Another Voyager 1st-time watch thread

[exodus]

Garrett Wang is way more interesting and cool than Harry Kim. Maybe it's because by the time they filmed his stuff, he'd been honing his act on the convention circuit for a few years, but he's just way more engaging than his character ever was on the show. Does this mean he's a bad actor because he couldn't channel that charisma into his character, or just that they didn't give him anything good to work with?

A little bit of both, I guess.

I've meet Garrett in person and yes, he actually has way more personality than Harry ever did. Garrett off stage is almost as entertaining as Robert Picardo, except Garrett is also a big fanboy himself. I know he used to give out his personal email too fans upon meeting them just to chat Anime, comics, video games, etc.

However, it's unknown if he's a Trekkie as well(like Tim Russ) or if it's only for the job.

In the acting dept., I don't think Garrett has enough experence as actor to grasp enough emotion to have made Harry more 3 dimentional. At the same time, very few Harry stories called upon him to be anything more than bland.

And I can definitely see that Kate Mulgrew had some issues with Jeri Ryan. The body language says it all. At one point when she's talking about her coming on the show, she does that little dismissive handwave thing. Very telling.

<-Tuvok says: "Indeed."

 

[Markira]

As promised, I'm back with...

"Hope and Fear"
And after watching "One," something dawned on me about Seven. She's been conditioned to live in a collective, so detests loneliness. So then why's she always starting shit with everyone, particularly the captain?

It's a classic theme, she needs people yet she pushes them away. She cannot stand to be alone but the experience of being with, in the collective, has not prepared her for being with as an individual dealing with other individuals. In the beginning nearly every exchange freaks her out and threatens her.. being with people as an individual is not the hive mind harmony of borg life. Yet she is also unable to bear being alone with only herself, so she is driven to keep interacting and failing at interacting.

Teacake, I really like your interpretation of Seven's character. I find her journey to humanity interesting, and it makes sense that she is experiencing social phobia and difficulty at this point. She is caught between two worlds, belonging to neither but needing to "assimilate" into one. Suspension of disbelief about the scientific matters in this episode, I thought it was pretty good character growth for Seven.

Now if they'd only get her out of the catsuits...

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Now if they'd only get her out of the catsuits...

Can't win 'em all, I'm afraid.

 

[exodus]

Now if they'd only get her out of the catsuits...

...and into my bed.


HOLLA!!!

 

[froot]

Bow-chicka-wow-wow?

 

[exodus]

Bow-chicka-wow-wow?

Awww, suki-suki now!!!

 

[Markira]

Bow-chicka-wow-wow?

Awww, suki-suki now!!!

 

[Shatnertage]

Hey now! I'm finally back with another episode...

"Night"

At last I see the Captain Proton holodeck program, and it's good, cheesy fun. Perfect for Tom Paris. And how can you not love Seven's method of keeping the robot occupied? Shades of Indiana Jones.

The episode itself was not overwhelmingly good, but was fun. Depressed, shut-in Janeway was a change of pace. And the crew's "mutiny" was cute.

The story...well, it was pretty full of holes. Even if there are no stars in the void, wouldn't you just see far-away stars? Isn't that why we can stuff in other spiral arms--and other galaxies?

The night people were interesting--my wife thought they looked "like they were dipped in chocolate syrup." So it made the scenes with the injured one a bit comic.

The bad guy was a mashup of a Pakled with a Sontaran. His suit is particularly derivative of the classic Doctor Who Sontarans. And of course he's not just greedy, but he's stupid and aggressive, too.

For example: when he's offered the "clean energy" tech, why not just tell them, "Oh yeah, I'll get this right to our scientists. Thanks so much!"

Or, if he was smarter, take the tech, prove to the government that it works, force them to mandate that every energy facility use it, and collect a royalty on every iso-ton of anti-matter processed. He wouldn't have to work every again, and he'd be considered a true humanitarian--or, I guess Malonarian.

But no, he's just stupid and greedy. And naturally since he's evil he's ugly. Not the apex of creativity there.

On the whole, though, it was a good episode that showed how the crew would stand behind Janeway, even when she wasn't standing behind herself (if that makes sense). And she gets to mess her hair up a little, which is always a good thing. And the first half of the episode--before the reveal about the "greedy garbage guy," was excellent--very suspenseful and dramatic.

 

[HoneyBLilly]

Night is one of my favorites and I do agree with the distant stars. It doesn't really make sense, but that's where I put on my Voyager goggles and go with it.

Janeway's depression was good and was brilliant with how they brought it in. Favorite part of the whole episode. Especially when she comes out of it with the compression phaser rifle and kicks the aliens butt.

Speaking of said night alien. Bob Picardo, idk if any of the others refer to it as this, refers to him as the "captain's log" Think nasty, that's all I'm saying.

 

[froot]

The story...well, it was pretty full of holes. Even if there are no stars in the void, wouldn't you just see far-away stars? Isn't that why we can stuff in other spiral arms--and other galaxies?

The night people were interesting--my wife thought they looked "like they were dipped in chocolate syrup." So it made the scenes with the injured one a bit comic.

Night's a personal favorite of mine too. I think it makes sense Janeway'd have to come to terms with the whole Caretaker thing at some point. Her depression ties in pretty well with the Mosaic novel, too. And I love the way Tuvok and Chakotay actually find some common ground as Janeway's two advisers and have a good talk.

But, yeah. Simply tooling around in an area without stars wouldn't make the stars invisible! Even in normal space the distance between individual stars is enormous. The script seemed to be deliberately obtuse about what, exactly, they were traveling through, though. Could have been a weird phenomenon of some sort, not just empty space. Or there was a huge amount of dust and debris clouding up the view.

As mairbeariepie mentioned, the cast didn't exactly compare that poor alien with chocolate syrup.

 

[Shatnertage]

Hey, any episode where Janeway appears with a really big gun, despite my deeply-held conviction that violence isn't the best way to solve problems, is a good one.

After a day in which I did a fair amount of mundane physical labor, it's fitting that I watched...

"Drone"

We open with Seven smiling? Is she posing for her headshot? Ah, she's practicing being more sociable. And is embarrassed about the Doctor walking in on her. Cute.

By a strange coincidence, just after we finished watching this I flipped on the Lifetime Movie Network, where Secrets in the Walls, starring Jeri Ryan, was playing.

This episode had its moments, but the whole idea--that the Doctor's holo-emitter and Seven's nanoprobes had sex and produced, completely on their own, a fully-grown Borg drone in less than a day--asks a slightly greater suspension of disbelief than the usual episode of Trek.

There was one moment that says it all. Late in the episode, my wife said, "I feel like I've seen this one before." And I said, "Yes--the one where Data creates a daughter, and the one where they find the disconnected Borg Hugh."

You'd think the ensign whose DNA was used to make the drone would have a higher-profile role in this story. And it also seems that Starfleet's policy towards the termination of unplanned/non-consensual DNA clones/lifeforms has changed since TNG: "Up the Long Ladder," when a first officer phasered clones with the CMO's assent, with hardly a look back.

It was a good episode, though. For one, we get to see Tuvok with a really big gun. The science aspects weren't particularly compelling, but we get to see a different side of Seven, in a good way. And it turned out a lot better than I thought it would. When they had the whole transporter snafu at the beginning, I was sure that everyone was going to swap bodies or something, and it would be completely silly.

 

[Saxman1]

I think both "Night" and "Drone" are great eps, two of my favorite. I thought it was great writing in "Night" to have Janeway finally have some "Caretaker" mental fall-out. I can't get through "Drone" without choking up at the end as Seven did when One terminated.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Hey, any episode where Janeway appears with a really big gun, despite my deeply-held conviction that violence isn't the best way to solve problems, is a good one.

That's the truth!

 

[Shatnertage]

I don't know if I want to chance sharing my thoughts on...

"Extreme Risk"

Thanks to whoever had this disc before me using it to sand the edges off of curb, the start of the episode is really rough. Torres says "Hi there!" in slo-mo while everything's all blocking. Thanks to some Windexing, though, I'm able to re-insert the disc and get things rolling again.

But now it's ruined, because my wife said, "Hey now!" after I said, "Hi there!" (we've been watching Larry Sanders on IFC).

And Torres isn't saying "Hi there!" She's saying "Higher." And doing holo-daredevil skydiving, until she gets called to the bridge.

So the plot is, they've lost a probe, and the Malon are trying to get it first. And they're still stinky garbagemen. Wasn't Voyager going to give the planet the secret of converting their waste into useful byproducts after closing down the wormhole to the dump where the chocolate sauce guys lived? I'm guessing they forgot to follow through on that one.

And their ship is constantly farting out green gas. What with the gas giant, this episode seems to have a lot of potential flatulence-related humor.

Torres is in a bad mood--such a bad mood that she doesn't snap at anyone, even when Seven disses her hull design.

Me: "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays."

But, as the episode goes on, it turns out that she might be clinically depressed. And the Doctor proscribes resting in her quarters for the cure.

Coming on the heels of an episode where Janeway was too depressed to leave her room, I've got to wonder: is season five just one main character getting depressed after another?

I understand what they were going for here, but I've got to say that they miss the mark. It's not the fault of any of the performances (although Robert Beltran looks like he's on the verge of cracking up in the scene where Tom proposes the Delta Flyer, and I suspect that this is around the time that rumors of his unhappiness started). It's just the idea that "clinical depression" can be solved by a nice pep talk and the knowledge that People Out There Really Need you. Wouldn't Torres' problem, if she's clinically depressed, really be that something's wrong with her brain chemistry? And would she really be able to just will herself out of it?

In a way, the episode almost does more harm than good, since it trivializes those who have to cope with real depression.

And then the Malon ship farts anti-matter onto Voyager, but the shields hold. So the episode goes from silly to serious in a way that's kind of...silly.

Like I said, I respect what they were trying to do here, but depression just isn't a problem that you can solve in 40 minutes.

 

[HoneyBLilly]

This is Braga's maiden voyage as Executive Producer and early on he tried to give it the same edge as DS9. That's why everyone has depression. IMO.

And no, B'Elanna's depression shouldn't have been cured in 40 minutes and most definitely not since her depression had been going since she learned of the destruction of the Maquis back in AQ.

And Beltran, he started looking bored back in the fourth season, but you couldn't tell because he occasionally did things, you'll start to see his boredom clearly by the end of the season and most certainly next season. It's towards the latter end of the season, Kate kind of looks bored around then too you'll probably guess why at season end.

But Beltran could have looked amused because one of the other guys made a decent fart joke in keeping with the episode.

 

[exodus]

I very much enjoyed "Extreme Risk".
Roxanne Dawson is as always amazing in her role.

IMO I just see it as a nitpick reason feel in ep. fails due to solving depression in 40mins, especially when we've seen similar to worse cases in other Trek shows. Most notibly O'Brian getting over the guilt of murdering an innocent in "Hard Time" & Sisko coming to grips with being an accessory to murder in "In the Pale Moonlight" and/or his own depression "Far Beyond the Stars" or the fact that in no Trek, nobody lingers on a death beyond one episode. I think we should be used to such story telling in Trek by now, honestly.

 

[Mareika]

But Beltran could have looked amused because one of the other guys made a decent fart joke in keeping with the episode.

What sort of joke do you mean?

I very like Extreme Risk. It has many good scenes- the Delta Flyer, the Malon...
But I most enjoy the Torres/Chakotay scenes. I always like these two people together. I think there`s a good chemistry between them.

 

[exodus]

But Beltran could have looked amused because one of the other guys made a decent fart joke in keeping with the episode.

What sort of joke do you mean?

I very like Extreme Risk. It has many good scenes- the Delta Flyer, the Malon...
But I most enjoy the Torres/Chakotay scenes. I always like these two people together. I think there`s a good chemistry between them.

Plus, I dig how Dawson puts a Latin accent on Chakotay's name when she says it.

 

[Shatnertage]

One thing I forgot to mention was the criminal under-use of Vorik. When I saw Alexander Enberg's name in the opening credits, I was psyched that we'd get another Vorik episode. But he only had two lines, and didn't even get to arch an eyebrow. What gives?

Incredibly, Vorik has become one of my favorite characters. I would have liked to have seen a purely logical difference of opinion between him and Tuvok.

 

[T.D. Possum]

Plus, I dig how Dawson puts a Latin accent on Chakotay's name when she says it.

I wish they had done that all the time. In the early days, KM did it, too.