Where has Voyager been all my life?
I saw the first episode yesterday and got hooked immediately.
All these years I let my dislike of Ms. Mulgrew's voice keep me away. Turns out that it's not that bad when you can see her acting. (But srsly, that voice by itself is terrible.)
I credit the podcast This Week in Trek with pushing me to Voyager; and credit also goes to Friend and Daughter who loved the show enough to watch it again with me.
As long as you don't take it too seriously Voyager is a fun time and worth watching. Mostly very decent and more seriously good episodes than seriously bad ones mixed in there.
I'm already somewhat bugged by the usual sci-fi sins: previously uncontacted aliens speaking perfect English; high-ranking officers going on away teams, etc.
The universal translator is a heck of a program. At least that's the handwavium leviosa they use to explain that incongruity. I'm ass-pulling an explanation for the bridge officers on away missions though: There's only a handful of qualified individuals once Voyager makes it into the Delta Quadrant. I would guess that cuts down on who gets elected or volunteered to do that. (Though don't ask me to explain the lack of training programs, opportunities or forced cross-utilization.)
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I'm told the series gets even better when 7 of 9 shows up.
I guess I know what I'll be doing next week while I get used to being unemployed.
Seven of Nine is one of my favorite characters. Jeri Ryan was added because of flagging ratings. That's why Seven looks the way she does. But Ryan acted her face off - the writers giving her juicy bits from which to act certainly helped.
Once you see the episode where they say they don't have many photon torpedoes left (and they can't replicate them or construct new ones), then you should keep a little notepad next to you while you watch and keep a tally of how many torpedoes they still have.
Also it's interesting to watch the actor playing Chakotay and see how he gradually turns from trying his hardest to act out the part to just turning up, saying his lines and taking the pay checks.
Full Spread!
Voyager is its own kind of special, I oddly learned to like it more after watching SFdebris and realizing just how much camp it was while pretending to be serious with grey corridors.
Another special thing to look out for is Harry Kim the sexually confused whipping boy. After awhile you start to wonder just how many times ship problems are because he was humping the Bio neural gel packs again. His awkwardness is enhanced by the writers/producers always giving the actor the shaft.
Seven and the Doc basically steal the show anytime they're around.
Maybe that's the trick; Voyager definitely works better when viewed as camp.
My problem was that I tried to take it seriously. Unfortunately, I could never convince myself that any of the main characters was actually intelligent -- much less someone that Starfleet would have allowed anywhere near a starship.
ETA: And yeah, Seven and The Doctor completely stole every scene they were in.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
-- Socrates
Last edited by The Lone Ranger; 10-26-2015 at 11:59 PM.
Kate Mulgrew is probably the main reason for my dislike of Voyager. I cannot stand her in anything she is in for some reason, maybe its that her voice reminded me of my mean old grandma.
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Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
Yeah, Voyager is a special one. The show gets crazy good after they bring on 7 of 9 (and fucking get rid of Kes ), but even still, Season 1 has some of my favorite episodes.
If you're going to keep a little tally notebook, keep track of how many times Harry Kim dies. It's not bad continuity or anything like those photon torpedoes, it's just hilarious how much the writers loved to snuff him out, especially toward the beginning.
There are a million things I could say about the show (no really!) but probably the most important to me to mention is The Reset Button. I have heard people complain that the show abuses the hell out of it, which it does, but I have no complaints. The Reset Button allows them to destroy the whole ship, kill off the entire crew, explore all kinds of crazy OMGWTF plots like that, within the constraints of a TV series, mainly that you can't blow up the whole fucking show every week. So I think of TRB not so much a crutch as a ... something that is not a crutch. Some kind of enabley thing.
My problem with Janeway is that she's a woman... er wait that didn't sound right, let me finish; the writers/producers didn't know how to handle it so they over compensated. Where as Picard has a vast array of knowledge from years of being a starship captain, his main expertise is being a captain of a diplomatic ship and it shows. Janeway on the other hand is a do it all superhuman who often pushes the so called experts out of the way to do basic operations like run the ship, it's almost as if the rest of the crew isn't needed. Yes we see you put a woman as what amounts to the main character but it is ok for her to have a few flaws, and no "too awesome" is not a flaw. Although this plays nicely into the psychopath Janeway interpretation that she purposefully got them stranded away from starfleet so she could run her own hunger games.
'And may the odds be ever in your favor... Haha not you Harry, now fetch me my reward phaser... don't make me get out the punishment phaser again.'
Ironically in what I'll call a case of inverse sexism, Seven was put in the show as a pair of tits to boost ratings and ended up being such a fascinating character that many fans would have liked to see her stay a covered up, surgically modified cyborg longer and eventually become more human instead of the quick jump to catsuit she has in the show.
The reset button was frustrating in part because the show was designed specifically to not have an easy reset button. The Enterprise gets its ass kicked and you expect StarFleet to have spit shinned it new again with the blood of many yellowshirts by the next episode cause first contact with phaser burns through the hull is poor form. But stranded away from home, it shouldn't be that easy.
However the real frustration comes when they show they can do it right. 'The year of hell' was excellent (and not just because everyone was called a dumbass) but because you knew the reset button had to be coming and yet by the end of it they had earned it.
As of yet mentioned, the giant hedgehog in the room, Nelix. Entire programs have been built around hating this character, and yes he stays just as insufferable through the entire thing (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions) which is especially sad as the actor is wonderful and salvages what he can from the role.
It's surprising just how good Voyager's first season is, especially compared with how dismal TNG season 1 is. DS9 s1 was, let's be honest, pretty mediocre.
True, those of us who'd become conditioned to tough it out with a Trek show through its first season were particularly blown away by how good the first Voyager season was. But that was also sort of a problem when they couldn't sustain that and consistently improve it (other than the occasional gawdawful clunker episode, both TNG and DS9 just got better and better, other than some self-indulgence in the last TNG season). Voyager just sort of seesawed back and forth between good and terrible.
Voyager also drove me nuts with how it almost always squandered good characters from the previous shows. Torik/Vorik was a great character in his one appearance on TNG; they should have left him alone if they were just going to turn him into a twit (yeah, yeah, I know, it's supposed to be his brother, whatever). And then there was Boothby. When you see My Favorite Martian pop up, skip the episode 'cause oh dear sweet Jebus it's gonna suck.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
I take some comfort in reminding myself that the Abrams-Trek universe is clearly not the "real" Star Trek universe.
The first Abrams-Trek movie clearly established that the technology, ship design, etc. was different before Nero arrived from the future. Thus, the Abrams-Trek universe is clearly an entirely different universe (one that, I note, clearly has different laws of physics than the "real" Star Trek universe), and not just an alternate timeline created by Nero and Spock going back in time.
I take considerable comfort from the knowledge that the "real" Star Trek universe is [presumably] going along just fine. Whatever happens in the Abrams-Trek universe can therefore be safely ignored. Because it may have a ship called Enterprise and characters called Spock and McCoy and Uhura and Kirk, but it bears very little resemblance to anything I'd recognize as Star Trek.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
I don't really care whether it follows the Abrams films' continuity or not. But if the writing is as shitty as the screenplay for Into Darkness, I won't be watching.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Nalo Hopkinson is also awesome, and very proud of her new shirt.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Jar Jar is actually Sith. He was made to seem foolish, just like Yoda was at his introduction.
The "phantom menace" is really Jar Jar.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.