BigJKO

A Dedicated Thread For Talking About Star Trek Episodes

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They don't get much more developed. The general level of quality does significantly improve by, like, season 5, but they never really go anywhere with most of the characters. Chakotay and Kim are super boring forever.

 

I'm very slowly progressing through Enterprise; I'm maybe a quarter of the way through season 3. It's a lot like Voyager in that even when it manages to be pretty OK, it still has so much obvious wasted potential.

 

In the case of Voyager, it's ridiculous how much promise there is in certain aspects of the premise. A crew that's half unproven cadets and half insurgents who have to learn to work together? Sounds dope. And then most of that conflict is resolved immediately, only to be paid lip-service periodically thereafter. 

 

And Enterprise throws out some interesting ideas. You've got these people flying around in this fancy ship that trivializes interstellar travel in a setting where a whole economy exists around slow ass space boats. In TOS and TNG they're always running into goofy-ass colonies; Enterprise could be digging into the idea of an expanding human frontier.

 

If you're going to do a prequel to TOS, maybe you can explain where all those miners and space farmers came from.

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39 minutes ago, Salacious Snake said:

They don't get much more developed. The general level of quality does significantly improve by, like, season 5, but they never really go anywhere with most of the characters. Chakotay and Kim are super boring forever.

 

I'm very slowly progressing through Enterprise; I'm maybe a quarter of the way through season 3. It's a lot like Voyager in that even when it manages to be pretty OK, it still has so much obvious wasted potential.

 

In the case of Voyager, it's ridiculous how much promise there is in certain aspects of the premise. A crew that's half unproven cadets and half insurgents who have to learn to work together? Sounds dope. And then most of that conflict is resolved immediately, only to be paid lip-service periodically thereafter. 

 

And Enterprise throws out some interesting ideas. You've got these people flying around in this fancy ship that trivializes interstellar travel in a setting where a whole economy exists around slow ass space boats. In TOS and TNG they're always running into goofy-ass colonies; Enterprise could be digging into the idea of an expanding human frontier.

 

If you're going to do a prequel to TOS, maybe you can explain where all those miners and space farmers came from.

Kim never getting promoted during all 7 seasons is sad, but kind of hilarious

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10 hours ago, Cordeos said:

Kim never getting promoted during all 7 seasons is sad, but kind of hilarious

 

It became enough of a thing among the producers that they basically decided to keep him an ensign forever, except Timeless where they make him an admiral as a joke.

 

Actually, that's a good way of explaining where Voyager went wrong with its characterization... An ambitious and talented ensign whose career is derailed by the extraordinary circumstances of his ship becomes a running joke rather than a chance for character development.

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I had also heard tell that the fact that the actor was not very well liked had something to do with it...

 

Voyager characterisation is definitely a "favourite children" crapshoot. The Doctor and Seven get all kinds of evolution, while other members of the main cast never do. The only reason this never bothered me is they were my favourites too.

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Kim does have a few good episodes, Timeless like already mentioned, but I also like The Chute. I'll take him over Chakotay any day.

 

@TheLastBaron

There's an episode guide to Voyager posted somewhere in this thread, if you get bored with Season 1 I recommend following that and just watching the highlights instead.

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48 minutes ago, eot said:

Kim does have a few good episodes, Timeless like already mentioned, but I also like The Chute. I'll take him over Chakotay any day.

 

@TheLastBaron

There's an episode guide to Voyager posted somewhere in this thread, if you get bored with Season 1 I recommend following that and just watching the highlights instead.

 

Here's the Voyager episode list I compiled earlier in this thread.  A few people added some more if you keep reading.

 

I felt a certain sympathy for Kim if for no other fact than he was Asian.  There were a few jokes made about the fact that he was a perpetual ensign (such as what Gorm mentioned above and another episode where Tom Paris is promoted and Kim jokes he didn't see a box on his console).  I also liked his friendship with Tom, but I was more than a little annoyed that he often defaulted to the sidekick role.

 

I agree that for the most part Chakotay was boring.  The actor that played him was really outspoken during the show's run about how displeased he was with his character's development.  The most egregious example I can think of is a later season episode that starts with the crew discovering an old Mars mission shuttle and Chakotay is all excited because he's supposedly really into that part of history.  Except ten minutes in he gets sidelined due to an injury and all the character development goes to Seven.  The only Star Trek book I've ever read was a Voyager one and it mostly starred Chakotay.  It was probably the most development on his character I've seen and it completely doesn't matter.

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5 hours ago, Gwardinen said:

Voyager characterisation is definitely a "favourite children" crapshoot. The Doctor and Seven get all kinds of evolution, while other members of the main cast never do. The only reason this never bothered me is they were my favourites too.

 

1 hour ago, SecretAsianMan said:

I felt a certain sympathy for Kim if for no other fact than he was Asian.  There were a few jokes made about the fact that he was a perpetual ensign (such as what Gorm mentioned above and another episode where Tom Paris is promoted and Kim jokes he didn't see a box on his console).  I also liked his friendship with Tom, but I was more than a little annoyed that he often defaulted to the sidekick role.

 

I agree that for the most part Chakotay was boring.  The actor that played him was really outspoken during the show's run about how displeased he was with his character's development.  The most egregious example I can think of is a later season episode that starts with the crew discovering an old Mars mission shuttle and Chakotay is all excited because he's supposedly really into that part of history.  Except ten minutes in he gets sidelined due to an injury and all the character development goes to Seven.  The only Star Trek book I've ever read was a Voyager one and it mostly starred Chakotay.  It was probably the most development on his character I've seen and it completely doesn't matter.

 

I think the "favorite son" dynamic that badly sidelined some characters (mostly Kim and Chakotay) and gave others (mostly Seven and the Doctor) lavish attention was created, as has been said before, by Berman's hands-off role as lead executive producer and the turnover of showrunners every couple of seasons. Piller ran the first two seasons of TNG, DS9, and VOY, and his focus on monsters or technobabble of the week means that Janeway, Tuvok, Paris, and B'Elanna get all the development. Jeri Taylor takes over and suddenly it's the Maquis crew with all the airtime (except Chakotay, because who knows what to do with him). And we all know about Brannon Braga and his sexy robot girlfriend Seven of Nine...

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At least with the Doctor it felt somewhat organic, as he'd been around, and he was a likeable character from the start. The way Seven swoops in and becomes the main character is so bananas. I mean, they did some good stuff with her, and Jeri Ryan is a treasure. She can definitely carry the weight, including delivering all of that undeliverable Star Trek dialog (with which Voyager is by far the worst offender).

 

But it really felt like the dungeon master's favorite character suddenly appearing as an NPC and dominating your campaign.

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5 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

I felt a certain sympathy for Kim if for no other fact than he was Asian. 

I have a co-worker I talk to a lot about Star Trek, he's actually the one who got me to watch DS9 and Voyager after only ever watching TNG (and TOS) multiple times.  He's talked about how big of a deal it was for him (as a Chinese guy) just to have a Chinese guy in Star Trek finally in Voyager.

 

Thanks for the episode list, I'm planning on just watching every episode, but I'll keep it handy so if there's an episode I'm really not digging I can see if there's a reason to stick around or if I'm safe skipping to the next one.

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46 minutes ago, TheLastBaron said:

I have a co-worker I talk to a lot about Star Trek, he's actually the one who got me to watch DS9 and Voyager after only ever watching TNG (and TOS) multiple times.  He's talked about how big of a deal it was for him (as a Chinese guy) just to have a Chinese guy in Star Trek finally in Voyager.

 

As a person of Chinese decent myself I can completely understand that position.  I just wish Kim evolved more beyond the eager beaver.

 

1 hour ago, Salacious Snake said:

At least with the Doctor it felt somewhat organic, as he'd been around, and he was a likeable character from the start. The way Seven swoops in and becomes the main character is so bananas. I mean, they did some good stuff with her, and Jeri Ryan is a treasure. She can definitely carry the weight, including delivering all of that undeliverable Star Trek dialog (with which Voyager is by far the worst offender).

 

But it really felt like the dungeon master's favorite character suddenly appearing as an NPC and dominating your campaign.

 

The Doctor and Seven are great characters, but they're also a little too easy since they both start as blank slates so you can graft whatever personality you want onto them, much like Data was often used as the vehicle to discuss human nature.  In this way I admire DS9 for not having a literally emotionless character yet still doing a lot character-wise (one could argue that Odo is pretty stiff but he's not physically incapable of it in the same way that Data, the Doctor, and Seven are).

 

Also Jeri Ryan is a treasure.  I'm bothered when she doesn't get her due credit as an actress and is written off as eye candy.  Although dressing her in nothing but skintight outfits doesn't exactly help that cause...

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I'm watching the DS9 episode where they go onto the original Enterprise with a lot of TOS footage and this is an enjoyable episode.  The stuff about the Klingons that no one recognizes as Klingons and Worf just says 'It's a long story, we don't talk about it with outsiders" and that's the end of that was great. 

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Oh hell yeah, Trials and Tribble-ations is one of those things that seems like it should be a shitshow on paper, but they pulled it off so well! I mean, the visual effects alone are awesome for 20 year old TV, but they also managed to cobble together a good, fun show around the concept. 

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15 hours ago, TheLastBaron said:

I'm watching the DS9 episode where they go onto the original Enterprise with a lot of TOS footage and this is an enjoyable episode.  The stuff about the Klingons that no one recognizes as Klingons and Worf just says 'It's a long story, we don't talk about it with outsiders" and that's the end of that was great. 

 

It's also kind of an indictment of the later series Enterprise when viewed nowadays, because Enterprise actually did try to retcon the different looks of Klingons. This seems to be a trap prequels fall into a lot; attempting to explain away what were clearly just design choices with in-universe fiction that wasn't really necessary or desired.

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20 hours ago, Salacious Snake said:

At least with the Doctor it felt somewhat organic, as he'd been around, and he was a likeable character from the start. The way Seven swoops in and becomes the main character is so bananas. I mean, they did some good stuff with her, and Jeri Ryan is a treasure. She can definitely carry the weight, including delivering all of that undeliverable Star Trek dialog (with which Voyager is by far the worst offender).

 

But it really felt like the dungeon master's favorite character suddenly appearing as an NPC and dominating your campaign.

 

Jeri Ryan truly is a treasure, and it's interesting to watch Voyager's writing gradually go from giving her lead roles in episodes because she's the sexy eye-candy to giving her lead roles in episodes because she's got chops. I still think that Bob Picardo is the most talented actor on the show (although I wonder if that's partly an accident of the writing, since many interviews with cast members mention Tim Russ as incredibly brave and capable as an actor) but man, they bungle a fair bit of that. All the rigmarole about choosing a name for himself and then they never use it, for instance...

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1 hour ago, Gormongous said:

 

Jeri Ryan truly is a treasure, and it's interesting to watch Voyager's writing gradually go from giving her lead roles in episodes because she's the sexy eye-candy to giving her lead roles in episodes because she's got chops. I still think that Bob Picardo is the most talented actor on the show (although I wonder if that's partly an accident of the writing, since many interviews with cast members mention Tim Russ as incredibly brave and capable as an actor) but man, they bungle a fair bit of that. All the rigmarole about choosing a name for himself and then they never use it, for instance...

He picked Joe in an alternative timeline

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3 hours ago, Gormongous said:

...many interviews with cast members mention Tim Russ as incredibly brave and capable as an actor...

 

Come to think of it, Star Trek has a nasty habit of trapping its most expressive actors behind emotionless characters: Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Rene Auberjonois, Tim Russ, Jeri Ryan...

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25 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

 

Come to think of it, Star Trek has a nasty habit of trapping its most expressive actors behind emotionless characters: Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Rene Auberjonois, Tim Russ, Jeri Ryan...

I actually think of Odo as a very emotional character, he just isn't a very emotive character (also I think Data is a very emotive character and I liked him, but in the episodes where Brent Spiner gets to play other characters I did definitely wish he got to do more).  I'm only on season 5 so I don't know how Odo ends up, but I was really into the stuff with him and Kira.  I think with a weaker actor he just isn't sympathetic at all and all his inner conflicts just aren't engaging, but Rene Auberjonois really makes the characterwork, for me at least.  

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3 minutes ago, TheLastBaron said:

I actually think of Odo as a very emotional character, he just isn't a very emotive character (also I think Data is a very emotive character and I liked him, but in the episodes where Brent Spiner gets to play other characters I did definitely wish he got to do more).  I'm only on season 5 so I don't know how Odo ends up, but I was really into the stuff with him and Kira.  I think with a weaker actor he just isn't sympathetic at all and all his inner conflicts just aren't engaging, but Rene Auberjonois really makes the characterwork, for me at least.  

 

Yeah, "non-emotive" would be a better way to describe it, but it's still really incredible to watch, say, "Far Beyond the Stars" and see how all of Auberjonois' character work is really subtle and pointed, not just gruff, awkward, antisocial Odo.

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22 hours ago, Gormongous said:

 

Jeri Ryan truly is a treasure, and it's interesting to watch Voyager's writing gradually go from giving her lead roles in episodes because she's the sexy eye-candy to giving her lead roles in episodes because she's got chops. I still think that Bob Picardo is the most talented actor on the show (although I wonder if that's partly an accident of the writing, since many interviews with cast members mention Tim Russ as incredibly brave and capable as an actor) but man, they bungle a fair bit of that. All the rigmarole about choosing a name for himself and then they never use it, for instance...

 

The episode that highlights this for me is Body and Soul where the Doctor has to hide from a race that distrusts holograms inside Seven's implants, inadvertently gaining control of her body.  The majority of episode is so-so, the absolute best part is watching Jeri Ryan enact all of Robert Picardo's mannerisms.  Supposedly Picardo acted out the scenes where the Doctor possesses Seven on tape so that Ryan could better mimic him.  I would kill to see that tape.

 

One aside from that episode is the side plot involving Tuvok going through the pon farr (the Vulcan need to mate every seven years).  I've always wished the part where Paris convinces Tuvok that mating with a hologram of his wife isn't really cheating got more discussion.  I know that marital infidelity isn't exactly a Star Trek topic but I found the concept of "not really cheating because it's still 'her'" interesting.

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3 minutes ago, SecretAsianMan said:

 

The episode that highlights this for me is Body and Soul where the Doctor has to hide from a race that distrusts holograms inside Seven's implants, inadvertently gaining control of her body.  The majority of episode is so-so, the absolute best part is watching Jeri Ryan enact all of Robert Picardo's mannerisms.  Supposedly Picardo acted out the scenes where the Doctor possesses Seven on tape so that Ryan could better mimic him.  I would kill to see that tape.

 

One aside from that episode is the side plot involving Tuvok going through the pon farr (the Vulcan need to mate every seven years).  I've always wished the part where Paris convinces Tuvok that mating with a hologram of his wife isn't really cheating got more discussion.  I know that marital infidelity isn't exactly a Star Trek topic but I found the concept of "not really cheating because it's still 'her'" interesting.

UIIX6pK.gif

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1 hour ago, Cordeos said:

UIIX6pK.gif

 

Man, I should rewatch Voyager...

 

1 hour ago, SecretAsianMan said:

One aside from that episode is the side plot involving Tuvok going through the pon farr (the Vulcan need to mate every seven years).  I've always wished the part where Paris convinces Tuvok that mating with a hologram of his wife isn't really cheating got more discussion.  I know that marital infidelity isn't exactly a Star Trek topic but I found the concept of "not really cheating because it's still 'her'" interesting.

 

It's also interesting because fidelity when apart assumes that abstinence is a possibility, but pon farr literally kills Vulcans who do not mate. Sadly, Star Trek prides itself on being to staid (although, now, probably more on being too grim and gritty) to explore that fully.

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Yeah, although in the early (Roddenberry) days of TNG, they wanted it to depict a future of causal space banging among mature colleagues. 

 

Shit was envisioned as super horny. 

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4 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

It's also interesting because fidelity when apart assumes that abstinence is a possibility, but pon farr literally kills Vulcans who do not mate. Sadly, Star Trek prides itself on being to staid (although, now, probably more on being too grim and gritty) to explore that fully.

 

It's mentioned that there are generally three ways the pon farr can be resolved: mating, a ritual fight to the death, or intense meditation.  In other words, sex, violence, or a (mental) cold shower.  Being TV, we can't see actual sex and watching someone meditate is boring so fights with dramatic organ music and gladiator weapons it is.  In the case of Tuvok's wife I am curious what she did.

 

I also wonder about the implications of when a couple's pon farrs don't line up.  I don't think "not tonight I have a headache" works in this case.  I get the impression that outside of pon farr Vulcans aren't really at all interested in the idea of sex, which begs the question of consent since this is a life-threatening condition.  I assume they would approach it clinically but that sounds like some passionless lovemaking.  Unless their partner can telepathically get them in the mood.

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1 hour ago, Salacious Snake said:

Yeah, although in the early (Roddenberry) days of TNG, they wanted it to depict a future of causal space banging among mature colleagues. 

 

Shit was envisioned as super horny. 

 

Is that why Riker and Troi have this really ill-defined and barely explored on again off again relationship? Or was it just that they made their relationship whatever was convenient to the plot at the time?

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1 hour ago, Salacious Snake said:

Yeah, although in the early (Roddenberry) days of TNG, they wanted it to depict a future of causal space banging among mature colleagues. 

 

Shit was envisioned as super horny. 

 

I know that Roddenberry is important for the original series, but his influence on TNG seems so terrible. He apparently floated that the twenty-fourth century would have no spaceships, just people teleporting across the galaxy, and would see the rise of a one-galaxy government. Like, kudos for your optimism but that's bad TV.

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