Is it just me, or is "Living Witness" unsatisfying?

[Lance]

I like this episode. I love seeing the 'alternate crew', and like others here said it's the nearest we'll ever get to basically Voyager in the Mirror Universe.

But I do think the story as a whole is unsatisfying.

I appreciate the 'message' of the episode, but the way the show ends was completely wrong. We're kind of going along for the ride, we want to see the Doctor and Quarren find that tricorder and 'prove' the true story, as well as maybe seeing them actually find that common ground between the Kyrians and the Vaskan and resolve the conflict. But no, we don't get to see that.

I dunno, maybe its just me, but I really hate the way the show just seems to 'stop'. It just pulls back from that screen and has that other lady go "And that's how the Doctor got us all to love and respect each other". It feels like they ran out of time to tell the story or something.

Am I alone in feeling like this?

 

[Danny99]

I didn't like the ending either and would've have much preferred a two parter of this to say "Flesh & Blood." I also wouldn't have minded that the conflict continued between the Vaskans and the Kyrians well into the future, a parallel of current Earth where some can be interested in peace, but war and hate is still perpetuated by most.

 

[Lance]

I did wonder briefly if the arbitrary nature of the ending was supposed to leave us guessing as to whether what we've been watching all along was as much a case of "theoretical postulating based on what we know" as Quarran's own exhibit about Voyager's involvement had been. In other words, we didn't really see the events of the day that Quarran rediscovered the EMH..... we only saw the future female curator's interpretation of the day that Quarren rediscovered the EMH.....

 

[Melakon]

It was a great show for Picardo, and Evil Voyager was a lot of fun, but I simply didn't care about the people on the planet. I know the intent was to comment on revisionist history, but there should have a way to make us care more about the Doctor's predicament than some people we'll never see again.

 

[Lance]

^ Yeah that's kind of it Melakon. I was interested in the Doctor's predicament, but they spent so little time developing it. The episode is almost a third of the way through its running time before Quarren even first activates the EMH, and then we get him being threatened with complete deactivation for his 'lies'..... but we never get to see him triumph over that and convince them he's telling the truth. All we do get told by the future curator is "Oh btw, the EMH survived and went on his merry way as well, The End".

Can't help wondering if the script should have had another draft. They should've introduced the EMH into the story sooner somehow so that they have time to develop the plot to a more satisfying conclusion.

 

[Melakon]

It might have worked better if they could have developed a revisionist history story that more directly involved the crew. Perhaps we got word that a planet we'd been to a season or two earlier was alreay rewriting events, and we had to fix that. I don't know.

 

[tomswift2002]

Another thing I found odd with this episode that really messed up it's continuity was that the "Doctor" who got left behind was a back-up to the main Doctor. This backup would've come in handy in "Message In A Bottle", and yet we had that whole scene with Paris and Kim trying (unsuccessfully) to create a backup from scratch. So did Kim make a backup of the Doctor upon the Doctor's return or was this back-up on Voyager for the first 4 seasons? And if it was, why didn't the crew just use it when the main Doctor started to "glitch" and needed the repair program?

 

[Lance]

It might have worked better if they could have developed a revisionist history story that more directly involved the crew. Perhaps we got word that a planet we'd been to a season or two earlier was alreay rewriting events, and we had to fix that. I don't know.

The interesting thing about the 'revisionist history' angle is that it actually does tie in with something we saw from an earlier episode: in "Cold Fire" Janeway was told by an Ocampa that Voyager already has a reputation in the Delta Quadrant for bringing death in its wake (she expresses surprise at this). What we see in "Living Witness" is just one of these planets touched by the 'ship of death', one where the population have had 700 years to reinterpret the events of Voyager's fleeting, but fateful, visit.

 

[Kevman7987]

Oee thing I can say about this episode is that I liked the "evil" reinterpretation of the "colored yoke" uniforms over the regular DS9/VOY versions. I really disliked the fact that those uniforms usually have the "purple" collar. They looked much nicer in with black on black.

 

[Ithekro]

Also it seems Starfleet never followed up on all Voyager's stops in the last 700 years.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Voyagers journey home was a National Park (Federal Park?).

Inside a corridor 5 light years either side of Voyager's path (From the admiral Janeway Timeline, where they didn't cheat.) there is allowed no Federation activity or colonies other than cloaked tourists, and the preservation of of the Park.

In fact it might be argued that as any world fell or died out, it would be replaced by Federal Park Rangers to preserve the integrity of the Voyager Federal Park.

But as far as the meat of the original post goes, the episode is a lot more enjoyable if you consider that that story might have taken place in the mirror universe and all the evil Voyager scenes happened verbatim, and then after the Doctor woke up 700 hundred years later he lied. He lied, and lied and lied to cover his ass.

 

[Finn]

Also it seems Starfleet never followed up on all Voyager's stops in the last 700 years.

They may have. Quarren's area of space may have been a bloody war zone by the time Starfleet checked it out for a "follow up", and moved on.

 

[The Wormhole]

Also it seems Starfleet never followed up on all Voyager's stops in the last 700 years.

They may have. Quarren's area of space may have been a bloody war zone by the time Starfleet checked it out for a "follow up", and moved on.

Or the Prime Directive may have been re-written and under the new definition, that planet is considered "too primitive." Haven't developed quantum slipstream or embraced the true meaning of evolving into salamanders after travelling at warp 10 or something.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I wrote a story about that once. The Second the Federation figured out Transwarp, they closed their borders and disappeared. And all the planets that they were giving aid to, or stopping from having a war were suddenly fucked. The Alpha quadrant just went to hell.

 

[Pondwater]

I would of liked it better as a MU episode.
*flees*

 

[Melakon]

I'd guess that those scenes were probably the most fun for the cast since they all got to hate each other.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Was Neelix there?

(It's been a while.)

I can imagine him served as dinner early into their first year for the Captain.

 

[Kevman7987]

Was Neelix there?

(It's been a while.)

I can imagine him served as dinner early into their first year for the Captain.

If he was, color me surprised Evil-Janeway didn't burn him alive immediately and space the carcass.

 

[Melakon]

Yeah, he's there, and smarts off to Paris.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFumnDF-jU[/yt]



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFumnDF-jU

 

[Richard Baker]

I loved the aggressive Warship Voyager- about time a federation design looked like it could kick ass whenever it wanted to (the Defiant looked more like a shampoo bottle instead of the 'first starship designed for combat")

I do feel the ending was somewhat rushed- I know it was supposed to be a layered surprise plot and the final twist a punchline. It is just that this could have made a nice two parter episode given room for letting us know more about how things were resolved instead of just that they were.
It would have been fun to see a couple of people in future starfleet uniforms (or maybe temporal agents) in that last museum tour group.