Science Ladies

So the VERY next episode I'm going to talk about is Threshold and I know we're all really excited about that. But... the last couple days what I did was just watch a bunch of X-Files because once I start it's like I'm a kid again and I just can't stop. Anyway, I've done so much writing work lately that I've been aching to do a little art (that's not work or commissioned... just stuff for myself) and I ended up spending some time in photoshop while Scully got kidnapped by aliens/the government.

I've been wanting to do a B'Elanna piece for a while now--especially one in a sciencey setting--so this is what I came up with:

And of course I had to do a Scully piece. I realize eating a sandwich in the morgue is a huge cliche but whatever, if anyone can pull that off, it's autopsy extraordinaire Doctor Dana Scully, FBI. 

I have almost no experience with animated gifs but I really wanted Scully to chew her sandwich while the entrails dripped blood so... I made it happen. Now I'm thinking about animating B'Elanna up there too.

Voyager Re-Watch: Alliances (A Comic)

Here's a complete transcript of Alliance (in comic form):

Voyager Re-Watch: Prototype

SITREP: B'Elanna has discovered an alien/robotic life form in the Delta Quadrant and fixed it up and now he's kidnapped her and wants her to help him make a bunch of new robots (not the old fashioned way) so his people can finally get back to killing the guys that look just like them.

On the surface, this one is pretty much an episode of The Original Series. Seriously, if you took the whole Robots V. Robots who straight up murdered their own creators and now they need the help of a super smart scientist to help get them back on the warpath plot and dropped it into TOS, you wouldn't bat an eye. Add to that the old timey robot costume and you have...

See what I mean? Apparently the people behind Voyager weren't too happy with the Pralor/Cravic design and I get it. These bots definitely just look like guys wearing some carpeting and a plastic mask over their heads. It's low rent. Whenever I see this one I alway end up spending a lot of time trying to figure out how the people in these masks managed to see and breathe and hit their marks. Voyager, like TOS and pretty much all of Trek, had a fairly small budget. They didn't have much money or time for production so I've always forgiven them when their costume design ends up looking a little half-baked. (Except in the case of the Kazon. I can't forgive Seashell Head. I just can't.) So this aspect of Prototype was never an issue for me.

There is greatness to be found in Prototype and it's all in B'Elanna's character and the way Roxann Dawson plays out the mother/creator plot. This part is pitch perfect. B'Elanna (at this early stage of the show) is not naturally mothering or tending toward the stereotype of nurturer but she is a brilliant scientist and engineer. She has a desire to observe, experiment, and create. She is at first elated with the re-construction of the found Pralor then she rails against being made to participate in building a prototype that would only lead to more war. And, finally, she is both relieved and devastated when she destroys her own creation. B'Elanna's journey here is profound yet believable but it's all mare more resonant when she finally has a chance to talk to Mamma Janeway about her experience. The captain and fellow scientist empathizes in a truly touching final scene.

Two lady scientists having a heart to heart? 

Not something from TOS.

Voyager Re-watch: Resistance

Welp, this one's never not hard to watch.

Resistance is a fairly non-traditional episode in that it takes place almost entirely off-Voyager and almost entirely with one cast member--Janeway. While Tuvok and B'Elanna are featured in the B-plot and the rest of the crew are briefly visible trying to retrieve the aforementioned characters, Janeway and this week's Delta Quadrant Guest, Caylem (played by Joel Gray), are more than capable of carrying this one all the way through. It begins with Janeway, Tuvok, Neelix and B'Elanna down on a planet where they're buying some much needed tellerium off the black market. Neelix heads out, some soldiers pick up Tuvok and B'Elanna and a nice little dude helps Janeway get away, though she's injured. She wakes up in his house and most of the rest of the episode is spent with Janeway trying understand her addled companion (who thinks she's his daughter) whilst forming a plan to free her officers from prison.

I actually remember the first time I saw this one and it wasn't in the show's original run. I was in college and happened to catch it in reruns on Spike TV and even then it made an impression on me. I may have cried into my ice cream. I've always liked stuff about Bad Dads and especially Bad Dads and daughters. In fact, just before I saw this one, I had started on my most recent novel which prominently features a Bad Dad and daughter combination so this re-watch really resonated with me.

I love that Janeway is out of her element in this one. She's stranded on an alien world she can't freely navigate and she's stuck with a person who is incapable of taking her orders because of his own mental state. Additionally, when Caylem identifies Janeway as his daughter, and she feels she must go along with it, we see a more tender side of her. This gentility is thrown into contrast when she ends up doing the ole' honey pot gag to get into the prison. While I sometimes balk and this plot move, I don't mind it too much here. It makes story sense and keeps with the whole Don Quixote feeling of the episode. Mulgrew and Gray are lovely together and their read of the subtle script makes this one a powerful (if painful) experience. Whenever this one comes on, I always sort of dread being put through Caylem's hardship all over again but, unlike a few wonky episodes (mostly involving the Kazon) I never change it or skip it or turn it off. I just watch these two fantastic actors carry out one of Voyager's first truly great episodes.

Voyager Re-watch: Maneuvers

Alright, I admit, I'm currently writing about episodes I watched a month ago but didn't get a chance to blog about at the time because I was in the middle of finishing a novel. I'd put an emoji of some sort here but I don't think they really make one for, "sorry I let you down because I was writing something else like it owned me."  Anyway, I do have notes for these episodes (of which there are four) but they aren't super helpful and that's not my fault. I'm in a clump of the series where Voyager was still finding itself, figuring out who it was and what it ought to be doing with its nine principle characters.

One thing it did was try to give a little more depth to Chakotay's character outside of, "Hey I'm some sort of Indian, I guess, and I have a distracting face tattoo." This meant giving him a relationship. And, like most Star Trek relationships, this one was doomed to fail and fail hard. Maneuvers is pretty much all about how Chakotay and Seska used to get it on but then she turned out to be a Cardassian and now she's run off to hang out with the most ridiculous aliens in the Delta Quadrant so that she can improbably eventually take over Voyager.

I don't hate the Chakotay/Seska thing. I think it actually kind of makes sense--more sense than Chakotay and Seven, especially. She's intense and rebellious and the member of a victimized society which Chakotay is clearly into. Chakotay has a face tattoo and a startling ability to break into the tough guy leader mode. They're both impetuous people who probably like to drip candle wax onto each other and then talk about their feelings. So, yeah, I get it, I guess.

Anyway, in Maneuvers, Chakotay and Seska haven't been a thing for a while but Seska (now looking way more Cardassian) feels like coming around to twist the knife and make him a little miserable. She succeeds at this and Chakotay ends up disobeying Janeway's orders and goes after his ex-girlfriend and her idiot Kazon friends. Everything eventually works out alright but Janeway is super disappointed with Chakotay in the end.

My issue with Maneuvers and, really, Seska in general is that she seems like a bit of a missed opportunity. She could've been Voyager's Gul Dukat--a merciless, intelligent, dangerous enemy whose cunning and cold nature make a deliciously love-to-hate character. Instead she takes up with some of the most absurd aliens in Trek--people someone with her apparent standards and temperament would never associate with--and then she's surprised when she (a woman in a backwards, misogynistic society) can't get ahead. Come on, Seska, you could've aligned yourself with the creepy female caretaker. Eventually she does manage to do some real damage and I'm excited to get to that episode. Now that I'm no longer writing this novel night and day (again, if there were an emoji...) I should be back on track!

Voyager Re-Watch: Cold Fire

So basically Cold Fire the one where I always feel like the bad guy Ocampan is Hugo Weaving even though I'm fully aware that he's not. Also a little girl has a scary voice. Here's how it goes:

Voyager is be-bopping along the Delta Quadrant and Kes and Tuvok are working on honing her magic Ocampan powers of telepathy. There's some scolding, obviously, and then the Caretaker's remains start going all wibbly wobbly and everyone has to check it out. Pretty soon they find a whole other Ocampa colony who accompany a female caretaker with a very clear bad guy name--Suspiria. Tuvok is rightly suspicious and runs off to find a way to kill Suspiria, you know, just in case.

Anyway, during all this Elrond shows up and tells Kes that she's being way underutilized and kind of gives her the ole' Come To The Dark Side (of Middle Earth/The Delta Quadrant) speech and Kes is just kind of like, "Wanna see my garden?" Because she's Kes. They go down to the Airponics Bay to check it out and Agent Smith shows her how to burn up all her flowers for not really any good reason at all. Seems like alarm bells should be ringing all over the place but Kes is definitely considering leaving Voyager to hang with these jerkbags. Eventually all of it comes crashing down when she pretty much sets Tuvok on fire (per V's instructions) and then Voyager is attacked by an all powerful Little Girl Monster version of Suspiria. Finally, Kes gets her business together and attacks The Red Skull while Janeway takes out Suspiria--the evil pair take off and Kes is left to sit in the corner and think about what she's done.

Really disappointed I didn't get a Megatron reference in there...

I've always felt a little mixed about this one. There's something about it that just never completely jived with me. Maybe it's that it all feels just a little bit too easy. It's Kes' sudden huge burst of power and her willingness to give into it then her willingness to give it up--I don't know. It's hard to fit all of that into forty-five minutes. But, maybe I'm also kind of torn because I always wanted a Hugo Weaving-esque bad guy to show up and explain to me, after all these years, how to finally use my super powers. Isn't that a dream everyone has? No? Just me? Ok. Anyway, in spite of whatever it is about this one that bugs me, I think the cast did a really solid job--especially Jennifer Lien and Tim Russ. Oh... and Ambassador Soval. Him too.

Bonus Points:
-I think this is the first time they mention that Voyager is becoming known as a "Ship of Death."
-Seriously though, Jennifer Lien does a great job here. It's one of the first times we get to see her actually have a real role in things and not just spending her time being some jealous guy's girlfriend.

Many Happy Returns

In my last post I mentioned how I'd been rather depressed and that I'd gone off and done some writing and could tell I was on the mend. Well, as it turns out, I suppose I sort of opened the flood gates. After I finished my mini-journal/essay project, I resumed work on a novel I had started a month before--one that had been completely derailed by the events in my life. Once I started, I really just couldn't stop. I wrote a thousand words a day at first. Then two-thousand. Then three. I only barely took the weekends off (sometimes starting back at work on Sunday night) and picking it up again on Monday mornings. I wrote in a near-fever, unwilling to stop. And then suddenly, on Wednesday of this week, I typed The End. It was a perfect storm of inspiration, long-term planning, and thirty years (including a couple very important ones) that ended up happening to make this happen and now, suddenly, I have a working draft. So, this is all sort of a long way of telling you what I've been up to lately.

Yesterday, still recovering from a sinus infection, I mostly laid on the couch and watched baseball and ate crackers because my antibiotic twisted up my stomach.

Today I'm back.

Well, sort of. I'm back to tell you that I'm coming back.

And, until then, I'm back to tell you how excited and happy I am about the Marriage Equality ruling handed down today. A couple years ago I did a little piece for marriage equality:

And today I returned to it, dressing everyone up for their big day:

Today is a day of celebration! Congratulations to anyone out there who's been waiting to get hitched, to anyone who hopes to get hitched, to anyone and everyone and all their family and friends. This ruling only brings us ever closer to the sort of peace and universal equality envisioned in Trek. 

PS- I made both of these the right size for a Facebook cover photo so, if you want to pull it and use it on your cover page, you're welcome to.