Star Trek - Voyager

[Johnny Textface]

I just watched "Cold Fire". The way they resolved it was the laziest writing. Is season 2 considered "shaky"?
Seems a bit shaky.

[Lemming]

Season 2 is definitely shaky. There's a collection of good episodes and a couple of excellent ones on the way, but there's also the Kazon/Paris/Seska arcs which all completely suck.

[purlieu]

Elogium. Neelix and Kes play out the first episode of series four of Men Behaving Badly. Meanwhile, Voyager gets in a fight over who it can shag. Quite a nice episode, I like Neelix and Kes in general so far and their story was quite sweet, and weird space anomalies and lifeforms are always up my street.

[Lemming]

"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, Captain."

[Mobbd]

Elogium is a good one. Kes gets to be properly alien.

I love that crazed look on her face when she eats the bouquet of flowers.

Nice to hear people being positive about Neelix and Kes generally. I always feel they both get a lot of uncalled for dissin'.

Before and After in Season 3 (let's not talk about it prematurely - though it is a time travel show about travelling backwards!) is Kes-based and excellent.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Yea who's having a go at kes, the script for her is a bit naff but it's an ace performace

[JamesTC]

Just unfortunate how much Jennifer Lien's life has fallen apart since then.

[purlieu]

Non Sequitur. In general, alternate timeline / 'is this real?' type plots tend to get tiresome for me, but I thought this was pulled off really well. Admittedly, Kim's reasoning for going back was almost uncomfortably 'nice', and frankly it really needed a debriefing at the end where he now explains

Spoiler alert

exactly how Star Fleet has responded to Voyager's disappearance

[close]

, but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Twisted. "I don't suppose anyone here knows the way to the bridge...?" I love a good 'what the fuck is going on' episode and that supplied both the weirdness and humour that can come with one. Excellent stuff.

[Lemming]

Twisted is a great one, even if the idea extends beyond the capabilities of the special effects. Would have been nice to have the corridors get properly fucked up, people going upside down, that sort of thing.

Janeway getting mentally stuck between the two states of existence is properly spooky.

Plus I love that the solution is

Spoiler alert

to just do nothing and let the anomaly pass through you.

[close]

Can't remember if that's ever been done in Star Trek before.

[purlieu]

Plus I love that the solution is

Spoiler alert

to just do nothing and let the anomaly pass through you.

[close]

Can't remember if that's ever been done in Star Trek before.

The funny thins is, while I was watching it I was actually thinking that might be a really good way to deal with it.

[Blumf]

Plus I love that the solution is

Spoiler alert

to just do nothing and let the anomaly pass through you.

[close]

Can't remember if that's ever been done in Star Trek before.

The Spectre of the Gun episode from TOS, maybe? Took a lot of effort for them to do nothing.

Agree on the SFX, they were fine, but would have been ace if they could have done more.

[Mobbd]

Non Sequitur. In general, alternate timeline / 'is this real?' type plots tend to get tiresome for me, but I thought this was pulled off really well. Admittedly, Kim's reasoning for going back was almost uncomfortably 'nice', and frankly it really needed a debriefing at the end where he now explains

Spoiler alert

exactly how Star Fleet has responded to Voyager's disappearance

[close]

, but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Twisted. "I don't suppose anyone here knows the way to the bridge...?" I love a good 'what the fuck is going on' episode and that supplied both the weirdness and humour that can come with one. Excellent stuff.

Those are two solid eps to which I would make a beeline in a hits-only re-watch. I enjoyed meeting

Spoiler alert

Libby and seeing San Fransisco again

[close]

in the former and then in Twisted I like how

Spoiler alert

Tuvok tenderly places his hand near to Janeway just before the anomaly engulfs them

[close]

. Just a really lovely moment.

I am not re-watching with you at the moment btw because I'm handling a house move. I just know these episodes so well!

[Mobbd]

Plus I love that the solution is

Spoiler alert

to just do nothing and let the anomaly pass through you.

[close]

Can't remember if that's ever been done in Star Trek before.

It's a

Spoiler alert

Chinese Finger Trap situation: relax and stop trying so hard!

[close]

I remember Data fucking about with one in The Last Outpost but I'm not sure if the metaphor actually played out in the A story.

[purlieu]

Parturition. Ah well that was lovely. Impossible to ignore its almost cloying sweetness, but it really worked for me. Even some slight growth in Paris's character.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Parturition. Ah well that was lovely. Impossible to ignore its almost cloying sweetness, but it really worked for me. Even some slight growth in Paris's character.

We also see season 1-3 Janeway in combat action here. A carefully modulated phaser blast to knock out the dinosaur ship's weapons with one shot.

Season 4-7 Janeway will be more: "Tuvok fire torpedoes at them until they either give up or explode."

[purlieu]

Ah well, she's not long out of Federation space still.

Persistence of Vision. Another example of what is far from an original Trek story, but handled with enough of an original slant to be really entertaining. The twist at the end was really nice.

[purlieu]

Tattoo.
Fucking hell that was bad. I have no words.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Tattoo.
Fucking hell that was bad. I have no words.

This one was a hit for the fake Native American cultural expert they hired, wasn't it?

[Chairman Yang]

Jamake Highwater!

That's the one where white spacemen gave Inuits the power of civilisation because of their 'respect for the land', right? Fuck me :D

[purlieu]

That's the one. Horrible, horrible stuff. And in no way helped by a really dire script, nobody putting in a convincing performance, and the worst special effects I've seen on Star Trek since the early days of TNG.

[Johnny Textface]

Season 2 has some absolute shite in it, but it does pick up considerably after the harrowing nadir Paris warp 10 shambles.

[purlieu]

Cold Fire. The way that began, I thought we might be on for something seismic, maybe a chance for them to shift forward along their journey perhaps. But no, instead it was a generic Star Trek story, with nothing memorable other than a vague hint that Suspiria might be back at some point. Ugh.

[purlieu]

Manoeuvres. Ah, the Crap Klingons are back, with the return of someone who... frankly, I'd forgotten all about. Actually that was quite a fun little action story, very enjoyable. That ending, though.

Resistance. That was very moving in places, and a decent action story in others. Good to see the quality increasing again after a few so-so episodes.

[purlieu]

Prototype. A nicely twisty, turny story that didn't feel particularly like any previous Trek story. Very enjoyable.

Deathwish. Well, that was a wonderful mix of lots of fun and nice philosophy. I've always enjoyed Q episodes and after seven seasons it was great to have him back. (Watching these according to the Star Trek Chronology Project, which is why I seem to have jumped ahead here). Nice to see a familiar face appear in this too.

[Lemming]

Resistance and Prototype are both great stories. Have almost no memory of Maneuevers at all, no surprise since it's part of the relentlessly shit Seska/Kazon arc.

Cold Fire is worth it just for the scene where Tuvok's blood starts to get boiled.

[Deanjam]

Death Wish is very good. The Q episodes in Voyager have diminishing returns over time, but De Lancie is always a hoot, and he and Kate Mulgrew have great chemistry.

[Johnny Textface]

Innocence is another one like Deathwish that has really entertaining philosophical ideas which are explored nicely and pretty quite well. Also more Tuvok which is great as he's probably the most interesting character in the show upto now. I'd give it a heavy 4. There's potential here.

There's a bit where he starts singing around the campfire which I'm just sampling.

[purlieu]

Alliances. Ah good, more Crap Klingons. Actually, that was a lot more satisfying than normal, even if the twist was about as surprising as Mr. Surprising's Surprising Gag made on April Fools Day.

[purlieu]

Threshold. lol what the fuck was that

[Wonderful Butternut]

Threshold. lol what the fuck was that

You know, I think that's the best description of that episode I've ever seen. Fair play.