Tenebrae

You know, I always thought it was so stupid how there were regularly three or more scenes an episode where 3 lines of dialogue couldn't be exchanged over the intercom. "You'd better come and look at this, Captain!" It would have been nice if someone - Picard or Janeway as it was mostly them - had said. "I'm the Captain, just tell me - I can't come running down to engineering every five minutes just for you to treknobabble at me, I've got a ship to run here!" Obviously, it was done for DRAMATIC purposes... because the nature of interaction is different if you're not face to face... I can't begin to imagine Adama doing it.

Chakotay is too mired in his hilariously overplayed American Indian cliche to be taken seriously. 99% of the time, he'll just do what Janeway tells him... most of the time he disobeys her is when she's off somewhere else or in a coma etc. Scorpion is a great example, as soon as she's out of commission, he turns around and does the exact opposite but you don't see that kind of spine when she's awake - well, not most of the time anyway.

Oh, it's a good episode... because it highlights both Janeway's utter lack of good decision making... AND it centres on the Doctor. It highlights the idiotic nature of Voyager - that is to say another ensign no one something happens to... which is supposed to be deep but as we've never heard of them before one just shrugs... uh, these people get toasted all the time and no one bats an eyelid and suddenly we're having services and it's all important? I agree with you totally dabrood... they got too carried away in the mandatory Voyager formula (at least there wasn't a pointless subplot) for it to excel... We're too bogged down in the "mystery" aspect of the episode and relatively little attention is paid to the Doctor's recovery. Which is - fundamentally - what you'd think the focus of a Doctor-centric episode would be... but no, instead we centre on Janeway's flip flopping and then get the Doctor, clearly still trying to resolve the conflict. I think it did a good job of highlighting the good and the bad of Voyager.

As a friend said "It has a zombie priest - that's all you need to say!" Not liking V for Vendetta? Perhaps I shan't listen to you.

The crew switching was one of the show's strengths as far as I'm concerned. You had an organically growing and changing cast... you weren't stuck with the same bunch of jokers through the full run. Anyway, yes - another good show whose life was cut tragically short.

So, it starts out with el Doctor doing a physical checkout with a treknobabble photograph, which he expositions to Naomi Wildman... you get the feeling she's training up to be Neelix 2 from this. Anyways, turns out Harry Kim has some surgery the DOCTORRRRR didn't remember. MYSTERY! Doc heads over to the Captain to do her physical. He mentions the surgery - like Hazza, she denies all knowledge of it. The Doctor heads to see 7 of 9 to ask about his memory loss, she tells him she'll come fix him in an hour. An hour later, 7 turns up - the Doctor is oblivious to the goings on... turns out his memory was deleted. 7 takes a look and finds the missing parts of the Doctor's memory, as well as some pretty pictures. We get a few flashbacks of - yes, you guessed it - an ensign we've never ever heard of... lot of them on Voyager. After this, the Doctor goes to bitch at Janeway about this. She admits she manipulated his program and says she will do it again. Here's the crux of the episode... Janeway has oft let the Doctor evolve and grow... yet, here she's treating him - for the second time apparently - as basically a bag of nuts and bolts. Yet another total U-turn! Hoorah for captain inconsistent. Anyway, after hearing about this reprogramming, 7 goes to smooch with Janeway. This results in Janeway deciding to let the Doctor know what happened. So, we replay the whole scenario... aliens of the week appear zap Hazza, ensign random and Doctor. He survives, saves the day but has to save Hazza and Random... as it goes, he only save Hazza (why?) and ensign Random is deaded. Naturally, this makes the Doctor go MENTAL. The death of someone never bothered him before but... now it's driving him nuts. After this the Doctor goes... well, a bit nuts again. Apparently Janeway want him to man it out!

Underscore - you're merely approving of the lack of imagination. Single characteristics do not a society make. Trek seems to think, once you start into space - you're a singular culture. Except Chakotay, A MAN CANNOT OWN LAND. Yes, racial stereotypes are a good thing in Trek!

Ah, Enterprise... they didn't have a HOLODECK! People never just hang out in the future! I suppose the mess hall was a good way to save us from the horrors of FAN SERVICE SHOWER RUB! And they had "movie night"... but seriously. It's just a lack of imagination and realism. Sure, people in the future will do stuff differently. Socialising now is different to 30 years ago... but not hugely different... no one ever seemed to just... go spend time relaxing with people. Sure, 10-4 was a bit beyond at that point but still.

Rewatching a bit of Trek has made me realise something... what was with eating? Upon some retrospection it seems like the role of food becomes increasingly prevalent from TNG onward. We start out with people just occasionally hanging out to chat in 10 forward... which is a bar, mostly where people have a drink and Troi occasionally stuffed her mouth full of cake... Then in Voyager we had the mess hall become a pretty important venue. People are always meeting there. And finally in Enterprise, we had people CONSTANTLY in there. Literally not an episode seemed to go by without at least two scenes in either the mess or the captain's dining room... I mean, does Berman have a mad-on for food?

Bit of the Avery Brooks school of acting going on, definitely... And I wouldn't even bother trying to think about the utter nonsense anti-technobabble RTD put in this episode. It's enough to make Voyager's BS seem like a tour de force in Quantum Mechanics... although, the difference is Doctor Who never really cares about the rubbish... Star Trek tries.

I'm not sure there was a great deal of depth to it... as it never stopped the race being their defining trait - LOGICAL! Oh, I guess they added how much Archer and pals HATED the Vulcans but most of it was really more involved with the whole Romulan involvement - or so it seemed to me. But glad you agree MrDad... I mean, it's hard to see the Klingons or the Ferengi ever really being a society that didn't end up imploding... I'd say it was because they're FAR too keen on bigging up humanity but I think it's more about the writers being bad.

Ah, good. "Micropetrol"? That sounds stupid but then so was the front of the pod getting blown off and the door opening and being fine... and the guy going "THIS IS CAST IRON!" Uh... yes, that well known futuristic metal. I suppose there was no Donna but it was pretty boring... clearly trying to contrast the jovial relationship between people when the going was good between how they acted in a crisis - which was... remarkably irritating. All the shouting etc. and ZOMG SHE IS REPEATING THINGS! Lammmmmme. Ill conceived, poorly executed, badly acted (VOLUME = DRAMAZ!)... and we didn't even see the Sapphire Waterfall.

I was going to start a post about the "worst trek villains" (I was pitching Kazon) and then I glanced over another sfdebris review that reminded me of the important aspect of Trek races. Monoculture. Which is to say you can describe almost every member of a race with a single word. Klingons are warriors, Romulans are sneaky... Cardassians are... uh, sneaky, Ferengi are greedy, Vulcans are logical... mostly humans are the only ones that are allowed to show any particular variation and even then, most humans are noble and various other upstanding characteristics. There aren't any facets to the alien races... they're just... one dimensional, hell the average Klingon makes a valley girl look deep. Even a character with plenty of screentime like Worf struggles to get past the characterisation... Anyway, it's an issue broached in the past - what do we all think about it?

I'm thinking back... none of the episodes have been toward the upper end of the spectrum... Donna hasn't helped. The Pompeii episode has been the best so far but that felt as if it would have been better suited to two episodes than the Sontarans or the Library, both of which felt considerably padded... While Tennant may well be putting more energy into his performance, I think that it may be a reaction to the lack of energy in the writing... it's not surprising to me that RTD is passing it off, I think he's losing interest because as the executive producer etc. etc. he's pretty much in charge of running a tight ship and that's been lacking, which probably shows RTD should have been sent packing a while ago. I think they've also struggled to fit Donna in. She strops and berates the Doctor but there's no real chemistry... Not to mention the "WE'RE NOT MARRIED!" gag just instantly sapping my will to live. They just don't seem to know what to do with her... Billy and the Dr. had the whole unspoken love thing going on... and of course her field of expertise was being bold and brassy. Martha had her unrequited love and was an actual doctor. Donna is... just loud and irritating, occasionally prone to pointing out THIS IS TERRIBLE! And maybe the odd bit of SUPER OFFICE POWERS! Seriously, the contrived way they've fitted that in is pretty hilarious. What next "OH NO, we're trapped in THE UNIVERSAL OFFICE OF INFINITE DOOM! Donna, use your super office powers!" I think this is one of the problems British TV has... there's no stamina. In the US, you've got shows with a season of 20+ episodes and often running for years... some of them even stay good for years! I'm not sure that we've really got any equivalent shows... but then I suppose that's a function of brain drain and money.

It was a bit of a flat ending, I felt... the logic of sticking cables to your brain was totally dubious and clearly an ironic way of having the intersecting lives of the Doctor and ER doctorologist be juxtaposed with her last meeting of him being their first. It was mind numbingly idiotic and so totally pointless that any sentiment that might have been invested in the moment was totally lost... The artificial reality was just kind of stupid... it felt like it was just a dead end beyond providing some semblance of a happy ending. You knew those collar things would have to do something. I think that the "count your shadows!" thing was a bit too much like "Don't blink!" Also, the face things... naff. Totally naff. All in all, it just didn't feel like the parts fitted together and the tension was pretty weak. I'd say that it failed because it was trying to do too much but ultimately became somewhat listless.