Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - Voyager - Season 3 Week 6!- "Displaces" to "Scorpion - Part 2"

Star Trek is fantastic. It's been part of popular culture in one form or another for 55 years at this point and has entertained and inspired millions of people over the past half-century.

So lets watch ALL of it. (Yes even the shite episodes )

We've already worked through The Original Series, The Animated Series,the first six movies, as well as The Next Generation, it's four movies and most recently Deep Space Nine. So it's time to take a vacation and visit another quadrant entirely...

Wikipedia wrote:Star Trek: Voyager is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor. It originally aired from January 16, 1995, to May 23, 2001, on UPN, lasting for 172 episodes over seven seasons. It is the fifth series in the Star Trek franchise. It follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager as it attempts to return home to the Alpha Quadrant after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy.

Paramount Pictures commissioned the series following the termination of Star Trek: The Next Generation to accompany the ongoing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They wanted it to help launch UPN, their newly established network. Berman, Piller, and Taylor devised the series to chronologically overlap with Deep Space Nine and to maintain thematic continuity with elements that had been introduced in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The complex relationship between Starfleet and ex-Federation colonists known as the Maquis was one such element and a persistent central theme. Voyager was the first Star Trek series to feature a female commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), as the lead character. Berman served as head executive producer in charge of the overall production, assisted by a series of executive producers: Piller, Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Kenneth Biller.

So, starting today, grab youself a hot cup of Coffee, state the nature of the medical emergency and join us in the Delta Quadrant!



This Week!

Sunday 18th November 2023 - Saturday 25th November 2023

Season 3

08 - Futures End - Part 1
09 - Futures End - Part 2
10 - Warlord
11 - The Q and the Grey


Where to find it?

https://www.paramountplus.com/gb/ (UK)

Proposed Schedule

Here's a look at the proposed schedule for the next few years. Shows in red are still airing, or will be soon so it's not possible to determine an exact schedule for them. I'll review closer to the time.

The Original series - Aug 22nd to Jan 8th 2022
The Animated Series - Jan 9th 2022 to Jan 29th 2022 (3 Weeks)
Movies 1 to 6 - Jan 30th 2022 to Feb 19th 2022 (3 Weeks)
The Next Generation - Feb 20th 2022 to Jan 21st 2023 (48 Weeks)
Movies 7 to 10 - Jan 22nd 2023 to Feb 4th 2023 (2 Weeks)
Deep Space Nine - Dec 2022 to Nov 2023 (47 weeks)
Voyager - Nov 2023 to Oct 2024 (46 Weeks)
Enterprise - Oct 2024 to Apr 2025 (26 Weeks)
Kelvin Movies 1 to 4 - Apr/May 2025 (2 Weeks)

Discovery
Picard
Lower Decks
Prodigy
Strange New Worlds

Spoiler Policy
I'm not anticipating this being a big issue, but I would remind everyone that we do have some newcomers to Star Trek going through the shows with us. When discussing episodes try and refrain from mentioning specific plot points outside of spoiler boxes. General comments are fine unspoilered through. Especially try and refrain from talking about plot points and character development further down the road. So please don't mention characters leaving/dying/getting promoted or other major developments etc.

Just watch the episodes and let us know what you think!

Caretaker: Parts 1 & 2

Ok, before we start, all I know about Voyager is that there's a female captain called Janeway and that she and her crew get trapped on the other side of the galaxy. And there's a character called 7 of 9? I remember people in the 90s fancying her and I assume she was in this series.

Just paused as I'll forget this by the end of the episode, but it looks like I was not done with DS9. It's nice to see Quark!

A very good opening episode. It'll take time to get used to the new characters, but nobody is irritating me too much so far. Paris felt like he might be annoying but he grew on me as the episode went on.

I was a little confused by the Kazon. They looked like desert dwellers who could barely survive, then they are piloting starships and taking on a Federation ship! I must have missed something, why were they so desperate for water if they had the ability to travel in space?

75 years to get home. No worse than the average British 5pm commute.

Parallax

It's nice to be exploring the galaxy again, instead of being mostly in one location. And the captain has a ready room!

I should have guessed the other ship was Voyager!

So far Voyager has been excellent, I really enjoyed that. Janeway is a good captain, takes no gooseberry fool, but is willing to listen to her crew. The half-Klingon engineer is going to be fun, I imagine she's going to punch a lot more people as the show goes on.

Time and Again

There's a character called The Doctor and at the start of this episode they mentioned a Red Dwarf. I now really want a Star Trek/Red Dwarf/Doctor Who crossover.

This was decent, but suffered from following immediately after Parallax, two weird time displacement episodes made things feel a bit samey, even if the actual plots were quite different.

Phage

The doctor slapping Paris was hilarious.

Another decent one, the aliens were suitably disgusting, even if the plot was pretty much nonsense they've survived for 2,000 years by grabbing organs from the dead/other races?

The doctor is easily the best character so far. I think he was briefly in DS9, when they were trying to make a holographic Bashir? I don't remember him being as funny in that thought!

I think voyager has the best start of any trek series and while I really enjoyed it overall, they didn’t make the most of the overarching narrative, with it often feeling devoid of consequence from week to week. Classic 90’s TV- everything has to end how the episode started.

And the doctor is perhaps the best trek character ever.

Oh man, I'm going to have to tag team DS9 and VOY now!

Got some long train journeys coming up for work this week so hoping to get some serious Trek bingeing on

Really looking forward to giving this another watch as I haven't seen any of it since the original BBC2 broadcasts and I'm fairly certain I didn't actually watch the show to it's final conclusion either.

FatDaz wrote:I think voyager has the best start of any trek series and while I really enjoyed it overall, they didn’t make the most of the overarching narrative, with it often feeling devoid of consequence from week to week. Classic 90’s TV- everything has to end how the episode started.

I remember this being one of the most frustrating things for me back in the day. The premise is so well set for a show with actual consequences and drama from their predicament but they never make any real use of it sadly

Still, glad they managed to make it back to the alpha quadrant so they could share their magical torpedo restocking technology with the rest of the fleet though.

Jenuall wrote:Still, glad they managed to make it back to the alpha quadrant so they could share their magical torpedo restocking technology with the rest of the fleet though.

Ehhh, replacing Photon Torpedoes in the field is likely a non-issue really. I'd expect the components are pretty much all just stuff that can be replicated and then assembled by an engineer, or a torpedo can even be replicated wholesale by an industrial replicator in the cargo bay (minus the anti-matter portion of the warhead payload). From there it's just a case of arming it.
I think one of the Technical Manuals points out that Photons don't actually carry the Anti-matter portion of the warhead all the time, they essentially get "loaded" with anti-matter at the point the torpedoes are loaded into the actual torpedo bay (Hence why there are several instances across Trek of Captains ordering the Torpedo bays to be loaded rather than them just being always ready to go)

Caretaker

A decent enough start to the show I think. It's an interesting twist on the Trek formula that has a lot of initial promise.

The cast is all immediately likeable, especially Mulgrew who has a fantastic energy about her.

The ship itself is visually interesting and the sets are cool and distinct from their predecessors.

Even the story is quite good and definitely sets the tone for the show quite well.

All in it's one of the better first episodes of Star Trek I think.

Lagamorph wrote:

Jenuall wrote:Still, glad they managed to make it back to the alpha quadrant so they could share their magical torpedo restocking technology with the rest of the fleet though.

Ehhh, replacing Photon Torpedoes in the field is likely a non-issue really. I'd expect the components are pretty much all just stuff that can be replicated and then assembled by an engineer, or a torpedo can even be replicated wholesale by an industrial replicator in the cargo bay (minus the anti-matter portion of the warhead payload). From there it's just a case of arming it.
I think one of the Technical Manuals points out that Photons don't actually carry the Anti-matter portion of the warhead all the time, they essentially get "loaded" with anti-matter at the point the torpedoes are loaded into the actual torpedo bay (Hence why there are several instances across Trek of Captains ordering the Torpedo bays to be loaded rather than them just being always ready to go)

Which is all great, as long as you're happy to ignore Janeway herself saying "we've only got 38 torpedoes and no way to replace them"!

But it's all good, just a bit of fun to poke at the way the show plays fast and loose sometimes. Like I say I'd have loved something that had a wee bit more dramatic continuity with the whole "trapped away from the usual comforts of repairs and resupplies offered by Starfleet" thing, but I don't think TV and audiences were in the right place for that kind of thing in 95

Cheeky Devlin wrote:especially Mulgrew who has a fantastic energy about her.

The road not travelled...

Caretaker
Agree that this is definitely one of the stronger openings for Trek so far, there's a real energy to things and the plot is always driving forward at a compelling lick.

On a rewatch I'm mot entirely convinced by the core setup for the story - would they really have sent a swanky new starship and crew to find out what happened to one Maquis vessel, even with Tuvok on board? Is it that logical for the Caretaker to have taken two ships from the same point in space so close together in time? He was apparently searching the entire galaxy for a compatible surrogate, seems a bit of a stretch that he'd go to the same well twice.

The crew are really well setup though - Janeway for sure is the strongest presence and really gets some excellent character work put in place right away (even if she is already displaying her slightly gung-ho tendancies!). I've seen that video of the previous actress before and it really was a smart move to go for Mulgrew. Most of the others don't get much time to develop but we learn enough to see their potential. Except Chakotay who is and will always remain gooseberry fool - partly because of the sham "expert" they got to give input on his heritage and partly because Beltran is a bigoted banana split.

I think they could have done a better job of establishing the reason to destroy the array and trap themselves - they say it's to protect the Ocampa but Janeway literally just had a conversation with the Caretaker saying how you need to let people grow and fend for themselves.

Jenuall wrote: Except Chakotay who is and will always remain gooseberry fool - partly because of the sham "expert" they got to give input on his heritage and partly because Beltran is a bigoted banana split.

My next review was written after I found out about the fake expert they employed.

I only found out about Beltran's bigotry recently though. Crazy how somebody can be in a show like Trek and completely miss all of the messages about equality.

Moggy wrote:

Jenuall wrote: Except Chakotay who is and will always remain gooseberry fool - partly because of the sham "expert" they got to give input on his heritage and partly because Beltran is a bigoted banana split.

My next review was written after I found out about the fake expert they employed.

I only found out about Beltran's bigotry recently though. Crazy how somebody can be in a show like Trek and completely miss all of the messages about equality.

Yeah it's so bizarre - I guess Roddenberry was gone by this point so perhaps everyone joining the shows wasn't getting quite such a hard sell on the values he wanted to show on screen anymore. But either way you'd think he'd pick up on it eventually!

Fake expert?

Hexx wrote:Fake expert?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater

Parallax
A mixed bag. The main plot is the most generic "ship encounters a weird anomaly" story that there is going, but it's lifted by the Torres sub-plot meaing we're less engaged in the actual issue.
It's nice to see them fleshing out the Maquis crewmembers and introducing that friction between them and the starfleet crew.
It's just a shame that they never really seem to revisit it properly or do much with it.

Time & Again
The kid in this annoys me with his stupid face and stupid hair.

Phage
An interesting new species, with an interesting and icky gimmick.
Gets plus points for making Neelix suffer.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Gets plus points for making Neelix suffer.

Let's not start the Neelix slander so early on.

Moggy wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Gets plus points for making Neelix suffer.

Let's not start the Neelix slander so early on.

If anything it's not started soon enough.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Gets plus points for making Neelix suffer.

Let's not start the Neelix slander so early on.

If anything it's not started soon enough.

I'm actually finding Neelix less annoying than I remember him being so far. I'm sure my patience will wear thin soon though!

Parallax
Treads very similar ground to things we have seen in the past, but it's pretty well put together here as a story. As mentioned we get some good content out of the integration between the Maquis and Federation crews, although it's sadly all resolved a bit too quickly. Would have been nice to get some ongoing tension between B'Elanna and Carey (and by association Janeway and Chakotay) out of the situation, but the "story of the week" dominant format of TV at the time wasn't really setup for that many threads carrying through to subsequent episodes. It is a bit unbelievable that a Captain would just snap her fingers and make such a big decision that quickly, but I guess they have the get out of jail free card of saying their in the middle of nowhere and have to act quickly!

Time and Again
I like this one quite a lot (although agree the kid is classic "annoying US child actor") although it is super obvious from basically the moment they arrive that they are the ones who cause the accident which undermines the reveal a bit

Phage
Some great interactions between The Doctor and Neelix/Kes in this - Moggy is right that the EMH is definitely one of the strongest players at this point - comes right out of the gate firing on all cylinders! Speaking of Kes I can't remember how long it takes for them to sort her hair out but they really need to do it soon - her initially hairstyle is just weird!

Good speech from Janeway in this one about the difficult position they are put in by the Vidiians situation. Although it is a bit weird that nobody seems at all concerned that the hideous virus that has plagued the Vidiians might infect the crew as well - I guess they really trust those biofilters on the transporter!

Cheeky Devlin wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Gets plus points for making Neelix suffer.

Let's not start the Neelix slander so early on.

If anything it's not started soon enough.

Voyager

I remember getting a massive voyager airfix type kit while on holiday in America and anticipating the build, then getting home and doing a terrible job of building and painting it.