Day Two Hundred and Fifty-two - Star Trek Voyager: Season 7, Episode 19, "Wait... this seems a bit familiar."

I've been very sporadic with my Voyager watching.

Having seen the complete series several times thanks to syndication and reruns on UPN (back when there was a UPN) and other networks for well over a decade, I pretty much just limit myself to my favorites... and, usually, those favorites revolve around The Doctor (Robert Picardo). Today's Couchbound entry is no exception, featuring the Season 7 episode, "Author, Author."

Recently MacGuffin-ing a way to regularly communicate with Starfleet back in the Alpha Quadrant (thanks to Dwight Schultz's recurring Barclay character), the crew of Voyager are finally able to speak face to face with colleagues and loved ones for the first time in years. Not having any family to speak of himself (or, perhaps, the writers not wanting to retread ground so quickly after Life Line), The Doctor decides to speak with a publisher for his new Holo-Novel.

The novel, itself, is a farcical reinterpretation of the Voyager crew from an oppressed Emergency Medical Hologram's perspective... and basically serves to drive a wedge between The Doctor and the crew as all of their fictional analogs act like they're from the Mirror Universe, but that's the throwaway comedic part of the episode. The real meat of the story is a replay of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode with The Doctor standing in for Data in The Measure of a Man.

It really is extremely derivative of the legal proceedings from over a decade previous, where a Starfleet scientist wanted to disassemble Data against his will, claiming he had no rights because he was just a machine and Starfleet property. In Author, Author, it's the same, just swapping out the scientist with a greedy, overzealous publisher looking for a quick strip of gold-pressed latium and Data for the put upon AI, The Doctor.

The episode is a bit disappointing on the whole.

The novel is far too cheesy and melodramatic, the few glimpses of it we are given, and the crew's reactions to it, while understandable, are far too conveniently shocked/appalled, with only Neelix giving a favorable review. The only highlight for me was when Tom Paris reprogrammed the novel to give a creepy, perverted slant to The Doctor that gave Picardo a few gems to chew on.

Then there's the side story that features several bridge crew and their calls home with loved ones. While it was nice to see B'elanna and Seven reconnect with their families, the scene with Ensign Kim's stereotypical overbearing Asian mother felt as if it set back race relations a couple of years with a few broad strokes of the pen.... so, kudos there, writers.

Still, if you can get past all the cheese and hammy dialogue, it's nice to see "Measure of a Man"-lite, the Diet Soda of Data Episode Ripoffs. It pales in comparison to the original (what with Riker running the prosecution and much more time spent philosophizing instead of just the crew testimonials here), but it ain't terrible.

Plus, it's always good to see Broccoli, even if he's a tool in real life.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Four - Star Trek Voyager: Season 5, Episode 11, "Robert Picardo, you wonderful ham, you."

Voyager gets a lot of grief from geek folk across the spectrum, despite it returning to the roots of Star Trek and focusing more on human exploration of the galaxy and less on Alpha Quadrant politics.

A closer hybrid of TOS and TNG than should've been expected, but shipped off to the far reaches of the Milky Way on a near impossible journey home, Voyager played quite a bit of havoc with its crew, but unfortunately relied on cheesy gimmicks like the Borg and sexy add-on characters when ratings flagged (a trap that carried over into Enterprise).

I can't exactly say that I'm a fan of the series as a whole, but I certainly enjoy any episode which revolves around the "Outsider Exploring Humanity" character, The Doctor. Like Data before him, The Doctor (played by scifi character actor Robert Picardo), is an AI who dreams of being human and fully integrating into a crew which sometimes regards him more as a tool than an individual.

Having Seven of Nine join the crew was an annoyance to me, at first, in spite of her skintight catsuit's effect on my lizard brain, but I eventually grew to enjoy her presence strictly from the perspective of The Doctor mentoring her. In this particular episode, both play a major role as The Doctor discovers a conspiracy to violate the sanctity of his memory banks and erase moments of his past.

I like Latent Images (this episode's title) mostly due to the fact that the key dilemma, that The Doctor's decision to choose one life over another causes him an extreme ethical crisis is layered both as a programming paradox issue and an overall ethical quandary. Any rational being with empathy would have the same problem and perhaps react the same way and that's what makes the episode so special. With any other character, the writers could just handwave away the decision with a "and I'll have to live with it the rest of my life" line, but by forcing the dilemma to have more permanent consequences, it's easier to swallow as relevant and poignant.

I am more than a bit disappointed that the writers got lazy and didn't dream up a new argument for sentience (or lack thereof) for Janeway to counter Seven with, as we've pretty much already covered the same ground with Data in TNG long before Voyager was zapped to the Delta Quadrant, but she doesn't hold it for long, so it's a bit forgivable.

I also kind of wish that they had taken this opportunity to off a main cast member (or even a recurring guest crewer) instead of a generic extra. It would've made that much more of a punch, but oh well.

As I implied above, I pretty much just skip around the series for Doctor-centric episodes now, but... if you've never watched it (or, it's just been that long)... I could easily affirm that it's worth going through in its entirety at least once, the same I would say for any Trek series (even Enterprise).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Ten - Explorers, "Some of that Spielburgian Scifi Wonder and Awe."

If you've read the blog or listened to OotV's podcasts you know that I love films like Super 8 that don't really dumb down family science fiction. Movies like Close Encounters and E.T. manage to entertain and inspire without over-complicating the message or resorting to the lowest common denominator, either.

It should probably go without saying that Explorers holds a similar place in my heart.

Focusing on three adolescents who are brought together both by their sense of adventure and the oddly prescient and vivid dreams that they share, Explorers stars a very young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix. Joined by Jason Presson (who sadly didn't have similar star power), the trio discover that the dreams that Ben (Hawke) is having translate into an undiscovered technology that can allow them to travel anywhere in three dimensions.

The film follows their journey (both literal and figurative) as they build a ship to navigate space with this new technology and decided to slip the bonds of Earth and see just what is out there. It's a nifty sort of coming of age story that mirrors the Vision Quest (again, both figuratively and literally).

I really enjoyed the Tron-esque dream sequences that featured early CGI. It was brief and pales by far to today's standards... but, for its day, was pretty impressive.

Plus, any movie that has clips of This Island Earth and the original War of the Worlds just begs for geek support. Hard to say 'no' to that.

That's not to say it's not without problems, though.

Unlike its true Spielburgian cousins, it's rather lacking in scope, has several glaring plot holes that don't resolve, and definitely peters out far too quickly as soon as the extraterrestrial reveal is made. Once the aliens make physical contact, it all becomes a goofy pop culture exploration that feels like it wants to be serious through surreal comedy but is instead very gauche and trite.

I was particularly disappointed with how easily early plot points (the bullies, the helicopter cop) are completely forgotten by the midpoint of the film. There's no continuity with either lost thread and it messes with my sense of balance concerning the film.

Attempts are made to try, such as with Darren (Presson) and his callback line about his father... and Ben's love interest Lori, but a much better job could've been done overall to tie up the loose ends.

It's definitely not a perfect movie, that much is certain, but it still manages to pull off a decent amount of suspension of disbelief.

It's also a semi-decent showing for Robert Picardo. Not his best foray into that wacky character repertoire of his, but the man has been the go-to guy for small roles like this for decades. You can't knock them all out of the park... and, really, when I think about it, the movie's problems aren't his fault at all. For what he was asked for, he delivered his part pretty well. It's just that the effects (especially the alien suit) were crap.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~