• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Rewatching Voyager

Tuvix

To be honest, I didn't really feel like doing a write up for this episode. Don't get me wrong, I like it and all, but I'm kind of tired talking about it except for one thing. Couldn't Janeway clone Tuvix and then do the split on one of the clones? Would that be as unethical as killing Tuvix to bring Neelix and Tuvok back? I know the episode was designed for Janeway to make the hard decisions, and she was probably in the right, but I would have wanted to explore all options.

I did really like the interactions with Kes and Janeway though. In fact, some of my favorite Voyager scenes are those intimate conversations Janeway has with characters like Kes, Tuvok, Seven, or Torres. Still, going back to my point about being tired of talking about this one, one of the reasons I do these write ups is because there might be an episode I am excited about that never gets mentioned that I wanted to give love to. For example, Lifesigns is one of those episodes. When was the last time you talked about Dinara Pel and how awesome of a character she was in the Voyager forum? Hell, I might even make a Dinara Pel appreciation thread (Probably not ;) ), but it's those kind of episodes I'm enjoying. I feel like Tuvix has been talked to death at this point.

My issue isn’t story or plot.

It’s technique.

If a character is possessed by another, the actor has a responsibility to imitate. This one had all the Tuvok of someone at a Trek convention, but where was the Neelix? He could have at least done a short impression which would get quashed by the Tuvok side.

Or we could watch the two personalities fight it out within a single sentence at a time......so much potential for comedy.

But he murdered both characters. At the end, no sympathy from me.
 
Starting a fire with hair, hmmm, makes everyone hungry.
To eat dinosaur eggs. And mealworms. And drink pee.

Did they shave with rocks?
 
Future's End

Much like Basics, I'm going to talk about this as if it was one episode. I've always loved this episode a lot. We get to see the crew interact with Present Day LA and Ed Begley Jr. was great as the egotist Henry Starling. In fact, in terms of two part villains, I would rank Starling up there. He didn't know what he was doing but that didn't stop him from achieving his goal. He also pulled a Jellico and really enhanced Voyager through The Doctor's Mobile Emitter, much like Jellico told Troi to put on a Starfleet uniform. I'm so glad the Doctor finally got the emitter in this episode mainly because he couldn't be stuck in sickbay forever and this was about a quarter of the way through season 3.

The other guest star was Sarah Silverman as Rain Robinson, and I think this is the best I've ever seen Silverman in anything. Does anyone remember her show that was on comedy central years ago? I watched some of that show mainly because I thought it was going to be the same Sarah Silverman that was in Voyager. What I got was a vulger, disgusting, and probably terrible cast show and I realized how much I didn't like her in "Normal" life. Still though, she was great here, and she and Tom had great chemistry together. I know it's a little corny, but I loved the Freakasauras line.

Watching this episode, I was wondering something regarding the Eugenics Wars and a possible explaination for why they didn't happen. Could one possible explanation be that when Starling stole the time ship in 1967, that changed the timeline, and when the time ship was destroyed, it restored those events? Maybe the Eugenics Wars did happen. Also, I thought I read somewhere that they didn't happen every where. You know LA at the time. Heck, there really hasn't been much of a change from how we dress back then to how we dress now. I loved 90s fashion.

This episode did also have a minor fault. I thought the trip to Arizona was kind of a waste of time and the conspiracy nuts detracted from the overall story. Why were they there, exactly? It just seemed to pad the episode and take away from all the cool stuff that was happening, even though it did give us more Rain/Tom Bonding time.

During the last episode I made a comment about how Janeway's hair seemed to be down more leading up to Future's End. The reason why is because this episode did one other thing that changed the "look" of the series other than the Doctor's emitter. We are introduced to my favorite Janeway hair style in this episode, the pony tail look. Maybe it symbolized we were getting a more action Janeway in the upcoming episodes, like Macrocosm with Janeway doing Die Hard, or Worst Case Scenario, or even Scorpion, but whenever I think of Janeway, I always go back to the pony tail. It's a shame it was short lived though, but we did get a season out of it so, hooray for that.

Overall though, Future's End is some of the best of Voyager. When I started this rewatch there were a few episodes I was looking forward to seeing again, and Future's End was one of them. The other is Scorpion, but I'll talk about the brilliance of that episode when we get to it. Until then, if you're looking for an episode or two to watch of Voyager and you have 90 minutes to kill, watch Future's End. It will take you back to the decade of roller blades, tying shirts around the waist, and that "far out" attitude. And it's a bunch of fun.


I also loved Sarah Silverman in this, so believable and funny with her facial expressions.

I don’t think that there can ever be a hand phaser that can vaporize a truck, but leave everything around it intact.

Like Kirstie Alley as Savik, in Wrath of Khan, when she’s in the kitchen, fires a phaser at a stockpot of dough, and vaporizes the stockpot, leaving the pile of raw dough.

Those are gratuitous, cheap effects.

And the big blinking lights behind the pilot of a 29th century time ship.

I still loved this ep, anyway....I would have loved to see Silverman as a returning character. She’s got chops.
 
I can see that. She did have a little Linda Hamilton persona going on with the tank top and pony tail hairstyle.


All oiled up and bare shoulders, that’s good Janeway. Could have used sweat dripping to start.

I guess they had a garage door remote to open the shuttle bay doors.
 
Warlord

This isn't actually my favorite Kes episode of the series, but I think it was the episode where Jennifer Lien acted this best, if that makes any sense. We've seen the outer body episodes before (Heck, even in Star Trek with DS9's The Passenger) but Lien looked like she had a blast in this episode as Tieran. Loved watching that struggle between Tieran and Kes, and that scene where we go inside the mind to show that struggle is actually one of the most memorable scenes in Voyager up to this point. I actually wish we got this wild side of Kes for the rest of the season. ;)

They should have written in this alter ego as a recurring character which couldn’t be removed, buried in her subconscious and suppressed, only to surface in times of great duress, and voila, you get an additional and exciting character added to the cast, and it doesn’t cost anything. Lien made me love her, and it hit me like crazy in her closeup two-shots.
 
Unity

The road to Scorpion continues with the episode that really set up was was to come. Here is a great Chakotay episode, the first since the Kazon Arc probably, and we meet Wolf 359 refugees that have been severed from the collective. I know Voyager gets a bad rap when it comes to the Borg, but I thought Unity added a lot to what we know about the collective and what might happen if a group is cut off from the collective. I liked Chakotay and Reily together and the use of the link to cure Chakotay was something fresh we hadn't seen with the Borg until now.

In terms of my point about setting up scorpion, we get a dead drone corpse, which the Doctor uses in part two to come up with nanoprobes and to take off the Implants for Seven, and we also get the transponder, which Chakotay uses to stop 7 of 9. Unity is a great episode and one of the third season's best.

Hallier as Riley was one of the best guest stars so far, and with her big eyes, she really lit up the room when she came into a shot. I couldn’t get enough of her, with her expressiveness and how she used her entire face, so convincing as well. Even when she is revealed as a bald ex-borg, she is eye glue. Persis Khambatta,
but with fantastic depth written into her. She should have been a recurring character.

Here was a good pairing for Beltran. He was invested.

And we discover how the Borg can be a force for good, with no crime or disease, and the human angle makes for a loveable ex-machine.

Too bad that some of the other species on the planet didn’t turn out so good.

Yes, this is a great ep. We have Unity on that.
 
Lately, I re-watched "Initiations", where Chakotay became entangled with Kar, a young Kazon, who attempted to complete a rite of passage, and tried to act as a mentor for him.
To me, this episode was a hell of a waste of time: the storyline was boring, the characters, even under the form of young Kazons weren't likeable, the rhythm was too slow, the background too dark and to end, why wanting to use Chakotay as a mentor of a young Kazon about completing a rite of p^passage, while himself has so much struggled with his own traditions to the point of completely cutting himself from his origins go back to the late?! BTW, Tuvok met the same difficulties in his young years btw. Sometimes, it is :crazy: Sometimes, it is necessary to be alone, to doubt, to get away to come back, enriched and stronger. It's part of learning!

Once, I said that "The Fight" was one of the worst episodes proposed but I'd say that "Initiations" was very close. :shrug:

Kazons were not Borg, for sure (besides, Seven herself admitted that they weren't worth assimilation! :whistle:) : They (Borg) offered us some very emotional and powerful episodes like Scorpion / Drone or One / Child's Play / Dark Frontier / Imperfection / Survival Instinct.
-> viewers are supposed to hate & fear them while in fact, we are attached to them as time passed. :)
 
While a lot of people were disturbed and even upset with "Tuvix", I admit that an episode like "Repentance" let me uncomfortable during a great part of its duration because of the message it tried to send: 1) in defiance of Prime Directive, Janeway and her senior crew decided to put criminals (murderers and sometimes, multiple offenders in their case) under Voyager's protection because they disagreed with the death penalty/capital punishment these prisonners were condemned ("ethical implications of helping take prisoners to their deaths", advanced by Chakotay and agreed by The Doctor) -> What do these people want and why do they interfere?. 2) to explained/justify a murder by a medical problem (remember that, according to the Doctor, the murder could have been explained by the idea of violence generated by a node, equivalent to pineal gland in Humans, which would have been detached due to a birth defect and that now that the individual, Iko being safe after a surgery led by the Doctor of course he should attempt to appeal to the sentencing with the victim's family...which of course, refused to look at the medical evidence, through logically. Then, as seeing as the family is not reasonable, to pardon Iko, that a judicial protection like granting asylum be offered to him. Janeway refused not because she disagreed but because she has already given her word to Yediq not to oppose to the continuation of the events.

Fortunately, things were back to normal at the end. Yes, Iko was executed but he faced death couragously and fully aware of the harm he had done to his victim and the victim's family (=atoment), while a lot of condemned people simply don't even care.
Remorse and forgiveness are simply never enough after the killing of innocent people, because well, behind victims, there are families too, which maybe will never recovered from the loss of a loved and will be found broken/wounded in body and soul.
 
From the beginning, the Kazon have been ruthless dummies who don’t deserve our sympathy or .....assimilation, either.
We can’t feel for them. We don’t care what happens to them.
But we viewers do feel for the intelligent aliens, and want to see them thrive, if they are not inherently evil.
Both episodes deal with the notion that Some Good Can Come From This. And that evil must not thrive.
Unfortunately, culture is the argument against this. Culture is a “good” word, a sounds-goodism. Like, we can’t rightfully change other’s culture, ala Prime Directive, even though we know better. Who are we to say......

Which permits evil to thrive, until it attacks us, and then, all bets are off.

The Prime Directive has a practical reasoning. Not a moral one.
It is to help ensure that we don’t needlessly create enemies with high minded heavy hands in their affairs.

And maybe some good can come from this.
 
On my rewatch. Which is hanging by this thread.

I’m finding that there is a lot more to these episodes than I thought, or read about in reviews.

Nuances. Like the small things that pass by quickly, which we post about in Favorite Little Moments.

Or technicals, like this one scene in Random Thoughts where Tom and Torres in conversation are shot with soft focus for Tom, and hi def for Torres, and you wonder if they’re actually in the same room.

Or, How do the Stardates work? But I suppose that’s another thread.
 
And there wasn’t enough Neelix in him to make him all that interesting. He needed some personality flipping. Inner conflict.
A fight between the halves. But he halved not.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top