Re-Watching VOY

[Lord Garth]

Best way to promote Harry?

Do it the same way Worf, Geordi (twice), Bashir, and Jadzia got theirs... off screen in between seasons.

"NIGHT" was the perfect opportunity... nothing mentioned, we just see him with that extra hollow pip.

That would've been a good way to approach things too, and the way TNG and DS9 usually did things, but not the way VOY has done things, so I was trying to play within their rules, where they always had a scene devoted to promotions.

Right from the beginning, Paris is made Lieutenant at the end of "Caretaker". There's a ceremony celebrating Tuvok being promoted to Lieutenant Commander at the beginning of "Revulsion" (although I think he should've been a Lieutenant Commander all along). There's a scene at the beginning of "Unimatrix Zero, Part I" when Paris is promoted back to Lieutenant again, where they also have the line from Harry asking, "Where's my promotion?" And at that point, I think B&B were just trolling the audience with what they thought of as a running gag. Not a very funny one, but there we are.

"Someone's got to be the Ensign!" Great, Brannon. But who was the Ensign on TNG or DS9? And no, Wesley doesn't count!

 

[Farscape One]

That would've been a good way to approach things too, and the way TNG and DS9 usually did things, but not the way VOY has done things, so I was trying to play within their rules, where they always had a scene devoted to promotions.

Right from the beginning, Paris is made Lieutenant at the end of "Caretaker". There's a ceremony celebrating Tuvok being promoted to Lieutenant Commander at the beginning of "Revulsion" (although I think he should've been a Lieutenant Commander all along). There's a scene at the beginning of "Equinox, Part I" when Paris is promoted back to Lieutenant again, where they also have the line from Harry asking, "Where's my promotion?" And at that point, I think B&B were just trolling the audience with what they thought of as a running gag. Not a very funny one, but there we are.

"Someone's got to be the Ensign!" Great, Brannon. But who was the Ensign on TNG or DS9? And no, Wesley doesn't count!

Paris got his rank back in "UNIMATRIX ZERO", 6th season finale.

 

[Lynx]

What I found most memorable about Altar Ego was that it almost epitomized Voyager's apparently conscious decision to absolutely trash Harry Kim across the board (physically, romantically, and career-wise). This is one of his many painful romantic misadventures. Once Tuvok shows up, Marayna wastes no time in dumping him like yesterday's kitty litter and pursuing the Vulcan instead.

Not as bad as Bashir getting swapped out for a Ferengi, but still. Ouch.

Overall episode score, 6.5/10, maybe 7... it's decent but fairly forgettable.

Good point.

It really made him look like a goof.

 

[Oddish]

It really made him look like a goof.

Yeah. If they had wanted to establish Harry as inept and clueless, that actually could have worked. I mean, TNG had Barclay, a character who DIDN'T have his together.

Problem is, Harry is established through canonical evidence as being intelligent enough to graduate at the top of his class, as well as help run the Academy newsletter and serve on the Pareesi Squares team. He is deemed capable of serving as a department head, right out of the Academy. And yet in this episode, he seems more like a 15-year-old kid dealing with teenybopper angst and unable to process his feelings.

 

[DonIago]

I wish we'd actually gotten to see Harry serve as a department head at some point.

 

[Lynx]

Yeah. If they had wanted to establish Harry as inept and clueless, that actually could have worked. I mean, TNG had Barclay, a character who DIDN'T have his together.

Problem is, Harry is established through canonical evidence as being intelligent enough to graduate at the top of his class, as well as help run the Academy newsletter and serve on the Pareesi Squares team. He is deemed capable of serving as a department head, right out of the Academy. And yet in this episode, he seems more like a 15-year-old kid dealing with teenybopper angst and unable to process his feelings.

That's correct.

You can also compare that to the Voyager novels from that era. As you write, harry was supposed to be intelligent and a sort of whizz kid when it comes to computers and operation systems which he actually is in many of the books where he comes out as a very important and skilled officer.

The only issue I have with those books is the "whipping boy syndrome". In the books, he has the bad habit of being seriously injured too many times.

 

[Oddish]

I expect we'll be coming back to this in every Harry-centered episode we review here. Of course, there aren't very many.

Romance was always a bit problematic for Tuvok, given that until Season 7, he was VOY's sole married character. And one of only two out of the 38 main characters in TOS or the Berman era who were married for all or most of their time on their respective shows.

 

[Lord Garth]

Just finished watching "Coda". No review yet. I'm feeling pretty tired right now. But some quick thoughts. I won't pretend it's great, but this one's kind of a Guilty Pleasure. I'm keeping track of how many previous Star Trek episodes I'm reminded of with this one.

"Cause and Effect" (TNG) - Time Loop. This is the most obvious one!
"All Good Things" (TNG) - Thinking the Captain has Dementia.
"Time Squared" (TNG) - Fly into the anomaly!
"The Next Phase" (TNG) - Janeway presumed dead, but she's out of phase.
"Skin of Evil" (TNG) - Trying to revive Janeway's body in Sickbay.
"The Tholian Web" (TOS) - A funeral service, and Janeway being out of phase.
"Sub Rosa" (TNG) - A ghost-like parasite preying on Janeway. Except it's posing as her father.

Line of the Episode: "Go back to Hell, coward!"

A full review tomorrow. "It is tomorrow!" Tomorrow means after I get up!

 

[Lord Garth]

Late last night, I Just finished re-editing, re-color-grading, and re-mastering my first (very) independent film, that we made 10 years ago. It's a 30-minute film I wrote, directed, and edited. I wanted to apply everything I've learned as an editor since then to the re-master. It started off last month as my wanting to tweak certain things that I think I could've done better back then or didn't have the tools for, before it turned a whole bigger thing. But now, I'm satisfied with what I have. It feels like a real accomplishment.

It also ate up a lot of my free time this past month, especially this past week as I got to the end (again). So now, I'm enjoying having some actual free time again. Which means, I can finally write my review for...

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"Coda"

Like I said in my previous post, this episode wasn't anything great, and it looks like it took a ton of TNG episodes and ran them through the blender, but somehow it all still works, and it actually does have some genuinely very good moments.

Janeway and Chakotay are in a shuttle talking about Talent Night on Voyager (which also sounds like something that could come straight out of the second half of TNG), when they encounter the Vidiians and a weird anomaly. They thought they moved beyond Vidiian Space and so did I, but if you're going to have back an enemy from the first two seasons, then better the Vidiians than the Kazon. Except that's when the anomaly kicks in. During the attack from the Vidiians, Janeway and Chakotay have to land their shuttle on a dangerous planet, Janeway is injured, then she dies. After she dies, they're right back to on the shuttle talking about Talent Night. Cue TNG's "Cause and Effect".

This whole thing happens a few more times before Janeway and Chakotay (finally) make it back to Voyager, except Chakotay can't remember what just happened, only Janeway can, and the Doctor thinks she might have dementia. Cue Future Picard from "All Good Things". Except it's dementia that's so bad, the Doctor thinks he has to kill her? That's the real "What the Hell is going on?!" moment. Until she's back on the planet's surface, injured again, and she ends up dying.

Everything in this episode has been so weird up to this point that I didn't believe it when I first watched "Coda" 30 years ago either. When Janeway's "spirit" is on Voyager, trying to follow Kes around, trying to get Kes to sense her, I thought to myself: cue "The Next Phase". But they didn't stay in that direction. Kes couldn't detect her, nor could Tuvok. Then the episode moves into the next Crazy Direction. Janeway sees her father, who died 15 years ago. And he's trying to get her to accept the Afterlife, except it's not Janeway's father, and he seems really persistent.

If this lifeform was going to take on the form of Janeway's father and knew so much else about Janeway, you'd think it would try to act more like what Janeway would expect from her father. But now, the more suspicious Janeway gets, the more resistant she becomes, and the more resistant she becomes, the more she hangs onto life, because she's not dead yet. She delivers the killer line, "Go back to Hell, coward!" to the entity posing as her father and she snaps back to full consciousness on the planet's surface.

Were the Vidiians ever really there? I lean towards no, but the episode doesn't make it very clear. Maybe it was the entity that damanged Voyager's shuttle, and maybe they used the illusion of the Vidiians so it would be an attack Janeway and Chakotay could understand.

Earlier on in the episode, during the funeral scene, fake or not, what Torres and Kim had to say about Janeway felt genuine. Torres coming to trust Janeway for one, and Kim ending up at a loss of words for another. When Janeway says she wants to stay around as a spirit, resisting the entity's urge to join him in the "afterlife", she talks about watching the other characters continue on their journey. At one point, she mentions if Paris and Torres will stop sparring and build a real friendship? All I have to say to that is "show, don't tell". I've never gotten a sense of constant sparring between them, even though Torres did call Paris a pig back in the first season. This feels more like setting up "Blood Fever", which is the very next episode. At least airdate-wise. Either way, knowing what I know about the direction things go in, it's setup.

For the writing credits, it shows that Jeri Taylor was the writer. I find that interesting, because most of the TNG episodes this episode reminded me of were written by Brannon Braga. I wonder how much of a hand Brannon Braga had in this episode, if any? Even if uncredited.

The only other thing I want to mention is I think the Vidiians look truly scary in the shadows, in the dark, and in the caves. Somehow, not giving them dialogue and just making them seem like a generic threat makes them seem more mysterious.

Overall, this is a tough one to rate. It's silly, and it ripped off a lot, but I enjoyed it anyway. And I liked the character moments and the "what the Hell is going on?!" moments. I give it a 7.

Saving this part for last: Janeway's father's uniform. I think it looks like the perfect mashup between a Monster Maroon and a TNG Uniform. In my headcanon, this was Starfleet's intermediate uniform between the two. They're so drastically different that something had to come in-between to ease the transition. Especially for the Admirals, who are no longer in the best shape, are set in their ways, and who I would imagine would have a hard time embracing the Early-TNG Uniforms after having worn TWOK Uniforms for all of their professional lives. The only thing that ruins it is the anachronistic combadge! No one in the Costuming Department had a TNG Era badge they could find?! Come on!