Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Well I've been unemployed for a year now, I can't afford to wash them on a monthly basis like I used to.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Unimatrix Zero (**) It might not the best way to destroy the mythology of the Borg, but having a bunch of them sneaking out at night and meeting up in a forest where they talk about their feelings and fall in love... it's one way to do it. And where did Unimatrix Zero come from? Nobody knows for sure, it's apparently some mutation that happened and affects drones at random. Ask any software developer and they'll tell you that complicated virtual reality simulations are constantly appearing at random with no known source, many of them believe that a wizard may be involved. But I digress. Unimatrix Zero exists, it's a boring place filled with boring people who do boring things, so naturally it is worth fighting for. It doesn't matter that it will involve taking on the most powerful force in the galaxy, they'll be no match for Voyager's Clever Plan™. That plan will involve three Voyager crewmembers being completely transformed into Borg, which should be good as character development because the psychological scars from that should give us at least one episode of follow-up. The episode dreams big, which is nice, but some of the concepts behind it all are either badly developed or terrible to begin with. I don't care about the fate of Unimatrix Zero, it's a dull place. The idea of a Borg civil war might be interesting were it not for the fact that the freed drones will be outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1. As for the Borg queen, I don't see what she brings to this episode. But the worst thing of all is that the Borg are unscary again, I felt they had recovered in Collective, but now they seem less dangerous than they were in Dark Frontier. Torpedoes: 74/38 Shuttles Lost: 15 Yes, I'm counting the Flyer. Right, you know the drill by now, I'll probably post a season review tomorrow afternoon and then its on to the final season.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I really enjoyed Unimatrix Zero. I give it three stars out of four. It certainly is in no danger of displacing Scorpion, Q Who , I Borg or The Best of Both Worlds from the upper tier of Borg event episodes but it is still a well crafted and potentially intriguing storyline that is set up here in the first half. Descent on TNG attempted to move towards the idea of a Borg civil war but I thought it was much more clumsily handled in its execution than what Brannon and Menosky devised here. I like this concept much more. At first when I heard about a vacation spot for certain Borg in publicity releases I wasn't sure if that really would fit well in the Borg mythology but after seeing how it was implemented here I think it works. There were a few issues with some leaps in logic designed solely to allow the story to take place that rankled such as how the Queen ever learned of its existence since drones have no memory of it when not regenerating and how Axum was able to draw Seven back to them from within this dream realm--but these were instances where I liked the idea so much I let these issues slide. I also thought Brannon did the right thing by having not just the captain assimilated but Tuvok and Torres as well. He wisely realized that the cliffhanger would draw immediate comparisons to Picard's assimilation so he altered by having three main cast members assimilated and the other twist being their assimilation was part of a bigger plan. I know some had a problem with Janeway et al undertaking voluntary assimilation but I bought it. Afterall Janeway is a little nutty plus the inclusion of seeing yet another destroyed colony earlier in the episode was just another reminder of the Borg's destructive path through the DElta Quadrant. No doubt her deal back in Scorpion to help the BOrg, while the right decision, still probably weighed heavily on her and here was an opportunity to destroy the Borg--not through destroying the collective by killing innocent victims turned Borg like was proposed in I BOrg or what Icheb's people had come up with--but through actually liberating those victims. Also I'm sure B'elanna felt a certain connection with the UZ drones seeing them much like the Maquis and the Collective like the Cardassians/Jem'Hadar. Whereas she was helpless to do anything to help the Maquis here she could be pivotal in helping not only modify the nanovirus but deliver it and prevent another slaughter of rebels fighting for liberation against a heavily powered force. Tuvok also made sense given the fact he is not only Janeway's best friend but as head of security responsiblefor her safety. Plus as the Vulcan axiom goes "the needs of the many...". If successful his temporary assimilation compared to the salvation of trillions of lifeforms would be worth it. I did wonder if it was necessary for Janeway to saythat Starfleet would have a problem with her starting a civil war. Yes if we were talking of Klingons but we know from Descent that Nechayev told Picard to do whatever it takes to bring the Collective down so I would suspect like the Omega Directive, the Prime Directive would be suspended when it came to stopping the Borg. Susana Thompson did a good job as the Queen. By this point in the series I had just given myself over to the idea of the Queen as a leader and the drones as her henchmen. The final act was quite exciting from start to finish--the preparations before disembarking where Janeway et al get a final moment to say their good-bye before heading off on their mission and Seven gives last minute instructions to the rebels, the battle sequence, the action on the tactical cube with the trio being overrun and injected with nanoprobes to the parting shot of the trio as drones. I also liked this story because a Borg civil war could be a nice final season arc with an epic scope. VOY really lacked an epic feel and any arcs to drive its ending and having just come off a year earlier with DS9's Final Chapter I really wanted something similiar for VOY and I thought this could definitely provide that. Unfortunately it really never fulfilled its potential and that was definitely disappointing.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Unimatrix Zero was a piece of shit. It ruined the Borg, and the only good thing in it was the apparance of the Tactical Cube. Janeway, Tuvok and Torres being fakeassimilated was insanely stupid, especially considering they'll be back to normal at the end of the episode, even though the Borg cut out large pieces of their flesh (Probably without sedation) and replaced them with machines.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager That's a great thought. It would have been great for a character moment. I would have loved to have had a scene where B'Elanna and Chakotay get to talk about the similarities between this fight and the Maquis'. But, since it didn't happen, now the episode is tarnished further for me, because I'll always remember what a great scene they didn't include. My main problem with Unimatrix Zero, besides the unexplained appearance of the place (a place that a certain set of Borg ALL visit during their regeneration cycle? Yeah, maybe that'd fly if they were all telepaths or something - this is a psuedo-explanation meant to give us an answer and quickly moving on before anyone can say anything about it), or the idea of willingingly being assimilated with the hope that they'll retain their individuality, stems out of the conclusion, so I'll save most of the rantings for this episode for there. Still, it seems to be shamelessly attempting to draw on BoBW's cliffhanger, hoping to match it. It doesn't.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Season 6 Review That's a very spiky graph in the middle, there's a string of 10 alternations where the score goes up and down, up and down... The average score for the season was 4.769, but that's a largely because of how much I hated the Irish holodeck episodes, if you remove those from the calculation the score is 5.167. Unfortunately those episodes do exist and I have to include the scores for them, but they do skew the results down. Just like season 4, the most popular score this season was 7, although there was more average episodes than in season 4. If we ignore the two Fair Haven episodes then all the scores fit within the 2-8 range, I considered none of the episodes to be all-time greats, but the only all-time worst were the Irish crap that I'm unusually sensitive to. 11 episodes were below average, 5 were average and 10 were above average. Best episode: Memorial Worst episode: Spirit Folk The Writers As with season 5, We have two new staff writers this season; Robert Doherty previouly wrote two episodes before joining the staff this year, and Raf Green joined up too. Both of them will stick around through seasons 6 and 7. Mike Sussman also co-wrote one episode but he will be back for season 7, and all of Enterprise, so I'm including him. (He also wrote The Swarm in season 3 which was never included in the writer graph, but now it will be.) Braga and Menosky both scored 5.75, but Menosky wrote twice as many episodes as Braga so Menosky wins this season. Biller and Raf Green both score 5.333 out of 3 episodes, so they're tied for third place. Sussman's one episode was average. Michael Taylor had a relatively poor season to score 4.6 out of 5 episodes, while Doherty's debut season was worse with a score of 3.5 out of four. But the golden boy of season 4, Bryan Fuller, is the real loser here with an awful score of 3.167 out of 6 episodes. How the mighty have fallen. This is how the writers stand after six seasons. Menosky and Braga are still falling short of overtaking Michael Piller with scores of 5.606 and 5.529 respectively, since Braga has only two more episodes left and Menosky only the one it seems very unlikely that they will manage to beat Piller. However, Raf Green has a real chance of overtaking all three of them if he has a good final season. Biller is averaging 4.957, so he has a shot of bringing his score above 5 in the final year, so too does Michael Taylor whose score was dragged down to 4.923 this season. Fuller went from being in the top tier writers to his current score of 4.706, hopefully he can salvage that next year. Including The Swarm from season 3 brings Sussman's score down to 4. However, Doherty's debut season on the writing staff combined with his scores for Vis a Vis and Bliss have made him my new least favourite writer on the show with a score of 3 from 6 episodes. What Would GodBen Do? Brannon Braga somehow got lost in Thailand and can't find his way out, Ron Moore still quit Voyager in a huff and Rick Berman just plain doesn't like Joe Menosky, so I've been hired as the new head writer for the sixth season. How would I have done things differently? My plan to improve season 3? Turn Basics Part 2 into a three episode arc. My plan to improve season 4? Turn Scorpion Part 2 into a three episode arc. My plan to improve season 5? Turn Night into a three episode arc. My plan to improve season 6? Leave Equinox Part 2 as one episode. I don't see the point in dragging out that episode to be anything more than a two-parter, having Voyager take more than one episode to find and capture Equinox would have made them seem incompetent. I certainly want more follow-up to Equinox though! They should have had an episode or two about integrating the remaining Equinox crew into Voyager, and Ransom or Burke should have survived in order to stand trial for what happened. They already dropped the ball on this by killing Seska at the beginning of season 3 without giving us a trial, they made the same mistake here. Why not keep the Equinox around for the season? Equinox survives and is salvageable, so they use Voyager's magic healing abilities on the Equinox to bring it back to a workable condition. Chakotay is given command of the ship and he starts acting a little more independently from Janeway, perhaps even breaking her orders and using the Equinox to go on some mission he feels is morally justified (á la Tom in Thirty Days). I've said for the last three seasons that Chakotay's character has been useless since Seksa died, this would give him some much-needed direction and it could also do the same for Harry by making him the first officer. In Unimatrix Zero Part 2 Chakotay is forced to sacrifice the Equinox in order to rescue Janeway and co. Yes, I'm am stealing the Pegasus plot from BSG, so sue me. Actually, I'm not such a fan of Unimatrix Zero and feel the episode needed some alterations. The idea of assisting in creating a Borg civil war is interesting but I don't like the concept of Unimatrix Zero itself and wish there had been another way. It could have tied in with Child's Play, they find a way of altering the pathogen in Icheb so that it affects certain races within the Borg and helps them transform back into individuals. It would affect 1 in 4 Borg, not 1 in 1,000,000, that way the rebel Borg have a chance to inflict serious damage upon the collective rather than being a petty nuisance that wont go anywhere. Janeway and the others are modified to carry the pathogen and they allow themselves to be assimilated in order to infect the collective. Statistics Shuttles Lost: 15 Torpedoes: 74/38 Harry Deaths: 3 Season 1 Average: 5.867 Season 2 Average: 4.692 Season 3 Average: 4.269 Season 4 Average: 5.231 Season 5 Average: 4.92 Season 6 Average: 4.769 Overall Average (144 episodes): 4.889 In Summation This season reminded me of a weaker version of season 4; instability in the quality, several good episodes, fewer "meh" episodes and a drop of quality in the final third of the season. It was less of a slog to get through than season 5 and its long string of average episodes, although Fair Haven has caused the score to be lower than season 5. As we head into the final season the score stands 0.111 away from breaking even with an score of 5.0, in order to achieve that season 7 will have to achieve an average score of 5.667, putting it up there with the likes of season 1. Whether I remain a Voyager "hater" now rests upon the shoulder's of the new head writer, Kenneth Biller. Take it away, Ken...
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Well he really didn't co-write UZ. Plus if you read the article he posted a few weeks back you can see how his input was very minor. UZ is really a Braga and Menosky story. I'm pretty sure Doherty also wrote season four's "Vis a Vis". I told you Fuller's work isn't that impressive. I'm not too crazy about trials. I know Moore had mentioned wanting to do a trial story but if it would be something akin to Baltar's trial on nBSG I'm glad they didn't. Except one or two isolated moments I found that rather underwhelming. Who really cares about this? The nanovirus that was released that restored individuality to the drones did the same thing as the virus MacGuffin you suggest. I really don't see the difference. Both would be a means to restore their selves so they could fight back. The UZ drones could still inflict damage on the Collective. The plan appeared based on Part II was for the liberated drones to proceed to each ship's vinculum(Infinte Regress) and disable it like Kirok did freeing the remaining non-UZ drones and seizing control of the ship. All it would take is one UZ drone on each ship to liberate the whole thing. There might only initially be 1 to 1000000 but soon enough those numbers would change drastically hence the Queen snuffing out ships with drones she could no longer hear. Which is what happened. The only difference is you would have had them carrying Icheb's pathogen which apparently much like Hugh's invasive program would have only affected the drones on the ship JTT were on and halting the story whereas the writers wisely had a technovirus that having been developed from a Borg technovirus could be uploaded into the central plexus without being flagged as a foreign threat being introduced because it would be recognized as Borg.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Part of the problem was having Chakotay ruin the surprise at the end of part 1, and not even allowing the viewers a little suspense over whether the fakeassimilaion was part of the plan or not. I think UZ was an interesting concept, in having a zone that the Collective couldn't control. But it was poorly executed.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I've always thought that Voyager the show would have been improved by having other ships (usually alien ones, but in this example the Equinox) flying along with the USS Voyager for multiple episodes every now and then — opportunities for arcs and subplots and all that. Oh, well.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Actually, I was referring to The Haunting of Deck Twelve, he co-wrote the teleplay with Biller and Fuller. Yeah, Memory Alpha really screwed me over on that guy, his page doesn't list the episodes where he is credited Robert J. Doherty. IMDb says that they're the same person and credited him with Vis a Vis and Bliss, so I updated the graphs with those details. Personally, I greatly enjoyed the majority of Baltar's trial and would have enjoyed something similar on Voyager. I don't watch lawyer-based shows because they're not my thing, but I like it when Trek delves into that arena every once in a while, something along the lines of The Drumhead would have been nice. Firstly, I don't like the representation of Unimatrix Zero as some sort of happy forest tribe, and I don't like how random the whole thing is, so I'm trying to get rid of the thing. What I like about modifying Icheb's pathogen is that it would allow the Borg children to play a part in the bigger picture, and I love it when season finales use elements established earlier in the season, such as the message from Starfleet being used in the season 4 finale. I find that things like that help give a sense of closure to each season. Well that was never defined in part 1 and I never got the sense from the first part that the UZ rebels would be anything more than a nuisance. Judging by how we never hear from them again it is easy to assume that that's all that UZ was and they were promptly wiped out in the weeks following their liberation. (I don't read the novels, I only follow the events on the shows, so UZ may have played a part in the novels but that has no impact upon me.) They would have planned for that and found a way for the pathogen to be transmitted beyond the ship. All I want to do is get rid of Unimatrix Zero because I felt that execution was stupid and boring.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Unimatrix Zero, Part 2 (*½) From Scorpion, Part 2: Nah, lets not let facts get in the way of a kewl one-liner. If only the Borg had the ability to open some sort of interdimensional rift that would allow instant passage to fluidic space, then we wouldn't have this pathetic excuse for getting rid of Seven's love interest of the week. Oh, wait... No it bloody well ain't! From Scorpion again: Fluidic space is in another dimension. The Beta Quadrant is most definitely not. KABOOM! At least another 75,000 dead in order to get 140 people home a few years earlier. Maybe I'm a heartless git (anything is possible) but I say that if Queenie wants to blow up a tenth of the Borg fleet in order to destroy a few million independent drones then you shouldn't try to stop her. You're at war with the Borg and this will significantly hinder any attempts by them to assimilate other worlds, including Earth. Billions of lives will be saved from the horrors of assimilation and all you've got to do is sit black and watch the fireworks. And to be perfectly frank, I don't like these attempts to humanise the Borg. I think that Picard made the wrong decision in I, Borg and I think that Janeway's moral objection to the Borg shooting themselves in the foot is silly. Not quite as silly as B'Elanna being knocked out of the way in the Borg's pursuit of Janeway and none of the Borg thinking to capture her just in case she decides to make sabotage the ship at the end. Why are the Borg so dumb? Things I liked? Tuvok's descent into dronedom, it is interesting that the one with the most mental discipline is the one who broke first. There's a nice scene where Shmully tries to mask his pain while talking to Seven about Axum, Picardo sold me on that scene. And stuff gets blowed up really nicely towards the end, although it was a little sickening to hear a Borg speaking technical jargon, it assists the ruination of a once incredible foe. Torpedoes: 77/38 Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Menosky has left the building.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager So much hope, so much potential that "Unimatrix Zero" and a Borg civil war had and it never went anywhere. I kept waiting for it to be revisited in one of the season seven telefilms or in the finale but nothing materialized but a bit of namedropping. I give it just 2 stars out of 4. Disappointing. interesting set up means nothing if the payoff isn't up to what came before it. I don't mind plot conceits but be consistent. The queen should have immediately detected the severed JTT as we saw her doing when she started blowing up the cubes. At the end of Part I even the queen inhaled like she could sense them. I was more than willing because I liked the idea of this storyline so much to suspend disbelief that the freed drones couldn't be heard any longer. Braga and Menosky clearly didn't have much of an idea after using up all the elements in part I of what to do with part II which is sad given that this was one of those ideas that should have spawned no shortage of interesting directions. Clearly Braga and Menosky were going through the motions with their hearts elsewhere--Brannon with developing ENT and Menosky back in Italy. I was surprised to see that they spent so much time in this episode with the trio trying to break into the plexus and uploading the virus. I think they could have streamlined this a bit. I was also surprised to see Tuvok fall victim first given the famous Vulcan mental discipline but I guess the telepathic nature of Vulcans made him more susceptible to the link. It was neat seeing the trio in full Borg mode and the intriguing sight of them as individuals while looking all decked out in their Borg get-up. One thing though I didn't like was the while holographic projection of Janeway in her regular appearance. No doubt it was to allow as little time for Mulgrew in the makeup chair. I also was hoping for more about the origin of the queen and uz--some kind of intriguing connection revealed possibly even tying the two together somehow. Maybe UZ was a recreation of the homeworld of the original species that ultimately became the BOrg and this was their way of holding on to what they once were and over time as was mentioned by Seven in "Dragon's Tooth" the memories from that far back were fragmentary hence no memory of it. I felt we were on the cusp of this when she visited UZ herself and started talking about how she was assimilated as a child but sadly it never went much further. And another moment of interest was when Axum spoke of going straight to U1 and disrupting the Queen's hold yet it never went there. I would have preferred more of this than the pointless and uninteresting Seven/Axum relationship. I was not for one moment the least bit interested in it. There were just too many dull scenes padding the hour--the Chakotay/Paris scene/arguing etc. There were a few interesting or exciting moments--the sight of Borg vessels firing on each other, that one drone with Queen who once regaining his individuality lashes out at her, the Janeway/Queen showdown over the destruction of the cubes. I actually thought part of the reason the writers made the ship JTT ended up on being a tactical cube was for two clever story reasons--one to make it so dificult to gain access that assimilation was the only way to gain access to the plexus and the second was to let JTT capture such a formidable vessel which would certainly help and come in handy. The writers also failed to provide a plausible reason for why the UZ drones didn't offer up a transwarp coil(s) This really could have been a nice three or four episode arc--they could have brought in 8472, Starfleet and other races who had an interest in the Borg's downfall working together across the entire galaxy but alas nothing. I mean why were they in such a hurry to wrap up this particular story. It wasn't like they had a lot of other pressing dangling story threads to get to. I mean was "Q2", "Natural Law", "Nightengale", "Drive", "Prophecy", "Friendship One" more urgent or interesting than one of the few ongoing threads than the Borg threat.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Welp, that season cliffhanger was resolved in all of five seconds. 'Oh no, we've been assim- No, wait, that was the plan.' Including some technobabble technology that is never heard of before or after this episode that allows our heroes to somehow manage to retain their individuality. Honestly, I think the fact that this is just a complete non-issue is what bothers me most about this half of the two-parter. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH. This is a piece of technology that allows people who are assimilated to be able to retain their individual personalities - in and of itself, it should have been a focus (perhaps a b-plot). But more important than that, it's EXPERIMENTAL, and the Captain, Tactical Officer, and Chief Engineer board a Borg vessel and get assimilated in the name of testing it - meaning if it had failed, they'd just handed over three of the four people (the fourth being Seven) who know most about Voyager and her crew and systems to the Borg. How is it that these people are so stupid and yet survive? Dumb luck can only get you so far... But seriously, you'd think this kind of thing would have a greater importance than to be just casually tossed aside.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager The whole time I was watching the last part of UZ Pt. 1, I was thinking, "Isn't this what redshirts are for?" I mean really -- sending your captain, chief engineer and head of security to mess with the Borg? At the very least, it should have been Chakotay instead of Janeway -- I believe that's an actual Starfleet regulation, come to think of it, the First Officer leads potentially hostile away missions. I'm pretty sure tampering with a Borg vessel counts as a potentially hostile away mission. And then in Part 2 when they revealed their "cunning master plan" it was even more unbelievable. Send Ayala. Send Kim. (No wait, don't send Kim, he'll just get himself incapacitated like he always does.) Send Harren or Mulcahey or Vorik .... but for the love of God, the CAPTAIN? WTF ...
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Is it me or has this once highly active and interesting thread started to run out of gas. Nobody hardly comments anymore.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I've been reading but I've been running kind of my own review thread on Babylon 5. Really that is the only thread on the entire board I've been following.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I've just begun watching season 7 myself and am still reading this thread. But to be honest I'm more interested in GodBen's upcoming Enterprise reviews, because I like that series better.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I blame the government. It has certainly become quieter in the thread for the last season or so, but the view-counter is still going up by a few hundred every day. Part of the problem is me, by season 5 things started to become very "meh" in my opinion, and in an attempt to keep myself interested in the thread I started turning more and more towards jokes rather than analysis. Some people probably lost interest because of that. Many of the people who had been around from the beginning of the thread also stopped visiting the board as frequently as they once did so they no longer have the time to post in here, and for noobs the shear length of the thread might be intimidating. Also, many of the people who have an interest in the thread were probably "haters" themselves and gave up on the show at some point, those people might have stopped paying attention to the thread once I passed the point where they gave up on the show. And apparently some people were offended by a joke I made about rohypnol in my Timeless review.