In which B’Elanna’s culture is not a costume; also, she is reluctantly willing to accept that it is in fact her culture. “Barge of the Dead” is a funny old episode. I mean. It’s episode 3 of a new season. That means it’s time to check in on B’Elanna. Last time we did this, she was having a bad day involving Malon freighters, garbage monsters and anger management problems. Before that, she was severely depressed and engaging in self-harm via holodeck. This time, she’s having a bad day (check) that involves the Klingon afterlife and the possible death of her estranged mother. “Barge of the Dead ..read more

The of Nine family reunion leads to one doozy of an r/AmITheAsshole post. As I see it, there are just two flaws in this otherwise-great episode. And they may not rise above the level of nitpick. The first is that Voyager opens itself up to tourists, which is fine in the context of the episode, except we see that the bridge is full of randoms. And I’m sorry, this is the command centre of a powerful vessel from a culture which is really strict about sharing technology. Not to mention the number of times Janeway and her crew have been Shockingly Betrayed By A Seemingly Friendly Alien. I’m not say ..read more

And now the conclusion. Previously on Squiddishly Dot Net, I said, “The problem with Star Trek two-parters is that the first episode tends to be all build-up, while the second episode is a chaotic and often unsatisfying conclusion.” That’s it. That’s the post. Except the second half of “Equinox” doesn’t even rise to the level of “chaotic”. Events happen, occasionally for a reason, but with a handful of key exceptions, it feels very predictable. Safe. Or, as Ronald D. Moore said: “…these things keep popping around on the bridge, and we just keep cutting to shots of people grabbing phaser rifles ..read more

The Voyager crew discover they’re not the only Starfleet officers in the delta quadrant. This is … very bad. This is a difficult episode to write up. For two reasons: One. It’s overshadowed by the events of the second part, which — spoilers! — are still the topic of Discourse today. That’s a distraction which makes it hard to appreciate part one on its own. Two. In my opinion, it represents a first draft of the Battlestar: Galactica TV movie Razor, which uses some of the same ideas and tropes but with much more rape and overt torture. This is awkward, since BSG showrunner Ronald D. Moore isn’t ..read more

It’s the one where Voyager helps someone in need who then BETRAYS THEM! No, wait, it’s the one where Voyager gets entangled with an artificial intelligence with an agenda of its own! No wait! IT’S BOTH! “Warhead” is not a bad episode, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve seen it before. I have a real problem where I confuse “Prototype” with “Dreadnought” with “Juggernaut” with “Warhead”. Three of these episodes are about B’Elanna, Liz. Get it straight. “Warhead” is a Harry episode, which naturally means the Doctor gets the bulk of the attention and the meaty acting goes to Robert Picardo ..read more

Voyager is in her self-referential era. Again. “Relativity” is a fun romp without much to say. And there’s nothing wrong with that, until the time comes that you have to open WordPress and try to blog about it. I set myself a target of minimum 1,000 words for these posts, and usually I only miss it if I dislike an episode. I like “Relativity” a lot! But I have so little to say about it that, well, I just wrote a whole paragraph of meta-blog. Writer soup Maybe the hollowness at the centre of “Relativity” is a case of too many cooks. We have three credited writers here — Nick Sagan, Bryan Fuller ..read more

This episode is brought to you by America’s turn-of-the-millennium malaise. It’s hard to think of another Star Trek episode which has aged so badly while being so inoffensive. “11:59” takes us back to a well Voyager has visited often: did you know that history is biased, historical records are rarely complete, and our understanding of the past is nearly always driven by some sort of agenda? This version of that story is refreshingly low in its stakes: Janeway learns that the ancestor who inspired her was not a heroic astronaut and explorer, but a nice lady who was down on her luck and living o ..read more

Unfortunately, heterosexuality. Multiple times over the last two weeks, I have opened Netflix and seen that I was up to “Someone To Watch Over Me” in my rewatch. “I do not have capacity for all the opinions I’m going to need to have,” I said each time, and went off to read a book or watch something else. But blogs wait for no woman, and here I am, having just watched “Someone To Watch Over Me” for the third time in my life and somehow hating it more than the first two times combined. I should say upfront, this is not an intrinsically bad episode I mean, it is offensively heteronormative and al ..read more

In which B’Elanna has another bad day, and the real eco-terrorists are the exploited workers we met along the way. “Juggernaut” opens with a scene both delightful and frustrating. Tuvok is teaching B’Elanna to meditate! He agrees that he was a cute kid! She has a lot of feelings and he is helping her to deal with them! Obviously I love it when Tuvok interacts with anyone not you Neelix but I’ve always particularly enjoyed his scenes with B’Elanna. Both of them. They really don’t get to hang out enough! And we know that Tuvok is full of rage, so who better to help B’Elanna mange hers? That’s th ..read more

You’re not gonna believe this, but it turns out that the self-styled smartest people in the room are a bunch of grifters It feels like “Think Tank” came too early. I remember it being heavily hyped (Jason Alexander’s first role since the end of Seinfeld!) and then landing to lukewarm praise. Alexander’s performance was very low-key compared with whoever he played in Seinfeld1 and the story was not remotely comedic. Without the baggage of expectations, and with more distance between us and Seinfeld, it turns out that “Think Tank” is a solid Voyager episode in the best possible way. Alexander pl ..read more