Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I remember looking forward to seeing this episode all summer of '97. With the exciting way "Scorpion I" ended, the promos UPN played that summer hyping the conclusion, and learning there would be a new Borg cast member all contributed to my anticipation for September 3rd. I was hoping that this Borg two-parter would propel the series into a new era the way "The Best of Both Worlds" had done for TNG. Unfortunately, it didn't and the conclusion wasn't the equal of its predecessor the way TBoBW II was to its first half. One major problem I had was Jeri Ryan's portrayal of Seven of Nine. She behaved far too much like a human thug with a chip on her shoulder giving off far too much attitude. I later learned that Ryan had no idea what a Borg was and Jeri Taylor had sent her some videos from First Contact telling her that Seven is sort of like the Queen but not. To me that was a big mistake. She should have been told to review Patrick Stewart's chilling performance as Locutus--that was the perfect portrayal of an individual Borg capturing all the menace without the emotion. In every scene in this episode with Seven I felt like I wasn't watching a Borg but a garden variety villian strutting around making threats. It really hurt the show I thought. Strike two. They didn't kill off Kim. It was so perfectly set up. Bad decision. Wang was a bad actor and Kim was dull as dirt. And while necessary, I wasn't crazy about Chakotay taking over. Beltran's not that strong of an actor and Chakotay doesn't have the gravitas. Plus, I didn't like him rescinding Janeway's orders. I can see why the writers would choose to focus on Janeway, Seven and the Doctor in the years to come. And while some of the technobabble was okay to have included given the players involved I didn't care for some of it and felt it got in the way. I thought the idea of fluidic space was a fresh idea and provided a nice battlefield. When the weapon had finally been developed, one of the more suspenseful moments was when Voyager launched the first group of modified photon torpedoes and it left you wondering was it going to work like they had theorized the nanoprobes would when it didn't immediately take effect. I also thought the idea that the Borg had precipitated this conflict was wholly appropriate and one of those surprises that you should have known the whole time. I also liked the surreal shot of Seven receiving instructions from the Collective intercut with the attack on a fleet of cubes. Overall, the episode didn't take enough risks and didn't hold a lot of surprises. It was mostly solid even though at times it felt like it was going through the motions. Oh and I was glad to see they were still in Borg territory by the time the credits rolled. I was afraid they'd be safely out of it..oh wait, that's next week! Just 3 stars out of 4
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager That really isn't an apt analogy in my opinion. Sometimes I'd rather prefer to hear 10 fun words in a row than a dull sentence.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Heck, that was my problem with Watchmen the film. It wasn't so much about accuracy of the source material, but rather that so much was going on that you'd need to expand in order to appreciate what was going on. I recall the original plan for Watchmen was to turn it into a 12-part television miniseries for something premium like HBO. But ugh, we had a movie that was paradoxically long as hell yet managed to rush everything through its laundry list.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Garret Wang couldn't shine even when he had a chance too, he was simply a bad actor.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Well Jaespol I'm not saying the guy was brilliant or anything, but I don't see how he was that bad. You've defended his interview where he talks about Mulgrew and Ryan's feud. He says in the same interview that he was told to play his character on a very low key/low emotion kind of way. On top of that he is given the blandest character on the show to play. He was always given the most boring technobabble dialogue and the writers never gave him any real character development. What could the poor guy do? It isn't like I'm his biggest fan, but I still say he made the best of a really bad situation. I still like old boring Harry, but yeah he could have been so much better! Could a better actor have done more with the Harry Kim character? I'm not sure. There was just so little to work with.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I defended his integrity yes but I can also see that even when he is given a chance to show emotion or be funny, he fails. Examples include -His attempt at simple sarcasm falling flat on his face in some episode where he says "You're a real optimistic guy Tom" (forget which episode but it stood out as particularly flat delivery) -His scream in "Scorpion Part I". -Shouting at Janeway in "The Disease", can't even show anger properly. -Any time he's supposed to be sad, I don't even believe him in "Endgame" when he's looking at earth thru the viewscreen. I just don't think he was a good actor even with what he was given.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Fair enough. None of those were shining moments, I'll give you that. I liked him in Timeless. That is the only one I can think of off of the top of my head which I guess isn't really a shining endorsement, but I know there were some other Kim moments I enjoyed. Oh yeah, I liked some of what he did in Void too. I can't remember the episode name, but I liked his performance in the letters from home ep.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Oh I forgot to mention "Timless", his terrible acting in that made me cringe as well. Sort of reminded me of "Riker" who could never quite convince me he was angry, I've said it before but Riker always reminded me of Jerry Seinfeld, he could never convince anyone he was angry in "Seinfeld" but that was funny, Frakes' and Wang's acting wasn't. I just think they shoulda got rid of Harry when they got the chance and kept Kes who wasn't that much better of an actor (although she did show visible improvement unlike Wang) but certainly was a more rounded character.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Well I totally disagree about Timeless. I found older obsessed Harry much more interesting than normal harry. But yeah I wouldn't have minded if they got rid of Harry instead of Kes. But I only say that knowing now that they were never going to do anything with him for the rest of the show. To me Harry is the Geordi type character of Voyager. Just a semi boring pretty nice guy. But Levar Burton pulled it off much better and had way superior material to work with. I totally buy into Frakes anger at his father in whatever that season 2 TNG ep was.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Harry was exceptionally good in Timeless. IMO, the episode was the shining moment for the character.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Oh man, I don't understand why everone on here seems to think some of the worst actors in history are decent....Frakes, Brooks, Wang...I mean come on! Have you ever seen an oscar winning actor in a film? Do you know what good acting is? It frustrates me SO much when I don't understand how someone can even have such a different opinion.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Agreed. I really liked this episode when it was first on. Seeing Seska again in any form was nice for me. I didn't like the way the character was jettisoned from the show (I thought after all the build up she deserved a better exit) - and to see her here was nice. After the episode ended I was slightly disappointed and figured this was just because she was gone again, but when I rewatched the episode years later I realized that the first part of the episode is just far more interesting than the last part. And it struck me (also) that here was the crew, speaking of the Maquis / Federation conflict when it never really happened on this show - which was such a ripoff. It demonstrated that the writers knew this storyline was expected, ignored it for no apparent reason, but felt they could exploit in later episodes whenever they chose. It left me feeling empty, and I've never had the urge to watch it again. It also brought home the fact that The Maquis / Federation storyline that was written into Next Gen & DS9 to setup Voyager was played out to far better effect on DS9 (Next Gen was off the air by then), which just made the dropping of that storyline feel even more like a failure than it already did. And anytime they bring back the Maquis storyline on Voyager it always feels a bit false, because the writers didn't do enough in the early seasons to validate any later references. It's just shoddy work. Agreed again. This episode was great from start to finish. I was blown away by this episode when it aired. I remember "A Call to Arms" (my favorite DS9 finale) aired in concert with this and I was just geeked out beyond the telling of it. lol. I was very pleased, and very excited to see what would happen. I liked the character conflict, and the Borg were used in a new way. I thought it had some really interesting ideas. I liked the music and set design and the CGI was nice. And I liked the continuity in both parts to Chakotay's previous experience with the Borg. Very nice. Easily my favorite Season 3 episode. I agree. But Seven's appearance had been highly publicized and from her obvious sex appeal I expected her to be nothing more than what she appeared to be - and expected to hate the character. Only I didn't hate her, so my opinion of this episode was greatly increased by extremely low expectations. I thought Jeri Ryan was a far better actress than I expected and I just wanted to see more of her character. And while she didn't behave exactly like a Borg would have to my mind, that seemed to be set up in the dialogue when Janeway asked for a representitive like Locutus. I agree that the 2nd half is slightly less good than the first part, but I've always found "Best of Both Worlds" (as great as it is) to be deadly dull (and find it hard to rewatch these days) - and I feel that the 2nd half of that story is also less compelling than the first. 'Scorpion' I can rewatch with no problems at all.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Frankincense oxymoron triangular viscosity abhorrent gerrymandering verbosity lackadaisical happenstance flagrant. Anybody can write a list of fun words, but it can take skill to compose a great sentence.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Totally agreed on this assessment. They were definitely going for a Japan-in-WWII route with the killer nanoprobes but here it just didn't seem all that plausible that it should wrap up immediately. Hear, hear. Ditto. I didn't get what he was doing at first, but now that I can actually appreciate and understand the way Guy states things, it's hilarious. It's like opening an easter egg... at first you don't know what's going on, but once you get it, it's the damn funniest thing ever. I actually agree here too, and for that reason Seven didn't bother me perhaps as much as she did GodBen. It made sense that Janeway actually asked for a single representative to deal with, but became a bit cliched and Borg Queen-lite when Seven started demonstrating her own personality prior to being cut off from the Collective in Fluidic Space. Consider how Locutus behaved even after the Enterprise had captured him from the cube. Now, had Seven continued to have been the 'voice of the collective' right up until they went into Fluidic Space and only then became more erratic and 'human,' I don't think it would have seemed quite as bad. Well said.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager It takes a lot of skill to do a lot of things that aren't interesting to watch. It takes a lot of skill to win at chess but its not always exciting to watch.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager By the same token, all things that are done easily or that take the short and easy route are not automatically entertaining either.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager OK enough with the analogies then I personally like variety in my shows- as an example I've also watched Buffy and some of Charmed (admitting this makes me sound like a real geek) and I prefered the earlier seasons when they were coming up different enemies each week and found it increasingly frustrating in the later seasons when there was the same enemy for many episodes and big arcs where for a lot of the time not much happened at all! I like variety, I like the idea of TOS/TNG and VOY that they would be getting into different scrapes each week. On another note, is there a way I can turn people's avatars off? If I wanted to look at people's faces I would outside...