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Apr. 11th, 2021 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsGreat 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."
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."
no subject
Date: 2021-04-11 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-12 12:38 am (UTC)I would donate to charity to see that, in fact.