Plot – One of the best ever Voyager pre-titles with a legendary love letter to 50s SF b movies of old. Fabulously overdone music, camp costumes, crazy sets, delicious villains and a giant clunky robot! It’s 60s Doctor Who! How the episode continues in black and white even away from the story playing out is a beautiful touch. I just happen to have a love for creaky science fiction and terrible b movies so this is the one and only time I can fully endorse a Tom Paris inspired holodeck programme. It presses so many of my buttons.
The idea of photonic life forms is an interesting one and imagine all of the things they could have done with the idea had they kept it on and developed it rather than tossing it at an idiosyncratic holodeck episode. The Doctor could have had regular contact with and build relationships with some of his own kind. Typical Voyager, drop an interesting idea on the viewer and then snatch it away after 45 minutes. A universe populated entirely with photonic beings is delightful…why the hell did we never visit there?
‘Entangle me in your web’ is one of the best come ons I’ve ever heard.
Character – Tom Paris has another love that happens to marry with an episode (along with vintage vehicles, cartoons, ocean planets, technology…the list goes on). This is the most satisfying and least embarrassing. It comes as no surprise that he would want to play the hero, because deep down he really isn’t. Well no, deep down he really is…he just hides it away behind bravado and roguishness.
‘Listen to me carefully because I’m only going to say this once. Coffee. Black.’ I have never loved Janeway more. That’s my drink.
I genuinely like Torres and I think Roxan Dawson delivers the goods when she is given the right material. However more often than not the writers press too hard on the stroppy half Klingon button and make her joyless and nowhere near as fun as she should be to be around. In this ridiculous episode she is snarky, rude and bitchy. Why exactly?
Performance – I would rather spend time with Martin Rayner’s Chaotica than half the Voyager crew. He’s so much fun. An outrageous old ham who just wants to rule the entire cosmos and has to deal with the incompetence of his inferiors. Janeway should empathise with him. Come to think of it I’d rather spend time with Satan’s Robot than Harry Kim, Neelix or Chakotay. Couldn’t they keep him on? He’s so cute.
Mulgrew knows exactly how to play the entire episode. Belligerent Captain, confused study of 50s b movies and outrageous ham as Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People. She’s magnificent throughout and the only person who really seems to be indulging in the fun completely. Why wouldn’t Janeway get off on having the chance to let her hair down?
Production – How dreadful the planetary backdrops look in what must be an amusing nod to TOS and early TNG. ‘Sets were expensive…’ – the reason the backdrops always look the same.
It is a fact that often when Trek heads to the holodeck that the musical scores are much more fun than your standard Trek episode. Doesn’t that suggest that they should be doing something about the regular music, rather than pouring all the effort into the quirky one offs?
The ray guns. Move over phasers, these are much funkier. Harry shooting an extra guard just for the fun of it is a lovely touch. Even Harry Kim can be fun in this programme!
Best moment – Four functioning lavatories for a ship of 150 people…that’s worthy of an episode itself. When the best non-holodeck scene is a Neelix one, that’s an interest dilemma.
‘Will someone please explain why we haven’t simply shut down the holodeck’ – Janeway talking good sense! Whatever next? A shame she wasn’t as forthcoming about Fair Haven.
Worst moment – Voyager didn’t break the fourth wall enough. It went to extraordinarily lengths to explain why Janeway needed to get to the holodeck and play a super villainess when Kate Mulgrew could have just looked (just off centre) to camera and said ‘so you’re telling me I’ve got to camp it up on the holodeck?’
I wish they hadn’t done that – With these holodeck episodes it always feels like the writers have to go to extreme lengths to explain why the characters should be having fun. I truly appreciated DS9’s Badda Bing when it was all about helping somebody they considered a friend. Here the explanation is pretty laboured, and full of technobabble, and actually fairly humdrum for Voyager. And that’s a shame because so much of this episode is riotous, gleeful fun. But highlighting how much fun 50s b movies are against a dreary Voyager plot doesn’t do the show (rather than the episode) any favours. Because next week we have to get back to more of the photonic lifeform style technobabble without any of the high camp or melodrama.
A reason to watch this episode again – ‘The future didn’t turn out quite as black and white as they imagined’ Glorious entertainment, if Voyager was this pleasurable every week I would be crying out for every episode to be set on the holodeck. It’s a moment in this shows history where everybody knows exactly what they are trying to achieve and they deliver fantastic results. I wish we could have jettisoned the technospeak and the appearance of so many dreary Voyager crewmembers and gotten to the Arachnia/Chaotica stuff much sooner. You see I care much more about whether Chaotica is going to lower the lightning shield than whether Voyager is going to be pulled into subspace. Who knew that all Voyager needed to make it deliriously enjoyable was a dose of high camp?
**** out of *****
Clue for tomorrow's episode:
https://www.theincomparable.com/randomtrek/
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