I just finished watching through Season 2 and felt like doing a rundown, so here goes:
"The 37s" - As I said in the other thread, the main weak points of this episode were the newly awakened 37's holding the Voyager crew hostage, the failure to show the human cities, and Noonan's last-ditch declaration of love to Earhart. Everything else I liked. However, I really,
really wish this had been the finale to the first season, rather than the second season opener. The ending had more sense of closure than that of opening a whole new pallette of episodes.
"Initiations" - I don't think I had ever seen this one before now. If I had, I'd completely forgotten that Aron Eisenberg had guest starred on Voyager. While I enjoyed his and Beltran's performances, I thought the chest-thumping premise was cliched and tired. Actually, I feel that way about the Kazon in general, so this episode was bound to have me rolling my eyes a bit.
"Projections" - I love Barclay - always have. The episode suffers a bit from the audience knowing that whatever is going on, the Doctor isn't really Lewis Zimmerman hallucinating in his lab. But it was sort of entertaining to watch the Doctor try to figure it all out.
"Elogium" - I pretty much hate this episode. I really like Jennifer Lien, but when she goes extreme, she gets too weird for me. And speaking of too weird, all her pre-natal antics were just over the top. I did appreciate the emotional issues she and Neelix had to deal with, and I found Neelix's reactions very sweet. And the episode does have the redeeming factor of introducing Samantha Wildman's pregnancy, though the timing of that always really bothered me. Either she brought some fertilized eggs along, or someone's been playing with the timeline. Oh well, I love her anyway.
"Non Sequitur" - I liked the idea here, that hitting the wrong space/time speed bump could alter one's history. It was fun to see Harry back home. Libby does nothing for me, though, and the way home worked much too well given how the alien described Harry's chances of success. It was like TNG's "Parallels" without the fun of multiple dimensional hops along the way.
"Twisted" - Had me just as frustrated as the crew with all the wandering around and accomplishing nothing. Disappointing when it all turned out to be a happy floaty trip through the special effects machine.
"Parturition" - Talk about STUPID episode titles... But I really enjoyed this episode, mainly because it resolved the oh-so-tiresome irrational jealousy Neelix kept spewing at Tom. I like my Neelix friendly to a fault, willing to give any and everyone the benefit of the doubt. I thought their scenes together on the planet accomplished their reconciliation nicely, and I heaved a sigh of relief in the end with an "at last" feeling in my heart.
"Persistence of Vision" - While it was interesting to see some of the crew's deeper desires, most of this one fell flat to me.
"Tattoo" - Good and bad here. I like early-seasons Chakotay for the most part, so learning about his past is something I enjoyed. I'm torn on the alien influence on ancient earth tribes - I don't hate the idea, but I don't think it came across as well as it might have.
"Cold Fire" - Like this one very much; like Suspiria, like the potential for Kes' abilities, pretty much like it all.
"Maneuvers" - The Seska subplot always bothered me, because as smart as Seska was, she should have known better than to choose the Kazon for her allies. But I like Chakotay, and I like that in the early seasons he actually got opportunities to do things. Granted, running off by himself may not have been the smartest thing to do, but it was selfless and showed initiative.
"Resistance" - This one gets so many extra points for Joel Grey's guest appearance that they drown out any possible story weaknesses, even if I could think of any, which I can't. You simply can't go wrong with Joel Grey, and I'm heartbroken that he's not mentioned once in the Season 2 special features.
"Prototype" - This is the first of two really nice vehicles for B'Elanna this season. You knew from the beginning that the robot would end up being eeeeevil, but B'Elanna's emotional journey helped make up for the predictability factor.
"Alliances" - Oh man, this was great until the ending. Janeway preaching the virtues of the almighty Prime Directive and the unassailable values of the Starfleet code made me ill. The fact is, the show
needed to move away from TNG's vanilla reputation and get its hands dirty, and this show was the PERFECT opportunity to do so. And frankly, here's where Seska should have jumped off the Kazon wagon and joined the Trabe. She'd have been ten times more menacing a threat with the freedom to actually put her strategies into play herself instead of "Yes, Maje"-ing her way through.
"Threshold" - I can't. I couldn't sit through it. I'm sorry. I did love how in the special features Braga basically apologized for how awful it was.
"Meld" - Stellar. I love Lon Suder - another superb guest star (Brad Dourif) completely left out of the special features. There's really no flaw here. Tuvok gets a chance to shine, and we get a great character to see again later.
"Dreadnought" - B'Elanna's second moment. I didn't buy that the computer wouldn't acknowledge that it wasn't in the Alpha quadrant, but other than that, the story was solid.
"Death Wish" - This is one of the few good reasons to allow Q in the Delta quadrant (the other being his presence gave us Susie Q, whom I love). This season really had outstanding guest stars, though, didn't it! Gerrit Graham made a convincing and sympathetic Q, and the episode came pretty close to the genius of "The Measure of a Man" in my book.
"Lifesigns" - This is another one I'm not sure I'd ever seen before. Very, very sweet episode, largely due to the endearing guest actress.
"Investigations" - I'm very glad that "A Briefing with Neelix" was ... ahem ...
brief. What is an overall excellent premise is tainted in a couple ways. First, the Doctor's snippy, overbearing behavior is a problem all too prevalent in the early seasons. And second, the treatment of Chakotay. It really bothers me how the writers increasingly marginalize him until he becomes a powerless figurehead of a character. I get the feeling more and more that they're trying to strengthen their female captain by weakening the male first officer. And that's a real shame. There was NO reason to abuse his authority the way they did.
"Deadlock" - This was really a classic episode. I was very glad that Samantha Wildman's baby was allowed to live.
And questionable science aside, it's always fun to see duplicates play off each other. Mulgrew ate it up, and it shows.
"Innocence" - I know a lot of people don't like this episode, but I do. So many people don't seem to like child actors, but I found the girls here quite precious (the little boy
was too whiny, I admit). The story does suffer a bit from dumb-aliens-syndrome; if they'd just TOLD the captain what was going on, it would have saved a lot of grief. Of course, the episode would have only lasted 15 minutes too. I liked the idea of a species' elderly returning to a childlike state; in a lot of ways, our elderly do the same thing without the benefit of childlike bodies.
"The Thaw" - I think this episode is a good example of a good idea gone bad. Michael McKean's guest performance just couldn't rescue this one. There were a lot of elements I actually found intriguing. I liked the "choric" element used in a lot of the fear characters' lines to be very creative. I work with elementary thru high school drama, and choric speaking is a
great category displayed a little bit here to nice effect. But the overall tone is just hard for me to swallow, as is the personification of fear to the point of it actually having the power of life and death. My suspension of disbelief snapped like a rickety rope bridge.
"Tuvix" - Throughout the piece I kept begging, "Can we keep him, mom, please?" A powerful episode with no easy answers. Here my disbelief in the cause of the merge was easily suspended by the truthfulness of the emotions in the situation. The guest actor did a PHENOMENAL job of merging Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips believably. I genuinely did want to keep the character - even as I would have regretted the loss of Tuvok and Neelix. A side benefit was the opportunity for Janeway and Kes to deepen their relationship.
"Resolutions" - Ah, what never was. Had the writers allowed Chakotay to remain the man he was in the beginning, I would have been the most rabid J/C shipper you can imagine, and this episode is great evidence of why. The two actors could express fabulous chemistry with one another, and I would have LOVED to see what two equal leaders could have accomplished on that ship. Instead they neutered Chakotay and handicapped Janeway to the point where she couldn't have a real relationship. The ship-side part of the plot was quite wonderful, though I found Tuvok's unreasonable adherence to the captain's order at the expense of the collective judgment of his crew to be ... illogical.
I do REALLY hate the ending, how Janeway and Chakotay are so determined to go back to the way things were and to erase the things they learned together on the planet.
One of the saddest endings of an episode in the series.
"Basics, Part I" - HOW are we STILL in Kazon territory?!?! Aaaarrrgh, this drives me crazy. I like the plot; I like the fight; I like the result of them being stuck on the planet. I do NOT like that we are STILL fighting the stupid Kazon!!! It is SO time we left the mad dogs behind, people! And I'm sorry, but even WITH Seska, these guys still come across as angry Pakleds with bad hair. They have just never been a believable serious threat to me, and the fact that they're still nipping at Voyager's heels after two years is just too much. *sigh* I felt a little sorry for Suder, wanting so badly to have some purpose now that Tuvok's training has begun to give him some stability. I'll save my comments on Chakotay's fatherhood until I see part two. Overall pretty unsatisfying. I could see any number of Delta quadrant species managing to overtake Voyager, but NOT the Kazon.
Overall, I have to say this was a strong, engaging season of Voyager. I appreciated the fact that the difficulties of being far from home were still a weekly struggle. At this point I could still buy a devastated ship being recovered the next week because the overall struggle for survival was still a real part of almost every episode. Characters are growing - some in good directions (Janeway, B'Elanna, Neelix, Tom) some not-so-good (Chakotay, Chakotay, did I mention Chakotay?). And still, I love them all and look forward to Season 3 with eager anticipation.
