Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I made some time today, so here is my long awaited review of the next episode... *drum-roll* State of Flux (****) In a perfect world this would have been another five-star episode. It has conspiracies, deceit, interesting revelations and someone telling Janeway something she doesn't want to hear. Mix that in with a story that ends with Voyager losing and Chakotay being betrayed and you have what I would normally consider to be perfect. But this episode suffers from not making much sense in the grand scheme of things. Just why did Seska betray the crew? She claims it was to protect them by creating an alliance, but why? Lets review the threats Voyager has faced so far. Caretaker: Voyager gets attacked by the Kazon who seem to do little damage and cause no injuries. Then they go away after making a threat. Nothing all that dangerous here. Parallax: Voyager accidentally gets stuck in an anomaly. No threat here. Time and Again: This episode never even happened. Phage: Okay, the Vidiians are a threat but they don't appear to be all that powerful. All they did was nearly kill Neelix, and that would have been a positive boon! The Cloud: Voyager encounters a nebula and frak it up, thus causing them to go back and fix it. No threat. Eye of the Needle: No threat. Ex Post Facto: They get attacked by two ships from a minor race and Voyager easily beats them. Minor threat. Emanations: Harry dying isn't a sign of danger, he does it all the time. Prime Factors: The aliens in this were friendly, the only reason the ship nearly blew up was because of the actions of certain crew members, including Seska. So just what threat is Seska trying to save Voyager from? This is a good episode but it came out of nowhere; they should have built up to this, not just drop it in our lap. Have a few episodes where we explore Seska as a character, maybe rekindle her relationship with Chakotay, and have a few more episodes exploring the Kazon as a serious threat. This is a good episode which could have made for a great season if they had held this episode for the finale. The villain in the real season finale was a block of cheese for crying out loud!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Glad you liked it, GodBen. State Of Flux is one of my favs. But let's not underestimate the real danger posed by the Neelix's cheese! Now that's drama with full of excitement!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager "State Of Flux" is a brilliant episode, one of the best in season 1. I remember being very surprised when I watched it the first time. OK, Seska was a troublemaker but suddenly she turns out to be a Cardassian spy and she also betrays Voyager. I also re-watched "Phage" last Sunday and it struck me that Neelix didn't seem to know about the Vidiians despite his famous knowledge of that part of the Delta Quadrant. A bit odd since the Vidiian territory covers a large part of thar area.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager When I was watching State Of Flux for the first time, I was expecting Seska to be proven innocent in the end, even though I wanted her to be the guilty one. However, I was convinced that the writers wanted to mislead us, that she was too obvious choice to be the traitor. So I was surprised, too. Lol.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Yes, I did get the same impression too. But I never suspected Carey either and I do think that Janeway and the others were a bit hard on him. I thought it was obvious that he wasn't a traitor. He was simply too much Starfleet for that.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I agree! This was a great episode that needed just a little more buildup to be perfect. I don't think this would have undermined the surprise at all, but rather made the 'betrayal' resonate more.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I didn't suspect Carey either. And I certainly didn't want him to bee the guilty one.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Proposed: Rule of Voyager 1.5: The Universe also hates Joe Carey (but not as much as Harry Kim.) Hey, maybe we should start a somewhat tongue-in-cheek 'Rules of Voyager' thread?
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I'd amend that to change "the universe" to Janeway. She promoted a terrorist in his place, she accused him of treason, and she sent him on an away mission for the first time in six years only for him to be killed. And when she went back in time to save Tuvok and Seven she didn't bother going back a few extra weeks to save this man who has a wife and two kids. Kim was unlucky, Carey's fate was decided. Heroes and Demons (**) This was the first episode of Voyager I ever saw, and this is the first time I have re-watched it since then. I had heard about the show for months and I was really excited about seeing this brand new ship, so I was more than a little disappointed when my first episode spent so much time messing about on fake-looking sets on the holodeck. I was also confused as to why they were so determined to find the Ensign Kim character because he was just an ensign and normally Star Trek doesn't bother trying to help red-shirts. I think we can all agree I was half-right about the Kim character right from the start. What works in this episode? The Doctor. What doesn't work? Everything else. In particular the story, the technobabble, the holodeck and the Vikings. Any script that's description begins with "The holodeck malfunctions..." needs to be thrown out unless it is beyond exceptional, and this episode needs to go a long way before it can make that claim. And just who came up with the idea of Vikings? They were so ridiculous and poorly acted that if they had suddenly started singing "spam spam spam" I wouldn't have been surprised in the least. Actually, it would have been a big improvement. There is a nice scene where the Doctor talks about having never seen the sky or wildlife, and that should have led to a great moment when he first appears on the holodeck. Unfortunately the set looks incredibly fake and even Picardo's acting can't salvage the scene. The two stars are purely for Picardo and some nice characterisation of the Doctor.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Done and done. Maybe there's an old Irish feud between the Janeways and the Careys? And I must say, if your first introduction to Voyager was "Heroes and Demons," no wonder you became a hater. Like you said, about all that works in that episode is the Doc. The rest is cheese. Bad cheese. And it under-utilizes the series premise quite nicely.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Actually Janeway really wanted Carey as her chief engineer but B'Elanna proved herself to be better for the job. As for the terrorist accusation that was along with Chakotay and Tuvok since Seska had planted false evidence. Lucky for Carey they didn't follow it blindly. So to say Janeway hated Carey is an arguement that doesn't hold much water for me.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Not to mention that Janeway actually put Carey in charge of the Torpedoes and Shuttle Building Team, the most important unit on the ship!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Ah-HAH! THIS episode is what the cheese from 'Learning Curve' is made of!
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Aw, you beat me to saying it! There's a line in the 'Starship Spotter' book entry on the Delta Flyer where B'Elanna is quoted as saying 'If I have to rebuild one more shuttle, I'm going to go space crazy!' I tend to think Carey would have been the one to have said this.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager yeah, I also saw Heroes And Demons for the first time in years via Virgin1. Not impressed.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You can only have so many coincidences before it ends up being motivation. I'm going to keep my eye on Janeway and Carey. Cathexis (**) I saw this episode a few years ago so I remembered the twist ending. This episode falls into the cliché of some presence taking over the ship, but what saves this episode for me is some interesting lighting. It sounds dumb to give an episode extra points for lighting the ship differently, but I like this dark look that the ship has here. The cast doesn't gel in this episode. They have worked okay up until now, but in this episode they don't display much chemistry for some reason. It felt like a bunch of people who didn't know each other rather than people who had been living and working together for the last few months. And Neelix really bugged me in this episode which is the first time in the series he has managed it. I don't think it will be the last. Not a great episode, but I think it was well executed. However, this also could have been a TNG episode, and that requires that I deduct half a star. I can't say much else because this episode tired me and now I'm all sleepy. Brain not work right. Take nap now.