Course Oblivion opinions?

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Oops, sorry for the typing errors. I'm going too fast tonight.

 

[Refuge]

Watched this last night. Felt really sorry for them when Tuvok said we are are all duplicates, none of us are real. What kind of realisation (or lack thereof) would that be?

If they had turned back in that moment they might have had a greater chance of surviving.

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Watched this last night. Felt really sorry for them when Tuvok said we are are all duplicates, none of us are real. What kind of realisation (or lack thereof) would that be?

Well, I'd say :

1. That we are very few things on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe,
2. That we do not know how to enjoy what we have (family, friends, work,etc...)

If they had turned back in that moment they might have had a greater chance of surviving.

Sorry but the crew 2.0 ‎was never intended to survive the odds so... However, the time they spent in the body of real people, allowed them to share a part of their lives, with their joys and sorrows.

 

[Refuge]

Well, I'd say :

1. That we are very few things on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe,
2. That we do not know how to enjoy what we have (family, friends, work,etc...)

This..

 

[Sophie74656]

What would have happened if they turned right around? Would getting to the Demon planet have saved them?

 

[Prax]

Yeah. They should have just dove gone for that other Y-class planet they found.

 

[Sophie74656]

Yeah. They should have just dove gone for that other Y-class planet they found.

They tried, there were aliens preventing them from doing so.

 

[Paul Weaver]

twists not taken

1) have harry survive - but be the only one left when they reached home, doomed for eternity
2) have them reach earth before disintegrating

 

[Voth commando1]

They could have settled on the first demon class planet-Janeway simply refused to fight the miners for it wasting precious time for her crew.

If you ask me there was no way given the distance they traveled and the rate they were degrading to ever make it back to the demon class planet.

They may have reached earth given they just installed a warp drive but then they would have died, they could have fought he miners for the other Y-Class but even Duplicate Janeway refuses to do this, or they could have hit the accelerator and gotten back to the Y-Class and settled from there.

But the third option was far less a certainty and its guaranteed more of the crew would die.

 

[F. King Daniel]

2) have them reach earth before disintegrating

If they decided to keep going and disintegrated when they reached Earth orbit, that actually may have been more heartbreaking.

 

[Voth commando1]

If they decided to keep going and disintegrated when they reached Earth orbit, that actually may have been more heartbreaking.

But then there would be a record of their existence-an incomplete one. Starfleet probably wouldn't be able to put two and two together to realize they weren't the real Voyager and silver blood duplicates and they'd be confused when real Voyager made it.

 

[Prax]

Then Voyager could learn of the fate of the silver blood crew from Admiral Paris. They'd be really sad, but also jealous that the demon crew beat them.

 

[Refuge]

I kind of like these duplicate crew scenarios. It's a shame that Course Oblivion came after Deadlock. If it had been prior, the silver blood crew could've gone through the space time rift that the Deadlock crew went through and there would have been four lots!

 

[Voth commando1]

You know I always wanted a Deadlock AU fanfiction where through some technobabble they successfully split the ships into two. With two identical crews just lacking one Harry Kim and one Naomi Wildman.

Basically Thomas and Will Riker duplicated writ large-a whole ship with everybody and everyone on it duplicated.

Now how would that affect the journey across the DQ?

 

[CommanderTrip]

For me, this episode and Timeless were two of my favorites from Season 5. But for me personally, this one was really good. Season 5 of Voyager was the first time I watched a season of trek during it's first run. And I was generally familiar with Star Trek, but I was really just starting to get into it (having also just recently seen First Contact on HBO at the time.) I thought it was so cool how the episode starts off like any other episode, for us, the audience, to then find out that the entire crew is duplicates, and that they are one by one falling apart.

The ending though was unexpected as well. Typically, one would expect some evidence of the crew to survive and make it to our versions of the crew. But nothing does. No records, no logs, no how-to's on creating a deuterium-dichromate-lifeform-melting enchanced warp drive. Total buzzkill, but totally awesome way to tell a story and still be able to keep doing the show next week.

 

[Prax]

Course: Oblivion and Timeless have a lot in common.

Some Background Info:
The story was conceived and written by Bryan Fuller. The script by Bryan Fuller and Nick Sagan(Yes, the son of Carl)

To the person who mentioned going to Earth, it looks like that was the original idea. Here's a copy/paste from Memory Alpha:

• we followed the adventures of those people that we left on the Demon planet?" The idea for the mimetic aliens had originally been the subject of a proposed two-parter that had an entirely different storyline (in which the crew of doppelgängers reached Earth), was often considered but was ultimately never produced. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 49)
• After Bryan Fuller thought up the story idea for this installment, Brannon Braga forwarded the plot. Supervising Producer Kenneth Billerrecalled, "Brannon wanted to do a tragedy about these people who are struggling to come to terms with who they were, and what home meant, and trying to embody the impossible images of these people who they've been created to resemble." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50) Teleplay co-writer Nick Sagan – despite not being a particularly big fan of the episode "Demon" – was, like Braga, enthusiastic about revisiting the deceptively alien characters and believed that this was generally also true of the other members ofStar Trek: Voyager's writing staff. "In terms of how it got started [...] we sort of liked the idea of picking up the mimetic crew, and finding out whatever happened to them," Sagan remarked. Earlier in the fifth season, Fuller and Sagan had worked in unison on the episode "Gravity", an experience which influenced their decision to collaborate again. Sagan explained, "Because Bryan and I had [...] started writing together, I was brought in to work on ['Course: Oblivion']." [1] Fuller enjoyed this writing partnership, once describing it as "a great collaboration." (Star Trek Magazine issue 114, p. 34)
• Settling upon a conclusion for the episode involved some debate. "There was some discussion about whether it was too bleak at the end," said Ken Biller. "I had written a version where they actually get that time capsule out. The real Voyager does come along, and the [duplicate] ship is gone, but they find the time capsule." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50) Nick Sagan, a supporter of ending some episodes tragically, offered, "There was some resistance [to the final version of this episode's conclusion]. One of the original things we talked about was that our Voyager would originally make contact with them. It would be a moment that would lead it a little bit more towards conventionalTrek, like encountering aliens, and then, oh my gosh, there's a moment of understanding. I was adamant about the importance of the near miss, that they don't actually meet, sort of 'There but for the grace of God go I.'" [2]
• The writers also wanted to leave certain issues unresolved. "We didn't want to answer a lot of questions," Ken Biller stated, "like, how long has that ship been out there? Some of the episodes that we saw earlier in the season, was it that crew? Or was it the real crew? It's kind of intriguing to think about." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50)
• Nick Sagan enjoyed writing for a group of characters that were extremely similar to but not the same as the regular Voyager crew. He reminisced, "One of the great things about 'Course: Oblivion' [was] that you could do whatever you wanted to do, because they're not the real crew." [3]
• Paris actor Robert Duncan McNeill liked that this episode apparently begins with the wedding of his character and B'Elanna Torres before revealing their true alien nature. McNeill described this deception as "a classic sci-fi thing" and opined that the installment also has "a real tragic ending." He concluded by saying of the episode, "It's an interesting way to deal with the relationship, and refer to it but not have to live with it forever." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 52)
• Anson Williams directed this episode with prior experience of having worked on visualizing biomimetic lifeforms, as "Demon" was also directed by him.

 

[Farscape One]

I really loved this episode, too.

Someone earlier in the thread asked how do we know which episodes were real or duplicate crew. There are only a few episodes where this is possible...

"ONE"
"HOPE AND FEAR"
"NIGHT"
"DRONE" (I tend to discount this simply because of the reference of designing a bigger shuttle which ultimately led to the building of the Delta Flyer.)
"NOTHING HUMAN"

All others had either Tom as an Ensign or had the Delta Flyer appear, and since we never heard any mention of it in "COURSE: OBLIVION", we can conclude the duplicate crew never developed or built it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Someone earlier in the thread asked how do we know which episodes were real or duplicate crew. There are only a few episodes where this is possible...

The novel Battle Lines is pretty close to one of the previous adventures Silver Blood Chakotay describes.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

One of my favorite episodes.

 

[Prax]

One of my favorite episodes.

Battle Lines?