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STAR TREK: VOYAGER |
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5/16/2001 |
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Still, I loved the Captain's strange behavior upon her return. She took Chakotay into her ready room and explained that they were in space belonging to aliens who had 50 times their technological capacity, and could destroy them without blinking, AND they were ecological extremists...Greenpeace gone mad with lots of firepower. So Voyager was going to hand over their warp core, and everybody was going to go settle on a nearby planet. What? Fortunately, Chakotay had the same reaction I did, especially when
Janeway started talking to herself on the bridge. But I liked that the crew was smart and figured out something was wrong quickly. On Next Generation they're always pretty smart but sometimes on Voyager or DS9 they'd get stupid and not report strange behavior or question it even though they've encountered a million aliens that can take over people's bodies or brains and make them do what they want. And One side note: they brought back Ensign Vorik, another familiar face from seasons past. I love that! I wonder if dead Seska will turn up in the final show. I like seeing these folks that we've had around from the beginning, it'll make the impact of going home that much better. (It still would have been better with Neelix around.) So that's it: on Wednesday it all ends. I can't believe it. Vive la Voyageur! |
Turns
out Janeway was really the Doctor, downloading various crew members'
data into his holomatrix so he could pose as each of them, all to save
the Captain's life because she was being held captive by some rotund
big-head aliens in silly outfits. Remember the 
the Doctor. . .like the singing, enough! They indulge him far too much.
As far as I'm concerned, the reason holograms don't qualify as life
forms - say, the way Data does - is for the exact reason that they CAN
be programmed. The Doctor can be programmed to not love Seven or to
forget he can sing (please) or to just stop being so demanding and annoying.
If I were the Captain I would have kicked his ass for not obeying orders
and putting the whole ship in danger just to save her. Maybe I would
have completely reprogrammed him, without any regrets. I wouldn't have
invited him out for coffee, that's for sure. And by the way, who's running
the mess hall now that Neelix is gone? 
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5/9/2001 |
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Well goodbye Neelix. It would have been much more exciting if last week's preview hadn't shown what was going to happen in the THE LAST FIVE MINUTES of tonight's show. Hello? They totally gave away the biggest thing to happen in the show a whole week ago. I think it kind of sucks for Neelix that he doesn't get to be in the final Voyager show. At least now he gets to live behind a shield on some asteroid with a bunch of scared Talaxians who ALL have Xes in their names. I'm not kidding. Dexa, Oxilon, Brax. . .and I remember an old episode where Neelix talked about his sister, and I just looked it up, and what was her name? Alixia. I can't, I just can't. And while it was nice to see Naomi Wildman again, it would have been even nicer to see her Mom too, or at least to have had somebody mention her. The story was pretty lame. The evil miners
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were
really creepy-looking aliens, but their skin reminded me of the kid
that's born in "|
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All in all, it was a sad send-off for Neelix. I don't know if I would have felt the same way if the preview hadn't RUINED it, but I hope they end the show on a bigger bang than this. |
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5/2/2001 |
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Good Prime Directive story, too, especially since they actually followed it for a change. And fun along the way, with Seven of Nine & Chakotay stranded, Tom having to take pilot lessons with a boring instructor, funky native people who communicate by sign language, really big stakes (an entire civilization) and lots of beauty shots. COOL. And they tied the stories together nicely at the end, when Voyager got stuck so Janeway sent encoded orders to Tom, in the middle of his pilot instruction in the Delta Flyer, and he had to whip over to the planet, beam up all the bad people and reactivate the shield to stop them from going back. |
on
shore leave in the middle of everything -- but it was a great story,
it could even have been a little longer. Things got a little rushed
at the end but I'm not complaining, it was action-packed. 
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 The
only thing that was missing was a little romantic tension between Chakotay
& Seven, since we know from earlier
this season that she digs him. Seven, as always, is just the coolest,
making her way through the jungle, learning to speak the sign languge,
not being able to keep her hair up in that crazy bun. I liked Chakotay
freaking out when the natives started decorating their faces to look like
his tattoo, I was so sure Seven was going to come back and find out he'd
been made God of The Silent People. |
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So they do get bonus points for a good episode, but it sure didn't feel like one of the last four, you know what I mean? The preview for next week indicates that Neelix is going away, but the previews on UPN are so badly done that I don't know if it's for real or some kind of fake-out. I won't read the previews or any gossip because I don't want to spoil the final episode. I can't think about the final episode or I'll get sad. What's going to happen to my Wednesday nights? |
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4/25/2001 |
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I can't believe it. I was JUST thinking about how the series is almost over forever, and wondering if they were going to bring back some people we haven't seen in a while, like Lt. Carey. He was there a lot in the first season, competing against B'Elanna for the Chief Engineer job, and then remember how nice he was when she got the gig instead of him? He had a very Miles O'Brien-like quality to him. I liked seeing him around. |
| So I turned on Voyager this week, and there he was! And it was as if he'd been there all along, they even gave him a first name and Tom said it as if they'd been hanging out for years. And then he mentioned having a wife, and a kid, so I knew right away that it was all over, it was like one of those army movies where a young soldier on his first mission pulls out a picture of his girlfriend. He may as well have been wearing one of those old red security shirts from the original series. (That, or they could have just painted a target on him.) |
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And I'm sorry, but I will never buy Tom & B'Elanna's relationship. Is it just me or do those two have zero chemistry? Chakotay has it with just about every woman on that show -- and I see he & Seven are getting stranded together next week, which should be especially interesting considering her recent holodeck fantasies about him -- but Tom & B'Elanna just don't do it for me. My fella & I just keep saying, "They're married" while we watch them to remind ourselves because there's NOTHING there between them. I will say this, though: Tom Paris is getting slightly less annoying over time. He had a lot of promise in those first few seasons but all that Captain Proton, I-love-the-20th-century-and-cars business was getting to me. I like when they bring back his training as a medic, that's more interesting to me than listening to him talk about hot rods. I liked the alien they beamed up to the ship who had those goobily things all over his face, and he cleaned up nicely once they started treating him for radiation poisoning. I was just a little surprised at the end that the the Voyager crew didn't send more medicine to everybody else on the planet, I mean, it was Earth's fault that these people got their environment wrecked in the first place. |
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There are only THREE shows left before the series finale, I can't stand it. R.I.P.
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But
did they have to kill off Lt. Carey? Did they really have to? Couldn't
he have made it home with the rest of them? I always like the peripheral
characters on all the Star Treks. And they must have considered him
as someone important at the beginning, since they even gave him his
own
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4/18/2001 |
I really liked tonight's episode even though
it  had
all the elements of a show that bores me silly: the Doctor as a central
character, the holodeck as a primary location, no immediate physical danger
for anybody, no real stakes for the ship or the universe, and no encounters
with aliens, although they did have one blue guy.
When they opened the show with the Doctor writing a holonovel, I had a
nasty flashback to that unforgivably bad singing
episode. |
| But I liked the novel he wrote, and it was really cool the way we got to see it along with each member 
of the crew watching his or her own badass character in action. I liked
Tuvok's beard, because it was a subtle little Spock-in-a-mirror-universe
reference.I liked Tom Paris' trick to make the Doctor seehow obnoxious
he was, and I usually find Tom Paris obnoxious. I even liked the names
the Doctor gave everybody in his holo-novel. And I think it was a great
way to dramatize the effect of looking at yourself through someone else's
eyes in a flashy, fun way. |
But I kept thinking of things to make the story better. How about all those communications that can suddenly come through on that new com signal? They could sow some seeds of apprehension  about
coming home. Maybe Janeway could find out that she's in some trouble with
Starfleet for her renegade behavior in the Delta Quadrant. Maybe Chakotay,
B'Elanna, and all the other Maquis should be starting to worry about getting
put in jail when they get back. And all of that aside, Data went through
a similar
struggle for personhood way back when, and did it with a lot more
humility. Remember? They had a trial to determine whether or not he was
"a person". And the stakes were a lot higher for him, because
if he lost, he was going to be disassembled. Ouch. |
| 4/11/2001 | |
| Q? Again? With a son? Oy vey. |  |
We've already seen this story on Next Generation. Remember when the Continuum took away Q's powers and left him on the Enterprise? That was fun the first time around. It's not quite so enchanting the second. |
| I liked the bit where Q Junior sealed up Neelix's mouth & removed his vocal chords, it was very Twilight Zone, in a send-you-to-the-cornfield kind of way. But Q Senior's quick repair took all the creepy, scary fun out of it. I did, however, like his line to the Captain: "I even fixed your pet Talaxian." |
And what was that deal at the end when Q handed Captain Janeway some PADD with information on how to shave a couple of years off the journey? Um, couldn't he just snap his fingers & send them to wherever he wanted? And his explanation for not sending them all the way home was very Gilligan's Island. He could have just said, "Because there are still six more episodes before the show's finale." It would have made more sense. |
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is back for the 800th time. I wish Dwight Schultz would get a permanent
acting gig and be too busy for Voyager. Isn't there an
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