guys here. Right. So there's a branch of this story where it goes into a, we are explorers, we're here to make contact with life and your life. And let's figure out a resolution here. Like that is one story.

This could have been that story. Right. It is not. This story is about Janeway dressing up as Arachnia. That's what the story is about. So it gets a little weird is what I'm saying. Like if you examine it from that point of view, you're like, whoa, wait a minute here. Galaxy brain take.

Yes, let's get to the galaxy brain. Somewhere between at least now and when I kind of stopped watching. So sometime between now-ish and the middle of season six-ish, there are multiple episodes exploring photonic life. multiple episodes exploring photonic life, including a rebellion of photonic, like creations against their makers, insisting that they are also, they have rights much like data as an Android, right?

It's established to have like human rights. The doctor ends up caught up in this rebellion. He, he becomes a true believer in photonic rights and all this stuff so like this is a a direction that the show moves in and explores this idea of yeah if we make these programs that have physical substance even though they're made of light and then they end up gaining consciousness what does that mean right yeah what is our responsibility here? And yeah. So this, and I think one of the big challenges of those episodes is that the whole Voyager crew just takes it as read that photonic light, like that photonic creations are not real people. Yeah.

This is eventually presented as a prejudice, like a racial prejudice that needs to be confronted and overcome and i think here this is like the my galaxy brain take is in this episode are we seeing just the baseline callousness with which there we go in the same way that i'm like i would never say that a that that if i'm watching tv the images on the tv are not real people i would never think of them as real people i wouldn't treat them as real people and I have absolutely no problem turning off the TV because who cares? Right now, as we are looking at each other on a monitor, I'm having the exact same feeling. Like, this is not a real person I'm talking to. As soon as you turn this off, I cease to exist. And that doesn't bother you.

And the people listening to this podcast, we don't exist to them. It's not a, I'm having a crisis. Are you having an existential crisis? Anyway, I'm just saying, this is kind of seeding that whole concept where it's like, oh, we don't think photonic stuff is real. It's just projection. Yeah. No, that's good. Just saying. I'll stick with that galaxy brain take.

I think that works. It's laying the groundwork for those later episodes. Well, as we were just talking about photonic life in our next scene, Janeway is summarizing the situation with everyone. The controls are still offline, so they can't just turn it off. But maybe the doctor can talk to them because he's photonic, so they'll treat him as a real person. Yeah, so here we go.

Tom Barris suggests letting it all play out and helping the aliens defeat Chaotica because once they win, because their thing is like, we're being attacked by this Chaotica guy, and he's going to pursue us if we leave so we can't leave. Like, we have to win. Right. So Tom Barris is like, yeah, let's help them win, and then once there's no longer

a threat, they'll leave. However, Arachnia, queen of the spider people, is the only one that can make this all work because and i'll probably may i'll cut it in because he lays it all out with all the fun terminology the destructo beam on my rocket ship can disable the death ray but only if someone gets inside the fortress of doom and can shut down the lightning shield and who's supposed to do that arachnia queen of the spider people yes um so someone has to take on the character of arachnia janeway looks at seven of nine everyone else looks at janeway and she's just like all right i guess it's our only option yeah i i definitely made a note about that i was like oh here we go uh the captain is obviously the only person on

this ship of 150 people that like there's not even another captain proton fan on that ship that could possibly go in um so yeah but that's you know that's a conceit that this this uh that we see all the time in star trek i do want to say because your galaxy brain take has got my brain galaxy brain taking now, because it just occurred to me that this is the end of Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom Sawyer, not Tom Paris, but Tom Sawyer, knows that the Civil War is over, but holds on to the fiction that they still have to free jim and it makes for the most excruciating 60 pages in literary history it's it's horrible it's this ending where because tom sawyer wants to play at freeing a slave they basically keep jim locked in kind of a slave situation. And it's this same setup where they're like, how do we stop this massacre? Well, let's play Captain Proton.

Right. Let's keep this fiction up. Let's extend the massacre until. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. That's enough on that. We have a brief visit with the doctor where he needs B'Elanna to reprogram him a disguise as the president of earth in order to

play this role uh tom paris explains the rules of the setting to janeway as they walk and talk this is very like all right so in this game uh characters are called heroes and hit points are called health and you know especially because it's it's like it's ray guns not phasers yeah it's this weird sci-fi term not the weird sci-fi term you've been using it's ray gun not phaser um imagizer not view screen earthlings not terrans got it and another thing these villains always have a trick up their sleeve trap doorsrap doors, secret weapons. It's the holodeck. I can't be hurt by weapons. That doesn't mean that you can't be restrained or thrown into the dungeon of pain.

Noted. Yu's grandiose language, such as the clever fiendishness of your evil plan, is brilliant. Janeway is not impressed with how Tom spends his free time, but he, uh, but she, she, she'll do it. She's on board. And,

uh, he mentions that if all else fails, Arachnia can uncork her vial of pheromones. Yes. In previous, uh, chapters, she has gifted Chaotica with her,

with the pheromones that cause him to fall in love with her or whatever. Um, this will be important later. On the holodeck. Full power to the death ray. So this is all super fun. It's all scenery chewing, purple prose. Like people who are fans of this wrote this and the actors are really just hamming it up and having fun.

And it is fun stuff to watch um janeway arrives as arachnia in a hell of a dress i love that color it's so good yeah there's lots of good little gags like chaotica shows her to the throne and she sits down and goes somehow i feel comfortable here because it's like a big chair like the captain's chair uh she sees the vial of pheromones and sneaks it away when no one's looking just in case and then story-wise she floats uh lowering the lightning shield so that her fleet of spider ships can land and pay their respects before joining the fight against the invaders but he will only lower it if she agrees to marry him so my dear the day you have always dreamed of has arrived

the day you become bride of chaotica there we go the title um i do like the pause when she's like my fleet of fighter ships. Yeah. I made a note here and this I think carries throughout, which is that the performance here is the by Kate Mulgrew is fantastic. is fantastic like we see janeway going in and out of character as arachnia yeah when she's not kind of on like she's looking around and analyzing the situation and you know thinking on her feet but then when she has to talk to chaotica she becomes you know arachnia like it's all and it's all very like carried through her visual like her her facials and her carriage and everything it's uh it's really good um for something that really is a very silly story the other thing i kind of loved about this was when tom was going through like telling

her about going into it and and you know all of that it did that fairy tale thing where it said here are all the things that you as an audience are about to see right yeah like just so you don't feel like well why is this happening it's it's nonsensical but but we told you that it was going to happen so here it is happening right it just makes sense and it works it's a very useful thing that i think uh sometimes people feel like their fiction is too clever for it and it's like no just do it just yeah just tell us what's going to happen and then show us it happening it's fine like just give us the stuff and then let us enjoy the stuff yeah this is not a mystery there's not subversion there's not really i mean it's kind of irony but not really really like for the purpose of showing how smart you are.

It's more just like a celebration of the silliness. Yeah, exactly. But like, if you hadn't set that up, watching all of this, we would have been like, it wouldn't have been like really bad, but we would have been like, well, why does Janeway know this? Things would have to be explained as it goes. Like she sees the v the vial she's like the vial of pheromones and this way it's just all packaged there and it's very economical yeah outside the fortress on planet x the doctor makes contact with the photonic alien he is the president of earth on a mission of peace and so he presents this plan that they have the common enemy of Chaotica, Captain Proton is their champion and is going to destroy the Death Ray, but the alien's weapons that they're shooting through their rifts

will endanger Captain Proton's rocket. So they need to stop shooting so that Captain Proton can take out the Death Ray and then Chaotica will be defeated. Now this, to me, felt like the most egregious moment in all of it the fiction that they're all enjoying is presumably alien to these photonic beings right right they are seeking new life and they come across dr chaotica and the whole thing and chaotica is like i will destroy you and now they're fighting for their lives from their perspective.

Yeah. It's not like they have a common understanding of things. I guess what it is is that this is a con that they're running. Sure, yeah. And it's based on them having a point of reference that is similar to sci-fi from the Earth in the 30s. And it's just, as far as they know, that's not at all what it is.

Although, like, who knows? The form they're taking is very Earth-like. So maybe. Who knows? there's something about it that it's hinging on them convincing them of this lie that in no way even seems like it would clarify things for them well it's an appeal to material interest right like right you're fighting this guy chaotica and you're going to continue fighting him even though your people are dying because you fear that he's going to come after you if you don't fight him now. Right.

We will defeat him for you and then you can leave. Right. Like that's the deal. I get what the deal is. It's just the context for it is all from this fiction that they have no contact with anyways. And they're maintaining that fiction as if that were. Well, they have to maintain the fiction because they don't because they think that it's that this is a world that they've come to. Right.

It's as if that explanation made any more sense than, hey, this is a computer program that we have running that you've stumbled into. Right. We'll shut it down if you just stop doing this. The crux of the premise though right is like that they don't believe that these people exist right so the crux of the premise is like if someone comes in and is like like epi your your your house is in the way of an important development and we need to bulldoze it and you're like what are you talking about like i live on this street no no well you can't see it but you know it's really really important that we bulldoze your house and you're like what are you talking about like i live on this street no no well you can't see it

but you know it's really really important that we bulldoze your house and you're like no you you can't bulldoze my house right so then they have to come back and be like okay he can't see the interstate that we're building directly through his house how are we going to convince you to abandon your house i don't know why i'm going down this path. I mean, okay, I get it. I will buy it for the sake of this episode. You get a series of letters saying we're going to bulldoze your house and you're like who's sending me these letters?

And then someone comes to your door and is like okay, here's the deal. Your house is on a sinkhole. And then your house starts shaking. And you're like, oh, maybe they've engineered this to get you out of the house so they can do their fifth dimensional bypass through it or whatever. Yeah. They should have just mentioned the fifth dimensional bypass, honestly.

Right. I guess the failure of imagination is being like, you know, we have the capacity of imagination to envision energy beings and photonic life forms and things that we can't sense but nevertheless perceive. life forms and things that we can't sense but nevertheless perceive while these photonic life forms apparently if it doesn't show up on their sensors they're like oh that this doesn't this doesn't exist right which is in and itself uh uh a bigoted view i would say going back to my earlier galaxy brain take um anyway we end with the alien agreeing and saying captain Proton may proceed. There's a brief scene where Tom Paris is doing all the things in the rocket to prepare. The only thing that stood out to me here is that the doctor arrives to tell him that it worked and he manages to pack three president puns into three lines. It's good.

Including that his performance was, quote, unimpeachable. So proud of himself. Maybe there were some earlier and I hadn't noticed, but now I started noticing all the in-universe transitions, like the swipe cuts and stuff. Oh, yeah. Also, we didn't mention it, but everything in the Captain Proton scenes has score music,

adventure score underneath it. And it's black and white. As well as being black and white so we have the swipe cut to chaotica and arachnia she keeps on bringing up the lightning shield they share their plight with uh the the incompetence of their inferiors where you always have to have things done yourself this is a great line given the fact that she's in the position that she's in right she's the captain of the the ship but she has to do it yeah i thought that was a like almost a genuine moment between jane way and dr chaotica we have

our big exciting uh climax here um proton is preparing to attack they're going to target his ship with the death ray but then arachnia well not well not climax, pre-climax, if you will. Arachnia then takes him out with a swift blow and holds Chaotica at ray gun point. No, no, lower the shield. Oh no, betrayal. Lonzac tries to kill her with his own ray gun, but because they're on the holodeck. For once, the safeties are not disengaged, and so the real people cannot be harmed by the photonic stuff. So she is unharmed by Blonzac's ray gun. A rarity on our podcast.

However, there are confinement rings that are activated to bind her and trap her, and Chaotica cackles with glee as the death ray hits Proton's rocket. Apparently this coincides with increased activity from the aliens' weapons, which are causing them to get pulled further into subspace. Sure. As they do. As they do.

We need to have danger to the ship as well as the fictional characters, right? Or else it's not Star Trek. Janeway, or Arachnia, is tied up next to the throne, but she's able to get the pheromones out of her sleeve and uncorks them. The alluring scent drifts to Lonzac, and he is compelled to her side.

Your beauty is maddening. Entangle me in your wind. Get me out of here and i'll do all that at once my queen she leans into this arachnia breaks free grabs lonzac's weapon and takes out all the guards and then finally forces chaotica to turn off the lightning shield. And then there's this moment where it clearly, you know, in universe,

there is now more banter and he just, and she's just like, sorry. And just shoots him with a ray gun, which is very funny to me. Yes. Uh, this does not kill him.

It does kind of take him down and he rolls around and he crawls over to the death ray. But, uh, kind of take him down and he rolls around and he crawls over to the death ray, but Captain Proton's rocket targets it with their weapon and they shoot it and it bursts into this big cackling electricity ball and Chaotica's touching it when it's hit, so he is

electrocuted along with the death ray and slumps to the ground. We cut back to the bridge where we are told that the distortions are closing and that the ship is realigning with normal space. The aliens have left, I guess, and they clear the subspace lair.

But Janeway wants one more minute on the holodeck as Tom, Harry, and the Doctor come join her in Chaotica's lair. Chaotica, of course, has a final speech. Arachnia, death as you know it, has no hold on me. My defeat is but a temporary setback.

I shall return to seek my revenge. He doesn't give up, does he? They never do. Our love was not meant to be, my queen. But be warned. You have not seen the last of... Chaotica. It's good.

It's good. Then we have a fanfare and a screen in the holodeck. It's like a screen that they all can see that's in Chaotica's lair. Yes. Plays the fanfare and shows the end. And then there's a beat and then it transforms into a question mark as we get cackling laughter of Chaotica. And then we cut directly into the end credits for voyager uh yeah i like the the bit the question mark bit there's no more dr chaotica i think i mean

obviously neither of us is finished the series right yeah uh yeah he he apparently returns in a season seven episode all right okay so i gotta keep going then gotta make it through this so there are four voyager episodes where the adventures of captain proton are in them and this is the third of those and then it's referenced you know as a line or whatever in another six voyager episodes and apparently an enterprise episode. Oh. Well, I mean, obviously it's fiction from before all the Treks, right? I'm surprised we don't mention it all the time nowadays.

Apparently, Captain Proton took many of his direct influences from a specific serial slash movie, Zombies of the Stratosphere, which was recut into a movie called Satan's Satellites in 1952 and 1958, respectively. So keep an eye out for that.

Anyhow, you too can go to Memory Alpha and look up all the trivia about the adventure Captain Proton. It's all in webpages. Yeah, that is our episode. That was fun. Definitely enjoyed watching Janeway ham it up. Yep, yep, yep. Certainly seemed like she was having a lot of fun, so good for her. Yeah.

Uh, you know, all of those moral quandaries aside, at least the crew were enjoying themselves. Yeah, I mean, I guess when you get right down to it, they weren't causing any more, like, the goal of ending the Captain Proton program

was itself going to end the loss of life from the alien yeah right uh but yeah there is something to the fact that they made that contact and then decided to start a war is uh yeah a little suspect i i blame uh tom paris and harry kim for not uh when the anomalies first show up uh being like, well, this is obviously a first contact station. Right, right. We'll go and deal with it the way you're supposed to deal with it. As opposed to we will transport off the holodeck, leave it running, and not mention it to anyone for three days. Though, to be fair, I have done that.

I've started up a program and been like, this is taking a while. I'll just go open a different window and I'll come back to it later. You'd think that on Voyager, at least. So, you know, it's established in other things that there's like holodeck credits. Like, you know, again, they don't have unlimited power. So one of the currency for the crew is recreation time. And they can like give each other credits for holodeck time and stuff like that yeah um so you'd think that there'd be something i understand the controls were disengaged

however you think there'd be something where like if there's no one on the holodeck it just turns off right you know some kind of uh some kind of thing i mean yeah at this point i assume that the holodeck also runs uh some portion of the holodeck runs part of the engine room. Right. Part of the engine is just a photonic engine that does what they needed to do. Yeah. And if they turn that off, then they're done.

It's like everything's intertwined. So yeah. Yeah. They just have like a, the holodeck runs a simulation program of a fission reactor that produces the energy they need to run the ship, including the holodeck that runs the fission reactor. Clearly, why didn't they think of this? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a fun episode, a fun departure to a slightly different flavor of holodeck episode.

Yeah, I enjoyed it's not that the holodeck takes over the ship it's not that people get trapped on the holodeck but it is that that first encounter that first contact with aliens who are like oh the holodeck is reality like that's a fun that's a fun premise yeah yeah that is definitely a fun premise uh and uh the sort of sci-fi that you know i'd love seeing more of just the the weirdness the like oh wait this doesn't make any sense to to us we got to figure it out uh as opposed to machinations of some giant space empire trying i don't know i feel like i'm gonna start criticizing all of sci-fi now for some reason and i don't mean to so i will stop that

line of thought apologies to space empires everywhere yeah i think uh we've pretty much covered all the high points of uh yeah what what came to mind for me watching this episode do you have any other thoughts on the bride of chaotica exclamation point it was fun. I actually left it curious about more Captain Proton like the actual Captain Proton stories that this was. Like the cereal? Yeah, exactly. But alas, I

have to mix it with my Star Trek. Wow. You can't have everything. Yes. Alright, well thanks to all of our listeners from the standard 4 and perhaps even 5th dimension. Yes. All right. Well, uh, thanks to, uh, all of our listeners from the standard four and perhaps even fifth dimension. Yes. Always a good time. And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll go fix up Satan's robot and make sure that, uh, that our good buddy is in tip top working order. And then, uh, we will be back next time with another holodeck episode from the Star Trek universe.

I don't know how that theme goes. I don't know it offhand. I think it goes something like...