Was Garret suspended with pay or without pay for two episodes in season 3?
Was Garret suspended with pay or without pay for two episodes in season 3?
While true union contracts often stipulate how discipline is to be meted out. He may have gotten paid. It's more of a statement and paper trail than anything else at first.
I just looked up which episodes Garrett Wang didn't appear in at all and cross-referenced with Memory Alpha. They were "Fair Trade" and "Blood Fever", which happen to have been produced back-to-back.
I have a theory. I was going to save this for "Before & After" or "Scorpion", but I might as well post it now: I think TPTB wanted to get rid of Garrett Wang and Jennifer Lein. Counting the addition of Jeri Ryan, that would've brought the main cast to eight, similar to DS9 (and TNG S2 through early-S4). Nine is a lot to juggle, so cutting out some of the dead weight would've made sense.
Then Garrett Wang turned out to be too sexy to let go!
I have a theory. I was going to save this for "Before & After" or "Scorpion", but I might as well post it now: I think TPTB wanted to get rid of Garrett Wang and Jennifer Lein. Counting the addition of Jeri Ryan, that would've brought the main cast to eight, similar to DS9 (and TNG S2 through early-S4). Nine is a lot to juggle, so cutting out some of the dead weight would've made sense.
Then Garrett Wang turned out to be too sexy to let go!
Last edited:
Garret Wang was also able to moderate his erratic behaviour by S3 (tales of him being hung over on set, etc, or depression & burnout by Wang's admission in the first couple of years) but unfortunately Jennifer Lien started losing her personal struggle with her worsening mental health meanwhile.
Really, once the Chakotay and Janeway ship wasn't going to sail, he became a liability as well. And the TOS movies, TNG, and ENT did fine with seven.
Chakotay was protected by a few things:
Someone had to be First Officer. Tuvok could've, but it wouldn't have worked whenever it was time for the Mandatory Annual Captain vs. First Officer Arguments the show liked to have. "Scorpion" being a prime example, and "Equinox" being another notable one.
They had to keep the J/C Ship going and unrequited.
Getting rid of Chakotay and Kes and Kim (while adding Seven of Nine) would've given the cast four men and three women. '90s Trek never would've gone for an almost half-female cast. They didn't even do it in the '00s. One-third was as far as Star Trek during the Berman Era was willing to go.
So, all of those things kept Chakotay safe.
Last edited:
Yeah, Berman Trek was relatively conservative (and they were now infamously gunshy about LGBT+ stuff).
Wondering if anyone else had also been suspended, I was looking at the line count per episode, and I noticed that Bob Picardo skipped out on 5 episodes, and Ethan missed 8 episodes. Google assured me that these particular actors were contractually bound to be paid, even if they are not on the call sheet. Pay or Play.
The exact wording in Jenifer and Garrett's morals clause is probably more weighted than the rest of the cast, because they're noobs.
Valid points. They were pushing the envelope with a female captain. But the character nonetheless went nowhere fast.
Remember that they were only about a decade past the AIDS crisis, and the explosive wave of homophobia that it brought with it. Same-sex relationships were illegal in at least 13 states. In today's tolerant world, it's easy to judge... but back then, they had to read the room.
Yes, we now know that Jen had a dark personality on the set, but that may have just meant they they would have kicked her off the boat next.
In 1997, the Budget had room for 9 actors, not 10. Someone had to go.
We're almost there! My definition of there is when Seven of Nine shows up. And the signpost letting us know we're getting close is Long-Haired Kes!
Got to love 24th Century technology, Ocampan genetics, or both. Kes grows her hair out from a pixie cut to past shoulder length literally in-between episodes. Probably in the span of a week or two. In early-2023, I'd cut my hair to the top of my ears. The shortest I'll go (I usually cut it to chin-length). Then I didn't cut my hair for a solid two years, by which point it had finally just gone beneath my shoulders (then I chopped it again). So, I personally get a kick out of characters being able to grow their hair out like that literally between episodes. First Worf, now Kes.
And with that out of the way, onto the review proper.
.
.
.
"Before and After"
Both the first time I watched this episode and just now, my thoughts were: this feels disorienting. Kes starts off in a possible future where she's 9, and then slowly goes back in time, technobabble jump by technobabble jump. She's as disoriented as I am, information is revealed to her the same time it's revealed to us.
This episode answers how Kes would've looked if she were on the series all seven seasons. She'd still look young until she was 8, after which she'd age rapidly. Kes' daughter and grandson were well-cast and felt believable. On the other hand, Kes and Paris being married will never not feel weird. The same as Kim being Paris' son-in-law.
The Doctor, a.k.a. Doctor VanGogh's hairpiece looks ridiculous. It looks like he's wearing a hair helmet. Of course, I think it was meant to look ridiculous, so I let it pass.
There are some echoes of "All Good Things". When Kes is elderly, everyone dismisses her observations as a symptom of senility. Only when she's far enough in the past that she's a practicing doctor, does the crew begin to take her seriously.
Chakotay being Captain instead of Janeway makes it clear that this is a future that'll never happen, also just like "All Good Things". But one of the things that appealed to me about Picard was trying to anticipate how close it would get to or work its way to being similar to the "All Good Things" Future even knowing full well that it wouldn't be 1:1. The same as the case with Voyager in Season 4 and trying to anticipate when the Krennim would show up. The glimpse into the Year Hell felt like a preview of things to come. Sort of. Even back then, I knew they weren't going to kill Janeway and Torres and have at least a season without the Doctor. So, my mind went to trying to anticipate how they'd be able to face the Krennim and not lose so many main characters. But we'll save talking about what does happen for next season.
They were very careful to say that what Kes experienced was only a possible future. I'm glad they said that because otherwise knowing what would happen for the rest of the series would remind me of why I generally don't like prequels: we already know what'll happen next. Instead, what they do here is better: we know that the Krennim are out there, but we don't know how Voyager will actually fair when they run into them. Pretending this is 1997.
Seeing Kes keep going further and further back into time, including to a scene from the end of "Caretaker" was wild. Then she moves all the way back to when she was conceived until going forward again until reaching the series' current timeframe. This is wacky, but it's a good type of wacky.
The episode ends with showing how swept up in everything Kes is. She'll even leave a party thrown for her just to write a report from the Krennim!
Overall, an interesting glimpse into what could've been and disorienting in a way that I want to be disoriented. But it isn't super potent and Kes doesn't spend enough time in any given timeframe to do more than show us the bullet points. I don't hold it against the episode because there's only so much you can do in 45 minutes, and they packed in as much as they could. Still very good, though. I give it a 9.
Got to love 24th Century technology, Ocampan genetics, or both. Kes grows her hair out from a pixie cut to past shoulder length literally in-between episodes. Probably in the span of a week or two. In early-2023, I'd cut my hair to the top of my ears. The shortest I'll go (I usually cut it to chin-length). Then I didn't cut my hair for a solid two years, by which point it had finally just gone beneath my shoulders (then I chopped it again). So, I personally get a kick out of characters being able to grow their hair out like that literally between episodes. First Worf, now Kes.
And with that out of the way, onto the review proper.
.
.
.
"Before and After"
Both the first time I watched this episode and just now, my thoughts were: this feels disorienting. Kes starts off in a possible future where she's 9, and then slowly goes back in time, technobabble jump by technobabble jump. She's as disoriented as I am, information is revealed to her the same time it's revealed to us.
This episode answers how Kes would've looked if she were on the series all seven seasons. She'd still look young until she was 8, after which she'd age rapidly. Kes' daughter and grandson were well-cast and felt believable. On the other hand, Kes and Paris being married will never not feel weird. The same as Kim being Paris' son-in-law.
The Doctor, a.k.a. Doctor VanGogh's hairpiece looks ridiculous. It looks like he's wearing a hair helmet. Of course, I think it was meant to look ridiculous, so I let it pass.
There are some echoes of "All Good Things". When Kes is elderly, everyone dismisses her observations as a symptom of senility. Only when she's far enough in the past that she's a practicing doctor, does the crew begin to take her seriously.
Chakotay being Captain instead of Janeway makes it clear that this is a future that'll never happen, also just like "All Good Things". But one of the things that appealed to me about Picard was trying to anticipate how close it would get to or work its way to being similar to the "All Good Things" Future even knowing full well that it wouldn't be 1:1. The same as the case with Voyager in Season 4 and trying to anticipate when the Krennim would show up. The glimpse into the Year Hell felt like a preview of things to come. Sort of. Even back then, I knew they weren't going to kill Janeway and Torres and have at least a season without the Doctor. So, my mind went to trying to anticipate how they'd be able to face the Krennim and not lose so many main characters. But we'll save talking about what does happen for next season.
They were very careful to say that what Kes experienced was only a possible future. I'm glad they said that because otherwise knowing what would happen for the rest of the series would remind me of why I generally don't like prequels: we already know what'll happen next. Instead, what they do here is better: we know that the Krennim are out there, but we don't know how Voyager will actually fair when they run into them. Pretending this is 1997.
Seeing Kes keep going further and further back into time, including to a scene from the end of "Caretaker" was wild. Then she moves all the way back to when she was conceived until going forward again until reaching the series' current timeframe. This is wacky, but it's a good type of wacky.
The episode ends with showing how swept up in everything Kes is. She'll even leave a party thrown for her just to write a report from the Krennim!
Overall, an interesting glimpse into what could've been and disorienting in a way that I want to be disoriented. But it isn't super potent and Kes doesn't spend enough time in any given timeframe to do more than show us the bullet points. I don't hold it against the episode because there's only so much you can do in 45 minutes, and they packed in as much as they could. Still very good, though. I give it a 9.
Last edited:
My perspective on "Before and After" is that, quite simply, it's not just a peek at a future that didn't happen, but a peek at the type of series we should have had.
Consider: Kathryn Janeway makes the ultimate sacrifice. Chakotay has to move on from loss to take on a leadership role he never asked for. Tom Paris loves, loses, and finds a way fo love again. The Doctor doesn't just get a name, but also evolves toward personhood both in his discovery of the very human qualities of ego and vanity. Neelix embraces a new chapter in his life, as a full fledged member of Starfleet, working under his long-suffering frienemy Tuvok. Harry Kim rabks up realistically and finds love in an unexpected place. And Kes experiences life itself, in all its beautiful and tragic glory. In short, the characters grow as the years pass. They evolve, and change. And, no character is safe... not even the captain.
Would some aspects of it have been problematic? You bet. Killing off two-thirds of their female leads would have been a huge problem, and Kate Mulgrew was too valuable a presence to lose. Plus, I don't think the Harry/Linnis pairing would have worked in real time. But still, this was a peek not just into an alternate future, but an alternate concept for the series. A series where the Big Red Reset Button gathered dust, rather than getting relentlessly pounded, and where the actors were playing characters who were different from the ones they started with.
Overall score: 8/10.
Consider: Kathryn Janeway makes the ultimate sacrifice. Chakotay has to move on from loss to take on a leadership role he never asked for. Tom Paris loves, loses, and finds a way fo love again. The Doctor doesn't just get a name, but also evolves toward personhood both in his discovery of the very human qualities of ego and vanity. Neelix embraces a new chapter in his life, as a full fledged member of Starfleet, working under his long-suffering frienemy Tuvok. Harry Kim rabks up realistically and finds love in an unexpected place. And Kes experiences life itself, in all its beautiful and tragic glory. In short, the characters grow as the years pass. They evolve, and change. And, no character is safe... not even the captain.
Would some aspects of it have been problematic? You bet. Killing off two-thirds of their female leads would have been a huge problem, and Kate Mulgrew was too valuable a presence to lose. Plus, I don't think the Harry/Linnis pairing would have worked in real time. But still, this was a peek not just into an alternate future, but an alternate concept for the series. A series where the Big Red Reset Button gathered dust, rather than getting relentlessly pounded, and where the actors were playing characters who were different from the ones they started with.
Overall score: 8/10.
The thing that's kind of sadly ironic about it, which doesn't really have anything to do with the episode in and of itself, is that presumably the Krenim timeship's machinations made it so that by the time Our Heroes encounter the Krenim they have no recollection of the events of the end of this episode. At least, there's no mention in YoH of the events of this episode, that I recall; just some parallels (no TNG pun intended).
"Real Life"
I'm not going to lie; this wasn't an episode that I was looking forward to. The idea of the Doctor wanting to create a holographic family is all well and good, but there are a few problems here besides just the obvious (which I'll get to).
First, how many families are there on Voyager? Aside from the crew being a family, which isn't the same thing. Not many from what I've observed. Only Ensign Wildman and her daughter. Everyone else is separated from their family, have had no communication with them, and have no idea what they're up to. This type of story seems better suited to TNG than VOY. Just replace the Doctor with Data and have him create a holographic family. The only differences are that Data would be faking emotions instead of having them, and it would be Troi who'd be telling Data to have a more realistic family and what she'd come up with would be a different from what Torres came up with.
This brings us to the next problem: the obvious one. The Doctor comes up with a family that's too perfect, but then Torres comes up with a family that's too chaotic. Talk about going from one extreme to the other. The son is friends with Klingons who are a bad influence. The daughter dies from a sports injury. The mother is overworked and overstressed. No one gets along. It's crazy. Most families don't have one kid who wants to join a gang and another kid who dies. This isn't the typical family experience.
Then there's the third problem: in a prototypical nuclear family, the husband and wife meet, fall in love, and get married. The kids are born, and you start raising them from the age of 0. The Doctor started the holo-program already being married and having a son who looks 14 and a daughter who looks 11. I'm terrible at guessing kids' ages, but the point is the Doctor skipped way ahead.
To be fair, there were two things here that ring true to me even though I think one of them was unnecessary. I'll with the unnecessary one first. I don't think it was necessary to have the daughter die. BUT. It's very hard for a parent to see their child die. I know this for a fact because my aunt died in 1970 at the age of 25 (nine years before I was born), and my mother and grandparents took it extremely hard. The Doctor should take it hard as well. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. What I'm saying is they didn't need to have something like that for the Doctor to learn what it's like to have a typical family.
And note to the Doctor, even though I'm not married: yeah, I agree with the wife. Allow her to weigh in before you start making a list of new rules for the family! You made it look like she has no say and she has to agree with everything you say automatically.
I resist the instinct to say this isn't a real family and they're just a simulation. While I personally think that, to the Doctor, a hologram himself, these are real people. Or at least as "real" as they can be without being self-aware that they're holograms. I don't know if it would've been possible for the Doctor to have created self-aware holograms, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt here.
The second thing that rang true was when Paris told the Doctor that having a family means experiencing both the good times and the bad.
And that's a nice transition into the B-Plot, which looks like it's just there to pad out time, give the rest of the cast something to do, and have something more traditionally sci-fi. Due to technobabble, Paris somehow ends up between space and subspace in some type of a not-quite-slipstream. I don't really understand it, but it's inoffensive and just kind of there.
The A-Story could've been more balanced. Fine, have two extremes, but then land on something in the middle. That's what the story needs that was missing. The B-Story is just by the numbers. Something more compelling would've helped there.
Weighing everything, and how mixed I feel about the episode, I give it a 5.
BTW, Klingon Heavy Metal sounds pretty fucking tame. I expect something that sounds more like GWAR!
I'm not going to lie; this wasn't an episode that I was looking forward to. The idea of the Doctor wanting to create a holographic family is all well and good, but there are a few problems here besides just the obvious (which I'll get to).
First, how many families are there on Voyager? Aside from the crew being a family, which isn't the same thing. Not many from what I've observed. Only Ensign Wildman and her daughter. Everyone else is separated from their family, have had no communication with them, and have no idea what they're up to. This type of story seems better suited to TNG than VOY. Just replace the Doctor with Data and have him create a holographic family. The only differences are that Data would be faking emotions instead of having them, and it would be Troi who'd be telling Data to have a more realistic family and what she'd come up with would be a different from what Torres came up with.
This brings us to the next problem: the obvious one. The Doctor comes up with a family that's too perfect, but then Torres comes up with a family that's too chaotic. Talk about going from one extreme to the other. The son is friends with Klingons who are a bad influence. The daughter dies from a sports injury. The mother is overworked and overstressed. No one gets along. It's crazy. Most families don't have one kid who wants to join a gang and another kid who dies. This isn't the typical family experience.
Then there's the third problem: in a prototypical nuclear family, the husband and wife meet, fall in love, and get married. The kids are born, and you start raising them from the age of 0. The Doctor started the holo-program already being married and having a son who looks 14 and a daughter who looks 11. I'm terrible at guessing kids' ages, but the point is the Doctor skipped way ahead.
To be fair, there were two things here that ring true to me even though I think one of them was unnecessary. I'll with the unnecessary one first. I don't think it was necessary to have the daughter die. BUT. It's very hard for a parent to see their child die. I know this for a fact because my aunt died in 1970 at the age of 25 (nine years before I was born), and my mother and grandparents took it extremely hard. The Doctor should take it hard as well. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. What I'm saying is they didn't need to have something like that for the Doctor to learn what it's like to have a typical family.
And note to the Doctor, even though I'm not married: yeah, I agree with the wife. Allow her to weigh in before you start making a list of new rules for the family! You made it look like she has no say and she has to agree with everything you say automatically.
I resist the instinct to say this isn't a real family and they're just a simulation. While I personally think that, to the Doctor, a hologram himself, these are real people. Or at least as "real" as they can be without being self-aware that they're holograms. I don't know if it would've been possible for the Doctor to have created self-aware holograms, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt here.
The second thing that rang true was when Paris told the Doctor that having a family means experiencing both the good times and the bad.
And that's a nice transition into the B-Plot, which looks like it's just there to pad out time, give the rest of the cast something to do, and have something more traditionally sci-fi. Due to technobabble, Paris somehow ends up between space and subspace in some type of a not-quite-slipstream. I don't really understand it, but it's inoffensive and just kind of there.
The A-Story could've been more balanced. Fine, have two extremes, but then land on something in the middle. That's what the story needs that was missing. The B-Story is just by the numbers. Something more compelling would've helped there.
Weighing everything, and how mixed I feel about the episode, I give it a 5.
BTW, Klingon Heavy Metal sounds pretty fucking tame. I expect something that sounds more like GWAR!
Last edited:
I won't be as verbose as you, but...
- Most aspects of the "new" family dynamic didn't bother me as much... a wife who has her own work-related concerns and a teenage son who makes questionable choices are very much a part of the human family experience.
- However, I think it was kind of dumb that the Doc thought he needed to play the scenario out. He created it to experience everyday family life. Balancing work and family is a part of that. So is addressing your teen's life choices. But the death of a child is not everyday family life. It's the ultimate nightmare. One wonders why B'Elanna allowed that kind of scenario at all. The logical decision would have been to modify the scenario so that Belle survived, but had to address a sports injury. Taking your kid to the ER because they broke an arm or sprained an ankle is certainly an aspect of everyday family life.
- Still, Belle's death is heartbreaking. Watching helplessly as someone you care about, someone you're instinctively hardwired to protect, slips away... it's got to be horrible. I can't imagine life a couple hundred years ago, when this horror was almost normal. But it just seems so unnecessary, and that kind of ruins the mood. It's like the end of "Titanic", when the band is playing the last song. It's so sad... but then, I see that mom and her two kids, who
-ing SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON A LIFEBOAT, and I just get pissed off instead.
- I remember when Picard is facing death in "When Silence Has Lease", and he faces it with uncertainty, but not despair. It contrasts with the Doctor's attempt to comfort Belle... he doesn't hold Picard's sense of hope or possibility. Kind of sad.
- The threat of the week was just lame.
Overall, this isn't on my regular re-watch list. 5/10 for the comedic bits.
- Most aspects of the "new" family dynamic didn't bother me as much... a wife who has her own work-related concerns and a teenage son who makes questionable choices are very much a part of the human family experience.
- However, I think it was kind of dumb that the Doc thought he needed to play the scenario out. He created it to experience everyday family life. Balancing work and family is a part of that. So is addressing your teen's life choices. But the death of a child is not everyday family life. It's the ultimate nightmare. One wonders why B'Elanna allowed that kind of scenario at all. The logical decision would have been to modify the scenario so that Belle survived, but had to address a sports injury. Taking your kid to the ER because they broke an arm or sprained an ankle is certainly an aspect of everyday family life.
- Still, Belle's death is heartbreaking. Watching helplessly as someone you care about, someone you're instinctively hardwired to protect, slips away... it's got to be horrible. I can't imagine life a couple hundred years ago, when this horror was almost normal. But it just seems so unnecessary, and that kind of ruins the mood. It's like the end of "Titanic", when the band is playing the last song. It's so sad... but then, I see that mom and her two kids, who
-ing SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON A LIFEBOAT, and I just get pissed off instead.- I remember when Picard is facing death in "When Silence Has Lease", and he faces it with uncertainty, but not despair. It contrasts with the Doctor's attempt to comfort Belle... he doesn't hold Picard's sense of hope or possibility. Kind of sad.
- The threat of the week was just lame.
Overall, this isn't on my regular re-watch list. 5/10 for the comedic bits.
Playing the "this should have been a TNG episode" card when it was presumably written after TNG had left the airwaves feels like a somewhat disingenuous argument? It certainly wasn't going to be a DS9 episode.
Besides, Robert Picardo can make almost anything great.
I think Torres may have somewhat intentionally overbalanced, though we never find out for sure. There are times in our lives where all kinds of crazy things seem to happen at one time, so I'd like to think that either with a bit more tinkering or on its own the holoprogram would have settled down a bit.
I don't blame the EMH for thinking he'd just start with a family-in-progress. If that's arguably a bit arrogant...I mean, look who we're talking about here.
Honestly, I would have liked to see a return (or even a mention) of the holofamily and the weird realm that Paris discovered...it could have led into a plot about a way for Our Heroes to maybe get home a bit faster or such. Alas, I believe this episode could be wiped out of existence with no harm to the rest of the series, and that's a shame.
Besides, Robert Picardo can make almost anything great.
I think Torres may have somewhat intentionally overbalanced, though we never find out for sure. There are times in our lives where all kinds of crazy things seem to happen at one time, so I'd like to think that either with a bit more tinkering or on its own the holoprogram would have settled down a bit.
I don't blame the EMH for thinking he'd just start with a family-in-progress. If that's arguably a bit arrogant...I mean, look who we're talking about here.
Honestly, I would have liked to see a return (or even a mention) of the holofamily and the weird realm that Paris discovered...it could have led into a plot about a way for Our Heroes to maybe get home a bit faster or such. Alas, I believe this episode could be wiped out of existence with no harm to the rest of the series, and that's a shame.
I don't think so. Families on ships was a TNG thing. VOY doesn't have families. Mostly. So, I think it's something they should've done while TNG was on, but they didn't. Since VOY was essentially the replacement series for TNG, I can see why they did it here. Maybe I should say this idea would've worked better during the TNG days.
Similar threads
