A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[TheGodBen]

I'm an Oirish person who is going to have to watch both episodes in their entirety. That's like forcing a Jew to watch video footage from Nazi concentration camps.


Night (***)

I liked the start of this episode as it focused on the characters and how they react to being in this expanse of starless space. Kim alone of the bridge with his feet up on a console? Good. Crewmembers squabbling in the mess hall at night? Good. Crewmembers not bothering the wear full uniforms? Great! Voyager should have had this more relaxed style from the beginning, I think it works well.

The bad part about this? Janeway. It is perfectly acceptable that Janeway would feel guilty about getting the crew stranded in Caretaker, and it is shocking that it has taken four years for us to get a story about it. But rather than being reflective Janeway is dismissive, you will have a hard time trying to find a worse case of ineptitude from a captain than you see in this episode. Character assassination at its finest.

Tuvok wrote:

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I've been observing her behaviour for the past four years. Guilt has been her constant companion.

Tuvok has been watching a different show than me, clearly.

Then some aliens show up and attack, and then some more aliens show up to help, and then we learn that the bad aliens are good and the good aliens are bad, and then stuff gets blowed up real good. This plot isn't bad, but it is rushed. As I have said for the previous two seasons as well, this episode should have been told over multiple episodes. Two episodes could have focused on the crew and the tension which amounts from being stuck in this empty region of space, and the third episode could have focused on this plot about the aliens and the wormhole. This was a great opportunity to focus on the crew without worrying about external conflicts, unfortunately the concept was wrapped up too quickly.

Torpedoes: 38/38

13 torpedoes were fired in this episode! 13!! To put that in context, only four were fired in the entirety of last season. This brings us to the limit, Voyager has no more torpedoes to fire. As per the rules of this thread laid down after season 1's The Cloud, Voyager as a show will officially jump the shark when the 39th torpedo is fired. It's coming any day now!

[Tomalak]

I can only agree. I liked the first part of the episode, showing the tension of the crew, and the effect the realisation of what a seventy year trip actually entails. And they'd only been in this empty space for two months.

I actually didn't mind the introspective Janeway. I could accept that this might have been in the back of her mind for the past four years, but she'd never had enough time to let it eat away at her. Previously they'd been passing through some heavily populated areas, always bumping into some hostile alien or another. Two months of nothing gave her pause to reflect, and come to the realisation that they probably wouldn't make it home. I think it does have some sort of impact too, because there seems to be more resolve to find shortcuts - having the balls to take on the Borg to get a transwarp coil in Dark Frontier, developing their own slipstream drive in Timeless (and Course:Oblivion, sorta), and I suppose future Janeway in Endgame. That said, the about-face at the end is hard to swallow.

It could possibly have been done in greater depth over two episodes, but probably not at the start of the season due to ratings concerns.

[Frazzled]

Night is one of my favourites. It has everything I like - most of the crew were given some screentime and decent lines, even though it ended up focussing on Janeway's guilt the others got some action too, I think it's one of Chakotay's better episodes. Seven played a fairly sensible role and wasn't at the forefront, and B'Elanna is back.

The balance of everything feels right, there is some J/C tension and a scene between Paris and Torres, then the emotional guilt wrangling, whilst also enough 'action' (or alien zapping) to please my husband so he happily watches it with me!

I don't mind Janeway hiding away, I think it's probably more realistic to expect something like that to happen to a human being who's a bit of a stresshead when things go quiet. She was still the Captain, she still jumped to it when the aliens appeared, I don't see it as character assassination.

And I hated the Malon, which is kind of the point with bad guys so that worked too.

[startrekwatcher]

Night gets 3 stars out of 4 for me.

I liked this episode. Everything came together quite nicely. It had a nice variety of elements--an engaging battle, nice visuals, an interesting species in both the Malon & Night aliens with great make-up design, an interesting region of space devoid of stars and planets, an interesting new holodeck program with the introduction of Chaotica!, and the crew working together.

I also thought the directing and pacing of the episode was well done capturing effectively the quiet monotony the crew is enduring. All the little character moments worked well from Tuvok using astrometrics to meditate to Kim on the bridge playing his flute.

A very solid episode although I really was tired of Janeway going it alone attitude which we had just a few episodes earlier in "The Omega Directive". I also didn't care for the continuity error of her commanding the Billings.

[Tomalak]

Doesn't he say she was "a commander on the USS Billings" rather than "the commander of..."? That's sufficiently nebulous to allow wiggle room.

[TheGodBen]

Tomalak wrote:

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I actually didn't mind the introspective Janeway.

Introspection is fine, I find the best characters in all entertainment mediums are introspective, but in this episode Janeway was selfishly dismissive of everyone's feelings but her own. She's the leader of this crew and they needed her leadership now more than ever, but instead she allowed her own needs to come before those of her crew and when this was pointed out to her she ignored it. I'd love an episode where Janeway realistically explored the guilt she feels for getting the crew stranded, I don't want an episode where her attitude to the crew is "sucks to be you".


Drone (**)

Bryan Fuller lets me down for the first time, what a pity.

I have a hard time buying into the concept, I don't see how assimilating Shmully's mobile-emitter leads to a super Borg with abilities dreamed up by a fanboy. I might buy into it if it wasn't for the fact that One as a character is not threatening at all. He looks, sounds and moves in a goofy manner, and he has a smug grin. How am I supposed to believe that this guy is the harbinger of doom when he is the Borg equivalent of a clown?

Seven gets some interesting material, and there is some good scenes along the way, but ultimately I found this to be a "meh" episode. It was very formulaic.

Shmully's mobile emitter wasn't retrieved by the end of this episodes so either he will never leave sickbay again or the crew will take apart One's body and they will equip Voyager with all his futuristic technology. I'm sure the profound implications of the crew having 29th century Borg technology on the ship will not be forgotten.

[Tomalak]

No, it didn't make any sense at all. It was just an excuse to put Seven in an unfamiliar maternal role, which was later repeated with Naomi Wildman and the Borg children (or Icheb, and the other four we saw in one episode).

Basically it was a remake of The Offspring, just not even half as good.

[startrekwatcher]

I'd give Drone 3 stars. It is a decent episode but I had read over the summer of 98 that there would be a drone from the 29th century on the show and this isn't exactly what I had in mind.

You have to be careful with this emotional material if you hope to pull it off where it resonates. Here it veered too much into mushy not poignant. It also didn't help that J. Paul Boehmer who played One really didn't work for me coming off more as a dopey tag-along. I thought Jonathan del Arco as Hugh played the innocent Borg much, much better and Hugh's relationship with Geordi and to a lesser extent with Beverly really worked so much better. Plus we got another battle sequence that wasn't that great.

There were a few neat bits such as seeing the sonic shower, the Doc's popping in on Torres showering and foreshadowing with the idea of a more utilitarian shuttle.

Still it will be the last entertaining episode for a while with Extreme Risk lacking the necessary gravitas to make B'elanna's plight compelling, In the Flesh having a good idea and message but ruined by the choice of antagonist to be the focus of the story and Once Upon a Time being the closet a Trek episode was to being an episode of Sesame Street.

[Praetor]

GodBen wrote:

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Night (***)

Tuvok has been watching a different show than me, clearly.

Yeah, I can't help but agree. I wouldn't have minded as much if they'd more clearly established that this recent wave of guilt was due to the "Hope and Fear" bit, which I think they meant to imply that it was, but it still came off as a WTF that she had been feeling SO guilty all this time, yet we hadn't really seen it.

I'd have found that easier to swallow if the payoff for it had been greater.

GodBen wrote:

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Drone (**)

Bryan Fuller lets me down for the first time, what a pity.

Yeah, I do enjoy this episode a little, but, sort of like "Night," the incredibilities found in it kind of overshadow what should have been an interesting idea - Seven developing her pseudo-maternal side and having to teach another drone the same lessons she had learned in the past year. It might have been easier had this drone simply been just another drone, or one recovered on a planet a la Hugh.

Still, it's very re-hashy.

Did anyone notice, coincidentally, that Jonathan Del Arco who played Hugh, was the main Night alien guy in "Night"?

[Tachyon]

Night: ***** and I would even give it +, too. It's perferct. No episode tops this one ever.

[DGCatAniSiri]

Praetor wrote:

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Did anyone notice, coincidentally, that Jonathan Del Arco who played Hugh, was the main Night alien guy in "Night"?

Actually, he was the character dubbed Fantome in 'The Void,' which was a sixth or seventh season episode.

[NumberSix]

startrekwatcher wrote:

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It also didn't help that J. Paul Boehmer who played One really didn't work for me coming off more as a dopey tag-along.

Especially since we just saw him as the asshole German soldier in The Killing Game.


Night
Liked it, though have to agree Janeway was being a bit selfish. Her crew were asking for her, and she pretty much abandoned them until the aliens attacked and she figured she'd save the day to try and redeem herself.

Drone
Terrible. Didn't feel any compassion for One and this was just the beginning of the "seven being a mother" stories, which I hated.

[TedShatner10]

Pity, I thought "Drone" was an excellent episode and the "Night" being the relatively uninspired episode for me, inspite of the contrivance of growing a Borg 'superdrone' out of the Mobile Emitter and a blood sample, however Borg nanomachines are adaptive and they exist to assimilate technology.

I rather liked the character of One, even if he was less sympathetic than Tuvix, but at least his death was not as grisly and empty as Tuvix's. He seemed to behave like a simple boy, ala Hugh, but his 29th century Borg costume was still impressive and has blue lighting like TNG era Borg ships. I liked Seven flashing fake grins into the mirror at the start of the episode and looking into the mirror at the end of the episode with a genuinely sullen expression.

Anyway I give Drone a full (****) or a 9/10. "Night" was watchable but formulaic style over substance.

[TedShatner10]

GodBen wrote:

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[
Shmully's mobile emitter wasn't retrieved by the end of this episodes so either he will never leave sickbay again or the crew will take apart One's body and they will equip Voyager with all his futuristic technology

That is essentially what happened with the retrieval of the Mobile Emitter from One's skull, but I doubt the rest of the technology was salvaged since One likely gave a last command to his nano machines to seal up the rest of technology.

"Drone" is a great episode, I'm puzzled if I was watching the same episode as you lot if it received generally favourable reviews from Trek critics such as Jammer, Sluss, and Sonneberg. This is one of Bryan Fuller's better scripts and his work on Heroes S1 did impress me, I doubt he is fully responsible for the clusterfuck of Heroes' grotesque S3.

[Tomalak]

Perhaps it hasn't aged well?