A Non-Fan's Re-Watching Journey

[Bisz]

Howdy,

I'll start off by explaining the title of the thread.

Voyager is my least favourite of the shows (not counting TOS which I have not seen in its entirety, though I love the movies). I grew up on TNG, loved it to death but ridiculed DS9 when it first came out... until I actually watched it. Now DS9 is my favourite Trek, I still love TNG and after re-watching Enterprise last year I have come to appreciate its third season and love its fourth, through the first two season still leave much, much to be desired.

Somewhere in there I saw Voyager as it was being aired and after... and unlike DS9 it did not grow on me at all. I remember really liking a few episodes, Drone was great, so was the episodes where a copy of the Doctor is in a museum. But for every episode I remember liking I remember disliking five, and entirely forgetting ten.

I have all seven seasons on DVD and I'll be watching them over the next few weeks/months and my intention is post at least a line or two about what I think of each episode and maybe give it a score from 1 to 10. Maybe I'll come to enjoy the show more than I remember enjoying it in its original run, kind of like what happaned with Enterprise.



Here is a bit more info on sic-fi shows I enjoy. Like already mentioned I love DS9 and like TNG a lot. I would have to say that DS9, along with B5 and Firefly are in the top three for me. On top of TNG I very much enjoy SG1 and SG:A. I like Farscape and The Outer Limits. I think SG:U improved a lot in its last half year after having a very weak start. I think NuBSG crashed and burned spectacularly after having soared so very, very high in its beginning.

 

[Bisz]

S01E01 & 02 - Caretaker

6/10

Just finished watching this half an hour ago. Its a solid episode that does a decent job of introducing all of the key characters.

A lot of people bring up the fact that Janeway and co. didn't even try to use the array to get back home while setting up an explosive to detonate it after they are gone. I think its a valid point, but its not one that jumped out at me too much so it doesn't bother me all that much.

One of my main gripes with Voyager is Janeway and I have to say that there were a couple of instances in this episode where I didn't like her. When Kes is telling one of the Okampa dudes that she will help the Feds find Kim and Belana Janeway has a really smug look on her face, that struck me as really poor judgement on her part. There is several other scenes where I don't like Mulgrew's delivery of lines, including at the end when she commissions Paris. A lot of people criticize Brooks for his acting as Sisko, whereas I absolutely love it. Maybe this is the same thing, I just don't like Mulgrew's style while it really works for others.

Ok. Onto Paralax.

 

[Bisz]

S01E03 - Parallax

5/10

A fairly solid character development peace wrapped in a weak and recycled technobabble story. No super noticeable moments of Janeway dislike, which is nice. Small nit-pick, why did the warp engines flash when Janeway ordered full impulse towards the singularity?

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I'm in total agreement about Mulgrew's acting. By no means do I feel that she's some great "act-ress", there are times when she delivers her lines perfectly but there are quite a lot of times when her expressions, poses and especially facial expressions do not suit the situation or are overly posed like she's on the stage. Still, I find her to be the most watchable of the captains and 10 times better than Avery Brooks whose acting I found simply atrocious on several occasions. Its one of the many reasons "Far Beyond the Stars" is one of my all time least favorite Trek episodes.
We have a VOY watchthrough thread running at the moment that's in season 5, but the more the merrier! DS9 has two going on, so why can't Voyager.

I think Parallax has great character interactions but the technobabble definitely drags it down

 

[Bisz]

there are quite a lot of times when her expressions, poses and especially facial expressions do not suit the situation or are overly posed like she's on the stage.

Pretty much spot on. One of the two reasons I don't like the Janeway character, the other being that I just find her unlikable as a person and as a CO.

 

[Bisz]

S01E04 - Time And Again

7/10

An enjoyable episode but it has the glaring flaw of revolving on exactly the same premise as the prior episode, Parallax: "In temporal mechanics sometimes effect can precede cause". Never mind that I don't see how thats possible in the general case, I don't see how this episode was able to happen. The only reason Voyager would investigate the pre-warp planet was because of the explosion, but the only way the explosion would happen is if Voyager visited the planet... At the end of the episode we see what happens when there is no explosion and no visit, my question is, why didn't that happen in the first place?

This is one of the good episodes I remember watching way back when.

P.S. What happened to the Captain not leading dangerous away missions rule?

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I guess people got fed up of the lame old "second officer reminds first officer of the Captain not leading away missions rule" scenes. For the sake of Voyager as an actual TV show, I'm glad they dropped it.

 

[josss]

I'll start off by explaining the title of the thread.

 

[Bisz]

I guess people got fed up of the lame old "second officer reminds first officer of the Captain not leading away missions rule" scenes. For the sake of Voyager as an actual TV show, I'm glad they dropped it.

I'm not, it relegated Chakotay to a piece of furniture. The CO always has plenty to do as is, having the XO lead the away missions allows that character some choice bits.

 

[Bisz]

S01E05 - Phage

7/10

A solid episode, though we again get Janeway leading an away mission... to a place where one of her crew was just pretty much killed. The Doc is already emerging as a solid character,



S01E06 - The Cloud

5/10

They don't have enough power to get a coffee from the replicator, but they can run the holodeck? A few interesting character moments but nothing spectacular. The animal guide thing was neat, I don't recall if they follow up on that or not.

We learn Voyager has 38 torpedoes aboard and it fired one of them.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Ah you weren't listening close enough, the holodeck power matrix is not "compatible" with the rest of the ship...LOL. I think Michael Piller didn't want there to be holodecks but Jeri Taylor did so she could write her little Janeway holonovel fantasies. Jeri Taylor really derailed this show from greatness.

As for "Phage", I love that episode, the scene with Janeway and the Vidiians at the end is great and I wish we'd got that more emotional janeway more often.

 

[MacLeod]

Which brings up a whole new topic, what engineer in their right mind would design a system onboard that required a different power system that was incompatiable with the rest of the ship?

It doesn't make any logical sense.

It might have been away around the problems that we had in TNG's "Booby Trap" where in situtations where power was limited the holodecks where shut down.

 

[Bisz]

Ah you weren't listening close enough, the holodeck power matrix is not "compatible" with the rest of the ship...LOL.

I did hear that, but I figured that can't be a reason for while the ship is starving for energy they are able to run holodecks, its such a cop-out. Its a Starfleet ship, there has got to be a million ways of getting every bit of juice they can get out of any system. They can transfer power from life support to fire torpedoes, they can transfer power from shields to boost transporter range, but they can't transfer power from the holodeck to the rest of the ship?

As for "Phage", I love that episode, the scene with Janeway and the Vidiians at the end is great and I wish we'd got that more emotional janeway more often.

I wasn't a fan. She was on the verge of crying... This was not a "The Line Must Be Drawn Here!" or "It's Real!" moment and her emotions felt out of place for me.

 

[Bisz]

S01E07 - Eye Of The Needle

7/10

Another of the episodes I remember fondly. Harry is annoying but other than that most things work for me, including Vaugh Armstrong as the Romulan scientist.



S01E08 - Ex Post Facto

7/10

I guess season one is the one that stuck with me the most because again, this is another ep I remember as being good. I like detective stories, Tuvok does a good job (though his hair style leaves much to be desired) and Janeway doesn't do anything to make me groan.

 

[Bisz]

S01E09 - Emanations

5/10

Not a great episodes but not a bad one either. I'm glad Janeway kept an open mind about things at the end of the episode. Back to back episodes with Harry laying on the Sickbay table, is he to become Voyager's O'Brian?


The thing that really disappoints me is that the show seems to have abandoned its premise, we are more than halfway into the season and these Voyager episodes are almost indistinguishable from TNG episodes. Aside from a line or two in the second episodes there has been no friction between Starfleet and the Marquis, nothing has been said about their integration. We saw B'Elanna chosen as the Chief Engineer but thats it. I know there is more coming, but I think it should have been addressed sooner. Instead of all these stand alone anomaly/alien/problem of the week episodes there could have been a lot done to flesh out the Voyager premise.

 

[Bisz]

S01E10 - Prime Factors

5/10

I don't understand Janeway's dilemma here, she should have gone for the trade. I'm glad to see some of the Marquis stuff coming up and its good to see Carey back. Kim continues to get a lot of screen time while Chakotay is largely ignored - not a good thing in my view.

 

[Bisz]

S01E11 - State Of Flux

7/10

Chakotay finally gets to do something, we have some Marquis stuff and the Kazon, all good things but I think the spins ode lacks something so it only gets a 7.

 

[tomswift2002]

Out of the ones that you have mentioned, I really didn't care for Parallax ('Time And Again' did a much better job), Phage or Emanations.

 

[Bisz]

Out of the ones that you have mentioned, I really didn't care for Parallax ('Time And Again' did a much better job), Phage or Emanations.

I guess Phage is the only one we disagree on, I thought it was a fairly good story and aside from Mulgrew, fairly well acted a s well.

 

[Bisz]

S01E12 - Heroes And Demons

5/10

Really disappointed in the fact that Voyager is doing a holodeck story, I still don't buy that they are short on power but can run holodecks because the enery is not compatible, seems like a total cop-out.