The Continuity and Serialization of Voyager

Methinks 90 percent of Starfleet is in Security, admin and catering, just like in the real military (in peace time.).

 

Do they need catering when there's a replicator in every room?

 

You think replicators just "work" without elbow grease?

Constantly sourcing new steams of biomatter, making sure that everyone is eating right and not making bombs or getting hammered?

 

Okay but that's an engineering trade, not catering.

As to the eating right I suspect the real magic of replicators is that everything you eat is perfectly balanced nutrition whether its a steak or an ice cream. Nothing has more fat or badness.

 

On the USS Voyager though, all the men have to ask Janeway if they can have their balls back.

 

If they want more balls, or just want to re-up to the correct number of balls after an incident, there's a pill they can get from sickbay to grow some more.

 

This conversation has gotten really disturbing.

I've just finished Persistence of Vision, and have to say that I wish the show had revisited Janeway's Gothic noir holonovel one last time to finish it up instead of it just being abandoned, but the events of the episode at least provided a perfect excuse for abandoning it from an in-story perspective.

I wish we'd actually seen Harry's hallucination of Libby instead of him just talking about it, but that's neither here nor there.

B'Elanna's hallucinated tryst with Chakotay added an interesting layer to her character even if it wasn't ever expanded on any further, and I liked her conversation with Janeway at the end of the episode as well.

One other thing I noticed and is that, although the Admiral Paris role was recast for Pathfinder and subsequent episodes, the new actor, Richard Herd, is almost a dead-ringer for the original actor, Warren Munson, who appears in this episode.

It was also nice to see Kes' telepathic abilities get some 'play' again, although if you'd seen this episode without having seen at least Time and Again, you'd be lacking the proper context for said abilities, making this episode another instance of actual story content belying the concept of episodes being able to be aired out-of-order.

Switching gears back to Partuition for a second, I wish that episode had included an explanation for why Janeway had her hair in an entirely different style than in the episodes that preceded and follow it, but do think it creates a nice little bit of what was more than likely 'unintentional continuity' since it gives you a 'preview' of sorts for her later-series hairstyle.

One last bit of continuity-related commentary on PoV: even without it being 'telegraphed' in any way, the teaser reveal of B'Elanna and Harry trying to work with the ship's holo-matrix to let him appear in key areas other than Sickbay is a nice bit of continuity hearkening back to Projections.

 

McCoy grew a new Kidney with a pill in 20 minutes.

But they went no further with the satellite emitters, and even after the Killing Game, they pulled everything down locking the Doctor down to the same restricted mobility zones.

 

I'm watching the first act of Tattoo, and Chakotay and Janeway's conversation has me wondering why they wouldn't have been aware of the discoveries made during the events of The Chase.

I do wish Chakotay's home colony had been referred to by name (Dorvan V), but the description is succinct enough to still count as a nice bit of reference even without the name being said.

 

What if you took that pill and you already had two kidneys. Would you get another one.

I would have liked it if Trek had more about colony worlds. Bab 5 was interesting in showing the divisions between Mars and Earth and how colony world peoples were often very different. It was way too homogenous in Star Trek.

 

There's some stuff where Mars and Earth are cited as having different entry dates into Federation membership.

Which means that several different planets (seats on the Council.)in the Federation can be represented by the same specieses.

8 Kidneys explains how Scotty and Kirk made it to middle age despite their drinking problems.

 

I think the continuity was pretty bad, when the writers couldn't remember whether Lt. Carey or Samantha Wildman were still alive or not.

 

^ Not (re)using characters has nothing to do with continuty.

 

It has a little to do with continuity.

Where were they before this week and and where are they for the next 3 years?

It's fraudulent to believe that their continuing adventures on Voyager are still taking place on Voyager less than a hundred meters in one direction through some hull plating of wheresoever the camera is pointing.

Voyager is tiny.

 

It does when it makes logical sense for a character to appear and then they don't because they writers thought they killed them off, but really didn't.

Why was Naomi Wildman spending all her time with 7 of 9 or Neelix, rather then her own mother? Why wasn't Samantha Wildman spending any time with Naomi? Was she just a bad mother or something. Its not good story telling to have a mother and daughter on a show and then just have the mother disappear with no explanation, but keep the daughter around, it begs a lot of questions.

 

No, it's not. Unless a character is explicitly killed off or otherwise shown to have 'moved on', they remain part of a show even if they're never seen again.

With a crew compliment of between 140-150 crewmembers, we are not going to see every single person who is serving on the ship every single week, but that doesn't mean they suddenly cease to be serving on the ship.

 

Exactly, TOS and TNG did that all the time with us never seeing come crew members again. Doesn't mean they're dead, just that they're somewhere else on the ship.

 

Which brings us back to Voyager is tiny.

97 characters were physically and literally named out of 160ish (152 + Borg kids + Equinox 5.).

I would have erupted with joy to see the Delanney sisters 2 or 3 times a year.

 

It is sort of a shame that they couldn't have had a few bit part dialogue actors return, like TOS did with Eddie Paskey, John Winston, and David L. Ross, and how TNG gradually fleshed out Colm Meaney's originally unnamed recurring crewman. VOY had Tarik Ergin's Ayala, but he seldom got any lines at all.

 

Ayala had no lines. 113 episodes and not a line. Poor bastard.