Star Trek Voyager - The Complete Third Season
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Movie Reviews of Star Trek Voyager - The Complete Third Season
Movie Review: Beginning of Change For Voyager
Summary: 4 Stars
Star Trek: Voyager's third season began to see change, vital to saving the show. Season Three started to tell more complex, exciting, and epic-style stories. Moving away from the slowly evolving plot involving the Kazons was the producer's best decision, and allowed for a very appreciated change of pace. If it weren't for the more exciting and epic-style episodes that began in this season, Voyager would not have survived to its seventh season.
The only thing saving Voyager until this time was its overall plot, which attracted fans of similar "The Next Generation" and the original series, and the fact that it wasn't syndicated like Deep Space Nine.
Voyager's season finale, "Scorpion", is the biggest Star Trek cliffhanger since TNG's "Best of Both Worlds" and was voted Voyager's best episode in a 1999 Startrek.com poll.
Voyager really takes flight with shows like "Unity" and "Real Life", although Season Three had several stand-out episodes prior to them.
Season Three starts out with the conclusion to Season Two's cliffhanger "Basics". It's a satisfying ending for the conflict between the Kazon, although it should have ended far earlier than this.
Voyager's anniversary episode called "Flashback" didn't hold a candle compared to DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations" however still had some good moments. The fact that the original cast from "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" guest starred was wonderful, but for Star Trek's 30th anniversary episode, it could have stood out more.
Season Three has a Ferengi episode ("False Profits"), which is always fun. The Ferengi only return once more in the season, and not until Season Seven. But it makes sense based on Voyager's plot.
Voyager's first mid-season 2-part episode aired in Season Three. The time-traveling episode "Future's End" finally gives The Doctor mobility. This episode is suppose to tie into the Season Five episode "Relativity" however the connection between the episodes isn't very clear. If you watch both episodes closely, you'll know what I mean.
The drastic attempt to keep Kes's character interesting is very apparent, not only in her appearance, but also personality. Starting with "Warlord" Kes suddenly seems to mature overnight from a youn naive girl to a mature woman. Kes also breaks up with Neelix in "Warlord".
Q returns for the second of three visits to Voyager in "Q and the Grey". This is Q's best episode for Voyager.
The Borg make their first Voyager appearance at the end of "Blood Fever" although it is only a dead corpse. This is a foreshadow of what's to come. The Borg also return in "Unity" and of course the explosive season finale "Scorpion".
Martha Hackett returns as Seska in "Worst Case Scenario". But wait, didn't Seska die in "Basics"? Ok, this is actually a holographic Seska that she created to torture Tuvok. This episode is full of action and wonderfully written. The scene where Paris and Tuvok go to the holographic sickbay and get tortured by The Doctor is hilarious.
Season Three had an explosive Season Finale called "Scorpion, Part I" where Voyager finally enters Borg space, but they now they face an enemy even more dangerous and destructive. It has tons of action and awesome visual effects.
WORST OF SEASON THREE: "Remember", "Warlord", "Alter Ego", "Darkling", "Favorite Son", and "Before and After".
Movie Review: Memorable episodes of a mediocre series...
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been in love with Star Trek for as long as I can remember, and I have faithfully watched every series from start to finish. Given the great stuff being done in recent years with TNG and DS9, I really expected to like Voyager. I thought the first two seasons were a lot of fun; not the best Trek I'd ever seen, but pretty solid stuff. Interesting plots, colorful characters, it really seemed like the show was going places. Then came along season 3. That's not to say this season is bad; actually, there are a lot of good episodes from this year. One of my personal favorites was the episode with Sulu, which was just a blast to see. The season also had a great beginning and end, wrapping up the Kazon arc (finally) and bringing in the Borg (finally). "Scorpion" is one of the show's best episodes, not only bringing back one of Star Trek's most compelling races, the Borg, but also introducing the creepy Species 8472 (It's a pity the subsequent Borg episodes in later seasons never measured up to this one). All that said, however, the beginning of the series' downward spiral can be seen here. Without the Kazon as an ever-present threat (and they were never that compelling as villains, anyway), the show bounces from one alien race to the next week to week, trying to find a new recurring enemy, a pattern it basically repeats for the rest of its run. The interesting character of Kes, who was never developed to her potential, ends her stay on the show with this season, and is replaced in season 4 by the insufferable Seven of Nine, perhaps the most blatantly sexist character in Star Trek history. Some of the episodes take a turn for the comedic, too, such as the one where a bunch of microbes grow to giant size and take over the ship. Granted, Voyager isn't alone in this; a lot of the Original Series' episodes were pretty out there, and some of DS9's early shows were fairly hokey, but somehow, the sight of a bunch of giant microbe-virus things attacking that resort on the holodeck made it a lot harder for me to take this show seriously. Then the episode where Belana gets somehow infected with Vulcan pon-farr is pretty far-fetched, too. It's entertaining, certainly, but really doesn't make any logical (no pun intended) sense, and seems sort of like a way for the writers to just throw in some meaningles sex to boost the ratings. Still, the season does have its moments, and is (in my opinion, anyway) probably the last good season of Voyager that aired. If you're interested in Star Trek, though, I'd go with one of the other series first.Movie Review: Voyager finally gets good
Summary: 5 Stars
The first two seasons of Voyager left a bad taste in the mouths of many, including myself. When the ship is escaping through a hole in a gravity well, or being threatened by Neelix's cooking, you know the writers are totally sapped of ideas. But Season 3 changed all that. It was one cool, clever, riveting, well-plotted episode after another. It was when I really started to pay attention to the show. And come "Scorpion," we finally ditched those lame Kazon and Vidiians for some REAL bad guys, the coolest bad guys ever to grace our TV sets... the Borg. For Borg fanatics like myself, who seek efficiency and perfection on a daily basis and strive to remove emotions from our decision-making processes, and wish we had Borg alcoves in our bedrooms, Scorpion was a godsend that ushered in a whole new era of Trek awesomeness. True, we would have to wait until Season 4 (when only every 5th episode wasn't about the Borg) to truly reap the benefits of this godsend, but still, there's something to be said for watching a taped copy of "Scorpion" Part I over and over for 3 months in anticipation of Part II.
So, aside from the Borg, Season 3 had a lot of really friggin' cool episodes. There was the one with Sulu, the one where the crew goes back in time to 1996, the one with the Ferengi, the one where Kes gets the Extreme Makeover... come to think of it, all of the show's most awesome Borgless episodes were from Season 3.
There are those who say this was Voyager's last good season, and those who say this was Voyager's first good season. What both groups agree on is that this is a really good season.
Movie Review: A Strong Season
Summary: 4 Stars
For my money, season three is one of the very best of Voyager. It's clearly a transitional year, from what I feel was a very weak season two to a more action-oriented, meaty, and fun season four.
The most superb episode of the season, and one of the best of Trek, is Scorpion Part 1, which introduces Species 8472. I remember watching this when it was originally broadcast. Back then the idea of a species "more powerful than the Borg" was almost unimaginable. The introduction of this alien race really injected some life into Voyager villainy, which had been mired for two seasons in the tired and rehashed Kazon story arc. Just look at the foreheads of those guys and tell me that they're not just a cross between Cardassians and Klingons. And we never met a Kazon female!
The other standouts in the third year of Voyager are Future's End, though the first installment is much more interesting and tightly scripted than the second; the engaging Distant Origin, which very cleverly presented its first couple of acts from the perspective of the dinosaur aliens; and Before and After. Not many praise that episode, but it does showcase some of Jennifer Lien's best acting, especially when she's a very confused 9-yr.-old at the episode's beginning. The backwards plot movement makes us wonder what happens next--meaning what happened before--along with Kes. We get at least a glimpse of what Kes might have developed into over the seven-year run of the show, are introduced to the Krenem, and the episode moves along the Torres-Paris romance subplot. We even get a passing reference to Kes' one lung (she donated the other to Neelix in season one). What's not to like?
Solid episodes in season three are many: There's the strong Basics Part 2, which nicely wraps up the Kazon, Seska, and Suder story lines, and The Swarm, where we finally get to meet, sort of, the Doctor's creator. There's False Profits, which finds a clever way to bring the Ferengi into the Delta Quadrant, simply by pointing out that two have been there already for a few years. I like very much both Remember and Sacred Ground, though by the end of the season Janeway seems to forget the lesson in spirituality she learned in the latter episode. When in Scorpion Leonardo suggests that she pray, Janeway rejects the suggestion pretty much immediately. Also solid are The Q and the Grey, though this gets derailed by the end, and Macrocosm, with its famous, or infamous, scenes of Kate Mulgrew looking fantastic in her tank top. I also like Blood Fever very much, as well as Unity, Displaced, Worst Case Scenario, and Real Life. This last I long thought poorly of because the Klingon friends of the Doctor's holographic son struck me as a negative racial stereotype. But perhaps I was being oversensitive.
Weaker, but still good, episodes include Flashback, which could have been great, The Chute, Alter Ego, Coda, and Warlord, which could have been really silly if not for Lien's intense performance. I know a lot of people hate Favorite Son and Harry Kim episodes generally, but this episode does have that sense of campiness that made the original series so much fun. Demon women pounding big wooden sticks on the floor just really appeals to me, I guess.
Two episodes I would rate the season's worst. First, Rise, which tries to be pulse-pounding but ends up being just dumb, and second, Darkling, which even that superb thespian Robert Picardo can't save. I was also annoyed that this episode assumes that the romance of Neelix and Kes has already ended. The problem is that the "break up" between the two in Warlord occurs when Kes is being possessed by an alien. So did they ever really break up? Did they ever talk about it ro resolve the relationship? We're just left hanging on this score. The relationship between these two characters always felt weird, though, so it's good that it ended somehow, I suppose.
After basically suffering through rewatchings of many season two episodes, the season three DVD set provided a pretty exhilarating experience. The extra stuff is generally good, though the "Braving the Unknown" segment seems much shorter than for seasons 1 and 2, and the "Easter Egg" ostensible surprises are pretty lame. Three-fourths of most of them consist of clips from episodes that you could just watch yourself, interspersed with a few comments by one actor or another. Certainly these extras are better than nothing, but it would be great to see more interviews with well-known guest actors.
In sum: every Voyager fan must own this, and Star Trek and sci fi fans more generally should give it a try, starting perhaps with the last two discs.
Movie Review: Good... yet... somewhat incomplete.
Summary: 4 Stars
I jumped in on this series only recently, forming a new appreciation for the details that makes it unique-- i.e. the crew interaction and character development that sets it apart from The Next Generation and gives the series a flavor of its own. The overall fast-paced, high-speed inertia that viewers were thrust into early in on the series is continued in this season. Stories continued to be both intruiging and amazing.. however.. in some ways, I felt slightly unsatisfied at the end of many episodes.While the stories slightly helped develop each character a little more deeply... it seems like there was a little less attention to detail in this season. Some parts seemed forced and rushed (especially some deaths early on in the season, which left me somewhat unsatisfied because I felt many of those characters deserved a little more detail in the end than what they were given). Some episodes seemed to leave out minor details or skip over things that could have been explored even further. Some even left me thinking, "Wait... is that it? It can't be.. there HAS to be more!"
However, as far as strengths go, this season continued to build my admiration in Janeway as a (fictional) superb leader who I wish I could have known and worked for. And some of the other major details (especially some that linked the series to previous movies and series) were extremely enjoyable, especially since they brought back to light things I may have thought about while watching Star Trek in the past.
Besides, seeing Sulu in Star Trek is always cool. =)