@MLClark The VOY crew did a great job building that set, complete with a functioning fountain and a plank on which Flotter could walk. Then they had to "burn" it.
I wonder if "Flotter and Trevis" fanfic are out there ...
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S5E6 "Timeless" ... It's a Brannon Braga reset button episode, so I've poured myself an extra tall glass of wine ...
Memory Alpha quotes Braga as saying the plot came from him wanting to see an opening scene of Voyager buried under ice. Well, that's how it opens ... With Braga, it's always about the visual, not the written.
Hello, pretty ship ...
Roxann Biggs-Dawson is back to Roxann Dawson in the credits. The divorce must have gone through. (1/x)
@MLClark Levar Burton directed and has a guest star credit.
Middle-aged Harry (is he still an ensign?!) and Chakotay beam inside frozen Voyager. Frozen bodies everywhere. (How did snow get in a sealed Jeffries Tube? 🤔 )
They reactivate EMH "to change history."
Flashback ... Voyager crew celebrate the creation of "the quantum slipstream drive." Sounds like a MacGuffin in waiting.
Paris figures out the drive won't work. Harry comes up with a workaround using a shuttle flying in front. (2/x)
@MLClark Janeway says to do it. In NASA-speak, we call this "go fever." Probably why the guest starship in this episode is Challenger, named after the lost Shuttle orbiter.
Back to "present day." EMH is told it's been 15 years. Chakotay and Harry got back to Earth on the Delta Flyer, which is where they are now. This is a rogue mission; they're here after Starfleet gave up. Harry sent Voyager the wrong numbers 15 years ago; they're going to try to change history. Reset button! (3/x)
@MLClark Uh oh, they stole a Borg temporal technobabble from Starfleet so they can send a message to Seven in the past. Federation starship is closing, six hours away. (How many acts is that?!)
Ewww, EMH removed a part of Seven's skull to get to her Borg implant.
Captain LaForge of the Starship Challenger has arrived. (Challenger is a Galaxy Class starship, so they can use the Enterprise-D model.) Nobody else on Geordi's bridge, apparently.
(4/x)
@MLClark Oops. The corrections they transmitted to the past didn't work. Apparently that's what caused the crash.
Fun fact ... Starship Challenger's ship number is NCC-71099. Orbiter Challenger was OV-099.
(Starship Enterprise was NCC-1701. Orbiter Enteprrise was OV-101.)
Harry sends a second transmission that shuts down the slipstream. Reset button!
Still, the trip cut ten years off their trip. Janeway orders the slipstream dismantled. (5/5)
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S5E7 "Infinite Regress" ... Is that a reference to the writing quality? 😛 Notes as we go.
Seven in her new blue suit. Less trashy than the old ones. If EMH is still designing her attire, he's getting better at it.
She awakens from her regeneration and starts acting like a Klingon.
Hello, pretty ship.
Act 1 ... Seven is back to normal. Naomi is following her, continuing a subplot from an earlier episode. Seven reverts to another personality and recruits Naomi. (1/x)
@MLClark B'Elanna picks up a Borg transmission that could explain Seven's hallucinations. She goes through multiple personalities. Tuvok finally stuns her, a logical thing to do.
EMH figures out she has the Borg equivalent of multiple personality disorder. They're people she assimilated.
In a debris field, the crew find a Borg "vinculum" that coordinates drone thoughts. "It brings order to chaos," Janeway says. Seven says the Vinculum is trying to reassimilate her. (2/x)
@MLClark Seven talks Janeway into bringing it aboard for examination. Bad idea, if you ask me (and you haven't -- McCoy, ST5).
Seven finds a virus in the Vinculum, which probably destroyed the Borg ship. She goes Ferengi on them -- fun performance by Jeri. The script is giving her an opportunity to show what she can do as an actor.
Engineering fails to shut down the Vinculum ... They beamed it aboard. Why not beam it into the pattern buffer and leave it there? Not a rhetorical question. (3/x)
@MLClark B'Elanna disables the Vinculum. Not quite sure how. (The writer said so.) Janeway turns over the Vinculum to the aliens.
Seven recovers. She gives Naomi study assignments, asks her to join her for recreational activities.
Fin.
An okay episode. Mostly a vehicle for Jeri Ryan to show what she can do. (5/5)
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S5E8 "Nothing Human". Comments as we go ...
SoCal experiences an earthquake, er, a massive energy wave hits Voyager ... Remind me sometime to tell you about Claudia Christian abandoned to her fate when the B5 set was hit by a Northridge aftershock ...
Hello, pretty ship.
David Clennon in the credits. He played the Edwards AFB press liaison in "The Right Stuff." Shows up in lots of places, including at a Dem fundraiser I attended back in the 1990s ... (1/x)
@MLClark The energy wave is traced back to a ship with a non-humanoid life form. Janeway decides to beam it to Sickbay. (These decisions never ends well ...)
The creature is a Space Muppet. EMH has no clue how to treat it.
The Muppet leaps through the useless force field and attaches to B'Elanna. It attaches to her neck and secretes a toxin into her bloodstream. (Told ya these decisions never end well ...)
(2/x)
@MLClark Janeway comes up with the idea of creating a holographic consulting exobiologist "based on a real person." (Another decision that probably won't end well ...)
EMH chooses a Cardassian named Crell Moset. (I smell a Dr. Mengele analogy coming ...)
EMH: "I don't care if he's the nastiest man who ever lived, so long as he can save B'Elanna." Yep, Mengele.
Seven is in charge of Engineering, per Janeway. (Another dubious decision?!) The Bajoran we've never met before resents her. (3/x)
@MLClark Seven tries to download the remaining data from the alien's ship. The ship blows itself up real good. (0 for 3 today with Janeway decisions.)
EMH and Crell decide to create a holographic facsimile of Crell's lab. (Here comes the Mengele revelation ..)
Crell worked in a Bajoran hospital during the occupation, "experimented with procedures." Yep, Mengele.
(David Clennon seems to be enjoying himself in the role. He always seem to find the right tone for a character.) (4/x)
@MLClark Janeway orders that the original distress call energy wave be retransmitted, hoping to attract others from the alien's species. (0 for 4?!)
The Bajoran engineer recognizes Crell as a mass murderer. (Yep, Mengele.) The Bajoran demands Crell's programming be deleted from the database. (The same argument was made about destroying Mengele's research.)
Crell: "Ethics are arbitrary." Notes that EMH's programming came from experiments on animals. (5/x)
@MLClark Janeway takes responsibility for using Crell to remove the alien from B'Elanna. (0 for 5?!)
The alien species shows up and sends another screeching message. Their tractor beam weakens Voyager. EMH finds a less intrusive way to remove the alien and has it beamed back to the other ship.
Janeway leaves it up to EMH to decide what to do with Crell. (0 for 6?!) EMH deletes the program.
Fin.
(6/6)
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S5E10 "Counterpoint" ... Comments as we go ...
Voyager gets pulled over by ICE, er, Devore inspectors. Apparently, this has been going on for a while.
Hello pretty ship ...
Les Landau directs. He was known as "Late Night Les" because his shooting days ran long.
B'Elanna is running extra power through the transporter. Methinks she's hiding someone there. (1/x)
@MLClark The Devore are looking for telepaths. Janeway says her two Vulcans and two Betazoids are dead. I think they're in the transporter buffer (a trick should have been used a long time ago, IMO ...)
Voyager has diverted twice from its permitted course. Harboring fugitives?! Yep.
Seems to me the Devore should leave a squad aboard Voyager until they're through Devore space. Budget limitations, probably. (2/x)
@MLClark The telepaths hiding in the buffer are suffering some cellular degradation, so the trick won't work much longer.
Neelix is telling a Flotter and Treevis story, a callback to the children's story episode earlier in the season.
The Devore inspector Kashyk shows up in a scout ship and asks to defect. He says he knows there are 12 refugees aboard and wants to protect them. Yeah, right. I'd introduce him to the airlock, but that's just me. (3/x)
@MLClark So if Kashyk claims he's a defector who wants to help the telepaths, and there are 16 telepaths on board, why doesn't one of them (Tuvok) read his mind to determine his sincerity?
Never mind, one of the refugees covers that plot hole by saying Devore inspectors undergo years of mental training so they can block telepaths.
Voyager intercepts a scientist named Turat who knows about a wormhole. It's unstable, moves around at random. (4/x)
@MLClark Janeway compares a space phenomenon to "the Aurora Borealis." Why not the Aurora Australis? Northern hemisphere bias. 🙄
Kashyk wants to return to the Devore to distract them while Voyager escapes. Yeah, right. Janeway agrees; I hope she's been playing him this whole time just as he's playing her.
(It would be refreshing if, just once, an alien turns out to be a good guy.)
They kiss each other goodbye. Still not buying this. (5/x)
@MLClark Yep, to quote Admiral Akbar, it's a trap.
Yep, Janeway played him too.
The telepaths take two of Voyager's shuttlecraft through the wormhole. More shuttles from the endless supply.
Kashyk lets Voyager go, tells his crew it never happened, otherwise it would look bad on their record. And there's never been a successful escape from Stalag 13.
Fin.
(6/6)
@MLClark #StarTrek VOY S5E11 "Latent Image." Comments as we go. A vodka shot has been poured for life support.
Scarlett Pomers ("Naomi Wildman") does a nice job as a child actor delivering subtlety in a humorous scene with the EMH.
EMH taking holoimages of the crew for a medical database. Not a bad idea. He finds surgical scars on the back of Harry's neck (maybe EMH removed his rank pips), but neither of them remember it.
Hello, pretty ship ... (1/x)
@MLClark Seven has lost her neural pattern. Tuvok offers to try a mind meld.
EMH: "Captain, you can't be considering this Vulcan mumbo jumbo!" His McCoy programming manifests itself.
Janeway contacts the species that made the virus. They're mad because the idea was to have the Borg retrieve the Vinculum and spread the virus to other cubes. Oops.
Tuvok enters Seven's mind and sees all the assimilated victims. Well done disorienting scene. That's a lot of extras in the makeup trailer. (4/x)