Voyager- Muse review

[bronnt]

I never really liked this episode. Found it boring.

I remember there was a little nugget of a compelling character moment for B'elanna, but for the most part I agreed. It felt like a very heavy emphasis on guest characters that took over the story, so the focus shifts away from our characters too much. Adding little touches of the Voyager crew only highlighted the fact that those characters weren't really doing anything.

[FaxModem1]

I always found it an allegory for the writers of Voyager and a critique on Voyager's audience. Here we have this poor struggling writer, with a hot actress girlfriend, who has to deal with his fat demanding audience demanding one story after another, how his actors complain about how awful his stories are, and how he just wants to make a difference with his stories.

Though, that is just one interpretation.

[Madner Kami]

I always found it an allegory for the writers of Voyager and a critique on Voyager's audience. Here we have this poor struggling writer, with a hot actress girlfriend, who has to deal with his fat demanding audience demanding one story after another, how his actors complain about how awful his stories are, and how he just wants to make a difference with his stories.

Though, that is just one interpretation.

Except that the writer is garbage and deserves all the hatred and bile spewed at him, because he fails to realize that he's an utter moron that can't write and still subjects a large audience that still somehow hasn't given up on hoping that there might be a good story coming up in the next episode somehow, to more trite and boring garbage, which's only highlight is Seven's catsuit.

[animalia]

So was the ending a nod to the ORIGINAL Deus Ex Machina?

[Shuboy07]

I thought Kellis' girlfriend looked familiar. Guess Elizabeth Cutler got reincarnated or something to the Delta Quadrant....

It must be my reading Mass Effect or Halo novels but both those franchises point out that humans and aliens should not be able to eat the same foods without getting sick (or lack proper digestion enzymes to process said food). So it's amusing to see this crop up so often on every Star Trek series.

[PerrySimm]

This episode seems to ask what the community theatre version of Star Trek: Voyager would look like... Something like THAT would be fascinating.

[bronnt]

I thought Kellis' girlfriend looked familiar. Guess Elizabeth Cutler got reincarnated or something to the Delta Quadrant....

It must be my reading Mass Effect or Halo novels but both those franchises point out that humans and aliens should not be able to eat the same foods without getting sick (or lack proper digestion enzymes to process said food). So it's amusing to see this crop up so often on every Star Trek series.

That's just the storytelling medium. When you've only got 46 minutes and a limited budget, you don't always have time to establish a full biology for whatever alien species is being introduced. In a video game with a plot that lasts 50 hours, you can just drop subtle bits of worldbuilding the conversation, and then let those drive the player toward reading the in-game encyclopedia. Similar to any written source, where you can introduce aliens and drop a full load of exposition without it interfering with pacing.

We're already accepting a lot of storytelling conventions from Star Trek shows-all aliens are obviously just humans in costumes, they speak the same language (thanks to Universal translators which are magical and don't require calibration, additional programming, or maintenance), and they breathe the same atmospheres so we have easily have our characters interacting with them. The aliens that don't breathe oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, like the Benzites, show up very rarely because they take a lot of production.

[RobbyB1982]

Naruto for another, as I often found, especially later in the plot of Shippuden (and I'm still so far behind I'm in the middle of the 4th shinobi war)

Bad news. The 4th Shinobi war is the entire rest of the series. It is fully 1/4 of all of Naruto and went way the hell too long.

And yes, the filler episodes that focused on the side characters tended to be better than the main plot. Rock Lee in general was a better character than later Naruto. (Earlier Naruto was fine.. when he was a random nobody underdog that happened to be cursed... rather than retconned into the destined one born to the village leaders who was part of a master plan.)

[chaos42]

I thought Kellis' girlfriend looked familiar. Guess Elizabeth Cutler got reincarnated or something to the Delta Quadrant....

It must be my reading Mass Effect or Halo novels but both those franchises point out that humans and aliens should not be able to eat the same foods without getting sick (or lack proper digestion enzymes to process said food). So it's amusing to see this crop up so often on every Star Trek series.

That's just the storytelling medium. When you've only got 46 minutes and a limited budget, you don't always have time to establish a full biology for whatever alien species is being introduced. In a video game with a plot that lasts 50 hours, you can just drop subtle bits of worldbuilding the conversation, and then let those drive the player toward reading the in-game encyclopedia. Similar to any written source, where you can introduce aliens and drop a full load of exposition without it interfering with pacing.

We're already accepting a lot of storytelling conventions from Star Trek shows-all aliens are obviously just humans in costumes, they speak the same language (thanks to Universal translators which are magical and don't require calibration, additional programming, or maintenance), and they breathe the same atmospheres so we have easily have our characters interacting with them. The aliens that don't breathe oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, like the Benzites, show up very rarely because they take a lot of production.

Id like to see some non humanoid aliens like the Horta or Tholians some times. Its one of the things Orville did that was a good idea, give us a big blob as a crew member. If a lower budget show can do that why not star trek at some point I would love to see a tholian science officer or a horta like creature thats a geologist ect.

[Shuboy07]

I thought Kellis' girlfriend looked familiar. Guess Elizabeth Cutler got reincarnated or something to the Delta Quadrant....

It must be my reading Mass Effect or Halo novels but both those franchises point out that humans and aliens should not be able to eat the same foods without getting sick (or lack proper digestion enzymes to process said food). So it's amusing to see this crop up so often on every Star Trek series.

That's just the storytelling medium. When you've only got 46 minutes and a limited budget, you don't always have time to establish a full biology for whatever alien species is being introduced. In a video game with a plot that lasts 50 hours, you can just drop subtle bits of worldbuilding the conversation, and then let those drive the player toward reading the in-game encyclopedia. Similar to any written source, where you can introduce aliens and drop a full load of exposition without it interfering with pacing.

We're already accepting a lot of storytelling conventions from Star Trek shows-all aliens are obviously just humans in costumes, they speak the same language (thanks to Universal translators which are magical and don't require calibration, additional programming, or maintenance), and they breathe the same atmospheres so we have easily have our characters interacting with them. The aliens that don't breathe oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, like the Benzites, show up very rarely because they take a lot of production.

I seem to recall only one other instance this was brought up. Pulaski notes in TNG Season 2 that Klingon tea is poisonous to humans (though she took some antidote before drinking said tea). There might be more though that might require a few rewatches. In Voyager's case, I've always assumed Neelix had to put his food past the Doctor before serving it to the crew.