A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[TheGodBen]

My integrity as a reviewer has been called into question! I must respond, my honour demands it!

Jaespol wrote:

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Mang, you season 3 haters just don't know where its at!

We just enjoy different types of story-telling. I'm far more interested in character drama rather than science-fiction plots. I enjoy science-fiction as a setting, but I prefer to use that setting to tell human stories rather than stories about things completely removed from reality.

Season 3 was a great season. It just good because there were no big arcs or grand schemes, it was just the Voyager crew getting on with their journey and their lives. No Borg to worry about, no Kazon, just plain sailing with some fun adventures/instances along the way!

This is a personal preference thing, but I love arcs. A well-done story or character arc is the exact same as episodic story-telling but it has a chance to build naturally over time, and the excitement it brings is far greater.

A quickie can be great fun, but a little foreplay can cause something special.

The Chute

This was an average enough episode for me because I'm not a big fan of prison dramas. I can understand why some might call it great.

Remember

Plot-elements stolen from TNG, emotional appeal rather than rational appeal.

Sacred Ground

Good premise ruined by a tacked-on explanation at the end.

Warlord

It was alright, but it stole almost the entire story from DS9.

Coda

I believe you all know my position on this episode by now.

Blood Fever

A fairly good episode with a cop-out ending.

Unity

A solidly good episode, in the top ten of what I've seen so far.

The Darkling
Before and After
Real Life
Distant Origin
Displaced
Worst Case Scenario
Scorpion Part I

It has been years, perhaps even a decade, since I've seen these so I'm reserving judgement.

Season 3 was the beginning of a huge upturn for Voyager going on to an even better Season 4 and 5, two awesome seasons of Trek.

If seasons 4 & 5 follow season 3's lead then I'll probably have to give up on this project.

I don't see why anyone would have problems with the above episodes except for ridiculously nitpicky reasons...

If I have said this once then I've said it a thousand times; I only nitpick episodes which I find boring, if I'm enjoying the episode then I don't have time to nitpick.

"too much sexual innuendo between Neelix and Janeway!"

I never said there was too much, it was only one scene, but it was the first scene of the show and it set my mood for the rest of the episode. Sexual innuendo can be great when done well, but the innuendo I perceived from Coda was lame and half-hearted at best.

DS9's Let He Who is Without Sin had the exact same problem, there was a really crap scene at the beginning of the episode which was crammed with lame innuendo and that is one of the many reasons why that episode is so terrible.

"We didn't see both sides of the story!"

This is a valid complaint, I don't see how any reasonable person could think otherwise.

"The time loops were irrelevant! (who cares if they were good to watch eh?"

The time loops were irrelevant, I did not find them fun to watch, and they were a lame rip-off of Cause and Effect.

"No way can dinosaurs have evolved like that, thats just impossiblz!!!111"

I agree here, every race in Star Trek evolved into humanoids, and if there was a dinosaur civilisation then there would be no remnants after 64 million years.

Just sit back, relax your brain and enjoy some fun science fiction people because that's what season 3 offers!

Any piece of entertainment which requires me to turn off my brain in order to enjoy it is fatally flawed in my mind. Good forms of entertainment turn off your brain without you knowing it, and great forms keep your brain active and challenge it during the experience.

[Tomalak]

I remember Distant Origin being a fantastic show (despite them nicking the idea off Doctor Who and the Silurians from 1970), which Roddenberry would surely have been proud of. Definately a very Trekkish story, much like The Chase from TNG.

It has been years since I've seen it though, and the memory does cheat.

[Mareika]

GodBen, I´m glad about your words about Unity: " A solidly good episode, in the top ten of what I've seen so far." It`s one of my fav episodes.

[m.lp.ql.m]

A summary of this thread so far:
GodBen et. al.:

1. Plot TNG-Lite: -1/2*
2. Writer cop out: -*
3. Treknobabble: -1/2 *
4. No/poor/contradictory characterization: -*
5. No continuity: -*
6. Good acting +*
7. Interesting premise: +***
8. Neelix gets butt raped: +***
9. Neelix gets butt raped by Janeway: -**

Total: */*****

Random Voyager defender:

1. Plot TNG-Lite: who cares? Just shut your mind off and enjoy it! -0*
2. Writer cop out: who cares? Just shut your mind off and enjoy it! -0*
3. Treknobabble: -1/2 *
4. No/poor/contradictory characterization: who cares? Just shut your mind off and enjoy it! -0*
5. No continuity: who cares? Just shut your mind off and enjoy it! -0*
6. Good acting +*
7. Interesting premise: +***
8. Neelix gets butt raped: +***
9. Neelix gets butt raped by Janeway: +***

Total: **********/*****

[TheGodBen]

^ 46 pages summed up quite well, I'd say.


The Darkling (½)

I was eating an ice-cream while watching this and when I finished it I was left with one of those curvy sticks that's thin in the middle and thick at either end. I twisted it just right and got a mildly interesting shape from it, and eventually I broke it into two long sticks and played with it creating many interesting shapes.

My point? I was more interested in an ice-cream stick than this episode.

The problem with this episode is that Shmullus doesn't turn evil, he gets a second personality which he knows nothing about and that is the one committing all the evil deeds. This is bad for two reasons, 1) Evil Shmullus is an annoying one-note character with absolutely no depth and 2) Shmullus faces no consequences and doesn't have to live with his actions since they weren't his actions.

The idea of Kes feeling she has out-grown Voyager is a good one to explore, but this interesting character exploration is abandoned for the stupid Shmullus story, and at the end she decides to stay anyway which makes the rest of the episode an even bigger insult than it already was. I'm not saying that she should have decided to leave the ship, that would have been as stupid as DS9's Meridian, but the whole concept was used as a plot-device in order to make Evil Shmullus mad when it should have been used as a genuine character story.

The whole episode is an uninteresting, formulaic exercise which just goes through the motions for 45 minutes and has absolutely no consequences.

[Jaespol]

Why should every episode have consequences?

[M]

Jaespol wrote:

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Why should every episode have consequences?

Funny, you make it sound like most of the episodes had consequences.

[Gotham Central]

GodBen wrote:

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The whole episode is an uninteresting, formulaic exercise which just goes through the motions for 45 minutes and has absolutely no consequences.

Isn't this a pretty good description of the entire series? I'm not entirely convinced that the writers actually knew the definition of the word consequences.

[Praetor]

'Darkling' flat sucked. I've always been utterly disgusted by it. A poor attempt at a 'Jekyll and Hyde' story with the Doc that ended up more boring than a broken popsicle stick.

[TheGodBen]

NCC-1701 wrote:

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Funny, you make it sound like most of the episodes had consequences.

There has been lots of consequences this season; Shmullus lost all his memories, Janeway's character was profoundly changed by the events in Sacred Ground, half the crew was killed off by the macrovirus and they spent that year in the vast and dangerous Nekrit expanse. There was tonnes of consequences.



Seriously, in answer to Jaespol's question, consequences make things interesting. Consequences are what makes drama drama, otherwise it is just a series of random events. The decisions I have made in my life have all had consequences, both for good and for bad, and I have had to deal with the fall-out of messy situations which I got myself into. If I am going to have an emotional connection to the characters on this show then I have to be able to connect to them, and if their lives are absent of consequences then I have no way of making that connection.

That has been the biggest problem I have faced with season 3, I am not clicking with the characters like I managed to do sometimes during the first two seasons and as I did most of the time on DS9 or nuBSG. Without that connection I find the stories uninvolving and ultimately meaningless.

Gotham Central wrote:

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Isn't this a pretty good description of the entire series? I'm not entirely convinced that the writers actually knew the definition of the word consequences.

To be fair, there is a lot of words in the dictionary under 'c', they can't be expected to know them all. But the show certainly fits that description for most of this season, and if it continues this way then it will be the epithet I'll use once this project is complete.

[Lynx]

Darkling

Another of my top 10 episodes. An excellent horror story.

The Doctor's dabbling with his program and the way he gets another personality, an evil one is scaring and exciting.

Kes's romance with Zahir is anice one even if it didn't last and Kes's decision to stay on the ship with her friends instead of leaving with Zahir actually contradicts all of the rubbish which occured later in the series.

In all an exceiting and enjoyable episode, one of Voyager's best.

I'll give it 5 points out of 5

[Tachyon]

Darkling is hardly re-watchable for me. However, the Doc/B'Elanna scene in the beginning of the episode was hilarious.

Gotham Central wrote:

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Isn't this a pretty good description of the entire series? I'm not entirely convinced that the writers actually knew the definition of the word consequences.

Oh please.

[Jaespol]

I give it a 3

* for getting Kes out of her bizarre clothing into a nice catsuit (you'll see I like them in my official catsuits thread in general discussions )
* for introducing that totally groovy beach resort holoprogram
* for the doctor paralysing B'Ellana!

[Dr. Jekyl]

Jaespol wrote:

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Why should every episode have consequences?

Because consequences are what allows characters to grow, and growth opens up new story opportunities. If there are no consequences, there is no change; characters remain static, eventually beginning to stagnate. This was one of the show's greatest problems, IMHO.

The consequences don't have to big or blatant. Since we're talking about a EMH-centered episode here (I hate the name Shmullus), compare 'Darkling' to 'Lifesigns'.

In the latter, there is a definite change in the Doctor's character, one we see in subsequent episodes - everything from greater empathy with the crew to spending leisure time on the holdoeck and developing real interests outside of medicine. And because there is change, more stories open up for him. You couldn't have 'Real Life' without 'Lifesigns', nor 'Someone to Watch Over Me', to name but two.

Darkling, on the other hand... this horrible experience he has here changes nothing. His relationship with Kes is unaltered, his relationship with the crew... Heck, he doesn't even learn that tampering with his programming is dangerous because he goes on to do it again - more than once, from memory.

Which sort of story is more worthwhile?

[Praetorian]

Beach resort was introduced in "Warlord" I think...=P