My VOY reviews

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Asso » Sun Nov 03, 2013 10:44 pm

Well, I think it's time for me to let it go.
A la prochaine.
Well yes. I continue to write. And on Fanfiction.Net, for those who want, it is possible to cast a glance at my latest efforts. We arrived to
The Ears of the Elves, chapter Forty-four


And here is the beginning of the whole story.
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But, I must say, you could also find something else on Fanfiction.net written by me. If you want.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sun Nov 03, 2013 11:22 pm

OK, time now to make sure this review thread isn't hijacked by a discussion about costume aesthetics. I'll slowly get back into my review grove, so here are a couple:

4-05 Revulsion

Revulsion was a surprisingly entertaining episode (and I'm not just saying that because I happen to frequent a message board where another member is the one who pitched the original story). It's nothing special but it gets the job done.

We meet a holographic janitor on a space ship who's gone berserk and killed all the "organic" crewmembers. Now he stalks and threatens B'Elanna Torres and his fellow hologram, the Doctor. That story would have been more effective had we not learned from the teaser that he was indeed a homicidal maniac. But Leland Orser played him to perfection. The original story idea that my online friend wrote featured a mad holo-Captain that attacked Voyager and that might have been a more dramatic piece instead of the dark thriller we got instead.

The second story had Harry Kim and Seven of Nine working together, and complicated things by having Harry attracted to her. That also worked surprisingly well and the predicable embarrassing moments (when Harry tried to hit on her) weren't cringe-worthy when they easily could have been. It was rather funny to see Seven bluntly state "do you wish to copulate" and "take your clothes off"! Poor Ensign Kim! Seven of Nine does have a sense of humour. Chakotay has a more cruel sense of humour when he forces them together, but I laughed at that part too.

This episode also marks the beginning of the relationship between Tom and B'Elanna, as he kisses her just when she confirmed that she loves him (Day of Honour) but said that he might as well forget it. They also have a cute scene in Sickbay at the end, when even the Doctor gets to crack some jokes, both about them and by impersonating the mad holo-janitor.

I'll give Revulsion a grade of 6- out of 10.

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4-06 The Raven

Another really good outing of Voyager featuring on Seven of Nine - now dressed in a much better looking and more understated brown bodysuit. We get to learn more about her backstory as her Borg-ness reasserts itself and she steals a shuttle and takes of to what she believes is a Borg encounter. However it turns out that the homing signal leads her to the crashed remains of the ship - the Raven - where she was assimilated as a terrified child.

Jeri Ryan played Seven to perfection, as a non-stoppable Borg at the same time as she had flashbacks to her childhood being chased by Borg. The rapport between Seven and Tuvok was also very nicely done. A logical Vulcan is probably the more logical choice to handle an ex-Borg. But the scene with her and Neelix was also very good and, frankly, quite hilarious as she had to learn how to eat. Heh, one might even think that it was his cooking that triggered the re-activation of her nano-probes!

The only downside, aside from the obnoxious obstacles that were the aliens-of-the-week™, was that a story like this would probably have had more impact if it had aired later, after we - and the crew - had gotten to know her better and begun to accept her. Oh, and the shuttle Seven stole is presumably lost as they apparently left it on that moon. That's lost shuttle number eleven!

The Raven gets a grade of 8- on my 10-graded scale.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Alelou » Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:11 am

Where else are you posting these if we're the other board?

I guess my problem with that actor is just that it wasn't the story I'd imagined at all. I wanted a scary, homicidal captain, damn it. Not some creepy OCD janitor.

But seeing as I only wrote a paragraph or two and got paid more per word for that than anything else I've ever written in my life, I can't really complain.
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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:47 am

Alelou wrote:Where else are you posting these if we're the other board?

At Brunette Jolene (see link in my sig). And then I hope to get around to put them all on my sadly neglected website (see other link in my sig) once I get time to reshuffle things there. I have all my previous reviews (except the TNG ones) there.

I guess my problem with that actor is just that it wasn't the story I'd imagined at all. I wanted a scary, homicidal captain, damn it. Not some creepy OCD janitor.

But seeing as I only wrote a paragraph or two and got paid more per word for that than anything else I've ever written in my life, I can't really complain.

:lol: :thumbsup:
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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Fri Nov 08, 2013 12:56 am

4-07 Scientific Method

For an episode that was derivative and recycled a lot of storylines from previous Trek episodes about aliens experimenting on the crew (like Schisms from The Next Generation) I found Scientific Method to be surprisingly entertaining. The writers made good use of Seven here, who was the only one who was able to see the alien scientists and communicate with the Doctor, who hid on the holodeck in leggings, through her Borg implants.

If there ever was an episode where Janeway earned the nickname Insaneway it was this one. Almost driven mad by the experiments (but who can tell the difference from her usual reckless behaviour?) she drives the ship between two pulsars in order to get rid of those aliens. I actually kind of liked that. And that there was no Trekkian way to tell the aliens that what they did was just plain wrong.

There were some funny moments as well, like when mutated Chuckles and Neelix argued who suffered the most, like two grumpy characters from a Monty Python sketch. Or the juvenile love shenanigans of Tom and B'Elanna, trying to hide their make-out sessions and failing miserably. There is no way to keep things like this a secret on a ship that small. And even Tuvok displayed a sarcastic kind of humour when he asked Janeway if he should flog the crew as well, after she'd gone on a rant about her crew slacking off.

I'll give Scientific Method a generous grade of 7- out of 10.

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4-08--09 Year of Hell, Part I-II

Year of Hell could have been one of the best episodes of Voyager, had it not been for the inevitable reset button™ ending. There's just no way to review this two-parter without taking that into account, which is why I don't review each episode individually. Suffice to say that this is one major disappointment. The events never happened and no one remembered anything about it. Ultimately it was all pointless.

I suppose one could view the story isolated, but that's just not possible. Once it was clear, almost immediately, that they would push the reset, all feeling of drama and suspense was lost and I sat impatiently waiting for it to be pushed. Sure, the story of mad Captain Annorax (an excellent Kurtwood Smith) was intriguing in itself, but that was all clouded behind the reset veil. Tom Paris even calls him "Captain Nemo" at one point, and I suppose Annorax is a deliberate anagram of the narrator Aronnax from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

While the visuals of a severely damaged Voyager were great, it also hammered down one of my main complaints about the show in general. This, or something like this, is how the ship ought to have looked over the course of its run. Left to its own devices in the Delta quadrant, with no means of doing substantive repairs, it should look progressively worse, and not as pristine as it does. Year of Hell is an annoying tease about we could have had.

I won't go into any plot details, mainly because they don't really matter - and because temporal mechanics gives me a headache. But I will say that it is odd that the crew doesn't react to the word Krenim at the beginning, considering the warnings they got from Kes in last season's Before and After. She even gave a report so they could be prepared or perhaps even avoid going through Krenim space at all.

Another oddity is how they could have encountered the Krenim in the first place. In Before and After, Kes was still aboard when they met the Krenim, and hadn't evolved into an energy being and hurled them a distance to the equivalent of a ten-year voyage. Thus, in this timeline, Voyager should be well beyond Krenim space. Ugh, like I said about temporal mechanics…

I've made no secret of my dislike of Captain Janeway, and here she proves how unstable she can be, especially when under severe strain. If Annorax is Nemo, then she's Captain Ahab. She's much too reckless and I cannot fathom why she thought it was a good idea to ditch most of her surviving crew into escape pods, where their chances of making it out alive would be even slimmer than if they'd stayed aboard. And how could the seven remaining crewmembers possibly make repairs, let alone run a ship as big as Voyager? In the end, her decision to ram Annorax's timeship was just arbitrary since she had no idea that that would reset the timeline. It was just blind luck, from her perspective, that the damage to the temporal core made the timeship erase itself from history.

But I'll readily admit that the visuals and the special effects were great, and I really like the addition and look of the new astrometrics lab that will become Seven's main hideout on the ship.

As an isolated story, with no reset, I might be tempted to give Year of Hell a grade of 8 or even 9. But as it stands I cannot in good conscience give it any higher grade than a 3 out of 10. Part I would get a 3+ and Part II a 3- for the ending.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:50 pm

4-10 Random Thoughts

If the plot of Random Thoughts feels like it's been done a hundred times before on Trek, it's because it has. I cannot begin to count all the times a crew has inadvertently clashed with seemingly arbitrary and intransigent alien laws and/or customs. Here it is violent thoughts that are prohibited and of course it is half-Klingon B'Elanna Torres that find herself at the mercy of the local thought police.

OK, I can buy that a race of snobby telepaths have developed such a ban (although it would be a horrifying place to live in) but how come they let alien visitors roam free with no warning, especially if they're concerned with polluting thoughts? And I find it exceedingly improbable that no one other than B'Elanna would have a violent or inappropriate thought. For one, I don't believe that all that Neelix wanted from that young woman was for her to stroke just his whiskers, the perv!

But the episode turned better once detective Tuvok discovered that there was a dark undercurrent in this utopia - people dealing in violent thoughts just like drugs. It goes to show how impossible and self-defeating it is to try and control the way people think and act. I also liked the insights and parallels to the Vulcan way of suppressing emotions. Tuvok really bared himself here, but given his previous experience with Lon Suder, another telepathic psychopath, that's not surprising.

Unfortunately, this episode also highlights the erratic leadership style of Captain Janeway. Suddenly she again strongly adheres to non-interference, willing to let B'Elanna get lobotomised without attempting a rescue. But at other times she doesn't give a damn. And in s closing scene with Seven she sings the praises of exploring, even if that means putting her crew at risk and lengthening the voyage home. At other times, like in Scorpion, she doesn't give a damn about that and is willing to do almost anything to get home. It's like she has a split personality, and which one will manifest itself in the next episode? I really liked how Seven called her out on those two conflicting goals, but she'd better direct those arguments to the show's writers.

In the end though, I give Random Thoughts a grade of 4+ out of 10.

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4-11 Concerning Flight

This episode seems to emanate from someone's all too clever idea of having Janeway's Leonardo da Vinci hologram walking and working among real people. And I'm sorry to say that no matter how good John Rhys-Davies is as an actor, that's not enough to carry an entire episode. It just came off as forced and a little silly.

Once Janeway found the abducted da Vinci, or rather the Doctor's portable emitter, there's no reason why she shouldn't have turned him off, if only to secure the emitter. Instead we're treated to a prolonged interaction between the two as they try and located the pirated goods from Voyager, most notably the computer. It all hinges on how interesting their conversations are, and frankly the answer to that is "not much". The most stupid part was when they talked about what existence means - when they're being chased by the pirates!

Concerning Flight feels like a giant gimmick, an excuse to show da Vinci again, and allow him to finally experience the flight of his glider. But he's not real, he's just a hologram. This brings me to another topic I want to address. The Doctor has become a person, a sentient being, due to the fact that he's been running for years. But what about other holograms? Star Trek and Voyager still seems to treat those as not being real. They sort of have to, otherwise they will open up a huge can of worms. Every time you power up the holodeck, you risk creating people. In this episode Janeway and the writers appear to view holo-da Vinci as somewhat real, so which is it? He's not allowed to remain once they get back. But this is a gimmick, probably not meant to be taken seriously, but it still bothers me.

I'll give Concerning Flight a grade of 3 on my 10-graded scale. The Seven bum grades seem appropriate given the numerous gratuitous butt shots of her in the episode (not that I'm complying about that, mind you).

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby CoffeeCat » Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:18 am

Kevin Thomas Riley wrote:4-10 Random Thoughts
OK, I can buy that a race of snobby telepaths have developed such a ban (although it would be a horrifying place to live in) but how come they let alien visitors roam free with no warning, especially if they're concerned with polluting thoughts? And I find it exceedingly improbable that no one other than B'Elanna would have a violent or inappropriate thought.


Yes! This is exactly why this episode annoyed the crap out of me. That and the fact that Tuvok thought they were somehow enlightened because of this bull shit.


Unfortunately, this episode also highlights the erratic leadership style of Captain Janeway. Suddenly she again strongly adheres to non-interference, willing to let B'Elanna get lobotomised without attempting a rescue. But at other times she doesn't give a damn.


I think during the middle seasons (4, 5 (especially), and 6) Captain Janeway is a real douche-bag towards B'Elanna, Tom, and Harry with the occasional Chakotay and Tuvok thrown in there. I think she came across as particularly ass-hattish towards Tom and B'Elanna.

But then again, as a fan fic writer, I actually enjoy jerk Captains since they add conflict and angst when you are writing about the problems of said characters. I'm totally going to exploit her when I write my next Voy fanfic.
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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:35 pm

Jeri Ryan appeared on thie latest episode of SyFy's Helix in what looks like a recurring role. And man she looks smoking! :drool: I can't believe she's 45 (my age). She hasn't changed since her 7of9 days.
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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Thu Jul 28, 2016 9:43 pm

Last week I saw the new Abrams Trek movie, and was as disappointed with it as I was with the previous ones. To get the sour taste out of my mouth I started to rewatch some old Trek again, picking up where I left of in my VOY reviews, so here I go again. Even my least favourite Trek show is better that what Abrams has done.


4-12 Mortal Coil

For playing such an annoying and obnoxiously cheerful character, Ethan Phillips really proves that he has excellent acting chops, provided he gets sufficient material to sink his teeth into. He did just that in Mortal Coil, but unfortunately that's the best thing I can say about this episode.

He has proven before that Neelix can have depth, in episodes like Jetrel and Fair Trade, but it's a crying shame that the writers never allow that to show in character growth once those stories have been told. Then it's right back to Neelix's one-dimensional self. And that's what I expect will happen even after this existential crisis, as shown in the relative ease in which he bonded with young Naomi Wildman (who has conveniently gone through the child rapid aging syndrome™ common to many TV shows) right after his attempt at killing himself.

My main beef with Mortal Coil is that it once again shows how little the writers understand about religious beliefs, and specifically about the afterlife in this case. It's a repeat of the equally bad Emanations. To say that they have adopted an agnostic view would be too kind. They seem to come to the conclusion that it's all make believe, yet they try and pay lip service to a view that there just might, perhaps, maybe, be something more, not that they would recognise it even if it came biting them in their rears. Hence Neelix's existential crisis after he's returned from the dead, thanks to some nifty Borg nano-probes, and can't recall having been in Talaxian heaven during the intervening 18 hours. Like I've said before, they try and eat the cake and keeping it, but it's still condescending to people who have faith.

But I'll be generous and give Mortal Coil a grade of 4- and that's at least one grade just for Ethan Phillips's performance.

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4-13 Waking Moments

If Waking Moments seems derivative of other Trek episodes it's because it is. For instance we have Night Terrors from The Next Generation, The Search from [i]Deep Space Nine and even Voyager's own Persistence of Vision. There's nothing really original to see here.

Some sleeping aliens induce the crew to collective dreaming sleep so that they can take over the ship, except that they take over it in a dream. Wait, what? Does this even remotely make any sense? What good is a dream-Voyager to them anyway? And if their goal is to get rid of the crew so they won't be detected then the consequences are the complete opposite. Before their dream-play Voyager didn't even know they existed. And how were the aliens even able to sustain themselves if they were all asleep down on that planet? Another annoyance was the cliché were Chuckles thought he had awoken only to find that, nope, still dreaming…

I could go on, but there really is no point. Aside from a few funny moments the episode is rather pointless - a variation of alternate reality™/holodeck malfunction™. So I cannot give Waking Moments anything higher than a 2+ out of 10.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Fri Jul 29, 2016 8:12 pm

4-14 Message in a Bottle

I thoroughly enjoyed Message in a Bottle. It was fun, action-packed, emotional and suspenseful. All you could want in an episode, really. The highlight was of course the banter between the Doctor and the new improved Emergency Medical Hologram, Mark II, played by Andy Dick. Their witty dialogue and oneliners had me laughing so hard. It's surprising that the comedy worked considering that the topic was rather serious - Voyager's first chance to communicate with home. The more somber reflections will have to wait until the next episode.

I'm a fan of the Romulans, so naturally I liked seeing them here, even if they were rather one-note. Having their plan of capturing an experimental Starfleet vessel, the USS Prometheus, thwarted by two holograms was perhaps a bit unbelievable, but who cares? It was fun, especially as the two EMHes just winged it.

Even the scenes on Voyager were quite funny, like when Harry Kim tried (and failed) to make a replacement EMH, or when Seven remotely electrocuted the Hirogen because "he wasn't responding to diplomacy". That kind of independent action on her part is something Janeway ultimately will have to deal with. The episode also got us a first look at the Hirogen, a new threat to Voyager, and now probably a bit ticked off at them.

I only have two minor beefs with this episode. One, if Voyager couldn't even get a small text or even voice message 60,000 light-years across the alien relay network, then how is it possible to send the vastly more complex and larger holographic program that is the Doctor across? And the second is that they really couldn't have been communicating with the Alpha Quadrant. The Prometheus was close to Romulan space, and that is located in the Beta Quadrant. That's still much closer to home, but it seems the writers didn't want to confuse viewers not up to date on Trek stellar cartography.

I'll give Message in a Bottle a well-deserved grade of 9 out of 10.

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4-15 Hunters

Hunters is rather like two episodes. The first half was really a necessary follow-up to Message in a Bottle. Using the same relay network the crew are able to receive letters from home, from family and friends who up until now has thought of them as lost. As Chakotay puts it, it must be agonising for many who finally have moved on, to now learn that they are in fact alive, but still 60 years away. This poignant reflection clouds the joy of finally being able to communicate with home.

Different crewmembers react differently, and that's good to know. Janeway learns that her fiancé Mark has married someone else. Tom Paris really doesn't want a message from his estranged father the Admiral, until he does. But he gets to have a nice scene about it with B'Elanna. But the most devastating news is that the Maquis are no more. They've been wiped out by the Dominion (as we've learned on Deep Space Nine) and all that's practically left of them are now on Voyager. I wish the show would've delved into this more. B'Elanna has a very strong reaction, but I think Chakotay's reaction, or should I say lack thereof, didn't serve his character well. He didn't even talk about it with Janeway, instead he comforted her about the loss of Mark.

Then there's the second half which deals with Tuvok and Seven getting captured by the Hirogen we saw in the episode before. (And in the process of that, another shuttle was lost, the twelfth one, but who's counting?) The Hirogen are somewhat threatening due to their size and relentlessness, but fairly uninteresting as a species. All they do is hunt and collect trophies of their prey, much like the Predators of the Predator movie franchise. They look better though. Or like the aliens that hunted Tosk on Deep Space Nine. Still, they're better adversaries than the Kazons, but I wouldn't want them as the main bad guys for too long.

It's too bad but perhaps inevitable that the relay network would get destroyed when the singularity imploded at the end. Voyager wouldn't quite be Voyager if they kept being in comm range of Starfleet Command.

I liked Hunters well enough to give it a grade of 7+ on my 10-graded scale.

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4-16 Prey

Prey is the inevitable culmination of the conflict between the differing outlooks of Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine, an argument that Seven won handily in my view. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A nice tie-in with the previous episode title, Prey shows us a couple of Hirogen hunters getting more than they bargained for when they decide to pursue a stranded member of Species 8472, a hunt that continues on Voyager. While the Hirogen are a fairly uninteresting species, Trek veteran actor Tony Todd (mostly familiar as Worf's brother Kurn) manages to lift his character above mediocrity.

Since both hunter and prey are hostiles Janeway's decision to help the member of Species 8472 is odd indeed, and Seven realises that: "A lesson in compassion will do me little good if I am dead." And thus she flatly refuses to help and in the end she saves the crew by beaming both hostiles onto an Hirogen vessel. This makes Janeway angry and she revokes a lot of Seven's privileges.

I must say I really liked the final discussion between Seven and Janeway when Seven, correctly in my mind, pointed out that Janeway punished her because she wasn't thinking like Janeway, and for not becoming more like Janeway. This after having been the one to encourage Seven to become an individual, but who now is frightened by it. To this the Captain has no answer, and I'm thankful for the show to not shove Janeway's view down on our throats. It also helps that Seven had been right. Finally someone standing up to Janeway's self-righteousness.

The visuals suffer a little bit from not too convincing CGI from the late nineties, but Species 8472 crawling along the hull of Voyager looked good. Once inside the ship, not so much.

A fun part was the Doctor, of all people, trying to learn social skills to a recalcitrant Seven, and Paris saying to the bragging Hirogen that he once tracked a mouse through a Jefferies tube.

I'll give Prey a grade of 8- on my 10-graded scale.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sun Jul 31, 2016 6:33 pm

4-17 Retrospect

This Star Trek take on the psycho-therapeutic scam of repressed memories is surprisingly good. But then the episode was aired in 1998, when the disastrous and life-destroying consequences of false memories had become apparent. In Retrospect it is the Doctor, who just downloaded a new therapeutic program, who convinces Seven that she has a repressed memory of having been violated by an alien weapons-dealer wanting to harvest her Borg nano-probes. She was probably projecting her experiences as an assimilated Borg after an explosive mishap, but unfortunately that wasn't satisfactory explained in the episode.

Suffice to say is that the poor innocent guy, who wasn't helped by the fact that he wasn't very likeable, in the end finds his reputation destroyed, flees and finally blows himself up. While it was a nice gesture for the crew and Janeway to initially side with Seven, a member of the family, the events must have been a sobering experience for them. It parallels numerous cases of implanting false memories of everything from sexual abuse to alien abductions in our real world.

Retrospect gets a grade of 7- from me.

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4-18--19 The Killing Game, Part I-II

What was the point of The Killing Game? Having the uninteresting race the Hirogens playing Nazis on the holodeck with the crew's French resistance is mostly an utter waste of time, and here it's even expanded to two whole episodes. The plot is completely ludicrous and frankly needs no repeating here. Is this the best they could imagine with the Hirogen?

I admit that the "progressive" (and I'm using that term loosely) Hirogen leader wanting to help his species develop by channelling their violent predatory instincts through a holodeck is a little interesting, for about five minutes. I suppose just asking Janeway for the technology was out of the question, even if she'd probably have handed it over readily, something she does in the end anyway.

But Seven looked nice in her evening gown and Jeri Ryan has a great singing voice. And Roxann Dawson finally didn't have to hide her real-life pregnancy as her holo-character conveniently was with a holographic child: "Unfortunately a very good projection. I feel 20 kilos heavier. It even kicks."

I'll grade and review both parts as one because there really is no point in separating them. And they both get a meager grade of 2- out of 10.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Tue Aug 02, 2016 9:09 pm

4-20 Vis à Vis

Vis à Vis is one of those alien possession™/body-swap™ stories that have been done to death on Star Trek and this one hasn't even an original take on it going for it. It's pedestrian and we the viewers are getting bored being transported from point A to point B to point C to the inevitable conclusion.

For no other reason than that the plot demanded it we're treated to a Tom Paris that is way out of character (for season four at least). Out of the blue he's bored with the life on Voyager, neglects his duties and is being an ass towards B'Elanna. All so he can spend time with an alien and help with said alien's engines (a job actually more suited for B'Elanna the Chief Engineer).

And speaking of B'Elanna, she was in effect implicitly raped by the alien guy pretending to be Paris, but somehow this isn't delved further upon, probably because of all the awkward questions that would have risen.

I also wonder about the alien guy. For someone who has apparently been doing body-jumping for a while he shows remarkable ineptitude at convincing others. Why else would he be behaving so carelessly, like getting intoxicated while on duty and openly reading Janeway's logs? It wasn't even that funny.

So no, a 1+ is all I can muster for Vis à Vis.

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4-21 The Omega Directive

The Omega Directive was a fairly novel concept that unfortunately didn't hold up in all its parts. Nevertheless I found it intriguing and even exciting in places even if the story changed focus through the course of the episode.

The technobabble surrounding this Omega molecule was frankly quite unbelievable. Given how volatile it is supposed to be, with the potential of destroying the very fabric of subspace for an entire quadrant, effectively prohibiting interstellar travel, it cannot be a molecule due to violating the law of conservation of energy. Why didn't they just call it a particle or something?

And while the secrecy of the directive made it mysterious and tickled my interest for the first half of the episode, Starfleet really went the wrong way here. I mean, how secret can you be when you first blare out a big Ω symbol for everyone to see, and then have the commanding officer locking herself up inside her office for hours? Everyone including the janitors would hear of this Omega directive in no time. And eventually Janeway fills the crew in on it anyway.

I really didn't understand why she never bothered to explain to those aliens how dangerous it was. The Omega directive superseded the prime directive anyway. So we get a shoot-out that could have been disastrous. And in the end Voyager goes on its merry way, with no guarantee that those aliens wouldn't start experimenting with Omega again.

This might sound like I didn't care much for the episode, but I really did enjoy it. The latter half focusing on what amounts to some Borg religiousness from Seven was inspired, even if I understand that it was added when the writers couldn't get an atomic bomb analogue story to work. Jeri Ryan, who really have impressed me in these past episodes, did an excellent job showing Seven's emotional side: "For 3.2 seconds, I saw perfection." She was even funny when she met Janeway on the holodeck: "Master Da Vinci doesn't like visitors past midnight." "He protested. I deactivated him."

I'm feeling generous so I give The Omega Directive a grade of 7- of 10.

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4-22 Unforgettable

Amusingly enough, especially considering the episode title, when I started to watch Unforgettable I couldn't remember actually having watched it before. After seeing it all I'm still not sure if I have. So it would more aptly have been named Forgettable, because that is in essence what it is.

Virginia Madsen, normally a memorable actress, and attractive to boot, is totally wasted here as the romance-of-the-week™ for Chuckles. There is absolutely no chemistry between the two and I kept waiting for it all to have been ruse by her character for some nefarious purpose. But it's just that her species has a bio-chemistry that makes people they encounter forget about them afterwards. Say what? And thus we get another dreaded reset button™.

Also, I found it odd indeed for Chakotay and the Voyager crew to at first so readily help her track down a fugitive that just wanted to escape the confines of the alien's isolated society, especially since she later on becomes a fugitive herself, who they do decide to help. Hypocritical much?

The only memorable, if you could call it that, thing about this epside is this funny exchange between Chakotay and Tuvok when they try to find a place for her on the ship, and Tuvok suggest the Mess Hall, because "all the qualities you mention would help in defending Neelix against the periodic wrath of the crew."

So I give a completely forgettable grade of 1 to Unforgettable.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Transwarp » Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:25 am

If I ever decide to rewatch any voyager episodes (and I might), I'm coming here first!
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sat Aug 06, 2016 12:24 am

Transwarp wrote:If I ever decide to rewatch any voyager episodes (and I might), I'm coming here first!

:hatsoff:

Continuing....

4-23 Living Witness

This episode is the closet thing Voyager ever came to a mirror universe episode. And while technically nothing much at all happened to "our" crew I still found myself enjoying it, for no other reason than it was fun seeing the normally bland crew act evil more or less for the lulz. Still, it's just a factually incorrect holo-recreation for the sake of some alien revisionist history.

That is what really lifts the episode, when they delve into the problem of how inaccurate history can be, especially when it is written by the victors or by people with an agenda. And I thought it was clever to use the Doctor, or rather his backup program, as the titular "living witness" to history, resurrected after 700 years (I'll try to forget that the mere existence of this kind of backup contradicts the show itself) and how he tries to set the record straight, initially just for the sake of Voyager's reputation, but then as a means to save a civilisation from continued strife.

The ending though, was a bit too rosy for my tastes, but then again, this is Star Trek. And apparently reach of the Federation haven't extended this far even in the year 3000, which makes me wonder if it still exists, and what the backup-Doctor might find once he gets to the Alpha quadrant.

I'll award Living Witness a grade of 6+ out of 10.

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4-24 Demon

Well, there's no beating around the bush, Demon was a bad episode, very bad. It makes no sense and has no point. If they wanted to make a duplicate crew it would have been much more interesting if they had used the Founders (from DS9), or at least their distant relatives. Instead we get some silvery goo.

For some inexplicable reason (a k a the plot demanded it) Voyager is running on fumes and they have to fill up the tank with deuterium. Well, that shouldn't pose any problems because deuterium is a very common element, being an isotope of the most common element in the universe - hydrogen. But no, here they must land the entire ship on a "Demon" class planet (named such just to tell us how inhospitable it is) to fish it up.

I'm also baffled that the crew so readily gave their DNA so duplicates of themselves could be created to satisfy the silver-goo aliens. This will obviously be revisited later on (in the equally pointless Course: Oblivion of season five).

The only really redeeming thing about Demon is the buddy banter between Paris and Kim, and that Kim finally has decided to stand up for himself and his opinions. Too bad it's in such a bad outing. And I suppose the fight over sleeping arrangements between Neelix and the Doctor was intended to be funny. Hint: it wasn't.

A grade of 2 on my 10-graded scale is all I can give Demon.

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Re: My VOY reviews

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sun Aug 07, 2016 8:27 pm

4-25 One

Put two of the best actors and characters together for an hour and you have a pretty decent episode, and this is what One is. Having the Doctor and Seven bicker as the rest of the crew are kept in stasis pods was a nice idea, and the execution was mostly good too, if a bit over the top and repetitive at times.

The reason for having the rest sleeping through it was a bit too convenient. For some reason they can't endure prolonged exposure to a vast nebula, which reminded me of Doctor's Orders from Enterprise (although it's probably the other way around, since this came first), when Doctor Phlox has to maintain the ship by himself and, like Seven, suffered hallucinations. I found some of the hallucinations to be a bit much and frankly unnecessary, especially the creepy alien intruder.

But these hallucinations amplifies her sense of loneliness, her sense of not belonging, which must seem terrifying for a former member of a Borg hive mind. But in a sense she was already alone before all this. Her Borg-ish persona is off-putting and scares most of the crew away. She craves company, but in fact lacks the social skills to make that happen. This is an interesting development for her, and there's a nice scene at the end when she invites herself to sit down with other crewmembers in the Mess Hall.

The framing device with the nebula could have been handled better. First of all, how could they have missed its presence until they were right on top of it? And from the charts you could see that there were better alternatives than going through it or around it, like, you know, "above" or "below" it.

The highlight of the episode was all the banter with Seven and the Doctor. One of my favourite lines is this one, apparently suggested by Robert Picardo: "Between impulse and action there's a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance." Heh.

One certainly deserves more than one grade. Fittingly, I give it a 7, while not of 9 but of 10.

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4-26 Hope and Fear

This last episode of season four was surprisingly not a cliffhanger, but that might be just as well, because it was obvious from the get go that they weren't getting home. A better title instead of Hope and Fear would have been Don't get your hopes up, since you're in the middle of a Trek production with the premise that you're stranded far away from home.

This is why I found the episode gimmicky and ultimately rather pointless. We've already seen too many false hopes come and go to even get excited. Even Janeway displays a healthy dose of sceptical demeanour. So now we get a new magical slipstream drive, on a false Starfleet ship (the Dauntless, NX-01A and no, it's got nothing to do with the NX-01 Enterprise) that is said to take them home in three months. Yeah, right!

Of course it turns out it's a trap. The friendly alien (Ray Wise in a wasted role) turns out to be not so friendly and has concocted an elaborate, and frankly implausible, scheme to exact revenge on Voyager. You see, Janeway's temporary alliance with the Borg to defeat Species 8472 allowed for the Borg to assimilate almost all of his people. While the moral argument might have had some validity, it is lost in the contrived plot.

The part that works best in the episode is Seven's fear and hesitation of going to Earth, even though, coming right after her development in One, it seems a bit strange that she now might decide to remain behind. She's like a moody teenager, and considering she was just "born" a season ago, I think it's an apt comparison. She's apprehensive about becoming more human, but she doesn't want to become a Borg drone again. At least she seems to slowly develop some sense of humour, like in this exchange with Janeway: "Understand?" Seven: "No. However if we are assimilated, our thoughts will become one and I'm sure I will understand you perfectly."

Hope and Fear gets a grade of 4+ from me, almost a 5 because of Seven.

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