Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Discussion in 'Media Central' started by Kyle, Jun 30, 2009.

  1. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    This is relevant to our interests :lol:

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  2. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    The fuckup is in saying they had no way to replace the torpedoes in the first place like they're fuckin' magic.
    Yes, they CAN make all the torpedoes they want.
    The shell is just a Spock coffin, and there's nothing special about those that can't be replicated.
    And the bomb is just an anti-matter pod, and they can drain anti-matter off from the warp core.
    All the ingredients they need, right on ship.

    The only limit is anti-matter, and they can make that too.
    The TNG tech manual says Starfleet ships have a "charge-flipper", (it has a fancier name, but I forget it) that turns matter into anti-matter, it just takes burning more conventional fuel to run it.
    So all they need is a hydrogen rich nebula to mosquito onto with the ramscoops.
    And they admit that's a canon thing with all their deuterium hunting.

    WTF was Michael Okuda on staff for?
    His one goddamned job was to be the geek that sorts this stuff out and keep it straight.

    Now shuttlecraft, that's a whole different kettle of fish.
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  3. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    I dunno, Mike worked on the other Trek shows an managed to keep shit straight.

    My theory is that Berman and/or UPN/Paramount wanted the show to have kewl 'splotions every week and decided to ignore the corner they wrote themselves into. :bailey:
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  4. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Hmm...come to think of it, what you can replicate has never been consistent either.

    Let's work it through here.
    Going by what's in the show...
    You can't replicate people.
    You can't replicate organs.
    You can't replicate rare alien artifacts made of magic minerals. (although you can beam them, but that's a whole other loose thread to tug on)
    And, you can't seem to replicate, say, plutonium, and use that for energy creation or a weapon.

    So, it's limited to inanimate things made of non-radiating standard naturally occurring Earth elements from a 20th century high school periodic table.
    Right?
    Wrong.

    Because they can replicate phasers, and phasers can atomize people, which would take one helluva magical battery made of advanced elements.
    So, they can replicate advanced elements.

    And dermal regenerators are inanimate, so they can replicate those, and those can make tissue grow, so you in a roundabout way, they can replicate organic matter.

    And they can replicate inert tissue scaffolds to mold that tissue into organ systems.
    Which on a primitive level, is what those silver bandages do.
    Just with skin.
    But it has to be able to scale up.
    We can mold an ear, or a penis, or a heart NOW.

    So, Worf's spine shouldn't have been a big deal.

    So, it's not a scientific law, or a respected show rule, it's just plot convenience.
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2015
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  5. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    I'd be totally fine with the explanation that they have to roll their own torpedoes and put a few extra miles on the Bussard collectors. But, they made a big old stink about how they are in limited supply, and they never bothered to even toss in a throwaway line about being able to replenish their stock. So they have to live with those rules.

    Plus, it's only magnified by the constant demonstration that they don't give a shit - they pull the same shit with shuttles and people.

    The people count on BSG is a great example of doing it right, because you know that meant that there was a white board in the writer's room that matches Roslin's, and every time they killed someone, that number went down. The deaths had consequence for the writers as well as for their characters.
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  6. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    "Worf's spine"? :unsure:
  7. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    The problem with Roslin's white board is that births would vastly outnumber deaths because they only had whatever condoms were in people's wallets and purses, and no, women don't bring years worth of birth control pills on vacation.
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  8. K.

    K. Sober

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    It's amazing how that just gets funnier and funnier throughout the video. You'd think it would quickly grow repetitive. But that's just the show, not the continuity errors.
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  9. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Best. Use. Of. Jacques Offenbach's. Music. Ever.
  10. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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  11. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    Human Error

    The only Human Error here is watching Voyager.

    Ba-dum-pssh.

    The entirety of the teaser for this episode is Several dressed like a normal, playing a piano. Thrilling hijinx are afoot!

    The crew is hosting a baby shower for Tom and B'Elanna, in which they receive embroidered cloth diapers. How the fuck do you clean those? Just run 'em back through the replicator, let that system demolecularize the shit and convert it into usable protein for use in the mess hall?

    Anyway, Seven's still wearing normal civilian clothes, and lacks her implants. She has to ask Janeway for quarters, even though, without implants, she'd obviously need some place to crash since the alcoves won't do shit for her. Chuckles suggests Seven give a toast, and she does so, and even cracks a joke about Tom being a dumbass.

    Up on the bridge, they detect some anomalous crap on the sensors, and it's revealed that Seven's in the holodeck, Barclay-ing it up with photonics copies of the crew. Seven's called away, so she ends the program, and her holographic clothes dematerialize into her standard issue "we think of women as sex objects" cat suit. That's right, the "clothes replacement" thing that pops up so jarringly in the final episode of Enterprise was also seen in Voyager, and yet, despite being like five years earlier, this looks way, way more natural.

    Anyway, Seven reads a damn computer console for Janeway, Tuvok, and Tom and tells them there's a lot of subspace radiation ahead, and then Janeway orders them all to go to Torres' baby shower later that day. Tuvok and Seven commiserate about not wanting anything to do with that nonsense.

    Back on the holodeck, holo-Neelix is showing Seven her new quarters. Which are bigger than Tom's and Harry's combined. Obviously a highly realistic simulation - I'm sure all the people onboard who actually hold a rank would be thrilled. They deck her out in a normal science division uniform, and she looks so damn good in it. It's like, seriously, what in the fuck is with the catsuits. Whether it's Troi, Kira (to a degree), or Seven? They all ended up in normal uniforms, and those were far more flattering and far less demeaning. So what the fuck gives?

    Neelix also tries to convince her to get curtains. For privacy. Claiming that she'll "never know when they might be docking at a crowded spaceport." Which is a bullshit excuse, given that we've seen Voyager do that, like, once.

    Holo-Chuckles shows up and forces a dreamcatcher upon her. Way to play to the stereotype in your simulation, Seven. Holo-Chuckles looks surprised when she knows what it is, but she says that she's been studying his culture (or, y'know, dredging it up from someone she helped assimilate along the way). She offers him tea, but he points out there's no replicator. Given how "reasonably accurate" the simulation is, this suggests there are giant-ass quarters without fucking replicators in them on this garbage-ass ship. Naturally, Holo-Chuckles says he'll requisition one for her. She asks if he'd like to come over for dinner, and Holo-Chuckles naturally accepts.

    In Sickbay, the Doctor is disappointed that Seven skipped out on the baby shower. She gets frustrated when he can't yank out more Borg components, and gets flustered when he asks why she's been skipping regeneration cycles. She spits out that her personal life is none of his concern, and he returns with, "I didn't know you had a personal life," which is a sick fucking burn.

    Up on the bridge, the crew are dealing with shockwaves that knock them out of warp. Seven reveals that it's from some warheads blowing up some unmanned probes. Icheb shows up to relieve Seven early, and she passes off her work. But, instead of going to regenerate, which is why the Doctor asked Icheb to help, Seven wanders off to harass Torres. She gives her booties, then asks her what she does with her hair. Kim wanders into this and is bewildered.

    She heads up to the holodeck, and upon activation, is dropped into a slinky red dress, her hair down. Magical fucking holodecks indeed. Holo-Chuckles is there, wearing a dorky looking vest, and ends up letter her taste soup off of his finger. Fucking gross. Nobody should have to have Robert Beltran's fingers in their mouth. Also, the fact that this episode, and all of the Chuckles-oriented ones in this season, exists suggests that Robert Beltran must have had proof that Brannon Braga murdered a hooker in Tijuana or something.

    I will say this, though - when Holo-Chuckles mutters "You're beautiful when you're chopping" as she's slicing up a carrot, you know damn well that that's totally a pickup line Chuckles would use.

    Apparently, that's enough to get the servos running, as Seven starts making out with him.

    FIRST NEELIX, THEN JANEWAY, THEN (holo)CHUCKLES? Who the fuck thought we'd want to think about any of these people fucking? This is practically a war crime according to the Geneva convention. This is the Axis of Evil.

    Anyway. Seven has a dream in which she's playing the piano, but it starts sounding off-key, and a Borgified metronome pops up. She's woken by Chuckles calling her, breaking her from the post-coital embrace of Holo-Chuckles. She heads to Astrometrics, where Chuckles and Icheb inform her that they've picked up a transmission indicating that they've wandered into a weapons testing range like a bunch of dumbasses who can't read the clearly marked warning buoys. Chuckles presses her, asking if she had a rough night. If only you knew, Chuckles.

    Back in the Holodeck, again, Seven plays the piano for Holo-Chuckles. After congratulating her on how well she plays one song, he's then a dick about how little emotion she's putting into the next piece, and he gets here to start playing without a metronome. That's...some pretty deep shit there for a computer-generated simulation.

    She's cut off by more shockwaves rocking the ship, and hurries back to Astrometrics. Apparently, she was fucking around in the holodeck during her own shift. And Janeway calls her out on it, and how much time she's been spending in the holodeck. For 49 hours in less than a week.

    So, she heads back to the Holodeck to break things off with holo-Chuckles. Naturally, to do so, she slips back into her red satin dress. He's pretty distraught over it, and gives a soap opera worthy speech over it. The stress of it seems to knock her out, but she calls the Doctor first. He transmits himself over there, and asks holo-Chuckles what's going on, only to discover that he's just a simulation.

    When she comes to, the Doctor gives her shit about her "other holographic friend," and notes that he's fully aware of what she's up to, though he'll keep it private. She reveals that she's been practicing up on being human, including how to fuck, I guess. The Doctor looks crestfallen upon hearing that Chuckles is the object of her affections, and let's be honest, a potted palm probably deserves to get laid more than Chuckles. It is a nice moment from Robert Picardo, though.

    Then, in a moment I totally forgot, she blames this all on Unimatrix Zero. That's right, there's like two mentions of that train wreck! She claims she's trying to recreate the experiences she's had there.

    Anyway, Harry and Torres finally get the warp drive booted back up, so they warp off. However, this starts attracting the warheads, and it can outpace a starship at warp. Fucking bullshit. Anyway, they throw a few torpedoes at it, to no effect, probably because they're a figment of Janeway's imagination at this point. Seven hops in, and suggest that she can disable it by beaming out a chunk of the warhead. I forget, did TNG ever establish whether or not beaming at warp was kosher? I'm leaning towards "no". Seven was successful, hooray.

    Anyway, the Doctor finds out that Seven's implants started malfunctioning due to a Borg booby trap intended to safeguard against drones attaining higher emotional states. The Doctor's optimistic that he can remove it, but Seven declines.

    This fucking episode is garbage. It's just bad. It has no redeeming qualities, other than a few brief moments in which Jeri Ryan got to wear a costume that wasn't intending to give teenage boys something to walk over. It came out of left field, almost seeming to be intended solely to set up the supposed "relationship" between Seven and Chuckles later on in the season. This episode could be chopped out of the season, and nothing of value would be lost.

    Rating: *
    Torpedoes remaining: -56/38
    Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
    Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16
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  12. Captain X

    Captain X Responsible cookie control

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    I always wondered about the catsuits myself. Even on characters that wore uniforms, like the two Dax ladies, had uniforms that were way too tight for them. I mean, I know why -for fan service- but I've always thought just doing an outfit like that was a pretty lame way to do fan service. And yet they were too chickenshit to do TV side-boob when Q, Jr. pervs out and wishes Seven's catsuit into the cornfield, or when Holo-Doc was drawing her nude in his daydream. Only to go on to have those lame decon scenes in ENT. :rolleyes:

    I don't know, I guess the way I'd do it, since I'd probably still do fan service would be something along the lines of the character having a normal uniform, but we might catch them in their pajamas in their quarters during their off hours or something like that. Hopefully that wouldn't come off as too desperate, like say those decon scenes.
  13. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    For Trek to be as sexually progressive as it pretends to be, it should be on Showtime, or HBO, or Netflix.
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  14. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Speaking of C/7, there's a later episode, when Chakotay crashes the shuttle one last time, where the two are stuck on a planet or whatever. The two actors asked if they should build upon the events of that episode, but we're told no.

    Honestly, if Enterprise hadn't raise the bar for lousy, fan sitting finales into the statosphere, folks would still be pissed about that ending.
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  15. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    Q2
    or, Brannon Braga's Self-Insert Fanfic

    Inheb is lecturing Janeway on Kirk being a badass and not giving any fucks about the Prime Directive if it meant doing the right thing. This is actually probably the only real concrete reference to the conclusion of the "five-year mission" in all of Star Trek. Janeway is bored to tears, and passes him on "Early Starfleet History" largely to get him out of her office. This is a woman that Starfleet is going to make an admiral.

    She's soon shocked to see another young man in her office, who calls out his report for making Kirk sound boring. And then Q shows up as well. The boy is Q's son, the one that only exists because Janeway would have rather been a wingman than to get her crew home early.

    Incidentally, "Junior" is actually played by John deLancie's son, which is a pretty damn nice touch. Also incidentally, any time Voyager mentions TOS, it pisses me off. It's like, you've got to earn that shit, you assholes.

    And, to continue rubbing salt in that wound, the Qs immediately start questioning whether Picard should have been Junior's godparent. However, Q soon reveals that he's essentially dumping Junior on Janeway for a "break" from the Continuum, and obviously, Janeway can't do shit about it.

    Junior is immediately disappointed by Janeway's steadfast and resolute desire to not do anything interesting whatsoever, so he turns Engineering into a rave, replete with women in bikini's dancing around. Torres insists that he's going to cause the warp core to breach, but we all know that's not true, as that would mean he'd have no one left to annoy, so it's kind of a hollow threat. He snaps Janeway, Torres, Tuvok, and Chuckles out of Engineering to pout. Tuvok suggests merely ignoring him, hoping he'll get bored enough to go back to the Continuum.

    Naturally, Junior's next step is snapping the clothes off of Seven. We get to see Jeri Ryan's bare back, in a move that, I'm sure, gave the teenagers in the writing room boners. Seven ignores him and continues working, though you can swear for a brief moment that Jeri Ryan is considering all the decisions she's made in her life thus far that have lead her to this nonsense.

    After Junior makes the computer be a bitch to anyone asking it for anything, Neelix suggests, instead, that maybe Junior needs a mentor instead of a lack of attention, and volunteers. Junior refers to him as "Kitchen Rat," and Neelix discovers him fomenting a war between two races Voyager met previously. After suggesting that boring-ass game that he and Naomi play, Junior asks if there are explosions in it, and says he's not interested if there aren't any. He then snaps Neelix's vocal chords and mouth out of existence (which, sadly, Q will later fix).

    Next, the ship is rocked with explosions - Junior has brought a few Borg ships to play, and they're naturally unhappy with the ship that's ruined them as effective villains. Voyager's shields soon drop, and Borg beam aboard the ship. Just as Chuckles and Janeway are about to be assimilated, though, Q returns, and snaps the Borg out of existence, yelling to his son that "If the Continuum’s told you once, they’ve told you a thousand times, don't provoke the Borg." Never mind that that's exactly what Q did in introducing humanity to the Borg in the first place.

    Q reveals to Janeway that Junior has wrecked havoc on the Continuum, who have told Q to get his shit together. He also claims that Junior is the first child born to the Continuum, but that's fucking bullshit. Apparently, none of the staff actually familiarized themselves with the mere handful of Q episodes in Trek's canon, and forgot about Amanda Rogers (though I'm sure there's some fucking bullshit about her being born to Q living as humans or something that some idiots have fanwanked out). Anyway, Janeway tells him that he actually has to be a parent, which Q interprets as a directive that, upon doing so, he will be idolized. Ten minutes later, joining Janeway in a bath, Q has decided that plan is a failure, and it's all Janeway's fault. Janeway tells him that he has to make Junior understand that there are consequences to his actions, a concept that Q is unfamiliar with.

    So he turns Junior into an amoeba, and informs him that the Continuum is going to give him a week of human time to get his shit sorted out, and relieves him of his powers. Yes, apparently, Q can create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it. He also decides to again leave Junior with Janeway, under the auspices of her being "a mommy to the crew." For that to work, Q, Junior would need to be a girl so that Janeway could have some Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moments.

    Junior storms off, and Janeway has him escorted by security to a simple set of quarters that has, basically, a bed and a replicator. I'm glad Chuckles requisitioned one.

    Tuvok then escorts him to Astrometrics for a lesson in causality, and to a diplomacy lesson with Chuckles, featuring holographic representation a Bolian, Ferengi, Naausican, Bajoran, Romulan, and Cardassian (incidentally, I think this is the last time the Cardassian makeup gets brought out to play). He then has to help Neelix in the kitchen, and still has time to trick Icheb into writing an essay on the Q Continuum for him. Janeway then calls him out for essentially cheating his way through all the tasks, despite his solution to the diplomacy one basically being Kirk's solution to the Kobayashi Maru.

    After being dressed down, Junior starts acting like a model member of the crew, and Janeway rewards him with letting him take out the Delta Flyer with Tom and Icheb. Q pops in, and Janeway talks him up a bit, and invites him to listen to a new draft of the essay Junior wrote. Q is unimpressed, and is pretty obvious about it, claiming that they've taught him nothing useful whatsoever. Janeway goes to console him, and offers to let him stay aboard Voyager if the Continuum doesn't want him back.

    Junior then tracks down "Itchy", who refers to him as "Q-Ball", in what are perhaps the most forced nicknames in all of Star Trek. He suggests that Icheb help him with repairing the Delta Flyer. After doing so, though, Junior fires up the Flyer and blasts his way out of the shuttle bay, escaping through an anomaly he's able to create with the deflector.

    However, an alien warps in and demands that they submit to incarceration for entering their space. Junior phasers out the tractor beam, though, and escapes back to Voyager, but Icheb gets electrocuted in the process. The Doctor reveals that Icheb's been irradiated, and without more information about the weapon, he'll die. Q pops in and, despite Junior's begging him to save Icheb's life, insists that it would only serve as a lesson for Junior. Janeway demands that Junior go beg the alien for help, and he does so. The alien agrees to do so, but only if Janeway is punished, as she was responsible for him. Junior begs the alien to punish him instead, regardless of punishment, and the alien starts laughing, revealing himself to be Q, who is proud of his son's selflessness.

    Q snaps himself, Janeway, and Junior in front of a panel of other Q, dressed up, well, like Q dressed up back when he was being Serious Business on TNG. They sentence him to remain human, much to Q's consternation. Q immediately snaps off and gets them to reverse their verdict, under threat of his leaving the Continuum as well. Junior snaps off happily, and Q hands Janeway a PADD with directions to shave a few years off her journey, but refuses to pop them back to Earth, as that would be a "bad example." Right. Bullshit.

    This episode, the last canonical appearance by Q in all of Star Trek, is kind of hit and miss, but it does manage to be fun - they do a good job of playing John de Lancie off his son, and Kate Mulgrew actually has some decent chemistry with him, so the frustration, bemusement, and consternation all seem remarkably legitimate. At the same time, rather than saying anything particularly interesting about what it means to be an adolescent omnipotent being, and actually exploring what that means, it becomes more of, "what would a teenager do if he could do anything," and the answer to that is basically drive fast cards, look at naked women, and be even more annoying than usual, and I think we all could have guessed that.

    Also, the only reason the three-hour tour counter isn't going up is because Q never promises anything to them.

    Rating: **
    Torpedoes remaining: -56/38
    Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
    Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16
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  16. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    I'm assuming you skipped over "Human Error" out of self preservation. ;)
  17. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    No, I reviewed it Friday night! You rated my review a "Winner!"

    I think you're just trying to trick me into reliving what Robert Bertran looks like after waking up after fucking.
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  18. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Oh, fuck I sure did :doh: it's been one helluva shitty ass week with my car breaking once, getting worked on, then breaking down again on goddamned Saturday when the techs are on a skeleton crew and cant look at the part till Monday. The only thing in all this is that I work at the place I get my car serviced.
  19. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Speaking of the catsuit thing you mentioned in that review, though, the most ridiculous one IMO? The one Molly had in Time's Orphan. She grew up with no contact for ten years but somehow made a suit showing T&A? Okay.

    It also looks nearly identical to the material used for T'Pol's hideous brown catsuit from the early years of Enterprise. Even for cheesecake fanservice, TIIC had to crib from DS9 :borg:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=t'p...0h3wq9#tbm=isch&q=molly o'brien time's orphan
  20. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    Author, Author

    Do you remember the outstanding TNG episode The Measure of a Man? Good. Cherish that memory. Hold it dear. Because you're about to get a seventh-generation VHS copy of it for $5 out of the back of a rusted Volkswagen.

    We open to the Doctor blathering overly poetic drivel about the instantiation of a fresh, new holographic consciousness. It's accompanied by what was, really, a pretty decent visual effect in which the Doctor, wearing a smoking jacket, boots up in slow motion. And Robert Picardo does a fine job of sounding pompous once more.

    It turns out that Barclay, along with Seven and Kim and way too much fucking unnecessary technobabble, have come up with a way to Skype across thousands of lightyears, but due to the anomaly of the week they're using to do it, they only get 11 minutes a day to make long distance phone calls.

    Janeway decides to let every member of the crew (all 146, it turns out, a rare concrete number for the crew that's been contradicted almost constantly over the past seven years) have a three-minute turn in random order. Rather than having the computer assign this in the space of a nanosecond, Neelix makes everyone pick from a hat. Fucking Christ, this is why we have computers.

    The Doctor somehow gets the first one, and uses it to call a literary publisher on Earth (incidentally, apparently the publishers of the Dixon Hill series, because we're not just going to rip off a classic TNG episode, we're going to rub everyone's face in it at the same time) - he's been putting together a holonovel, and he wants to distribute it back home. The publisher spews a bunch of BS the Doctor wants to hear, naturally, but Seven cuts him off, claiming that his times up and that his "ego's received enough stroking for one day." Ice cold, Seven. Fucking nice. That'll show him for giving you shit about fucking holograms that aren't him.

    Anyhow, Tom talks the Doctor into letting him experience "Photons Be Free." After skipping through the overly indulgent introductory sequence, Tom realizes that the Doctor has crafted a story about the "U.S.S. Vortex" and the struggles of its holographic doctor to overcome the crew's "bigotry." Tom's the latest character to be granted a holodeck-provided costume change, and again, it's done so much less intrusively than Enterprise would go on to do. I hate to keep harping on it, but damn, it just stood out so badly.

    Tom's thrust into the chaos after the, uh, Vortex is tossed into the Delta Quadrant. Holo-Chuckles shows up with a giant-ass Bajoran tattoo on his face, along with nose ridges, ear-bling, and, inexplicably, a stereotypical Native American ponytail, dragging Holo-Tom in. Holo-Tom, "Lieutenant Marseille" has a porn 'stache. Tom triages the most wounded crew first, which pisses off Holo-Chuckles, who insists that the minor injuries of Holo-Tom be treated first. Holo-Janeway, "Captain Jenkins," shows up as well and summarily executes the more wounded patient, freeing up Tom's time.

    Tom regales B'Elanna, Harry, and Neelix with the events of the first chapter. Kim's worried that people will regard it as being autobiographical, and why wouldn't they - the "Vortex" is the exact same ship as Voyager, using the exact same crew with some cosmetic enhancements and name swaps. Torres accuses Tom of jealousy; that the Doctor is edging in on his turf, so he challenges them to try the program.

    Torres is up next, and Chapter 5 sees a female crewman show up to Sickbay. Holo-Tom shows up and demands that she go to Engineering, but she's bound to Sickbay without her mobile emitter. It actually depicts Torres dematerializing as she steps out of Sickbay. In other words, the camera gets the photons-on-eyeballs treatment that everyone else supposedly does in the magical planes-on-treadmills land that is the Holodeck as well, because otherwise, holy fuck the holodeck can dematerialize you. Anyway, Holo-Tom forces her to strap on the emitter, which is a giant-ass backpack. Torres runs into Holo-Torres in Engineering (they let Roxann Dawson out of her makeup for it!), who tells her to fuck right off, and upon return, she discovers Holo-Tom making out with the crewman, just in time for another female crewman to show up in a rare Trek reference to threesomes.

    Neelix gets the shakedown from Holo-Janeway in a ready room filled with guns. She calls him out on the sheer amount of BS he's accumulated in his program over the year, and calls "Tulok" to forcibly delete his subroutines. Holo-Tuvok's rocking a badass Mirror, Mirror style goatee, but sadly, this is no mirror universe, just a shitty holonovel.

    Harry takes over from there, where he encounters "Kimball", a Holo-Kim who's also a hypochondriac. However, they're sidetracked by "3 of 8", who basically looks like Seven if she wore a blinky necklace and had freshly-fucked hair all the time.

    Apparently, they've decided that enough's enough, and they invite Janeway to participate in the final chapter. It reveals that the Doctor's done such a shitty job of programming the novel that it can't account for female characters, as everyone refers to Janeway as a guy. Holo-Janeway listens to a speech from Holo-Seven, dismisses it as "nice" (God, if only more characters gave less of a shit about the sanctimonious garbage that spills out of people's mouthes on this show - Holo-Janeway is a far more interesting character than Janeway herself), and orders that the EMH be decompiled.

    Janeway is pissed off, as is virtually everyone else. Harry himself looks like he doesn't have enough time in his life left for this fucking bullshit. As he bitches about how his emitter makes him feel different than everyone else, Janeway points out that it's what liberated him from fucking Sickbay. He reveals that part of why he's written what he did was because of the other Mark I EMHs in the Alpha Quadrant, who are demoted to menial tasks, and refuses to make any changes to appease his friends.

    We're then treated to a scene in which Harry Kim's parents are treated as stereotypical helicopter Asian parents who question when he's going to get a promotion. Maybe it'll happen when his spine emerges from the womb.

    Anyway, the Doctor goes to play his program again, but discovers that Tom's reprogrammed it to let the viewer take the role of Tom as Nurse. We get to see the, uh, Holo-Doctor with a bad combover (which somehow reminds me far too much of Hitler) screaming at the Doctor for being 24 seconds late to his shift, and confusing "One of Three" for "Two of Three", stating "They're triplets, y'know?" lecherously before giving Holo-Seven an aphrodisiac instead of an analgesic. The Doctor is horrified.

    The Doctor and Tom get into a yelling match in the hallway about it, one which passerby ignore as if it's not happening, and ultimately Tom points out that he's not really bothered by people thinking poorly of him based on the program, but because he thought the Doctor thought more highly of him.

    Neelix goes to the Doctor to ask if he'd forward on a cookbook to his publisher, and goads him into changing the program and talking to his publisher on Neelix's call time. He does so, and gets the publisher to agree to hold off on publication until revisions can be made.

    We then get another Skype call, this time between Torres and her father (actually the same actor from earlier in the season, incidentally). He apologizes for his role in their falling out, and she agrees to write him.

    Back on Earth, Barclay has some distressing news for Tom's dad - the Doctor's novel's been released to "thousands of holosuites." Janeway and the Doctor call up the publisher, who basically tells them to go fuck themselves, as the Doctor's a thing, not a person, and therefore owns no rights to the holoprogram - per Federation law, holograms have no legal rights.

    Yes, that's right. Fifteen minutes before the end of this episode, they've decided to fast-forward through an entire episode of TNG to wrap this thing up.

    Anyway, the publisher points out that a replicator can create a cup of coffee, which is not terribly different than the Doctor creating a holonovel in the grand scheme of things. Tuvok counters that the Doctor created an "original" work, as there had never been a holonovel about the plight of a hologram written before, and therefore. However, the arbitrator of their complaint points out that the law specifically requires personhood.

    Tuvok suggests another tack to the Voyager crew - argue the contract is invalid, as per the publisher's own logic, the Doctor couldn't enter into a binding agreement. Janeway has another idea - asking the crew to describe their experiences with the Doctor to indicate personhood. After hearing from Seven, Harry, and Barclay, Janeway goes off on a speech that's desperately trying to reach the heights of Picard's from The Measure of a Man, but it fails - it's like she's trying to do a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment with the arbitrator, an old guy.

    We also get a scene in which Seven tries to pass off her Skype call to Harry, but he convinces her to contact her only living relative - her aunt, who reveals that Annika loved strawberries.

    Anyway, the arbitrator makes his ruling, and while he demurs on whether or not to grant personhood to holograms, he does find that the Doctor meets the bar of "artist", and can therefore control his work and order that it be recalled. The episode wraps with a scene in the Alpha Quadrant - one Mark I EMH talking to another in a dilithium mine, suggesting that he run an illicit backup of "Photons Be Free", before the camera pans slowly, 360 degrees around the room, revealing dozens of Mark Is at work - it's actually a surprisingly well-put-together shot, given that it had to have required a motorized camera movement and tons of takes of Picardo doing different things in the mine or surprisingly strong face replacement.

    This episode couldn't really decide what it wanted to be. We got a poor knockoff of a TNG episode, a bit of, well, what passes for 'comedy' on Voyager, and a tiny, tiny bit of character work for the Doctor that you know isn't going to go anywhere or be referenced again. So really, what's the point?

    Rating: **
    Torpedoes remaining: -56/38
    Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
    Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16
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  21. Kyle

    Kyle You will regret this!

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    Friendship One

    Ready to retcon Starfleet and the Federation into being established less than a decade after First Contact? Let's do it! First shot of the damn episode is a Starfleet delta with a Federation flag painted in the middle of it, and apparently, it doesn't obey Part 15 of the FCC rules - it blasts some classical over the speakers of an alien listening post before entering their planet's atmosphere in a shot that looks like it was composed in Quake III.

    Some random-ass admiral Skypes up Janeway, who regales him with tales of the aliens from Distant Origin. It will not be the only continuity porn of the episode, but it's certainly the cheesiest. Also: Janeway is second only to Kirk in terms of first contacts. One would think that, given that they've crossed tens of thousands of lightyears that she'd have cleared that record, but that'd require Voyager to make any damn sense. Also, fuck TOS references. Anyway, the admiral apparently feels like this ship of fools has nothing else better to do than recover some museum piece that Earth fired out of the solar system, so naturally, they hop right on that - Starfleet has some bills to pay and they hope to get it appraised on the Antiques Roadshow.

    Tom specifically calls out that it was launched four years after First Contact, and the damn thing is decked out in both Starfleet and Federation regalia. Tuvok then directly states that Starfleet didn't exist. What in the goddamn fuck, you idiots. Anyway, despite the Vulcans being around to tell human beings to knock it the fuck off, we apparently tossed a bunch of flash drives of warp engine schematics, music, and porn into the thing and shot it towards parts unknown. Starfleet has projected its course to a position close to Voyager, and Harry even manages to refine that, which is a fact that is highly problematic - you'll see why shortly.

    Anyway, they find it on a lifeless, irradiated planet, so Janeway tells Chuckles to put together an away team. It includes Neelix, Kim, Tom, and Lieutenant Goddamn Carey. Long time, no see! Anyway, after they take the Flyer through the atmosphere, they see a city blanketed in nuclear winter, with no indications of anything having survived - except to the viewer!

    Anyway, Tom, Neelix, and Carey break out the First Contact EV suits for one last hurrah and head outside. They find an electric alien music box that plays a Vivaldi tune, but no one finds that at all strange. They also find a shit-ton of missile silos, filled with active nuclear warheads. Tracing the signature of their probe, they discover it in a makeshift fallout shelter, just in time to be surrounded by aliens packing heat. You know they're ready to shoot some bitches, because they play the same fucking "gun cocking" sound a dozen goddamn times in succession. Man, we're going to win an Emmy for sound design on this one.

    Back on the Flyer, Chuckles and Kim get ambushed by a single guy hiding in the cargo area, but he's quickly phasered into submission. That's right, don't fucking lock your goddamn doors in what is barely a step above present-day Detroit. The aliens soon start firing antimatter weapons at the shuttle, so Chuckles high-tails it the fuck out of there.

    Anyway, the aliens demand to know what's going on from Tom, who reveals that they had produced the probe. The aliens calls up Voyager and start blaming them for genocide. Their leader demands that Voyager evacuate the planet in exchange for the lives of the away team. Now, thinking pragmatically for a second, if there hadn't been any hostages and the aliens called them and begged to be rescued from their post-apocalyptic hellhole, Janeway would have moved heaven and earth to do it, but now, she can't just grudgingly beam them all to a cargo bay and get her crew back? Now is the time for fucking principles?

    The Doctor reveals that the aliens are so irradiated that they basically blend in with the background, and revives the one that had broken onto the Flyer. He's pretty skeptical of the people he views to have destroyed his world, but the Doctor offers to treat his radiation poisoning. He reveals that they Chernobyl'd the fuck out of themselves out of the technology that was sent on the probe, and blames humanity for the accident as an inevitability that they'd exploit for conquest. Yeah, OK.

    And that reveals the fundamental problem with this episode. He mentions their planet receiving the tech "decades" ago. Let's say 50. That means that no matter how long Starfleet had projected the probe's journey, and no matter what tweaks Harry made, there would have been no accounting for its crash landing on a planet. In other words, it should have been much further into the Delta Quadrant.

    Back on the planet, Tom tries to strike up a conversation with one of the aliens. He notices she's pregnant, and asks if its her first. She says its her fourth - the other three were stillborn. Conversation fucking over. Damn!

    Back on Voyager, they estimate that relocating all of the aliens would take three years to the nearest uninhabited M-class planet. And, the Doctor starts treating the patient with Seven's damn nanoprobes (and oddly, Seven says she's the only ex-Borg aboard - sorry Icheb). One would think that the Doctor would just start having her do weekly blood draws or something, or figure out some way to batch replicate them, or at least have qualms about shooting everyone up in the damn quadrant with Borg technology that's one step away from turning them into mindless killing zombies.

    On the planet, Tom then introduces himself to a curious little girl, who immediately ignores him and latches onto Neelix. They give her the music box, which she is delighted by - the leader immediately flips shit and yells about it possibly being a weapon. Your species fucking built the thing, have you never seen one before? Neelix goes to speak with him, and mentions that, at first, he found humans "arrogant" and "self-righteous". Gee, Starfleet officers self-righteous? Never! Anyway, he begs the leader to let them help, and commiserates with him, mentioning the metreon cascade. The leader refuses to budge.

    Janeway calls him back, and suggests that the man they have aboard could help them undo the nuclear winter of the planet with the help of Voyager's technology. He points out that humanity's technology was partially responsible for this shit, but agrees to trade one of the hostages for food in a show of good faith for both sides. He hands the transport enhancers to Carey, then shoots him just as he beams up, killing him instantly.

    Yes, they brought back a recurring character just to kill him off unceremoniously and senselessly. Keep in mind, this guy showed up a lot in Voyager's first season, so much so that his absence was practically notable. And they could do nothing better with him than kill him off to show how "serious" shit is - as if there is any goddamn risk to Tom or Neelix. They took a character and made him into the equivalent of a yellowshirt. It might as well have been some fucking random nobody.

    Anyway, this pisses Janeway off, enough to agree to try to transport everyone up at once. And the alien aboard is responding well to treatment - about half of his boils have disappears. Seven points out to him that humanity had never intended to harm their planet, and that it was an error in judgment. He says that the leader will never agree to it - but Seven suggests that he might be an effective leader as well. And on the planet, the woman starts going into labor. She begs the leader to let Tom help her, as the baby's early. And I'll give credit to the actress playing her - when Tom reveals that the baby's heartbeat is irregular, there is anguish on that face. The baby comes out still and quiet, but Tom manages to science the life back into it. Meanwhile, Tuvok gets himself captured, and is brought into the fallout shelter. The Doctor comes with him, disguised as one of the aliens. The Doctor phasers the fuck out of a few of the aliens, which seems like it would go against the physician do no harm thing, but if this season has proved anything, it's that the Doctor is no longer bound by such pedestrian concepts as "the Hippocratic Oath."

    Tom convinces the woman to let him take the baby up to Voyager for more care, before Tuvok gets them all beamed up to the ship. On the ship, Janeway reveals that she's just going to get the fuck out of there. Tom and Harry convince her to try once more to get the aliens to accept their help. The alien aboard the ship and Seven come up with a plan to fix the atmosphere, but lack the equipment necessary to do it, so they come up with a plan to shoot the planet with photon torpedoes that have somehow been modified. The alien beams down with the baby, and convinces the leader that all Voyager's done since arriving is try to help.

    For some reason, Voyager has to fly into the atmosphere to do this, and they four modified torpedoes into the atmosphere in the "first sequence." The shockwaves freak out the leader, so he starts arming the warheads. Janeway insists on sticking around, even though the warheads would destroy the ship, and fires the "second sequence" - presumably another four torpedoes. The alien from the ship and the woman then stage a coup, just in time for the girl to run in and ask everyone to come outside - the sun breaks through the nuclear winter for the first time in decades.

    Voyager is able to retrieve the probe and its sensor readings. Chuckles commiserates with Janeway as she mopes in Carey's quarters - apparently, he was building a miniature Voyager in a bottle.

    As much as I bitched about the episode, in a way, I kind of like it. Why? It's a very TOS-like episode - dealing with the fallout of early spacefaring pioneers and unintended consequences of noble actions. Even the Janeway speech at the end could have been delivered between a somber Kirk and Spock. But what brought it down was, well, it being Voyager. Janeway tipping back and forth between wanting to help and not giving a flying fuck. Largely interchangeable characters. Caring enough about continuity to reference Distant Origin, Neelix's past, and Lieutenant Carey, only to turn around and care so little that the probe is basically an anachronism, Seven forgets about Icheb, and Voyager burns through eight torpedoes.

    This could have been another Blink of an Eye. It wasn't quite there.

    Rating: ***
    Torpedoes remaining: -64/38
    Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
    Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2015
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  22. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Eight torpedoes?

    Fuck, I dunno if the finale even went that balls out. :soma:
  23. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Sounds like he's adopted the "Hypocritic Oath", amirite? :diacanu:
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  24. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    Maybe radiation exposure drastically cut back fertility. But yeah, I remember one of the early episodes where they made a big deal at the end about a baby being born. If they're normal humans, then they should've had HUNDREDS of babies born by that point.

    Back in the early 1990s Israel evacuated a bunch of fellow Jews from Africa (Ethiopia IIRC). They packed around 900 on a single 747.

    Two women gave birth during that 8 hour flight.
  25. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    Each year there will be 8 to 50 live births per thousand people per year. Australia and the US are having 13 births per 1,000 per year. BSG's count at the end of 33 was 47,972. At 13 births per 1,000 that would be 623 births per year, which is 1.7 per day, so the birth on the Rising Star on day 6 should have been the tenth baby, not the first, and they should've added 2,400 babies by the end of the series. If they had a birth rate like Niger they'd have added 9,500 children by the end of season 4.
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  26. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    In regards to the endless supply of torpedoes and shuttles thing (along with other supplies) I recall Brannon Braga being asked about it by Starlog or some magazine like that and IIRC he said that while it should be addressed, he thought the series was depressing enough as it was without belaboring the limited supply situation.

    Also IIRC it was said that the producers of Voyager basically said they wanted to "do The Next Generation". Not Robinson Caruso.
  27. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    In other words, it's what I said about twenty posts back:TIIC didn't give a shit about the premise.

    I understand Berman and Braga had their hands tied to UPN to an extent, but goddamn. Star Trek is the biggest reason the network lasted as long as it did. They had some pull, but chose not to even try to fight for the show.

    Fuck them both. :borg:
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  28. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    I don't remember exactly what was said but I seem to recall something Braga said after Voyager and Enterprise ended that seemed to indicate he and Berman had a major grudge against Star Trek fans in general.
  29. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Yeah, TATV is Exhibit A through Z on that account. :brood:

    I mean, some went overboard with the hate, but most of the flack they got was well earned.
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  30. Captain X

    Captain X Responsible cookie control

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    Yeah, probably because they weren't the stupid people they seemed to think they were, and called them on their lazy bullshit and the way they were taking their audience for granted. :jayzus: I honestly don't understand how those two could toot their horn when it came to talking up how Star Trek inspired so many people to go into STEM fields, and yet turn around and put out some really stupid shit under the excuse that the only people who watch it are nerdy teenagers living in their mom's basement who will just eat anything up they put out because it's Star Trek.
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