Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Flashback
Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, "Boy, when I was young, TOS was awesome, but now, with my refined sensibilities, I find it to be a little cavalier and crude, so I'm glad I have a show like VOY to keep me on the straight and narrow?"

Yeah, me neither.

We open with an utterly forgettable scene between Neelix and Tuvok in which Neelix delights in trying to serve him some new concoction. Tuvok is surprised when it is actually edible (upon reading Memory Alpha, it turns out that this scene, and another that I'll mention soon, were added because at the last minute, Nichelle Nichols couldn't participate). Tuvok and Neelix are called up to the bridge.

Voyager has discovered Yet Another Nebula, only this time, it's full of sirillium, which is, I guess, the space form of Clean-Burning Propane, and Voyager has a bunch of Propane Accessories that could use some. Seeing the nebula, however, sends Tuvok into a Vulcan panic attack. He sees an image of a young version of himself holding onto a girl hanging off of the edge of a cliff. Her grip soon slips, and she falls to her death.

The Doctor slaps a gizmo on Tuvok's neck and sends him out of sickbay. Tuvok goes back to his quarters to meditate (scene no. 2 of the Nichelle Nichols replacement) with some building blocks, and Kes comes and visits him, briefly discussing the building blocks' usage in meditation and how they represent the builder's mental state. The blocks, of course, are scattered across the table as his structure collapsed. Subtle, eh?

Anyway, the Doctor tracks down some Vulcan medical texts that basically say that the treatment for Tuvok's repressed memory is to have a mind-meld with a trusted family member or friend to help guide them through recovering it, as repressed memories physically damage Vulcan brains. Tuvok asks Janeway to, and they fire up the Mind Meld express. However, rather than revisiting the memory, they end up on...

The bridge of the Starship Excelsior during a Klingon attack with Sulu in the center chair. Janeway and Tuvok express confusion over this turn of events, but Tuvok is able to rewind his memories back to the beginning of the day. Rand wakes up the young recruits, and Tuvok reports to the bridge, bringing Sulu a cup of Vulcan tea (the same tea that famously falls off of Sulu's coffee table in STIV). Soon, the Praxis wave strikes the ship. The events then, as far as I can tell (though MA contradicts this and says it was a continuity error) fast-forward to the beginnings of Sulu's rescue of Kirk and McCoy. Tuvok formally protests this action as being against regulations, and Sulu slaps him down.

Sulu directs the ship through a nebula, and Janeway and Tuvok soon recognize it as looking very similar to the nebula Voyager has encountered. The memory soon bubbles to the surface, and the mind meld is broken by the Doctor.

While resting before making another attempt, Janeway has ship's bitch Harry do some research, as apparently Janeway knows fucking nothing about the events surrounding the Khitomer accords. Harry reports back that he can't really find any scientific similarities between the two nebulae beyond visual appearance, and even notes that the logs seemed to conspicuously not note Sulu's actions after the Praxis wave. Janeway then goes off on a speech about how it was a different time, where the Prime Directive wasn't invoked as often as phaser fire, and they didn't have plot devices like replicators and holodecks. Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in our faces, I would prefer to be watching STVI right now.

Janeway and Tuvok meld again, and they end up on Excelsior once more. After Tuvok chats it up with Voltaine about his decision to leave Starfleet, we get, for Voyager, an incredible indictment of the sanctimony that TNG through VOY, DS9 included most of the time, preached. He claims humans basically fly around the galaxy trying to recreate everyone in their outwardly-squeaky-clean, but inwardly conflicted and deeply irrational selves. He even mentions he intends to leave Starfleet. He and Janeway then discuss this, where Tuvok reveals that his decision to join in the first place was based on his parents' wishes, and how becoming a parent himself made him understand their desire to give him the benefits of a life in Starfleet, like letting countless millions die in natural disasters because they don't have a warp drive to go to Earth and blow the Federation president into getting aid.

The Klingon attack then begins, and the crew is called to stations. When Tuvok and Janeway arrive on the bridge, Kang calls up Sulu, and Sulu cheeses his way through pretending to have gotten lost in the nebula. Kang hesitantly agrees to see him back to Federation space, and Tuvok and Sulu work together to ignite the Clean-Burning Propane in the nebula and disable Kang's ship. As they escape, Voltaine is killed by a Starfleet Exploding Console. While he lay dying, he calls out to Tuvok for help, and this invokes the image of the little girl. However, this time, the meld isn't broken, and Tuvok's memory of the events quickly begins to degrade, with Sulu recognizing Janeway's presence and demanding Security's removal of both Janeway and Tuvok from the bridge. Tuvok is able to rewind the events one last time, and as Voltaine is dying, Janeway helps Tuvok focus though the memory.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is noticing something incredible - a third mental presence indicated by his neural scans. He quickly realizes that somehow, a virus is causing this, and he starts zapping Tuvok with a technobabble device. As he does so, the memory soon shifts over to Janeway, and she witnesses the same memory Tuvok described, but with herself as the protagonist (and Janeway was kind of a chubby kid, apparently). The Doctor soon starts zapping her as well, and we witness the memory with about a dozen different protagonists.

Soon, the virus is eradicated, and the Doctor helpfully explains that it disguised itself as a memory engram, hopping from host to host and hiding in its memories long before Dimitri Voltaine.

The best characteristic about this episode was also its most damning. This was part of Star Trek's 30th Anniversary celebration, a concentrated effort on the part of the various production staffs to recognize the Original Series. DS9 handled the TV era, and VOY handled the movie era. When we saw "Trials and Tribble-ations," however, it was obvious that DS9 got it right. They brought out the rare, for DS9 anyway, time-travel card, and spent the vast majority of the episode enjoying the hijinx of the 23rd century. The story surrounding it was a mere scaffold to support the fun they were going to have, and they did an excellent job. VOY, on the other hand, went the opposite direction. They failed to realize that we didn't really want to see much of Voyager for this episode (or any other, but that's beside the point). So instead, we get little dashes of STVI with a big helping of Voyager's usual hopeless brand of bland. And yet, whenever George Takai was on the screen, you could tell he was having a great time. Grace Lee Whitney was, of course, there too, and she seemed to enjoy the little extra bit of character that was tossed her way. And even when we've established in Voyager's canon that Chakotay had met Sulu, after the initial scenes on the bridge, we never see him again - apparently, he can offer no insight into a situation involving a man who knew Chakotay well enough to recommend him for the Academy.

It was a nice to see the movie era once more, but it is a shame it had to be tainted by the ineptness of Voyager.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

The Captains Table books go on to explain that Chakotay actually met Demora Sulu (from Generations), who became Captain of the Enterprise B after Harriman retired.

It really makes more sense that way, since Hikaru Sulu would have been too old to be captaining anything by that time.

Janeway does not even deserve the right to utter Kirk's name.

The episode was written by Brannon Braga, who has admitted on many occasions that he never watched TOS and didn't 'get' the show.

Not exactly the type of person you want writing your tribute episode.

The writers of DS9's tribute episode, on the other hand, were big fans of the original series and it showed in all the little details.

Sisko and Dax spoke of that era with nostalgia and fond memories, unlike Janeway, who spoke of Kirk with a twinge of disdain.

Plus, what was up with all the medical technobabble in this episode? TOS was definitely not about that...

A few more nitpicker's points: Tuvok said that the attempted rescue of Kirk and McCoy was two or three days after the Praxis explosion, but in STVI, Spock says that the explosion happened "two months ago". Also, Valtane was alive by the end of STVI.

I think Spock said it was actually SIX months ago.

Flashback showed off Voyager's utter lack of quality in so many ways. They reshot much of the action on the Excelsior bridge from STVI, and it was so much LESS interesting with their wide-angle closeups and camera angles, and crappy Voyager music.

I still enjoyed the interior scenes with Sulu & crew, and the new CGI of the Excelsior and that Klingon battlecruiser.

I remember thinking I might not mind an Excelsior series.

Well, George Takai pushed for that for a while, but frankly, I would think that any Excelsior series with B&B at the helm would have been such a disaster that it would have soured the STV-not-withstanding pristine movie era almost entirely.

They did do a nice job with the CGI, though - I'm pretty sure that it's the only instance of the 'crackling' style of shield hits that were done with CG.

Manny Coto and Ron Moore.

I saw Coto's Trek, I wasn't impressed.

They basically would have cancelled each other out. It'll be something I discuss later on, in S6, I believe, but I really think that Ron Moore was only really happy on a show when he was creating canon, not playing within it. Manny Coto, on the other hand, would have been trying to slip in sly little winks to some random one-off line every five minutes.

The Chute
Harry must have taken one hell of a wrong turn at Albuquerque, because he ends up sliding down a chute into a prison. He is fought over by the prison inmates, but then Tom sucker-punches him in the stomach and makes up a story about how Harry had turned him in, and how he deserved his revenge.

It turns out that Tom and Harry have been wrongfully accused of pulling off a terrorist bombing. They've been tagged with studs in their heads that seem to heighten their paranoia, and food and shelter in the prison is scarce.

Meanwhile, on the ship, Janeway tries in vain to convince the government holding them to let Tom and Harry go. A representative states that the sole evidence beyond residue found on Tom and Harry that would have been on anyone present at the bombing site was that the weapons were trilithium-based, and clearly derived from Voyager's dilithium. Torres tells Janeway that it could have also been derived from paralithium (sure, what the fuck, why not? We can have quadralithium and pentalithium too while we're at it), and Voyager detects some and heads off to investigate.

Meanwhile, Tom and Harry have cobbled together some wires to try to disable the forcefield protecting the entrance to the chute. They try to do so, but after Harry takes a shock to the chest, Tom gets shanked in an ensuing prison squabble. A man helpfully appears and tells Harry that without medical care, Tom will die, so he'll call for a medical evac, prompting lots of laughter. Tom and Harry's shelter is stolen by a crazy man, and Harry ends up going to the sarcastic man for help. Offering to trade Tom's boots for food, bandages, and shelter, the man agrees, after some persuading.

Voyager finds the source of the paralithium readings - it's a small ship that appears to be operated by a local terrorist/freedom fighting cell. They are hesitant to help, but are forced to do so, as Janeway essentially throws them in the brig. After essentially threatening one of the prisoners with the time in the very prison he's protesting, Janeway finally convinces the prisoners to lead them to where Tom and Harry are being kept.

Meanwhile, Harry helps nurse Tom back to health. He then goes with his fellow prisoner to try to unlock the chute and does so, climbing up it to discover that they aren't underground - they're in space. After sliding back down, the prisoner tries to convince Harry that instead of trying to escape, they'll need to create a society of order amongst the prisoners. This man clearly isn't quite sane either.

Janeway contacts the government one last time, claiming new evidence to clear Tom and Harry's name. However, the representative tells them that sentences cannot be reversed as a form of deterrent, and to expect the ship to be boarded. Janeway warps away, and hatches a plan with Neelix to use his shuttle to make a sneak-attack on the prison.

After Harry spends some time with the prisoner, he returns to find that Tom has, in a delirious and paranoid state, destroyed the tangle of wires in the pipe that Harry used to unlock the chute. Harry rages out and almost starts beating Tom with it. The prisoner encourages him to finish the job and kill Tom, as he'll just weigh Harry down. He even hands Harry a knife, but Harry refuses, telling the prisoner that he'll never murder his friend.

And just in the nick of time, Janeway, Tuvok, and other Starfleet security personnel storm the prison, killing a few prisoners and wounding others, and they take Tom and Harry back to Voyager, as Neelix flies his shuttle away, barely avoiding the government patrols.

After the Doctor removes the studs and helps rehydrate Tom and Harry, they go off to enjoy a big meal. Harry is emo, though, because he almost killed Tom, but Tom tells him that the only thing he remembers is Harry refusing to kill his best friend. Cue happy music!

Overall, this wasn't quite as bad an episode as I remembered it. The guest star as the prisoner did a pretty good job, and it's another instance in which Janeway simply did what needed to be done rather than humor some ridiculous alien culture's laws.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

This is actually one of my favorite episodes. One of the very rare episodes to effectively use Harry Kim.

The orbiting prison is a sweet idea and the atmosphere in the prison was appropriately creepy and claustrophobic. Great directing.

It might have been even better if they had left Kim to rot in the prison.

The Swarm
Tom and Torres are in a shuttle, and Tom is teasing Torres about some young guy that's got a crush on her. He then makes a pass on her, and Torres utterly shoots him down. Ice burn. Then some aliens beam onto the ship and basically shoot 1.21 gigawatts of power into them. Whoops.

This is the episode that spawns the Doctor's interest in opera. He's singing along in the Holodeck, and he and a holographic diva fight it out over the best interpretation of the particular piece they are trying to perform. Just as they are about to begin again, the Doctor believes that he has forgotten the words. Janeway has the Doctor return to Sickbay to treat Tom and Torres. It turns out the alien disruptors basically blew a few fuses in Tom and Torres' brains, but the Doctor handily sets them on the road to recovery. Torres is eager to leave, but the Doctor insists she stay. He then goes to pick up an instrument, but forgets where he placed it, and after finding it, asks Torres what she's still doing there. She rolls her eyes and leaves.

Janeway calls a staff meeting and asks for options. Neelix reveals that he's heard only rumors of this alien race, and that anyone who has ever encountered them was usually slaughtered. Tuvok, Chakotay, and Harry report that they've detected a sensor net defining their territory that would take Voyager a year and a half to fly around. Harry comes up with an idea to basically shield Voyager from the sensor net, and Janeway enthusiastically supports it.

Tuvok isn't happy with this, stating that Starfleet regulations basically state to respect the borders of other cultures. Janeway tells him that she won't ask the crew for an extra year and a half to avoid some bullies.

Then why the fuck didn't you bang Q?

Anyway, the Doctor reports that Tom will need some minor surgery, as the damage to his neural pathways was a little more severe. However, as he begins the surgery, he realizes that he has forgotten how to perform it. Kes ends up walking him through it, and, in a fit of frustration in the end, basically completing it for him.

Kes brings this up to Janeway and Torres, and Torres' only solution is a reinitialization of the Doctor's program, which would wipe out the two years of progress he's made. The Doctor readily agrees to this in order to help protect the crew, but Kes fights for him, making the argument that just resetting him doesn't solve the problem, it only would make it more difficult to diagnose and repair until the degredation started to occur again. Janeway agrees, and directs Torres to figure out some solutions.

Meanwhile, Harry has figured out exactly how to slip through the sensor net. As the ship sets out, Tuvok and Tom detect a massive ship, which, upon further investigation, is revealed to be thousands of tiny ships in a tight cluster. A swarm, if you will. Janeway directs Tuvok to keep an eye on them, and sends them through the sensor net.

Torres uploads the Doctor to the Holodeck and fires up the Jupiter Station diagnostics program. A holographic Lewis Zimmerman springs to life, and starts chewing Torres out for letting 'it' run for two years. His only solution is to reinitialize the program, but as Torres is called off to Engineering, she tells him to come up with another solution, as he uses the same style of self-growth and learning that the Doctor himself does. The Doctor begs Torres not to go, clearly afraid of what is happening to him.

Back on the bridge, the crew discovers a heavily damaged ship with one faint life sign aboard. They beam the alien to sickbay, where Kes helps stabilize him. However, it is clear his injuries are severe, and the Doctor's only advice is that "he is a very sick man." The alien tells Janeway that the aliens covered his ship in tiny ships and killed everyone onboard before dying. As Janeway leaves, Kes gives the Doctor a harmless instrument to 'treat' the dead man with.

Soon, Kes goes to visit the Doctor in the holodeck with holoZimmerman. Zimmerman discovers that the Doctor's program is rife with trivialities, and even expresses surprise at the Doctor's romantic aspirations, asking if women were actually attracted to him. He even asks Kes if he is really a friend to her, as he is just a hologram. After asserting that he is, Zimmerman asks the Doctor if Kes is his friend. His only reply is that he doesn't know who she is.

Meanwhile, an alien ship has departed the damaged vessel, and hits Voyager with a pulse that essentially tags the ship to all the other alien sensors - they start chasing Voyager, and are faster than the ship, even at maximum warp. Worse yet, they are using interferometric pulses to essentially sap the ship's shields and reverse any phaser fire back onto Voyager.

Yes. Interferometric pulses. What in the goddamn fuck. This is the best they could come up with? If you're going to technobabble us to death, couldn't you at least give us plausible sounding technobabble? I mean, I remember as a dumbass middle schooler hearing that and busting up laughing at the absurdity of it.

Kes tries to get help from someone, as the Doctor's program is rapidly destabilizing, but Janeway essentially tells her to fuck off. Kes takes matters into her own hands and goes back to talk to HoloZimmerman. While there, she strikes on the idea of using his program as a graft onto the Doctor's program to stabilize it. Zimmerman says that it'll destroy his program, but if the Doctor's program was destroyed, he wouldn't have a purpose anyway, and happily consents to the graft. He starts the procedure, and he and the Doctor's programs go offline as the computer works on the program.

Back on the Bridge, the alien ships have started to latch onto Voyager's hull, with aliens beaming onto the bridge and promptly getting shot the fuck down by anyone with a phaser on the bridge. How the fuck did that other pansy-ass ship get destroyed by these goons? Anyway, Harry comes up with a technobabble way to fire phasers at the ships in such a manner that the effects would cascade across the swarm, and he fires, breaking one ship off of Voyager's hull, causing all others to break off as well - the entire swarm is disabled, and Voyager blasts off, happily giving the finger to a sovereign nation's borders.

Back in Sickbay, Torres and Kes await the results of the graft, and soon the Doctor reinitializes. However, he doesn't recognize either of them. Torres fakes an ailment to justify to the fresh EMH his activation, and he sets to work, humming the opera he was singing before - he'll remember it all soon enough.

Yes, that's right - the ending of Star Trek: Nemesis cribbed from a Voyager episode. Dear God.

This episode drives me nuts, because I liked the parts with the Doctor, but utterly loathed the rest of it. This was, incidentally, a strapped-to-the-hood-of-a-Jeep-and-gutted Mike Sussman job. Fuck it, I can't justify three stars.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

I forgot to mention - it actually showed someone's throat getting cut. Fucking cold for Voyager.

And actually, this episode makes me realize the problem that I'm running across frequently with episodes of Voyager. One of the plot lines is usually passable, or even good, but the other is just mind-blowingly bad. Voyager seemed to be damn afraid to essentially just give an episode to a couple of characters and a single plot and let it go from there. Instead, it has to hop back and forth like a schizophrenic man-child between a decent sci-fi plot and filler for the remaining characters.

Honestly, if the actual prison plotline of The Chute hadn't been, really, pretty outstanding, it would have only pulled two stars like The Swarm did. Had it had more time devoted to the actual story that people wanted to watch, it could have made four stars easily.

I think TNG did a much better job of integrating all the cast members into the main plot. Even if an episode is focused one particular character, I almost never have to wonder where the other characters have gotten off to. They usually all contribute to the plot in some way.

This was frequently a problem with the later years of Voyager. When it basically became the Seven of Nine show, I can recall many episodes where Tuvok, Neelix, Kim, and/or Chakotay did absolutely nothing except stand around.

The early VOY years were not very good either but at least I had the feeling that they were using the whole cast of characters in each episode. I became more cynical when they dumped Lien for a nice rack.

Of course you can't even compare this to DS9, which not only developed 8 or 9 main characters but dozens of recurring characters. Amazing how they were able to spread the plot around to cover everyone, even marginal characters like Jake Sisko. Some of the most well developed characters weren't even in the main cast (Nog, Kai Winn, Dukat, Damar, Martok, Garak, Weyoun, Eddington, etc. etc. etc.)

How do we "fix" Flashback's timeline botch re: Praxis

Tuvok having a "memory problem"

There's no excuse for that.

False Profits
Remember how the Ferengi were originally supposed to be ferocious, greed-crazed gnomes that ate their business partners? Remember how TNG threw that totally out the window in their first damn appearance on the show? Remember how "The Battle" was the only decent Ferengi episode on TNG, and how it was an utter crap shoot on DS9?

Now, can you trust Voyager to not fuck this one up? Surprisingly...it isn't quite as bad as I remembered. It, by far, is not the worst Ferengi episode in Star Trek.

Voyager happens upon evidence of a wormhole. As they begin investigating, they discover a nearby in a preindustrial age. The curious thing about it is that it picks up a reading consistent with a replicator which, at this point in their journey, is a distinctly Alpha Quadrant invention, and certainly not something that a preindustrial society would have lying around.

Janeway has Tom and Chuckles beam down, decked out in native garb. Chakotay is busy waving his tricorder around like an idiot, barely concealing it in his hands, and Tom is harassed by a bum and a very persistent salesman. They discover that the replicator is likely in the temple, and they start to go there, but the salesman informs them that they'll need a talisman to be allowed entrance, and, of course, he sells them. They trade their shoes for some gaudy bling.

On Voyager, Harry and Torres happily announce that the wormhole leads back to the Alpha Quadrant. However, the Delta Quadrant end tends to bounce all over the place, and they still need to figure out a way to predict its movement. However, they eventually settle on using some technobabble to try to draw the aperture to their location.

Back on the planet, a commotion ignites the town square. Tom and Chakotay take notice, as the 'sages from the sky' make an appearance. First, out comes the replicator. Second, out comes the Ferengi. One man comes up and asks them for help with a failing business. The Ferengi are outraged at the suggestion, and question why he hasn't been exploiting his children as a labor force. Their 'help' is a copy of the Rules of Acquisition, and then demand he pay for it.

Tom and Chakotay beam back to the ship and report on the conditions on the surface. Tuvok has correlated the data, and has come to the conclusion that the wormhole is the Barzan wormhole that Picard and Co. encountered seven years previous. The Ferengi are, obviously, the ones that flew into it while Troi was banging someone. Tuvok points out that the Ferengi don't have the Prime Directive, and Voyager can't interfere with pre-warp civilizations, so their hands are tied. Janeway pulls an internet lawyer act and claims that since the Federation moderated the negotiations on the Barzan wormhole, they were responsible, and therefore had to fix it.

Janeway beams them aboard, but the Ferengi basically smack her down and tell her that the society has come to believe them to be Gods, and the sudden disappearance of their gods would send the society into chaos. Janeway beams them back down, having fully displayed her entire hand. Way to go Janeway, you wouldn't last five seconds at TNG's poker table.

Janeway holds another staff meeting, in which they decide to out-Ferengi the Ferengi. Yeah. So, back on the planet, the Ferengi are counting their riches, when they are disturbed by a knock on their door. Demanding who is entering, first comes the Nagus' cane, and then a whole new Ferengi.

Sort of. It's Neelix. I'm sure Ethan Phillips missed the makeup from Menage a Troi. He plays at being the Grand Proxy, the official representative to the Nagus. He claims that he's arrived from the Alpha Quadrant after a probe from Voyager alerted them to the temporary stability of the wormhole, and that the Ferengi are to report back to the Nagus and surrender all their newfound wealth to him. He grabs a couple of bags of money and tells them to work up a good speech to leave the natives on.

He starts distributing the money in the town square, which prompts confusion from some of the locals, as they've never seen a 'sky sage' behave in such a manner. However, the Ferengi have decided that rather than surrender the world they're ruling over, they'll simply kill the Grand Proxy instead. When Neelix walks back in, they attack him with ornamental, but sharp, swords, and soon, he cracks and reveals that he's actually a Voyager crewman. They throw him out and tell him to crawl back to Voyager.

While he and Tom and Chakotay are sulking, the beggar sings them yet another song and demands compensation. Chakotay realizes that this might be the key in forcing the Ferengi's hand, and asks about the end of the story, paying his shoes, again, for the privilege. The beggar reveals that a third sage would arrive with three new stars in the sky and accompany the sages back on wings of fire.

Waiting for the evening, Neelix soon gathers the attention of the town square, revealing that he is the messenger sent to retrieve the sages. The Ferengi soon protest, but then Chakotay has Voyager ignite three proton bursts (not torpedoes, sorry) to 'create' the new stars in the sky. The villagers are convinced, and decide to help the sages on their journey by lighting them on fire. The urgency of the situation convinces the Ferengi to tell Tom and Chakotay where the dampening field is, and they disable it, just in time for the Ferengi and Neelix to be beamed aboard, completing the saga of the sages to the natives, and saving them from the Ferengi's greed.

However, the Ferengi somehow manage to overpower the security officer assigned to them on Voyager, and they steal the Ferengi shuttle out of the shuttlebay. While they intend to retrieve all their profits, one of their defenses to Voyager's tractor beam destabilizes the wormhole, and they are sucked in with a shot that is reminiscent of how they ended up in the Delta Quadrant in the first place. The wormhole permanently destabilized at both ends now, Voyager continues on their long journey home.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this wasn't the worst Ferengi episode around. It featured at least one not-entirely-inept Ferengi, and it took advantage of a lot of the canon established by TNG and DS9. It also didn't seem to be afraid of being heavy on the guest stars for a change. A relatively harmless one-off that actually fit well into the established canon.

At least it didn't have me screaming about interferometric pulses. By the way, we can thank TNG for introducing the word 'interferometric.' Thanks a bundle.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

It is kind of annoying to see the crew almost make it home every episode only to have it snatched away at the last instant.

Fuck, we know its not gonna happen anytime soon. Why manipulate the audience like that? That's why people called this show Gilligan's Island In Space. At least they had Ginger and Mary Ann.

That's why I gave up on it after a couple of seasons.

• You knew that they'd never get home until the final episode (or close to the final one--which would've been better than that abomination of a finale).
• For the most part, all Starfleet/Maquis conflict ceased after the first episode.
• No matter how badly the ship had been mauled, it always looked brand-new by the next episode (if not before).
• No real ongoing storylines.

ST: ENT was bad, but I rank it above VOY which, as this thread has reminded me so well, was practically unwatchable. ENT was so bad that it was funny at times. VOY was just bad.

According to Memory Alpha, this was the sixth instance that Voyager was within arm's reach of the Alpha Quadrant. In other words, it happens, so far, about once every eight episodes. Perhaps a little more frequently than was necessary, but I don't think it necessarily approaches "Gilligan's Island In Space."

Later on in the show, they even wise up to it, and instead simply present the crew with more opportunities to shave years off the trip, rather than getting home immediately in one go. A little more realistic, I'd say, and it allows for the crew to occasionally succeed as well.

Yeah but in many of those instances where the light-years were shaved off, it was not because the crew worked hard at it. They just got very lucky. Kes gifted them some miles when her rack got too small and she left the ship, and future psycho Janeway got them the rest of the way home by screwing up the timeline and stealing technology.

They never actually struggled and fought for the miles. There might have been some other jumps back but I don't recall them at the moment. I think future psycho Harry might have given them some miles when he tripped back...

Remember
Voyager's playing interstellar taxi service for some aliens who have an exceptionally slow warp drive in exchange for upgrading the warp engines to use FlexFuel or some hippy nonsense. Torres, an old alien lady, a hot blonde alien, and Harry are all maxin' and relaxin' in Engineering. Torres helps set up Harry with the hot blonde, but don't worry, Harry won't have many more lines in this episode, and we all know he ain't getting any.

Instead, Torres goes back to her quarters and crashes out early. She eventually has a dream. A wet dream. And we get to see Torres and some alien going at it until she's abruptly awoken by Chakotay. Torres is late for her shift, so Chakotay decided to simply break into her quarters and wake her up. He asks if she's OK, and she kind of sighs it off. Fuck Chakotay, no, it's not OK, just because you're not even getting laid in your dreams doesn't mean you have to ruin it for all the other sexually frustrated members of Voyager (i.e. everyone whom Tom Paris is not banging).

While walking her to Engineering, Chakotay hassles her about the dreams until she reveals that she's basically had wet dreams since a little after the aliens came aboard. He agrees not to reveal that Dream-Torres is a nympho under threat of death.

Meanwhile, Tom and Harry go to the mess hall to see that Neelix has redecorated it to make the aliens feel more at home. Janeway's there in some godawful robe thing that looks like it was made out of an old canvas tent, watching some old guy play an instrument that looks like that one TNG ship with the multicolored sphere at the back of it. She expresses a desire to try it, and the alien offers to teach her how. However, he does this by telepathically transmitting his memories of the instrument to her, which surprises her and Tuvok finds "interesting."

Congratulations, those of you who aren't operating out of a vegetative state now know the source of Torres' dreams. However, don't worry, in true Voyager fashion, you'll be hit in the face with it.

She has another dream, but wakes up and heads to work. She passes out on her way to Engineering, however, and dreams a while longer. Basically, a father figure in the dreams is telling her that the boy who is totally doing her is no good, and that his people are dangerous. She secretly sees him anyway, even as she graduates and earns an achievement award.

God, the romance shit is just so cloying. I've mentioned this before for a different episode, but it's like what a middle school girl would write, thinking it to be both sexy and romantic, when clearly, a Romeo and Juliet ripoff is anything but.

Kes and the Doctor revive her, and the Doctor straps yet another electronic gizmo on her head so that the dreams won't continue. The leader of the aliens apologizes, and explains that her dreams were probably a composite of telepathically transmitted memories from all the aliens aboard - the events never occurred. Torres doesn't buy this, though.

She ends up going back to her quarters and falling asleep again. In this dream, she helps lead a relocation of the "Regressives," the group of people that her fuck buddy is a part of. They're basically Luddites, and the alien society is relocating them to their own own colony so that they can live their life as they choose. Her father claims it is voluntary, but the Regressives seem to be confused about what's going on and where they're going.

Torres wakes, and realizes who the woman is in the dreams. She goes to see the old alien woman, who is dying, apparently poisoned by her own people. She then forces Torres through the last of her memories.

Dream-Torres' boyfriend shows up and tries to get information out of her about the relocation, then appeals to her, telling her that his people are being slaughtered, and that there is absolutely no colony.

Hey hey, have you got the other allusion yet?

They hear her father coming, so he hides in the bathroom. Her father quells her fears, telling her that the location is being kept secret to help maintain the life they wish to lead, and that there is no way their society could be doing anything so atrocious. He even tells her that he's seen her boy-toy palling around with other girls as well, trying to convince them of the same things he was telling her.

She gives him up, and watches as her father forces the man out of the room. We then move to a public execution where her (presumably ex-) boyfriend and a couple of other Regressives are on the docket to be killed. They are basically microwaved alive, and Dream-Torres joins her fellow people in claiming her society's superiority over the Regressives.

Yeah, I bet you've got it now, haven't you? Good job! In case you haven't, though:

The dream then advances a few years, and Dream-Torres is leading a group of school children aside the gate to the old Regressive community. She tells them that they fought amongst themselves and killed each other because of their primitive ways, and the children happily affirm their societies superiority. End of dream!

So yeah, if it isn't painfully obvious, this is a Nazis/Jews allegory. An incredibly heavy-handed one. Torres confronts the aliens about it, and they deny everything, with the younger aliens even claiming that there was no way their society could have exterminated an entire subculture. With no evidence of foul play from the Doctor, Janeway is left to believing Torres at her word. But, Janeway tells her there's little they can do, that they can't force a culture to acknowledge their own past (arguably one of the more controversial things Voyager ever stated), but she does tell Torres that the last of the alien engineers are leaving the ship, and maybe she can convince them.

So Torres goes and talks to the hot blonde that Harry certainly didn't get to see naked, and tries to convince her, but she is still in denial. When Torres wishes she could transfer these memories like the old woman transferred them to her, the alien girl tells her that they can receive as well as transmit, and starts pulling Torres memories, starting with the alien guy banging the shit out of her.

God, where to start. This episode had incredibly lofty goals, and probably could have fared pretty well under a writer other than Brannon Braga (Ken Biller, Joe Menowski, anyone, really), but as it was, it was about as subtle as a brick to the face, and was about as enjoyable to experience. Roxanne Dawson does admirably, and does as best she can with what she's given, but Brannon Braga can write little more than stereotypes and absurdities.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Some other instances included the Quantum Slipstream drive, with Voyager piggybacking on the Dauntless as it tried to take Janeway and Seven to Borg-infested space, or with Voyager trying to build one of its own and then Harry ending up cratering the ship on an ice planet (both of these episodes were actually fairly decent, if I recall correctly).

There were a couple more, but I don't remember them. I felt it was a little more honest than just saying, "Oh, well, you could get home tomorrow" when we all knew it wasn't the case.

They got 20,000 light-years out of the Borg transwarp drive they stole in Dark Frontier as well.

The Star Trek Star Charts book that came out a few years ago shows Voyager's route home, including all the super-jumps.

Great thread, Kyle. Lots of PTSD all around, but great thread.

Reading this jogged my memory of why I stopped watching Voyager, and it was one of the only times where canon really stood out as being violated. I think it was the episode The Swarm (it might have been The Chute) where Janeway is trolling around the hallways of Voyager looking for something to blast, and she's carrying a phaser rifle...one of the new ones introduced in First Contact. Which there's no way Voyager would have, and if they did have them, there's no way the crew wouldn't be using them.

It was my moment of "wow, they're not even trying anymore" and I gave up.

Yes, VOY's hand held weapons were far in advance of those seen on DS9. In fact, DS9 usually just used the older phaser rifles. I recall seeing the newer versions only once or twice.

Contrast this with the number of times that, say, a main cast member "died" in TOS but was alive by the end of the episode.

I feel like, if all the episode is about is "Will they get home or won't they?!?!?" then that's pointless and bad. But if it's taken as an opportunity for, I dunno, character development, or a moral quandary, (that one episode from early in the first season) or even just a good space battle, then as long as you aren't using the premise to death, you should be all right.

Partly ties in with the remark I made in the TNG thread about the premises people do or don't accept.

I believe you're thinking of Macrocosm, an episode later on in Season 3, in which Janeway wanders around the ship shooting giant bacteria or something.

It was a mess, and I have no idea why they even brought it up in Shattered in S7.

Macrocosm was written by Brannon Braga. Surprised?