Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager 'Tinker, Tenor' was Voyager's best comedy episode, and ranks up there with the best Trek comedies. The Doctor's dream about B'Elanna, Seven and Janeway coming onto him in that meeting was hilarious, as was the computer suddenly gaining a bit of sentience. 'Last chance to be a hero Doctor. Get going!' (RIP Majel.) 4.5/5 'Alice' was rather disappointing coming off the first four episodes. Chakotay's comment about the full complement of shuttles had me lol-ing. Tom's character development is severly lacking, though his scenes with B'Elanna at the start are nice. It all delves into dull, silly nonesense - the malevolent Alice is particularly shite. 2.5/5 And what's next? Riddles? Oh dear, more missed opportunites.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Well, but of course you're young (at least you seem so to me), so your prior infatuations aren't all that far in the past. Maybe that makes a difference. I mean, it would be absurd for me to be jealous of somebody from before we were married. It was in the previous century, for goodness' sake, and not all that near the end of the previous century, either. I do know people who would be, though, but they are...well, nuts. There's another possibility for you.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager So you're saying that my strange and potentially insane behaviour means I attract strange and potentially insane women? Goodo, they're my favourite kind! Riddles (*½) There are many reason why I don't like this character, but that line sums it up for me. If I was captain of Voyager then I'd tell him to go home and ask the government to send a competent investigator instead. But no, lets make the insane conspiracy nut right. I know some think that Neelix and Tuvok had a Spock/McCoy thing going on, but I never bought into that because McCoy was awesome and Neelix is less than awesome. When McCoy antagonised Spock it was normally based out of philosophical differences not because he's a twonk, and then Spock would half join in so that the audience could know that he was enjoying the discourse. Neelix seems to pick on Tuvok because he is different, and Tuvok genuinely seems to want Neelix to go away. It was a joy to watch Spock and McCoy antagonising each other, for me it is a chore to watch Neelix antagonising Tuvok, it's like watching one man slowly destroy another's soul because he thinks it's a laugh. That's my fundamental problem with Riddles; I don't want Tuvok and Neelix to become friends, I want Neelix to learn to leave Tuvok alone. Then there is stuff about aliens and cloaking devices and that stupid investigator guy, none of which made much of an impact.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I liked Riddles. It gets 3 stars from me. Normally I can't stand Neelix or Tuvok. The former is quite annoying and the latter is an unlikeable prick but surprisingly this episode manages to make them both quite pleasant to watch both individually and together. This is a VOY episode with a lot of nice touching character moments. I also thought the aliens were neat.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I agree. One other thing I like about Riddles is Tim Russ availing himself of the opportunity to act beyond the rigid Vulcan exterior.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You're really grasping at straws to find reasons to dislike episodes now. Janeway didn't have all year to spend time dealing with the bureaucracy of some alien world, she wanted to find out what was wrong with Tuvok, cure him and be on their way. You're forgetting that this captain has seen a lot of things and what might seem like a crazy conspiracy theory to a load of government bureaucrats will seem perfectly likely to her. There was nothing unrealistic about this exchange at all and I happened to love this investigation/mysterious enemy plot. Unfortunately the Neelix/Tuvok plot made me cringe a bit, but overall the episode was OK.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Riddles is one of my favorites. I would easily hit it with ****. Tim and Ethan did great and the story was touching while there was the scifi component there as well.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager When wasn't I? That's not my problem with that line, my problem is that the investigator makes it clear that he is starting his investigation with a preconceived notion as to what is to blame and he wants to work on the case in order to find evidence to back up his beliefs. He is not a reliable investigator because he is starting from a prejudiced position and is likely to overlook or ignore evidence which doesn't fit into his pet theory. For that reason I would want to get rid of that investigator and ask for someone who will follow the evidence towards a conclusion and not the other way round, and my problem with the conspiracy nut being right is that it justified his methodology rather than condemning it. I don't dislike the guy because he is a conspiracy nut, I dislike the guy because I fundamentally oppose his way of doing things.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I agree that it was well acted but I found it a bit naff. Examining the Tuvok/Neelix relationship yet again felt a bit like flogging a dead horse to me. I vastly preferred it to the previous 3 episodes though! I nearly gave up on season 6 after Alice. It gets much better later I think.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Tuvok acting like some kind of child made me cringe. I generally find it pretty cringeworthy when characters act out of type, Data is "Masks" is the champ here, I nearly threw up watching that.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Riddles was sort of good in the areas of Neelix's concern for poor Tuvie, and of course, Tim Russ's acting. Aside from that though, there's just a lacklustre side plot and and a very bad reset to end. All in all, very disappointing. 2/5 And for me now, I'm sure it's here where Voyager seems to flip between a bad episode and a good episode from one week to the next.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Dragon's Teeth (***½) This is a good idea for an episode that works most of the way through and then falls apart about ten minutes from the end when the whole thing turns into an action-filled mess. The episode begins by copying a concept from an earlier Voyager episode (The Thaw) but rather that go the evil clown route this episode decides to stick with the idea of a race trying to rebuild itself after nearly being wiped out in a war. This is Voyager, so of course the aliens are going to end up being evil, but I don't mind that this time because the way the crew uncovers the violent history of the Vaadwawr feels natural. Then the aliens turn super-evil and start attacking Voyager, the bad aliens from the start turn good, Voyager starts to fall from the sky twice for some reason, Gedrin decides to assist in the potential wiping out of his whole race for no reason, Tuvok beams down to the planet and never beams back, and stuff gets blowed up real good. I would say that this sequence was rushed, but it lasted around 7 or 8 minutes so it really shouldn't have been, the whole thing was just unnecessarily complicated and paced really, really badly. What this episode does well is give Voyager a sense of scope it normally doesn't have, this episode feels like it is playing out on a bigger stage than most episodes of Voyager do. So, even though it falls completely apart in the final ten minutes, I still admired what this episode was up until that point. Amazingly, they only fired one torpedo in this episode that I noticed, it's incredible considering all the effects shots and they way they've been using the things lately. Torpedoes: 61/38 Here's a practical experiment that you can try at home. If you are using a desktop computer then get a small explosive, strap it to the side of your computer and set it off. If you don't have any explosives handy then get something heavy and start battering your computer until it breaks down. Now unplug your computer from the socket it was in and plug it into a different socket. Congratulations, your computer will now be working! What sort of qualification did the science advisers to this show have, a degree in music theory?
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Dragon's Teeth gets 3 stars from me out of 4. Really my only problem with it was the fact that it definitely feels like this is going to turn out to be the first part of a two-parter given the flow except it decides in the last 10 minutes to go from an entertaining set-up to an abbreviated wrap-up of the preceding 50 minutes. So before shaking things up they scuttle them because the episode has to end. So it really can't do justice to all the potentially interesting threads it introduces. To be fair though the writers admitted this was suppose to be one of those telefilms like "The Killing Game" and "Dark Frontier" but something came up where they had to change their minds. I liked the Vaadwauar. I liked the idea behind them. I liked the way the ensemble was used. Loved the FX, the exciting battle sequences at the end.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Okay, time to play catchup. Agreed. Also agreed. Maybe he did give up? That's not a bad idea. Good grief. I'd also tend to agree. Eh, I liked "BotD" a bit more than that... I guess I kind of understand the dejected religious/need to appease the parents issue though. Also a ditto from me. Nah, it doesn't start to get annoying til "Author, Author." I remember reading once that "Alice" was their attempt to remake Stephen King's "Christine" in a sci-fi fashion and do it better. Nice try, but no. Eh, you just have evolved sensibilities. I had to look this episode up. I might not have even given it a star and a half. But in summary, this: Agreed. That sums it up for me.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You know, my rewatch of Voyager has been running more or less parallel to yours (I'm a couple of episodes ahead of you), and I've noticed a trend of steadily decreasing logic and sense to Voyager's technobabble over the last two seasons. It wasn't much to begin with, but in season 5/6 they're spouting the most ridiculous technobabble phrases that just don't make any sense at all! It's very noticeable to the point that I'm getting quite annoyed at those stupid onliners. Thank god ENT did away with all that nonsense!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Wasn't Dragon's Teeth supposed to be a double episode feature, like Dark Frontier and Flesh and Blood? I remember wondering why they changed their minds, and then when I eventually saw the episode I gathered that they just ran out of story. It started off with good intentions, using Seven and Neelix's historical knowledge to slowly establish the new race. But then it's all thrown away in the end for a whizz-bang finale, which is such a shame. The Vaadwauar were being touted as a possible new ongoing villain, but they end up falling a bit short here, and never return. 2.5/5.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager This episode could have been one of the better tele-films if they had stuck with it, it had a very good premise while having the scope of an episode like Dark Frontier, and with an extra hour they should have been able to sort out the problems with the Big Action Finale™. It was certainly more worthy of the treatment than The Killing Game. I warned you this would happen when you got that job. It has definitely gotten worse over the years, and it was particularly noticeable in Dragon's Teeth. I'm just browsing the script and here's some common technobabble phrases that were just thrown into the battle in order to make it "more dramatic". Shields at maximum. Weapons standing by. Target phasers, full spread. Shields at ninety two percent. Evasive manoeuvres. Reroute emergency power. Targeting sensors offline. Switching to manual. Aft shields down to twenty percent. Our sensor array took heavy damage. We've lost impulse engines and navigation. Thrusters are failing. How about emergency power? Thirteen power relays just blew out on deck six.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^ Can you really call it "babble" if it's understandable? Don't get me wrong, VOY did a lot of technobabble, but most of your examples here seem...well, sometimes unnecessary maybe, but not actual babbling. I mean, if shields are down or power relays have blown out, that is (or at least ought to be) a fairly important plot point, yes? Or at least indicators of the seriousness of the situation. Edit: I mean, is it really any worse than those little dramatic things that non-scifi does? You know, like in a war movie when they start talking about running low on ammo or a mystery when the detective always ends up looking for stuff with a flashlight after dark instead of in daylight.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I think it's more all of that in one sitting - that's twelve lines of dialogue in a single scene, mostly detailing what we could understand with a few seconds of visuals. There's no talk of strategy or what evasive maneuvers entails, just 'evasive maneuvers.'
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^ Are all those lines successive or nearly so? GodBen doesn't say that, as far as I can tell, but I could be wrong. If so, bleah. But even so, I'm just not sure it qualifies as "babble." Unnecessary, maybe, but to me, the term technobabble implies that the stuff just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You know, blinding us with pseudo-science.