VOY:Spirit Folk or "PaddyWorld"

[Mickey_Rat15]

The plot to this does look a lot like 2016's WestWorld. The non-player characters are half-remembering things they should not, and at least seeing a bit beyond the fourth wall of their game. There is also the issue with creating characters that are a little too close to being actual people if they exist merely for entertainment. Tom and Harry may be worse than Felix and Sylvester as techs half assing their way idealing with a glitch in the system they run into.

[Rocketboy1313]

The idea that on a long voyage without real hope of making it back to friendly shores, that the crew would immerse themselves in works of fantasy, become overly attached to some diversionary dream, and then have some harsh reality come knocking might make for a better long term story. But that would require a substantial bit of planning to make the long form story work toward a satisfying end.

This episode does not work, because the audience does not care about the setting, and it has not built toward some kind of confrontation that requires letting go of the illusion/game/toy or whatever. It is an anti-climax to a story that wasn't told. It is weak.

[bronnt]

There's a point reached where a piece of entertainment is so stupid that watching it makes me feel embarrassed to be watching it. It reaches a point where it's like a program created for toddlers that doesn't even bother trying to entertain parents. Even the lowest points of TNG have a tough time reaching that mark. But this episode absolutely reaches it. The writers aren't approaching the episode from the point of view of the world or the characters, so they'll just insert whatever stupid plot contrivance and stupid character actions they need to get the episode where it's going. It's almost condescending-"The rubes who watch this show like this stupid crap, they'll eat it up."

If I had to rank Voyager episodes based on Embarrassment Factor, this one ranks up with "The Q and the Grey."

The idea that on a long voyage without real hope of making it back to friendly shores, that the crew would immerse themselves in works of fantasy, become overly attached to some diversionary dream, and then have some harsh reality come knocking might make for a better long term story.

What you described sounds much more like "Bride of Chaotica."

[Riedquat]

Compared with Threshold at the end but even Threshold has some redeeming factor in the so bad it's good stakes, whilst this just looks cringeworthy.

[CharlesPhipps]

There's a lot of fascinating stuff which can be done with the idea of immersing yourself so much in a piece of fantasy that you start to lose track of the real world and how much you can enjoy it even though it's not real. I mean, this is a site which panders to the original crazy-fanboys in Trekkies.

However, it seems the writers GENUINELY did not see that parallel at all.

Mind you, I'd love to have had a Captain Proton Con on the Voyager.

[Riedquat]

There's a lot of fascinating stuff which can be done with the idea of immersing yourself so much in a piece of fantasy that you start to lose track of the real world and how much you can enjoy it even though it's not real. I mean, this is a site which panders to the original crazy-fanboys in Trekkies.

Lose track is perhaps not quite the right direction. Cease caring about maybe.

[bronnt]

Compared with Threshold at the end but even Threshold has some redeeming factor in the so bad it's good stakes, whilst this just looks cringeworthy.

When it comes to "so bad, it's good," it needs to be an episode that's trying to do something serious. Threshold works because it's trying to actually tell a story, failing, so it's fun to laugh at. Episodes like this one or "The Q and the Grey," which are trying to be funny, they're bad because they fail at that, and failing at being funny isn't funny.

[Jokie155]

Surprised there wasn't a larger rant about there being an actual live cow, given all the fuss kicked up about an 'offscreen juggler'...

[Darth Wedgius]

Surprised there wasn't a larger rant about there being an actual live cow, given all the fuss kicked up about an 'offscreen juggler'...

Yeah, but they effectively got her at a discount. They already had paid her for co-authoring the script.

Chuck's complaints seem to follow two threads: the AIness of the holograms and the stupidity of the crew. The stupidity was.. well, too common in Voyager. Except for Beltran, I thought the show was acted OK, but the writing... Similarly for Enterprise. And the JJ Abrams films I saw, the first two.

The AI thing was a problem I think only TNG handled OK, IMHO. We don't really know if Vic Fontaine was sentient; he was programmed to imitate humans, after all, and many of us are sentient. Maybe algorithms detected that the crew would value his contributions more if they thought he had sentience and made that a factor in his pre-programmed responses. He seemed sapient, but the 1701D mainframe seems to be able to reason somewhat. But was there a there there?

[Rjak]

In this episode's defense, you do have to run a program to debug it.