What are you blathering on about Kimchee? In what universe is saying Robert Beltran's mouth is small infraction worthy?
The universe in which there's rule against posting just to piss people off. Consequently, here comes the infraction... Warning for trolling. Below is a sampling of the troll posts - some continued after you were told to knock it off. Comments to pm.
They are some of the most moronic reasons I've ever seen for an infraction ever. You shouldn't punish everyone just because you seemingly have some form of autism but I guess you are the mighty one who holds all the power so I guess I have to bow down to your completely ridiculous and illogical infractions.
Back on topic, I also acknowledge that VGR seasons 1-3 felt like a very different show, but I've never quite been able to quantify exactly why. The pacing seemed different somehow. It may have been the type of writing, perhaps more character-based and subtle than in later seasons.
I was not that impressed by Season 1. Nor do I agree that the Seasons 1-3 episodes seemed more character based than the Seasons 4-7 episodes. They all seemed like a mixed bag to me. By the way, I just finished watching Season 7's "Flesh and Blood". I was suprised that a two-part television episode had better writing and more depth than the latest Trek theatrical release.
Me either. Firstly there's the problem about why the Hirogen are 30,000 light years from where we first met them with holodeck technology. Secondly, the whole story was forced, I didn't buy that Dr Shmully would defect to the holograms and I didn't buy that Janeway would be so dismissive of him. And in the second part they have to prove that Janeway was right and Shmully was wrong so suddenly the main hologram is bloodthirsty and insane when there was little evidence of that in the first part. But it has been 8 years since I've seen it, maybe I'll like it better when I get around to watching season 7. Now season 1, that's where it's at.
Spot on, GodBen. It probably didn't help that no one seemed particularly sympathetic in those two episodes, and therefore it was different as a viewer to really be drawn into the story. Which brings me to another thing I did like: most of the time, I was able to sympathize and empathize with the characters. I felt bad for them, I really did. (Most of the time. )
It worked for me a hell of a lot more than this recent TREK movie. The latter was entertaining, but hardly had any depth and the writing was questionable at times. By the way, it was established in Season 4 that the Hirogen traveled very far throughout the galaxy, which is why the Voyager crew was able to encounter them in Seasons 6 and 7.
But most episodes of Trek are better than the new movie, Trek XI is mostly flash in order to cover up its thematic weaknesses. My theory is that the reason why it has received such rapturous approval is because its fans have suffered from years of cocaine abuse, but I dare not say it in case people find it offensive. But how did the holodeck technology go 30,000 light years in that time? Voyager traversed that distance with help from wormholes and transwarp drives, as far as we know the Hirogen had no such technology and the communication network they had been using was destroyed. I'll normally ignore such petty complaints if the episode is good enough to carry the plot contrivance, but in Flesh and Blood's case that was not so, at least for me.
I won't turn this into a Trek XI debate thread since Warped9 is using it to get opinions, but I did want to touch on something that GodBen said in relation to the quality of VGR: VGR often took liberties with continuity (and yes, I know that's another discussion) to tell a story. To be fair, I think all Treks have, and rightly so. However, on VGR, unlike on most other series, there were an almost equal number of cases where this kind of thing went one way or another: either the plot was really strong and it worked really well and almost no one cared, or it fell flat and everyone tore it apart for breaking continuity. Example of the former: "Living Witness." The doctor has a backup suddenly, but that's okay because it's a good story. Example of the latter: "Threshold." Do I need to explain why? So, what I'm saying is, that while perhaps the overall quality of the show wasn't the best, and while it definitely had some strikeouts, when it made contact it often hit it out of the park, with almost no middle ground.
the EMH is programmed with the Hippocratic Oath-to do no harm. The fact that he could turn his back to Voyager for a civil rights cause and unknowingly put them in danger means he overrode the last of his programming. Janeway couldn't punish him because they allowed him for 7 years to become what he is at the end of the ep., which is possably sentient. Janeway would also be punishing him for the right we all have, the right to make a choice. As Janeway addresses again in "Author, Author" by saying: "It wasn't right but it was human."
This has already been mentioned by previous posters, but I like Voyager because of the story line; a federation ship getting stuck deep in space taking years to get home. The idea of meeting new aliens and new adventures was an interest to me. I also think the ships pretty cool looking.
I think VGR provided an unparalleled opportunity to isolate a bunch of humans, more than they had been on any previous series, put them through utter hell, and really see what they were made of, and ultimately find out they were made of the right stuff. (I'm by no means saying this idea was totally successful.) That's TOS-level thinking, there.
Tom made a choice to help out some aliens in Thirty Days against Janeway's orders, but he got busted back to ensign and sent to the brig for a month. By letting Dr Shmully off the hook she is confirming that he is different and that he's not to be held to the same standard as the human and human-shaped aliens in her crew. She was not treating him as an equal, she was treating him as a child. But that was never my point, my point was that I never believed that the characters would act this way. In order to get the plot where the writers wanted it to go they had to make both Janeway and Shmully act out of character and I didn't buy into it. I admire what they were trying to do but plot determined character actions, it is supposed to be the other way around.
Acquiring his civil rights has always been a theme for the Doc. since day one. Janeway has allowed the Doc. to evloved due to Kes' request, Janeway started treating the Doc. as fully human at the end of "Latent Image" thanks to Seven's analogy. BTW, Tom can make a choice because as a human he has free will. The EMH is progammed behavior, he doesn't have free will until he finds a way to break his programming.
I'm not saying that Doc Shmully can't make a choice, I'm saying that he wouldn't make the choice he made in this episode, and Janeway wouldn't make hers either. I'm able to make choices and should I so choose I could make the choice to get a knife from the kitchen and slaughter my dog, but I would never make that decision because it is completely out of character for me to do such an outrageous thing. Just because I can do a thing does not mean that I will. The same applies for Shmully.
This is one of the reasons I don't care much for this episode. Treating the doc as a child was doing him a disservice. Janeway was more in character when she punished Neelix by treating him "like any other member of the crew". In doing that she was declaring him an equal. Her treatment of the doctor was way out of character.