| The Doctor, Kim, and Seven are on a Delta Flyer Survey MissionTM, when they are assaulted by a species who is waging war on "photonics." The Doctor is downloaded into Seven's body, and wacky hijinks ensue. See, he tries to befriend the captain of the ship, but because he's in a woman's body, he takes it as a romantic advance; fortunately, the Doctor is a man, so he is disgusted when the captain kisses him. And the engineer/medic of the ship, he develops romantic feelings for her, but she just tries to hook him up with her brother, because he's male. Then, when they are rescued by Voyager and betray their new friends, the engineer/medic is all like oh no, I don't think my brother would want to sleep with you now because you're a guy, and he only likes to have sex with women. |
So, yeah. The thing is, I already covered this episode's biggest problem in my Warlord review. I don't really have much to add to it. I can do a decent job of ignoring the writers' outright cowardice when it comes to including homosexual characters as long as they don't rub it in my face. After all, not every show needs to have a full spectrum of affirmative action technicolor crew members. But this is Star Trek. This is the successor to the show that put a black woman on the bridge of a starship. A show whose original pilot had a female first officer. Sure, they put a woman in the captain's chair, but that was overdue already. It's like your grandpa saying that something's "groovy" in an attempt to be "hip." He's late to the wrong party. You know what, skip the gay crew member (or, rather, don't stop there). Go straight for polygamy/polyamory.
So, in addition to doing another "lulz we put a man in a woman's body" story, they also made it awkward and uncomfortable to watch. Sure, there were little bits that were good, like the Doctor eating cheesecake for the first time, but that scene was before we saw Seven's reaction to his behavior in her body. The first time they extract him, she is incensed that he ate junk food and got drunk and was working on a way for them to escape quite effectively. As uncomfortable as her reaction was, it made all the other scenes with him in her body worse, because you know now that he not only has to fool his captors, but he also has to behave in a way that won't enrage Seven. With so many ways to fail, it wasn't very enjoyable to watch.
Meanwhile, Janeway engages in cowboy diplomacy that would've made Kirk proud. That's right, I said another nice thing about her. This time her performance was still grating, but she did bully other people with lesser technology a bit more, something that would have been interesting to see in the first couple of seasons. That would have been something interesting to do with her; play up the Federation-hubris angle with her, and give her chances to learn and show humility. Well, none of that happens here, she just gets her way all the time because she's Janeway, but it would've been nice.
Watchability: 1/5
Bottom Line: You get the feeling one of the writers said: "Hey, you know how we only know how to write for the Doctor and Seven? What if we put them in the same body!" Ryan and Picardo tried to make this work, and I was quite impressed with Ryan's acting range again, but you can have an operatic tenor sing Kid Rock and it will still suck.
Addendum: Well, I forgot about this B-plot on the first run through this review, which is weird because it was by far the best part of the episode. Anyways, Tuvok is finally going through Pon Farr, and without the Doctor around, Paris has to be his physician and confidant. Tom prescribes a hologram of Tuvok's wife, which didn't work last time (Blood Fever), but Tuvok is more mature, and they didn't try a hologram of Torres either, so I could buy it working. I like the Voyager approach to the morality of having sex with holograms (which is to say - it's fine, who cares?), but this plot kind of vanishes halfway through, only to be solved with exposition at the end. Still a 1/5.
No comments:
Post a Comment