Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Picardo's performance is the only saving grace of this episode.

Just so I'm clear on the stats, Voyager has fired 73 torpedoes out of an original 35? Thus, they are at a negative?

And they lost at least 10 shuttlecraft, and possibly as many as 17! According to the writer's guide, they only had 2 to being with, but they started ignoring that right away.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/inconsistencies-voy.htm

Gotta be a lost episode where they upgraded the shuttlebay into a bigass replicator.

Things like the torpedos and shuttlecraft would've been okay if they had at least inserted some throwaway lines of dialogue about manufacturing some more.

But I've heard that Brannon Braga had such disdain for critics of the show that he avoided even doing that much.

Why does modern Star Trek seem to attract producers and writers that sound so hateful toward their franchises own fans?

It ain't just Trek...

http://comicsalliance.com/um-actual...-porn-star-she-hulk-and-other-nasty-business/

Kyle has the shuttlecraft count at 15, and he's barely half way though season six. I'd be surprised if the count is under 20.

Glad you are continuing this thread!

Alice
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. Incompetent artists, however, are little more than cargo cultists.

This episode is basically Stephen King's Christine in space. Brannon Braga even admits as much:

1. The "possessed" ship is given a name.
2. It is bought from someone who is knowingly dooming the next owners for cheap.
3. It overwhelms and changes the personality of its owner.
4. It gets jealous of female attention towards the owner, even trying to kill the love interest.
5. The owner's friends eventually track down the truth about the craft.
6. The ship is destroyed in order to save the owner.

Of course, we all know Tom Paris isn't going to take a dirt nap, so there's at least one difference. I'd say that Stephen King deserves royalties for the damn episode, but I bet he wants nothing to do with this fucking mess.

It all starts out with Tom and Harry trying to guess Tuvok's age. This would be funny, if it wasn't for the fact that Harry could literally tap two buttons on his console and find out. Anyway, they encounter some crap floating around in space, and Tuvok immediately puts the ship on high alert and starts gearing up to kill everything with fire. He'd probably waste another ten goddamn torpedoes if it didn't become clear that it was a junkyard. And naturally, just before we get our Jerry Goldsmith Orchestral Theme, the camera focuses on Tom so that we know the episode will be all about him.

He finds a shitty little shuttle in the junkyard, and decides to convince Chuckles to part with useful shit for it because it has a novelty neural operating interface and some weapons that we'll obviously never hear about again. And if anyone ever says that B&B actually put effort into this shit, the scene that follows is proof that they didn't. Chuckles balks, saying, "We've already got a full complement of shuttles."

THAT IS FUCKING BULLSHIT AND YOU GODDAMN KNOW IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

A full complement of shuttles my ass. They've destroyed 15 of them at this point. We know they're keeping the Delta Flyer in there, and it's a shuttle that's big enough to have two separate cabins (a fact, by the way, that means that every shot of the Flyer leaving the shuttlebay is a shot where they're fudging the scale on either the ship or the shuttle, because the Flyer and whatever tiny-ass normal shuttles they have can't take almost the same amount of space going through that door). Neelix even states in this episode that they're still holding on to his interstellar equivalent of a '72 Datsun. It's not even a matter of whether or not they can replicate the shuttles - they don't even have the physical room. So, unless the shuttlebay is the fucking TARDIS, this episode is bullshit just from this alone.

Anyway, because Chuckles has no spine, he parts with actual useful things to get Tom the shuttle. And let me say, the visual effects guys did a fantastic job of replicating the terrible job the set crew did of redressing the shuttlecraft Chaffee from the Defiant on DS9 - it basically looks like they painted everything with a flat coat of leftover green paint and started nailing particle board to it.

So, just like every other hobby he has, Tom proceeds to run this one into the ground, foregoing holodeck time with Harry and fucking his girlfriend to work on the thing, even though it's pretty obvious she's down to bang in the shuttle if necessary. He gives up on basic hygiene, and starts to grow a beard. He even replicates a terrible, unflattering jumpsuit from some file he finds on the shuttle's computer (Luckily, we didn't have to see Tom jerking it to whatever porn he found on there). Finally, after using the neural interface a few times, he starts seeing a woman, played by an actress that had about as much subtlety as a brick to the junk, telling him that she's Alice, and that he has to repair her so that they can be together.

At one point, B'Elanna gets snoopy and the shuttle tries to vent all of its air so that she'd suffocate. Tom frees her, but she's angry - he's been swiping parts from Voyager to fix the shuttle. As she confronts him about it, Alice convinces Tom to put his plan into high gear - he takes off in the shuttle and blasts off for parts unknown.

Voyager, not content to let their adult crew members run off to go cyber-fuck shuttlecraft in the privacy of subspace, backtrack to the junkyard and ask the operator for help. He refuses, stating that all sales are final, but Neelix is able to ply him into talking by offering to return some chunk of rock that is highly valuable. Seven even says that some races would trade a fleet of starships for the rock, which is insane - they should go do this and get a fleet, not worry about their man-child pilot. But the dealer accepts, and as they press him for information about the shuttle, he eventually reveals that it has him under its spell as well, and it's powerful enough to actually try to kill him. The Doctor is able to suppress the ship's influence on the dealer, who is able to point them to where the shuttle is trying get Tom to go, stating that he would have take it there himself, but that he was too weak a pilot to do so.

It turns out the shuttle wants to go to a particle fountain and let it fountain some particles through it, and it's got Tom onboard with the plan. Strapped into the neural interface, and with all sorts of tubes running into his body, he's directly controlling the ship. Voyager shows up, though, and somehow transmits B'Ellana's consciousness into Tom's head via a comm link, where she can distract Tom and Alice long enough for Voyager to disable the shuttle's shields and beam Tom back, just as the particle fountain tears the shuttle apart (and no, it doesn't count for our listing - Starfleet equipment only). Notice how brief the description of the last act is? It's that bad, I just want it to fucking go away.

Earlier, I mentioned that this episode was the work of cargo cultists. A brief lesson, for those who are unaware. Back in WWII, Pacific Islanders outside of modern society saw a lot of weird shit - things flying through the air, and even landing on their islands. Unable to understand why the planes worked, they did their best to replicate them, building Gilligan's Island-esque knockoffs that, for the most part, looked the part, but wouldn't actually function.

This episode tried to riff on Christine without understanding why Christine was a decent story to begin with. It takes all the bullet points from that story, but fails to realize that those bullet points alone do not a good story make.

It's OK, though. They have a full complement of shuttles.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -35/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 11

Riddles
So frequently, Voyager episodes could demonstrate both the best their actors had to offer, and the worst their writers could deal out. On one hand, "Riddles" lets Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips do what they do best, which is drama, but on the other, it's a comically over-the-top example of how inconsistently Janeway was written and how poorly Voyager handled B-plots.

We open with Tuvok, trapped on the Delta Flyer with Neelix, who is torturing him with the Dad Pun level riddle ("hurr the name of the episode") involving a castaway surviving with only a calendar by eating the dates. Tuvok eventually has enough of that bullshit and goes off to to the aft room to meditate or something, when he notices the computer doing a dump of the library data. He is then shocked, seemingly out of thin air.

After getting Tuvok back to Voyager, Neelix is distraught and blames himself - Tuvok appears to have major brain damage from the incident. Janeway decides to backtrack to the world that Neelix and Tuvok had visited in trade negotiations in hopes of finding out more about what happened. Meanwhile, the Doctor lets Neelix fill Sickbay with Vulcan crap in the hopes of bringing him out of the coma he's in.

Janeway meets up with an investigator from the aliens that Neelix and Tuvok were working with, who is basically a space cryptozoologist, insisting that the attack was by something called the Ba'neth, because extra apostrophes are totally alien. He agrees to help them research it, hoping that he can find more information on the Delta Flyer. While there, they use technobabble to show some sort of shadow, or something, of the creature, confirming the investigator's beliefs. Seven is even able to enhance the shadow using even more technobabble, revealing that the creature has tentacles, which is inconsequential because we never get to see the damn alien in the flesh. It's just some fiddly little shadow-cloud-thing that probably took the CG artist ten minutes. This is a bottle episode, but teasing us with an actually-alien alien just seems cruel.

OK, up to this point, it all sounds pretty awful. And it's Voyager, so let's be honest, it is. They've devoted an absurd amount of time to a plot that nobody should care about - playing Scooby Doo with the alien - and ignored that one of the crew is practically dead. Don't worry, it's time to get back to that.

Tuvok wakes from his coma, but is afraid and uncommunicative - his Vulcan brain rewired itself around the damage it received, reducing Tuvok to a childlike state (luckily, he retains control of his bowels). Neelix takes it upon himself to take care of him, slowly reintroducing him to aspects of the ship. He leads him to the bridge, and has him interact with the crew. The beautiful part about these scenes is that they are never, ever played for comedic effect, and Russ and Phillips play them perfectly straight. After Voyager tracks down the Ba'neth fleet with technobabble and harasses them, they start to attack. While Voyager is ultimately able to fend them off, the attack scares Tuvok, who starts to speak, saying that Neelix protected him.

As Tuvok starts to experience and understand more, Neelix has him play Kal-toh with Harry, which goes about as well as it would if you asked a ten-year-old to assemble an engine manifold. Tuvok gets angry about it, and after returning to his temporary home in sickbay, he gets in a fight with Neelix, referencing his crew file, stating that there's no way he can live up to the legacy of who he once was, and, what's more, that he doesn't want to.

Neelix gets pretty depressed about this, and goes to eat his feelings in the mess hall late at night. Seven is in there, contemplating ways to track down the Ba'neth because, let's face it, if there's one thing that attracts Voyager's senior staff, it's an alien race wanting nothing to do with them. It's like Voyager is a repressed teenager or something. He mentions the incident in sickbay with Tuvok, and expresses that he doesn't understand how Janeway helped Seven become who she was. Seven points out that Janeway didn't try to make her back into her old self - she was ultimately capable of a lot less than she was as a drone - but that she helped her find out what she wanted to become instead.

This inspires Neelix to let Tuvok explore - he quickly demonstrates an interest in art and sculpture and a talent for cooking (gee, I'm glad they kept something about him from the series bible), quickly producing food that the crew eagerly states is more edible than Neelix's. He even baked a cake, frosted with the frequency of the Ba'neth cloak he had discovered just before getting shocked.

Janeway takes the frequency and uses it to track down a Ba'neth space station, swarming with their ships, all cloaked. She opens hailing frequencies to try to talk to them, hoping for information about what shocked Tuvok, and they open fire. Janeway immediately goes for the nuclear option and threatens to expose their entire race. While that gets their attention, they're still reticent about it, even as the investigator says that he'll drop his search for space Bigfoot if it means they'll help Tuvok. Janeway then tells them that's far better treatment than they'll receive at the hands of the investigator's people, meaning that she knows they will fucking try to murder them. While the Ba'neth did try to steal their information and hurt Tuvok to cover it up, I don't think it's generally a sound diplomatic tactic to threaten to wipe out an entire sovereign state (or species) for what is essentially basic espionage.

Anyway, now that the Doctor has more information about the blast that hit Tuvok, he's able to devise a cure. Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that brain damage doesn't work that way. When our bodies get fucked up, outside of poison and disease, it's largely a physical repair operation. While knowing more about the weapon certainly won't hurt, the damage has been done.

Anyway, Tuvok doesn't want to be fixed - he's enjoying his new life of good food, good Jazz, and lounging around his quarters in pajamas. Neelix tells him that while he enjoys new-Tuvok's company, the ship needs old-Tuvok more. Tuvok can't disagree, and goes in for the procedure. Afterwards, he and Neelix meet up in the mess hall. Old-Tuvok is back, requesting boring old tea, but as Neelix gets it for him, he mentions that, in addition to the dates, the marooned man could have eaten the sundays as well. Neelix points out how illogical a solution that is to the riddle, and Tuvok looks, as much as a Vulcan can, terrified.

As I mentioned previously, Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ made this episode - there were certainly times where Tuvok's behavior could have been played for laughs, but they didn't. This could have been a top-notch episode, had it not been dragged down by the inane B-plot. If you honestly think that your viewers will get so bored with an A-plot in which one of your leads is recovering from a near-death experience, you have at least one of two problems - your audience isn't actually captivated by your characters, or your audience is as dumb as posts. Voyager has the problem of the first, but the creators thought the problem was the second - meaning, ultimately, that whatever they did, they wouldn't be able to salvage their show. They were aiming for the wrong target.

Three stars for Phillips and Russ. One star off for the remainder of the episode.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: -35/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 11

Dragon's Teeth
The episode opens with a very nice shot of some sort of torpedo destroying a futuristic office building. In the future, aliens hate TPS reports. Some forehead aliens called the Vaadwaur are on the run in papier-mâché cave #7 from the bombardment. They proceed to toss themselves into some stasis chambers, which is basically dooming yourself to hundreds of years of sleep in Star Trek.

900 years later, Voyager manages to fly itself into some sort of subspace corridors - per usual, it didn't have anything to do with their competence. Some aliens called the Turai are pissed off that they're there, and knock them out of the corridor and tell them to be prepared to be boarded so that all evidence of the corridors could be erased from their computers. Naturally, Janeway won't have anyone deleting their Wikipedia pages, especially since they say that the corridor took them 200 lightyears in the space of five minutes, so they run off and hide on a shitty, irradiated planet that shows the remains of a very advanced civilization. Like, futuristic office building sort of advanced.

So, Voyager's all beat up (though we can't see it, and they just landed the ship on a damn planet, so it can't be too bad off), and they detect some life signs in a cavern. Naturally, Janeway grabs Tuvok and Seven and beams the fuck on into some random cave in an irradiated planet that may or may not be filled with fucking nuclear winter. They discover the Vaadwaur stasis pods, and Seven's panties get wet at the idea of saving, instead of destroying, a civilization for a change, so she fires one the fuck up.

Naturally, it's the pod of their illustrious leader, who proceeds to regret not that his wife is dead (again, if you get into a stasis pod in Trek, chances are good that you're going to be sleeping through your death), but that she was afraid, which seems off to Janeway and anyone with any sense at all. They start reviving the rest of them as they take the leader back to Voyager, where he recognizes both Neelix and Seven as a Talaxian and a Borg, respectively. This is an interesting statement, just because it indicates that the Borg have been around for at least a millennium (later statements show that the Borg were busy assimilating back then as well, but were apparently weak enough that species like the Vaadwaur could survive). The leader spins a tale of the Vaadwaur being a merchant race, whose "underspace" subspace corridors made them the envy of the quadrant - eventually, enough jealous enemies banded together to destroy their civilization via orbital nuclear bombardment, leaving he remaining Vaadwaur to put themselves into stasis.

Conveniently, the Turai start bombing the fuck out of Voyager - the Vaadwaur leader uses a satellite to help Voyager fire up a warning torpedo at them (oh, yes, you can fire photon torpedos through an atmosphere into space with a satellite that's almost a millennium old, yet still in perfect working order in a stable orbit above a planet). He also immediately bribes Janeway to help him find a new home for his race by offering her access to secret corridors in the underspace (after all, Innerspace was already taken, as Robert Picardo would attest). She sets the whole crew off on trying to help them do that, and more and more details pile up, indicating that the Vaadwaur are, at the very least, not particularly pleasant people - they seem proud, almost indignant about what's happened to them. Eventually, Neelix decides to look into why "vaadwaur" in the ancient Talaxian tongue means "foolish," and he cross-references the results with the information Seven has.

Together, they put together a much different story of a race of interstellar gangbangers, hopping out of their corridors to raid and destroy colonies to expand their territory. The leader of the Vaadwaur eventually admits that they engaged in both, but that they just wanted to settle down now. Sadly, his subordinates disagree, and turn their ships on Voyager. In its escape, Voyager manages to "disable," in Tuvok's words, four of their ships. The visual effects team apparently interpreted this as "blown the fuck apart by phaser fire," however. Janeway calls up the Turai and asks for some help, and he doesn't believe the Vaadwaur are back, despite one standing directly on the fucking bridge next to Janeway. Eventually, however, he's convinced, as the Vaadwaur leader and Tuvok beam down to the surface and send up some codes to let the Turai target the Vaadwaur fighters that are attacking Voyager. The leader sacrifices himself to make sure Tuvok can go, and Voyager high-tails it out of there. Tom says he's going to warp from within the atomosphere, but the visual effects shot clearly shows Voyager in default black-and-starry-space going to warp, leaving the promise of the underspace behind.

After they leave, Seven discovers that some of the Vaadwaur escaped into underspace, and apologizes to Janeway that she helped bring back such an antagonistic race. Janeway kind of shrugs, says she might have done the same, then launches into a comically over-the-top rant about how Seven's actions have fucked up the balance of power in the quadrant. Of course, they never show up in any significant capacity again in the series (they make an appearance later on, but nothing really related to the plot).

I'm ambivalent about this episode. It's well-paced, relatively light on technobabble, and doesn't feature anyone saying or doing anything particularly stupid (though there are two scenes with the Doctor and Torres that are clearly shoehorned in just to give them something to do). What I would have liked to have seen more of is related to their antiquity. The implications to the Borg are kind of huge, and they're largely treated as a throwaway line in the end. It's even established that the data the Borg had from then was so terrible that Seven was only able to make it useful once it was cross-referenced to Neelix' Talaxian cultural database, which implies that the Borg must have had some major incidents in the following years. Plus, the Vaadwaur were so advanced 900 years ago that they weren't exactly slouches when they were revived, yet they keep bitching about how all their shit's out of date. Building a spacefaring culture that really does look out of date to the modern Delta Quadrant, but possibly being able to use that to their advantage.

So, per usual, lots of promise, but little payoff, and no long-standing consequences. Voyager in a nutshell - and that's what earns it its score.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: -36/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 12

Kyle, slow down. I don't know how long your nerves can take this dosage. Yes, I know you want the whole ordeal to be over, but this is dangerous!

Riddles, in spite of its on-the-nose title is definately a standout episode. My mom even sat down and watched it one time and she don't know nothong 'bout Trek

How long till we get to the only really great episode in the series?

Which is?

Message In A Bottle I think it was called.

Where they have the battle over the U.S.S. Prometheus at the end. With the three Romulan Warbirds on one side and the two Defiant class ships and one Akira class ship on the other.

That was actually a pretty decent space battle.

But it also guest starred Andy Dick.

One Small Step
Or, the Disappointment of Robert Beltran

We open on a NASA-derived space ship in orbit of Mars in 2032. John Mark Kelly, a man with three first names, and therefore dead to God himself, is piloting the craft, talking with some fellow astronauts on the surface of the planet. There's an honest-to-Behr reference to DS9 here during the astronaut's discussion of the world series - Buck Bokai is mentioned. However, before they start talking about the Eugenics Wars, WWIII, or any other Trek continuity, the anomaly of the week shows up and eats the Ares IV spacecraft.

Back in the 24th century, Chuckles is trying to read a book in his quarters when his doorbell keeps ringing. When nobody comes in, he goes to answer it, only to have the door start to go nuts. Calls to the Bridge get rerouted to the Transporter Room, before all the ship's audio gets routed into his quarters. He hops between the opening and closing doors (can the doors crush people? These are the vital questions that go unanswered in Trek) of his quarters and goes to Engineering, where he bitches out Seven for making unauthorized optimizations to the ship's software. They're called to the bridge when the anomaly of the week shows up, which Seven quickly avoids using some Borg-related technobabble. Somehow, despite the fact that there would have been virtually no good computer records that would have made it through WWIII and the 21st century's (relatively) crappy sensors, Starfleet has identified this thing as a "graviton ellipse," which might as well be "bullshit shape," and Chakotay recognizes this as the same sort of anomaly that munched up the Ares IV.

Given the anomaly's rarity, instead of, y'know, getting the fuck back on the road, they decide to investigate, much to the consternation of Seven of Nine, who believes it to be a waste of time. Now, from the pursuit of science and the expansion of knowledge and the human condition and blah, blah, blah, she's wrong, but in terms of the scope of what the show was supposed to be about - people trying to get the fuck back home - she was absolutely right. But, then, we wouldn't have what's actually a decent episode, so, let's move on.

Tuvok and Seven find evidence of a human ship inside the anomaly, that uses the same type of materials as the Ares IV would have. Struck with the knowledge that it is likely the same anomaly that harassed NASA four hundred years ago, they decide to modify the Delta Flyer with Borg-inspired shielding to safely enter the anomaly and check it out. Chuckles eagerly volunteers, and Janeway volunteers Seven for the mission, ostensibly to get her to appreciate the spirit of exploration, but in reality, she would make the most sense given that she's the only one who knows any damn thing about how these anomalies work.

Once inside the anomaly, Seven, Tom, and Chuckles set about to find the remains of the Ares IV while Seven pouts about it. Tom asks Chuckles if he thinks they could have handled it back in the 21st century, even pointing out that they "live in the lap of luxury," a rare consideration of how good humanity has it nowadays in Trek. He even goes on to say that he'd love to study the anomaly and its contents indefinitely, saying that "they'd manage" to Seven's concerns are justified, though, when a dark matter asteroid (which looks just like a chunk of space Obsidian, I guess) starts getting attracted to the anomaly just as they find the spacecraft, surprisingly intact. Janeway tells them to GTFO, and Chuckles proceeds to take a shit all over those orders and demand that Tom tow the massive, heavy hunk of 21st century with them. Surprisingly (for a Voyager episode) or not (if you have common sense), this goes poorly and the dark matter asteroid plows into the anomaly, which fucks up the Flyer and shocks Chuckles into unconsciousness. Tom revives him, but Seven is - rightfully - pissed off that he almost got them killed over what is, at best, a history lesson.

After they get back in contact with Voyager, they tell them that they're effectively dead in the water without parts. B'Ellana realizes that a part from the Ares IV could be repurposed to work for their purposes (apparently, Engineering grads from Starfleet Academy memorize the parts manifests from all the damn space ships), so Janeway orders Seven to beam over since Chuckles got himself zapped and Tom needs to actually pilot the Delta Flyer. She does so, and Chuckles begs her to download their database. She tells him yes to shut him up (she does the same to the Doctor earlier in the episode, taking his holo-camera, which never shows up again), then sets to work magnet-booting around the spacecraft. She turns on the computer, which immediately starts playing back video logs from Kelly, which Chuckles demands they listen to while, y'know, Seven is supposed to be working.

We then get to see the logs, in which Kelly, trapped in the anomaly, sees a chunk of alien spaceship float by and realize that this is proof of alien life, and should therefore be preserved. He sets the sensors to log everything they can, then tries to figure out a way out. However, the strength of the anomaly is too much, and he burns through his remaining fuel reserves. As the power starts to run down, he turns off the life support systems and cranks up the sensors, hoping that his final contributions to science will one day be realized.

In a couple of surprisingly effective shots, we see the arm of Kelly's dead body, preserved in the background, and Seven finding a photograph of Kelly and his wife. And those two scenes, perhaps moreso than any other at this point in the series, demonstrate that Jeri Ryan can act - she's not just shapely set dressing. She perfectly portrays the emotion of finding these artifacts of his life, filtered through her rather cold personality.

Just as the anomaly starts to disappear back into subspace, Seven grabs the used part, downloads the database, and slaps her commbadge on Kelly's body, requesting that both she and her badge be transported. Tom and Seven are able to reintegrate the part, and proceed out of the anomaly with some tractor-beam assistance from Voyager. After the anomaly disappears, and with Chuckles listening in from Sickbay, Janeway eulogizes Kelly from the bridge, his body in the standard empty torpedo casing, draped with the UFP flag. Seven even speaks up, stating that she learned her lesson about the importance of exploration (uhg, come on guys), then whispers the winner of the 2032 World Series to his body. The last shot is of the torpedo being fired from the ship, sailing off into the blackness of space (and no, torpedo coffins don't count in our running total, as I could see how those could be easily replicated).

I thought this was actually a pretty good episode, and served as a love letter to NASA and current-day space exploration. But, someone didn't agree with me. That someone was Robert Beltran. In an interview, he expressed that he was initially thrilled with the episode, until he learned that he'd be playing second-fiddle to Seven's character arc.

I like Robert Beltran because he's one of the few actors who was willing to speak up about B&B's bullshit. But his criticism here wouldn't fly, because Chakotay's character wouldn't have actually grown from the experience. He was already convinced of its value, so it would be, what, Chakotay has a good time on an away mission? What would the depth be? Where's the conflict? The only way I could think of it being a truly Chakotay-driven episode is if he broke rank to get the thing all by himself, but even then, what would his motivation be? What about this random piece of NASA history made that worth it?

In the same interview, he kind of shrugged that off as being the writer's duty - that it wasn't his job. But the most successful Trek actors have always taken personal ownership of their characters, and they'd push back against mischaracterization and under-utilization. In that sense, I wonder how much of Beltran's complaints really stemmed more from his seeing it as a job, and not really taking advantage of being part of the Trek phenomenon, as battered and bruised as it might have been. But in most other ways, it's also painfully obvious that the writing staff of Voyager was dysfunctional at best, writing softball sci-fi for the characters with built-in story.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: -36/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 12

Oh, we've been there, my friend.

I even find it painful to read about the show. I can't make it thru an entire review post.

how did they get the torpedo on the bridge?

alcohol

Like a senior prank?

The Voyager Conspiracy

Fuck.

Are you ready to find out what Loose Change would have been like if it was about Voyager instead of 9/11? Well, then climb the fuck aboard this shit train - choo choo motherfuckers.

Seven's busy fucking around with adding a USB port to her alcove so that she can download Voyager's computer core into her head - I'm sure Harry's collection of schoolgirl erotica will be of tactical advantage someday. In one of the episodes two decent moments, you can almost see Seven smiling as she indulges Naomi Wildman's curiosity. She shoos her off, though, and hooks herself up for her hit of data heroin.

Meanwhile, Chuckles and the Captain are eating dinner in a scene that's desperately trying to pretend that this show hasn't become the Janeway/Seven Power Hour. The entire scene is a setup for the rest of the episode, but it's literally them making painful small talk over replicator rations. It's fucking worthless, like this damn episode.

After Seven wakes up, she runs off to the bridge to bitch about some power fluctuations she's deduced have come from magical fleas that absorb plasma or something, all thanks to her data download. Glad she put that information to good use. Meanwhile, the bridge staff track down an anomaly that takes them to a lone space station. They contact the owner, who says that it's a catapult designed to fling starships a few thousand lightyears forward. Upon hearing he built it so that he could get home, Janeway immediately offers to help - in exchange, he'll let them use it after he leaves.

While the engineering and science divisions are doing something important, Seven decides to go take another nap. Upon waking, she reveals to Janeway that the slingshot is using a lot of the same damn technology that the Caretaker's array used, including a rare type of generator. The alien shyly admits it after being scanned and cleared of Caretaker DNA, stating that he was afraid Voyager would steal the damn thing if they knew about it.

This is where this shit starts to go off the fucking rails. Seven gets a copy of Neelix's shuttle's database and wires it up to the alcove, jacking in for a night sure to be filled with plot-convenient Talaxian fairy tales and love letters where Neelix awkwardly hits on a two-year-old. When she wakes up, she immediately requests Chuckles' presence in Astrometrics. She locks him in and turns off the sensors, but before he gets any wild ideas about getting freaky on some exploding consoles, Seven launches into a batshit fucking crazy conspiracy theory that Starfleet and Janeway conspired with the Cardassians to infiltrate and take over parts of the Delta Quadrant. Now, anyone with a fucking brain knows that Starfleet, let alone Janeway, is too fucking incompetent to pull that sort of shit off, but Chuckles buys it hook, line, and sinker after she goes full-on overcompressed YouTube video crazy, listing off stardates and events from Voyager's stumblings through the Delta Quadrant.

Now, take all that, and wash-rinse-repeat, because after her next nap, it's Janeway's turn for almost literally the same scene, except that it's now a Maquis plot to obtain the Caretaker's array to launch attacks against the Cardassians. And, again, after Jeri Ryan does her best auctioneer impression (seriously, if she was paid by the word, she'd be a fucking millionaire off of this episode alone), Janeway's along for the ride.

Finally, she goes full-on batshit, swipes the Delta Flyer, because anyone on the goddamn ship can steal that thing, and heads off to destroy the slingshot. Janeway and Chuckles Scooby-Doo it in Cargo Bay 2, realizing that Seven's both got them convinced the other's a traitor, and after about ten seconds of embarrassment for acting like children, Janeway beams over after the Doctor tells them that she's downloaded so much data into her brain that she can't make any judgment calls about reality any more. Seven reveals her latest conspiracy - that the Federation set her family up to be assimilated as part of the world's worst plot to make Annika Hansen into a Borg drone that could be taken apart in the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway has a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment with her, and Seven comes around. They fling themselves three years closer to home with the slingshot, and any lasting damage from Seven trying to download the internet into her head is conveniently written out.

What torques me off about this episode is that it could have been decent. There's plenty of continuity porn - it even explains what the fuck a tricobalt device is, and it's probably the last positive reference to Kes before they fuck her character over later in the season. But instead, it's Jeri Ryan yelling at the screen for two thirds of the damn screen time. The episode is almost entirely Seven talking at people. This would be fine, if it was incredible speeches like Picard or Sisko were known for, but instead, it's literally what would happen if you asked a Truther to narrate Loose Change in the lobby of an outdated Ramada Inn and Suites. And that's just not pleasant at best. On Voyager? Fucking awful.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -36/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 12

Pathfinder

The sad thing about this episode is that what makes it bad is also what makes it good, and the good is really hard to overlook.

We open with Reg Barclay, on Earth, opening his apartment door for Deanna Troi. Oh no, this is not an episode of TNG, my friends. This is TNG showing Voyager the fuck up on its own show. As they catch up, Barclay reveals that his request for a visit while the Enterprise is at Earth was not entirely innocuous - he's been canned from the Pathfinder project because of his obsession with the fate of the U.S.S. Voyager.

As narrated to Troi by Barclay, the Pathfinder project was set up to find a means of establishing regular contact with Voyager. With some science help from DS9 and the use of a piece of equipment called the MIDAS array, Barclay's come up with an idea for using a lot of technobabble to create a wormhole to permit communication to the Delta Quadrant. However, Reg's supervisor doesn't believe the plan will work, complaining about how the last of Barclay's ideas resulted in a lot of wasted effort. Reg reveals to Deanna that he then headed off to the warm, familiar brace of the holodeck, where he has a whole simulation of Voyager set up to be sugary-sweet to him - ostensibly to work out issues with his wormhole plan, but in reality, he's socializing with the crew in his self-aggrandizing manner that got him in trouble on the Enterprise. He even ends up spending the night in the holodeck in his holographic quarters aboard holographic Voyager.

The next morning, the Pathfinder team is graced by the presence of Admiral Paris, Tom Paris' dad. Reg's supervisor announces progress made with the Vulcans using the MIDAS array - one-way transmission that could arrive in a matter of days, provided they aimed it at the right spot along Voyager's plotted course. Reg speaks up (much to his supervisor's dismay), stuttering his way through a proclamation that two-way communication was possible with his plan, and that it wouldn't hurt to try - in the process, insulting Admiral Paris and torpedoing his chances.

Cutting out of the episode for a minute, the bit about just needing to give it a try has me thinking - the Federation is basically some liberal commie paradise, so money and resources aren't really at issue, and Reg wants to use the array for a function it is capable of without modification. In short, there's no reason why they shouldn't try. No wonder Starfleet can't nail down a transwarp drive or a cloak that doesn't piss off the Romulans - there's so much red tape for any scientist or engineer to cut through that they'd never be able to get anything done.

OK, back to the action - Reg, depressed, returns to the holodeck instead of dealing with it like any other member of Starfleet, which is going to go drink synthehol at a bar and pretend like that's just as good as getting blitzed. This concerns Deanna - she thinks he's falling back into holo-addiction (and is probably secretly terrified at the possibility that he's added a Goddess of Empathy to the simulation), but he insists it helps him with his work. The fact that every hologram in there eats out of the palm of his hand goes unmentioned. While there, he realizes that the reason why he couldn't get the simulations of his approach to work was that he was thinking too wide - he was trying to create a much larger wormhole than he'd need to transmit data.

His supervisor catches him, though, and dismisses Barclay from the project. Reg makes one more last-ditch effort to pitch his case to Admiral Paris directly. While he agrees to take a look at Reg's proposal, Barclay is convinced that Paris is just trying to get rid of him. With that, Reg has caught Troi up to the present time. He begs her to go to bat for him with the admiral, but instead, Troi says that she's going to take some time off so that she can continue to help Reg even after the Enterprise has departed.

That night, unable to sleep in his real bed, Barclay makes a decision. He heads back to the lab, fires up the MIDAS array, and establishes his microwormhole. Just after he sends a message to one possible sector that Voyager might be in, Reg's supervisor shows up with security in tow. They chase him into the Voyager holodeck simulation, but Barclay uses the holodeck's inherent forcefield support to lock out security, all while redirecting the array to broadcast to other sectors. Finally, his supervisor's had enough of that bullshit, and sets up the holographic Voyager to self-destruct, which would force the simulation to violently and graphically end for its holographic inhabitants. Reg can't bear the thought, and cancels the program.

As he's being escorted away, Admiral Paris bursts into the room, proclaiming that he thinks Barclay's idea is sound. What Admiral Paris was doing running around a communications lab in the middle of the night is beyond me, especially since nobody was supposed to be there. An emo Reg admits that his plan didn't work, until finally, his last transmission goes through to Voyager. Janeway replies, and Barclay and his supervisor work to clean up the transmission. Paris is ultimately able to have a brief conversation with Janeway, and both sides transmit data relevant to the other. Paris closes the call by asking Janeway to let Tom know how proud he is of him, then tells Reg that he's got quite a bit of work to do now that the project is a success.

Here's the problem with this episode. Far too often, the writers of Voyager and Enterprise went back to the TNG well for story ideas, if not entire characters and episodes - the most notorious of which being Enterprise's These Are The Voyages (and it is fucking difficult to type "voyages" and not "voyager" now, which is depressing as fuck). TNG-lite, as it were. But here, they've done it, devoting the vast amount of screen time to the episode's guest stars, and it's far-and-away better than what Voyager usually turns out. It's like letting it all hang out in your skant, or wrapping up in a warm, cozy Space Hotel blanket. Dwight Schultz always puts in a top-notch performance, and unlike every goddamn pairing on Voyager, he and Marina Sirtis have actual onscreen chemistry. They actually seem like genuine friends - I'd suspect they really are, which probably would make that easy.

It's kind of cheating, though, which (along with Reg having a cat named Neelix and the major plot hole of how they could identify sectors Voyager might be in when they can't even account for the jumps forward they've made in their progress home) earns them a demerit. For better or worse, Schultz and Sirtis will return to Voyager, but the appearances become more and more gratuitous as they go on, unfortunately.

The episode also emphasizes how much better the First Contact era uniforms are than the Generations era uniforms.

Oh, and @Anna, next review is for your favorite episode.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: -36/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 12

Fair Haven
Scene: Brannon Braga's office. The stale smell of dried jism wafts from under his desk. Littering the floor are dozens of empty bottles of Seagram's, the carpet long-since stained from their careless disposal. Replacing a third of the scripts on his shelf are photos of Braga, Berman, and a terrified-looking Bryan Fuller looking on as Braga appears to fuck a blow-up dall with a spray-painted silver body, a Starfleet delta scrawled onto the left breast in Sharpie. A dart board with Ira Steven Behr's face hangs beside the door - all the darts are stuck in the wall, four inches below the board, leaving the picture untouched. Kate Mulgrew enters, leading Braga to hastily slam a magazine into his desk drawer and drop a copy of a script titled "Can You Smell What T'herock Is Cooking" (the title scratched out in red pen by Fuller, reading "too on-the-nose") onto his lap.

Braga: Katie, how are you doing? Looking sexy as always.

Mulgrew: We've been over this, Brannon. I'm not "sexy," "hot," or "smokin'," to you.

Braga: Can I at least tell you - damn, that ass looks good in those jeans.

Mulgrew: No.

Braga: Fine, fine. Listen, you're going to be our heavy in this next episode, "Fair Haven."

Mulgrew: I'm the heavy in practically every episode. Either me or Jeri. I've heard that Garrett and Robert are jonesing for an episode or two?

Braga: Nope, no way. There's no way the network would let either of them fuck a dude hologram.

Mulgrew: What.

Braga: Yeah, Janeway's totally going to get her rocks off on some holo-schlong.

Mulgrew: I can't believe I gave up stage work for this.

Braga: Whatever, the stage sucks ass - there aren't even any explosions.

Mulgrew: What a shame.

Braga: It is. Anyway, here's how this shit goes down. Bobby's been fucking around on the holodeck instead of plowing Roxann -

Mulgrew: You know they don't actually have a relationship, right?

Braga: Whatever, you know he'd hit it. Anyway, he's created a whole Irish town in the holodeck, and Garrett totally gets cockblocked by Bobby while he's trying to get some Fanny McStrange. Anyway, Voyager found some sort of space thunderstorm. We're going to call it a neutronic wavefront because that sounds badass as fuck, and Neelix convinces Janeway to keep Fair Haven going to ride out the storm.

Mulgrew: Wouldn't they need the power? For the storm?

Braga: I don't know, they have the holodeck hooked up to the Delta Flyer on jumper cables or some shit. Anyway, Janeway goes to check it out, and she meets a bartender that totally soaks her space panties. She stays up all night getting horny as fuck as they play bar games, then finds out he's happily married in the morning.

Mulgrew: It is amazing we don't have more female fans of this show.

Braga: Oh, this shit's totally for them, this is like one of those paperbacks you find in a rack while you're checking out at the Rite Aid and the bitch of a cashier is trying to see if you have a fake ID just because you're buying like eighty cases of wine coolers. It's like, here, take one, loosen the fuck up, and call me if you're down to fuck.

Mulgrew: Anyway.

Braga: Yeah, so, Janeway needs to get plowed, and fast, so she goes to the holo-lab -

Mulgrew: The what?

Braga: The holo-lab, where you build holodeck programs. Fuck, where do you think Tom does it?

Mulgrew: The holodeck? We don't even have a holo-lab set?

Braga: We're just going to drag a wall from the science lab set into the holodeck set and BAM, holo-lab. Anyway, she starts making changes to Sullivan - the guy you're gonna fuck is named Sullivan - and makes him taller, gruffer-looking, and deletes the fuck out of his wife. Oh, and she "makes him more provocative," whatever the fuck that means, but Robin Burger insisted that if we were going to put her name on the episode that she had to contribute at least one line.

Mulgrew: The nerve of her.

Braga: Right? It's OK, we're getting a new writer named Mike Sussman, and he'll let us put his name on anything. Some nerd's going to get so pissed off at him someday.

Mulgrew: Continuing on?

Braga: Fine, whatever. She goes back to the holodeck for a date with Sullivan. Since Robert says we're contractually obligated to include him in episodes, Chuckles'll see you on your date, then totally try to hit on you on the bridge by reminding you of your new holo-boy-toy.

Mulgrew: You know, I'm not like Robert. I don't mind not being in an episode. Especially this one. Let's make that happen.

Braga: No way. He's gonna be totally hinting that she's gonna get her potato fields plowed by an Irishman, and she'll be all like, "You can wipe that smirk off your face; it’s not what you think," and "Too bad he’s made of photons and forcefields." and I'm gonna make Robert say "I never let that stand in my way" because I know it'll piss him off.

Mulgrew: My God, why did I agree to come back after Season 5?

Braga: Sci-fi, baby. Anyway, you go back to the holodeck and remove all the characters and make eyes at Sullivan, and he's gonna want to kiss you, so you're gonna moan, "Oh, I think I’ve waited long enough" and then - BAM - cut back to your quarters where you're dereplicatorifying all your Irish books because it's obvious you hit it and quit it. Neelix wants Janeway to go to a party in Fair Haven the next day, but she's a total bitch and tells him to fuck off, so later at the party, Sullivan gets pissy that he's not gonna get more of your sweet body and starts a fight, and the Doctor has to patch everyone up.

Mulgrew: There is so much that is wrong with all of that. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit. Wouldn't the safety protocols have prevented injuries?

Braga: I don't know, Tom probably deleted them so he could have room for his porn. Anyway -

Mulgrew: No, I wasn't done yet.

Braga: Sure you were. Anyway, the Doctor goes off and tries to get her to admit she went for Sullivan's corned beef and hash (the beef is his rod, the hash is his tackle), saying, y'know, all stuck-up like Bob Picardo does, "Did you have...intimate relations?" And she'll be like "That’s none of your business, let’s just say it was a memorable three days," so it's pretty obvious she was down to fuck. Anyway, he convinces her that the only way she's gonna get any without slamming one of her subordinates is with a hologram or alien strange, so she gets the fuck over it, but the space storm wipes out half of the holo-program. She makes sure to save Sullivan, and agrees to see him again, but locks out her ability to edit him so that she can't make him an even more irresistable piece of fuck-meat.

Mulgrew: That's it. Send me the script, I'll cross out all of your usual stage-directions that focus on where my buttocks are relative to the camera, and I'll get this over with. Thank God there's only a season and a half of this to go.

Braga: Oh, quit whining. Tim's stuck pretending to be space-sick the entire episode. (Yelling out the door as Mulgrew storms out of the office) Hey, if you want to come out to the bar, I'll totally hook you up with some panty-dropper shots!

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -36/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 15
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 12

Torpedoes remaining: 13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 8
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

eh?

Fixed. That'll show me for cribbing off of the text from the Nemesis episode review.

The worst thing about Fair Haven is that they make a god-damned sequel! I expect your upcoming review of Spirit Folk to set some sort of record for internet snark. Just think of how much effort it took to deliberately write an episode that's worse than Fair Haven, and imagine what they could have done if that effort went towards writing actual good episodes instead.