A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[Jaespol]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

"Fair Trade" was boring beyond belief. I remember watching it with someone and we both just turned to each other and said "basically nothing interesting whatsoever happened in that episode".
"Alter Ego" was OK, I like any time they go to the holo beach resort.

 

[TheGodBen]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

"Fair Trade" was boring beyond belief. I remember watching it with someone and we both just turned to each other and said "basically nothing interesting whatsoever happened in that episode".

Well they made Neelix a sympathetic character that I didn't want to punch in the face, that was so unusual for Voyager that it piqued my interest. I liked how he felt guilty about Wixban going to jail and him getting away scot-free, so Neelix was willing to bend his ethics in order to help him out.


Well, here's goes...



Coda (0)

I can only imagine the break-meeting for this episode.

Jeri Taylor: I have an idea for an episode where Janeway has a near death experience and her father tries to convince her to join him in the afterlife. It could be a profound character piece.
Joe Menosky: Good idea, but her father should really be an evil alien who wants to eat her soul.
Brannon Braga: People seem to love Cause and Effect, how about we throw in some time loops for absolutely no reason?
Kenneth Biller: Don't forget to add a shuttle crash or two. This is Voyager after all.
Jeri Taylor: All your ideas are crap! But I'm feeling too lazy to do the work required to write a good episode, so I'll use them anyway.

I don't give out zero scores lightly, but this episode was an utter mess and I cannot in good conscience give it any points for anything. I even read Jammer's review of the episode before posting (something which I never do because I don't want other people's opinions to have an effect on my own) in the hope that it would remind me of some reason to give it at least half a star, but all that did is remind me of all the things I hated about it. It isn't worse than Threshold, but what Coda and Threshold have in common is that they are both so utterly insulting to my limited intellect that I just don't care to rip them apart.


Just ten episodes more until Scorpion... hold on Ben... just ten episodes....

 

[Mareika]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Coda (0)

OMG!
I love this episode. Well, I don`t care for Janeway`s father, but I love the scenes in the shuttle and the other J/C scenes- like many other J/Cer`s do.
And I love the end!

About Fair Trade- I agree with you. I think it s a good episode with an interesting story.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Of course, in two episodes time, it's Voyager's Triumvirate of Terror - three episodes back to back considered some of the worst outings at all.

I don't know, I kind of liked Coda, or at least the first half, before we get everything explained to us - the time loop of death was interesting. Looking over the episode as a whole, it almost feels like the first half of one episode and the second half of a second episode - they should have done one or the other and run with it instead of throwing the both of them together.

 

[Michael]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Of course, in two episodes time, it's Voyager's Triumvirate of Terror - three episodes back to back considered some of the worst outings at all.

Which is something I never quite understood. I mean, Darkling and Favorite Son are terrible, but Rise has always been one of my favorite episodes. I hope Ben will find something to like about it.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

It's been quite a while since I saw them either, but I seem to recall enjoying Rise myself - I just reported the facts. Of course, the Tuvok and Neelix pairing, for me at least, was an interesting friendship, with shades of the Spock/McCoy relationship, so episodes that emphasize it were ones I enjoyed.

Well, s they say on TV Tropes, Your Milage May Vary. Maybe with the two episodes around it, it soured some on the episode regardless?

 

[TheGodBen]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

OMG!
I love this episode. Well, I don`t care for Janeway`s father, but I love the scenes in the shuttle and the other J/C scenes- like many other J/Cer`s do.
And I love the end!

Well I'm not a J/Cer, although I did enjoy Resolutions until they copped out on the ending, so those scenes didn't do anything for me. Actually, I hated that final scene, I thought it was overplayed to the point of ridicule.

I don't know, I kind of liked Coda, or at least the first half, before we get everything explained to us - the time loop of death was interesting. Looking over the episode as a whole, it almost feels like the first half of one episode and the second half of a second episode - they should have done one or the other and run with it instead of throwing the both of them together.

That's one of my big problems with it; the time loop had nothing to do with the plot. If you are going to do a series of surreal scenes then it has to work within the context of the plot, like it did in Projections. In this episode the whole time loop thing takes up two acts yet it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. The time loop was filler that needed much more work on the script in order to get it to fit into the story, or preferably it should have been dropped altogether.

 

[Jaespol]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

You seem to mark episodes based on wasted potential, not whether it was actually an enjoyable episode or not.
I liked "Coda", it was an enjoyable episode with a very unique premise.

Yes, "Rise" and "Favorite Son" are awful but why the "Darkling" hate?
"Darkling" was a good episode!

Its all up after "Favorite Son" anyway with a stream of good- excellent, the highlights being "Before and After", "Worst Case Scenario" and "Scorpion", some of the best episodes of not only season 3 but all of Voyager.

 

[Praetorian]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Aye, Coda was a bad mixture of many TNG/sci-fi cliches, hardly any point in it.

 

[PolloCaballo]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Maybe those of you objecting to the time loop in Coda don't quite get it.

It wasn't a time loop at all. Chakotay wasn't there with her, they just wrote it to seem like he was experiencing it along with her. That's part of the surprise of the episode. I liked the twist. We start out thinking it's just another time travel conundrum, but it's not. The whole entire episode is Janeway's near death experience.

She wasn't actually killed multiple times by Vidians or shuttle explosions or whatever. The crew never really tried to locate her consciousness with a magnaton scanner. Kes and Tuvok never tried to communicate with her soul and they never had a memorial service.

I leave you with one of the most powerful quotes from all of Voyager:

"That's the real me isn't it? Lying on the ground on that planet DYING!"

And delivered with such expert intonation by Mulgrew, I relive my initial fascination with the episode every time I hear it.

The only thing that would have made the episode better is if they made it a two-parter and they had a good half-hour of invisible Janeway haunting the ship. You know, scrambling data on PADDs, plotting illogical course corrections just to annoy the helmsman and pulling Harry's chair out from under him at briefings and such. But I digress.

 

[TheGodBen]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

You seem to mark episodes based on wasted potential, not whether it was actually an enjoyable episode or not.
I liked "Coda", it was an enjoyable episode with a very unique premise.

I rate them on both, and enjoyability is by far the most important factor. If an episode is fun and I find myself enjoying watching it then I don't have the time to stress out over what it could have done better. If I don't enjoy watching an episode then my mind wanders and starts to nit-pick. I didn't enjoy watching Coda so my mind ripped it apart.

And Coda was hardly an original premise. The time loop was stolen from Cause and Effect, the bit with Janeway trying to get the crew to notice her was stolen from The Next Phase, and there was dash of Tapestry added in. It is amazing when you think of it, I would probably rate each of those TNG episodes as five stars but mix them together on Voyager and it gets 0.

 

[TheGodBen]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Maybe those of you objecting to the time loop in Coda don't quite get it.

It wasn't a time loop at all. Chakotay wasn't there with her, they just wrote it to seem like he was experiencing it along with her. That's part of the surprise of the episode. I liked the twist. We start out thinking it's just another time travel conundrum, but it's not. The whole entire episode is Janeway's near death experience.

She wasn't actually killed multiple times by Vidians or shuttle explosions or whatever. The crew never really tried to locate her consciousness with a magnaton scanner. Kes and Tuvok never tried to communicate with her soul and they never had a memorial service.

Thanks for trying to help, but I got that. It still makes no sense in the context of the narrative and its only purpose seems to be to fill time.

 

[Jaespol]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

What would you have done then GodBen? 8-|

 

[Praetor]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

The only redeemable thing about 'Coda' was the underlying idea that, as GodBen points out, got murked up irredeemably.

Oh and of course Janeway's unforgettable 'Go back to helllll!'

 

[Dane_Whitman]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I love that line, and the way she delivers it. Go back to hell, coward!

But overall I see GodBen's point, Coda is not a good episode. It's a collage of elements from TNG episodes and it's a mess. He's right when he sais the timeloop made no sense. This alien wants to convince Janeway that she's dead, why does he make her go through that timeloop? Nonsensical.

 

[TheGodBen]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

What would you have done then GodBen? 8-|

I would have quit my job on Voyager and try to move over to DS9.

Seriously, I would have cut out all the worthless garbage and told a story about Janeway having a near-death experience. Near-death experiences are real and possibly caused by blood loss to the brain so I don't see why they needed the stupid evil alien angle or all the other idiotic crap weighing the episode down. Do something based around the character which is life affirming and significant.

Oh and of course Janeway's unforgettable 'Go back to helllll!'

To be honest, it makes me cringe. It sounds like something from a bad action movie, I can never see a real person saying it.

 

[Lynx]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

Fair Trade

I like this one. A good thought-provoking story about guilt, lies and more guilt. A good Neelix story as well, not as good as "Jetrel" though. It's easy to feel sympathy for Neelix in the way he got dragged into Wixiban's affairs, how he lied and got into more trouble. But also great to see how he managed to get out of the situation by standing up for the mistakes he had done.

I'll give it 4 points out of 5

Alter Ego

Well,a good attempt to make a ninteresting story but it doesn't really work. Tuvok suddenly becomes a bit "too human" for a Vulcan here. Some good scenes and the reasons for Marayna's behavior is interesting. A decent episode but not more than that.

I'll give it 2 points out of 5

Coda

This one could have been interesting and is actually interesting with its spooky scenario............until the whole thing is revealed as some alien parasite disguised as Janeway's father.

That actually ruins the whole thing for me.

However, due to some excitement in it, I'll give it 2 points out of 5

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I kind of like Coda. It actually makes me wonder if every time somebody dies in the Trek universe their soul is eaten by an alien and they suffer for all eternity! Because that isn't ruled out!

I thought the timeloop stuff was just part of the alien trying to confuse and disorient her, to make her buy in to her death more easily.

 

[Frazzled]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

I always wondered why I found Coda so dissatisfying - now I've twigged that every time I see it its because the time loop fools me and I forget its the episode that the alien pretends to be Janeway's father. I think you folk are right that said that the two halves of the episode don't quite fit somehow.

Shame because apart from that I thought it was great. Pity the time loop thing couldn't've been an episode by itself with a different reason for it all, then the near death experience a whole episode and explored in more detail including the effect on the crew. That way they would have had an extra episoide so could've got rid of 'favourite son' altogether - I hated that one!

 

[Jaespol]

Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager

What would you have done then GodBen? 8-|

I would have quit my job on Voyager and try to move over to DS9.

Seriously, I would have cut out all the worthless garbage and told a story about Janeway having a near-death experience. Near-death experiences are real and possibly caused by blood loss to the brain so I don't see why they needed the stupid evil alien angle or all the other idiotic crap weighing the episode down. Do something based around the character which is life affirming and significant.

A near-death experience episode? That could be done on any old random show! This is a science fiction show, there should be some science-fiction involved.
So you would have had Janeway fall over and hit her head, nearly die and then mope about for the rest of the episode going "Oh no, I nearly died!".

I'd rather have some fun time loops, death scenes and the concept of a soul eating alien than that pedestrian crap.