It has been awhile, friends! I actually finished watching the show, sheesh, 4 or 5 months ago? Maybe even longer? And when I went back to my notes for seasons six and seven I realized I'd not written anything for at least a dozen episodes. Watched and scored 'em all, but no remarks. I didn't want to type these up with any "notes missing" sections obviously, so that meant I had to go back and re-watch a bunch before finishing, necessitating a further delay. But here we all are. My how you've grown! Let's just dive in.
24.
Voyager crewmembers return from an away mission experiencing repressed memories of having participated in a massacre. They eventually discover a malfunctioning memorial which is transmitting fragmented neurogenic pulses, causing anyone in proximity to experience the trauma, as a (see title).
Here's the only thing I wrote while I was watching this: "Holy moley if this doesn’t get better it could be the worst episode the entire series..."
It didn't. Starts off somewhat okay with the shared nightmares (a la that one TNG
episode where Riker et al are getting probed by the scissor-aliens)
then becomes something of a parody of itself. (And didn’t they do this one already, with Chakotay? I can't think of the title, but it's similar enough where someone should have realized they were needlessly retreading ground.)
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| I did like the whole got-you-a-TV-I-have-made-a-terrible-mistake... stuff from B'Elanna. |
There's a good - possibly even great - episode in here somewhere, but it needed an actual conflict. Just prior to Janeway's decision to leave a "trigger warning" in space for any other hapless travelers, the crew tries its best to angrily disagree about what to do, but why would there be any argument? Mainly the whole thing just fails to justify itself.
23.
After an alien attack strips him of his Vulcan memories, inhibitions and control, Tuvok turns to Neelix for help and insight only to experience a completely uncharacteristic chain of events.
Not bad, I guess, but does anyone really need another episode where a character's memories/ personality is wiped out and they have to rebuild? I mean this goes back to "The Changeling" FFS; whatever drama there was in this scenario is well and truly dried up. Some nice bits here and there, I guess, harmless but boring.
22.
Seven of Nine encounters a past lover in a secret Borg hideaway where drones maintain their individuality; Janeway seeks to foster a resistance movement among them.
The season finale is the first of a two-parter. It has some fun ideas (Tuvok’s “bridging of the minds,” Anika/Axum, the Borg’s admittedly-legit beef with Janeway) but they’re all underdeveloped.
- Was Ron Moore involved in this at all? There’s kind of a Caprica vibe here. The more you examine it, the more Battlestar Galactica looks like a response to Voyager. The parallels are so numerous. Perhaps, though, it’s that Voyager looked to the original Battlestar as a template of sorts, so the similarities are really between Voyager and BSG (2003) on one side and BSG (1975) on the other. I don’t know. Had I known this, though, I’d have done a side-by-side rewatch and made that the focus of these Voyager posts. Too late now.
- The Borg hive looks pretty cool. Susannah Thompson does a good job as the Borg Queen, even though I come down on the “The Queen makes the Borg less interesting, though” side of the argument. (I also prefer them all to have that multi-chambered voice). She’s just kind of an evil queen here, issuing orders, but, as happens often when Trek revisits the Borg, they muddy the original concept that much more.
- One thing with this Queen, though. In pivotal scenes, she’s reading the stuff off a screen and saying it out loud. Is that Borg efficiency? I allow for TV conventions, but come on. It's almost Galaxy Quest-like. In other scenes, with but a thought, things explode halfway across the quadrant.
- FFS pt. 2: this sort of dialogue/ scene between Janeway and Chakotay. “We’ve had our disagreements… I need your support.” How many more times do we have to hear this crap? Too much unearned drama.
- Adios, Delta Flier. Well, until they replicate a new one.
- “Front shields are gone.” Then they sustain several frontal blasts, which are clearly shielded. Watch for it next time. I bet Tuvok was just fooling with everyone, correctly guessing no one would even notice. He's probably nursing a few years worth of hurt feelings over there in his corner of the bridge.
- So… Voyager invented anti-assimilation technology? Seems kind of big, no?
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| Not the biggest fan of the cliffhanger fake-out. |
21.
Tom Paris falls in love with a ship that connects to him neurogenically, then appears to him as an attractive woman. Becoming addicted, Tom leaves Voyager with "Alice" and the crew must figure out a method of countering the addiction.
Great idea. Not a bad performance from Alice (or from Tom) but neither are given enough to do with the concept. Everything kind of fizzles after a certain point.
Reminded me more than a little of the s2 episode "Threshhold."
20.
When Voyager encounters a derelict Borg Cube, a group of partially assimilated Borg youngsters try to seize the ship's deflector dish, and Seven of Nine is left to negotiate with them.
They missed their chance for a Borg Children of the Corn here. And outside the superficial differences, they've been to this particular Borg well a fair amount of times.
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| Intro Icheb (Manu Intiraymi). I like Icheb. |
Chakotay does a fake-out lose-a-shuttle plan that made me smile. If you were send someone on a fake-out-lose-a-shuttle mission, you'd definitely pick Chakotay. Otherwise, I never quite buy (or understand) the course of action Janeway pursues. Why “stall” another deflector? Just go over and get them.
19.
The return of a vengeful Kes sparks disaster for Voyager. This Kes blames Janeway for her premature evolution and the loss of her youth and will stop at nothing to take revenge on the crew.
Kes’s Khan-like fate – and the rationale for it – is a little flimsy. They were going for something different, something darker/ arguably more epic. But I don’t think they succeeded.
Three quick things: (1) The doctor’s doctor/patient confidentiality obviously wouldn’t apply in Voyager's circumstances, would it? Or under these ones anyway. (2) General Trek observation: every species should have had its own unique sound fx for blasters, transporters, etc. I mean it: every single one. That’d be a hell of a synth-database to own. I sympathize with production realities and all, but Trek is more consistent with its pointy-sideburns than it is with its peripheral sound fx sometimes. And (3) So what does Janeway tell Kes? No Vulcan memory wipe. Sleeper-activation? We’re supposed to believe Janeway just had this in the back of her mind for all the episodes together? Perhaps I misunderstood.
All that aside, the main unfortunate spectacle of this episode is the real-world sadness, obviously unintentional, of things onscreen mirroring subsequent events in Jennifer Lien’s life. Some of the dialogue is uncomfortably close to what it might have been like (or would be like) for Lien to show up randomly at a big Trek convention and confront the cast or something like that. It makes me wonder how far along Lien’s mental illness was during this, or how well-known, if at all, among the writers.
Certainly I don’t suggest any of it was or would have been exploited, just like I say some of the parallels as you’re watching now with hindsight are unsettling.
18.
When Seven of Nine and Tuvok are captured on shore leave, Seven finds herself forced to face down a devastatingly powerful opponent in a match of Tsunkatse, a game which is played to the death.
A blown opportunity. Has its moments but more fun could have been had with the concept.
Fun mental exercise: think back over the many Trek series and consider how often you’ve heard some variation of this way of the warrior stuff in Trek. (Now picture the writers themselves, but that's a different exercise.) It's kind of amazing, isn't it? The universe is populated with wrestlers.
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| Is the communal wellspring for this in sci-fi Robert E. Howard? It probably isn't. Those readers literate in Golden Age of Sci-Fi Trope Establishment trivia, please let me know in the comments. |
17.
When Seven of Nine awakens a race of dormant aliens in stasis for centuries, an ancient struggle to control subspace is revived as well, with Voyager caught firmly in the middle.
There are several cool ideas in this episode, all more or less squandered or not developed to their full potential. I like the Talaxian connection. "The Talaxian Connection" might've been the name for one of those more developed ideas herein. Another suggestion on both counts: “The Khan That Failed”.
Cool attack sequence with the little ships on Voyager, itself a little(r) ship compared toother Starfleet vessels we've seen. I like stuff like that. The pics don’t do it justice, so there aren't any.
16.
A dead crewmember with whom Harry Kim was once in love returns in a body reanimated by aliens. However Lindsay Ballard must face a difficult decision when her alien family returns to claim her.
Some of the Borg-as-kindergarten-cop stuff is fun ("Resume your disorder", "Fun will now commence"), but this subplot didn’t do much for me. The main plot is better, with a good guest performance from Kim Rhodes as Lyndsay. They could have done this with someone we’ve actually seen Harry with. (Or have we?) But that "haven't we seen this before?" feeling hangs over all proceedings. I do like how the two plots combine in the last scene, though. Whenever that's pulled off successfully, I picture everybody in the writer's room high-fiving. Sort of like the guys at NASA control when something happens in outer space. A white-board victory.
Kind of a weird set-up, though. I don’t know what to make of this alien species. They re-animate full grown aliens as procreation? I suppose it doesn’t have to make sense to me.
15.
When Seven of Nine downloads the entire Voyager database, she believes she has discovered conspiracies involving Starfleet, the Maquis, and the Caretaker. She spreads paranoia among the command staff until they realize that they must untangle the theories together and discover that the most efficient way to gain knowledge is often not the most accurate.
A fun one, if drawn out a little too much. Crunching too much data leads to Seven coming to plausible if projective conclusions. Watching it in 2019, the parallels to the internet are immediate in a way they weren't when this episode originally aired.
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| If it was a warning of some kind, it wasn't just tragically ignored, it's like we took it and ran as far as we could in the opposite, dumbass direction. |
Why do they beam Janeway and Seven out at the end and not pilot the shuttle back? I must’ve missed the explanation. Unless it's just that Voyager hates shuttlecraft, which bears out.
14.
Three former Borg drones from Seven of Nine's unimatrix track her down, hoping she can help them break free from the neural link that ties them together.
I didn't write much down on this one. (The sum total of my notes is "This again.") Which is weird because I think this is one of the better Borg episodes of the various Berman-era Treks. It's not a classic episode like "Best of Both Worlds", but it's a thoughtful fleshing out of the whole Borg concept. And it's another one where the A and B stories coalesce pleasingly in the finale.
The trauma of assimilation - and of becoming un-assimilated - might be a little darker of a topic than Trek comfortably could explore in this era. And maybe that was fine. Suggestive metaphors work better in sci-fi than the uber-grim, at least for me. Those raised on tortureporn likely disagree.
13.
When Voyager tracks down the parents of the young ex-Borg drone Icheb, Seven of Nine has trouble trusting the boy's parents to care for him. Her concerns are soon justified when they attempt to send Icheb back to the collective.
The parents’ plan is a little wonky. Beyond a little wonky, actually - why would the Borg even cut such a deal? Of course, the joke is on them, ultimately.
Also, it's funny
how many times this introduce-a-pathogen thing is considered. The
Captain’s/ Starfleets arguments for or against it are inconsistent. But
beyond that, you’d think the Borg might have adapted by now. How much
warning do they need?
Still, I like Icheb. My wife - not really a Trek or Voyager fan - ended up watching most of this one with me. Whenever she asked what was going on, I prefaced the answer with "Oh, this is classic Icheb..." regardless of what he was doing. It never made much sense, she looked at me like I was crazy, but I amused myself each time. And am doing so even now, in hindsight. Classic Icheb!
12.
Torres has a near-death experience in a shuttle, and after having a series of hallucinations, travels to the Klingon Barge of the Dead, where she must fight to save her mother from spending eternity in Hell.
I know myself. If certain elements are involved (aerial dogfights, William Shatner, a ring that leaves a skull-imprint on the faces of punched enemies, etc.) I’ll find a way to like whatever’s being offered regardless of whether it’s any good or not. I think a barge of the dead ferrying the souls of the Klingon dishonored probably qualifies for such a list, but the episode is pretty good all on its own so I don’t have to worry.
A cool idea and a good B’Elanna episode, even if (stop me if you’ve heard this before) we’ve hit some of these B’Elanna’s personal journey/ B’Elanna and Janeway beats a few times already. But VOY folk like to re-trace their character arcs every so often (right, Harry?).
11.
Voyager encounters an anomaly which swallowed up the command module of the first manned Mars expedition in 2032. Chakotay, Paris and Seven set out to rescue the module but soon end up caught in the same anomaly which crippled the ancient vessel decades before.
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| All of these people are still trying to make the Nexus work. |
I kid, re: the Nexus. And if that's what they were doing, they succeeded, actually. Is the Mars/ Delta Quadrant/ ancient-Earth-mystery thing a little much? Sure? Have they already done this a few times, now? Yep. Is the episode pretty good just the same? You bet. I like the saga of Phil Morris's doomed astronaut. There's not much to his story except getting stuck in the space-energy-ribbon and dying, just as there isn't much to the Voyager-timeline story, either, but together, they add up to something more interesting than either alone.
Phil Morris, son of the Mission Impossible star, filming on the same Desilu set as TOS, also starred in Star Trek III as well as an episode of DS9. I love a Trek pedigree like that.
10.
A troupe of alien con artists pose as Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok in their mock up "Delta Flyer" in order to take advantage of other species riding on Voyager's good name.
Fun one, good set-up. Great opening. Two memorable guest performances as well. Three or four, I guess. My favorite of all the Levar-Burton-directed Voyager episodes.
The Janeway imposter (played by Kaitlin Hopkins) reminded me a bit of Michelle Sprecht, from Star Trek Continues. I like the Tuvok guy (played by Greg Daniel) slowly losing himself in the part, as well as Tuvok’s taking him out.
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"Logic would indicate that neither of us has the advantage."
"Your logic... is flawed." |
Janeway goes on an away mission in the Delta Flyer with three misfit crewmembers from the lower decks who, according to Seven, are constant underperformers. When the mission runs into difficulty, Janeway's leadership skills are needed more than ever.
The episode opens with an elaborate tracking shot following some engineering specs being passed person to person until they end up in some far corner of the ship.
It's fine and all, but is there any real 24th century need for physically passing the baton like this? It's cool to walk the ship and all, but they could've considered the matter for five seconds and come up with some better justification for it, even if they just crunched most of the other expository conversations into one walk-with-me scene.
This whole episode seems very 90s to me. I don’t know what it is. The relationship set-ups and the dialogue? The self-absorption? They should have these guys all in flannels or (other 90s wear). The hypochrondiac guy is a bit annoying. Out of 3 annoying ones. Nice performance from Mulgrew, however. That's why this is landing where it is: it's a solid Janeway episode.
8.
Janeway falls in love with a holocharacter in a holo-program created by Tom Paris, but comes to her senses and deletes him when she learns how obsessed she has become. And The people of Fair Haven develop enough sentience to accuse Voyager crewmembers of witchcraft; when Janeway seems more worried about saving Michael Sullivan than Paris and Kim, Torres reminds the captain that while her lover can be reprogrammed, Tom and Harry can't.
Man some people hate these episodes. I've never understood getting all that worked up about them. And they're both perfectly charming, happy-fun episodes, to boot, with some suggestions of deeper sci-fi conundrums that never overwhelm. Maybe that's why some hate these; they shrug at the implications and just go with the broad strokes. I can see that. I'm
perfectly happy shrugging along with them, though.
I like that Voyager's holodeck characters occasionally follow in Moriarty's footsteps, but I didn't need a retread of either "Bride of Chaotica" or "Ship in a Bottle." So, I'm glad they didn't try to give me one. This is a nice little unofficial two-parter that satisfies all the definitions of Trek.
Of all Janeway's quasi-boyfriends, Michael Sulivan works the best. Mulgrew and Fintan McKeown (Amory Lorch from Game of Thrones) have great chemistry. And the scene where she modifies his program to be more "suitable" is great dark comedy, as are all the scenes where The Doctor preaches fire and brimstone.
7.
Deanna Troi visits Reginald Barclay, who has an idea about how to contact the Voyager crew, but Admiral Paris, Tom's father, thinks he has relapsed into holo-addiction.
I used to like this episode more than I do now, but I still like it fine. Some of the Barclay stuff is just a little too much. Most of it, actually. It's odd because everything he does (his awkwardness, his disregard for boundaries, his obsession with Voyager) is true to Barclay's character, and might even be toned down a bit, considering whence the character.
Maybe that's it - Barclay is just kind of an uncomfortable character. The idea with him was that in the future even people like Barclay would have a supportive community around them who know how to deal with his disregard for boundaries and Holly Gibney-ness. That's a positive thing obviously. Still a pretty solid episode.
6.
As Voyager enters a nebula the ship goes to grey mode, and Neelix tells ghost stories to the Borg children whose regeneration cycles have been disrupted. His last story is about a mysterious creature that takes over the ship until the Captain promises to find it a new nebula to live in. The children (except Icheb) are frightened, until Neelix tells them he made it all up and there is no nebula-creature. Once they are safely regenerating, Neelix goes to the bridge and looks at a nearby nebula as the ship takes some final readings. "Well," he says, "I hope it lives happily ever after."
I wonder why this wasn't the Halloween episode? I remember liking it when I first watched it 10 years ago or so, but it blended into the background in memory. Wrongly, as it turned out upon rewatch: the performances, writing, pace, atmosphere, all of it is quite well done. It plays to Ethan Phillips's strengths and blends the concept plus traditional genre-scares well. It's more successful in this regard than both "Catspaw" and "Wolf in the Fold," two TOS attempts at the very same, or TNG's "Sub Rosa", so that's a feather in the show's cap.
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| Great score by Jay Chattaway. |
Icheb is the proto-blogger here, the Trek reviewer asking nitpick questions that hint at the absurdity of some of the franchise’s conventional wisdoms/ go-tos. And he even calls out Neelix's story is meta, so extra meta-points.
Trek Trivia: Tuvok only sweats when the temperature reaches 300 degrees Kelvin (with an unspecified humidity threshold.) #TellYourLovedOnes
5.
An advanced race discovers music via the Doctor's singing and begins to treat him like a superstar. When the Doctor's ego grows too large, he abruptly announces he's leaving the ship, and cuts all ties with his former crewmates. And The Doctor has fantasies of running the ship and being desirable to all its women, but when aliens tap into his daydreams, he must work to make them real.
Two seemingly quite different episodes, but two that I a) like pretty much the same, and b) pretty much explore the same terrain: the Doc’s thwarted need(s) for adoration. Trek is about the human condition and how technology complicates or simplifies things, but the problems of our essential nature remain. The Doctor always represents narcissism and ego in this meta-view of the Trek experience, and these two episodes explore that well. We are all the Doctor; we are all Seven, too. Most of us can't sing as well as Picardo or fit a catsuit as well as Jeri Ryan, but nevertheless.
"Virtuoso" suffers ever so slightly from the technical difficulty of creating music that sounds like an advanced hologram going "beyond musicness." Tall order. But they do a good job. There are many unexpectedly touching scenes in this episode, no more so than the end. Good stuff.
"Tinker Tenor" - cheeky title aside - is a fun use of all the above with the Doctor as well as a classic Trek-adventure sort of idea. This is almost a fan service episode, but it's also one of Voyager's best. (Not that there's any incompatibility between being these things.)
4.
Learning that his inventor is dying, the Doctor has his program transmitted back to the Alpha Quadrant to try to save him. There he meets Troi and Barclay who, having already tried to convince Zimmerman to seek treatment, are doubtful about the chance of success from the Doctor.
Fantastic episode. Here are my bullet-points, Straight Outta Notebook:
- I like Haley. It's unclear whether the relationship was meant to be romantic or familial, but either way, it adds a dimension to the episode that works well.
- No holo-emitter? Isn’t that 29th century? (I don't quite remember what this bulletpoint refers to.)
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| -
Did Troi and Barclay have some kind of joint contract deal? Where one
appears, the other must? Is this some kind of penance for all the
creepy-holodeck-implications from TNG? |
- Nice Insurrection tie-in with the masseuse. (And nice fake-out with the doctor.)
- Good split performance (and tech) from Picardo. The primary-matrix-degradation parallel is good, with the “You’re defective!” projections. He’s bitter about what happened to the mk-1s and then the Doctor shows up, a literal externalization of his failures at the end of his life.
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| And I like the whole Dad/son stuff, too, sue me. |
3.
Janeway pursues Ransom with a vengeance - dismissing the interests of her crew, relieving Chakotay of duty, and threatening the life of an Equinox crewmember in her effort to bring the renegade captain to justice.
Despite the ridiculous ending of the first two-parter (Chakotay yelling "CAPTAIN!" and the slow-motion leap), here's the only IMO successful conclusion of a season-wraparound two-parter.
Not only is it fun to see B'Elanna (I'm sorry, I mean "BLT") get the best of Titus Welliver, one of those actors with an innate this-guy-annoys-me demeanor or the Dark Doctor causing chaos, or the rising above of a tense situation, the redemption of the Equinox captain as brought to life by a very effective John Savage really turns this from an exciting story into a great Trek tale.
As with so many Voyager episodes (as I alluded to in my write-up of the first part) you can see how these ideas changed into BSG-reboot episodes in the years to come. I've voiced this suspicion many times (even in this review, somewhere up there - I write these things months apart and I've no editor, so it happens) but having just picked up So Say We All: The Complete Uncensored Unauthorized Oral History of BSG by Mark Altman and Edward Gross, I'm happy to report this suspicion was confirmed the moment I cracked it open to a random page and read Ronald Moore confirm it.
2.
Torres crashes on an alien world and becomes the inspiration for a playwright trying to inspire peace for his people who are embroiled in a bloody war between factions.
This one really hits me. It's only edged out ever-so-slightly by the episode below, but it's one of the best of the whole series for me. This is Trek doing and exploring compellingly all that it could and should within the boundaries of its concept. (i.e. philosophy and space lasers, against the backdrop of western civilization.)
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| It's also a great B'Elanna episode. |
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| I feel bad for this theater company, though - no way they're going to replicate this effect again. The script covers for this a bit, but I'd be extra careful, Kelis et al: that audience might get rowdy. |
This deserves a better breakdown than this wee capsule summary, but so it goes for now. Onto my favorite of the season and perhaps the series altogether:
1.
Voyager is trapped in orbit around a planet that experiences the passage of time much differently on the surface; what Voyager experiences as minutes, the inhabitants experience as years. Visible to the people below (first as a star then as a ship once they develop telescopes) and dubbed "Groundshaker" due to the earthquakes its presence in orbit unfortunately creates, the crew tries both to free itself and to reverse the damage it has done to the planet's natural evolution. The Doctor beams down to investigate and ends up spending the equivalent of a lifetime on surface. When the planet's technology gets to the point where it can launch warheads and ships of its own, things get tense.
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| Nice turn by Daniel Dae-Kim as Gotana-Retz, the first of his people (unnamed) to make contact with the Sky Friends. |
Recently my brother and his wife wrapped up a Voyager watchthrough, and they pretty much hated it. I was disappointed to hear this, and I asked about this episode in particular. They saw nothing special in it. ("Muse," I was happy to hear, made a much bigger and very favorable impression on them). It's possible that any sort of hype of this episode, which is often included in "Best Trek Episodes" lists, works against a first viewing these days - I wouldn't know, but it's possible. I think this story is best approached as a wonderful surprise, one that will stay with you a long time.
Favorite moments:
- The Doctor's lifetime adventure and possible fatherhood (we haven't seen the math on that one but I love it) on the planet surface.
- Everything with Gotana-Retz, particularly that last shot of him looking up at Groundshaker slowly fading away as Voyager warps away forever.
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| "I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend." |
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| While we're here, updating this establishing shot to convey the centuries passing was handled well. |
Great stuff. The title's an obvious nod to TOS's "Wink of an Eye," of course, but thankfully there was no attempt to tie the fate of this unnamed planet to the Scalosians.
~
One season to go - see you whenever that comes together, hopefully by Christmas-time.
