Investigations: I’m not a hugger but I want to give Tom a hug. Thankfully Neelix did it for me.

I don’t love Neelix’s show thingy but as he talks about Tom it hurts so much. I really love the way they are using Tom. He’s such a good pilot that people want him around, people have heard about him.

Oh shoot wait is this a spy mission? Did they realize that someone was feeding information to the Kazon and set up this whole plan?

Oops Neelix you’re asking the wrong dude.

YES TOM IS OKAY! It WAS a spy mission! They kept me out of the loop for a long time. I was thinking it was more alien influence/poison for the last couple of episodes, but I couldn’t believe Tom had gone that far off the rails.

So uh, if they can transport in and out of engineering, why didn’t Tuvok transport INTO engineering after they failed to transport Jonas out?

Deadlock: whenever we have a pregnant crewmember I just brace myself for the most inconvenient time to have a baby.

I liked this episode a lot. I thought it was interesting, the science wasn’t too inconsistent with itself.

I thought I wrote a lot more about this while I watched but it’s missing. I’m glad that Kim talked about how weird it was to be on the other ship. It’s the same crew, but it’s not HIS crew. The people he spent this journey with are dead.

I love how casually we talk about the Vidians stealing organs. It’s like this is totally normal, and to them, entirely acceptable behavior.

Innocence: I am not a kid person, okay? I usually can’t stand it when there are kids on these shows. But I actually loved this. Tuvok with the kids was excellent.

As a side note, I love it when Vulcans talk about meditation techniques. I absolutely love meditation and have been experimenting with different techniques since rewatching Enterprise. In one of the first Enterprise episodes, T’Pol helps Hoshi calm down by teaching her to imagine a turbulent ocean, and to calm the waves in her mind. It’s an excellent meditation technique. I’d be interested to try the technique Tuvok taught the kids.

I loved Janeway skipping the preflight while Tom tries to do it by the book. It’s funny because Tom is such an excellent pilot, he only breaks the rules when he absolutely has to, or when he’s experimenting. I think it’s funny that he of all people is so textbook.

I loved Tuvok telling the people to do what they will, he’s not giving up the kid.

This episode was stunning, stellar, amazing. Beautifully written. Solid reminder that not all species are good or bad, some just want to be left alone. Also that the way humans work isn’t the way everyone works. Two themes I’ve been harping on that I think are critical to understanding Star Trek, and understanding other aliens if we ever encounter them in real life.

The following is an apparently quite long discussion about some of the conversations in the Delta Flyers because I think it was beautiful and important, but if you’re just here for the episodes, that’s it for tonight!

I’m not completely writing about the Delta Flyers podcast because I am not even close to synced up with them or with my watching of the episodes. But I do want to talk about something they discussed on their episode about The Cloud. McNeill talked a lot about how Tom was portrayed as a “Lady’s Man” but in a definitely not great way. I just want to address how astoundingly well they had that conversation. I’ve taken a number of classes in feminism, gender, and race studies and I know how annoying that can be so I almost always skip over the things I see in these episodes that relate to that because that’s not what these blogs are about, and this show is a product of its time (I discussed this multiple times in my DS9 blog, for those of you who are just here for Voyager). Some of the stuff on here is uncomfortable or downright offensive, and I could choose to focus on that, or I could just try and enjoy the show. I’m a huge fan of historical science fiction but you have to walk in knowing that it’s not going to conform to my values, which are modern.

All that said, McNeill approached it beautifully. It’s not an apology, and it shouldn’t be. They didn’t write the show. But he didn’t use that as an excuse, either. The whole thing is an acknowledgment that this aspect of the show wasn’t a good thing, they understand how and why and how to recognize it, they wouldn’t do it again. As a fan of the show, this is wonderful to hear addressed by people who are so central to what happened. McNeill sounded so genuine and honestly offended by himself. It gives me a lot of hope for new science fiction, like the new show McNeill is working on, to know that the people creating it actively care, give thought to, and criticize their own performance in these subject areas. You can tell that he really cares about making new things that are more respectful and inclusive. I also just love that he pointed out B’Elanna’s line where she asked Tom if he created the holoprogram and calls him a pig.

It’s worth noting that Wang and McNeill also discussed Chakotay’s Native American heritage and what a disaster that was, however, I am not in a position to comment extensively on whether or not that conversation was done well, as I am a white person. I think it was. They both seem to care very deeply about not repeating that mess in anything new they create, which, if nothing else, is a fine takeaway.

“Product of the times” is not an excuse for some of the shit that was done/said/shown on these series, and all of them had some pretty troubling stuff (although remember that I haven’t seen Picard, Discovery, or any of the really modern stuff- but even that is going to have problems to us a 25 years from now). In a number of ways, we have to evolve and learn with the shows. Hearing it from the actors themselves is such a push for the fans to do that same kind of reflection.