Star Trek: Voyager Season 5
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
501: Night 1998 October 14
(First watched 2008-09-08) I'd been wondering whether people could modify their appearance in the holodeck. Well, it seemed within its possibilities, but I don't think it had actually happened until now. Though it seemed kinda silly that they remained in grayscale when the ship's power went out. Holodeck was still running, but not the LIGHTS on the holodeck!?
Further, doesn't it seem a bit silly for the Doctor to use the holodeck, as he did in the beginning of this episode? I mean, he's already a computer simulation. Can't he just... simulate some experience directly, without needing to use his computer-generated physical presence to interact with another computer-generated physical presence? He wouldn't have to bicker with the rest of the crew about it being his turn.
Janeway is moody today. I guess she only has regrets when the crew is completely safe; not when she's putting them in danger on a weekly basis. She's really sorry she saved the Ocampa rather than dooming them so their few dozen people could've went home? Jeez, it's a good thing Kes isn't around to hear that, or the many other people they've helped along the way.
502: Drone 1998 October 21
(First watched 2008-09-08) So a transporter malfunction combines nanoprobes, the holographic transmitter, and generic crewman to create... superdrone. He had a very different look than other Borg and a shitload of new functionality; I guess the little Borg nanites are a hell of a lot better at extrapolating from a small bit of 29th century technology than our everyday heroes are.
Janeway doesn't want to resort to murder? Yeah, tell that to Tuvix.
Seemed disrespectful that One picked a name, people seemed to be accepting him, and yet he was still mostly referred to as "the drone". Especially in the aftermath of that Sphere explosion, that's a very unspecific name.
So One dies... hey, anybody remember when Neelix was dead for three days and they were able to revive him using old-fashioned 24th century Borg technology? Though in this case it was his will to die. Very Terminator 2, One.
503: Extreme Risk 1998 October 28
(First watched 2008-09-16) So B'Elanna's been doing crazy shit for months, and we see the entire problem and solution condensed into one episode. Also an episode when they design and build a new type of shuttlecraft from scratch. Well, OK, Tom had already planned much of it out. But the default shuttles must be really awful if a small unaided crew can so best it in such little time.
504: In The Flesh 1998 November 4
(First watched 2008-09-17) Peace between enemies... that's Star Trek.
So 8472 got all their data about Starfleet from Voyager? Somehow? But thought Starfleet Academy had a load of Ferengi in it?
505: Once Upon A Time 1998 November 11
(First watched 2008-09-18) Given how they were treated at the beginning of TNG, 11 years prior, I thought holodecks were still fairly new and novel at the time. So I thought it odd when Harry Kim talked about playing the Flotter programs when he was young. Then Janeway busts out an old tale of her time there in her youth. So holodecks have been around for 40+ years? Maybe it was just the inclusion of them on ships that was novel at the beginning of TNG?
Another shuttle crash... but this time it's their Super Shuttle!
506: Timeless 1998 November 18
(First watched 2008-09-21) So we've got an interesting new show with fugitives from Starfleet where Janeway and Seven are dead and LaForge is a captain... but the fugitives just want to cancel it and bring back Star Trek: Voyager. I guess Geordi's not that big a shot, though. He's got a Galaxy-class ship, which is probably a quarter century old by this point.
Again we see something where supposedly they've been working on a project for months, but this is the first we ever hear of it. So much stuff in this show could've worked so much better in a serial format where we could really see these things come together over months.
So they went through a bunch of holodeck tests to see that their original slipstream plan was a bust... but didn't run a single one with their new plan, which is said to be one of the riskiest things they've done yet?
So they cut another 10 years off their trip, eh? Must be down to around 50 years left, then.
507: Infinite Regress 1998 November 25
(First watched 2008-09-22) Wow. Usually Jeri Ryan just gets to poorly act a Borg, but this episode she gets to poorly act a Vulcan, Klingon, Ferengi, and more.
So this thing affecting Seven wouldn't be lessened by them just going away... so it's just an enormous coincidence that when it started being a problem they were within a day of it? And now that the vinculum is back with the people who'd been screwing with it, won't they just screw with it again and Seven will be messed up again?
508: Nothing Human 1998 December 2
(First watched 2008-09-28) It's almost another Tuvix. Everyone is freaking the hell out about what the real Cardassian doctor did, but as his hologram points out... he's just a hologram programmed with the Starfleet knowledge of him, which was quite incomplete. He's not the guy who performed experiments on Bajorans, nor does he have any memory of it. Yet for that and helping save someone's life, he's deemed worthy of deletion. I guess the Doctor is lucky he wasn't programmed with a Hitler mustache, or he'd have been offed long ago.
509: Thirty Days 1998 December 9
(First watched 2008-09-28) So Paris is busted back down to ensign. Maybe that's why Harry's still an ensign; he just keeps committing off-screen violations.
510: Counterpoint 1998 December 16
(First watched 2008-09-29) An episode that would be boring the second time around, because it's so built on whether or not the guy is double- or triple-crossing.
511: Latent Image 1999 January 20
(First watched 2008-10-02) If there's one thing Voyager does well, it's dealing with issues of artificial life forms. If there's another thing it does consistently, it's Janeway changing her mind, but acting completely convinced that she's correct at both times.
So after the Doc went nuts the first time, they erased his memory, erased all records of Ensign Jetal from the computer, and just pretended like she'd never existed?
The episode ends without his problems fully resolved, either, though since he's back to normal by next week we have to assume things like Janeway's oldass poetry set him straight.
So if that holoimager thing was so easy and so informative in checking out the crew's health, why wasn't it already a standard practice? It took the brilliance of an EMH to decide it should be? No offense, Doctor. Also, the amazingly intricate scan required them to pose at different angles? Certainly the results look more complex than something one would get from combining four angles of data. If four could do such detail, why not one?
512: Bride of Chaotica! 1999 January 27
(First watched 2008-10-02) This may be the weirdest holodeck episode ever. The metaness of a 1990s scifi show talking about how inaccurate a 1930s scifi show appears in the 2370s and things like reuse of sets is appreciably silly, but it strikes a great contrast with how it's unintentionally lead to a disastrous first contact with photonic beings from another dimension, where dozens of lives (none on Voyager, of course) are lost. Makes things a bit less of a laughing matter than the tone of the episode tried for.
The ship seemed to be running into lots of trouble with malfunctioning replicators and bathrooms... but I don't recall them ever explaining why there were problems beyond them being stuck.
513: Gravity 1999 February 3
(First watched 2008-10-06) The background bits with a young Tuvok were interesting. Too bad they had to be interspersed by another shuttle-rescue episode of Voyager.
514: Bliss 1999 February 10
(First watched 2008-10-07) Come on. I know they were all anxious to get home, but nobody thought it was a little suspicious that everyone was getting fuck-awesome news and offers from Earth?
Naomi Wildman and Seven make an interesting pair. A literal child and a figurative child in the sense that she didn't grow up in a normal human environment, both learning their way around.
Star Trek has strange things, but this is one of the creatures that really strains credulity. How did a creature thousands of kilometers long and that has lived for hundreds of thousands of years evolve to its state of telepathically tricking starships into itself to eat them?
515: Dark Frontier Part I 1999 February 17
(First watched 2008-10-09)
516: Dark Frontier Part II 1999 February 17
(First watched 2008-10-09) Well, at least they make it pretty solid that Seven has no reservations about staying out of the Collective.
The Borg Queen must love herself enough to care whether the room she's in is blown up.
So they cut another 15 years off their return? 35-ish years left, about half what they started with?
517: The Disease 1999 February 24
(First watched 2008-11-23) So Starfleet regulations require getting the okay from the commanding and medical officers before getting intimate with an alien? How come I haven't seen people getting busted for this before?
518: Course: Oblivion 1999 March 3
(First watched 2009-06-16) Ahh. It's good to be back in the 24th century. Prime timeline.
Flatlined dead mimetic B'Elanna sure breathes pretty visibly.
I've previously complained about how Janeway will so strongly fight for one path, and then end up reversing it. Here she does it again, but since it's a mimetic double crew rather than the real one which can survive everything, her dumbass refusal to turn around sooner ends up dooming them all.
(First watched 2009-06-16) Is this a goofy new hairdo for Chakotay?
Boothby again? This guy is all over Star Trek for what a small character he actually is. I believe this is his 3rd onscreen appearance, and only the first was actually the real Boothby.
What an insane long hallucination sequence this episode has. Is that one of the longest in all of Star Trek? Well, I know there are a few where almost entire episodes are supposed to have taken place in someone's mind, but this is the more general type where we know it's a hallucination and they keep hitting us over the head with changing locations and weird lighting and character disappearing and yada yada yada.
(First watched 2009-06-18) Heeeey, Jason Alexander. This think tank group is interesting. They help people as we're always seeing the Starfleet groups do... but do so in a capitalist way. I like the reference to curing the Phage, which Voyager ran into in one of the first episodes.
(First watched 2009-06-18) So I wondered if they tried pushing their waste filtration tech on the Malon again. The single survivor at the end of the episode would probably be more receptive to the idea.
So they ended up pushing the ship near an "O class" star, so when it exploded the star's gravity would take most of it. If that's such a safe way to get rid of the waste, why don't the Malon always dump into these O class stars?
Hey, we actually see a sonic shower work in this episode, rather than just hearing it referenced.
522: Someone to Watch Over Me 1999 April 28
(First watched 2009-06-18) Heeeey, Scott Thompson!
Beyond that, the episode was pretty much humor and a Star Trek take on Pygmalion.
Robert Picardo did a nice job; I could really read without words as his feelings toward Seven were changing. But then, Robert Picardo tends to do a nice job.
(First watched 2009-06-18) And the point of that was...?
There have been a few other Trek episodes set primarily in the past, like Deep Space Nine's Far Beyond the Stars. However, this episode was neither very relevant to a "present" situation, or very entertaining on its own, so it seemed a bit pointless. So family is important and history can be inaccurate... okay, never heard those before.
Even though it dealt with the late 20th century, this episode took some great suspension of disbelief. Indiana as the location for a new high technology?
Also, Ms. O'Donnel, emailing everyone within a hundred miles is not a simple task considering email addresses have no logical relationship to worldwide location. And it's an assholey thing to do even if you could.
(First watched 2009-06-19) What a screwy time travely episode. When one Seven dies... they just grab an earlier one with no consequences. Yet somehow grabbing these later ones too many times would doom an earlier one from some sort of time travel psychosis? And though one of the captured Captain Braxton was from a point in time when he hadn't yet decided to commit the crime, he's still going to be reintegrated with the one that did and go to trial? I was wondering if the act of arresting him before he'd done anything was the cause of him being pissed off enough to do something, but it didn't seem to play out that way.
So they wanted to help Seven blend in to past Voyagers by disguising her Borg bits, but with their fancy schmancy future technology could they have not gone even further? I dunno, disguise her as some actual minor member of the crew, or give her a personal cloaking device?
So they talk about the events of Star Trek: First Contact again, using it as an example of a paradox where attempting to stop something causes it to happen. Buuuut I don't think it's a good example. Just because the Enterprise crew stopped the Borg from interfering doesn't mean the Borg incursion was a necessary part of making it happen. I mean, it's not like Zefram Cochrane turned out to be a rogue Borg drone or something.
If nothing else, this episode at least gave us a cool shot of many ships at Utopia Planitia.
(First watched 2009-06-19) The episode title didn't leave much confusion as to what it was they'd really found on the planet.
So everyone was impressed with how admirably Harry Kim handled things in this episode. Surely he'll be rewarded with another non-promotion.
526: Equinox Part I 1999 May 26
(First watched 2009-06-19) So of course to preserve series status quo, when they finally meet another Starfleet ship it's a group who has gone against the Starfleet way and are killing innocent life forms for their own benefit, and thus are doomed to not last past this two-parter.
Though the Doctor's holographic generator has been used by other intelligences before, it's interesting that this time it's by another EMH who has similarly developed on his own for the last several years--albeit without his ethical subroutines.