A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[apenpaap]

Anwar wrote:

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I knew it, the ratings are going down. What shall we bet you give this series a 3/10 by the end of S7?

Yep. It's all the Big Niner Conspiracy's work.

[Thor Damar]

apenpaap wrote:

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Yep. It's all the Big Niner Conspiracy's work.

ssh, don't TELL them you'll blow our cover and ruin our great work...

I mean

[kes7]

The "Big Niner Conspiracy" sounds like a band name or something.

[TheGodBen]

Can I be the keyboard player? I have up to grade 5 in the RIAM exams for piano.

Anwar wrote:

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I knew it, the ratings are going down. What shall we bet you give this series a 3/10 by the end of S7?

I have €2,000 in my right hand right now, so I will take that bet! Because statistically it is now impossible for Voyager to get a score lower than 4.661, and that would only happen if I gave every remaining episode a zero score which I have no intention of doing. So how will you be paying me my money?

Anwar, if you want to join in and discuss Voyager and criticise some of the things I say about Voyager in my reviews then please feel free to join in, I welcome dissenting opinions. If you're going to continue to judge me based on things I don't say, even after we reached that peaceful resolution last week, then please bugger off.

StarTrekker wrote:

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I really don't see the problem. Tom Paris created a stereotypical version of an Irish village and they all enjoyed it, the end.
I'm from Ireland and it didn't bother me at all.

Firstly, they tried to pass Fair Haven off as authentic by having Janeway (a supposed expert on Irish history) call it such. Secondly, the writers made it very clear that they didn't have a clue what they were talking about when they wrote those episodes and that bugged me.


Workforce (***½)

Yes, the plot has many holes and you do have to suspend your disbelief in order to accept that any of these events could have happened, but as I've said in the past, if I'm enjoying myself then I'm willing to do that. I enjoyed this episode, largely because I thought it was fun to watch several of the crew living a life with no knowledge of everything that happened on Voyager. All the characters get something to do here and most of it I found interesting.

I'm not a fan of the ECH being real and not a fantasy, especially since they left off the best part (the magically appearing pips). I'm also torn on the issue of Tom being attracted to B'Elanna even though he doesn't remember her, part of me thinks that it's a cop-out that they didn't explore Tom going off with someone else, but a horrible part of me thinks that it is sweet. I hate that part of me, it's disgusting.

There's a somewhat intriguing mystery here and some fun character stuff. But please tell me, what happened to Naomi?


Workforce, Part 2 (**)

The big problem I have with part 2 is that it introduces some new alien characters and they are the ones that resolve the plot with a little help from the Voyager crew. Not only does this take away from the character stuff which made part 1 enjoyable, but these characters are bland and uninteresting. When the sinister plot is revealed it doesn't live up to the intrigue I felt existed in the first part, and the fact that a bunch of boring characters are the ones who figure it out doesn't help.

Then you have the ship-side story where SuperShmully and Kim have disagreements about who is in charge and they eventually learn to respect one another's tactics. I wasn't a fan of this plot. They manage to rescue everybody and everything is reset back to normal, and no matter how the episode ends you know that Janeway isn't going to be fundamentally changed by her experience on the planet. She seems to fall in and out of love faster than MadBaggins.

Torpedoes: 89/38

[kimc]

I thought "The Void" was a bright spot of Season 7. Besides, you finally had a situation where Voyager was fighting for resources - something some fans had been clamoring for. I also love how they got out of the situation using diplomacy and ingenuity - no magic resets here.

As for "Workforce" I wish they had gone with the original premise of Chakotay being Janeway's lover. This would have been an opportunity to resolve the J/C issue one way or the other and provide a nice character arc for the two through to the end of the series as they dealt with the repercussions of their planet-side relationship.

[Alidar Jarok]

StarTrekker wrote:

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I really don't see the problem. Tom Paris created a stereotypical version of an Irish village and they all enjoyed it, the end.
I'm from Ireland and it didn't bother me at all.

Yeah, honestly, the only problem should be if they had traveled back in time to Ireland. In that case, then, yeah, I'd have a problem with a stereotyped Ireland.

[Bertie]

VOY: "Workforce" was a more credible and interesting "industrial" setting than Star Trek XI's brewery.

(Not that I didn't otherwise like Star Trek XI, of course.)

[TheGodBen]

Human Error (**)

I want to like this episode a lot more than I do, there's a lot of promise in the idea of having Seven pull a Barclay by living her life on the holodeck. The episode would probably have been better suited in season 5 or 6 when it could have signalled a genuine shift in Seven's character, the back-end of season 7 means it is already too late for this to significantly impact the future of her character, especially since the procedure to help her is put off until the finale. But at least it ties in nicely with Seven's experiences in Unimatrix Zero.

But the worst thing about this episode is C/7, they don't seem to have any chemistry with one another. The whole plot revolves around believing that Seven could get so emotionally attached to the Chakotay hologram that she breaks some Borg anti-emotion device, but I can't buy into that because of how horrible some of their scenes together are. The whole thing feels awkward, I'd almost prefer to watch Kim and Neelix to get it on because I think those two might display better chemistry towards one another.

Then there's the b-plot about alien warheads that send out big blue shockwaves, a story I found thoroughly uninteresting but which was apparently necessary for the plot.

Torpedoes: 92/38

[kes7]

TheGodBen wrote:

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I'd almost prefer to watch Kim and Neelix to get it on because I think those two might display better chemistry towards one another.

Oh, my goodness. Brain bleach, please -- stat.

As a committed Icheb fan, I liked Human Error for his snarky quotations of ancient literature, and Seven's total irritation with it. It was also hilariously disturbing that he quoted Oedipus, because Seven was kind of serving as his surrogate mother, but he so clearly had a crush on her.

Other than that, the whole episode required the brain bleach. C/7 -- WTF?

Oh, ETA -- Seven looked completely adorable in the blue science division uniform. Much better than the catsuit.

[TheGodBen]

kes7 wrote:

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Oh, ETA -- Seven looked completely adorable in the blue science division uniform. Much better than the catsuit.

Agreed, she looked great in the uniform, and with her hair down. It's a pity they didn't move the character in that direction at some point.

[Dane_Whitman]

I'm a little behind on my VOY rewatch (just watched Prophecy tonight), but remind me -- is Human Error the episode with the most laughable excuse for a teaser ever?

"Look. It's Seven playing a piano. Tune in for another exciting episode of Star Trek: Voyager."

[kes7]

Dane_Whitman wrote:

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I'm a little behind on my VOY rewatch (just watched Prophecy tonight), but remind me -- is Human Error the episode with the most laughable excuse for a teaser ever?

"Look. It's Seven playing a piano. Tune in for another exciting episode of Star Trek: Voyager."

That's the one.

[Tachyon]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Human Error (**)

I want to like this episode a lot more than I do, there's a lot of promise in the idea of having Seven pull a Barclay by living her life on the holodeck. The episode would probably have been better suited in season 5 or 6 when it could have signalled a genuine shift in Seven's character, the back-end of season 7 means it is already too late for this to significantly impact the future of her character, especially since the procedure to help her is put off until the finale. But at least it ties in nicely with Seven's experiences in Unimatrix Zero.

But the worst thing about this episode is C/7, they don't seem to have any chemistry with one another. The whole plot revolves around believing that Seven could get so emotionally attached to the Chakotay hologram that she breaks some Borg anti-emotion device, but I can't buy into that because of how horrible some of their scenes together are. The whole thing feels awkward, I'd almost prefer to watch Kim and Neelix to get it on because I think those two might display better chemistry towards one another.

We are in total agreement GodBen.... oops - me meant THE GodBen.

However, because I am a J/Cer, I would have to give this episode only one star. Tee hee.

Dane_Whitman wrote:

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I'm a little behind on my VOY rewatch (just watched Prophecy tonight), but remind me -- is Human Error the episode with the most laughable excuse for a teaser ever?

"Look. It's Seven playing a piano. Tune in for another exciting episode of Star Trek: Voyager."

Good one!

[TheGodBen]

Dane_Whitman wrote:

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"Look. It's Seven playing a piano. Tune in for another exciting episode of Star Trek: Voyager."

It was certainly a step down from Scorpion. I think you were meant to be shocked that Seven didn't have any Borg implants, but they shot her from an angle so you couldn't see that her ocular implant was gone, and her hair was covering that spider thing on her cheek.

Tachyon wrote:

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We are in total agreement GodBen.... oops - me meant THE GodBen.

And don't you forget it, I'm not just a God called Ben, I'm The only God called Ben. That Austrian guy on YouTube is only fooling himself if he thinks he's more of a God than I.

[kimc]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Human Error (**)

Normally you rate episodes too low but this time you've gone too high. This should get zero stars. It's a stinker all around.