VOY: "Nightingale"

[slochmoeller]

I don't disagree, it is rather cringe. Nevertheless the question now turns as to ''why'' this plot turned out so badly. After all, it is a perfectly reasonable development that someone with literally ZERO social skills due to spending most of his life as a pod baby and ZERO meaningful interaction with the opposite sex would misinterpret the signs. The only other two girls on the ship are Naomi (who is too young) and the Borg Girl (who left the ship by this point). And who are his apparent tutors in the way of becoming a human man dealing with his first potential crush? A woman who is herself suffering from a crippling lack of social skills (Seven), Shithead (Neelix), and a hologram who is technically younger than he is. The fact that this poor boy has hormones should have been considered much earlier than it actually was.

This should have been a good plot. The material is there.

Good point. I feel like Janeway would have assigned Paris this task, and he in turn would have just given Icheb his old copy of "Vulcan Love Slave" and pointed him towards the holodeck.

[clearspira]

It kind of makes me wonder...has Harry really had THAT poor an amount of training and experience in command, in seven-odd years in Starfleet, plus four years in the Academy, that he's a complete bumbling naif when put in charge of a space RV?

Lack of immediate chances for promotion due to circumstances or not, I think that actually reflects worse on his superiors than Poor Dumb Harry himself.

It definitely reflects poorly on the people who should be training him. Basically, despite being the lowest ranking member of the crew, he still should have had opportunities to be in charge of something, from time to time, just to get practice at leading. The closest he ever came was when they paired him with Seven to build the Astrometrics lab, and he decided he wanted to bone her (despite her having the emotional age of a ten-year-old girl because Harry is a sexual monstrosity).

Remember that back in Pen Pals, freaking Cadet Wesley Crusher was put in charge of a survey team. Harry's experience is that even the EMH can give him orders, despite the fact that he's a program without a real body or even a freaking name.

I agree with with both of you tbh. His trainers have done a piss poor job with him... but sometimes you do come across people who are just that hopeless at life. Lets look at this objectively: Kim isn't just an ensign - he is THE ensign. He is a department head who has a seat on the bridge. There are full braid lieutenants who report to him as we see in ''Twisted''. And if he didn't board Voyager? We learn in ''Non Sequitur'' that he would be designing revolutionary runabout engines. And speaking of Wesley, the franchise's other THE ensign? Kim got his seat without any nepotism whatsoever given how he wasn't fortunate enough to be raised on a ship where the captain wants to breech his mum's warp core.

And yet, despite all of this, he amounts to nothing in 7 years despite others being promoted beside him. Why? Because Kim clearly has a neurotic personality. And I think the fact that one of the most popular fan theories about him is that he is a closet gay as it is the only way to explain his weird relationship with both Tom and every woman he meets speaks volumes. He's great at what he does, but the moment you challenge him with something outside of his comfort zone, he is liable to make mistakes.

[clearspira]

I don't disagree, it is rather cringe. Nevertheless the question now turns as to ''why'' this plot turned out so badly. After all, it is a perfectly reasonable development that someone with literally ZERO social skills due to spending most of his life as a pod baby and ZERO meaningful interaction with the opposite sex would misinterpret the signs. The only other two girls on the ship are Naomi (who is too young) and the Borg Girl (who left the ship by this point). And who are his apparent tutors in the way of becoming a human man dealing with his first potential crush? A woman who is herself suffering from a crippling lack of social skills (Seven), Shithead (Neelix), and a hologram who is technically younger than he is. The fact that this poor boy has hormones should have been considered much earlier than it actually was.

This should have been a good plot. The material is there.

Good point. I feel like Janeway would have assigned Paris this task, and he in turn would have just given Icheb his old copy of "Vulcan Love Slave" and pointed him towards the holodeck.

Lol. It's a pity that he doesn't live on DS9 where I am convinced that someone (probably Jadzia or Nog) would have *nudge nudge, wink winked* him towards Quark by now. ''Itchy, buddy. We get it. You've got hormones but you don't quite have the ability to express them with an actual girl yet. Here's a bar of latinum, go nuts.''

Joking aside though, that probably would be the best treatment for him at this point. With no girls about or mentors who are really worth their salt, an actual ''officially approved for teenagers'' sex education program that teaches you the fundamentals regarding love and sex would go down well. Hell, give it thirty years and boys in the real world will probably be getting the birds and the bees via a VR helmet too.

[SFDebris]

No-one:

Chuck: "Studies have shown that judges are more lenient at the beginning of their careers and the start of the day because decision making is inherently stressful and that's why Neelix is stupid".

Sorry, but I do wonder if any other character, on any other show, had made the same remark Neelix did about decision making, if Chuck would have dug out courtroom statistics to call them dumb or simply ignored it and moved on

You can't put out the quantity of material I do without studying strategies in optimization, and that includes decision fatigue. For example: I sometimes take a working lunch to refresh myself by getting out of my office, but work in the restaurant. For each restaurant, I always order the exact same thing there every time, my choice of meal is determined the moment I get into the car, because that's the restaurant I start driving towards. I know that I can always tip $2.50 to have a range between 18-25% for the server so I never have to think about that. The only decision I have to make is the moment I get in the car, and after that I am following a routine all the way until I get back, leaving my brain fully powered to tackle the work task that I've planned for that lunch.

So yeah, I know the court statistics off the top of my head, it's a common example from discussion of the topic, alongside the one-set-of-clothes example. For those of us who want a little variety, there's the put the clothes out the night before option - it may seem anal, but it means you don't have to make a decision what to wear the next morning, you just follow your routine and collect your clothes after showering because they're there. Every single task you can transform from a decision to a routine makes you a more productive person. It's why this CBS issue has me so pissed off, I've had to go from routine to decisions, and this is taking a physical toll because decisions exhaust stamina.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

One of the few Voyager episode reviews still up. Anybody have the rest? If he puts them all on Patreon I'll pay for it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The videos are great and this is good assessment of episodes, but the title card at the start is pretty scary and I have to remember to skip ahead a few seconds.

Gets me every time...

[Darth Wedgius]

I really like the concept of the episode, and Burton had done good work with Wang in Timeless. And I liked the episode, but I wasn't thrilled by it.

Giving Harry something to do would have been nice, but at the end of the episode he was probably still going to be an ensign. By the time he takes the center seat as something other than a warm tush, Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris, Torres, and probably a dozen people not in the opening credits needs to be seriously injured, stuck in a turbolift, or have a temporary relapse of being a newt. Giving Troi the bridge command test made for one interesting episode before she was back to Lieutenant Commander Obvious for the same reason, IMHO.

I've said more than once that I wish Chakotay had been removed from the show to shake things up. Make Harry the tactical officer and Tuvok the XO, maybe. Tuvok's POV is different enough that being an XO would be interesting. Give Harry the position of giving people missions some may not come back from, and of keeping an eye on some Maquis.

[TrueMetis]

And yet, despite all of this, he amounts to nothing in 7 years despite others being promoted beside him. Why?

Because the writers are garbage and forget what they've put their characters through? Like he's been put outside he comfort zone plenty of times and been fine, he's been in firefights, almost died more times than I care to count, been a department head for years at this point, been put in charge of voyager, and lead away missions. At this point what he deals with in this episode wouldn't even be outside his comfort zone, but the writers treat him like, not even a fresh academy graduate but like some random guy they grabbed and put in charge.

[Jonathan101]

No-one:

Chuck: "Studies have shown that judges are more lenient at the beginning of their careers and the start of the day because decision making is inherently stressful and that's why Neelix is stupid".

Sorry, but I do wonder if any other character, on any other show, had made the same remark Neelix did about decision making, if Chuck would have dug out courtroom statistics to call them dumb or simply ignored it and moved on

You can't put out the quantity of material I do without studying strategies in optimization, and that includes decision fatigue. For example: I sometimes take a working lunch to refresh myself by getting out of my office, but work in the restaurant. For each restaurant, I always order the exact same thing there every time, my choice of meal is determined the moment I get into the car, because that's the restaurant I start driving towards. I know that I can always tip $2.50 to have a range between 18-25% for the server so I never have to think about that. The only decision I have to make is the moment I get in the car, and after that I am following a routine all the way until I get back, leaving my brain fully powered to tackle the work task that I've planned for that lunch.

So yeah, I know the court statistics off the top of my head, it's a common example from discussion of the topic, alongside the one-set-of-clothes example. For those of us who want a little variety, there's the put the clothes out the night before option - it may seem anal, but it means you don't have to make a decision what to wear the next morning, you just follow your routine and collect your clothes after showering because they're there. Every single task you can transform from a decision to a routine makes you a more productive person. It's why this CBS issue has me so pissed off, I've had to go from routine to decisions, and this is taking a physical toll because decisions exhaust stamina.

As a student of personality psychology...thank you for that insight, Clarice

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Anybody have any of the S3-S7 reviews? Can't find them anywhere. The repository only has S1 and S2 and a tiny amount of the rest.

Esp great eps like Scorpion.