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Sep. 28th, 2025 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsVOYAGER CATCH UP. I said I wanted to post about the first half of S6 before we were actually done with s6 and have not .... quite achieved that, technically, but TODAY we start the seventh and final season so I feel like if I post today it more or less counts, spiritually, emotionally, etc.
1. Equinox, Part II
When we left off at the end of S5, Voyager had encountered another trapped Federation ship with Bad Ethics! When we return, the other Federation ship has doubled down on their Bad Ethics and also erased some of the Doctor's code so as to make him do evil brain surgery on Seven! We spent this whole episode convinced that the Doctor was just faking being evil and was going to turn it around any moment, which did not turn out to be true. Robert Picardo always enjoys being cheerfully evil and it's nice to see him have a good time but I feel like after all the time they've put into building the Doctor as a person it's a bit boring to say 'well, he's evil now because we erased the ethical subroutines' and it would have been more interesting to look at all the other, more complicated motivations that have woven their way through his program; I don't think his relationship with Seven and desire not to give her brain damage, for example and in particular, has much to do with The Ethics Module. Give us chaotic neutral Doctor!
Anyway, the Bad Ethics Federation Captain in the end has a change of heart and heroically sacrifices himself and several other Equinox crewmembers get integrated into Voyager, where I am reasonably sure they are never seen again. Voyager Gothic.
2. Survival Instinct
Seven meets three Borg who were part of her Borg team and had a chance to escape due to the particular Weird Properties of Some Planet, but she panicked and hauled them all back to the Collective. I like this bit of Borg Seven backstory and I like it especially now in context of having just watched the S6 finale which rewrites Seven's relationship to the Borg in ways I don't think are either particularly interesting or consistent with Survival Instinct. But More On That Anon, In A Future Post.
3. Barge of the Dead
B'ELANNA GOES TO KLINGON HELL. It's nice to see a B'Elanna-focused story about her relationship to Klingon spirituality and her mother in particular; I wish her mother in particular was more interesting. It is sort of frustrating to watch B'Elanna's Depression Arc play out in contrast with Seven's Individuality Arc, because they put a lot of care and attention into Seven's Individuality Arc and making sure it progresses recognizably, and every episode of B'Elanna's Depression Arc is like 'B'Elanna's depressed and stressed about everything that's happening in the Alpha quadrant without her ability to help with it!' '... well, now she's had some catharsis and is a bit less depressed!' without any sense of continuity from one to the other, and it's a shame because it could have been a really good arc and an important way to give stakes to Voyager's Endless Voyaging if only the writers had cared about B'Elanna half as much as they do Seven.
4. Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy
Aww, it's Voyager Galaxy Quest! The Doctor Imagines a World where he's an Enormous Hero and Everyone Loves Him, and some aliens tap into that and think it's real. Very silly but Robert Picardo is having a wonderful time.
5. Alice
Paris gets seduced by a sexy derelict spaceship spaceship and B'Elanna has to rescue him after a full episode of him being really rude to her about it. I know people really love B'Elanna/Paris, but it's episodes like these that should be convincing me it's very romantic and they're not really convincing me it's very romantic, and in episodes that aren't like these it's never relevant.
6. Riddles
WHY does Voyager keep asking me to feel sad for Neelix that Tuvok doesn't want to hang out with him? I think Voyager is convinced that Tuvok/Neelix is their Quark/Odo and it simply isn't, it drives me up a wall, I don't enjoy seeing them hanging out because every time an episode pushes them together it's like Voyager is asking me "hey, wouldn't Tuvok be better if he was a little less snooty and More Like Neelix?" AND MY ANSWER IS A REALLY EMPHATIC NO, ACTUALLY.
In this episode Tuvok gets brain damage and Neelix tenderly cares for him and teaches him all the things that Neelix likes to do and Tuvok is like 'whoa! maybe I secretly like being this version of me better!' and I'm not saying Brain Damaged Tuvok doesn't deserve love and happiness but it is part of a REALLY ANNOYING TREND I THINK in Voyager that they will never give us a Tuvok episode unless the central question of it is like "hey ... would Tuvok be happier if he Wasn't Like Tuvok? 🤔 Makes You Think" and I'm so, so sick of it.
7. Dragon's Teeth
This is the one where Voyager discovers a bunch of subspace tunnels that were made by an ancient civilization that was genocided nine hundred years ago, and then they wake up the last like three hundred genocide victims who were hanging out in stasis, but! it turns out! the genocided civilization were LEGENDARY IMPERIAL VILLAINS who wanted to CONQUER THE GALAXY! so Voyager is like whoops, our bad, and starts helping their historical enemies blow them up again. But some escape! Dun dun dun!!
Normally one does not expect Star Trek to come down on 'the solution to genocide is more genocide' but also this whole big threat does feel a little silly .... like if you woke up 300 crusaders from nine hundred years of slumber you might be like 'well these guys aren't very nice' but a.) they have spears and we have guns now and b.) there are three hundred of them. Truly, what are they gonna do. 'But they have subspace tunnels!' rats in the walls kind of problem. Terry Pratchett kind of problem. Pearl-clutching unnecessary IMO. Anyway I guess Voyager agreed because we have never heard from these guys again.
8. One Small Step
Voyager finds a Historic To Voyager (future to us, but not by much) spacecraft trapped in a weird space phenomenon, including the last records of its pilot. Janeway encourages Seven to Feel Sentimental About This, which initially she is skeptical about but eventually sentiment is unlocked. The point of this episode is to make you feel big emotions about space adventure and it does succeed in this. Also the last-records pilot is very handsome and we did hope he might still be alive and get to join the Everyone Stays AU, but alas.
9. The Voyager Conspiracy
Seven accidentally downloads too much data and starts making up Voyager Fan Theories out of various previous plot twists that didn't make sense. This is fun to watch because by its very premise the episode has to remember that Voyager has a continuity and also that a lot of it didn't make sense.
10. Pathfinder
It's Barclay again! Unfortunately I haven't seen much of TNG so Barclay Again, With Visits From Deanna Troi, is not as pleasingly nostalgic to me as it was I suspect for viewers at the time. Also unfortunately Debi, who has seen TNG, hates Barclay with a fiery passion, so it's not pleasingly nostalgic to her either. Anyway, Barclay is working with Paris' grumpy dad to get two-way communication working with Voyager and eventually they do do it! Huzzah etc!
11. Fair Haven
Ah ..... Fair Haven. Okay, so in this one Paris has invented a quaint Irish holovillage for everyone to hang out in, and Janeway gets a crush on a quaint Irish holo-guy and starts tweaking his code to make him her Sensitive Irish Holo-Boyfriend, and then talks about it to various other crewmembers at which point I started screaming because no one should ever have to know about their boss' designer Sensitive Irish Holo-Boyfriend, I think, but Voyager clearly disagrees with me and will disagree with me again, louder and worse!
12. Blink of an Eye
Voyager briefly gets trapped in the orbit of a planet that has a time dilation field, accidentally causing earthquakes there; meanwhile, thousands of years pass on the planet as they look up and observe Big Weird Celestial Body That Seems To Cause Problems and form various myths and theories about it, eventually developing their own space technology to try to see it for themselves. This one is fun! Genuinely good science fiction IMO! Also Daniel Dae Kim is there for a while and definitely should have joined the Everyone Stays AU.
13. Virtuoso
Another 'we must puncture the Doctor's swelled head' episode; in a spiritual sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Tenor, Spy, this time an alien culture gets briefly obsessed with the Doctor's operatic abilities just long enough for him to decide that maybe he wants to go be a professional singer before they replace him with a Superior Singing Hologram and he must return chastened to Voyager. Meanwhile, everyone freaks out about him leaving, because for some reason no one ever considers 'we could just copy his code to a new server and make a second Doctor' a viable option.
Overall early S6 not a high point in our Voyager experience, with some exceptions; it feels like we're on a little bit of a downward arc after the highs of S4/S5, but we will see what the future holds!
1. Equinox, Part II
When we left off at the end of S5, Voyager had encountered another trapped Federation ship with Bad Ethics! When we return, the other Federation ship has doubled down on their Bad Ethics and also erased some of the Doctor's code so as to make him do evil brain surgery on Seven! We spent this whole episode convinced that the Doctor was just faking being evil and was going to turn it around any moment, which did not turn out to be true. Robert Picardo always enjoys being cheerfully evil and it's nice to see him have a good time but I feel like after all the time they've put into building the Doctor as a person it's a bit boring to say 'well, he's evil now because we erased the ethical subroutines' and it would have been more interesting to look at all the other, more complicated motivations that have woven their way through his program; I don't think his relationship with Seven and desire not to give her brain damage, for example and in particular, has much to do with The Ethics Module. Give us chaotic neutral Doctor!
Anyway, the Bad Ethics Federation Captain in the end has a change of heart and heroically sacrifices himself and several other Equinox crewmembers get integrated into Voyager, where I am reasonably sure they are never seen again. Voyager Gothic.
2. Survival Instinct
Seven meets three Borg who were part of her Borg team and had a chance to escape due to the particular Weird Properties of Some Planet, but she panicked and hauled them all back to the Collective. I like this bit of Borg Seven backstory and I like it especially now in context of having just watched the S6 finale which rewrites Seven's relationship to the Borg in ways I don't think are either particularly interesting or consistent with Survival Instinct. But More On That Anon, In A Future Post.
3. Barge of the Dead
B'ELANNA GOES TO KLINGON HELL. It's nice to see a B'Elanna-focused story about her relationship to Klingon spirituality and her mother in particular; I wish her mother in particular was more interesting. It is sort of frustrating to watch B'Elanna's Depression Arc play out in contrast with Seven's Individuality Arc, because they put a lot of care and attention into Seven's Individuality Arc and making sure it progresses recognizably, and every episode of B'Elanna's Depression Arc is like 'B'Elanna's depressed and stressed about everything that's happening in the Alpha quadrant without her ability to help with it!' '... well, now she's had some catharsis and is a bit less depressed!' without any sense of continuity from one to the other, and it's a shame because it could have been a really good arc and an important way to give stakes to Voyager's Endless Voyaging if only the writers had cared about B'Elanna half as much as they do Seven.
4. Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy
Aww, it's Voyager Galaxy Quest! The Doctor Imagines a World where he's an Enormous Hero and Everyone Loves Him, and some aliens tap into that and think it's real. Very silly but Robert Picardo is having a wonderful time.
5. Alice
Paris gets seduced by a sexy derelict spaceship spaceship and B'Elanna has to rescue him after a full episode of him being really rude to her about it. I know people really love B'Elanna/Paris, but it's episodes like these that should be convincing me it's very romantic and they're not really convincing me it's very romantic, and in episodes that aren't like these it's never relevant.
6. Riddles
WHY does Voyager keep asking me to feel sad for Neelix that Tuvok doesn't want to hang out with him? I think Voyager is convinced that Tuvok/Neelix is their Quark/Odo and it simply isn't, it drives me up a wall, I don't enjoy seeing them hanging out because every time an episode pushes them together it's like Voyager is asking me "hey, wouldn't Tuvok be better if he was a little less snooty and More Like Neelix?" AND MY ANSWER IS A REALLY EMPHATIC NO, ACTUALLY.
In this episode Tuvok gets brain damage and Neelix tenderly cares for him and teaches him all the things that Neelix likes to do and Tuvok is like 'whoa! maybe I secretly like being this version of me better!' and I'm not saying Brain Damaged Tuvok doesn't deserve love and happiness but it is part of a REALLY ANNOYING TREND I THINK in Voyager that they will never give us a Tuvok episode unless the central question of it is like "hey ... would Tuvok be happier if he Wasn't Like Tuvok? 🤔 Makes You Think" and I'm so, so sick of it.
7. Dragon's Teeth
This is the one where Voyager discovers a bunch of subspace tunnels that were made by an ancient civilization that was genocided nine hundred years ago, and then they wake up the last like three hundred genocide victims who were hanging out in stasis, but! it turns out! the genocided civilization were LEGENDARY IMPERIAL VILLAINS who wanted to CONQUER THE GALAXY! so Voyager is like whoops, our bad, and starts helping their historical enemies blow them up again. But some escape! Dun dun dun!!
Normally one does not expect Star Trek to come down on 'the solution to genocide is more genocide' but also this whole big threat does feel a little silly .... like if you woke up 300 crusaders from nine hundred years of slumber you might be like 'well these guys aren't very nice' but a.) they have spears and we have guns now and b.) there are three hundred of them. Truly, what are they gonna do. 'But they have subspace tunnels!' rats in the walls kind of problem. Terry Pratchett kind of problem. Pearl-clutching unnecessary IMO. Anyway I guess Voyager agreed because we have never heard from these guys again.
8. One Small Step
Voyager finds a Historic To Voyager (future to us, but not by much) spacecraft trapped in a weird space phenomenon, including the last records of its pilot. Janeway encourages Seven to Feel Sentimental About This, which initially she is skeptical about but eventually sentiment is unlocked. The point of this episode is to make you feel big emotions about space adventure and it does succeed in this. Also the last-records pilot is very handsome and we did hope he might still be alive and get to join the Everyone Stays AU, but alas.
9. The Voyager Conspiracy
Seven accidentally downloads too much data and starts making up Voyager Fan Theories out of various previous plot twists that didn't make sense. This is fun to watch because by its very premise the episode has to remember that Voyager has a continuity and also that a lot of it didn't make sense.
10. Pathfinder
It's Barclay again! Unfortunately I haven't seen much of TNG so Barclay Again, With Visits From Deanna Troi, is not as pleasingly nostalgic to me as it was I suspect for viewers at the time. Also unfortunately Debi, who has seen TNG, hates Barclay with a fiery passion, so it's not pleasingly nostalgic to her either. Anyway, Barclay is working with Paris' grumpy dad to get two-way communication working with Voyager and eventually they do do it! Huzzah etc!
11. Fair Haven
Ah ..... Fair Haven. Okay, so in this one Paris has invented a quaint Irish holovillage for everyone to hang out in, and Janeway gets a crush on a quaint Irish holo-guy and starts tweaking his code to make him her Sensitive Irish Holo-Boyfriend, and then talks about it to various other crewmembers at which point I started screaming because no one should ever have to know about their boss' designer Sensitive Irish Holo-Boyfriend, I think, but Voyager clearly disagrees with me and will disagree with me again, louder and worse!
12. Blink of an Eye
Voyager briefly gets trapped in the orbit of a planet that has a time dilation field, accidentally causing earthquakes there; meanwhile, thousands of years pass on the planet as they look up and observe Big Weird Celestial Body That Seems To Cause Problems and form various myths and theories about it, eventually developing their own space technology to try to see it for themselves. This one is fun! Genuinely good science fiction IMO! Also Daniel Dae Kim is there for a while and definitely should have joined the Everyone Stays AU.
13. Virtuoso
Another 'we must puncture the Doctor's swelled head' episode; in a spiritual sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Tenor, Spy, this time an alien culture gets briefly obsessed with the Doctor's operatic abilities just long enough for him to decide that maybe he wants to go be a professional singer before they replace him with a Superior Singing Hologram and he must return chastened to Voyager. Meanwhile, everyone freaks out about him leaving, because for some reason no one ever considers 'we could just copy his code to a new server and make a second Doctor' a viable option.
Overall early S6 not a high point in our Voyager experience, with some exceptions; it feels like we're on a little bit of a downward arc after the highs of S4/S5, but we will see what the future holds!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-28 04:01 pm (UTC)B'Elanna. So, B'Elanna. I actually differ a little on the B'Elanna's depression episodes - I always read them as, she's hopelessly sad and grieving because that's what life is, in her position, she will go back to her grief in circles for the rest of her life. But you are not far now from an episode called "Lineage" and I'm fascinated as to what you'll think about it - it's about B'Elanna and how racism destroys you from inside, it's extremely not fucking around, but somehow it's also what convinced that Tom loves her as she deserves and will love her forever! So.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 03:16 am (UTC)I am also fascinated what I'll think about it! I think what I keep stumbling over in re: B'Elanna's depression episodes is Voyager's lack of B-plots again; every season, here's ten episodes where B'Elanna has three lines related to engineering, and then a grief circle, and then ten more episodes where she has three lines related to engineering, and then -- I just want the connective tissue, I want it to feel relevant in the background, and not like the show every so often remembers to check in on B'Elanna and is like 'oh? still depressed? okay then' and stops thinking about her for the rest of the season. But that's just not a thing that Voyager does for anyone except Seven and somewhat the Doctor and I have got to get used to it.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-28 04:24 pm (UTC)I had never thought about it this way, but I think you're right. Star Trek sometimes has a problem with thinking it can replicate iconic character dynamics from past Trek iterations but not knowing how to make that lightning strike twice. (See also: Data and Pulaski are not Spock and McCoy.)
no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-28 07:05 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed hearing Robert Picardo sing Verdi filk.
(I also recall that this episode worked much better for me than the similarly ship-saving-secret-fantasy-life-centered "Hollow Pursuits" from TNG, almost certainly because its climactic stakes were simultaneously goofier and more proportionate.)
11. Fair Haven
I HAD NO IDEA THERE HAD BEEN A SECOND CASE OF THE SPACE IRISH.
12. Blink of an Eye
This one I will actually try to check out on account of the science fiction, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 03:19 am (UTC)THERE IS SO MUCH SPACE IRISH. The Space Irish episode in the back half of St6 is even worse.
I think you will enjoy Blink of an Eye!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-28 09:29 pm (UTC)Interesting side note: I recently listened to a Doctor Who short story that has a very similar plot to Blink of an Eye: https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Rise_and_Fall_(audio_story) . I had to go find it because I wanted to find out which story was released first, and it was Voyager. I'm not sure if I'm surprised.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 03:21 am (UTC)Oh, fascinating! I guess it isn't that surprising to find all the big sff franchises bouncing plot ideas amongst each other given how much content they all respectively need.
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Date: 2025-09-28 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-29 02:09 pm (UTC)