S1 E05: The Cloud

We start with Neelix again, and again he is annoying, and again Janeway is very rude to him for daring to ignore starfleet protocol. Once more, I'm starting to feel a little bad for him, but just like last time, I'll stop before the episode is done. Hrmph.

Voyager finds a pretty pink nebula, and decides to fly right in so that Janeway can get the replicators working again and ditch that furry troll Neelix. Okay, I'm being snarky, I'll stop. In fairness, this episode is continuing the theme of limited resources, which is plenty of reason to go somewhere where they might get more fuel. And that somewhere is an interesting nebula that seems to have some order to the chaos inside it - but before we can find out more, the ship makes its exit, so it won't be destroyed. A reasonable move. Meanwhile, Neelix is ranting about how the crew is made of "idiots" and making out with Kes. We won't dwell on that.

What is kind of strange is the intermission in the middle of the episode. We get some good Tom-Harry time, which we haven't really since Caretaker. Paris is a little creepy with Kim at first, but Kim's okay with that, because he reveals he's a little strange too: "I remember being in my mother's womb." Sure, weird, but awkwardly likable, just like we expect of Kim. What's really odd is that, in the middle of an energy shortage, they fire up the holodeck without a second thought.

We also have Chakotay trying to help Janeway find her spirit guide (a lizard). It would have worked better if Janeway hadn't delivered all her lines as if she were given the direction to address a small child in as condescending a manner possible, but we get nice insight into what the Native Americans have been up to since heading into space to set up colonies in the demilitarized zone. Apparently now they use tech gizmos to reach the spirit plane, for which I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was all ready for a fight to develop over whether or not Chakotay should be able to take his kamala extract psychotropic drugs on a starfleet ship for religious purposes. It may seem like the easy way out, but I am eternally grateful to the writers for their restraint. The scene closes with a great throwaway line about what Torres did with her spirit animal. I don't really remember caring about Torres one way or the other the first time through, but this time I'm very much enjoying her.

As abruptly as it came, the intermission is over, and we're back to the nebula. It turns out, it's alive! Which is cool. The crew needs to fix a problem they caused, which is the right and good thing to do. Meanwhile, we have some insufferable Neelix-on-the-bridge-time cancels out some earlier, brilliant silent acting by the Doctor. He can make any scene work by just being a moving picture in the corner of the screen. They generate an interesting technobabble solution which makes enough sense (as far as these things go) to be believeable within the world of trek - but they end up not gaining the energy they'd hoped they would, instead they're down 20%. At this rate, they won't be able to turn on the lights in a week.

The episode ends with Janeway being invited to the holodeck by Kim in a nice enough gesture. She makes everyone a little uncomfortable, but we get a nice "aw-shucks" ending when she throws off her mantle of command for the evening to enjoy some time hustling her crew at pool. Though if it were Neelix who'd conjured up a holographic prostitute who came onto her, I have a feeling he'd be out the airlock by now.

Anyways, the whole senior staff is in the holodeck and no one seems bothered by the energy being wasted. This isn't continuity; it's one thing if they forget all about the energy shortage for the next episode, but this is like 5 minutes later! Maybe I'm reading this scene wrong though. The writers can't have missed the implications of holodeck energy usage. Maybe, with this scene, they're showing us a crew, used to the comforts of the Federation, unable to comprehend not using the holodeck. I could be giving the writers too much credit here, but I actually like this interpretation better. Instead of a smarmy ending, we have a "hollow victory" ending, where the crew is happy and deluded, postponing rude awakenings for later. Like business tycoons throwing an extravagant dinner gala a week after the 1929 stock market crash, thinking that surely this depression thing won't last. Yeah, haunting.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: While I didn't focus on it much in the review, I did like the Cloud/Nebula/Alien idea a fair bit, and that was really most of the episode. If you can get up and fix a snack during the Neelix scenes, this is quite a decent episode.

S1 E04: Phage

So, Neelix is annoying. I get that. After all, his overly ingratiating, obsequious manner annoys me. It actually bothers me more that all the characters on the show can't seem to stand having him around either (Kes doesn't count). Do the writers feel the need to show us exactly how intolerable he is? Why is he still here then? It's not like he's useful or competent. And when he actually has a good idea with the galley, Janeway still hates him so much for inconveniencing her that she practically bites his head off. I actually started feeling bad for him...

...And then the rest of the episode happened.

Neelix gets his lungs stolen in the first five minutes, and most of the rest of the episode explores different aspects of life sustaining measures wherein quality of life is greatly sacrificed. This is important stuff! Except the recipient is Neelix, who spends his time throwing any goodwill he has generated in me directly in the septic tank by showing off his selfishness, jealousy, pettiness, and stunning lack of insight - only one of which we've seen so far before. He's dug a big hole here.

But enough about Neelix. There's other stuff in this episode, better stuff, so let's focus on that. When risking their lives by chasing the alien ship to get that one guy's lungs back, the crew is essentially stuck in a house of mirrors inside an asteroid with their quarry. In most shows, the solution is to either (a) break all the mirrors, or (b) find the image that isn't mirrored. Chakotay's bouncing phaser solution is a pretty clever way out. I liked it.

The Doctor also gets plenty of screen time, which is always a plus in my book. His personality is basically a charicature of the bedside-manner-less-sour-doctor, but Picardo's performances are hilariously well delivered and give The Doctor a little more depth. I also feel like he works well in contrast with Kes's performance - even making her more interesting when he's around.

The concept for the Vidiians is also cool. Realistically, a disease as terrible as the Phage probably would erode the moral foundations of a peaceful society - and because this is Star Trek, we can think about that possibility without it happening to us. I would have been much happier with this episode if the Vidiians and their culture took center stage, rather than a barely a footnote at the end.

Unfortunately, much like the previous episode, this one takes the easy way out at the end. When Janeway has the Vidiians helpless at the end, she lets them go (all the while threatening to kill them if she sees them again - like any villain would take that seriously) because it would be wrong to steal back the organs because now the Vidiians are using them! Really? I mean, it's a bit of a quandry to be sure, but that's kind of like not taking back Locutus because the Borg are using him now. How could we possibly justify taking their leader away? Just because he used to be ours, that doesn't make it right!

Anyways, we get a Voyager Happy Ending because they did the right thing, so the Vidiians repay their kindness and fix Neelix, who manages to be ungrateful all the way back to life.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: It's a Neelix episode.

S1 E03: Time and Again

And we have our first Voyager Reset Button (VRB) episode! In fairness, the first TOS Plot Rehash episode of TNG was episode #2...

For the most part, I'm trying to avoid too much plot synopsis in these reviews, sticking instead to my reactions. In this case, however, here's a little background: The Voyager detects a cataclysmic explosion on a nearby planet and goes to investigate. They find a lifeless planet and beam down to investigate. Janeway and Paris are transported about 1 day into the past, before the planet was destroyed, and the rest of the episode consists of an attempt by the crew to rescue them, and an attempt by them to be rescued.

I went to the memory alpha page on this episode, hoping to get an idea of what the writers were thinking. I found this:

"The original pitch was what if you were in Dresden twenty-four hours before the fire bombing and knew it was coming? What would you do? That just seemed like an irresistible kind of a premise... It was just a compelling story with a high-concept idea that we couldn't resist." - Jeri Taylor

What? What?! They hardly explore that premise at all. Paris suggests, reasonably, that they should try to stop it, but Janeway shuts him down, citing the Prime Directive, and that's the end of the story until the plot makes them think that their presence is what made the explosion happen. This is probably my least favorite use of the Prime Directive - also to be found in Homeward (TNG 7x13). It just feels like the writers are using the Prime Directive as a cheap plot trick to tie the characters' hands and fill screen time. I mean, look at Pen Pals (TNG 2x15). Instead of just saying "oh we can't do that", the senior staff sits down and has a thoughtful discussion about it, and then decides to break with the directive in that case. But here and in Homeward, it is just used as a source for character conflict, and reflects poorly on a rule that was put in place for the protection of less technologically advanced peoples, not as a way to say "let them die". Oh well.

So that's part one of my beef with this episode.

Part two has to do with the resolution. Basically, to spoil the rest of the plot, it turns out that the crew's rescue attempt is actually what causes the explosion, and Janeway changing her mind and going to the source to try to stop the explosion is actually what brought the crew to that area to try to rescue her. Awesome so far, right? How are they going to cope with being ultimately responsible for the destruction of an entire civilization, even if they didn't mean to? They could even have worked in some defense for the interpretation of the Prime Directive as a way to not help the doomed.

But, instead, Janeway figures out what's going on, and closes the rescue rift with her phaser. Magically, everything gets undone, the planet reverts to normal, and only Kes has any idea what happened (but is Guinanly vague about it). This episode had so much potential it hurts. If they had stuck with the ending where the crew had mistakenly destroyed the planet, it might have been a bit too heavy for episode #3, but instead we're left with no lessons learned, everyone ready to make the same mistakes again.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: Its worth is not in what they did with the plot, but what they could have done. Good to think about afterwards, but not during.

S1 E02: Parallax

There are two major things going on in this episode.

(1) Bad Science

(2) Good Character Development

Let's start with (1), so that I end on a good note, shall we?

Quantum Singularity is typically trekese for a black hole. To give this part of the episode any credit, we're going to be assuming that it actually means "magical space phenomenon that does magical things for no reason." They do use some terms like 'event horizon' that suggest that this magical space phenomenon is similar to a black hole, but do not be fooled. This event horizon is a physical barrier, not simply the point at which light will never reach an outside viewer. In fact, they visually detect an object that is beyond the EH, which starts off the fun.

While a black hole might bend time (we've never actually explored one, so who knows, right?), we don't know. What we do know is that it has strong enough gravity that is can slow the speed of light. That's powerful enough for me! And we can pull off some pretty cool plot tricks, just with that effect, even some of the "seeing yourself in the future" bits that they do here. It's an especially interesting mind-puzzle when you also include a ship that can move faster than light.

Instead, the writers decided that it would be more compelling to let this object magically bend time and space so that ships magically get caught in loops and outside observers can see two copies of ships that aren't moving faster than light. So this Quantum Singularity can do some cool stuff, it's cool, but I think that it would be a lot more awesome if it could do these things for actual science reasons, not just technobabble reasons.

That is not to say that other Treks are exempt from this sort of writing behavior. They're not. But I'm not reviewing them right now. And, in my opinion, the other part of the episode at least sort of excuses it.

As for (2), we get the power struggle regarding the choice of a chief engineer. It's one thing to join the crews, that makes sense that they should work together while they're stranded together. What is kind of weird is expecting the Maquis to integrate and begin following Starfleet rules. Chakotay thinks that that is unreasonable, to an extent, and he is right. He stands up for his crew - and Janeway 'reminds' him that they're not his crew anymore. He thinks she's being ridiculous, and again he's right.

I do not remember Chakotay fondly. So far, I'm not sure why. He's behaved rationally, and has nicely straddled the line between friend and commander with his crew (which one would expect to be blurrier for Maquis). And he's also dealt with Janeway's brand of crazy pretty well.

As for B'Elanna, she reminds me of a lot of people who are annoyed that people who can play the management's games get promoted, while the hard-working and talented (but not exactly socially gifted) people keep getting grunt-work. She's Dilbert, only half-Klingon and attractive. And she does a good job of convincing Janeway through her actions that engineering should be a meritocracy.

Overall, the character part of the episode gives me a lot to like, growing naturally and resolving satisfactorily. It does not, however, do any favors for Janeway, an already strongly unlikeable character, to essentially cast her as the villain.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Good, as long as you can get part the magical space stuff. Which you can. You saw how much it bothered me, and I still ended up enjoying the episode. Really, the writers were just using the Singularity as a background for the power struggle. Could the episode have been better if both parts were good? Sure. But that's what happens when you have a trillion different writers. Sometimes the science is the focus, sometimes it isn't.

S1 E01: Caretaker

So, here it is, the pilot episode.

It's actually a very solid Trek Episode.

The first part does a decent job of introducing the characters. Particularly good was the first Paris/Kim scene, which was helped a lot by Quark. We get information about the characters without too much exposition.

"Oh god, I'd forgotten about her voice," a quote from my wife from the first scene with Janeway.

Why couldn't Paris be Nicholas Locarno? I mean, there are reasons offered by that link, but I'd forgotten that they even went so far as to give the two essentially the same backstory. Not a big deal, I just don't get it.

A note: every crew member who is a jerk to Paris dies. Let that be a lesson to others.

The Caretaker's illusion is pretty classicly Trek odd-choice-for-a-setting. Of everything in the computer's database, the Caretaker chose this? The end of the scene is pretty sinister, and gets you ready for the entire rest of the 2-part episode to be an illusion - I'll spoil this: thankfully, it isn't.

Our first Tuvok/Neelix encounter reminded me a lot of one of the things I liked about DS9: the banter. Even in the rockier first season, you could count on lively back and forth between, at the very least, Odo and Quark. The mix of contempt and grudging respect must've made their dialogue particularly fun to write, and the actors pulled it off well. I could talk all day about how much I like the DS9 scriptwriting (don't even get me started on Bashir and Garak), so I won't. This space is for Voyager.

The first time around, Neelix annoyed me more than Wesley annoyed most other Trek fans. So far, he's a bit grating, but his exchanges with Tuvok have kept the jury out. Tuvok nails the Vulcan condescension, but rather than fight it like McCoy, Neelix embraces it in a way that must be infuriating. And even better: Tim Russ is good enough at Vulcan that he doesn't act infuriated. We know he's frustrated, because we know Vulcans, and he's with it enough to let that be enough.

It's been a couple days since I watched the episode, so I'll just insert this here: The Doctor is awesome from the start. For every time Janeway uncomfortably moves her face around trying to show some emotion, The Doctor makes everything better with a flash of his grimace. His timing and delivery are excellent. You also get the impression that they've got some real life ER doctors around, because his humor and dialogue is reminiscent of many of the ones I've met.

We glaze over Neelix's betrayal, but that's OK because the Kazon are clearly bad guys. The Kazon feel more like a one-off villain here, but the goofy makeup doesn't really bother me.

Kes quickly establishes herself as the Deanna of the series, and we move on. The Ocampan society is pretty interesting - at one point, the leader refers to something like "a hundred generations" which, when you think about it, is not really that long. It's cool to think how much faster something like improved psychic powers could become something of legend in such a society. To me, this is Trek; interesting new civilizations that you can just think about the ramifications of elements like a short lifespan for hours afterwards, even if they don't explore it much in this particular episode.

The resolution of the episode with the array is interesting too, but feels a bit cheap if you think too much about it. Couldn't they have used those explosives on the Kazon, and taken their time getting the array running and set it to blow once they returned home? It doesn't really matter, the point is that the crew in this show is not made of the kind of people who would sell out an entire race for their own benefit. Also classic Trek.

The clean-up at the end doesn't sit very well with me though. They integrate awfully quickly (I mean, uniforms right away?), as if they've come to terms with being stranded for 75 years right away. In the Trek universe, where fantastical things happen every episode, you'd think the characters wouldn't grasp the reality of the situation immediately. This is all stuff they could have put off for a later episode; distribution of uniforms to the maquis would have made a nice B-plot later on. It feels like the writers are just cynically getting ready for a continuity-less show from the start. Not that I think continuity is the be-all-end-all of television. I love TNG and it has next to none. But Voyager has a premise that is built for continuity, and more of it could have gone a long way.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Good Trek elements, several compelling members of the crew, and the scriptwriting isn't bad if you're OK with the cleanup.

About This Blog

I want to like Star Trek: Voyager.

I tried when it first came out. I really did. So did my dad. We were rabid TNG fans, didn't mind DS9*, and we were excited about more Trek. Three seasons later, the new Whose Line Is It Anyways? came on the air, in the same time slot. We told ourselves that we'd watch half of Voyager, then switch to Whose Line if we weren't invested yet.

That's how we started watching only 30 minutes of Voyager a week. Eventually, less than a season later, those 30 minutes became no minutes.

Years later, I tried watching individual Voyager episodes, hand picking ones that were on "best of Voyager" lists. This attempt actually made things worse. Most of these were among the infamous Voyager Reset Button (VRB) episodes, where an hour passes and at the end all the events of the episode are magically reverted. Worse, because I didn't care about the characters, I'd often find that while the plot synopsis sounded interesting, the execution would let me down. I became an even more outspoken critic of Voyager, because I could cite examples of Voyager Heresy.

Now I'm sure, as Trek fans, you've all met the Anti-Trek Sci-Fi Fan. The one who thinks that liking Trek would somehow diminish Babylon 5 in some way. You can like both, people! I've seen exhaustive essays about Star Trek being racist because some one-off writer used the Prime Directive as a cheap plot trick instead of a source of intellectual discussion. We all know that the writing of Trek can be schizophrenic due to the large number of different voices contributing to it, but to the ATSFF, each bad episode erases everything good about all the the series and movies.

I'm worried I've become that guy, but within Trekdom.

I've become the Anti-Voyager Trek Fan.

My wife remembers Voyager much more fondly than I do. It was her first Star Trek, and, while she never watched the whole series, it carries a bit of nostalgia for that. We watched all of Firefly and Battlestar (redux) together and loved them, and she convinced me to give B5 a chance. We really enjoyed going through the whole series. Then, I got her to try TNG (skipping most of the first 2 seasons), and it was a hit. Then we watched DS9, and it blew us away. I remember liking it well enough the first time, but I didn't watch it religiously, and missed most of the last couple seasons.

What if the same thing happens with Voyager?

Well, we're going to do it. We're netflixing the whole thing, top to bottom. And I'm going to share my experiences with you. Because it is worth giving things another chance, whether it is some televised sci-fi series, or calculus, or a book, or whatever.