(no subject)

[skygiants]

Great news, everyone: we got past the lizard sex episode of Voyager and somehow we're still going! This is a wonderful achievement given that innerbrat states this episode is what originally compelled her to quit not just Voyager but all space-related television, in its entirety, for several decades.



6. Twisted

In this episode, a weird energy field distorts the Voyager's geography and everyone spends forty minutes wandering around aimless, distressed and confused. Only two things of real note happen:

a. Tuvok and Chakotay express a mutual sense of competition and rivalry about presenting solutions to Janeway that would have been great as an ongoing subplot stemming out of their backstory in which Tuvok personally betrayed Chakotay, if the writers ever consistently remembered it

b. Janeway tells Harry he's Doing A Good Job

In the end, the whole stressful near-death experience turns out to be the result of alien intelligences attempting, badly, to communicate and/or do science at them. This is very funny and totally justified given the number of times so far that Janeway & Co. have caused aliens to have near-death experiences by attempting, badly, to communicate and/or do science at them so I'm glad that Janeway is more or less delighted by it too.

7. Parturition

Paris and Neelix fight about Kes, thenn crash-land on a planet and are forced to coparent a baby alien. On the one hand, the high school flour-sack-project plot is inherently a good time, and on the other hand, the Paris/Neelix/Kes love triangle is inherently a bad time, so tbh I think this episode more or less cancels itself out.

8. Persistence of Vision

Janeway starts hallucinating stuff from her favorite Gothic holonovel. Everyone thinks this is stress but it turns out to be a psychic alien who wants to fuck with the crew for kicks, but Kes is able to defeat him with her brain. The best thing about this episode is that Kes gets to do something that isn't related to her deeply unfortunate two-year-old love life! The worst thing about this episode is that the hallucinations attempt to inform us that B'Elanna has a crush on Chakotay, but given that we're now nine episodes past this and it's never been mentioned again we are very cautiously willing to resign this supposition to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

9. Tattoo

Oh .... boy. Okay. Yes. So. This is an episode in which Chakotay, on a visit to an alien planet, learns that the benevolent aliens there brought their technology to his Native American ancestors. That is certainly a thing that happens. However, let's focus on the bright side:

- if you take away all the, like, content of the plot, and leave simply the character note that Chakotay as a kid was Resentful About Obligations To Connect With His Culture and now as an adult is regretful about that and has to feel his way to it by himself when he's far distant from his actual family, that's a reasonable and interesting character note and I don't at all hate it
- this episode has a B-plot! An actual B-plot! We're so proud! And it's a perfectly cute B-plot, too, in which the Doctor attempts to prove that being sick isn't a big deal and people should stop whining about it, and Kes takes initiative to prove him wrong, and it's a charming evolution in their friendship and also genuinely funny. MORE B-PLOTS FOR VOYAGER. LET CHARACTERS HAVE DEVELOPMENT IN THE BACKGROUND. We know you can do it if you try!!

10. Cold Fire

Wikipedia informs me that the production title for this episode was "Untitled Kes Firebug", which sounds about right. Anyway, Voyager finds the other member of the species of alien that brought them here and hopes this will allow them to short-circuit the show's premise and kick them home early, but of course we are only on episode ten of season two so instead she's furious about the death of her far-distant partner and out for revenge. Meanwhile, one of her own set of personal pet Ocampa attempts to train Kes in Ocampa super-psychic abilities and Kes briefly gives in to the dark side of the Force and sets a lot of things on fire. This is just one of several episodes this season in which the conclusion is that the starship Voyager needs much, much, much better PR.

11. Maneuvers

Seska is back! Seska is ... committing major reproductive crimes! Oh dear.

So, Seska and her new Kazon friends have stolen one of Voyager's transporter modules, and Chakotay decides He Personally Must Redress This Wrong and goes to attempt to steal it back, and gets captured in the process. There's a lot of fairly solid Nemeses With Backstory Feelings stuff between Chakotay and Seska. I am fine with this. Then Seska steals some of Chakotay's DNA and impregnates herself with it. I am no longer fine with this. Debi and I are agreed that it is Janeway's responsibility as Chakotay's boss to ensure that he never interacts with Seska again without emotional support and a mediator.

12. Resistance

Janeway, Tuvok and B'Elanna get stranded on a one-off planet that is existing under an occupation; Tuvok and B'Elanna get stuck in prison while Janeway escapes and attempts to rescue them with the help of an extremely sad old man who thinks she's his resistance-fighter daughter and is trying to get his wife/her mother out of jail. The Tuvok-B'Elanna stuff is interesting, the Janeway-Fake Dad stuff is extremely sad, all the actual beats of the plot are fairly predictable but that didn't stop me from having a feeling about it! ;__;

As a sidenote, the absolute funniest scene in this episode is the one in which Janeway commits the most perfunctory prison guard "seduction" known to man. I love Janeway attempting come-hither eyes and really only achieving I'm-your-captain-and-you're-going-to-do-exactly-as-I-say face!

13. Prototype

B'Elanna finds a robot body in space and becomes obsessed with fixing it ... and does! And they become friends!

Then the robot asks her to fix the rest of his robot civilization, and Janeway is like "I'm interpreting the Prime Directive for conflict rather than compassion this week and that means I can't let you give these robots the right to repair and reproduce," and B'Elanna fumes, and then the robot kidnaps her so she can give them the right to repair and reproduce, and then B'Elanna fumes about that but is secretly relieved ...

... and then it turns out that the robots have programming that forces them to engage in endless interstellar war with some other robots and also caused them to destroy their makers, and rather than consider that alternate programming might be an option B'Elanna is like "WELL THIS SUCKS, BYE," destroys the baby robot she made, and flees. Truly love to see B'Elanna be an irritable genius but we think perhaps more nuanced solutions were available here.

14. Alliances

Chakotay tells Janeway that they're in a bad position with a bad PR problem and should form an alliance with someone for mutual protection. As a result, Janeway attempts to form an alliance with the Kazon, gets mad, storms out in a huff, forms an alliance with the people who used to enslave the Kazon but swear they have learned their lesson about being assholes after the Kazon revolted, makes a shocked Pikachu face when it turns out they have not learned their lesson, breaks the alliance, and ends up all alone in space with zero allies and a worse PR problem than ever.

The lesson Janeway takes from all this is "Starfleet Regulations Were Correct, We Maintain Absolute Neutrality And Ally With Nobody." I respect and appreciate that Janeway is a science captain who does not enjoy diplomacy and deeply resents that circumstances keep attempting to force her into being a diplomacy captain anyway, but I wish the show did not present her as, uh, correct, about this.

15. Threshold

IT'S AMPHIBIAN TIME.

The thing that gets me about this episode, tbh, is that I knew there was a plot in which Janeway and Paris have lizard babies and yet I still wasn't prepared for it in this episode because it's 35 minutes of Paris having a melty space-induced psychotic break followed by five minutes of Janeway-kidnapping, surprise salamander evolution and reproduction, and astoundingly calm resolution that boils down to "well that was a weird day!"

We're actually a couple episodes ahead of here by now but I think the infamous lizard sex episode is a reasonable place to leave off, returning soon with more hits like "we still love to see B'Elanna be an irritable genius" and "every Star Trek ship desperately needs a legal department."

Comments

[raven]

THRESHOLD, HURRAH. It's.... I mean, it's extremely bad, but it has given me so much joy that I kinda can't blame it? It's a point of human connection. Plus it won an Emmy, which is a thought to keep me warm at night.

[skygiants]

IT WON AN EMMY?! holy shit, what for?

I do feel like it's sort of a badge of honor to have hit it, like -- surely we have now hit the greatest infamy Voyager has to offer and we are stronger for it!

[raven]

For make-up! Which, I guess, that is a LOT of lizard make-up going on.

[skygiants]

You know what, that's absolutely fair. Those makeup artists rose nobly to the challenge when someone said "look, we gotta make Tom Paris look increasingly messed-up throughout forty minutes of screen time" and they should get their accolades.

[conuly]

That makes sense.

[pauraque]

You might say you've made it past the bad Voyager episode....... threshold.

I'm sorry!

[skygiants]

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR THIS 😂

[conuly]

It won a what? HOW?

[conuly]

I continue to be angry whenever I think about how that show screwed over Seska's potential plotline.

I also seriously wish that Kes had dumped Neelix's jealous ass.

[skygiants]

She's TWO! (or three or whatever, anyway, I resent it every time the show makes me remember it.)

On the bright side, it's set my bar for Kes plotlines really low, so every time she does something that's not centered on her romance with Neelix I'm like "yes! great job Kes! congratulations on [checks notes] setting an entire garden on fire with the power of your mind!"

[sovay]

She's TWO! (or three or whatever, anyway, I resent it every time the show makes me remember it.)

Is the accelerated-compressed lifespan thing inherently squicky to you or is it the way the show handles it? I don't like most of her relationship with Neelix because of the jealousy angle—I don't find possessiveness entertaining to watch and the fact that it's in the series bible is one of those oh early '90's no moments—but the disparity in their life cycles, as differentiated from the ages of the actors, does not bother me and seems to bother a lot of people and I am curious what goes on.

(Learned from the random handful of Voyager I watched post-"Jetrel": I am a Kes partisan and bear a twenty-years-dead show a serious grudge for mishandling her.)

[conuly]

It'd be less squicky if it wasn't Neelix, that's for sure. Kes really doesn't have the life experience to tell what sort of person she's dating, and some of that, yes, is because she hasn't had enough time to learn.

[skygiants]

Hmm, it's more the way the accelerated-compressed lifespan thing plays into the other stuff, I think -- I have an inherent 'yikes!' reaction every time the show forces me to remember that she has lived for Only Two Of My Earth Years, and then I consciously remind myself that different species age at different rates and what matters is that she's an adult by the standards of her species, and then I look at the visible age difference between the actors and I have another inherent 'yikes!' reaction and I suppress it again because different species different standards alien makeup, and then I actually see their relationship dynamic play out onscreen with the jealousy angle and this sort of unfortunate paternalism from Neelix that emphasizes the age difference element and I have yet a third 'yikes!' reaction and this one I do not suppress, and it's all the stronger for containing the vestiges of the other two.

Whereas, for example, Odo/Kira contains a lot of the same elements -- Rene Auberjonois is twenty years older than Nana Visitor, and, conversely, I'm pretty sure based on the bucket baby backstory that Odo-the-character is half Kira-the-character's age at most -- but because a.) the two things work opposite to each other (the age difference between the characters reverses the age difference between the actors) and b.) the dynamic is always played as one of comfortable equals with approximately equal maturity levels, none of the potential 'yikes' hits and settles.

[sovay]

and then I consciously remind myself that different species age at different rates and what matters is that she's an adult by the standards of her species

By complete coincidence of an e-mail that arrived in between the comments of this thread, I have just found myself explaining the concept of the yetzer hara, the yetzer hatov, and the relation of the latter to the age of reason, mazel tov, you twelve-to-thirteen-year-old ritually qualified adult, you.

but because a.) the two things work opposite to each other (the age difference between the characters reverses the age difference between the actors) and b.) the dynamic is always played as one of comfortable equals with approximately equal maturity levels, none of the potential 'yikes' hits and settles.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, neither of them is irrationally jealous of the other, which seems to be the factor that tips your twitchiness about Neelix/Kes from "if it works for them, it works for them" to "THE DEGREE TO WHICH THIS IS NOT WORKING IS LITERALLY VISIBLE FROM SPACE."

I believe the jealousy angle does get more or less dropped after "Parturition," and gur punenpgref riraghnyyl naq ernyvfgvpnyyl oernx hc, nyorvg va fbzrguvat bs n Qblyvfgvp zrff jurer Xrf vf cbffrffrq jura fur qhzcf uvz naq gur pbairefngvba juvpu pbasvezf gung fur fgvyy zrnaf vg jura va ure evtug zvaq naq gung Arryvk npprcgf ure qrpvfvba jnf phg sebz n yngre rcvfbqr sbe gvzr (naq gur npgbef jrer fnygl nobhg vg sbe lrnef), but I would prefer it not to have been present at all.

P.S. I don't know who else to drop this aroace Odo/Lwaxana meta on.

[skygiants]

Odo gets jealous sometimes when he's in the pining "she'll clearly never love me because I'm a bucket of goo" stage but not to the horrifying level of "holy shit she had a conversation with Another Man this is UN! ACCEPTABLE!!!" that we see from Neelix; more importantly neither of them ever attempts to limit each other's behavior as a result of their feelings and their dynamic always functions as a partnership rather than what in many ways feels like a weird guardianship.

(I am glad to have it dropped!! Odo's marriage to Lwaxana is one of my favorite Odo plots.)

[sovay]

"she'll clearly never love me because I'm a bucket of goo"

So I wouldn't have written it in the first place, but if the writers had wanted to treat Neelix's jealousy as a real issue instead of an offputting sitcom hangover of gender relations, that's the obvious avenue: Kes is legitimately amazing and he hasn't got a great opinion of himself to begin with, of course he's terrified that she's only with him because she doesn't know any better ("To the most of men this is a Caliban / And they to him are angels") and the second she has any other options, she'll drop him like a hot space rock. Which is, Watsonianly, what one might as well spin the dial to interpret as going on, but Doylistically? I genuinely don't know what it's doing in the story.

(I can't imagine I haven't mentioned it, because I have a limited and boring fund of life stories, but I had at one point a partner who became irrationally possessive; it was very bad; I assume it influences my feelings on the subject. I can remember hating jealousy plots and love triangles as far back as middle school, though. JUST TALK TO ONE ANOTHER, I PROMISE PEOPLE DO IT ALL THE TIME.)

(I am glad to have it dropped!! Odo's marriage to Lwaxana is one of my favorite Odo plots.)

I really want to watch it now! Their stuck-in-a-turbolift meeting was one of the few episodes I saw when the show originally aired.

[sovay]

"yes! great job Kes! congratulations on [checks notes] setting an entire garden on fire with the power of your mind!"

I realized I left a key point out of my previous parenthetical complaint! That episode established that Ocampa can extend their lifespans beyond the nine-year limit of Kes' people, which means that if the Powers That Couldn't Find Their Way Out of a Paper Bag with a Map and Flashlight had wanted to retain the character for the show's full seven seasons, there was their loophole right there.

[skygiants]

There was so much that was interesting that could have been done with her -- I LOVE the glimpses we get of the rival-mentorship plots with the Doctor and Tuvok, "everyone on the crew parents their beautiful new psychic daughter who was raised in a fishbowl" is yet another wonderful premise squandered by Voyager tbh.

[sovay]

I LOVE the glimpses we get of the rival-mentorship plots with the Doctor and Tuvok, "everyone on the crew parents their beautiful new psychic daughter who was raised in a fishbowl" is yet another wonderful premise squandered by Voyager tbh.

As far as I could tell from falling into behind-the-scenes WTF in January/February, the showrunners never agreed on a mutual vision for Voyager and successively overwrote one another's work to the point where the series doesn't have a reset button so much as it has TBI-induced amnesia and it is desperately frustrating. I experienced many emotions about it.

[sovay]

The Tuvok-B'Elanna stuff is interesting, the Janeway-Fake Dad stuff is extremely sad, all the actual beats of the plot are fairly predictable but that didn't stop me from having a feeling about it!

JOEL GREY.

[skygiants]

JOEL GREY!!! you could give that man the Star Wars Holiday Special to table read and he'd make me feel emotions.

[sovay]

you could give that man the Star Wars Holiday Special to table read and he'd make me feel emotions.

I would donate to charity to see that, in fact.

[lizbee]

I just wanna say that "Threshold" is a perfectly good piece of characterisation for Tom (until it's not), and represents a major turning point in his arc while also never being spoken of again.

[skygiants]

Yeah I genuinely like the first fifteen-to-twenty minutes of the episode! Cool to get some insight into Tom's motivations! Fun to see all the kids collaborating on a group project! WILD that Harry and B'Elanna more or less never appear in the episode after Tom starts amphibianizing given that they're the ones who made the whole thing possible to begin with ...

[starlady]

The writers were so allergic to continuity it's a wonder they managed to set every episode in the Delta Quadrant.

[conuly]

They didn't, in fact, set every episode in the Delta Quadrant. Wasn't the one where Harry got shunted to another timeline (seems to happen to him a lot) and instead of saying "Ok, well, that's life" he became determined to slide back into the correct timeline instead, the one where he's trapped on Voyager and never gets to date anybody ever?

[starlady]

This feels like a metaphor for Garrett Wang sticking around for all seven seasons.

[skygiants]

GREAT POINT ON BOTH. God. Poor Harry, and poor Garrett Wang.

[brownbetty]

Love what you have going here, and although I have never seen an enter episode of V'ger, reading this, I feel like I have? I have seen it all!

(Don't want to step on your vibe, but lizards... aren't amphibians. Amphibians aren't reptiles. Salamanders aren't lizards. Sorry.)

[conuly]

None of them are humans, though, so.

[skygiants]

lol it's true, I kept catching and editing myself in the post and then forgetting -- I've seen it referred to multiple times as 'the lizard episode' but within the episode they're definitely future-evolution salamanders. innerbrat is convinced there are TWO episodes like this and in another, future episode they are going to turn into dinosaurs and the same thing will happen but I feel like that CAN'T be right.

[qian]

I watched most of the first couple of seasons of Voyager when I was nine and the only episode I have any clear recollection of was the lizard episode, because it BLEW MY MIND. By nine-year-old standards, absolutely fantastic television!

[skygiants]

Now that you mention it's entirely possible that I also saw this episode when I was a nine-year-old -- my parents were Voyager watchers and while I have no memory of the episode in specific I do have a very clear memory of having a nightmare in which one of my friends slowly 'evolved' into a monster critter in much the same way that Paris does here which terrified me for months after. Extremely effective horror for an easily frightened youth!