Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager neogothboy74, nice to see you! And don't be a stranger. I certainly missed you around here.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Don't let that life stuff get in the way of this important internet stuff. Get your ass back here! You're just upset that your jokes go over like a lead balloon.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Yes, I agree, the writing was to blame rather than the basic character or Tim Russ as an actor. It goes down to the central dilemma of Tuvok: how do you have a Vulcan without him being a pale imitation of Spock, perhaps the greatest, most iconic character in all of Star Trek? They never quite got around it for me. Too often it was simply "Vulcan=serious=arrogant", which DS9 and often Enterprise were also to blame for.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager One (**) Trivia time: Intrepid class starships include over 140 stasis chambers, that is almost four times as many stasis chambers as the amount of torpedoes they carry. I like the general idea of this episode, but the way it plays out is initially boring and eventually turns over the top. They literally turn Voyager into the Seven and Doctor show here and that's not such a bad thing because they are both intriguing characters. Unfortunately Seven's antics quickly get annoying and the episode relies upon Shmully insulting her to make things interesting. But then Shmully goes offline and Seven is left on her own, that's when things get silly as she starts imagining the crew and Borg drones taunting her about her imminent death. Any sense of subtlety the episode should have had it completely lost when the ship turns green and dry ice starts sublimating all over the place.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You forgot to mention the rule about those who go away then come back again have to buy a round. Never mind, I just did.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager 2.5 stars for "One". I thought it was boring. This was as bare-bones as a bottle show can get. The cast gets a week off and Jeri Ryan gets to carry a show. There really isn't a lot to say about it. It is mostly an hour of various mini-crises that Seven has to deal with--Tom gets out of his pod, Seven hallucinates drones, there might be a strange alien onboard, Seven and the Doctor chit chats. None of it is bad it just left me not the least bit interested. Plus I have never been all that crazy where a crewmember has something happen in their head and it plays out before us as a hallucination. I actually kept waiting for some interesting plot development to occur but unfortunately it never did. I was really hoping for a Borg cube to show up. Chalk this up as another unsatisfying Taylor script. I think I might actually like ENT's rip-off episode "Doctor's Orders" more. It had a bit more pep to it. Like I said before, VOY peaked around Prey and the season ended very weak. Not even the next episode--a season finale which usually are the stronger episodes of a season is that good. It basically had an opportunity to shake up the status quo as well as pay off the ongoing coded message from "Hunters" in a satisfying way but unfortunately it did neither and came across as an episode that could feel right at home in a string of regular mediocrity not even bothering to supply a cliffhanger or intriguing final scene. But I guess I got ahead talking about "Hope and Fear"--I have plenty to say about when the time comes.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Personally, I'd give the episode three stars, but then, I'm big on psychological focuses, given that I think Voyager should have employed them on a regular basis. Okay, so the green lighting and dry ice is more than a little hokey, but I like the fact that they actually managed to play on the idea of being all alone out there in the (in actual fact, not so) big bad Delta Quadrant. If you're going to study the effects of isolation, someone who has spent most of their life as one among many, never being alone, makes for a good choice.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager "One" was not horrible, but not my favorite. Like GodBen said, the basic idea was good, but by the end any subtlety it had left was lost. DGCatAniSiri is right in saying that seven was the logical character to pick to do a study of the effects of isolation, and I too wish a psychological view had been examined more closely and more frequently on VGR. With "One," what should have been a quiet, tense character drama episode degraded to near-farce. And don't get me started on the bend-over-backwards plot contrivance for setting up having Seven have to run the ship alone, and pulling the stasis pods ot of nowhere... Me too!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I don't mind a psychological story but this one simply didn't work for me. I think such a story is potentially interesting but this wasn't the best execution. I can't point to anything specifically it just didn't come together.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I thought One was a strong episode and I easily give it 3 out of 4 stars.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Same, I quite enjoyed it. Anyone, left alone for an extended period of time would probably start to talk to themselves to keep themselves occupied. Seven hallucinating was just an extension of that, I think.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^ I'm fine with Seven hallucinating, what annoyed me is how all the hallucinations kept saying the same thing; "You're alone and you're going to diiiiiiie!!" It was five minutes of nothing but stupid scenes of Seven imagining people telling her she's going to die, and at the end of the episode they have Seven say to Tom "Perhaps you dislike being alone." It would have been more subtle if they repeatedly hit me on the head with a hammer and shouted the message in my ear.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^ Haha, probably. Maybe the writers didn't think we got that Seven's greatest fear was being all alone and dying alone?
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager *bonk* "SEVEN HATES BEING ALONE!!!" *bonk* "SEVEN HATES BEING ALONE!!!" *bonk*
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^ So do you guys think Seven hates being alone? Seriously, this one isn't one of my faves either.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager There's something about Seven hating being alone mixed in with the work "bonk" that... actually forget it, I'll keep those thoughts private for the good of the community.