Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I agree with Cubcoltracer. But it's your thread GodBen, do as you wish. I pay more attention to your comments about the episodes than to the scores anyway.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You are forgetting The Torpedo And Shuttle Building Team, aren't you? The special team which was assembled in season 2 after the destruction of their second shuttle in "Parturition". The team was lead by Lt. Carey and included Rollins, Dalby, Henley, Chell and Gerron. Later on Vorik, Samantha Wildman and The Borg Baby joined this special unit.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager And when they are referenced on screen then this whole problem will go away, but I don't think that's likely to happen. It is a little tough on the individual episodes, I agree, but the writers must have realised when writing the episodes that something was wrong with how many shuttles they had destroyed and were continuing to destroy. All they had to do was throw in a short line about the shuttle and torpedo building team and I would begrudgingly back down, but if they didn't bother to put that line into a script then it's not my fault. As for the torpedoes, We're almost half-way through the show now and they have used up just over half the torpedoes, so with a little rationing I see no reason why we couldn't make it to the end of the show without using them all.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Wait till you see Night. They fire a Galaxy class' complement's worth of torpedoes in that one. You make some very interesting observations about Voyager, GodBen, most of which I agree with. In fact, this has become my favourite thread currently active on the bbs. However, I think you're taking this shuttle/torpedo thing a bit far. IMO, it is a structural problem of Voyager that should reflect itself structurally in your rating of the series, not on an episodic basis. Now I have to add the stars you've deducted for shuttle loss to the rating to see how you rate the episode itself, which is really of the most interest to me. I'm just sayin'... Keep up the good work.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager The fact that so many people have asked me to hold back on the point deductions for torpedoes and shuttles is beginning to make me question that policy, so I have come to an important decision; I'm going to set you all to ignore for the duration of my reviews. I can't have people influencing me, I'm sure you all understand and thank you for your cooperation. Wouldn't it be fun if I was really like that? I'm shelving that policy for now and I'll try to find a way to incorporate point deductions without affecting the episode scores, so consider Nemesis as being promoted to three and a half stars. I'm keeping the point deductions for TNG-style episodes as I do feel that this is a valid complaint against individual episodes as opposed to the show in general.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Golly, GB, that's so...reasonable! You're getting dangerously rational for a Trek board, you know...
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I dunno... I agree with deducting points for that sort of thing, since it bugs me every time I see it, and thus detracts from my enjoyment of individual episodes. Personally I think GodBen should also deduct points every time they lose another member of the engineering group without mentioning staffing problems. Do you realize how many engineers they lost during that show? Sure, you can train other people to take their place, but it's going to take years, and there are only just so many people you can pull from other departments. And the engineering team would suffer major losses in efficiency in the meantime. Especially if they're trying to build shuttles and torpedoes at the same time!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I'm of the opinion that GodBen's critaria will be quite interesting but by the time season 6 comes along, this thread might be useless because the hater is still the hater. Every episode will be like 1 star or something.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager GodBen has created an interesting thread so let him continue with his reviews through all seasons, wether we agree with his ratings for the different episodes or not. This is perfect for a good debate about each episode.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I wish I could take all the credit, but I only realised the truth after being visited by three ghosts during the night. They took me on a crazy journey through time and showed me the negative consequences of my policy, and it would have taken a heart of stone to ignore their pleas. So I told them to GTFO and let me get back to sleep, but the ghost from the future threw me against the wall and held a knife to my throat. I'm not a smart man but I know when I'm bested, so I backed down in the face of imminent death. True story. I'm going to try to get the point deductions in there at some point, but since I've begun judging the writers on their episodes it probably isn't fair to take away points from them for something wrong with the series as a whole. I'll keep a track of how many shuttles show up each season and try to find a way to deduct them in the season review.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager At least ratings-wise, I would suggest including both the pre-deduction and post-deduction scores in the actual review. I'm not so sure about how to handle the graphs and charts with that idea, though...
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager To be honest, I don't think it's a big issue. Shuttle crashes are an obvious cliché, so maybe you should only deduct points if it is completely arbitrary and unnecessary? Rick Sternbach has said manufacturing new shuttles shouldn't be a massive problem anyway, so neither should torpedoes. Besides, Bernd Schneider already counted them up. (link)
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Revulsion (**½) I'm going to single out the first scene of this episode because I found it very enjoyable to watch. The bit where Tom and Kim tell a story about a prank they pulled on Tuvok wasn't as funny as it wanted to be, but I liked the energy after that moment as multiple plot and character threads are addressed. That scene made Voyager feel like a community with each person having their own story, and this is a feeling which I feel hasn't been there through much of the show so far. The plot where Doctor Kennith H. Shmully and B'Elanna go to help that hologram guy was drawn out far too long, it is clear to the audience that something is wrong with him right away but the episode takes a long time to get anywhere with it. My other big problem with this episode is that B'Elanna is the one who kills the guy when I feel that it needed to be Dr Shmully who performed this act. It takes what could have been an interesting story where Shmully is forced to kill one of his own kind into a boring survival story for B'Elanna. The b-story about Kim's crush on Seven was at least fun and gave Harry something to do. I'm not fond of Tom warning Harry off Seven because she's a Borg as only two episodes ago Tom gave Seven a speech about how he wants to help her and doesn't judge her. It made things feel disjointed. A shuttle appeared in this episode and since I can't take points away from it I'm just going to grumble about it. *grumbles*
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Revulsion First up, I thought the first scene was very un-Star Trek. I actually screwed up my nose when I saw all the blood, thinking wtf? I did like this episode despite its predictable-ness, probably because I like Leland Orser who played the crazy-hologram. I also agree with GodBen that the Doctor should have been the one to kill crazy-hologram-guy to make for a more interesting plot twist. Overall I thought it was interesting to see an episode that was more "i know what you did last summer" than normal trek.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Agreed. Generally, had the dilemma with the hologram been handled better and more tense, I think it would have made for a better episode. But I do like it. Obviously, Tom is lying and wants her for himself. Wouldn't it be awful if he were really like that? Next you'll be shouting for those damn kids to stay off your lawn.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Yeah I found this episode boring me and did feel it was drawn out too long. As for the torpedo/shuttle count rating, I think deductions should be taken from the series as a whole not single episodes otherwise we won't know by the ratings what you think of the actual quality of the episode, deducting for shuttles would be too technical.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Seems that GodBen missed the "Voyager-Shuttle-O-Matic" seen in the background of several episodes. Just push the big red button and a shiny new shuttle pops out! Sometimes my art skills amaze me.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Bravo, good sir. I'm glad there's a red button. GodBen should post that image whenever a theoretically new shuttle is lost from here on out, in exchange for not deducting points anymore.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I 'shuttle' to think what might happen if he didn't! /runs screaming into the night/