What Star Trek Ep/Movie Did you Watch Today?

[Raw_Deal]

DS9 - Our Man Bashir.

I love this episode! Usually, I'm not a big fan of holodeck/holosuite episodes, but this one is brilliant. It totally catches the vibe of the 1960s Bond movies, and Garak's reaction to the Bond way of doing things, is priceless: "Kiss the girl, get the key. They never taught me that at the Obsidian Order".

[DigiFluid]

Star Trek: Voyager 1.13 "Cathexis"
I was eating through most of the episode so I didn't get to type thoughts out as usual. But suffice it to say I did actually rather like it. It's a complete bottle show, and I think it's funny that brain-dead Chakotay is pretty much ignored for the entire episode, but it's still likeable. I enjoyed how it was such a mystery/whodunit-style story for the entire episode.

Janeway is in desperate need of a new hairstylist though. From the bun to this....wave, or whatever you want to call it And I had to laugh toward the end when they tried to backtrack out of the nebula by using possessed Tuvok's travel logs. Why in hell would his possesser be keeping logs


Star Trek: Voyager 1.14 "Faces"
Yay, more Vidiian stuff! They're so....disgusting and neat. Like I said before, I think they kind of deserve a bit of extra leniency toward a more PG-13 rating. They're grotesque and horrific, they should be shown as such. Especially when they do horrifying things like steal a man's face in order to be more personable to one of their captives

Roxann Dawson does a really nice job here as human Torres, and I like how they took the time to give her character some background. I'm not really sold on how they wrote her Klingon half though. I kind of wonder whether anyone on the VOY writing staff bothered to do any research into Klingons at all beyond the most cursory. Klingon Torres (and even regular Torres) just seems like she's constantly on some hardcore Klingon PMS rather than just acting like a Klingon.


Star Trek: Voyager 1.15 "Jetrel"
Kind of an unnecessary (and really, unwanted) replay of DS9's Duet. I very much appreciate finding out more about Neelix's background and history, since it was essentially ignored to this point, but this really doesn't bring anything new to the table. And if I'm not mistaken, even VOY recycles this story a little later on with some holo-Cardassian doctor....

Still, Ethan Phillips delivers a fantastic performance, and I think that exploring Neelix's past is one of the real highlights of VOY's first year.


Star Trek: Voyager 1.16 "Learning Curve"
Pretty boring way to cap off the first season IMO. The Maquis malcontents story is boring and misplaced--it should've been done (and better) earlier in the season. And the infected gel-packs story, while interesting, is under-utilized.

Although I did laugh out loud at Chell's hope that Tuvok would slip and fall to his death in the Jeffries tube

[Raw_Deal]

DS9 - Homefront; Paradise Lost.

[stargatefan234]

VOY: The Gift

[nx01a]

VOY: The Gift

Bye, Kes!

[DigiFluid]

Star Trek: Voyager 2.01 "The 37s"
Goofy, just goofy. If the truck is drifting through space, how is it losing rust? How is it the oil and water in the engine didn't freeze solid and destroy the engine? How can it possibly still smell of manure after being in space for four centuries?

Memory Alpha says this was written and produced as the last episode of season 1, despite being the first episode of season 2....I guess they wanted (initially) to end on a bang and show the ship landing for the first time. The logic of it though....what? It's too dangerous to fly a shuttle down, but it's just fine to fly THE WHOLE DAMN SHIP down and risk everyone's lives and hope of getting home if anything goes wrong? And then they call for a Blue Alert for the landing--didn't TNG establish that Blue was for when life support was being shut down?

That said....it's pretty neat to see a Federation starship land for pretty much the first time in the franchise. I'm still not sure why it doesn't flop over onto its saucer section, but hey at least it's neat-looking.


Star Trek: Voyager 2.02 "Initiations"
Poor Aron Eisenberg, always having to play roles about 20 years younger than he is....

But hey, we see the first of many shuttles destroyed in this one. And I guess Chakotay's medicine bundle along with it (so much for that cultural tradition! Except, somehow he has them back at the end of the episode. Figure that one out.


Star Trek: Voyager 2.03 "Projections"
A bit more fun this time around. Taking reality and turning it on its head for half the episode is a nice change of pace; having the Doctor be the only real person in a shipful of holograms.

Star Trek: Voyager 2.04 "Elogium"
Kes' biological clock starts ringing, and I think Jennifer Lien does a nice job of portraying Ocampan maternal insanity. More than nice, I think she actually does a really terrific job of it. Her devouring of tons of odd foods is a laugh, and then the sweaty hyperventilation later....very well played.

But I think the real meat of the episode is in the B-plot in which things are discussed rather than actually happening. I think maybe the best part of the whole episode, story-wise, is Janeway and Chakotay sitting in her office discussing whether or not Voyager should become a generational starship. Of course as viewers we know the show won't go on for 75 years, but contextually it's a very important question.

[Raw_Deal]

Digi, in the rate you're going, you'll be back re-watching DS9 in no time

[Raw_Deal]

DS9 - Crossfire.

[Jeff O'Connor]

Enjoying the write-ups, Digi.

[DigiFluid]

Enjoying the write-ups, Digi.

Cheers

Digi, in the rate you're going, you'll be back re-watching DS9 in no time

We shall see! I'm going to have no/very little free time starting in a couple of weeks so I'm trying to get through as much of VOY as possible before then.

I suspect my next Trek watch-through will be TNG-DS9-VOY, by Stardate Minus TNG season 1....because that doesn't work with the Yar equation.

[DigiFluid]

Star Trek Voyager 2.05 "Non Sequitur"
Oh Harry Kim, are you ever new at this. Not just Starfleet--green at life. You don't know when you've got it good with a girl. You tell everyone including the local Starbucks owner EXACTLY where you live; apartment number and all. And when you decide that you're in an alternate reality--rather than go to Starfleet where they might be able to do something for you--you go to France to chat with someone you've never actually met. Well done.

I think it's unfortunate that the (actually rather interesting) sci-fi concept of aliens who exist in temporal folds gets really glossed over in favour of the 'Harry's actually on Earth!' story. It's an interesting thought, and hints at even more interesting story to be told, but ultimately it never really goes there.

I also notice the banners hanging from lampposts outside Harry's apartment identify the area as the Mission District. I don't know whether that was meant as a nod to the big DS9 two-parter Past Tense or if the Trek people just have a particular interest in the real-life SF Mission District, but it was interesting nonetheless.

And um....why the heck was the Runabout launching from inside the Dyson Sphere?


Star Trek Voyager 2.06 "Twisted"
Neelix's jealousy thing is old. Really old, and really kind of creepy actually.

The episode itself, however, has some pretty neat ideas driving it. Some strange new spatial anomaly, very Trek. And the distortion of the entire ship so that the cast is wandering in circles and repeatedly ending up in the same places is a lot of fun. Only thing is, I wish they hadn't done the door from Engineering into some guy's quarters thing. That just didn't fit in with what the rest of the episode was doing.

I also really like the diagram of the distorting ship that we see at one point. I don't understand why the corridors don't appear to be going uphill and downhill from the perspective of the crew, but I can let it slide. It would've cost too much to portray it, and it's not ultimately necessary to the storytelling.

And all this because Tuvok decided that the best option was to fly through the distortion in order to minimize the amount of time they were going to be in it


Star Trek Voyager 2.07 "Parturition"
Hey! Kes' shuttle simulation included being shot at by Jem'Hadar fighters! I know Voyager launched post-Jem'Hadar/The Search, but weren't they baffled later on when they made contact with the Federation, having no idea who the Dominion were. And I did laugh when Chakotay said the new M-class planet was named 'Planet Hell'. Nice nod to behind-the-scenes Trek stuff there

As for the main thrust of the episode (pun fully intended), bleh. I commented in the previous episode how tired I am of Neelix's creepy jealousy. Being overprotective of his two-year-old girlfriend Oh and boom goes another shuttlecraft. That's 3 already this season

Nice VFX shot of Voyager descending into the planetary atmosphere though.


Star Trek Voyager 2.08 "Persistence of Vision"
Honestly I kind of zoned out while watching this; spent most of the runtime tooling around in my Star Trek XLS file instead. A starship crew being driven to distraction by its hallucinations and lack of inhibitions was fun in The Naked Time, less fun in The Naked Now, and downright awful in If Wishes Were Horses. I don't see why they needed to recycle it here, too.

[Raw_Deal]

I suspect my next Trek watch-through will be TNG-DS9-VOY, by Stardate Minus TNG season 1....because that doesn't work with the Yar equation.

Sounds complicated...

As for me - tonight was dedicated to DS9's Return to Grace.

[DigiFluid]

I suspect my next Trek watch-through will be TNG-DS9-VOY, by Stardate Minus TNG season 1....because that doesn't work with the Yar equation.

Sounds complicated...

Well, it is and it isn't.

Certainly it's a ton of episodes to sort, which translates into a lot of clicking through Memory Alpha.

There's also the problems that the Stardates themselves pose--Stardates don't always line up with episode order, and in DS9 and VOY particularly, there are a great many episodes without Stardates at all. Add in the occasional big date discontinuity (ie: the First Contact discrepancy), and it can be a bit of a jumbled mess.

But I prefer to look at a lot of those as opportunities rather than obstacles. Looking at episodes by Stardate rather than by episode number renders episode number/original airdate irrelevant and can give a new twist on things. Blocks of episodes without Stardates at all allow you to organize them as you please--be that by narrative or arc, or else simply by convenience.

Plus, Excel is a wonderful organizational tool and I have it pretty much worked out already

[stargatefan234]

VOY: Day of Honour

[Mr.MacGadget]

TNG, 7x07, Dark Page *cries*