{"id":3493,"date":"2023-08-19T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-19T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3493"},"modified":"2023-07-31T09:02:28","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T08:02:28","slug":"trekaday-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/08\/19\/trekaday-102\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday #102: Memorial, Tsunkatse, Collective, Spirit Folk, Ashes to Ashes, Child’s Play, Good Shepherd"},"content":{"rendered":"

VOY S06E14 Memorial <\/strong>(\"4). Harry Kim is bitching about his shipmates\u2019 domestic habits. Since he has no known personality traits, except \u201cis young\u201d, why not cast him as the parent to Paris, Chakotay and Neelix, the better to further muddle his characterisation? When arrive back on Voyager, Torres has created an antique television set as a gift for her boyfriend. She even does the hoary old \u201cI\u2019ll say something shocking to demonstrate you aren\u2019t listening\u201d but. The reassuring jollity of these early scenes makes a nonsense of the \u201ctrapped on the other side of the galaxy with no hope of rescue\u201d premise, but I suppose I should be over that by now. It\u2019s just so insistent here, that I find it more than usually maddening.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the television set which initially seems to be the plot engine of the episode, since it appears to have the power to transport Paris into the old war movies it shows, and pretty soon other members of the crew are succumbing to dreams\/memories\/hallucinations of combat atrocities. So this is pretty familiar stuff \u2013\u00a0mainly \u201cuh-oh something on the ship is sending everyone bonkers\u201d mixed in with \u201cI\u2019ve always been fascinated by twentieth century Earth history\u201d. But the suppressed memories of war crimes have a little more weight than usual, and if the insight that \u201cwar is hell\u201d is scarcely new (not even to Star Trek<\/strong>) then at least it gives the cast a chance to flex their acting muscles a bit \u2013 Paris\u2019s big breakdown is very impressive and Roxann Dawson wisely plays a calm compassionate contrast to his garment-rending hysteria.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the solution is another riff on The Inner Light<\/em> (evoked only a couple of episodes ago) and so the cast has just been experiencing second-hand memories which have nothing to do with who they are \u2013 even though several of them have lived through wars \u2013 making this a puzzle to be solved rather than a moral choice for the characters (at least not until the very end). But the journey is more worthwhile than usual, with Robert Duncan McNeill\u2019s big scene and a less hysterical but even more effective Neelix\/Seven scene notching this up to four.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E15 Tsunkatse <\/strong>(\"1.5). In a gladiatorial arena, a lycra-clad Zagbar is athletically kicking hell out of a similarly-attired Zooble, with Chakotay and Torres merrily applauding the victor. Before the titles, this is played as \u201cwhat the hell is going on here!?\u201d But after the titles, it\u2019s played as \u201cof course enlightened Federation officers will enjoy recreational bare knuckle boxing if they have nothing else to do\u201d. Discussion of this makes up much of rather a formless and dull first act which also has time for Neelix\u2019s sunburn, Seven\u2019s packing habits vs those of B\u2019Elanna Torres and whether or not a given silence might be described as \u201cawkward\u201d.<\/p>\n

This last exchange is between Seven and Tuvok, two characters whose lineage goes all the way back to Gene Roddenberry\u2019s idea for Number One in the original pilot. Tuvok\u2019s character development stalled somewhere in Season 2 and poor Tim Russ has been reduced almost entirely to trotting out his Leonard Nimoy impersonation at the rate of three lines of dialogue per episode. Seven, having assimilated fully into the Voyager<\/em> crew has recently only been called upon to summon superior officers to the astrometrics lab without explanation. Putting these two in a shuttle together isn\u2019t a bad idea, as they could each use the story space, and as they are so similar in many ways, this might force the writing staff to focus on their differences.<\/p>\n

But despite the presence of JG Hertzler and Jeffrey Combs, this is not Deep Space Nine<\/strong>, and the purpose of the expedition is not to give two characters time to talk during a long journey, it\u2019s to re-enact Spartacus<\/em>\/Ben-Hur<\/em>\/Gladiator<\/em> (you know like Kirk and the Gorn) with friends forced to fight each other to the death (you know like Kirk and Spock). Tuvok is just along for the ride as it\u2019s her Hirogen trainer that Seven is forced to face in the arena. The whole thing is all pretty by-the-numbers, and was apparently devised to cross-promote a UPN wrestling show.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E16 Collective <\/strong>(\"3). How about this for a very TNG<\/strong>-flavoured teaser? A poker game interrupted by the arrival of a Borg cube. In minutes, the Delta Flyer<\/em> is taken onboard the vessel and Paris, Kim, Chakotay and Neelix are in for a Very Bad Time. But when Voyager<\/em> catches up, the Borg want to swap their prisoners for Voyager<\/em>\u2019s main deflector. I\u2019m not one for poring over made-up schematics and I don\u2019t care one jot which room is meant to be on which deck, but I do note that something called a \u201cdeflector\u201d, which is presumably meant to deflect things, is going to be used by the Borg as a radio antenna, and its purpose on Voyager<\/em> is to help get us to warp speed. Huh\u2026?<\/p>\n

Seven pays a visit to obtain proof of life and finds more messed up humanoids of various ages (including a rather upsetting Borg foetus). These are immature Borg drones who haven\u2019t had long enough in their maturation chambers, and these five individuals, cut off from the collective, are all that are left on this cube. All of this talk of immature Borg I think is meant to be grisly David Cronenberg-esque body horror, but it comes off as a university drama group cos-playing rather than a new insight into what it\u2019s like to be Borg. We end up with four Borg kids on Voyager<\/em> which is an unexpected, if not exactly unprecedented, development. Surely they won\u2019t vanish into the background the way that the Equinox<\/em> lot did.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E17 Spirit Folk <\/strong>(\"1). Among the things I don\u2019t enjoy about Voyager<\/strong>, some include: the crew treating being stranded halfway across the galaxy as a pleasure cruise, shenanigans on the Holodeck in the place of an exciting plot, Tom Paris\u2019s obsession with cars, stories involving fairies or magic, everything about the recent episode Fair Haven<\/em>. So in this episode, Tom Paris goes for a relaxing drive in the Holodeck fantasy town of Fair Heaven and is mistaken for a fairy.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E18 Ashes to Ashes <\/strong>(\"3.5). Action! Adventure! Alien chick spouting gibberish whose ship is under attack! For once, we get a tangible sense that the Gamma Quadrant is a dangerous and unpredictable place for our people to be, and not three weeks in the Azores with twice-nightly cabaret. Also – hey! Those Borg kids are still on board. I genuinely didn\u2019t expect to ever see them again, and it\u2019s incredibly encouraging to see them, especially as none of them strike me as overly moppetty.<\/p>\n

The alien chick claims to be the late Ensign Lindsay Ballard, a member of Voyager<\/em>\u2019s crew who died during an earlier (off-screen) mission. With plenty of episodes having included the deaths of various crewmembers, it\u2019s odd that none of them was chosen for a return visit \u2013 especially in the same instalment which remembers the Borg Brood from two weeks ago. On the other hand, I always like it when characters reel off a list of all the things which might solve the mystery, but don\u2019t this time. Kim Rhodes is very appealing in the part, and there\u2019s some welcome specificity in the script, but the it\u2019s hard to believe that this will end with Ballard returning to her duties. If anything, I\u2019m more interested in the other new arrivals, under the stern but benevolent gaze of Seven of Nine, who lets them know that playtime has begun by commanding \u201cfun will now commence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s new personality trait of \u201cis tidy\u201d seems to be here to stay, regardless of how little sense it makes of what little else we know about him.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E19 Child’s Play <\/strong>(\"4). The progression of Voyager<\/em> away from barely-lashed together lifeboat to luxurious pleasure cruise is essentially complete now, with the Borg children participating in Voyager<\/em>\u2019s first annual science fair. However, while the writing staff has remembered that the Borg children exist, we last saw them as stubborn, wilful and refusing to submit to Seven\u2019s authority. A week later, they are docile, obedient and studious \u2013 and in the case of the eldest about to be reunited with long-lost family, as improbable as that sounds. Rather sweetly, Seven can\u2019t bring herself to bring up the subject with the spiky young man, and she goes full bear-mama when she doesn\u2019t think his biological parents are good enough for him. This issue of biology vs upbringing has come up before, and it\u2019s great to see it used as fodder for another of these Janeway\/Seven slanging matches which are always such fun \u2013 and we really probe Seven\u2019s make-up here in a very exciting way. That\u2019s Mark Sheppard as Icheb\u2019s dad \u2013 basically science fiction royalty as he\u2019s had roles in The X Files<\/em>, Sliders<\/em>, Doctor Who<\/em>, Battlestar Galactica<\/em>, Firefly<\/em>, Supernatural<\/em> and many others.<\/p>\n

VOY S06E20 Good Shepherd <\/strong>(\"3.5). Seven of Nine has been doing a time-and-motion study onboard Voyager (which barely scrapes a passing grade). A feckless Ensign has to walk a PADD with some specifications or other to Torres (presumably the WiFi is playing up). Via the medium of this device passing from hand to hand we meet our guest crew members for tonight – Mortimer Harren, William Telfer and Tal Celes – who are all falling short and who are punished by having to endure a team building session with Janeway. Having to build the narrative around who these screwups are means that they have a little more dimension that almost anyone else onboard, which makes this a touch richer than usual, but massively shows up the regular cast, even given that none of these three is another Spock, Picard, Garak or for that matter Seven. This character development then comes to a sudden halt as the episode gets wrapped up in thirty seconds flat with no follow up for any of the three misfits. Bajorans put the family name first, but Tal Celes is mysteriously referred to as \u201cCeles\u201d throughout the episode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOY S06E14 Memorial (). Harry Kim is bitching about his shipmates\u2019 domestic habits. Since he has no known personality traits, except \u201cis young\u201d, why not cast him as the parent to Paris, Chakotay and Neelix, the better to further muddle his characterisation? When arrive back on Voyager, Torres has created an antique television set as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,79,528,538],"class_list":["post-3493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-trekaday","tag-voyager"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Ul","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3495,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3493\/revisions\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}