The Least Disliked Episode 2023: VOY Season 3

[Farscape One]

Taking out "FUTURE'S END".

"The future is the past. The past is the future. It all gives me a headache."
Captain Janeway

Me, too, captain. Which is why it's gone.


The Chute
Remember
Unity
Before and After
Distant Origin
Worst Case Scenario
Scorpion (I)

 

[Sakonna]

Madness! "Future's End" is incredible.

I'll ax "Unity." I like it all right, but the whole thing with Chakotay & his Borg love interest is pretty flat.

The Chute
Remember
Before and After
Distant Origin
Worst Case Scenario
Scorpion (I)

 

[Seven of Five]

I'll remove Distant Origin next. I love the concept behind this one, I just like others more.

The Chute
Remember
Before and After
Worst Case Scenario
Scorpion (I)

 

[Farscape One]

Finally, a choice that is a bit tricky.

I'll take out "REMEMBER", only because I think the others are either stronger episodes or are more my style. Still a VERY good one with a wonderful performance by Roxann Dawson and Bruce Davison.


The Chute
Before and After
Worst Case Scenario
Scorpion (I)

 

[Sakonna]

I'll ax "Scorpion" for my last season 3 elimination. It's great, I just love Kes, Seska, and prison homoeroticism more.

The Chute
Before and After
Worst Case Scenario

 

[Warp 10 (Pepperoni)]

I would have eliminated The Chute before some of these others but that's just me! Just so much (too much) Harry and Tom in this one

Before and After
Worst Case Scenario

 

[Farscape One]

I will take out "BEFORE AND AFTER" only because "WORST CASE SCENARIO" was just so much more fun. And didn't involve time travel.

'WORST CASE SCENARIO" wins the season!

 

[Oddish]

WCS has a great opening, but takes a severe downturn when it stops being a holonovel and becomes a holodeck malfunction episode. I like it, but I would have chosen quite a few others over it (Scorpion maybe, or Before and After).

But still, surprises do happen. WCS it is.

 

[Qonundrum]

Seska and Ebert agree, "Worst Case Scenario" wins!

I'm surprised "Scorpion" lost, as it's (IMHO) the best Borg story since TBOBW, which is surprising...

Flashback - a retconning of ST6 TUC was a weird way to celebrate the era... complete with footage reused with a orange creamsicle color cast instead of the original purple/pink. If nothing else, 1:13 shows the difference between SD and HD far better than faffy upscaling could try to mimic:

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It was probably easy to remember the lines, but the episode felt like everyone was phoning it in.

That said, this was Tuvok's recollection, which is a neat in-universe way to explain every bit of minutiae so it's silly to be too harsh...

...then again:

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Yup! The 30th anniversary special smacks the original series rather than celebrating the franchise. Albeit unintentionally; Janeway's trying to make some parallels with her crew's plight, combined with comparing technologies -- it should come off better than it does. "Sulu, Kirk, McCoy, different breed of officer..." and all because they do what Picard and Sisko and Janeway too I'd imagine have done and not bored the XO's to sleep with overly-wordy details that only Tuvok, Spock and I would appreciate.


False Profits - naturally, the other side of the wormhole from the classic episode 'The Price' ends up being in the Delta quadrant. It's also a bog-standard runaround that smacks of TNG season 7 vibes. It'd be more fun if the wormhole ended up in that corner of the Alpha quadrant that everyone forgot about and how Geordi's sensors were wrong...

The Q and the Grey - starts out as a sophomoric running gag but goes south once they do the allegory of the 1860s American civil war. Also, no pun was intended. Also note, it can be sophomoric and still funny. Humor is more subjective than anything else...

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Also: Aww man, it's "The Orville" a couple decades early!

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Ditto!


Macrocosm - it may be Trek's latest take on "Aliens", but the high concept premise of a virus being increased in size exponentially is put to decent and novel use.

 

[Sakonna]

I'm surprised "Scorpion" lost, as it's (IMHO) the best Borg story since TBOBW, which is surprising...

What can I say, I flashed on how much I hate that scene where Chakotay goes through the whole scorpion analogy. I can't stand that scene! I sometimes don't make it past it. Obviously I am a fan of the ep overall.

And I particularly love "Before & After." That's a top Voyager for me.

I think the Delta Flyers pod has also recently tainted "Scorpion" some for me. Those pods were so much about the ugliness of how Jennifer Lien was treated, it refreshed my negative feelings related to that whole situation.

 

[Farscape One]

What can I say, I flashed on how much I hate that scene where Chakotay goes through the whole scorpion analogy. I can't stand that scene! I sometimes don't make it past it. Obviously I am a fan of the ep overall.

And I particularly love "Before & After." That's a top Voyager for me.

I think the Delta Flyers pod has also recently tained "Scorpion" some for me. Those pods were so much about the ugliness of how Jennifer Lien was treated, it refreshed my negative feelings related to that whole situation.

I actually think the Janeway/Chakotay scene was one of the best between them in the whole series. It was a very rare time when he actually disagreed with her. And he was right.

 

[Summer Solstice]

I'm very happy Worst Case Scenario won because it's my favourite from season 3, but I wasn't expecting it to, particularly as Scorpion is amazing and a very popular episode.

 

[ReddishAlert]

As a great fan of Seska I’m glad about Worst Case Scenario.

I also always felt like they should have more Tuvok/Tom things. I really like their interactions for some reason.

P.S. Just because I was picking on Kes episodes for S1 and S2 I’ll mention Before and After is one of my all time favorite episodes.

 

[Seven of Five]

Not my winner, but still a good winner, apart from the end.

The Scorpion two-parter was easily the best use of the Borg since BOBW, though I also loved I, Borg. Unfortunately, it was also the peak of the Borg during VOY's overuse of them. :drone:

Before and After is also a favourite from this season. Kes's best episode by far, whilst also showing the Krenim, the powerful unknown enemies.

Why oh why did they get rid of Kes before Harry?

I know she wasn't the best character ever, but she had more potential after dumping Neelix and was coming into her own this season after dumping Neelix.

And yes I did hear about that silly survey that Garrett Wang was in.

 

[Oddish]

And yes I did hear about that silly survey that Garrent Wang was in,

I thought it was a magazine article.

Why oh why did they get rid of Kes before Harry?

They didn't really do the character any favors. Kes went out on a high note, or would have if not for "Fury". Harry was crapped on by the showrunners for four years, and by much of the fanbase for another 22.

Before and After is also a favourite from this season. Kes's best episode, whilst also showing the Krenim, the powerful unknown enemies.

That one episode had more character development in it than the rest of the series.

 

[Sakonna]

Ever since my own time working on a TV franchise in the 2000's, I've been absolutely convinced Jennifer Lien was fired for not being hot enough. It's the way they start tinkering with her look several episodes before the firing that is most damning. I've (depressingly) witnessed the other side of this more than once now, and this is exactly what it looks like when an actress is fired for insufficient fuckability (the number of times I have had to engage in workplace discussions with my bosses where "fuckable" was every third word out of their mouths...)

I doubt Garrett Wang was ever on the chopping block, though I'm sure they didn't mind an opportunity to fire another warning shot at him over his lateness. But that reporting never made sense to me. (That was something else I got familiar with working in TV, the gonzo reporting on the BtS that correctly identified the broad strokes - firing, sex appeal - while positioning it in a false narrative to conceal the true extent of the darkness)

I always thought it was crazy how they went with "we just don't have any story ideas for her!" No ideas for the super-powered alien, whose short lifespan would allow her to be constantly reinvented or expanded in any way they desire, who is regularly being featured in stand-out episodes all the way up to her firing? Yeah, totally, no story potential there.

 

[Oddish]

I agree with you in that I think Kes was on the proverbial block well before S3's end... why have "Before and After", which was a condensation of Kes's 9-year life, if you were still planning on playing it out at normal speed?

 

[ReddishAlert]

Ever since my own time working on a TV franchise in the 2000's, I've been absolutely convinced Jennifer Lien was fired for not being hot enough. It's the way they start tinkering with her look several episodes before the firing that is most damning. I've (depressingly) witnessed the other side of this more than once now, and this is exactly what it looks like when an actress is fired for insufficient fuckability (the number of times I have had to engage in workplace discussions with my bosses where "fuckable" was every third word out of their mouths...)

I doubt Garrett Wang was ever on the chopping block, though I'm sure they didn't mind an opportunity to fire another warning shot at him over his lateness. But that reporting never made sense to me. (That was something else I got familiar with working in TV, the gonzo reporting on the BtS that correctly identified the broad strokes - firing, sex appeal - while positioning it in a false narrative to conceal the true extent of the darkness)

I always thought it was crazy how they went with "we just don't have any story ideas for her!" No ideas for the super-powered alien, whose short lifespan would allow her to be constantly reinvented or expanded in any way they desire, who is regularly being featured in stand-out episodes all the way up to her firing? Yeah, totally, no story potential there.

That’s really interesting (and well described). I know nothing about the TV industry but I feel like I’ve seen that phenomenon before like in Sliders.

My dad was originally really critical of Seven of Nine (not her specifically) because it felt like a swap out for “a hotter blonde” to him which he was disdainful of at the time.

The reason I mentioned it is because I noticed at some point on a rewatch how Kes has a different look in each one of her episodes right before she’s written out.

I love Voyager but it’s a shame really that a show with so many interesting female characters so often does them each a disservice.