Another Voyager 1st-time watch thread

[Shatnertage]

I am back with a bang. Or rather, a chroniton torpedo. I've been jumping around, trying to fill in the gaps in season 2 before moving ahead to the end of season 3. Since the furthest I got into season 3 before was "Favorite Son," so I'm picking back up with...

"Before and After"

This was a completely kick-ass episode. There was the "what the hell" factor in the these, seeing the Doctor with hair and a name; even once we figured out that Kes was traveling back in time, there was still the mystery of Captain Chakotay and the other changes.

I've got to say, on a side note, that I liked Chakotay as Captain. It shows what he might have done if he had been given better material to work with throughout.

There were tons of cool moments. Kim being Paris's son-in-law was amusing, and the hints of how the crew had coped with losing Janeway were intriguing. Tuvok, without his long-time friend, seemed more disconnected than ever, despite his attempt at humor (this is during the birthday party scene).

By the way, where have we seen that blue cake before? My wife was positive it was in another episode, but neither of us could remember it. Unless we're traveling back in time.

It was just a phenomenal episode. Yes, it got heavily into the technobabble, but it didn't really matter because the human (or, in this case, Ocampan) story was so powerful. And it kept me guessing. The scene where fetus Kes de-ages back into a single cell was really disturbing to me, for some reason.

So this was a great way to get back into the show. I've got about 2.5 seasons worth of consecutive episodes I've never seen, so I should be moving straight ahead.

Also, in my on-going commentary on hair, I've got to say I really prefer long-haired Kes. Did they just start that in this episode, or did I miss it earlier?

 

[T.D. Possum]

They had a cake like that for Kes's birthday party in "Twisted". And if you've seen clips from other eps, the same icing turns up again on other cakes in future episodes.

This has been your Pointless Voyager Factoid of the Day, sponsored by "Neelix Crocker Brand Cake Mixes - They are yum yum yummy in your tum tum tummy!"

 

[froot]

I can't remember when long-hair Kes started. To be honest, I liked her short pixie hair - but there's some rumor that Lien wasn't doing well with the ear glue, so they made her hair longer. You'll notice she starts wearing a catsuit with the long hair as well - she was groomed into a sort of mini-Seven before the real one showed up.

I love this episode, too. I really dug Linnis and some of the cool "what-if" relationships. Also, keep this episode in mind as you start to delve into Season 4

And, yes, that blue frosting might be the hallmark of a particular kind of cake that frequently turns up on VOY - it's called something like "Jibellian fudge cake." I think it gets mentioned in dialog here and there. And remind me to avoid all Neelix Crocker brand goods. Ick! There's probably leola root in all of 'em...

 

[Shatnertage]

OK--thanks for clearing that up. We knew we'd seen it somewhere before.

 

[Shatnertage]

Back again with...

"Real Life"

From the tease, I thought this was going to be VOY's take on Pleasantville. Lots of forced, unfunny stuff, only mildly redeemed by Robert Picardo's great comic acting. It's nice to see that the show can still surprise.

In the first act, I'm thinking, this is a holodeck adventure A story, with an anomaly technobabble B story, which means that I should hate this episode, but I like it. Again, Picardo gets a chance to show his comedic chops, and it's not that bad. Plus, a little hint of P/T (or is that T/P?) brings a little more depth to the supporting cast.

So things are sailing along. The Klingon teenagers were a nice touch, and as the story goes on it's getting more interesting. It's a fun hour of VOY.

Then comes the end of the fourth act, and the Doctor's daughter is mortally wounded. Now, I know on one level that this is completely silly. A holographic doctor runs a program that creates a holographic family, and one of them is, according to the rules of the story, going to die. And, of course, I know it's all being acted by actors on a soundstage.

But the look on Picardo's face when he finds out...just touched something inside me. I won't deny that my eyes got watery. Then that scene with him and Paris. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. I believed that the Doctor was grieving and distraught. And it made me feel his grief and loss. I couldn't believe it.

If I ever get a chance to meet Robert Picardo at a convention, I'm probably going to make an ass out of myself by gushing about what a fine dramatic actor he is. From the other episodes I've seen, I'd never have known (except for that one where his dark side gets jealous over Kes).

And it's an episode that's phenomenal in a completely unexpected way. Another one for my VOY short list.

 

[T.D. Possum]

This is truly an outstanding episode. You're a brave man to watch it all the way through. I think I've mentioned before that I've never been able to bring myself to watch the last few minutes.

Going to go give my kid a hug now . . . .

 

[Saxman1]

Real Life is really a great story and Picardo is outstanding. Very moving.

 

[froot]

Agreed that this is a wonderful episode. So wonderful, in fact, that I can only watch it rarely because it makes me so sad!

Those last few minutes are indeed tough.

 

[Shatnertage]

^ Tough, but incredible. I usually snicker when people blather on about how Star Trek is something more than genre TV, but I'm challenged to think of anything in TV that affected me as powerfully as everything from that moment when the Doctor and Tom are talking, the Doctor turns, and you can see his eyes...maybe Radar announcing that Henry Blake's plane's been shot down over the South China Sea, with no survivors. Or the moment when Bubbles walks up those stairs in the last episode of The Wire.

For me it's a vindication of the power of storytelling, like that bit in HHGTTG with the whale being called into existence in mid-air. Douglas Adams had been miffed about writers creating and killing off redshirts that no one cared about, so he created the whale to prove that, even in the space of one page, you could create a character who the audience had a connection to.

"Real Life" says to me that even the most contrived situation, if acted right, can create the same kind of connection.

 

[T.D. Possum]

WHY did you have to bring up the WHALE!?!?!?!?!? *sobs*

(I'm too tenderhearted for all this vindication of the power of storytelling stuff.)

 

[Shatnertage]

Back with a surprisingly good episode...

"Distant Origin"

Here's an episode where, once you take your shot of "that's not how evolution works," you can actually really enjoy.

There's also a very cliche "challenge to orthodoxy suppressed in the name of dogma" element to the plot, but, again, it doesn't really matter. In fact, the whole "Gegen vs. the Science Circles" thing is lifted straight out of the last act of Planet of the Apes (1968), but it's still well-presented, so it's pretty enjoyable.

The Voth were well-realized--incredible make-up on them. They look very similar to the Silurians as re-imagined in Doctor Who last year, but I guess there are only so many things you can do with lizard aliens (or lizard earthlings, in both cases).

As a matter of fact, though the latest Doctor Who might have borrowed the look of the Silurians from VOY, the general idea of an advanced dino-based species that evolved before humans is lifted from the original Silurians, which I think is from 1972. So there's not a lot that's original here.

And, of course, there's Brannon Braga's continuing difficulty with the idea of how evolution works. It's not teleological, with an end in sight at the beginning, but the result of random mutation, so it can't be projected forward. That scene in the holodeck was complete padding, and just about superfluous. I would have liked a few more minutes fleshing out the Voth culture instead.

I really liked Gegen & pal's palentological investigation, and their structural analysis of the crew while cloaked. One of the writers remembered something from his college anthropology classes. And it was interesting to see the focus on someone besides the Voyager crew, though naturally Chakotay gets to make the Hero Speech at the end.

Was it Hogan that Gegen found in the beginning? I thought so.

Even though the ideas behind the episode were either rehashed or just wrong, it was still a great episode to watch, with lots of ideas, like Voyager being completely, over-matched by the Voth. It's definitely rewatchable, and a really good episode.

 

[froot]

Not just over-matched - their damn city ship ATE Voyager. I loved that thing!

And yup, that was Hogan.

The nice thing about my complete ignorance of all areas of science is that most of Trek's kooky pseudo-science usually flies right over my head. Threshold was really one of the only times it was so stupid even I noticed. Well, and that one TNG where everyone turned into de-evolved animal things. (I like that one though.)

That's probably why I like sci-fi to start with - I don't need any suspension of disbelief because I don't know what the heck they're talking about anyway!

 

[Shatnertage]

Hey, I'm back with everyone's favorite disappearing episode:

"Displaced"

Starts with some T/P banter, then right into the big idea: strange people are showing up, and the VOY crew is disappearing.

Chakotay got to do action hero stuff for about five minutes. I think this sort of thing was one of Robert Beltran's strengths, and they should have let him do it more often.

Very interesting set-up: I like that Janeway's suspicious pretty quickly.

Do I even want to ask why, if the Nyrians have cool tech like the translocator and the habitat ship, they even need to get ships by stealing them? If they can build a ship big enough to hold 94 crews (I think that was the number), why couldn't they have just built 94 of their own ships?


It was a neat episode, though, with a few twists along the way and an interesting premise that I don't think we've seen before. We chuckled big-time at Torres' "They just complain about it more" line.

I thought that they should have spent more time on this one. Sure, the jailbreak stuff is good for one episode, but then you could have had 2 or 3 more episodes following it in which they try to barter with some of the other crews that have been imprisoned, or end up following another species somewhere. With a little reshuffling, you could have had Voth discover Voyager after another crew told them about this strange new race, and you could have worked a "let's help these guys get home" B-story into "Real Life." Even though I don't usually bang on about mini-arcs and so on, this would have been a natural place to connect the stories better.

 

[J.Ashmore]

In regards to them stealing other people's ships rather than building their own, I just always assumed that they thought it better to steal ships from others. Since all the work was done for them, why pass up the chance to just take them rather than use the resources to build their own? They had the ability to take over the ship and send the original crew away and they built the holographic habitats for that reason, so I guess the smart thing would be to just keep doing what they were doing rather than change. Because, obviously, they didn't see anything wrong with it.

But, who knows how it all started?

On another note, I, too, enjoyed Janeway's suspicions. I love how she seems really 'old fashioned' in the sense that she relies on her instincts and gut feelings a lot. Makes it much easier to relate to her, in my case. But, I'm a Janeway fan so I suppose I'm gushing a bit

Another thing I want to say, since I'm new to this forum and I haven't really posted much on the Voyager sub-forum, is about my feelings about the Janeway/Chakotay thing: I don't like it. I never have. It's much for the same reason Mulgrew didn't support the idea, either. I much preferred the friendship between Janeway and Tuvok, but she seemed to just forget about him and the whole speech about her "needing him" went down the toilet once the whole fiasco with her and Chipotle (I LOVE the nickname) started.

I know it's a dangerous thing to say in the company of most Voyager fans, but I just had to let it out in the open.

Whew, I feel much better.

 

[T.D. Possum]

Another thing I want to say, since I'm new to this forum and I haven't really posted much on the Voyager sub-forum, is about my feelings about the Janeway/Chakotay thing: I don't like it. I never have. It's much for the same reason Mulgrew didn't support the idea, either. I much preferred the friendship between Janeway and Tuvok, but she seemed to just forget about him and the whole speech about her "needing him" went down the toilet once the whole fiasco with her and Chipotle (I LOVE the nickname) started.

Welcome from another non-J/Cer.

 

[Shatnertage]

Welcome to the thread, J.Ashmore. I think I'm agnostic on J/C, though I'm a fan of "Resolutions." And the one where Janeway dies over and over and Chakotay weeps over her.

I've become a big Chakotay fan over the course of watching the show. I just like the guy, even though in a few episodes I've seen he seems extremely lethargic.

 

[J.Ashmore]

I don't hate Chipotle. I just don't like him with Janeway. Like I said, I'm privvy to Tuvok!

I loved "Resolutions" and "Coda" as well, mostly because Kate Mulgrew was wonderful in them. I liked when Chipotle cried over her body too, but I always think of the whole thing as one-sided on Chipotle's part. (Yes, I'm in denial, and yes, I overly love the nickname Chipotle.)

And thanks for the welcome. I really appreciate it. And AMG: I'm really happy I'm not the only one!!!

Alright, I'm really looking forward to your reaction of the next episode "Worst Case Scenario."

 

[froot]

Hi J.Ashmore While I'm keen on J/C, I am also very much a fan of Janeway and Tuvok's friendship. It's one of my favorite parts of the show. It's got a lot of echoes of Kirk n' Spock, while still being its own thing.

I like Displaced, but I remember it best for the horrible promo they originally showed for the episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk56_n2L6HA

(listen to the background song and tell me it doesn't make you want to facepalm )

 

[HoneyBLilly]

I like Displaced, but I remember it best for the horrible promo they originally showed for the episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk56_n2L6HA

(listen to the background song and tell me it doesn't make you want to facepalm )

Na na. Nana na na. Hey. Hey. Hey. Goodbye.

That's what I hear. Call me insane, but I hear it.

But now I look back and remember that promo. Oh, all of the good memories. UPN's trailer's sucked. But they were humorous.

James T. Chanukah I highly recommend you look them up on YouTube. Some of them are just too hilarious to pass up.

 

[T.D. Possum]

Ahahahahahahaha that's the "best" Voyager promo I've ever seen. It even tops the one for . . . what was it? "Lifeline"? The one where it's implied that Captain Picard and lots of sex are going to be involved in the Voyager ep.