Voyager again, for the first time

[NightJim]

Phage

Well that'll teach me. After moaning about the lack of Voyager dealing with the problem of being stuck in the middle of nowhere and Neelix's addition to the crew seemingly pointless, this episode opens with both of these issues being addressed. Neelix has a plan to solve the ship's energy situation and has set up a kitchen to help with the food problem. These are the type of issues I want to see being dealt with in the background.

Then we get to the planetoid with the dilithium and things go sideways. Some great directing gets the tension going and Neelix ends up missing some rather important possessions. The body horror and crew attitudes throughout had me hooked, and once again the Doctor's 'awakening' from just a tool into a proper personality is fascinating. But unlike the previous episode it's a nice side story, rather than being the sole highlight.

I sort of wish the episode had explored the idea of switching the life support off if they hadn't caught up with the aliens, but at the same time, when Kes was questioning the hologram decision I found myself thinking "at least do it while we see if we can catch up."

After the disappointment of Time and Again, Phage is exactly what Voyager needed. As an amusing sidenote, here in the UK I think TV was a year behind the US, and this was one of six episodes I bought on VHS when the series first appeared.

[NightJim]

The Cloud

I liked it. Like Phage it does a good job of showcasing the transition of the crew into their situation while having a particularly Star Trek problem for the ship to deal with at the same time.

Neelix, having now fully assured my complaints of his being on the ship, has started his descent into being annoying. I know he's not in any shape or form military, and was a rough and ready trader before he met Voyager, but on what planet does it make sense to arrive in a crisis centre with entrées? It's completely pointless, and it's not even like they needed him on the bridge for the next bit.

Meanwhile I loved the bit with Tuvok and Kim basically whispering to each other on the bridge with communicators. It's a nice little subversion of the technology that we're so used too.

But oh God, the spirit animals have started to appear.

[teacake]

NightJim wrote:

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But oh God, the spirit animals have started to appear.

So embarrassing..

[Guy Gardener]

Chakotay "And this is my Spirit stick."

Janeway "Is this an important part of your Native American religion?"

Chakotay "No, what? I was the deputy Captain of my High School Cheer leading Squad."

[teacake]

And his balls are still pom poms.

[Guy Gardener]

Those jewels cushioned the abuse when the rest of the pyramid fell down on him.

[NightJim]

Now Cheerleading would make for an interesting revelation about him. Instead of taking Janeway on a vision quest they go to the holodeck to re-enact this.

[teacake]

But instead of a gym it's rubber trees, right?

[NightJim]

Well, of course.

Eye of the Needle.

Good episode, but nothing really outstanding or despressing in it. I did like the slow ramp up of various crew members getting excited about going home, from Kim being mental from point 1, to B'Elanna when she figures out the transporter technique.

Also the Doctor and Janeway's conversation about giving him some autonomy. Is it wrong that this is one of the most interesting things about the show at this point?

[Guy Gardener]

Nope.

Holorights should be a leading issue here.

Is there slavery in the Federation?

But this is when we figure out that there is a Romulan spy positioned on board Voyager who is up to no good, who has had thirty 30s of forward planning behind him to turn political profit form being lost in the Delta Quadrant.

[NightJim]

Ha, that would be quite a nice turn of events. The holo-rights thing should definitely be front and centre, but one aspect I found problematic with the whole thing is Janeway's attitude in this episode when Kes was talking to her. It was basically "We programmed it, who cares?" but surely Starfleet have already been through this with Data? It's not that different is it? Both boil down to self aware AI, just one has a robot body, the other a holographic one, or am I being too open minded?

[Guy Gardener]

The Doctor is not programmed to be self aware. To guarantee his continued indentured servitude they have to make sure that the Doctor is self unaware and that he gets off on his unawaredness and has no desire what so ever to change that status.

If they tell him to take a bullet out of Harry Kim's shoulder after a cocked up away mission and he says "No." Do you really think that they'll let Harry die because the Doctor wants to change his name to the Princess?

Heuristic? Yes.

Selfaware? No.

Data on the other hand was created to be alive, self aware and thinking. Treat him like a slave, forget to say please, and he's going to knock you your ass, or at least the constipated passive aggressive mid 24th century equivalency.

All that being said, the Doctor could "accidentally" become self aware, but he's not going to become "accidentally" self aware, when he's specifically programmed not to be come self aware after only a month in deep space without perhaps something weird happening.

A few times in later episodes. "technicians" have been amazed and made utterances like "You've been active continuously for how many years?" Dude, you're supposed to be reset to factory settings every couple weeks, no wonder you're glitching and batshit.

[NightJim]

Ahh I see, didn't get that. That makes a lot more sense now. From the way he'd been acting and what Kes said (though I realise she's meant to have the outsider naive view of it) I just thought he was.

So the whole becoming selfaware is due to being on for so long and his programming evolving from that. I also like that Starfleet has a "Did you try rebooting it?" angle on him. Rather nasty that the designers basically knew this would happen and just told people to reset to prevent it.

[Guy Gardener]

There was a TNG episode where the Federation spent billions of credits (however money that doesn't exist works) and millions of man hours to invent a service droid (slave) called the exocomp. By the end of the episode Starfleet had to admit that exocomps were alive, and probably GIVE THEM SEVERAL PLANETS to thrive on and grow as a species. Ditto with when Welsey's high school science experiemnt with nanites got away from him. They had to give away a planet in that episode too. If Holograms decide they require equal rights to the fleshies and there might be more holograms than fleshies in the Federation, exactly how many planets do you think that they're going to incist of taking to build their own civilization upon? Half the Federation? 3/4's of the Federation? All of the Federation?

If the Federation could learn from history they never would have called this ship Voyager after the death toll a rambling living AI called Voyager racked up in the Motionless Picture.

Case in point. In America while they kept slaves. If a black person learnt how to read, that was clear grounds for execution. Slaves do what they're told and make the lives of their masters idyllic. Any example to the contrary is met with a whipping. Next thing you'll have me beleive is that Janeway is going to say "yeah, sure, fine" if the Doctor says he wants to go on tour as a pop star leaving Voyager stranded without a Doctor.

[teacake]

They don't have to give them the M class planets, they don't need to breathe.