And then we watched...
"Future's End, Part II"
Well, there were some twists, but not the kinds that made it good.
Again, the whole plot is so nonsensical, that it makes you wonder why they even bothered. The guest casting wasn't so hot, either. Sarah Silverman was nails on a chalkboard bad, and Ed Begley was just playing your typical unprincipled, evil corporate mogul. This actually got more difficult to sit through.
At least they referenced the Doctor losing his memory, though they addressed it in such a wishy-washy way that I almost wish they didn't. "I'm still in the process of recovering my memories" seems to be code for "we'll forget about the events of that episode, unless a future script needs us to remember them." Ugh.
Nice that he's got the mobile holo-emitter, though.
Instead of going to 7-11 for breakfast, they should have gone to Dinah's for some chicken and waffles. That would have been fun.
I like how they didn't follow up at all on that newscast of Voyager being visible...hell, being on KTLA or whatever local station that was supposed to be.
The plot twist into Arizona, and the Ruby Ridge/Waco/Timothy McVeigh types was, again, more lazy stereotyping, and the sudden injection of anti-government extremists into the story (particularly a year or two after the OKC federal building bombing) is a real drag on what should be a fun episode. A funnier way to do that would have had them crashing on some kind of meditation retreat--you know, the people who are into crystals and all that jazz. Have them venerate Chipotle and Torres as spirits from the sky, and make it so Tuvok and the Doc have to literally drag them out of there. I could see Torres' temper being a pretty funny element to work off of. It's still pretty broad, but at least it's good-natured.
We had an interesting discussion about what they really would have done if they'd been stuck in the 20th century. If I was in command, we'd head to Vulcan--at least we know that they had warp flight back then, and at the very least they'd want to study you. Staying on earth wouldn't be an option, because you could never divorce yourself from what was going on around you and you'd inevitably influence the timeline. Denobula wouldn't be a bad choice, either--they seem pretty tolerant of outsiders there.
Paris' "I'm about to kiss...your HEAD!" moment with Sarah was a bit awkward-looking.
And the resolution...reset button heaven. I don't believe that Janeway would just take Braxton's word for it that they had to go where they were meant to go. Why not say, "Screw you!" and do the TVH slingshot around the sun thing to get back to the 24th century?
Please indulge me for a moment while I lay out, in about a paragraph, how I would have handled the same idea (Voyager goes back to 20th century LA).
In the late 1960s, a young producer with a police show to his credit is out hiking at Vasquez Rocks. A small alien ship crash lands. It has no inhabitants, and YP is able to figure out how to use the only component that is salvageable: a time scanner. Scanning forward a few hundred years, he sees starships buzzing across the galaxy, and gets the idea for a revolutionary television show, set in the far future, showing just that.
Fast forward to 1996. He's still making TV shows, but he's running out of ideas. Somehow he's able to TECH the TECH to pull members of Voyager's crew back through time and space. Let's say it's Janeway, Tuvok, Paris, and Torres, with Chipotle and Paris back on board, trying to TECH the TECH to figure out where the others went.
In 1996, the producer starts pumping the Voyager 4 for ideas. Then he makes them go to a business lunch--cue smarmy Hollywood agent/tv exec stereotypes. You can take it to a whole meta-level, and have the Hollywood execs say that the real adventures of Voyager aren't good enough--you need to sex them up.
Meanwhile, Voyager discovers that the Producer opened a subspace chroniton rift that, if not sealed, will destroy the entire sector. Chipotle is able to TECH the TECH, and the V4 vanish in the middle of a dramatic studio meeting. Final shot is the studio greenlighting a pilot for a new show based on those fantastic special effects.
Done right, it's a tongue-in-cheek tribute to LA's entertainment culture and the show itself.
"Future's End, Part II"
Well, there were some twists, but not the kinds that made it good.
Again, the whole plot is so nonsensical, that it makes you wonder why they even bothered. The guest casting wasn't so hot, either. Sarah Silverman was nails on a chalkboard bad, and Ed Begley was just playing your typical unprincipled, evil corporate mogul. This actually got more difficult to sit through.
At least they referenced the Doctor losing his memory, though they addressed it in such a wishy-washy way that I almost wish they didn't. "I'm still in the process of recovering my memories" seems to be code for "we'll forget about the events of that episode, unless a future script needs us to remember them." Ugh.
Nice that he's got the mobile holo-emitter, though.
Instead of going to 7-11 for breakfast, they should have gone to Dinah's for some chicken and waffles. That would have been fun.
I like how they didn't follow up at all on that newscast of Voyager being visible...hell, being on KTLA or whatever local station that was supposed to be.
The plot twist into Arizona, and the Ruby Ridge/Waco/Timothy McVeigh types was, again, more lazy stereotyping, and the sudden injection of anti-government extremists into the story (particularly a year or two after the OKC federal building bombing) is a real drag on what should be a fun episode. A funnier way to do that would have had them crashing on some kind of meditation retreat--you know, the people who are into crystals and all that jazz. Have them venerate Chipotle and Torres as spirits from the sky, and make it so Tuvok and the Doc have to literally drag them out of there. I could see Torres' temper being a pretty funny element to work off of. It's still pretty broad, but at least it's good-natured.
We had an interesting discussion about what they really would have done if they'd been stuck in the 20th century. If I was in command, we'd head to Vulcan--at least we know that they had warp flight back then, and at the very least they'd want to study you. Staying on earth wouldn't be an option, because you could never divorce yourself from what was going on around you and you'd inevitably influence the timeline. Denobula wouldn't be a bad choice, either--they seem pretty tolerant of outsiders there.
Paris' "I'm about to kiss...your HEAD!" moment with Sarah was a bit awkward-looking.
And the resolution...reset button heaven. I don't believe that Janeway would just take Braxton's word for it that they had to go where they were meant to go. Why not say, "Screw you!" and do the TVH slingshot around the sun thing to get back to the 24th century?
Please indulge me for a moment while I lay out, in about a paragraph, how I would have handled the same idea (Voyager goes back to 20th century LA).
In the late 1960s, a young producer with a police show to his credit is out hiking at Vasquez Rocks. A small alien ship crash lands. It has no inhabitants, and YP is able to figure out how to use the only component that is salvageable: a time scanner. Scanning forward a few hundred years, he sees starships buzzing across the galaxy, and gets the idea for a revolutionary television show, set in the far future, showing just that.
Fast forward to 1996. He's still making TV shows, but he's running out of ideas. Somehow he's able to TECH the TECH to pull members of Voyager's crew back through time and space. Let's say it's Janeway, Tuvok, Paris, and Torres, with Chipotle and Paris back on board, trying to TECH the TECH to figure out where the others went.
In 1996, the producer starts pumping the Voyager 4 for ideas. Then he makes them go to a business lunch--cue smarmy Hollywood agent/tv exec stereotypes. You can take it to a whole meta-level, and have the Hollywood execs say that the real adventures of Voyager aren't good enough--you need to sex them up.
Meanwhile, Voyager discovers that the Producer opened a subspace chroniton rift that, if not sealed, will destroy the entire sector. Chipotle is able to TECH the TECH, and the V4 vanish in the middle of a dramatic studio meeting. Final shot is the studio greenlighting a pilot for a new show based on those fantastic special effects.
Done right, it's a tongue-in-cheek tribute to LA's entertainment culture and the show itself.
