A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by TheGodBen, Feb 9, 2009.

  1. jongredic

    jongredic Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    I'm kinda relieved I'm not the only one who was hoping for a bit of the old violence against alien children there :p

    To be honest, I'm not overly keen on that episode. The main bulk of the story is good, but I've never been a fan of reset buttons of any sort :(

    I do kinda like Parallax though, despite the technobabble. Tom's the voice of the viewers for that episode. A bit of representation at last!
     
  2. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    There is a great moment in Time and Again where Janeway refuses to play along so one of the protesters pulls a gun on the kid, but then Tom jumped in the way of the bullet. :(

    I must say that I liked that moment for Janeway as well as she refused to play along with the situation. She's a much stronger character than I remembered her, at least she is in these early episodes. Pity about that bun though.
     
  3. jongredic

    jongredic Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    The size of that bun is directly proportional to how "Janeway" she is. The bigger the bun, ohhh you can bet there's an irreplacable, limited edition photon torpedo coming your way.

    By the time the bob rolls around, it's omnidirectional phaser sweeps and Federation piety for breakfast :p
     
  4. Vampire Kirk

    Vampire Kirk Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Sounds like me. I never really liked it when it was on, but decided to pick up season four on a whim a while ago. Great stuff.
     
  5. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Phage (****)

    This is an episode I was worried about because I knew it was going to focus on Neelix, but I found it quite enjoyable. The Doctor begins to develop a personality and there is a good odd-couple vibe going on between him and Neelix. The Doctor also manages to throw in some good one-liners.

    Neelix still hasn’t managed to annoy me, surprisingly enough. I do wonder exactly how he managed to build his galley overnight without getting authorisation, but the idea that Voyager needs to adapt like this is a good one that seems to get dropped at some point.

    I have always enjoyed the Vidiians since they are very sympathetic villains and certainly not your usual Trek aliens. How can we judge them for wanting to survive? Would we stoop to harvesting people’s organs if the same thing happened to us? I like Janeway’s speech at the end where she comes to realise that she cannot do anything to stop them because of the situation Voyager is in, this does help separate this show from TNG and DS9 where the Vidiians would doubtlessly be arrested and brought to trial.

    A solid instalment. :techman:
     
  6. Tachyon

    Tachyon Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Phage is one of my favs from season 1. Most definitely. Vidiians were such an amazing villain. The tradegy of them made them more than your awerage one dimensional bad guys of the quadrant.
     
  7. DGCatAniSiri

    DGCatAniSiri Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    I think Phage should have been aired first after Caretaker - it's a good story that emphasizes the differences between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants, since if they were an Alpha Quadrant Alien of the Week, they could just petition for medical assistance from the Federation and recieve it, while in the Delta Quadrant, the species has to resort to organ piracy. It would have been a good hook, better than a technobabble plot, heavy on the characters or not.

    And I also love Tom's 'we ate him because we are demons and I'm still hungry' bit. Never fails to amuse me.
     
  8. spoonunseptium

    spoonunseptium Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Heh, I watched the entire series from beginning to end last year when I was just 17, and loved it. All the people I know who like Voyager are teenagers.

    So, I don't see an validity in the notion that you like it better when you grow up.



    anyway. I appreciate Voyager for all of its allegories and philosohical words of wisdom and ethical dilemmas...though I quickly discovered that that is the entire underlying thread of Star Trek- exploring humanity and whatnot.


    And, once I started watching other series like TNG or TOS, I had to get used to the fact that the Enterprise could contact Starfleet for backup at almost any time. After being Trek-trained(as I call it) on Voyager, it was weird to realize that the starships could take a couple of days to swing by earth.

    I think Voyager is superior in that way; they can't just call up Starfleet, they're all alone and must achieve their goal without anyone's help. Plus, the entire run of the show was about getting home, so it was all very driven.

    For that reason, I find the other series to be a wee bit less inspiring.

    Although, Emissary is, out of all five series, the best pilot episode.
     
  9. leola

    leola Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    What a great time to find this thread! I missed most of ST:V first time around due to living a crazy life, but was a huge TNG fan and desperately tried to catch what I could, plus jaded reports from hubby. Needless to say, epic fail. I rediscovered it 3 yrs ago while recuperating from accidentally slicing wrist tendons and being told to sit and do absolutely nothing... yeah right. Spike was airing 5 hrs of ST/day and I tuned in to TNG and then Caretaker was on right after. It was love. I became a huge Janeway fan, and soaked up all I could. Not all epis were phenomenal, but fan-fic repairs all!

    Fast forward to now, and I'm recovering from repairing those same tendon repairs, and rewatching V on DVD as I'm sitting, doing absolutely nothing (and typing left-handed). I'm enjoying this board, and these commentaries, and hope to contribute.

    Welcome, other 'new' old fans.
     
  10. freak

    freak Commodore Commodore

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    You know I happen to agree..it's nice to see that Voyager haters of the past come back like years later and watch the series again and then start to get hooked on it. :) I was basically the same way. Years 1-4 really stuck out for me..but when Year 5 came around, it started to dull a bit for some reason(even though I still loved the series as a whole). Year 7 was the worst for me..I guess because I was realizing that it was gonna be over soon and it really got to me. Especially when Neelix left! At first I thought: oh this is a joke..he'll come back later on. But when he REALLY left, it made me realize that uh-oh, this series is fixing to go bye-bye. And it killed me when it ended!!!! Then I said: wait, THAT'S the END?!?! What are you kidding me?!?! Suffice to say, it didn't end like I wanted it too. But that's what fanfic is for. :)
     
  11. Tachyon

    Tachyon Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager


    What an interesting idea. Never thought about this before. Perhaps it would have been slightly "bigger deal" if Parallax had come after Phage and B'Elanna had become as Chief Engineer few episode later.
     
  12. es!

    es! Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    GodBen, it's a nice idea to rewatch Voyager, especially for a person who is indifferent towards it (I mean it's clear that I watch the epis again and again, lol).

    I like your reviews although I don't always agree. Like the other posters in this thread you bring up many interesting points. I'm looking forward to reading more of your "hater" reviews here! :techman:
     
  13. Piper

    Piper Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Phage was the first really solid episode after Caretaker in my opinion. Parallax had a good human story allied to a very weak technobabble story, while Time and Again was just "meh." Phage, however, had great aliens (the Vidiians were far more interesting than the Kazon) and it made Neelix seem like he would be a good character after all.
     
  14. Tachyon

    Tachyon Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    On no, no, no, no, no. Parallax had no weak technobabble story. Me loves Parallax. :D
     
  15. Trek Survivor

    Trek Survivor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    "Phage" was really good.

    "State Of Flux" (shown on Virgin1 Monday) was as good as I remember as well! Robert Beltran seems to struggle with acting ("All I want to know is...why") but besides him, I liked the whole Seska thang.

    God bless daily repeats!
     
  16. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    The Cloud (**)

    I have very mixed feelings about this episode for several reasons. On the one hand it does address Voyager's energy problems which are serious enough that Janeway has to give up coffee, but then Tom and Harry go and mess around in the holodeck. The term cognitive dissonance comes to mind. I also like how a lot of this episode focuses on character scenes and this episode really makes Voyager feel like a true ensemble show, but the scenes aren't that well written some some lines sound incredibly cheesy. The cloud story is superfluous for most of the episode which I think is a good thing, but then the final 15 minutes focuses on some technobabble stuff they are doing to save the cloud, and that gets boring fast.

    "There's coffee in that nebula" is a line often used to sum up Voyager, but this episode has two lines which I think do this much better. First there's the Doctor's "Why pretend we're going home at all, all we're going to do is investigate every cubic millimetre of this quadrant, aren't we?" And secondly here is Neelix with this unusually insightful comment "You don't care a great deal about your crew and introduce them to the spectre of death at every opportunity."

    Here is an idea I've just had, Neelix shouldn't have been so incompetent and his anger at Janeway's decision making should have built as time went by and crew-members started to die. He senses disquiet among some of the crew and begins to lead a mutiny against Janeway's command. Many Maquis join this mutiny and Chakotay is forced to choose between his people and his captain. There could have been a good number of stories on this subject, but by the end of this episode Neelix tucks his tail between his legs (does he have a tail?) and bows down to the mighty Janeway.

    I guess there is already a show for people like me and it is called Battlestar Galactica. :p

    Torpedo count: 1/38. I'll probably forget about this, but I'm going to try and keep track of it. Voyager officially jumps the shark at torpedo 39. ;)
     
  17. leola

    leola Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    Is there also going to be a Shuttle count? Methinks we'll be done quickly...
     
  18. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    I'm going to try to keep one of those too, but I don't think there was ever a limit put on how many shuttles they had. Still, it's fun to count. 1 Ha ha ha. 2 Ha ha ha. 3 Ha ha ha... :rommie:
     
  19. es!

    es! Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    I've seen a list of torpedoes and shuttles counted... darn, I don't remember where it was... maybe somebody knows?..
     
  20. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

    I agree on that. I think that B'Elanna was tamed little too quickly, already in the second episode.

    Anyway, they are good episodes both of them.

    My season 1-3 Voyager reviews: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Park/1964/episodeguide.html