The Season 2 (mini) Arc

[Orphalesion]

My favorite season 2 episode is Tuvix, maybe because absolutely every one in it, except their collective victim Tuvix, behaves like a perfect asshole. I mean, how cowardly of all the bridge crew to ignore Tuvix's cry for help. Someone with whom they have been close for weeks, pretending to be his friends. It's rather unique to see an episode where every one takes the role of the bad guy...

I wouldn't go so far as calling everybody else the bad guy. However I do love the Tuvix story and find it very much a missed opportunity (they should have kept Tuvix longer) also the effect would have probably been different if it had happened to characters I actually like instead of Tuvok and Neelix...

And yes, Season 2 was excellent, Seska was a marvellous antagonist and I wish they could have kept her longer. Her exit seemed rather abrupt.

 

[Guy Gardener]

KIM: Game.
PARIS: Why don't we make it interesting this time. Let's add some table stakes.
KIM: What kind of stakes?
PARIS: I don't know. Hmm. Couple of replicator rations, maybe?
RICKY: Don't do it, Harry. He's hustling you.
KIM: Wait a minute. Are you saying he deliberately let me win?
PARIS: That would be dishonest, Harry.
KIM: I won that game, and I'll beat you again.
PARIS: How many rations are you willing to bet on that?
CREWMEMBERS: Go for it, Harry.
KIM: A week's worth.
PARIS: Harry, Harry, Harry. Never, ever play with anyone, not even your best friend, if he says let's make it interesting. You want a little action, I'll give you a little action. How about an honest game of chance?
RICKY: Never play with anyone, even your best friend, if he offers you an honest game of chance, Harry.
PARIS: One replicator ration is all it takes to play, and the only thing you have to do to win is pick a number. Just predict what the radiogenic particle count will be at twelve hundred hours tomorrow, and if you hit the pot is yours. Minus a small handling fee for the bank, of course.
CREWMAN: I'll take a piece of that.
JONES: Jones. PARIS: Harry, get a PADD, take down these names and numbers.
KIM: I'm in too.
LEWIS: Lewis, twenty one hundred.

The Operations Officer controls/manages ships resources, which includes everything from boots & blankets to Replicator Rations.



If Tom was a truly despicable person, or at least pretending very well to be a truly despicable person, How difficult would it have been to zero out Harry's ration book, then put him into extreme debt where he could be leveraged into "stealing" from the ships stores with some creative accounting on the weekly replicator usage report Harry fills out?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I liked the main arc in season 2. It would have been really hard to keep Seska around longer though, it was already a stretch to have the Kazon fleet somehow keep pace with Voyager for two years.

I wish they had gone further in Alliances and forced Voyager to make friends they weren't terribly fond of to survive. Seems like a missed opportunity to raise the issue then have the takeaway be 'Prime directive is gospel'.

Rather than extend the Kazon arc I wish they'd had more mini-arcs in further seasons.

 

[hux]

If Tom was a truly despicable person, or at least pretending very well to be a truly despicable person, How difficult would it have been to zero out Harry's ration book, then put him into extreme debt where he could be leveraged into "stealing" from the ships stores with some creative accounting on the weekly replicator usage report Harry fills out?

I'm trying to remember if i bought it the first time around. I honestly can't remember but i highly doubt it. There was always something a little phoney about it. He was only really trying to fool Chakotay but even that wasn't convincing (and so soon after Chakotay had been fooled by Seska and Tuvok.....Tuvok obviously had a low opinion of him and thought..."you know what would be fun...if we did it again"....and Janeway was like...."oh yeah, let's totes do that")

Rather than extend the Kazon arc I wish they'd had more mini-arcs in further seasons.

Yes, definitely. This one seemed to work so who knows why they gave up on the idea (i suspect the arrival of Seven as an easier option for story telling may have had something to do with it)

 

[Makarov]

For some reason I usually like the 2nd seasons of TV shows the best, it's like they've just laid the foundation down but it's still fresh and they are doing the best stuff. VOY s2, Lost s2, BSG s2, (maybe) TNG s2. Makes me sad about some shows that never got a second season.

Seven is an ok character but I don't think the focus on her made the show better, if anything my favorite episodes are ones that just focus on the Doctor. Or the episodes that feel more like seasons 1-3.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

It's hard to believe that any ship but the fastest could keep up with Voyager. Remember that Voyager is trying to get home on roughly a straight line whereas the others have to move back and forth from where they live to where Voyager is. In order to keep up with Voyager for any significant amount of time a ship would have to be twice as fast, at least. That's not the Kazons!! Who are supposed to have inferior technology.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Voyager cannot fly as the crow does.

Ships are hungry.

They need resources.

Bibs and bobs.

Yes, mostly in a straight line, but they do have to zig zag a little to target handsome planets and vibrant meccas chockablock with the necessities of starship life.

Not only does this slow them down a little, but it also makes Voyager's path predictable.

 

[Tiberius]

My favorite season 2 episode is Tuvix, maybe because absolutely every one in it, except their collective victim Tuvix, behaves like a perfect asshole. I mean, how cowardly of all the bridge crew to ignore Tuvix's cry for help. Someone with whom they have been close for weeks, pretending to be his friends. It's rather unique to see an episode where every one takes the role of the bad guy...

God, you;d think they'd know by now that it was only going to be a matter of time before Tuvix would get duplicated in a transporter accident. Wait until you have two tuvixes, and then return one to Neelix and Tuvok. Then you get to keep all three.

 

[Inactive-Shapeshifter]

I think they should have worked more with the Vidian than the Kazon, for me they ware much more interesting villains.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Tom wasn't trying to convince people he was a despicable person, he was trying to convince them he was impulsive and unable to abide by authority. More 'Chaotic neutral' on the D&D morality spectrum. When it first aired I thought they were trying to regress Tom Paris to his early state so he could 'Learn a lesson' and save Voyager at the last minute.

The Kazon and Vidiians are interesting villains, but it's hard to justify having them never hit the edge of their space. Just like I thought it was ridiculous to have the Hirogen appear in season 7 20000ly away from where they first met them.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I think they should have worked more with the Vidian than the Kazon, for me they ware much more interesting villains.

That guy from the Think Tank said that they had cured the Vidiians. I wonder, if he was lying. What would be his motivation for lying, though?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I wish they'd done an episode that showed what happened to the Vidians after they were cured and had to live with the consequences of what they did during the phage.

But again, would have been hard to justify with the distance separating them from the Vidiians.

 

[RandyS]

My favorite season two episode is "The 37's" where they find Amelia Earhart. I never have understood why it's one of the lower rated episodes among fans though.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

My favorite season two episode is "The 37's" where they find Amelia Earhart. I never have understood why it's one of the lower rated episodes among fans though.

The ending is quite unbelievable. It's hard to believe, that among a hundred plus people, there weren't a few to prefer to live there than to continue on a highly hazardous journey that most likely would lead them nowhere (it was seventy years of travel from there!).

 

[Orphalesion]

The ending is quite unbelievable. It's hard to believe, that among a hundred plus people, there weren't a few to prefer to live there than to continue on a highly hazardous journey that most likely would lead them nowhere (it was seventy years of travel from there!).

I agree, I hate when fiction does that... turning a group of people into an amorphous mass that all make the same decision.

But the thing is really Voyager never utilized it's theoretically diverse crew with Starfleet officers and Maquis and all, there should have been WAY more tension anyways.

 

[hux]

Even more unbelievable that some of the 37's didn't want to go back to Earth and see what it was like now. Especially Earhart....i mean the whole point of this woman is that she's an adventurer, a free spirit with an appetite for adventure who suddenly wakes up in a future world

So here's an opportunity for an amazing adventure through unknown space and a future she knows nothing about and yet we're expected to believe that she decides....nah, i'm gonna stay here and start squeezing out some kids.....but thanks for the offer Kathy

Bye then

 

[Guy Gardener]

On Voyager she would have needed 5 years basic schooling before she was allowed to be a janitor... I doubt Amelia realized this, and merely didn't want to go because she thought that she would immediately be a janitor on Voyager.

Voyager has no janitors.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

On Voyager she would have needed 5 years basic schooling before she was allowed to be a janitor... I doubt Amelia realized this, and merely didn't want to go because she thought that she would immediately be a janitor on Voyager.

Voyager has no janitors.

I always wonder. Do they have an automatic cleaning system or does everyone take care of their own quarters, and they take turns for the corridors and other common areas...?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Transporter sweeps for dust and particulates?

DS9 The Ascent.

JAKE: Yeah, I know what you mean. We're on our own now. No one to tell us what to do.
NOG: Well, before we unpack, we should call maintenance to clean this place.
JAKE: They were here yesterday.
NOG: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I'll do the cleaning on the odd numbered days, and you'll do it on the even ones.
JAKE: We're going to clean every day?

!!!!! Kieko just said the word "Fucking" in Enemies of laughter (2000).

Sorry.

It seems that "maintenance" comes in while you're out (What percent of the crew is maintenance? Half the crew cleans the other halfs quarters as well as their own... Wait, they are ordered to clean their own quarters and penalized if they don't?) and "cleans" everything some how with something.

Am I half wrong?

Is half the crew Janitorial staff?

 

[mswood]

Really season 2 in my opinion is better then seasons 1,3,6 and 7 but worse then seasons 4 and 5. With about 9 episodes I really like,a handful of ok average episodes, and 3 episodes that I rank near the worst of all of Voyager and several that are easily poor episodes, it's still not a very strong hour of television.

Part of that is Piller absence for about 8 episodes of that season before he returned full time to writing, but even with me likely those episodes when he was back full time on the writing staff that period has some major flaws.

But it brought problems after leaving Trek, Piller discovered how much the rest of hour long dramas had changed. He wanted to push Trek forward to be more modern in its storytelling. Taylor didn't. Miller is the one to push for a Kazon arc, to use shorter cuts, do have some serialized elements in the show. And of for me most of those made the show better. Even the continue use of the Kazon, which frankly never made any sense as Voyager should have been fast enough to distance them from ever meeting the same Kazon twice, let alone escape their sphere of influence.

Needless to say, once Piller turn in his notice Basics Part Two completely got ride of Seska, the child, and the Kazon, not to mention serialized storytelling and shorter scene cuts. That wouldn't return until Braga was given his shot at running the writer's.

Really also disappointed that we lost building up recurring characters (for the most part) on the crew, something season one and two did to to some degree. In fact with the small size of the crew, and no replacement crew members its the one show that should have the most developed supporting characters but that never happened.