Voyager Re-Watch: Vis a Vis, The Omega Directive, Unforgettable

Hooray! I'm back at my own house! In my weird little place in the floor. Yes, I'm still doing Inktober, but today I managed to only spend about 2 hours on a fresh piece. Otherwise I watched three Voyagers and did about a million loads of laundry. Also, can I just ask, is it fall where you are? It's still 96 degrees where I live. What is happening? This is not ok. I want my scarves and hot chocolate and crisp morning air. Anyway...

Vis A Vis: In which Paris is kind of a jerk.
I always get this one mixed up with the forthcoming episode about the time Paris got obsessed with a new toy and shirked all his duties and his girlfriend and everyone thought he was a jerk and then he sort of takes off in the ship or maybe gets kidnapped kind of? What happens in this one is that Paris gets obsessed with a new toy, shirks all his duties, and B'Elanna and everyone thinks he's a jerk but then he gets body snatched.  You can see where I'm coming from, right? It's not just me. Anyway, I sort of like the concept of this one--the idea that there's an alien who's been going around stealing bodies for so long who even knows what his original name/species/gender was?

The Omega Directive: In which Seven meets God.
I really love the idea of this one. And the execution is really great from the moment Janeway gets all cagey and goes into her ready room and seals the door to review the Omega info to the point that Seven stares into the heart of the universe and doesn't want to tear herself away. Basically, they're trying to track down and stop an alien experiment on a dangerous particle known about by Starfleet captains and, of course, The Borg. To Seven, this thing is perfection itself and she's willing to do just about anything to see it. It's an interesting, very human episode for Seven and, for once, her obstinance is rooted in something utterly illogical.

Unforgettable: In which Chakotay has a girlfriend/forgets/has a girlfriend/remembers/forgets.
So, I literally laughed out loud when this one came on. Ironically, I'd completely forgot that Chakotay had a relationship with the woman from Sideways. I think I sort of replaced her in my head when I re-watched Chakotay's other one-episode-love-affair with Riley Frazier (the ex-borg lady) I mean, is it just me? I feel like Chakotay really has a type:

 

I guess none of us should really be all that surprised with who he ends up with. 

Whose Couch Is This #4

Johnny totally called last week's couch. It belonged to the one and only Guinan: 

This week's sofa is upholstered from a TNG guest costume: 

Voyager Re-Watch: The Killing Game

I've been way into Inktober lately. Honestly, I can't help it. Being in a hotel room throws me off my game which is good and bad. Good- I'm getting a ton of art done because I actually have a desk and it's a nice change of view/pace. Bad-I'm not getting nearly as much Voyager watched and I've sort of slacked off on some of my other work. Sorry about that. I'm going home tonight so I'm guessing things will get back to normal soon.

Anyway, yesterday I watched The Killing Game. Of course, I love this one. Everyone's playing dress-up. It's WW2 with Klingons and Hirogen. Seven is singing songs at a piano and Janeway's wearing a white fancy dress tux. Of course you have to get past the idea that everyone in this episode is being mentally/emotionally/physically violated thanks to the neural implant that makes them all think they're characters in the holodeck program which is really, truly disturbing if you stop to think about it for too long. But I don't. The rest of The Killing Game is good enough and fun enough and exciting enough that I can totally let the disturbing neural implant thing slide.

My favorite things about The Killing Game:

1-Tom and B'Elanna are long lost war-time loves.

2- American GI Chakotay.

3- Janeway's swanky new look is perfect. She oozes all the classic, tomboy charm of Katherine Hepburn.

4- Klingon Neelix. Perfect.

5- Songbird Seven is still Seven.

And I love the conclusion. It make sense that the Hirogen culture is just sort of treading water, that they're spread out over space only living for the next hunt and never thinking about the future. I love that the guy with all the foresight ends up getting killed but that Janeway makes his dream a reality by giving the Hirogen holodeck technology. And, of course, I love that all that good-will comes back to bite them later.

Voyager Re-Watch: Hunters, Prey, Retrospect

I'm just gonna say up front, it's been a weird few days. Scott's working out of town and I elected to come with him so, for the fourth time in three months, I'm watching and blogging from a hotel. Actually, this one's pretty nice. It has a desk and I've suddenly been made to realize just how nice it is to have a big workspace and a chair. I usually sit in the floor. I've been doing a lot of art (Inktober has provided me with a great excuse to break out my pens) and watching a good deal of Voyager--when the hotel wifi is up to the task:

Hunters:
This one parks Voyager at a relay station while they try to retrieve a data dump from the Alpha Quadrant. Letters from home as well as important info from Starfleet is squeezing through the stream (slower than everyone would like--especially Harry) and everything is made worse when the Hirogen (who own the station) attack. We caught a glimpse of them in Message In A Bottle but here we see them up close and personal. Well, Seven and Tuvok do.

 I love the Hirogen. I think they're a great nemesis for Voyager and their design is beautiful. Where the Kazon were Voyager's Ferengi, the Hirogen are their Klingons. They're tough, war-like, and focused on the hunt. Their ships are stark and utilitarian. Also, they're huge. I love that they're huge. I realize the practical dilemma with recurring alien makeup on a budget--it takes forever, it's expensive, and guest actors often kind of suck once you put a pound of latex on their face and, of course, CGI (especially at this time) was worse. But the Hirogen design is glorious. Utilizing exceptionally tall actors (they tried not to cast anyone under 6'5" though this sort of fell apart later) is a smart move and it sets this species apart from the rest of Trek. They're a nice mix of Predator and Klingon and just the right kind of baddie for the diminutive Janeway and her single ship of puny, regular-sized folk.

Prey:
Here, Voyager crosses paths with another Hirogen. This one's injured and, ignoring Seven's protestations, Janeway says they should try to be friends. Then the Hirogen wakes up and is all, "Where's my gun?!" and an intruder gets on-board and they let their new Hirogen friend out and holy crap it's Species 844530ujf093. Tuvok briefly makes a psychic connection with the intruder and Janeway's all, "Wait, can we be friends with him too?" But then the Hirogen shoots him and then Seven beams both aliens over to the Hirogen ship. She ends up getting grounded but since I'm a lot like Seven I'm here to tell you that, "Go to your room and be away from people for a week," isn't much of a punishment. Once again, I love all these Hirogen episodes and I love both Janeway's classic Starfleet optimism and Seven's realistic outlook and practical approach to "diplomacy."

Retrospect:

 The 90's was a big time for latent memory recovery. All the cool kids were doing it: The X-Files, Buffy, TNG... Not to be outdone, The Doctor puts Seven (who's been acting super cagey) through a hypnotic process he casually read about somewhere and then gets some dodgy memories of abuse, theft, and violation out of her. Everyone rushes to Seven's aid but it turns out (and they have physical evidence to say so) she unintentionally made the whole thing up. By the time they realize their mistake, the man accused dies. For once, Voyager is wrong. Janeway is wrong. The Doctor is so wrong he feels nothing but remorse and offers to delete all the extra subroutines he's written into his program. But then, Janeway reminds him, how would he learn anything from this experience?
In a lot of ways, this episode is problematic. Looking at it through the lens of our current culture it's easy to see how this episode potentially promotes the kind of thinking that casts doubt on women who say they've been violated. And that's really not ok. But, on the other hand, this episode was written in the wake of the nation-wide hysteria surrounding both the day-care sex abuse panic and the satanic cult panic of the 80's and 90's. This kind of hysteria led to the life-ruining jail time (most of which was much later over-turned) of several innocent people. I actually knew someone who was wrapped up in all of this and even have my own story about a repressed (fake) memory. It's a real thing that really happens--especially with kids, who are easily coerced and led.
Of course, this is the problem when you're dealing with allegory. SciFi is often written as a commentary on the current culture. Even though the actual words or images don't change, its message seems to because we're seeing it through the lens formed by our society's current experiences, expectations, and feelings. Retrospect is, in many ways, a daring episode and it's one that only scratches the surface of a deep and complicated issue.

Voyager Re-Watch: Message In A Bottle

This is a pretty big deal episode, wrapped up in the comics page. It's very rompy and of course I love it because it's all Doctor and romps and flailing.

Catch you up: Seven gets a signal (by bouncing some things through relay stations) from a Federation ship in the Alpha Quadrant) and, though they can't seem to get a message through, they can send the Doctor. It's a pretty big deal away mission and he's totally cut off from Voyager but he's determined to go a good job--even when the ship he finds himself on is currently inhabited by a bunch of jerk Romulans. Eventually he enlists the help of the new EMH (played by Andy Dick) and hijinks ensue.

This one is about as broad as Star Trek gets--which is to say that it isn't really very broad at all. Andy Dick actually had a hard time adjusting to the difference in tone between Trek and the sitcom world he'd been working in. Still, Message In A Bottle is packed with physical humor (Andy Dick can't figure out how to get into the jeffries tube) and snappy quips (The Doctor makes an allusion to making himself fully functional) as the under-experienced EMHes sabotage the Romulans' efforts to takeover Starfleet's latest toy.

The end, though, is where it's really at. After they succeed and our Doctor comes home, he reveals that he got through to Starfleet. That their families will soon know they're still out there, still alive, and still trying like hell to get home. It's a hopeful end and a bright beginning as well--now that Voyager's finally made contact.

Whose Couch Is This? #3

Last week's couch belonged to <drum roll> Quark! 

Now for this week's: 

Hint: This magnificent piece of furniture graced a recurring TNG character.

Voyager Re-Watch: Random Thoughts, Concerning Flight, Mortal Coil, Waking Moments

First of all, I am, once again, out of my hobbit hole. Scott had to work out of town the last couple days and asked if I'd like to come with him. I said yes and wrote a little webcomic about it and put it over on my tumblr so feel free to go have a look.

Alright, on with the episodes:

Random Thoughts:
This one always pisses me off. I mean, obviously, I guess. It's sort of engineered to provoke internal rage, I think. Random Thoughts is the one where Voyager encounters a non-violent and telepathic culture. Tuvok is totally fangirling over this place until they snatch up B'Elanna for *thinking* a violent thought. She's about to have her brain slightly scrambled (I think that's the technical term) by the alien police when Tuvok worms his way into the seedy underbelly of the seemingly benign culture and uncovers a black market for illicit images. He presents his evidence but he's not in time and B'Elanna still gets a bit scrambled because Janeway says they can't pick and choose which rules they follow...except when they totally do.

Concerning Flight:
This is the one where Janeway and DaVinci go on a big weird adventure together. I read that this one was originally titled "DaVinci's Day Out" and that is 9000% accurate. As much as I always wanted to love this one--my dad's an art history prof, remember? I grew up with this stuff--I just never could warm to it completely. It's fine. A bit of a caper--which I like. And DaVinci is played by the glorious John Rhys-Davis and both Janeway and Tuvok wear some fantastic tourist costumes--I would actually wear Janeway's dress in this episode. You know, I think part of it is that it doesn't really feel very much like a Voyager episode. It feels more like a TNG or, even moreso, like a TOS.

Mortal Coil:
This one always breaks my heart a little bit. The ever-bubbly (over-bubbly?) Neelix is killed in a shuttlecraft accident ( yes, Chakotay is there. Never get in a shuttle with Chakotay) and subsequently resurrected by Seven and her Borg tech. (I think we sort of forget Seven has this super power after this episode but we can just gloss over that.) Neelix is grateful but hesitant about life. He isn't the same man he was before and a big part of that is his loss of faith. Before he left on his fateful voyage, he told a teensy Naomi about the Talaxian afterlife--The Great Forest. But when he died, he didn't go there. He didn't see it. He experienced nothingness. And that totally freaks him out. He has to find a way to cope with life now. Ethan Phillips does a wonderful job here and I love the way Neelix' story has developed and will continue to develop as Voyager soars on.

Waking Moments:
Another Chakota-sode! Guys, seriously, I did not set out to make this My Year Of Chakotay but I'm definitely appreciating this character more this year than before. Anyway, in Waking Moments, Voyager encounters a culture who spend their lives in a dream world and they're determined to mess up everyone else's day because of it. If only they had someone on-board who was like, super spiritual and could like...go on a vision que---Oh wait! They do! Chakotay volunteers to head on down to sickbay and do some serious lucid dreaming. I love this one. It's creep factor is turned all the way up and, as Chakotay falls in and out of dreams in a way that is less fancy but as effective as Inception, he gets closer (with The Doc's help) to saving Voyager. This writing, acting, and directing here all play up the inherent eeriness that we all feel when we wonder whether we're truly awake, truly in control.

Oh! Also, is it just me or does it look like Janeway's nightmare might've been caused by her reading up on the old captain's logs a little too much?

Maybe that's just the ever-present fear of a Starfleet Captain--my crew will die, the environmental controls will no longer function and our bodies will be suspended in ice.