"Scientific Method" - if Nagillum was a cewmember on Voyager he'd feel terrified for his life as well.
And that's the crux. Trek has come a long way since 1987 when it came to remaking or innovating on stories, as the laughable "The Naked Now" was quick to prove.
The Voyager episode pretty much take the main concept of "Where Silence Has Lease" and shakes things up to incorporate a whole race of beings with some coherence as opposed to one magical turquoise thing inside a big gas cloud in space just trying to get some magical space jollies. As with DS9's "Starship Down" vs TNG's "Disaster", the spinoff shows definitely go above and beyond with ideas presented in earlier shows and refining them into something bigger and more grounded.
And by 1995, tv shows could show more gruesomeness and to the point this episode took no restraints in exploiting to ratchet up the fear factor. In tandem with a less fantastical setting (which worked in 1988, don't get me wrong), "Scientific Method" feels more grounded and hits home in a way TNG's original could not do as effectively.
It may be filler, but it was entertaining throughout. Though the ending was a trifle convenient with achieving such escape velocity yet the ship didn't get torn apart.
And I loved seeing the bridge in a brighter hue - it looked so much more vibrant and not dank, which was the one thing that annoyed me from season 1 onward - the bridge and sets seemed under-illuminated.
Rating: B+
"The Raven" - ignore that the nameplate on the bridge (redress of 1701-D viewscreen too, BTW) reads "The Raven" rather than the "USS Raven" as shown on the exterior hull, and this is another thrill ride of an episode and the best is yet to come.
The episode is littered with coincidences that come together nimbly in the nick of time, but it wasn't that difficult to roll with.
It's a nice reminder that space is not a nice place - though the same can obviously be said for a lot of Voyager episodes, season 4 is so refined and honed that it all feels more natural.
To my current understanding: In Celtic mythology, a raven symbolizes power, presence, and prestige, if not the coming of death and keep in mind ravens do feast on corpses. Imagine the poor cats and raccoons being chased away - even on the roadside if you lack a time travel capsule to check out 4000BC directly with but I wasn't there so I can only guess or read various bits of information based on what is known or theorized... wait, don't do that since if you see a trio of them nibbling on a squirrel on the road you might end up as their dessert within half an hour. So if you're reading this while driving, go back in time eighteen seconds and stop reading this until you get home.
So its tie-in to the Borg story is rather interesting, and made more creepy given what the Borg do to individuals. It's almost a eerie form of poetry that the Borg would find their first humans on board a ship christened "USS Raven", albeit as an inverted trope. If not a more literal meaning, noting how often the Federation during TNG and VOY have defeated the cybernetic nightmares that represent death in a far worse way, that eat the soul as well as the technological components even devouring flesh - something episode episode reveals as a few dormant Borg nanoprobes activate and start to regenerate and attempt to take over her body (but thankfully stopped in time, by now Janeway is wondering what sort of quagmire she has on her hands if 7 is trying to contact home, thwarted, and now home is trying to wake up inside of her to reclaim the host body Anneka is.)
In other mythology, a raven symbolizes a God that protected Britain. The Raven's crew collecting and transmitting data about the Borg helped protect the Federation... pity they didn't show up in a group of three, but that is regarding yet other lore.
And in even more lore, some Native American lores saw the Raven as tricksters or of transformation (think the Q). Tricking is futile when to comes to Borg, but the allusion of transformation is palpable enough, as they also stole souls...
Ravens are also intelligent creatures that even mimic human actions. Almost like wanting to be part of a collective in a certain way... there are so many ways the allegorical nature of a raven and its historical or even modern day context can be used and I don't know about you but I think that's enthralling, to fathom the possible facets. Thankfully my ADHDsquirrel keeps me from doing just that. Which reminds me, I need to make some popcorn... ravens do eat popcorn littered about by the nonchalantly sloppy at a park...
"Raven" is a nice 7 story, but it gives a huge moment to Neelix - a survivor of the Borg onslaught, having to remain composed toward her and having to remember she isn't a drone and, like Locutus and others, not acting on their will of their own accord. This is an eminently strong scene, well acted. And as much as I do like Neelix's happy go lucky nature, it's their dinner scene that injects a little left field back into the show's character that much more... though despite how engaging the scene an what followed was, does this mean the Borg could just waltz through any old Starship forcefield and make future invasions that much simpler?
The ending feels inspired by the old "For more information on _____, check out your local library!" PSA message after a Saturday morning cartoon.
In "The Gift", it is said the ship is moved clear from Borg space. Yet the crew continue to encounter beings who have been ravaged by the Borg and this is only the latest example, and the show is coming dangerously close to becoming "The Seven of Nine Show". Especially as we get a revisit of her childhood in an upcoming two-parter next season, making one wonder if "Raven" - despite some marvelous direction and visual allegory - really needed to be told to begin with if they were going to retcon part of it by "Dark Frontier" anyway in, if nothing else, the Hansens are told in "Raven" they wanted nothing to do with Starfleet but by "Dark Frontier" they were doing covert missions to acquire data about the Borg species.
The girl they got to be young Anneka - really nice acting when being terrorized by the Borg.
Best line of the episode: "The feathers are black, wingspan approximately one half metre. The eyes are yellow and it has a powerful triangular beak. When it looks at me, I am paralysed. I cannot move. It seems to know me, but I don't understand how that's possible. It's merely a bird, an inferior form of life, but the sight of it fills me with fear. It sounds like she's describing a member of the corvidae family like a crow, or a raven. She's describing a raven."
Second-best line of the episode: "Papa?"
It's filler, it holds together well enough, it isn't bad, but something felt missing... at least they didn't leave an anachronous coffee flagon on set during filming and to look beyond the mere visage, the history and Earthy folklores behind the raven make this episode more than the sum of its parts.
Rating: B+
And that's the crux. Trek has come a long way since 1987 when it came to remaking or innovating on stories, as the laughable "The Naked Now" was quick to prove.
The Voyager episode pretty much take the main concept of "Where Silence Has Lease" and shakes things up to incorporate a whole race of beings with some coherence as opposed to one magical turquoise thing inside a big gas cloud in space just trying to get some magical space jollies. As with DS9's "Starship Down" vs TNG's "Disaster", the spinoff shows definitely go above and beyond with ideas presented in earlier shows and refining them into something bigger and more grounded.
And by 1995, tv shows could show more gruesomeness and to the point this episode took no restraints in exploiting to ratchet up the fear factor. In tandem with a less fantastical setting (which worked in 1988, don't get me wrong), "Scientific Method" feels more grounded and hits home in a way TNG's original could not do as effectively.
It may be filler, but it was entertaining throughout. Though the ending was a trifle convenient with achieving such escape velocity yet the ship didn't get torn apart.
And I loved seeing the bridge in a brighter hue - it looked so much more vibrant and not dank, which was the one thing that annoyed me from season 1 onward - the bridge and sets seemed under-illuminated.
Rating: B+
"The Raven" - ignore that the nameplate on the bridge (redress of 1701-D viewscreen too, BTW) reads "The Raven" rather than the "USS Raven" as shown on the exterior hull, and this is another thrill ride of an episode and the best is yet to come.
The episode is littered with coincidences that come together nimbly in the nick of time, but it wasn't that difficult to roll with.
It's a nice reminder that space is not a nice place - though the same can obviously be said for a lot of Voyager episodes, season 4 is so refined and honed that it all feels more natural.
To my current understanding: In Celtic mythology, a raven symbolizes power, presence, and prestige, if not the coming of death and keep in mind ravens do feast on corpses. Imagine the poor cats and raccoons being chased away - even on the roadside if you lack a time travel capsule to check out 4000BC directly with but I wasn't there so I can only guess or read various bits of information based on what is known or theorized... wait, don't do that since if you see a trio of them nibbling on a squirrel on the road you might end up as their dessert within half an hour. So if you're reading this while driving, go back in time eighteen seconds and stop reading this until you get home.
So its tie-in to the Borg story is rather interesting, and made more creepy given what the Borg do to individuals. It's almost a eerie form of poetry that the Borg would find their first humans on board a ship christened "USS Raven", albeit as an inverted trope. If not a more literal meaning, noting how often the Federation during TNG and VOY have defeated the cybernetic nightmares that represent death in a far worse way, that eat the soul as well as the technological components even devouring flesh - something episode episode reveals as a few dormant Borg nanoprobes activate and start to regenerate and attempt to take over her body (but thankfully stopped in time, by now Janeway is wondering what sort of quagmire she has on her hands if 7 is trying to contact home, thwarted, and now home is trying to wake up inside of her to reclaim the host body Anneka is.)
In other mythology, a raven symbolizes a God that protected Britain. The Raven's crew collecting and transmitting data about the Borg helped protect the Federation... pity they didn't show up in a group of three, but that is regarding yet other lore.
And in even more lore, some Native American lores saw the Raven as tricksters or of transformation (think the Q). Tricking is futile when to comes to Borg, but the allusion of transformation is palpable enough, as they also stole souls...
Ravens are also intelligent creatures that even mimic human actions. Almost like wanting to be part of a collective in a certain way... there are so many ways the allegorical nature of a raven and its historical or even modern day context can be used and I don't know about you but I think that's enthralling, to fathom the possible facets. Thankfully my ADHDsquirrel keeps me from doing just that. Which reminds me, I need to make some popcorn... ravens do eat popcorn littered about by the nonchalantly sloppy at a park...
"Raven" is a nice 7 story, but it gives a huge moment to Neelix - a survivor of the Borg onslaught, having to remain composed toward her and having to remember she isn't a drone and, like Locutus and others, not acting on their will of their own accord. This is an eminently strong scene, well acted. And as much as I do like Neelix's happy go lucky nature, it's their dinner scene that injects a little left field back into the show's character that much more... though despite how engaging the scene an what followed was, does this mean the Borg could just waltz through any old Starship forcefield and make future invasions that much simpler?
The ending feels inspired by the old "For more information on _____, check out your local library!" PSA message after a Saturday morning cartoon.
In "The Gift", it is said the ship is moved clear from Borg space. Yet the crew continue to encounter beings who have been ravaged by the Borg and this is only the latest example, and the show is coming dangerously close to becoming "The Seven of Nine Show". Especially as we get a revisit of her childhood in an upcoming two-parter next season, making one wonder if "Raven" - despite some marvelous direction and visual allegory - really needed to be told to begin with if they were going to retcon part of it by "Dark Frontier" anyway in, if nothing else, the Hansens are told in "Raven" they wanted nothing to do with Starfleet but by "Dark Frontier" they were doing covert missions to acquire data about the Borg species.
The girl they got to be young Anneka - really nice acting when being terrorized by the Borg.
Best line of the episode: "The feathers are black, wingspan approximately one half metre. The eyes are yellow and it has a powerful triangular beak. When it looks at me, I am paralysed. I cannot move. It seems to know me, but I don't understand how that's possible. It's merely a bird, an inferior form of life, but the sight of it fills me with fear. It sounds like she's describing a member of the corvidae family like a crow, or a raven. She's describing a raven."
Second-best line of the episode: "Papa?"
It's filler, it holds together well enough, it isn't bad, but something felt missing... at least they didn't leave an anachronous coffee flagon on set during filming and to look beyond the mere visage, the history and Earthy folklores behind the raven make this episode more than the sum of its parts.
Rating: B+
