I was reading an episode review by one of the reviewers for this site, and something really stuck out to me:
"Do Voyager's lazy, recycle-happy writers not remember those events? Or do they simply wish us to pretend they never happened, so they can swipe some of the concepts and even some of the dialogue for later episodes? I'd accuse them of stealing the basic concept of "Riddles" from Original Trek's "This Side Of Paradise," in which Spock loses his inhibitions, plus "The Changeling," in which Uhura loses her memories because of an alien scan...but that can't be the case because most of the current writing staff swears they never watched and never liked Real Trek. If they were smart enough to be deliberately borrowing from it, Voyager would be a much better series. Probably they just stole this idea from Regarding Henry instead.
I'm not going to deny that I enjoyed this episode while watching it; I did, I thought the performances were terrific, and the directing was both innovative and effective. But it's impossible to think about or be moved by these characters for longer than the 40-some minutes of the show, because even without a typical Trek reset button ending, we can be sure that they will return to square one every week, without incorporating anything they've learned or felt unless they happen to be the resident Borg boob - I mean babe.
Why should I believe Tuvok or Neelix, or Janeway or Chakotay or Paris or Torres or any of the rest of them, will learn and grow, when all previous canon on this series seems to get erased on a weekly basis? They're going to be the first crew ever to explore an alien quadrant and come home having learned exactly nothing. So that's what this series is worth."
Even though this isn't something I've discussed to great lengths in my reviews, it's something that has bothered me quite a bit. It's not realistic that important events and character development would all be completely forgotten by the next week.
I remember back to a season 4 DS9 episode called Hippocratic Oath where O'Brien and Bashir encountered a group of rogue (?) Jem'Hadar. Bashir tried to create an antidote to cure of them of their addiction to Ketracel White. Had he been successful it could have completely changed the course of events that followed. But before Bashir was able to finish his research O'Brien destroyed it because he needed to get Bashir to come with him. IMO, what O'Brien did was absolutely unforgivable, and I think Bashir might have felt similarly. Realistically this should have had a huge impact upon their friendship, but a week later it seemed that the events of Hippocratic Oath had been completely forgotten. This bothered me quite a bit not only because it was unrealistic, but because DS9's continuity was one of its greatest strengths. I hated to see that continuity just thrown out the window after this episode, especially considering that Hippocratic Oath is one of my all time favorite DS9 episodes.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that DS9 was sooooo good with continuity that when it screwed up once it bugged the hell out of me. With Voyager, on the other hand, it happens so often that it no longer even phases me. So, while I may be giving Voyager episodes a lot of high scores, those scores are for the self-contained stories, not for the series as a whole. There isn't a lot of cohesiveness between episodes, with the exception of 7 of 9 episodes, and that bothers me. I feel like I'm just watching random space adventure of the week every time I watch Voyager because rarely do episodes build upon what came before.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Kazon Arc was, and still is, the highpoint of Voyager's entire run. (unless you count Ron Moore's 1.5 episodes as a run, in which case I might have to go with them).
Anyway, sorry about my rambling. Continue on with the discussion.
