Star Trek Voyager - The Complete Third Season
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Movie Reviews of Star Trek Voyager - The Complete Third Season
Movie Review: The new excitement starts from this season
Summary: 5 Stars
This reason introduces new role of 7 0f 9 and the conflict with Borg. I like those crippy green Borg domes and captain Janeway.Movie Review: Season 3 hangs in there..
Summary: 3 Stars
Ah, season 3 of Voyager... well, it continued to show signs of how good it could be, but generally it was a flat year. "Basics Part II" was a good start (but somehow solutions in Voyager are always too easy!!), but soon the season slipped into stories that were just not really intersting or involving. "Flashback" was a weak story for the anniversary and was totally out of whack with continuity. "Future's End" was fun but light-weight, and "The Q and the Grey" was a dumb story and a poor excuse to get Q back. Kathy continues to go off her trolly as the each season progresses e.g. "Macrocosms" turns her into Bruce Willis (and it's similar to TNG's "Starship Mine" episode). Kes finally has some good acting to do in "Warlord" and it's a shame that she was wasted. Why didn't Neelix get the boot? "Scorpion" was a good way to end the season, but after that, it all went down hill with recycled stories and technobable solutions and weak characterisation... shame, it had such potential!Movie Review: Voyager: Season III -end of the line
Summary: 4 Stars
Season three saw the loss of co-creator Michael Piller (with Jeri Taylor leaving before the start of season five), and the tone of the series shifted. While I have had serious issues with this show from day one, this was the last season I can actually call viewable. Seasons 4,5,6 and 7 threw everything out the airlock that had been built upon in the first three seasons. Anyway, the Kazon and the Vidiians would finally be left behind (it had been stated many times that both their space was not that large, yet the crew kept bumping into them, even after spending days and weeks in warp), and Brannon Braga began his rise as the new executive producer. He immediately drew the ire of many fans, with his 30th anniversary Trek episode Flashback. While the concept of the story was silly (it just an excuse to get Janeway and Tuvok on the bridge of the Excelsior during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country with special guest star turn of TOS actor George Takei as Captain Sulu), his lack continuity showed through, killing off a character that never died in the movie (and add his speech about how the exploits of Kirk and Company would have gotten them "booted" out of Starfleet these days. This was, essentially, what was incongruously wrong with the series. The fun of Kirk's era was gone, replaced by a chain of command from corporate America. Though, I might add, this type of attitude had slithered into TNG, especially in the two-part Unification, where Picard accused Spock of "cowboy diplomacy". And while Enterprise has attempted to return to that with Archer and his way of doing things, the show still lacks a desire to go deeper).
Still, like season two, there were one or two shows that stood out from the rest of the crap. Despite some of its shortcomings, Flashback was well directed and acted (though you can tell Grace Lee Whitney's acting has not improved with age). False Profits was a hilarious sequel to TNG's The Price, and while the two-part Future's End also had some problems, it was well done (and introduced the Doctor's mobile emitter and a 29th Century Federation Captain named Braxton who will cause many problems later on in the series). And while Warlord was nothing to write home about story wise, the acting of Jennifer Lien was top-notch. If only more stories like this came her way, maybe she would have not been shoved out after this season. John de Lancie's returned in The Q and the Grey, a sequel to the previous seasons Death Wish, and Kate Mulgrew's turn as Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in Macrocosm were also better than average.
But then there was Remember, a clunky show with a theme done many times in Trek history -the story of a group of minorities who get blamed for everything, who are then shuttled off to a "better place" and then killed. Once again, a great performance from Dawson, but we are pounded over the head with much repetition, on the allegory they are trying to put forth. Don't get me wrong, parables are Trek's bread and butter. However, over the years, they've become pedantic in nature, and usually ends with the crew jaunting away, leaving many unanswered questions, when their metaphor gets too complex.
Season three also was featured the return of the Borg. Somewhat. With shows ratings dipping, Paramount felt that show need a ratings fix (like the appearance of Q), and since it was mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact, and vaguely referenced during TNG's run, that the cybernetic creatures come from the Delta Quadrant, wasn't it about time they bumped into them? At the end of the lame Blood Fever we see a dead Borg, which came off as a late minute add on, I might hazard a guess. Then Unity happened, and once again, Braga showed why he angers the fans, because while this show is stupid, it never really was about the Borg, but about a group cut off from the Collective. Plus it had a glaring error in continuity. One character says she was assimilated at the famous battle from TNG's fantastic two-part Best of Both Worlds. There is no way in which she could've been at Wolf 359. Mainly, because there was only one Borg cube heading for Earth. It is illogical to accept that after the battle, the Borg ship went into transwarp, dropped a few crews off and returned to the Alpha Quadrant. It was more logical to assume that she was assimilated -along with the Roluman Borg during the events of The Neutral Zone, the season one finale of TNG, where Federation colonies and a few Romulan War Birds encountered early incursions of the Collective. It was just another attempt by Braga to alter Trek for his own agenda.
Unity, by the way, was a rating hit, but most fans felt they had been baited, and were disappointed with the episode. Meanwhile, the last half of season three trudged along, producing more bad shows like Rise, Real Life and Displaced. The only highlight of the last few shows was Distant Origins, which I kind of liked and the season finale, Scorpion, which featured the return of the Borg, but in a better story. But overall, the show remained static, inable to break out a formula of appealing to teenage boys. Maybe, had Voyager and now Enterprise remained in syndication, they could've still produced stories that made DS9 the best of the Trek franchise shows. Becoming a network show again, they've had to capitulate to advertisers and investors who's motives are as soggy as most of Voyagers scripts.
Movie Review: Voyager's third season an improvement from the second.
Summary: 4 Stars
After a mediocre early second season which progressed impressively,Star Trek Voyager's third season was an improvement. Although being the flagship series of the still new UPN network,it carried the burden of being a non Trekker friendly show,thus becoming Trek-lite to hardcore fans.
While it's sister show which was currently airing at the time, Deep Space Nine, was emerging as Trek's greatest series with it's ambitious multi-layered storytelling, Voyager was becoming a very mundane show as it played it safe with viewers, despite it's concept of two oppoising crews(Starfleet and Maquis) working to ensure survival as they find a way home from a distant part of the galaxy.
Using gimmicks such as guest appearences from Original series era stars (Flashback which included Captain Sulu during Star Trek VI),Time Travel (Futures End which the crew goes back to 20th century earth only to end up back in the Delta Quadrent at the end.HELLO, Slingshot effect!!!),as well as appearences by Ferengi and The Borg.One very insulting moment happened during the teaser to Warlord which shows a possessed Kes about to kiss another woman in a scintellating preview.
Aside from these flaws, season three had a good run of episodes(Basics pt II, Remember,Future's End,Alter Ego,Fair Trade,Darkling, Unity,Blood Fever,Distant Origin,Worst Case Scenario) as well, the best ever Voyager cliffhanger,Scorpion pt I.Scorpion begins as Voyager confronts not only the Borg (following up on the Unity episode), but Species 8472 an alien more deadlier than the cybernetic collective.When Voyager returns the next season,we see the exit of Kes,and the debut of former Borg drone Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan).
Movie Review: The last best year
Summary: 5 Stars
Voyager - Season 3Voyager's second season left impossibly high standards, and season number three came darned close to succeeding them. The show put forth some of its most ambitious and intriguing ideas, it tried out a number of things, some of which worked well, others, not so well, but the diversity displayed here was unmatched before and certainly never would be again.
The season begins with the conclusion to the excellent Basics cliffhanger, where the crew managed to (surprise!) escape being stranded and retrieve their ship. Immediately after this comes the 30th anniversary tribute episode, "Flashback," which was okay, but not nearly as fun (or captivating) as Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations." Another highlight was the popular "Future's End" two-parter, which had the crew hobnobbing in L.A., circa 1996. (And how like another planet that can seem!). Fans of continuity were happy to see the two renegade Ferengi that went through the unstable wormhole in TNG return in "False Profits" which, like many Ferengi episodes, was comic in nature (Evidently, there are new rules of acquisition!). The best episode of the season, though, is "Fair Trade." I'm not a big Neelix fan, but here he is put into a very palpable moral quandary. He becomes convinced that his crew doesn't want him around anymore, so he tries to barter for a map to a huge unexplored region (in order to make himself indispensable), which leads to his involvement with smuggling, narcotics trafficking and murder. Even while he unwittingly gets himself into huge trouble (and gets others implicated instead of him), one can sense his agony as he goes forward with a conspiracy that continues to grow progressively deeper until he is so enveloped in guilt that he has to do something. This is more than just a mere morality play, though; it is a solid hour of television, and even funny, in a darkly ironic, twisted way. The Doctor takes some interesting turns as well: he becomes a homicidal maniac (Darkling) and a father (Real Life), and continues to dispense wonderful dry humor. "Rise" is a combination edge-of-your-seat thriller and murder mystery, "Worst Case Scenario" is a holodeck malfunction episode that works and features a resurrection of Seska (one might say that it works because of a resurrection of Seska, but I did like the story, and for a holodeck malfunction episode, it packed a few surprises), and the season ends with the new threat of a race more powerful than the Borg in "Scorpion."
All in all, this was an enjoyable year of Star Trek, and it comes highly recommended.