The Sound of Her Voice
- Thread starter Captrek
- Start date
I agree with you on this. I think ST did this sort of thing way too often, throwing some sort of space wedgie into stories that really didn't need them.
Well, I think it is mostly a way of avoiding either expected ending: getting there just a tad too late, or just in the nick of time.
Personally I don't think the twist adds much, but I don't think it weakens the episode much either. Lisa becomes a sort of "voice from beyond the grave," so that is somewhat interesting. Her words have an impact after she is gone. I can see where the writers were going with this. It is a compelling enough idea, especially in wartime.
It's a mediocre episode though, imo, but mostly because the conversations with Lisa don't dig deep enough to make this episode memorable or especially moving. It is pleasant, and some of the character material is okay, but nothing really stands out or has any consequences.
The foreshadowing of Jadzia's death during the wake is a bit transparent as well.
The twist was actually the main story idea the person who pitched the episode to the writers had:
That's interesting, but isn't it somewhat self-contradictory?
On the one hand: Originally, this woman was going to affect our people and help them figure out their lives, kind of like Vic Fontaine but that got diluted a bit and never really made it through the script.
On the other hand: when we watched the finished episode it seems to us that the twist, that she was back in time, was just thrown in to make the ending different. But that was the core concept of the pitch.
It feels like the "chatter with the crew" and the "twist" were both there from the beginning, so this doesn't really give us all that much more information about why the writer chose that particular ending to begin with, other than he/she may have felt a sci-fi twist was needed to pitch a show for Trek, which is basically what the op was lamenting.
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Personally, I think the idea that they were always going to be too late no matter how hard they pushed the Defiant is a much more powerful ending than if they were just a little late and O'Brien spends the last scene of the episode cursing himself for not getting the ship to go just a bit faster. More tragic, to me anyway.
In my opinion, the twist is the only thing that kept that episode from being totally boring. At least at the end you go, "wow, they were having conversations with someone who isn't even alive anymore!" If you're talking to a person, you assume they're alive so I found myself wondering what I would feel like in that situation. I'd wonder what I was doing at the time she was sitting in that cave by herself talking to me! I don't know, I kind of like the ending.
If they got to her and she was just dead, it would be a total letdown. An hour counseling session with all the crew and then that's it? Boring. They had to do something.
If they got to her and she was just dead, it would be a total letdown. An hour counseling session with all the crew and then that's it? Boring. They had to do something.
The twist feels tacked on in the finished version. It's a fancy science fiction variant of the Defiant getting to the planet too late to save the Captain when a fancy science fiction twist wasn't needed. Change the ending so that the Defiant arrives and they're just too late and the emotional point is exactly the same.
But that's easy to say in retrospect.
But that's easy to say in retrospect.
Yeah, years later always gives you a different view on things. I totally respect your opinion and I'm not saying the ending was perfect but for me, the bulk of the episode is B-O-R-I-N-G with a lot of sitting around and talking. There's no showing. It's all telling. They talk alone in their quarters so the characters aren't even interacting and learning about each other. It's not an episode that I ever care to watch again.
For me, if they talked for 55 minutes of the episode alone in their rooms and then the woman they were talking to just died at the end, it would just suck even more. Something has to happen. Sitting and talking before the person dies is just not an interesting idea for me.
Having a time warp involved absolves our heroes of guilt--they did not fail to save her because she was already many years dead.
That's true. But there has to be something to make it worthwhile for me to watch. There has to be some climax; something to look forward to. Or, if they wanted to have them not get to her in time, give us something substantial and dramatic as to why they were slowed down in getting to her.
But an episode of "blah, blah, blah" followed by "she's dead, Jim" leaves you going, "that's it? They talked and just didn't get to her in time? That's the ending?"
Corollary - having a sci-fi twist doesn't automatically make it a bad episode.
