30th Anniversary VOY Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

Parallax


Janeway drafts Paris to begin training as Holodoc's assistant. He had two roughly applicable classes at the Academy, which for this ship was as close as anyone came to being qualified. Paris didn't seem at all pleased by the assignment--and, as subsequent episodes proved, he wasn't up to the task. Whether it's because he just wasn't qualified or because he effectively practiced passive resistance, I don't dare venture to guess.



When did Tom prove incompetent at medical tasks? He was never enthusiastic about them, but he did his best.


Carrey, of course, lords his apparent seniority over Torres, and condescends to her enough that half of Engineering seems to root for her to break his nose again. Torres, however, seems to be slightly unnerved from her previous encounter with the captain, and isn't in a mood to break anything at the moment. Torres isn't all spitfire and right hooks; she has some skeletons in her closet she hasn't shown anyone yet. Could it be that the Klingon Tsunami is actually...suffering from low self esteem?
Nah, couldn't be.



Good insight. That was always a problem with Voyager-character development didn't happened at the same rate as TNG. This is particularly odd because the higher-ups told the producers to knock it off with the Maquis conflict and try to be TNG Part Two as much as possible. And on TNG the cast was allowed to have character growth once Gene was kicked out.

Tom Paris asks what the heck they're talking about--"we got the signal before we got stuck...how's that possible? Am I making any sense here?" To which Janeway replies, "no. But that's okay." She pats him on the head like a good little Gump and gets back to chatting at warp 9 with Torres. (I'm not bothering to pass on the science, because it gave me a headache trying to follow it. I'll side with Paris on this one; just look cute, keep your mouth shut, and be ready to drive fast when given the word.)



Hehe.


We also get to meet Carrey, Torres' rival in Engineering; a Bajoran/Maquis engineer who is fitting into the Voyager crew even less well than Torres; and we see the first "date" between Kes and Holodoc.



Ew.


Time and Again


This was the second straight episode where effect preceded cause. Perhaps they didn't want us to forget this "valid literary technique" so soon after introducing it in the black hole episode. My personal feeling about such things is that it's crap, and when they try to cram too much Trek Science into an episode I lose interest. The more time they waste on science, pseudo science, and other technosputum, the less time they can devote to plot and character development.



He has a point, albeit a debatable one.


The progression from "we can't violate the prime directive" to "well, we already violated the prime directive, so we might as well spill it," was too abrupt and there was little in the way of body language or other cues to suggest that she had made the transition in a plausible way.



Another debatable point, but it must be pointed out that Kirk was even more cavalier about the PD at times.



These time-twist stories can be effective, but it still boils down to, how does the time-twist affect the characters? How do they react, how do they change? This is what's really interesting. In this Voyager episode, you really didn't see any of that, which is why I was so disappointed.



Cue comparisons to "Year of Hell" again.