Anyway, back to where I am in my Voyager journey, and I watched three episodes tonight (And maybe a fourth)
Basics
I think I'm going to try to talk about these episodes together, even though part 1 is a lot better than part 2. I loved how tense and season self referential Part 1 was. You've got the Kazon NIstrim targeting a specific part of the ship, which was pretty good strategy, and while that was happening this episode referred back to The 37s with the landing, Tattoo with the scene between Chakotay and his father, the Kazon arc (Of course), and Investigations with Paris going to get help from the Talaxians, and Meld, with the return of Lon Sudor. I thought the stuff with wondering if Voyager was heading into the trap was really the highlights of the episode, as well as the ending with Cullah and Seska boarding the ship. This was a great ending to season 2, even if it wasn't as strong as some of the other endings in Voyager (Like Scorpion).
Part 2 picks up right where part 1 leaves off with the crew on the alien planet. I have to say this part of the episode wasn't all that great. I would have liked to see more "Basic" stuff of survival rather than that alien race. Part 1 ended with Cullah saying "Let's see if you can survive without it" and while we see Chakotay making a fire and them making weapons, I wish the aliens on the planet were not part of the story. The better parts of the episode, however, was what was happening with Sudor, who really did become one of Voyager's most interesting characters in his short time we saw him. We see a guy who has made a living of killing and is starting to turn his life around, and I loved seeing the psychological impact of him becoming a killer again. You can see it really hurts him even though this time it is for the necessary good. That scene in engineering where he kills all the Kazon, except for one unfortunately, with one shot each was great. He sure puts GI Joe to shame.
Anyway, as a way to end the Kazon arc, I liked Basics. I wish we might have gotten more with the Baby and maybe it was a copout that the Baby wasn't Chakotay's son but really what else could they have done. Maybe keep the baby on Voyager and have Chakotay raise it, but that would cost some money I'm sure. Might have given the character more ummpf in the later seasons though if he had been a father. I'm also sad Sudor was killed. He could have been a very interesting recurring guest star, and I like seeing Brad Dourif in stuff. Other than that, it was a pretty good two parter.
Flashback
This might sound blasphemous, but I think I'm starting to like this episode more while I'm starting to like Trials and Tribble-ations a little bit less. Yeah, I know Tribbles is a better episode, and it was really done with love, but I really liked how Flashback came together. Also, I've been wanting more stuff in the movie era and we got to see pretty much The Undiscovered Country from the Excelsior's perspective. So what if there are some continuity errors like two months vs. two days. I don't really think about that kind of thing watching the episode. What I do think about is here is this interesting storyline about a virus that uses memory engrams to attach itself to the host. This allowed us to go back to the days of Excelsior and see Captain Sulu and Rand one more time.
I will say the only thing I didn't like about this episode was Janeway's "They would have been booting out of starfleet today" line. Oh really? Has Starfleet gotten so rigid that it will forget its past? Maybe the Dominion were right. It's interesting. One of the reasons I'm not as much a fan of Tribbles while it is a great episode is I find the bowing down to the original cast at the Alter of Star Trek kind of annoying. Here it's the other extreme of being overly critical. They couldn't really come up with a satisfactory medium to honor the original cast during the 30th anniversary, but I do applaud them for trying.
), but it's those kind of episodes I'm enjoying. I feel like Tuvix has been talked to death at this point.
