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.

"Children of Time" was a good episode... Mostly because Sisko is presented with a difficult choice AND is ready to basically strand himself and his crew in the gamma quadrant in the past to allow these people to survive. Actually, I love the fact they're presented with a "have your cake and eat it" solution that turns out to be a lie to ensure the survival of the colony - because you know 90% of the time, that stuff usually works right off the bat and everyone is happy. That's a very good example, Underscore... And why DS9 will always be a superior show to Voyager.

Uh, Klingon "honour" is a crock. They run around in cloaked ships and consider blowing up anyone "honourable". As I've said before - honour doesn't mean anything if a Klingon says it... They just care about the body count.

You need a slap, hayden. How the hell is it Christianity vs. Islam? It's MONOTHEISM vs. POLYTHEISM! If anything. The lords of Cobol vs. the Cylon god. So, more like Hinduism vs. Judaism.

YAAAAAWN! Predictable in the extreme. I didn't QUITE see ER girl dying but it was obvious she'd not be coming back anytime soon. More specifically, the whole artificial reality was rather predictable and extremely tedious. I realised how this episode was such a monumental waste... We had people running around in a library... Libraries can be pretty creepy but this made them less than scary. There was just so little suspense. Pretty boring, really. How can you fail to make it scary?! Bah.

Sometimes, even a cynic like me can sit back and watch an episode from start to finish without quietly mouthing some sarcastic comment about irrational motivations or such like. I think that in many ways, this is the pinnacle of what BSG is... now, granted it takes a build up but when it gets there... HOORAH! Baltar talking to the Centurion, ace. Adama - win. This was just pure BSG.

As I've belaboured, it's pretty hard to answer the question without establishing a time period... Basically, then the Klingons show up, they're pretty hot stuff because of the technology they (somehow magically reverse engineered) got from the abortive invasion of the Herc... which was totally implausible but... slightly LESS implausible than Klingons managing to develop the wheel - let alone the warp drive - of their own volition. Enterprise kind of made it more plausible with the Klingons lording it over everyone... But then, it was a mess too. They bemoan the fact that Klingons aren't what they used to be and that they're a bunch of barbarians running around smashing people over the head... guess the whole "stop being idiots" thing went out of fashion around the early years of TNG. Where you may recall the Klingons that appeared were pointed out to be backward and dinosaurs by all standards... and yet, that went on to become the norm. It makes the situation of Yesterday's Enterprise somewhat infeasible. There can't be any doubt that the Vulcans are smarter, stronger and more technically proficient but it remains to be seen as to whether they'd really pursue the Klingons or pursue a peaceful resolution... of course, I suppose if they reasoned that the Klingons were a persistent threat that it might be best to wipe them out... makes sense.

That's something I've always asserted, Voyager and a lot of Enterprise were the logical conclusion for Berman's direction of the show. All the soul was stripped out whenever possible and a rigid formula was added in that dictated the structure of the vast majority of episodes - if you see a GOOD episode, chances are it ignores that and dares to be different... But you have that regular "Janeway IS GOD!" notion hammered into your head. It's like they think she's the ultimate captain... despite the fact she constantly fraks up... and that's EXCLUDING blowing up the array. Living Witness is hilarious because... it's really not THAT far fetched. Janeway busting in, meddling her ass off, running away etc. Not to mention inflicting suffering on her crew and everyone that's around... Likewise, anyone watching Scientific Method with a cynical eye will surely notice how "crazy" Janeway isn't really... well, not that crazy at all... or rather, not any MORE crazy. Threshold sums it all up for me... Yes, we can probably agree that was the worst episode of Voyager - and probably Trek - ever made... but the FACT, the fact it was made speaks volumes of what Berman and Braga had driven the show to... I suppose I could concede that things improved slightly when they brought 7 on board - because they actually USED her... too much, I think... but then, Voyager was horrible for a secondary cast. Really horrible. When the only secondary cast member that gets any real screen time is the 7 year old kid... you frakked up... but I digress.

The third way... definitely a Voyager special... for example... Recall, if you will, the TNG episode where Picard is faced with the dilemma of a planet facing something to do with its volcanoes - with the time traveller guy who is pretending to observe but is actually a fraud who stole the machine and is just there to steal stuff. Upshot is, Picard has the choice to either do nothing - leading to the certainty of tens of thousands dying or he can go with Data's plan to try and rejigger the planet - which would either fix everything right up... but might millions of people if it goes wrong. Basically, your classic TNG episode with Picard wrestling with the moral implications - not to mention almost pleading with the faux time traveller to tell him what happens, that he might save lives. I can almost - though it pains me - imagine the scenario playing out in Voyager. They'd come across some planet of aliens with the same problem and Janeway would be more than willing to take the time and resources to help a bunch of idiots they'll never see again - because it's not like she's going to need those to get back home 70,000 light years away or anything. Naturally, they try something to fix it... and it doesn't work. Nope, it makes things worse. After Janeway has reprimanded everyone for sucking so much, they all go back to the meeting room and after sufficient padding, someone will go "What if we could have our cake AND eat it"... There wouldn't be the moral/ethical dilemma - just a treknobabbled solution that would magically fix things without any risk. I think this is the real problem Voyager had... at almost every opportunity, polymath Janeway's magnificence is hammered into our heads... and yet, it's almost always because of situations described as above. If you have to choose between A - which is bad - and B - which is very bad - then you just spout something about the quantum manifold being repolarised to a phase variance of 47 and you've got C - which is just dandy. Oh, sure - there are occasions when the dilemmas aren't resolved so easily but I'm sure we can all think of clunking examples of this... the most obvious being Endgame... A choice between going home or giving the Borg a bloody nose... of course, there's no need to choose! Treknobabble skillz ACTIVATE! And amazingly, both feats can now be accomplished. So much a for a dilemma. Obviously... There ARE exceptions but more often than not we have a situation that's resolved without any trade off or compromise. Sigh...

I'm not really buying the need for tactile interfaces, OK Tom likes to play with his idiotic joystick - you could tell Tuvok wanted to slap him for that - but that doesn't seem to be the norm... I think it's another one of "those things". If you had everyone hooked into some kind of mental interface... it might make bridge sequences kind of dull, that or you'd have to spend a fortune on CGI (just think of the sequence in Matrix Reloaded where the Nebuchadnezzar docks at Zion - they've got a bunch of people hooked into the construct so they can push buttons and dodas in there... although, in itself that's probably more to do with the fact that's easier than building a control room... or something, what am I - the answer man?) Anyway, if you could just shout "Plot course, warp 7, engage!" then... well, there's not much for anyone else to do. Button pushing gives people... well, A task - if not an interesting one. I mean, Torres would pretty much be reduced to standing around and shouting at people if she didn't have to run around pushing buttons... isn't it great how they have to do that? You'd think you could just use one console to do stuff... but no.

Oh sure, there are examples of things that aren't LCARS... There was the girl Odo did on DS9 who had a dataport in her head (someone had something identical later on), Tom flew that ship with the neural interface that made him go a little crazy. I'm not saying that these interfaces don't exist, I'm saying their usage is the exception and not the rule.