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March 28, 2024, 08:36:30 PM

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Star Trek - Voyager

Started by dr_christian_troy, October 05, 2020, 01:52:46 PM

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mothman

Quote from: Mr Trumpet on January 19, 2022, 10:25:44 PMI thought the uniforms they wore in that were a bit of a nod to the not-quite-right costumes that fans wear to conventions.
Yeah, what is it with that anyway? It's not that difficult to acquire or create a tunic that looks pretty good, and far better than some of the baggy, wrongly-coloured shite that you see at conventions. I used to own a TNG tunic. I got it for a specific fancy dress party; a couple of years after, having never worn it again, I sold it on eBay and have rather regretted it ever since, as it was very good quality, cut perfectly, and can't have cost me more than about £20-30 new - in 2001. It was polyster rathee than the wool gabardine of the original, sure, but you wouldn't have known to look at it. I don't think the online retailer exists any more...

Malcy

Quote from: Mr Trumpet on January 19, 2022, 10:25:44 PMI thought the uniforms they wore in that were a bit of a nod to the not-quite-right costumes that fans wear to conventions.

Yeah always reminds me of the ones in fan films that area mostly always inexplicably really badly fitting.

Lemming

Finding a Starfleet uniform in my experience was a bizarrely difficult venture in a way that made absolutely no sense given how many people must be willing to buy them. I wanted the TOS miniskirt variant for a party ages ago and there were a hell of a lot of custom ones for sale which ranged from "bad" to "not even recognisable as a Starfleet uniform". Officially-licensed stuff seemed very sparse, ended up with a command-gold one which still looked a bit off and had a really shitty Starfleet delta sewn on an inch or two higher than it should have been..

Especially weird since you can get perfect replicas of phasers, tricorders and communicators. It's only the main centrepiece of the entire outfit that's impossible to get hold of, for some reason.

purlieu

Muse. Oh boy. There's a fine line between saccharine schlock and charming wide-eyed naivety, and that really struggled to balance. Quite sweet, but also kind of cringey.

Lemming

Love that one, one of the numerous episodes of Voyager that feels a bit meta-y, about the process of writing fiction.

Mr Trumpet

Has everyone already seen this notoriously crap trailer for the first episode of Voyager on the BBC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI549QQKByA

I actually remember it - I think it may have been on a TNG VHS I owned. Commenters on YouTube seem to think that it's Chris Barrie narrating.

Wonderful Butternut


Mobbd

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on January 20, 2022, 11:45:53 PMTuwok?

Who's Tuwok?

Hee! That was our favourite part too. We will call him Tuwok from now on.

I don't think it's Chris Barrie, by the way, but I see why people might think that.

I remember some stuff about "Doc Zimmerman" when Voyager was first being promoted. I think that was a last-minute 180. He is indeed listed as Doc Zimmerman in the show bible.

Lemming

Most interesting thing in that trailer is when Janeway is referred to as "one of the most respected captains in Starfleet". Is she? I always thought she was just some random no-name rank and file captain prior to Caretaker, which is what made her such an interesting choice to strand in the Delta Quadrant - relatively inexperienced and just holding the entire crew together through sheer willpower and determination. Also explains her having a much more relaxed and approachable command style than Picard et al.

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on January 20, 2022, 11:45:53 PMTuwok?

Who's Tuwok?

He's a friend of chah-KOH-tay.

Mr Trumpet

One of the most respected captains in THE Starfleet. But yeah, it always seemed like Voyager was her first command.

mothman

There must be hundreds (a thousand? Thousands?) of starships in Starfleet. All with a "Captain" - I put it in quotes, because if it were anything like a real-life navy, smaller ships (in size and/or complement) wouldn't have a captain-by-rank, just a captain-by-position. They'd be called "Captain" but might just be a Commander or maybe even Lt. Commander.

Example: I saw a doco on TV recently about a Trident submarine which was commanded by a "captain" who had the rank boards of a commander.

So really Janeway, commanding a small (albeit new/modern/state of the art) science vessel with approx. 150 crew should be a commander in rank. But that would be too confusing for the audience, so a Captain she is.

Consider also that Chakotay is only ever addressed as Commander - but has the (silly) Maquis rank pin of a Lt. Cdr. - even in situations when addressing him with his full rank of Lieutenant Commander (as Data often was) would be correct. So we don't know what rank he was. Cavit, original XO of Voyager, was just a Lt. Cdr.

TL;DR no I don't think Janeway is a senior/experienced captain; if she was she'd be in command of a capital ship not what amounts to a scout vessel.

Wonderful Butternut

Assuming Janeway is about the same age as Kate Mulgrew was when portraying her in Voyager (that's generally the norm for human main characters - Picard and Tilly are exceptions), she's around 40 at the start of Voyager.

A few times it's suggested making captain by 40 is an achievement, so that points to Voyager probably being her first command. By comparison Sisko was promoted to Captain at 38/39.

As for Commanders, Lt. Commanders permanently (ie. non acting) commanding starships, we don't really see it happen in Star Trek. Sisko's the only one I can think of.  Pretty much any time they meet a ship it's captain is a Captain.

This doesn't mean anything to anyone, btw. I just like to talk bullshit about Star Trek.

purlieu

Pretty sure in the episode I watched yesterday it was mentioned that before taking command of Voyager, Janeway was a science officer.


Fucking hell, that trailer though. Kes. Young, beautiful and going out with a male character!

I wish I'd seen a version of Voyager with Chakkatey, Tuwok, Tarres, Doc Zimmerman and an alien unlike any encountered before rather than the one I'm watching at the moment.

mothman

The Janeway Memory Alpha page says she was a new commander (by rank, i.e. likely XO) of the USS Billings from 2365 - six years before Voyager disappeared. Even if she spent just half that time before making captain, it'd still make her pretty junior/new in command terms - and definitely not a senior/experienced captain.

purlieu

Doesn't she become admiral just after getting back anyway? Sure she turns up in some mega senior role in Nemesis.

Deanjam

Quote from: purlieu on January 21, 2022, 07:30:00 PMDoesn't she become admiral just after getting back anyway? Sure she turns up in some mega senior role in Nemesis.

Yes, she's an admiral in that. I guess crossing 70 light years in 7 years, and defeating the borg earns you a fast track.

mothman

I don't spend all my time thinking about these kind of things just most of it, but once during a long shower I came up with a theory that in Starfleet you can gather, let's call it XP, that dictates how and when you can move up the ranks.

It explains how Janeway can move to three-pip vice admiral (not just a two-pip rear admiral) within a couple of years of returning home.

It also explains how Picard goes from Captain to four-pip full admiral a couple of years after NEM.

And why Riker having spent fifteen years twatting around as a commander, he was only a captain when he retired and didn't even get a reserve flag rank!

purlieu

Fury. In which the earlier crew of Voyager don't spot that Kes has put on a couple of stone overnight.
I do like a nice time travel episode, and there was some potential there, but none of it felt right at all. Kes's dramatic character change, and then the fact that, despite knowing the future, her life seemed to follow the exact same path, literally down to the second... nah.

Lemming

That's one of the most controversial episodes of all time. I share your underwhelmed reaction to it - I can't get actively offended and upset by it as some people do (and I am a KES FAN) but it is quite weak and far from the best way to bring Kes back.

purlieu

Life Line. Yesssss. You know it's going to be a really emotional episode when it starts with 20 minutes of brilliant comedy. Wonderful. Brilliant character stuff which never comes close to being saccharine, and generally hilarious.

Deanjam

Quote from: purlieu on January 23, 2022, 07:31:32 PMLife Line. Yesssss. You know it's going to be a really emotional episode when it starts with 20 minutes of brilliant comedy. Wonderful. Brilliant character stuff which never comes close to being saccharine, and generally hilarious.

The only thing better that Robert Picardo is two Robert Picardos!

purlieu

The Haunting of Deck Twelve. I feel like I've written a variation on "loads of good ideas in there but the overall handling of them was a bit crap" about a hundred times in this thread already, but that was another. I particularly enjoyed Janeway communication with the alien via the computer (especially the "you'll have to kill me first" / "affirmative" exchange), but it just felt so slight, and Neelix telling it as a story of something that happened months ago just placed the whole thing at a distance that made it impossible to really get caught up in the story.

purlieu

Unimatrix Zero Part 1. What a load of guff. The Borg have already become irredeemably crap at this point, but that just felt like fan fiction. Characters acting with no believable reasoning, a totally unexplained dream land where they know they're Borg but don't actually know anything that they're doing, a hilariously bad version of the Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger at the end there. Ugh.

mothman

True story. When details of this emerged prior to broadcast - something like "Some of the crew get assimilated" - I was able to accurately deduct how many and which characters it would be. That it would be Janeway, Torres and Tuvok.

And gosh isn't it fortunate that not one of them got any limbs or sensory organs removed and replaced in the process?

purlieu

I dunno how much of it is just bad editing, but it also seemed like they went from being caught to becoming completed drones in the space of about a minute as well.

Despite it having a lot of my favourite Voyager episodes so far, season 6 has finished up being my lowest rated series in the whole Star Trek so far.

purlieu

Unimatrix Zero, Part II. Maybe a slight improvement, but still largely ungripping, predictable, unmoving and full of really tedious narrative coincidences and character inconsistencies. Yawn.

Wonderful Butternut

Unimatrix Zero went from Jumping the Shark to Launching into Space Directly Over the Shark.

"Let's have the crew assimilate themselves. That's not bullshit."

Deanjam

Small thing, but I dislike that Tuvok breaks down first. The guy from the species that obsesses over training themselves to control their thoughts loses his shit before the Klingon?

The kind of thing I'd overlook if the episode was good.

mothman

Yeah, Voyager back then (without the benefit of hindsight and actually-can-you-believe-it inferior Trek to compare it favourably with) was widely seen to set the bar VERY low, but even then "This week the crew LET THEMSELVES GET ASSIMILATED" took the biscuit.

Malcy

I will defend a lot of the choices in VOY due to the restraints they had from the suits higher up making decisions about stuff they know nothing about but Unimatrix Zero isn't one of them. Voluntary assimilation. Not Picard levels of a sort of partial-assimilation to be a figure head but full on ASSIMILATION and by the next episode they are fine. Whereas Seven still has ongoing issues.

Can't even explain that away with saying she was a Borg longer. It's just shite. Yes VOY could have gone down the road of gradually losing people, ship being in a right state etc but it just wasn't going to fly with the network folk who wanted to put it through to syndication. A shame but I watched all of it recently and i'm grateful it's there and always was.

Even Trek back then that was a bit rubbish was just that. Ah it's a bit rubbish but there's a new story next week. Whereas now we have to endure a shit story and everything else over a whole series. I reckon people like myself who have been hugely disappointed by new Trek, bar LD & Prodigy for myself anyway, care but aren't massively arsed because Unimatrix Zero is still a better watch than Burnham being a saviour and crying  and endless shite.

Plus we now have a continuation of VOY in Prodigy which i reckon will just go from strength to strength. And we even have Janeway in Star Trek Online now as well. Apparently with a big return that no one seen coming but I'm waiting to see what that is when i get the chance!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5ADVJyM4DY