Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Yet another reason why I'm glad I don't read the novels. The Void (**½) Ireland, Summer 2001, a 15 year-old schoolboy named Godfrey Steven Benn is alone in his parent's front room watching the latest episode of Star Trek Voyager on Sky One. The following is a reasonably accurate transcript of what occurred: Yes, I predicted the dialogue at the end of the episode all those years ago. It's not such a big deal on the surface, but I rarely feel so familiar with a show that I'm capable of doing such a thing, and that triggered something in me. When I think about it, The Void should be my perfect Voyager episode; piracy, questioning one's morality and the formation of an alliance. This is exactly what I wanted from the Kazon arc but it is condensed down into one episode, so why don't I love it? I can best explain it through a strained analogy: You're married to a woman for many years and the relationship has grown stale. It's not any one individual's fault, you've just become very familiar with one another and rarely have much interesting to say. You arrive home from work one day and walk into your bedroom to find her on the bed in sexy lingerie as part of an attempt by her to spice things up, so you do what's expected of you and join her on the bed. But there's no sense of passion, there's no bonding, there's no emotion involved, it's a purely physical act to you. When you're done you look into her eyes and realise that you don't love her. You can't remember if you ever truly loved her, but you can be sure in that moment that you don't and probably never will. You still care for her, you still want to spend some time with her, but you don't love her, and it hurts you to realise it almost as much as it would hurt her to tell her. You only started dating her because of her hot sister anyway. The Void isn't a bad episode, but it marks the point where I gave up on Voyager during its original run. Yes, I did hang in there for a long time. I still watched the show right up until Endgame (probably a mistake), but I stopped caring and I stopped expecting the show to turn into what I wanted it to be. That's what The Void represents for me, the episode where I officially stopped being a Voyager fan. Torpedoes: 88/38 And no, I'm not really called Godfrey, but after coming up with that name I almost wish I was.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager So would that make any further high scores analogous to wildly kinky attempts to reignite the flame of love again?
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager The Void gets 2.5 stars from me. I know many love it but I find it to be dull. For a similiar story executed a million times better watch ENT's "Anomaly" and "Damage". This is where the season finally comes off the rails--the next series of episodes are an absolute waste of space and just is shocking the writers didn't craft a homecoming arc like DS9 did with its Final Chapter instead of treating us to pointless drivel like Natural Law, Q2, Human Error, Friendship one, Renaissance Man, Workforce.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager ^The idea of ending with an arc is awesome, especially since the last half of the season is shit, with the exception of "Author, Author". However, I think the show shouldn't end with Voyager coming home, but with them finding a new home in the Delta Quadrant like in the "Places of Exile" story in "Infinity's Prism" ( Spoiler: "Places of Exile" In that story, Janeway decided to follow Chakotay's advice in Scorpion and observe the Borg-8472 war instead of joining in, but the 8472s found them and smashed Voyager up real good, so they retreat and find allied people (Including the Voth). Eventually, this alliance ends up becoming a second Federation in the Delta Quadrant, and at the end of the story even Janeway doesn't want to go home anymore. )
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I'd put it more down to a funny conversation we had that reminded me why I want to remain her friend. To be honest, I've met this new girl and from what I know of her she could be quite the catch. She's called Enterprise, and I've found myself thinking about her a lot recently, especially while Voyager and I were into the kinky stuff. But I'm not going to cheat on Voyager, Godfrey Benn is a gentleman, so I'm going break it off with Voyager and once the divorce is settled I might just ask Enterprise out.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I dated Enterprise once. Pretty girl, nice smile, but she doesn't have whole lot going on besides the good looks, if you know what I mean.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Repentence was a very average one, and could have been much better. Prophecy was quite poor, full of lots of boring cliches and dull plotlines that make no sense. The Void is one that I do like a lot though, and I probably like it for the reasons you listed as why you hate it! I realise that the episode was too little, too late, and it is by no means perfect. It's just nice to see some of the long-standing problems of the series being addressed in an episode. A peek into what could have been, perhaps. I remember Jammer calling it one of Voyager's most unintentionally ironic episodes. I liked seeing the crew make alliances to survive, and I liked the strange 'singing' species - something a little new for Star Trek, which almost seems impossible at this point in Voyager's history. There was almost a sense of renewed optimism for the crew, and so much more could have been made of it. The Void could certainly have happened over a few episodes, making better points out of some of the story that was skimmed over, or missed entirely.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Aww, I was hoping Enterprise would be the sexy librarian type; smart but also an erupting volcano of sexual repression. The sort of person who can quote novels and help children find books to read, and then do you in the storage closet afterwards. I don't hate The Void, I just don't feel anything from it even though I know I should. And if anybody is wondering why I've had my username adapted slightly it's because this is the username I normally use on other sites and I don't know why I left the "The" off when I joined here. It bugged me for 9 months, but now it is fixed.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I can't believe you gave such low scores to "Barge of the Dead" (Jammer gives it full marks) and "Body and Soul", it was just a light comedy episode and you mark it down for not fully exploring the philosophy or whatever behind the doctor inhabiting SeveN??
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager You know what? It may be because I've not watched the earlier seasons for years, or because I'm just not that emotionally invested in this show, but I don't care about any of this! To me, this was a good episode. As with Latent Image, if they feel the need to retcon the past to make it more interesting, that's fine by me.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager That could have been such a good episode, but instead they ruined it with the typical VOY reset button. 1, she was hot, 2. she was an interesting character in that she insulted Janeway to her face which the other crew members were too afraid to do. It was interesting the way she challenged Janeway about the mission yet Janeway was unable to answer her questions, you wouldn't see wuss kim doing that or Chakotay. She should have been made a permanent member of the cast. But instead we got a ridiculous plot about an alien species which procreates by re-animating dead people which makes no sense for very obvious reasons! In addition this alien race clearly had no right to do this in the first place!!! And why would anyone with memories of their real past life want to escape a lame aliens species and then try to re-join them after escaping their clutches. Aggh, its just one of many star trek episodes where we get introduced to a really cool new character only to have them written out in the space of 45 minutes. But then what can you expect from Voy, the ship should have been a wreck by the end of the seventh season but instead it was in a perfectly immaculate condition, deus ex machina and janeway committing human rights offences/toying with the very nature of existence for her own gain, all the way.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I can't agree with your ratings of seasons 5 and 6. Season 5 was very weak in my opinion - a few great episodes (Latent Image, Equinox), but so many that screwed up their premise and ended up boring. I thought Season 6 was a great improvement. Yes, doing two Fair Haven episodes was insane, but the season as a whole is more watchable. One of the successes of TNG was that even the stupid episodes were usually watchable, Voyager season 6 replicated this, whereas season 5 did not.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager Me too. Yeah great looking, but kind of an air head. And half of what she says makes absolutely no sense.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager The first two years Enterprise and I were together, we had fun, but that was about it. Then it became awesome. I'd have married her if I hadn't discovered DS9.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I did, but I still disagree. As you say, season 5 was a real slog, whereas season 6 wasn't. Sure, Fair Haven and Spirit Folk were really bad, but they didn't stop me enjoying 6 more.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I enjoyed season 6 more too, and had it not been for the Irish crap in those two episodes it would have received a better score. Unfortunately it did have the Irish crap, I happen to be Irish, and the rest is history.
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I knew it, the ratings are going down. What shall we bet you give this series a 3/10 by the end of S7?
Re: A Hater Revisits Voyager I really don't see the problem. Tom Paris created a stereotypical version of an Irish village and they all enjoyed it, the end. I'm from Ireland and it didn't bother me at all.