This week has been very long.
@MLClark My Voyager binge has begun!
S2E13 "Prototype," directed by Jonathan Frakes, meaning it will be a step up. And it was.
It was the typical trope teaching the consequence of violating the Prime Directive, but Jonny's directing made it interesting. He found some thoughtful ways to shoot a scene, e.g. dialogue off-camera while POV focuses elsewhere.
Voyager must have a Shuttle factory aboard, because they sure do lose a lot of them ...
SO MANY SHUTTLES.
And the worst part is that this series also implements the idea of replicator "rations", which is both an annoying deterioration of a key part of the universe, and an added reason to SAVE YOUR SHUTTLES.
Yes, scarcity economics creates plot points - LD uses them all the time in S1&2 - but makes a real hash of the world-building.
I'm enjoying S4 more than I thought I would. Just finished "Year of Hell". SO glad the writers didn't try to make a season out of it!
@MLClark Part of the original VOY premise was finite resources. We've never seen a crew before struggle with losing resources. That was the promise, but the production team never followed through.
The BSG reboot did, though.
@MLClark I found on Archive.org an early draft of the VOY Season 1 bible, if you want to read along ... Janeway is still "Elizabeth."
@MLClark S2E14 "Alliances."
Wow, this episode certainly speaks to this week's current events.
VOY returns to its roots -- the Federation/Maquis infighting, the Kazon, and a new "frenemy" called the Trabe.
The only cringe I had was the "homage" to "Godfather III" when the Trabe ship appears outside the conference window to open fire on the Kazon tribal leaders.
This was the fourth straight episode where Kes was absent or had a minimal presence.
That one would have been better as a two-parter: more time for the characters and conflicts to breathe, and less rushing the story in ways that put ridiculous words in Chakotay's mouth.
They still haven't figured out how to use him as anything more than a vague prop for indigeneity at this juncture, and often in some extremely insulting ways, like when he's used to encourage a people to hurry to forgiveness for past atrocity.
(But yes, very resonant for today!)
@MLClark Yes, I agree about Chakotay. They don't know what to do with him. The same with Kes.
That's an interesting suggestion to make it a two-parter. It would have benefitted from more air to breathe.
Lazy character and setting development... and in that way, early VOY is such an excellent teaching tool for storytelling.
Have you ever seen Bubba Ho-Tep? I often point to that film as a perfect example of how it *does not matter* how bonkers your character and plot premises are. You can have an old forgotten Elvis & a Black JFK fighting mummies in a southern retirement home...
But if you commit to your premises, you can make something incredibly poignant out of that story, too.
@MLClark Good morning ... I have not heard of "Bubba Ho-Tep." I just looked it up. "Bonkers" is the right word, and in a good way!
I like the premise; but I wonder if anyone has done a story about a group of primary characters who really are famous people that faked their deaths to regain their anonymity and go off on adventures.
My next VOY episode will be "Threshold." 🦎 🦎
Off to go cycling ...
@MLClark S2E15 "Threshold" 🦎 🦎
Um, okay ... In a way, today is an appropriate day to watch this episode, because it's the 76th anniversary of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier.
Chuck, however, did not mutate into a lizard.
The story was pitched by Michael De Luca, at the time a horror writer. The teleplay was written by Brannon Braga, which tells you all you need to know.
Why they couldn't just go warp 9.95 to return home is beyond me ...
@MLClark Out of curiosity, I looked at what the Season 1 TNG writers guide said about warp speed ... I don't think "Threshold" technically violated this rule, but it did "warp" it a bit ... <rimshot>
My favourite summary of this episode is "Kathryn Janeway and Tom París become deadbeat parents in the Delta Quadrant." 🙂
@MLClark Torres told Paris he would join famous names in history such as Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong, and Zefram Cochrane.
I thought, "Hey, wait a minute, what about Chuck Yeager, the guy you're copying?!" Harrumph.
They also borrowed from "Frankenstein" (Paris on the table) and "King Kong" (Paris carrying away Janeway to mate).
At least this show spawned two directors in Roxann Dawson and Robert Duncan McNeill.
Robert Picardo is on the Planetary Society Board of Directors.
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S2E16 "Meld" ...
"If you can't control the violence, the violence will control you."
This was very well done, and appropriate for a week where we are wrestling with human nature's evolution from its predatory origins.
Just a smart episode all the way through. No significant oversights, although some nits along the way.
Brad Dourif played a similar character on B5, a serial killer who'd been mindwiped. That episode aired three months before "Meld."
I was going to call attention to the B5 connection, but in another way!
That episode bothered me because it *forces* viewers to accept that capital punishment is the most "logical" response by putting that point of view into Tuvok's character.
Now, Vulcan world-building is a mess - you have fights to the death in mating rituals in TOS and rehabilitation camps for mass murderers in DSC - but this idea also shows up in B5, where Sheridan and Garibaldi echo the sentiment often. /x
@MLClark Re capital punishment and Vulcans ... In TOS "Journey to Babel," Spock said Sarek could perform Tal-Shaya, an ancient means of execution. Sometimes Vulcans rationalize behavior by finding a "logical" reason for it.
Vulcans really struggle to control their emotions. They're more emotional than we are. As the EMH said, there's something wrong with that.
To be honest, Sheridan and Garibaldi reflect their actors' opinions! JMS heard Jerry say "electric bench" and wrote it into an episode.
To be clear, a lot of folks on the "left" do this, too, in Trek.
Adira's coming out with pronouns was supposed to be "progressive" in Discovery, but all it did was give us a future where coming out is still a stressful ordeal... when, ah, it really freaking shouldn't be by then!
Then there was SNW having T'Pring read a recent book by Maggie Nelson to learn more about human sexuality a few hundred years out.
Sometimes writers just *cannot* get out of their temporal moment. 🙃
@MLClark S2E17 "Dreadnought" directed by LeVar Burton ...
Seems to be loosely inspired by "Fail Safe."
Interesting premise, but flawed execution. As is typical with Trek during this era, too many no-win situations are technobabbled out.
I wondered why B'Elanna didn't just beam in with a bomb the first time as a backup.
The second time, she had a phaser, so clearly weapons can get through. Why didn't she just set the phaser to Vaporize?
Some arc-y subplots continue with Paris and Jonas.
@MLClark S2E18 "Death Wish" written by the father/son duo Michael and Shawn Piller.
I'm always a sucker for a good Q episode. In my opinion, this one is the best.
The Pillers found a way to examine all angles of assisted suicide. In the end, it came down to the rights of the individual, no matter how odious to the state.
Gerrit Graham found a way to portray a Q separate from De Lancie. A+ performance.
De Lancie and Kate Mulgrew are longtime friends. I enjoyed watching them together.
@MLClark S2E19 "Lifesigns"
A fairly innocuous episode about holographic love.
There was an interesting moment when Denara's hologram tries to poison her Vidiian body, but the EMH fixes that so no harm done.
Arc-y subplots continue with Paris's insubordination and Jonas's treason with the Kazon.
@MLClark S2E20 "Investigations" brings to an end the Tom Paris and Michael Jonas arcs. Fairly standard stuff.
The novelty is the "Mornings with Neelix" show. It's been clear in some episodes that sharing information hasn't been command's strong point. This way it comes from an independent, if annoying, source.
How convenient someone can just steal a shuttle and fly away, especially an alien shuttle they've never seen before. Also some conveniences for time purposes to move the story along.
@MLClark S2E21 "Deadlock"
"We're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job." -- Janeway
A typical Brannon Braga script -- alternate timeline, hit the reset button at the end.
But ... it's so well directed and acted, and because the stakes are doubled as two Voyagers are at risk, that I can overlook the Braga cliché.
We see a full-on Vidiian harvest. It's not pretty. That helped sell it too.
Lots of technobabble to drive the plot, but still one of my favorite VOY episodes.
Re: "Dreadnought" - This episode was for me a sharp reminder of all the wasted potential of having so many Maquis on VOY. So many terrific plot ideas and character arcs frittered away, especially with B'Elanna and Chakotay.
Re: "Investigations" - Neelix's show might be the closest Star Trek has ever come to addressing the world of social media / influencer culture. It's kind of cute how much this future is completely bereft of human inclinations to gossip / cause trouble online.
@MLClark BSG did the internal conflict much better ... Voyager was supposed to have a little more than 100 crew members. Clearly, they violate that. We meet people we've never seen before. In BSG, Roslin kept a whiteboard with the number left.
Social media wasn't much of a thing when "Investigations" was filmed in 1996. Neelix was spoofing morning talk shows popular back then.
But yeah, Gene's sterile vision of future humans wasn't very realistic of human nature.