As an Electrical Engineer, the cloaking "frequency" in the frosting of the cake was utter and complete bullshit. At least make an effort to try and give me pseudoscience/treknobabble, don't try to pass off sugary sweets as a frequency. Star Trek is generally good at making their science sound believable in the realm of "you know its fake, so go along with it". Bad stuff like that though takes me out of it.
I don't think that the other Kazon in Jabin's own group would think he was weak for asking for help against superior invaders from the other side of the Galaxy...
Yeah they would, But Jabin was a fool if he didn't take everything he had after Janeway. To call for reinforcements I would be assuming (bah!) that he was calling on those outside h is immediate influence, ie a nearby sect he assumed (BAH!) that he could trust, which he probably couldn't. In that fight jabin had two shuttles, and a cityship. Later Voyager survived a confrontation with 20 cityships. The best he could hope for to come from Ocampa (Quickly) would be a few more shuttles.
I was reading an episode review by one of the reviewers for this site, and something really stuck out to me: "Do Voyager's lazy, recycle-happy writers not remember those events? Or do they simply wish us to pretend they never happened, so they can swipe some of the concepts and even some of the dialogue for later episodes? I'd accuse them of stealing the basic concept of "Riddles" from Original Trek's "This Side Of Paradise," in which Spock loses his inhibitions, plus "The Changeling," in which Uhura loses her memories because of an alien scan...but that can't be the case because most of the current writing staff swears they never watched and never liked Real Trek. If they were smart enough to be deliberately borrowing from it, Voyager would be a much better series. Probably they just stole this idea from Regarding Henry instead. I'm not going to deny that I enjoyed this episode while watching it; I did, I thought the performances were terrific, and the directing was both innovative and effective. But it's impossible to think about or be moved by these characters for longer than the 40-some minutes of the show, because even without a typical Trek reset button ending, we can be sure that they will return to square one every week, without incorporating anything they've learned or felt unless they happen to be the resident Borg boob - I mean babe. Why should I believe Tuvok or Neelix, or Janeway or Chakotay or Paris or Torres or any of the rest of them, will learn and grow, when all previous canon on this series seems to get erased on a weekly basis? They're going to be the first crew ever to explore an alien quadrant and come home having learned exactly nothing. So that's what this series is worth." Even though this isn't something I've discussed to great lengths in my reviews, it's something that has bothered me quite a bit. It's not realistic that important events and character development would all be completely forgotten by the next week. I remember back to a season 4 DS9 episode called Hippocratic Oath where O'Brien and Bashir encountered a group of rogue (?) Jem'Hadar. Bashir tried to create an antidote to cure of them of their addiction to Ketracel White. Had he been successful it could have completely changed the course of events that followed. But before Bashir was able to finish his research O'Brien destroyed it because he needed to get Bashir to come with him. IMO, what O'Brien did was absolutely unforgivable, and I think Bashir might have felt similarly. Realistically this should have had a huge impact upon their friendship, but a week later it seemed that the events of Hippocratic Oath had been completely forgotten. This bothered me quite a bit not only because it was unrealistic, but because DS9's continuity was one of its greatest strengths. I hated to see that continuity just thrown out the window after this episode, especially considering that Hippocratic Oath is one of my all time favorite DS9 episodes. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that DS9 was sooooo good with continuity that when it screwed up once it bugged the hell out of me. With Voyager, on the other hand, it happens so often that it no longer even phases me. So, while I may be giving Voyager episodes a lot of high scores, those scores are for the self-contained stories, not for the series as a whole. There isn't a lot of cohesiveness between episodes, with the exception of 7 of 9 episodes, and that bothers me. I feel like I'm just watching random space adventure of the week every time I watch Voyager because rarely do episodes build upon what came before. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Kazon Arc was, and still is, the highpoint of Voyager's entire run. (unless you count Ron Moore's 1.5 episodes as a run, in which case I might have to go with them). Anyway, sorry about my rambling. Continue on with the discussion.
I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. I'm in the "yes it gets better" camp. Skip season 2 & 3 mostly, except maybe for the few good ones people mentioned.
You Will Fail post Alice was fairly heavy with script conventions. Like- Tom gave up everything; jobs, friends, romance just to be with his ship.It needed a new everything. He asks Chakotay for more parts; a broadband sensor matrix, EPS conduit, and a tactical data module. If he steals these he'll go to prison. ___________________ Apparently in 'Riddles' this is what Tuvok lacked that was abundant in Tom and was taken away.
You only say bland because we've lived though, survived Kara Thrace. (Who ironically was about nearly the same size and age as Jennifer lien.) In the 90s, we thought that this was all hard ass.
Voyager had it's problems, but my biggest pet peeve is that this guy never got any lines. He just looks so interesting, his face is full of character! How long has he been in science division? like, forty years? He must have seen some amazing things. I bet he has some hilarious stories about Miles O'Brien too. He served on the Enterprise D, after all. I bet he calls people in operations "red shirts" still, and they look around confused. "out of my way red shirts, bad-ass science officer coming through!"
@Admiralscreed. Pretty much, that's my view of the show too. Individual episodes like "Barge of the Dead" can make you go wow, that was amazing trek. But then you think of the bigger picture, the only feeling is being underwhelmed. That's why I simply consider Voyager a collection of a lot of very good sci-fi stories. I've noticed some fans kind of make up these big narratives for Voyager, like I sometimes see in youtube comments "Oh Voyager was the best show, such an epic story of a captain struggling to get her crew through the Alpha quadrant against so many obstacles and the crew struggling with isolation blah blah blah", and its just like, well hang on a minute, you're really just saying what the show was supposed to be but that's not really the reality. Its almost like people make these things up in their head because its more logical given the show's concept to think Voyager was all those things, than to think it was about a self-repairing ship that was far from home but really didn't struggle that much more than a ship like the Enterprise. Its funny because reading an interview with Kenneth Biller a while back (which I found for the Kes thread since he was quite open about feeling it was a mistake to let her go), he said he was annoyed that during his episode "Lifesigns", there was a scene with Jonas talking to the Kazon (which no doubt Piller insisted be inserted to desperately try and keep the Kazon arc going). He felt like any viewer watching that episode would be annoyed because they didn't know what was going on, and that's just utter BS to me. As Moore said in his interview, viewers are aware when they randomly dip into a show they haven't been keeping up with, there may be a few things they've missed, treating them like some kind of moron who'll put their foot through the TV if they're not 100% up on what's going on totally counters the ambition and potential of the show, and that should be Biller's mistress, not a very small percentage of mouth-breathers who get confused ridiculously easily. So in the end it just harms the show and you're left with a lot of characters you literally could not give one flying f**k about, while on DS9 even character who you may not have liked (Bashir for me), you at least are marginally interested in what happens with them because you feel like you know them. Its no surprise the Doctor and Seven are the most popular VOY characters.
Like all writers in science fiction R. Moore gets involved in the literature and forgets the big why concerning the audience and the show. He's writing about things that are real and these are-- anti-gravity, dampening field, holo-decks, transporters, shields, phasor guns and warp-drive. These latter are not technobable items but visions that come through the door. They are also unprovable and todays' scientists aren't even beginning to prove them. This gap is written all over Star Treks' eps. and will continue to be the reason Star Trek isn't met like "Alley Mcbeal" or C.S.I. series. These men must have vegetables for brains.
Don't know what on earth you're talking about. Moore is just commenting on the need for some kind of continuity and storylines that run through the show, rather than just continuing on in a totally episodic fashion. Its nothing to do with technobabble.
You're on some serious mushrooms, because "previously on:" is a literary device used by many television programs, including many sci-fi shows. Not only did DS9 make liberal use of it, but LOST had one before every episode. nuBSG and Caprica did as well. Not sure how futuristic technology is negatively affected by continuity...
Agreed. I think what ruins "Alice" is that they gave the ship physical form when it would have been much creepier had the "personality" of the ship been left as just a voice. Giving the ship a physical human form disconnects the audience from the ship itself. They missed the point on what made the car in "Christine" so haunting. Honestly Tuvok and Neelix remind me more of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" where Tuvok is Felix Unger & Neelix is Oscar Madison and while Felix think Oscar an uncaring pig, Oscar would look after Felix and feel obligated if he were ever in the same position as Tuvok was. "Riddles" shows how well their friendship has progressed much like "The Odd Couple". Tim Russ and Ethan Philips performances really sells it. Best Line-The Doc; "If anyone can provoke Mr. Tuvok, it's you Mr. Neelix."
Apart from the two parters, I can think of just once that majel Said "previously on Star trek Voyager" after the opening credits and that was Coldfire to explain what a caretaker was before the audience sat down to watch Susperia run amok. WHAT A CARETAKER IS!!!!! They assumed that their audience had not seen the pilot or couldn't remember the plot of the TV show they were watching. No respect. Mean while they needed a Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer every week, and it went on for 5 minutes just to keep everything straight, because everything mattered and everything was connected... Do you remember when Majandra Delphino used to stand in front of a white board and and draw really bad cartoons to flow-diagram explain the Previously on Roswell? THAT WAS AWESOME! (Gosh she is so pretty.)
Dragon's Teeth: Interesting aliens-of-the-week, an engaging story, and good performances by everyone. Janeway's line at the end about seeing them again bugged the hell out of me though because it's obvious that Voyager will never encounter them again. They'll forget everything that happened in this episode by next week. I was in a lousy state of mind watching this (still really am) episode, so it was really hard for me to enjoy it, but being as objective as possible I think that Dragon's Teeth is very good. If I was happier I am sure I would have enjoyed it much more. 7/10
I wish I could say you were wrong. Anyhoo, "Dragon's Teeth" felt like a competent episode. The idea was pretty good, there were some actiony scenes....but overall it just felt very "meh" to me. Good for what it was meant to be, but nothing that really excited me.
That annoyed me, too. Why bother throwing in that line if the writer's have no intention of revisiting the Vaadwaur? Reminds me of the throwaway at the end of TNG's Conspiracy.
Well we do see a Vaddware in the Ts... crowd. And as cool as they were to look at, they were also 900 years out of date.