There's some potential here, but it has some work to do. First impressions are everything and this didn't make a great one. Mostly, for a comedy it wasn't funny at all, but the cast and situation are interesting enough to keep me watching for now.
The best moment was easily the reveal about the captain. I hope the characters aren't going to be jerks all the time (everyone seems to hate what they're doing) because it's a lot to take.
I love this list, thanks for making it. Will you be keeping it updated with the new Clone Wars season 7 episodes?
The first encounter with the Borg was probably quite creepy back in the late 1980s, but watching it today it feels a bit underwhelming. Far more interesting is the performance of Guinan, and Picard's need to become humble before Q. Lots of things here which were never followed up on, notably the concept of baby Borgs which was completely abandoned. The 18 dead crew members do lead a bad taste in your mouth, and severely alters any playful side we may have seen in Q.
They also set up a big mystery with Guinan's background, which was never mentioned or explored again. Lt. Gomez could have become an enjoyable recurring character, too.
I have to be honest, I really don't understand the factions and politics present here. Am I not paying enough attention, or is the show doing a poor job of explaining?
My only impressions so far:
- OPA: some kind of terrorist group. Bad.
- Belters: Gangs, criminals, violent, corrupt. Bad.
- Earth: elite, ignorant of others plight. Bad.
- Mars: isolationist, seen as a threat by everyone. Bad.
Surely this can't be right?
However, this episode was better for characters. People really seem to dislike each other but at least there was some reasoning behind it this time.
I'm as surprised as anyone that I've found an episode with Neelix in such a prominent role that I quite enjoyed. But it's not because of him, it's because it's the culmination of a plot thread that has been building over the past bunch of episodes - even though that culmination may not be the most satisfying end. At any rate, Neelix's scenes saying goodbye to Tom did work very well.
It turns out Tom Paris has been faking his misbehaviour (duh) because Janeway and Tuvok suspect there's a spy on board. They decided to keep Chakotay out of the loop to make it seem more real, but I think it's really because they didn't trust Chakotay not to mess things up. I think what's impressed me most about it all is that the show kept this thread running over the course of several episodes, and it just feels like such a breath of fresh air to have some serialisation that I'm happy to sit back and enjoy it, despite it not being all that compelling.
Tom's fight to escape from Seska and the Kazon is unimpressive, seeminly limited to one corridor set that he has to run back and forth through. Seska herself is revelling in being evil, and I have to admit I get a weird thrill out of the cheesiness of it all. I almost didn't expect Jonas to die, and at least he goes out in style.
Neelix's TV show could become grating if we see lots more of it, but the funny subplot with the Doctor did entertain me. One moment that took me right out of the episode was when Janeway contacts engineering and explains everything that's going on to Jonas ("we need the transporter, because we've detected a Kazon shuttle and there is one human life sign on board and we think it might be Tom Paris") despite no captain ever taking the time to do this in Trek history. Also, Jonas being the only person in engineering is really bizarre.
I'm disappointed that all of Paul Wesley's singing moments weren't done as spoken word, as a tribute.
So, this was a mixed bag for me - It's very difficult to overcome my negative feelings towards musicals. I found parts of this quite entertaining, and there was also parts where I was cringing in embarrassment. I'm not sure it's going to have any rewatch value for me. I appreciated that they at least incorporated the songs into the storyline as a mystery that needed to be solved, but am never a fan of when they lean into the music as a way to dwell on a character's emotional state. Just move the damn story forward instead of sitting in a single moment for three minutes!
Some musical parts were definitely better than others, but this was always going to be a difficult one for me. There were just too many songs here, and they were too much in the musical theatre style. I didn't like the "finale" at all (the Klingon moment should have been hilarious but literally made me cry out "oh GOD NO").
At the same time, I really appreciate that Strange New Worlds is taking risks and experimenting. This is a thousand times more interesting than the super safe Berman-Trek, even when the results don't completely work for me. The problem is that we are only getting 10 episodes per season, so episodes like this can feel like a monumental waste of storytelling time.
The best stuff here was everything that dealt with character relationships - Chapel/Spock, Pike/Batel and La'an/Kirk.
There's something off about Torchwood. The premise is interesting enough, being given a nice setup in series 2 of Doctor Who, but the tone is bizarre. It's an adult show that exists within the Whoniverse, and therefore piles on the sex, violence and swearing. Doctor Who is a family show aimed more at the kids, but adults are a huge part of its audience. So it made some sense to create a spinoff that could be more mature.
But Torchwood isn't mature. It throws in the aforementioned sex and blood and swear words, but its writing is still at the level of Doctor Who. By that I mean it still has people running around shouting silly dialogue, giving us tons of exposition, plot contrivances, poorly designed monsters and only glimpses of emotional maturity. This stuff works in Who, in fact it works quite well because we know we're watching a fun kids adventure show. But this is supposed to be an adult drama, so immediately things feel iffy. The pantomime vibe is still here.
The characters do the show no favours either. I quite enjoy Captain Jack portrayed by John Barrowman, but I think it's fair to say that dramatic acting is not his forte. The issues with the rest of the characters are numerous, but it's a real problem when they are so completely uninteresting (Tosh and Ianto) or absolutely impossible to like (Owen). Gwen is our way into the story being the newcomer, and she's handled better but she makes odd choices. The character has nowhere near enough depth to give us the information to understand why.
The writing is not able to do justice to the stories being told. This isn't the fault of the actors (...mostly), but down to the laughably weak dialogue and direction. It doesn't help that visually it's all so poor, inheriting the cheapness from it's parent show of this era. Through all this there is fun to be had. There are good episodes in there and a sense of camaraderie does build within the cast. There's so much room for improvement though.
It's nice to finally get the issue of Tretonin addressed after it's introduction last season. Is it as effective as a symbiote? Will it have any side effects? And what happens when you don't have enough of it? I had been wondering these things and it almost felt as if the show had forgotten about it outside of vaguely mentioning its name a couple of times.
The episode is a fairly large story split into two distinct halves. Both halves are good, but I think I was most taken with Teal'c's recovery because it reveals things not only about him but for Daniel too.
The action in the latter half is fairly epic and very nicely done, with some strong material for Teal'c, Bra'tac and Rya'c. And I love that once again it looks like Bra'tac is going to die, but no!
Colleen Rennison does a perfectly fine job as Cassandra, but I always thought it was a shame that the original actress wasn't brought back. The change is jarring. Otherwise this is not a spectacular episode, but it gives Dr. Frasier a good role to play.
I was worried after the sharp turn last week's episode took, but this was MUCH better. Although, I really wanted to see exactly when/where Georgiou ended up.
Did anyone else get major Pennywise vibes when they heard, "Hey there, Jackie boy!"?
Ordinarily I would not particularly like an episode that is nothing but action, but this is visually stunning and has some fantastic cinematography. There's an intelligent flow to the battle, and this is exciting enough to manage without much in the way of characters.
It's hilarious how seriously the characters take things. I guess we are all guilty of it at times when we can't see the big picture, but damn teenagers take it to extremes.
And it was all going so well.
This barely kept my attention and I ended up browsing Reddit while it was on. Really low effort Star Trek that fell back on the most obvious tropes it could. My main comment would be that Claire Rankin (Alice) is very good at doing crazy eyes.
It's really hard to talk about these continuous episodes as seperate entities.
My main takeaway from this is that I'm annoyed we didn't get to see Dax's mission on the Defiant, and I really didn't like the way she copied Sisko's speech word-for-word to the crew at the end. It made it feel inauthentic, whereas Sisko's felt spontaneous and true.
The stuff going on back at the station is fantastic. I actually feel genuinely angry at Odo.
Neelix: Darn it, I'm going on this away team and I just can't get Tuvok to respect me.
Tuvok: I do not respect you, Neelix.
Neelix: But look, I can save our lives in an emergency.
Tuvok: I now respect you, Neelix.
Could this episode be any more formulaic? Also, that's one of the worst space battles I've ever seen, Voyager just sits there and gets shot.
Although, the orbital tether platform is cool.
Better than the first part, things just flow better here. The character of Rain begins to work and there's good interaction between the Doc and Starling, as well as Paris and Tuvok. In fact, it might pretty much be the Doctor who saves this whole story. The addition of a portable holographic emitter for him is going to allow his character to grow, and I like the fact that it referred to his memory loss in the 'The Swarm' (which, chronologically, should come right before this episode) and explained that he's recovering and gives us a possible reason as to why he was barely in part 1.
Ed Begley Jr. does do a great job as the bad guy, despite how low budget his entire business appears (he just has the one henchman working for him).
The whole sequence with Torres and Chakotay getting captured by gun-toting American survival fanatics was painful and moronic. And no explanation as to why bullets passed through the Doc.
If the 29th century has "time police" to sort out people they detect aren't in their correct time, why have they never shown up before whenever Star Trek characters accidentally travel to the past?
Okay, this is a mixed one. We open with Kes acting like an idiot and behaving completely out of character which leads to her getting seriously injured. What follows is a quasi-spiritual tale that I think we are meant to accept as something beyond science - that would be all well and good, but the entire foundation of Star Trek is science, so this really throws things for a loop and I'm not sure how well it works as a Trek story.
The spiritual guide is annoying smug throughout. I think Janeway comes across quite well throughout this, mostly showing that she's willing to go to great lengths to help her (senior) crew and, for the most part, not falling victim to silly tricks that the "spirits" were attempting to use on her. Instead it turns out that the entire process was a trick, so that at least makes it feel a bit more unique.
As another reviewer here mentions, the apparent revelation that Janeway - a pure scientist at heart - has that science is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be will have zero impact on her from here on out. That makes this all feel completely pointless.
The Doctor does get a lot of good scenes, though.
Almost a disaster of an episode due to the central premise, which ends up only being creepy. It's the ethical situation which arises around it which makes the episode work much better than it has any right to. Merging Tuvok and Neelix, two of the most uninteresting characters on the show, results in Tuvix who honestly freaks me out more than anything. I'm not sure he was cast quite right, even though Tom Wright does a pretty fantastic job in the role.
It doesn't really get interesting until the final act (honestly - that opening sequence is torture, as Neelix STILL doesn't seem to comprehend the basic fact that Vulcans don't feel emotions). Once Janeway makes her decision it's quite uncomfortable viewing, and the ending leaves a bad taste. That's the second episode in a row to finish on a sour note, and it certainly makes things memorable.
One of the few things I kind of liked about that was the Starfleet uniform mixed with Neelix's garish suit patterns. This probably would have had some real ramifications if Tuvix had stayed around for a few episodes.
I feel like this episode kind of ruined Tony Todd's character, Kurn. He had been an intimidating but fun Klingon in his previous appearances as Worf's brother, but here he doesn't really feel like the same person. Which I'm sure was actually the intent somewhat, giving us Kurn broken and depressed, but somehow I found it went a bit too far. The notion that he'd want to die rather than fight to regain his honour didn't quite work.
It's also shocking that Worf was so readily willing to kill him, but that at least sits in line with his character. Worf is probably the most Klingon Klingon who ever Klingoned, which is completely add odds with the fact that all the other Klingons are far more ready to throw aside honour or just have fun. Worf is having none of that, and raises the question on whether or not he really IS a true Klingon or is he just trying to be the ideal notion of one that he always imagined they should be?
I like that we see the results of his earlier actions in 'The Way of the Warrior' and the effect his selfish decisions have on those around him. I don't like the way this was all resolved with the memory wipe. The highlight for me was actually Captain Sisko's dressing down of Worf after the attempted murder ritual.
Also, clear signs that Worf and Dax definitely have chemistry together!
It's impossible to overlook the biggest issue this episode has: how utterly cheap it feels. The robots look ridiculous, like something from the original 1960s Star Trek or Doctor Who. It's such a failing on the part of the design team that I'm surprised the episode went ahead at all, because as a viewer watching it all I could think was "that's a guy in a really terrible suit". Star Trek should be aiming much, much higher than this.
Story-wise, though, it kind of works. B'Elanna tends to improve things when she's front and centre and it's easy to get invested as she attempts to do the work demanded of her. The ending is unfortunately cheesy, because there was never a sense that she felt any kind of motherly feelings to Prototype 0001, who never does anything other than repeat the same annoying line of dialogue.
Janeway citing the prime directive feels like nonsense, too. These robots came and specifically asked for help, there was no interfering going on at all.
I was worried when this started as it looked like was going to be an episode all about Neelix and his jealousy. It turns out that it is, but it's nowhere near as bad as I had feared. Tom and Neelix really needed to work their differences out, and in true cliched TV tradition they get stranded together. It becomes a prime example of how simplistic the writing on this show was, as the two of them bond over a baby and magically resolve all of their differences. You could argue that Trek in general operates like this, but Voyager somehow makes it much harder to stomach. Still, I'm really glad that the Neelix/Paris jealousy story is over.
It's also a shame that the alien baby puppet looks like a reject from that '90s TV show Dinosaurs.
I really appreciated the calmer moments of this one, such as Harry playing clarinet and the Doctor's discussion with Kes. Voyager was not one for really digging into characters, so when the moments occur I tend to enjoy them. I think this also wins the prize for the most insane camera shaking ever during the shuttle's crash landing. That was absolutely nuts.
Janeway's new hairdo is awesome.
Our first hints at where Odo may come from, and our first time hearing the word "changeling". Of course, it all turns out to be completely untrue and given the nature of The Dominion that we learn in later seasons, it's kind of surprising that Croden knew nothing real. It basically boils down to the fact that none of that had been written or even thought of at this point. Still, seeds are planted.
It has a fairly emotional ending and some really beautiful cinematography during the scenes in the vortex, but this is overall a bland episode. Quark's scenes are great and its a good look at Odo as a character, but it's overwhelmed by all the poor alien designs and one-dimensional characterisations given to them. Rom still has the mean streak to his personality from 'The Nagus', given that he seems to relish the thought of Odo dying.
First contact with Gamma quadrant species sure isn't going well so far.
Odo getting knocked out by a rock - or even feeling any pain from it - makes zero sense. Somebody wasn't thinking that through.
An episode that consists of all set-up for the next part means that it feels like nothing really happens here. On the other hand, it's not the worst thing to just spend time with these characters we've gotten to know so well. The main focus here is on Worf and Data, the latter of whom has the most interesting story. His attempts to start dreaming unlock some lovely moments and some creatively shot sequences - I really loved the bird's POV shot that swoops outside of the Enterprise. Brent Spiner again plays Dr. Noonien Soong, this time without a load of prosthetics and does a really nice job of it.
Worf's story is a intriguing start that doesn't get paid off too well in this first part. Going to Deep Space Nine is a nice treat (and seeing it in HD on the blu-ray is lovely) and Worf's inner struggle is fairly compelling.
So, despite all the quite lovely things that happen in this episode it just feels like it's a whole lot of people sitting around and thinking. There's no real excitement, despite a wonderful guest appearance from an unrecognisable James Cromwell and even Dr. Bashir showing up.
I fell asleep. I think it turns out that the dog did it. You're welcome, I just saved you from having to watch this one.
This episode is rightly lauded as one of the best of the entire franchise. It's emotional, powerful and thoughtful and exemplifies exactly what the show is about. But, and I am frustrated with myself for saying this, I don't really love it all that much. This could be a product of having seen it a bit too often, or having it always rammed down my throat as BEST TREK EVAH!1!!
I get it, it IS quite wonderful, but I've always found it to highlight The Next Generation's inherent weakness, and that is that the episodic nature of the show. This is an episode that absolutely demanded to have repercussions for Picard as a character, and there are absolutely none. It should have utterly changed him as a person. The fact that this is such a self-contained episode makes it lose its power somewhat for me. Much in the same way that Worf is completely fine following 'Ethics' or that Riker falls in love but has forgotten all about it after 'The Outcast', TNG tells fantastic stories that you can dip in and out of at any time but so rarely rewards the viewer for watching.
Two things really stood out to me in this:
1) Clara bears a distracting resemblance to Mark Wahlberg.
2) Troi and Picard pronounce "Clara" in a very odd way.
Kind of bland all round, with the only interesting moments being a couple of tiny scenes with Wesley and the Gatherer leader. There's an attempt to look at hatred and prejudice, but it doesn't come across with any force or meaning.
That may be because of the focus on Riker's romantic interest in Yuta. She's far too much of a blank character to give this any weight.
There's also the big question of why he didn't just stun her at the end, unless I missed something.
I love the introduction of Spock's parents and his relationship with them. It's genuine and added a great deal of heart, helped by the fact that I know some of the things from later in the franchise. The main plot of the episode itself is a bit all over the place, starting off well but losing its way as it went. It's nice that Kirk, Spock and especially McCoy all get to shine, though.
