A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[TheGodBen]

Praetorian wrote:

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Even if there's an entity called "Federation" in the 29th century, it doesn't mean it's a direct continuation of the 24th Century UFP. Like for example the (Western) Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. For all we know the UFP was destroyed in the 25th century, constituting the beginning of a new Dark Age, that lasted until the 29th century when a new Federation appeared. This would also explain why the technology wasn't all that.

I thought about that and I really like it. It says that the Federation is an idea which cannot be crushed, it can be halted for a time but as Benny Russell said, "you cannot destroy an idea". However, I don't think that is what the writers had in mind with this episode, and the whole concept is sort of nullified because Braxton seemed to wear a Starfleet insignia.

Count Zero wrote:

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While I can understand your concerns, I never had any doubts the Federation would win the Dominion War. Even if the Xindi arc hadn't played in Trek's past I'd never have doubted Earth's survival. Trek does have some constraints, you can't go all bleak, there always has to be hope and optimism. This goes for other shows, too.

It is a very strange thing to complain about because the narrative imperative almost always demands that the good guys will win. But when I was 12 or 13 I read a book about a teenage girl who feared she was going to be kidnapped and murdered because somebody had been killing teenage girls like her throughout the book. The story progressed like a normal teenage mystery novel and at the end she find out who the murderer is and gets him arrested.

But in the final pages she finds out that he was actually an innocent man and the girl ends up being captured by the real murderer who says that he is going to rape and kill her. The End. This was a book aimed at teenagers which had a really dark ending, and I guess it spoiled me for most future forms of entertainment because it is very unusual to come across anything other than a happy ending.

I was pretty sure that the Feds would win the Dominion War, but I like having that 1% of doubt. I loved watching the final season of The West Wing because I honestly didn't know who would win the election, and I wouldn't have been that surprised if the finale of BSG had involved the destruction of the human race. I like not knowing where the story is going, and it is one of the reasons why I hate teasers which take place at the end of the story and the rest of the episode is shown as some form of flashback.

Praetor wrote:

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The rest - the setup and the problem - kind of hurt my head. As did the lack of Eugenics Wars.

I think destro hit the nail on the head; if they had talked about the Eugenics War then everyone would have wanted to see that rather than time-travelling antics. The EW is one of the big missing links in Star Trek and I would say that most of us want to know what happened and would love the opportunity to see it on-screen. But the writers weren't interested in telling that story so it is best not to tease the audience with something they aren't going to get.

StarryEyed wrote:

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I'm not going to comment on GodBen's rating because I always thought is was ridiculous to rate parts of episodes. It may have been aired in two parts but it's ONE story.

It is tricky and I did considered watching both parts and doing one review for both. Ultimately I decided not to do that because it was produced as two episodes and it was intended by the writers to be seen in two sittings. Feature-length episodes like Dark Frontier will only get one review, but two-parters will get two.

Besides, there are some two-parters where there is a noticeable difference in quality between the two parts, such as Scorpion, and in that situation I don't want to blame the first part for the problems which occurred in an entirely different season.

[Count Zero]

GodBen wrote:

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It is a very strange thing to complain about because the narrative imperative almost always demands that the good guys will win. But when I was 12 or 13 I read a book about a teenage girl who feared she was going to be kidnapped and murdered because somebody had been killing teenage girls like her throughout the book. The story progressed like a normal teenage mystery novel and at the end she find out who the murderer is and gets him arrested.

But in the final pages she finds out that he was actually an innocent man and the girl ends up being captured by the real murderer who says that he is going to rape and kill her. The End. This was a book aimed at teenagers which had a really dark ending, and I guess it spoiled me for most future forms of entertainment because it is very unusual to come across anything other than a happy ending.

I wonder if that's a pedagogically useful ending... However, some books for teenagers are pretty bleak. in 6th grade we read a book in which the Cold War ended with nuclear war and Germany got nuked. The state of some of the survivors was described in rather gory detail and nearly everyone died. We read this after the nuclear threat had ended but the book was published well before that.

GodBen wrote:

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I was pretty sure that the Feds would win the Dominion War, but I like having that 1% of doubt. I loved watching the final season of The West Wing because I honestly didn't know who would win the election, and I wouldn't have been that surprised if the finale of BSG had involved the destruction of the human race. I like not knowing where the story is going, and it is one of the reasons why I hate teasers which take place at the end of the story and the rest of the episode is shown as some form of flashback.

I can understand this sentiment even if I don't share it in all cases. Sometimes I appreciate the knowledge that the story will end in a hopeful/positive way, even if a lot of tragic things happen. That doesn't mean there can't be major developments storywise and characterwise, though. I'm thinking of Doctor Who, which has a lot of tragedy and bleakness at times, even the main character can die, but at the end I can rest easy knowing that there always will be someone like the Doctor. But I'm babbling on...

Guy Gardener, maybe I missed some steps in your thoughts reagrding South African Eugenics, but Archer's ancestor served in North Africa.

[neogothboy74]

GodBen wrote:

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Sacred Ground (*½)

Agreed. The first time I saw this I'd have rated it just one star (I hated it). When rewatching the series, I enjoyed it slightly more, but it's still not something I want to see again and again.

GodBen wrote:

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Future's End, Part 1 (**)

Agreed again. I don't love this 2-parter. It has 1 really good side effect, but beyond that...meh.

On a side note, it was around this time that I started thinking that Voyager wasn't for me. I loved Season 1; Season 2 was mostly blah and Season 3 seemed to be mostly crap (while I enjoyed 'Remember' more than you, it didn't knock it out of the park either, and I couldn't remember the last time the series did) - and it didn't help that Season 5 of DS9 was playing alongside it, in which different strands of continuity were being combined in rich stories that I hadn't dreamt possible. I stayed with Voyager for 5 more episodes then stopped watching. A friend later told me it improved so I went back and eventually caught all that I'd missed and I did enjoy the last few episodes of Season 3 and enjoyed most of Season 4. Season 5 went back to the mixed bag approach IMO (which it never really recovered from) and I stopped watching again, only to catch up on dvd. It's easier to watch this stuff on dvd, and I did thankfully find some episodes I enjoyed - but Voyager never morphed into the series that we were promised in the early episodes, and having to turn off one's brain to enjoy an episode is fun now and again - but even then, on some level you know it's unfortunate, insulting, and lame.

GodBen wrote:

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I think destro hit the nail on the head; if they had talked about the Eugenics War then everyone would have wanted to see that rather than time-travelling antics. The EW is one of the big missing links in Star Trek and I would say that most of us want to know what happened and would love the opportunity to see it on-screen. But the writers weren't interested in telling that story so it is best not to tease the audience with something they aren't going to get.

Agreed. And seeing the wars would have been awesome (and I can't help feeling that if DS9 had gone back to that era we would have seen them). One of the reasons these episodes annoyed me when they first aired was the lack of anything to do with the EW. Except this episode does reference the Eugenics Wars, albeit rather obliquely. When Sarah Silverman's Rain character is on the phone at the SETI lab you can see a conjectural model of the S.S. Botany Bay that's equipped with several space shuttle-style solid rocket strap-on boosters (suggesting how the 1996-vintage spacecraft might have gotten into orbit). This design can also be seen on the cover of the 2nd Eugenics War book by Greg Cox - a trilogy of Khan themed books that explain how the wars happened without anyone ever noticing - which actually work with the wars not being shown in these episodes. So, while I feel it would have been more satisfying at the time these episodes aired to see the wars as many probably imagined them, there is a bit of retroactive continuity that softens that particular crit; at least for me. But even without that annoyance these episodes are still only mildly entertaining.

[TheGodBen]

Future's End, Part 2 (**½)

I found this episode to be quite enjoyable and there wasn't too many problems with it which annoyed me all that much. Unfortunately it ended with Tom calling Tuvok a freakasaurus, which is such an unnatural and annoying piece of dialogue that I took away half a star for it. I hate that line.

If there is one thing in the story which I think was a mistake it is the sub-plot involving the rednecks and their paranoia about the government. It feels like filler, and uninteresting filler at that. I think the best part about this whole episode has to be Shmullus who steals the show with some well-delivered one-liners, and it is good to see that character out and about doing things he wouldn't normally be doing. There was some debate amongst the Trek fans I knew back in 97 about whether Shmullus' mobile emitter was a good things or not, but I think that he is such a good character that it would have been a mistake to keep him tied to the gimmick that he is trapped in sickbay, and this seems like the natural course of evolution for the character.

But... the reference to him losing his memory back in The Swarm was just that, a reference, and I assume we wont be hearing any more about the subject. I think it was a huge mistake not to follow up on that story thread and I have to stick to my promise to deduct points for this. I will take half a star from this episode, and I will retroactively take half a star from The Swarm so now that episode only has 1.5 stars. Unfortunate, but this was a really huge frak up in my opinion.

Overall Future's End was fun but it had a major plot-hole in the beginning in order to get the story to work and the whole thing was little more than time-travelling antics.

[Guy Gardener]

I agree about the rednecks. It would have been so easy to tie that into the Eugenics war, or as I am doing right now, to disqualify the eugenics war... No Government that is warring on superhumans would take such a threat seriously, and why would any dissident who was not completely retarded and possibly conceived on top of a running microwave think they can threaten a government that is warring with Superhumans so mundanely with the pitiful tools they had at hand?

Though the racist comments to B'Elanna and Chakotay had me...

No, filler. There's no justification for this "subplot".

[tomalak301]

So now a Joke and reaction is unnatural? Interesting. Perhaps you're right GodBen, but I didn't mind the line because it was construed as a joke, and he just said it after hearing Rain say it. As for the rednecks, they were really the only things about Future's End I didn't like. Still, I really enjoyed this two parter.

[TheGodBen]

^ What I found unnatural was the word freakasaurus itself. I have never heard the word in my life other than in this episode of Voyager, and it really comes across as some middle-aged men attempting to seem "kewl" to the hip young crowd and trying too hard. It is the sort of thing which elicits a groan from me. Push that into an ending which feels like one of those TOS episodes with the crew laughing on the bridge and you have something that really gets under my skin.

[Guy Gardener]

Plus, knowing Sarah as we all do now, it's more likely that she said "uptight asshole" and it was just the universal translator which autosensored her cursing.

[tomalak301]

It's interesting. The first time I saw her was in this episode. I then watched an episode or two of her program and was very shocked (kinda) with the vulgarity. It was weird.

[Guy Gardener]

Me too.

But I've had years to acclimatize.

Have you seen her "lovenote to Jimmy Kimmel" youtube song "I'm fucking Matt Damon"?

Hmm? I was just wondering what has happened to English in in 400 years? Isn't it entirely possible that the Universal translator was so entirely completely and absolutely needed because "english" had become some superintercontinental intergalactic pigeon?

[tomalak301]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Have you seen her "lovenote to Jimmy Kimmel" youtube song "I'm fucking Matt Damon"?

I have. It makes me wish this episode now was a little more vulgar because now it seems like the whole Rain Robinson character was just not right for her.

[Praetor]

GodBen wrote:

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Future's End, Part 2 (**½)

I found this episode to be quite enjoyable and there wasn't too many problems with it which annoyed me all that much. Unfortunately it ended with Tom calling Tuvok a freakasaurus, which is such an unnatural and annoying piece of dialogue that I took away half a star for it. I hate that line.

Really? I kinda liked it. Agreed otherwise.

If there is one thing in the story which I think was a mistake it is the sub-plot involving the rednecks and their paranoia about the government. It feels like filler, and uninteresting filler at that. I think the best part about this whole episode has to be Shmullus who steals the show with some well-delivered one-liners, and it is good to see that character out and about doing things he wouldn't normally be doing.

Ditto... the rednecks were just... annoying. I liked the shot of the speedboat shuttle firing phasers.

[kimc]

GodBen wrote:

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Future's End, Part 2 (**½)

I would think Tuvie showing up with a Big Gulp for breakfast would have been worth at least two stars right there.

[Tachyon]

Never been a huge fan of Future's End either. The only bright spot in that two-parter were the J/C moments.

[DGCatAniSiri]

GodBen wrote:

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^ What I found unnatural was the word freakasaurus itself. I have never heard the word in my life other than in this episode of Voyager, and it really comes across as some middle-aged men attempting to seem "kewl" to the hip young crowd and trying too hard. It is the sort of thing which elicits a groan from me. Push that into an ending which feels like one of those TOS episodes with the crew laughing on the bridge and you have something that really gets under my skin.

That sort of thing never really bothers me - I often watch shows aimed towards teenagers, given that I'm just barely out of my own teen years, and it's sort of hilarious how in attempting to sound culturally aware of teenagers and the way teens speak, the writers show how out of touch they are with actual teenagers. Sure, it's definitely odd to hear it in Star Trek, but it doesn't bother me personally.

And now a part of me wants to actually use the word 'freakasaurus.'