A Voyager Episode Review Podcast - V'Ger Please!

An old podcasting partner and I started V'Ger Please, a Hateful Voyage through the Delta Quadrant! Join two sarcastic Trek nerds on an episode-by-episode journey through Voyager, the unloved child of the Star Trek universe. Come for the scathing commentary, stay for the weird tangents on Starfleet workplace drama!

If you hate profanity it isn't for you. If you really, *really* love Star Trek Voyager, then this is probably not for you (we certainly praise the good episodes, but we are pretty mean when the show inflicts the likes of "Tattoo" on us). If you need to kill an hour in the car with a podcast and want to spend it listening to two guys get nerd angry over minor stuff from bad 1990's sci-fi television writing then we've got your back!

We are available wherever fine podcasting can be found, just choose a link below and get started! If you are looking for a decent one to start from, I recommend our most recent episode, a review of S2 : E12 "Resistance" that we titled 'New Jack Neelix'.

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Thank you!

 

If it's going to be trashing the show, no thanks. Best of luck to you

 

I don't think we trash the show so much as we understand its faults and make comedic light of them. We give the appropriate praise, too - our review of "Resistance" is pretty thick with appreciation for all the performances (in between comments about the generic COBRA nature of the random fascist space thugs).

The best way I have heard one of our fans say it is that we understand Voyager is a guilty pleasure, and treat it accordingly.

 

Except liking Voyager isn't something to be ashamed of or feel "guilty" about, so your logic fails.

And I don't expect you to get much traction here by advocating otherwise.

 

This!

 

Spoken like someone who has not had to watch "Elogium" recently!

Voyager is one of those shows with a lot of rough patches between its moments of brilliance. For every "Year of Hell" there are three or four entries that range from noble failures to downright wretched. I'm a lifetime fan of essentially every Star Trek branded thing out there (save a couple of the Kelvin timeline movies), but that does not mean I don't understand the faults in the things I love.

We cope with that with jokes about Neelix never washing his hands while doing food preparation in his illegal space kitchen.

 

That's a matter of opinion. There are episodes that I skip but even the worst of Voyager is not that bad. Elogium for example has some cheesy overacting from Lien, but some wonderfully touching scenes with Neelix talking about being a dad

 

Oh for sure, it's always a matter of opinion. It's what makes rewatching and discussing the show so much fun. My podcast partner and I have had some differences of opinion on episode quality (for example he liked "Persistance of Vision" and I thought it was too much like a Lifetime tv episode in space). We love the interaction we get from listeners on what they think, particularly when they disagree.

It wouldn't be a fun show to do or listen to if everyone always had the same opinion. Though admittedly, we both thought "Elogium" was the worst we gave seen, with "The Cloud" and "Tattoo" vying for second place.

 

I would put Elogium on my worst list, along with Persistence of Vision, and Cold Fire.

 

There's a difference between "recognizing the faults in something you love" and starting out with the premise that it's somehow "wrong" to love Voyager.

 

So, DS9 had Profit and Lace. The original had The Way to Eden. All the series have bad episodes. I don't feel guilty for liking Voyager and in fact, there was a whole lot to like about the show. For one, the characters felt more like a family than any other series.

 

Nothing wrong with loving what you love at all - we certainly wouldn't be devoting all this time to doing this show if somehow we felt that way. Calling something a 'guilty pleasure' is simply recognizing it's something with a lot of deep flaws, but you like it anyway.

Voyager certainly qualifies as that, as much as I like a lot of what it (eventually) brings to the table.

 

That's interesting, you didn't like Cold Fire? We ended up really enjoying that episode - Gary Gram delivered a good performance, and while it had some flaws (some flimsy effects in particular) it delivered an interesting story. That scene where Tuvok gets his blood accidentally boiled was pretty clutch.

+1 to not linking Persistence of Vision, I'm with you on that. Though part of me still wants to know how the Gothic Governess holonovel ended.

 

^ I think you're overexaggerating Voyager's flaws, which seems to be typical, especially amongst people for whom it's their least favorite Trek series.

I've said enough, though, and will move on.

 

Eh, it's a Kes episode

 

Two of my favorite episodes of Voyager are Kes episodes (Warlord and Before and After).

 

Hey that was fun! I just checked out 'Parallax' on Youtube and you guys had me busting up at the end of it. I'll have to follow your podcasts; maybe they'll even help me get through the series for once and all (because there ARE really quite a few good episodes in it... here or there).

I started writing up my own personal VOY reviews earlier this year, thinking I'd document for myself my attempt at (once again) trying to somehow get into the show -- especially should I once again find myself called out or challenged into "justifying" why I'm otherwise not particularly fond of it. Because without some record I'm sure the majority of these eps would just end up back in the Memory Hole of my grey matter as they have before. I didn't get very far though:

**Drops the bomb; runs and hides**

*******copy and paste*******

Season One:
803 – Parallax (score: No Pass, ** stars)

B'Elanna Torres breaks Engineer Carey's nose, because he's in the way. This complicates Chakotay's recommendation of B'Elanna as a suitable candidate for chief engineer. Seska sticks foot-in-mouth and offers to back Chakotay in taking over the ship, because She's Evil. Solid character interaction between clashing Janeway and Chakotay highlights the problems with integrating two crews into one (and a Starfleet crew at that). So now B'Elanna must prove herself to Janeway. That's the A-plot.

The B-plot? Voyager comes across a “type 4 quantum singularity” (read: a black hole) and discovers a ship at the event horizon. Its signal is garbled. They signal back, can't get an answer. They try “re-modulating a tractor beam to match the subspace interference” hoping to “cut through the event horizon” (“A subspace tractor beam,” Chakotay summarizes)… but they lack the power needed to free the other ship, Treknobabble ensues, and they too almost get pulled in (yawn). They leave to get help from a nearby system, but keep winding up back at the event horizon. B'Elanna recommends they blah blah blah, because of... something about the ship's holo-emitters that's causing the EMH to shrink (his appearance turns wide and flat – courtesy of some laughable lens manipulation and cheap video after-effects). The ship in distress is Voyager itself. They clean up its signal by doing... (whatever B'Elanna suggested), and it turns out to be the same hail Janeway sent earlier.

B'Elanna theorizes they're trapped underneath the event horizon, looking “up” at it from below and seeing a reflection of themselves. Their reflection is time-delayed by several hours – with one BS exception the script tries to mostly ignore. They find a “crack” in the event horizon (what huh?) from where they first entered (what huh?), but it's too narrow to get back through. So Janeway and B'Elanna take a shuttle out to widen the crack. Returning to the ship, they find Voyager moving alongside its temporally-differentiated “reflection” and have to quickly guess which is their ship – just for some bogus last-minute artificial drama. They both guess differently; Janeway is Proven Right. The ship escapes the black hole. B'Elanna is promoted Chief Engineer and makes good with hapless Lt. Carey.

A completely nonsensical plot about the ship in meaningless Treknobabble jeopardy. Did Brannon Braga write this one? Oh look, he did (The script at least. Story's credited to one Jim Trombetta.) The black hole exists solely to give B'Elanna a chance to show her stuff – but without requiring her to demonstrate she's actually leadership material. Its physics makes no sense: an event horizon isn't even technically a “thing” in nature. Not to mention the problem of being underneath it for nearly half an episode without knowing it – and apparently without even being able to tell which way was “up”. They already tried blasting away on impulse, they tried warping away from it. ANY of these maneuvers should've finished them off, if they were THAT disoriented. Even stupider, we also saw stars streaking by during exterior shots whenever they “thought” they had left it. At the end, the shuttle encounters Voyager and its reflection side-by-side. They're on their way back from the event horizon, shouldn't their mothership's reflection appear “behind” them since it’s an artifact of the horizon?

Major cringe factors: Janeway and B'Elanna both Treknobabble in unison at one point (“Warp particles!”). At the close Janeway gets “maternally” sentimental beside Chakotay as they talk about “Our crew,” suggesting she and he are like surrogate mother and father to this ship (Eww). And when B'Elanna gets humble about her conflicts both on the ship and back at the Academy, Janeway replies something like “Some professors like students who challenge them. And also some Starfleet Captains.” You wouldn't say that to someone who's already (at least somewhat) dismissed your authority. Also several dope reaction shots of Janeway staring blankly at the camera, usually with her mouth open.

 

The shock to us has been how much we have consistently enjoyed Kes's scenes, even in bad episodes. We thought we would hate her, but she tends to be pretty good.

Points off for "Elogium" though.

 

Glad you liked it my dude! My podcast partner is new to the show so we have that angle as well. I loved your takedown on Parallax - I can see why you liked our episode there, our opinions were pretty close overall.

 

To each their own. I never cared for her and thought every episode she was featured in was very weak and her acting was terrible. With the exception of Darkling. The Doctor saves it.