So I put on voyager for some background noise, and I started with the beginning of season 3 where they have been marooned on a planet while the kaison run away with the ship. Is Neelix always such a fucking dick? You come to a pile of humanoid bones at the entrance to a cave, and you order some schmuck to pick them all up because they might be useful, but you don't help him or even watch his back. You act like you are this great survivor, but you don't even ask the question of why have multiple creatures died or at least decomposed in this one spot. Are starfleet people just really fucking stupid now? You are all getting kicked off the ship on some planet you know nothing about and no one tries to smuggle some basic survival things out with them? They were not strip searched or anything, and they had a fucking baby with them. No one replicates a knife or water filter which might look like part of their uniform and not a weapon. A fucking magnifying glass would be hella useful too. Are we all this stupid in the future?
I didn’t mean in that sense. More so that both characters were annoying and were the worst characters of their respective franchises. Neelix should have been airlocked in season one. Jar Jar should never have left the pre-production/story boarding phase.
I will admit them not being mass executed was completely outside of what should have happened in that situation. That race was violent and had no reason at all to leave them alive. However, that seems to happen a lot in star trek where the villains are very forgiving and PG. They normally don't address any of that. In this case This character seemed to die so janeway could say we are not going to lose anymore people, but she does not go after neelix for a completely boneheaded move that killed someone. Really you coild have exposed the monster in the cave by having a close call making the later decision to run into the caves much more tense because everyone saw the cave monster. Then you could have had the crew beat the crap out of neelix forcing the captain to get control and showing her powerful leadership while also offering the audience a good round of kick the neelix which could have become a regular thing on the series. At least then there would be a reason to keep him around, and it would have actually made sense to have him as the morale officer because people always feel much more upbeat after beating an idiot. In the end that might have helped Torez deal with her desire to beat people senseless on occasion, and had he survived the psychopath could have done experiments on neelix to calm his needs to harm people.
Oh, and I got off track, even if they were going to be mass executed, do not take that for granted. Be prepared. What if you see a moment to escape? What if the traitor liked you and left you alive? Since they are not executing you, and making a space ship out of crude tools would be near impossible, why not ask for a frying pan or some sort of medical pack for being on the planet? Your captors have a ship capable of replicating things and are leaving you alive out of the goodness of their hearts. Make the attempt to just ask for a knife or two which would not help you retake the ship in any way, but would be valuable for primitive survival. I am probably going to torture mself with more of these voyager things so this is probably going to get worse.
Ah. Apparently, much of the character development happened when they were in the process of shooting.
Season 1-3 Neelix is a creepy pedophile. Season 4-5 Neelix is tolerable. Season 6-7 Neelix is actually enjoyable. Also, Ethan Phillips plays a washed up astronaut on that new HBO show Avenue 5. Which is basically the premise of Voyager: an incompetent captain gets his crew and passengers stranded on a seemingly endless voyage.
In the very next episode we have neelix give Tuvoc a plant concoction he has made and all of a sudden tuvoc is having hallucinations of some young girl, which clearly could be coming from the alien plants. Over the course of trek there is no indication they have gotten a real grasp on trippy things and how to scan for them so if you are taking things from foreign planets you would never have had to worry about with human, vulcan, and klingon biochemistry it would be smart to not have the cook cross contaminating all the stuff you are getting from planets. Do these people even know basic science? It was nice that at one point trek actually directed people to scientific theory and chemistry, but now you cannot even get cooking right.
Ok, so this episode actually has Tuvok having a bad trip because after he had Neelix give him some mixed up plant juices he starts hallucinating things from his past that he might have repressed. This is totally what could happen on an LSD or SSRI trip which could cause someone to have a psychotic episode or go into a K hole, or have a death trip. And it can cause huge problems with the brain if one goes into one of these states due to having certain drugs. No one stops Neelix from giving out his space juices? Even the doctor tries to explain it away as a virus which is bullshit. Someone has to stop Neelix. The title is even Flashback. they all blame it on something else, meanwhile neelix is cooking for everyone and no one is supervising it. Do they not have drugs in the future? Is the hollographic doctor not aware of what slurping down concoctions of plants can do to a person? They have Mr. Indian chikote on the ship. Doesn't he at least recognize vulcans having a bad trip since he for some reason worships the great spirit and should have some ideas about plant induced shaministic explorations of the subconscious? Tuvok does not need a mind meld, he needs a tripsitter and perhaps some weed.
edit: So I am probably going to do this for a while. Yes, I know someone somewhere has probably said these things, but I have not done my ranting.
So next episode is called The Chute and it starts with Ensign Kim in jail with Tom harris. All I can think from the start is perverted references to the poop chute where kim is going to have to take it because he will be the bitch everyone sells. Ok, why the fuck are they letting people go away on shore leave without some form of security to make sure they get back OK? You have good com badges, how do you get taken prisoner like that? Shouldn't you have some emergency transporter capabilities to get you out of a bad situation? Maybe invent a little transport me home button to take around? Don't go so far away from the point where you can be tracked by the ship. You have neelix's ship, why not fit it with some form of transporter like a shuttlecraft? Why did you nee to use Nellix's ship since none of the people of this obscure world would know what a federation shuttlecraft with a transporter and phasers were? I know I am supposed to overlook some things and go with it, but again we have problems. What is worse is these problems will continue. Is there a Federation stupid disease? I know you don't want to disturb things, but the reality is you are alone. You have phasers with stun capability. Keep your people safe and use them because you do not have the time or inclination to deal with the local legal system. Why are you staying around this long on any world?
Nope. Kim totally got some, and got a formal reprimand from Janeway for it. Because sex is bad unless it's with an Irish hologram.
Kim got some? Which episode was that? And did it have tentacles for the hot hentai action, and a reference to galaxy quest.
Ethan Philips got the biggest shaft on Voyager playing this character, and that's an amazing feat on a show with Harry Kim, Chuckles (thanks @Kyle ! ) and Kes, who got brought back specifically to be trashed). He's a great actor when given the material (like "Riddles" or that one where he's questioning his spirituality after being dead for a few blessed, sweet moments of hope for the audience), but too often he was written to be the seventh generation Chinese bootleg version of Quark. Fun fact: apparently, Robert Picardo initially auditioned for the role of Neelix before being offered the Doctor. And honestly? With the way he played the Doc with camp at time, he honestly would've been a perfect fit.
Ah. Just remembered - if you are only up to Basics, Part 2, that ep hasn't happened yet - it's midway through S3. And no, no tentacles but his cells are nearly harvested.
As opposed to Tom Paris, who kept trying to bang the exact same minor. I read somewhere a few months back that Neelix was actually supposed to be a young guy in his 20's, but for some idiot reason they were looking for older actors to play him.
I love Tim Russ, but I'm of the understanding that Tuvok was originally supposed to be a visibly elderly Vulcan right up until the producers realized they hadn't cast any black actors yet, so they called the guy that placed second when they were casting Geordie LaForge. It would have been yet another stereotype on a show full of stereotypes, but Neelix would have been much better as a young black hustler running from both a war he was drafted into and a gang (still the Kazon) he tried to run with. Kes can still be around, but she has a crush on him while he sees her as a little sister replacing the one that died in the war. That way he can still be overprotective and suspicious of Paris without coming off as a pedo. It'd also give the Neelix/Tuvok stuff a Will Smith/Uncle Phil vibe.
5x17: The Disease Or, as UPN marketing (seriously, this is NOT a fucking joke) decided to call it: LUST IN SPACE.
Next episode: the swarm Here is another problem with the stupidity of humans in the future. I get your original mission might have been to explore places, but weird sensor readings go into a log for the future and we zoom on by. what purpose aside from lazy writing is there for sending out a shuttle craft. Don't you have returning probes you could send? We know what a probe is at the point of making this. Ok, and now we have the doctor, who I like and I know they do interesting things with him. However, why is he performing an opera alone in the holodeck using up holodeck time which is supposed to be rationed? As a program doesn't he have simulations he could be doing in the processor? If you are going to give him alone time wouldn't he do alone time in the computer? I sort of get what they are doing, but it falls apart when you realize that taking up space with a projection is human way to recreate. If this is an AI within the machine then why the fuck is it doing human things? You could be doing something much more interesting and less dumbass with this time. OK, the holographic doctor is supposed to be scrubbing up using a human disinfecting device? THAT MAKES NO SENSE GIVEN WHAT HE IS! He is a hologram not an android. If you wanted an emergency android you could make one. This is the problem with having non technical writers doing technical things. These re not just words, they are established concepts in the universe. Previous treks were very good at giving us creative scientific exploration of ideas about AI, and this is just poopie. This episode had some interesting tech things with the doctor, but when you are half assing the universe tech on some parts, and then you are trying to be technically realistic on the other hand it comes of as just throwing terms around to look cool. If you are going to have the EMH be a character you should go towards his differences from humans rather than try to make him be one.
To Tom's credit, he didn't go into jealous rages when anyone looked at Led. With that said, it's still way to many Jacob/Renesmee from Twilught vibes. Not that it would matter with the 5 pounds of makeup required for the character, but yeeeeeaaaaah, this is why Voyager was doomed to fail. They can't even be assed to consider little details like this.
I mean... Makeup can't hide age. Maybe some older actors can play younger characters convincingly, but Phillips and Picardo? Nope.
I don't know why you find any of this surprising. Voyager was a horrible pile of shit, easily the worst of the Trek series. Badly written from start to finish.
I dunno, it has very strong competition from Enterprise. There are some Voyager episodes I remember fondly. Not really any for Enterprise.
