VOY - Retrospect

[9ansean]

Warning: mild rant coming

I can't fault Chuck for not being as angry about this episode as me. That's a personal thing. As usual he was quite fair and articulate. Especially important was his point that this seems to be about Seven of Nine, but it's really more a Doctor episode. This should have been about her struggle to regain a feeling of autonomy after so much had been taking from her and the vulnerabilities she’s left with. Instead she’s treated as nothing more than a tool for someone else’s experiments and all the concern is how it affects outsiders. She completely robbed of her agency.

It's almost one of those legal drama we're the lawyer is trying to get justice for a family that's lost a lot, but most of the time we're spent feeling sorry for how much the hard case is costing him. I wouldn't mind so much if this felt like more of real ethical dilemma than it really is (as Chuck and others pointed out why not consider mind melding) and more importantly the scaring experience of Seven (whatever it was or whoever caused it) is completely ignored!

The one issue I do have is that Chuck repeats without question the claim of the coda. That Seven expresses guilt about driving Kovin to his death. Because she DID NOT drive him to his death! Even if the crew or the Entharans had been as prejudice towards Kovin as he claimed, she played no role in the investigation and the decision to flee and keep fleeing was entirely his own! Janeway only went after him with the intent of vindicating him, not lynching him and she kept going even after he refused to listen, he fired at the ship putting everyone's lives at risk and she was told by the Entharans to let them handle this. Once it all ends with Kovin committing suicide by cop, she just glares at Seven as if to say you made me lose an innocent man and know I have to answer for it. As well you should! I've never gotten on the hate Janeway bandwagon, but her treatment of Seven here made me sick.

That is the thing that really enrages me. The thing that I find irredeemable. Even after Janeway is cleared and The Doctor is told to learn for his mistake rather than be deactivated and she admits they all screwed up to help Seven, no one tells her she did nothing wrong! And to have Seven say she does not regret her time with the Borg sending millions to the same fate she suffered with her family but does regret this was outrageous!

If they had ended with the admission that Kovin might have done something wrong, but they'd probably never know or at least not blamed Seven for the outcome I might have let this off with a 3. Instead this has the distinction of being my least favorite Star Trek episode. A more offensive mangled attempt at a message show then even Tattoo. At least Tattoo didn't imply Native America only imagined they had a great civilization and than wiped themselves out!

[9ansean]

Sorry about the length of passions of these posts, but I've been holding my feeling about this one for a long time now. Just time be clear, I'm not opposed to stories that confront the issue of due process and credibility when it comes to assault charges. This is a complex, serious, and sensitive subject and I don't claim to have all the answers. My deal here is the manner in which it's dealt.

[Yukaphile]

The reason Seven felt guilt is probably, from the writers' perspective, the same reason "One Small Step" was shifted from a Chakotay story to a Seven story - to "teach her another lesson about humanity," because it's one of the few things that actually WORKS on Voyager, and they don't wanna give up those tired old formulas rather than do something new.

[Fianna]

Is getting a tissue sample taken without your consent really such a traumatic experience? I mean, when a mosquito bites me and flies off with some of my blood, I can't say I feel violated by it.

[clearspira]

Is getting a tissue sample taken without your consent really such a traumatic experience? I mean, when a mosquito bites me and flies off with some of my blood, I can't say I feel violated by it.

Star Trek is pretty notorious for shying away from sensitive issues or stopping halfway. Remember the genderless beings ep of TNG? I can't help but think that at one point this actually was a rape ep but someone chickened out. Maybe they were also scared of awakening the ''look at what she is wearing she deserved it'' bullshit given the padded catsuit, although the 1990s in general wasn't as sensitive to that sort of thing so perhaps not. Like you say, as things stand now, stealing a tissue sample does seem overboard for what transpires.

[Yukaphile]

1990s wasn't perfect, but I still miss those times - at least in the US, it was quite a good time to be a kid.

On topic, I feel as if, treating this as a legit violation, some felt it isn't, and I'm not gonna debate it, but treating it that way, that Seven's initial reaction, of being confused and needing the Doctor to convince her to get mad, is very logical. Assimilation is to a writing perspective, even on a show as bastardized as Voyager, treated as a constant rape both physical and mental, and to experience it constantly over decades would leave you feeling so numb, it'd be hard for you to be outraged over a singular incident following that which could be considered the same. The Borg have no concept of privacy. OBVIOUSLY. So it's something she'd have to learn.

Hell, fun theory. Was this after the episode where Doctor realized he wanted to, um... "service the collective" in new ways? If so, one could interpret it as him being jealous someone else got to the prize first.

Oh, and the "the running away proves he's guilty!" argument Chakotay brought up? LOL. I actually read a great Harry Potter fanfic to that effect which proves how WRONG that way of thinking is. Harry Potter travels back to his 11-year-old body to change the future from the brutal war that had killed most of Wizarding Britain as well as everyone he loved, and worked to free Sirius, who then escaped earlier in the timeline after questions had been raised about his imprisonment without trial. A bunch of senior Ministry officials then printed in the Daily Prophet that, "This only confirms that he's truly guilty of the crimes he was put away for, and will hopefully put these ridiculous rumors to rest." And speaking from the rest of the canon and the fic... yeah, Sirius was and is innocent. Ah, epic.

[Darmani]

7 expressing guilt never struck me as wrong because it struck me as her being intellectually guilt-ridden about the fact that she wanted him dead and then wanted that feeling to go away. She falsely accused someone and actually I think an important thing that comes out of this is that there is no wonder trial. Can't find a guy that you hate and then beat him up for making women in your life happy to deal with or having no complex psychological issues. In fact we do see that she is traumatized but the trauma is much more deep intense and comes out in different ways and helping her made it worse

In short I like that she felt disturb but it's pretty clear who's more disturbed by this the doctor, who very obviously much more at fault versus 7, who feels put off by what's happened especially as it's recontextualized something that you may have taken pride in and started to realize that's the thing that she may have liked was bad and hurt her. So in fact the very real anxiety issues that she had are still totally there and in her outbursts and being taken advantage of she ended up hurting someone. Something she by the way didn't feel guilty for in the earlier part of the episode. Given that she Prides herself in a sense of purpose and follow through the fact that she irrationally recalled something misjudge something and pushed a conflict that didn't need to happen all while acting out of irrational whims and impulses means that she starts to realize how flawed she can be and how that can have negative consequences to no gain

Not all character development is going to be positive and I don't think it's a bad message because it tells us how overzealousness doesn't actually help victims it hurts them. Now you can say that she was used for prop but one seven is a fictional character and she's being used as a proper problems mainly someone who is being manipulated by overzealousness and taking advantage of overall in this situation. He's also been taken advantage of in the past and it's starting to come to realize this and different circumstances. Emphasizes the importance of dealing with someone who comes from a traumatic past and it's not just all Kick-Ass superpowers that oh but she was sad or hurt by them that justify her abilities

[Darmani]

I liked this episode for riling us up and yanking g the rug. Complete with whitest statement ever.
Its not don't believe victims
Its don't politocise or jump to conclusions or make investigations about the persons nut the incidents

Oh yeah I think we are actually up on that lol. But it also it was brought up in the video that this episode holds up distasteful in light of more current events.

[.

Which one's Bill Cosby or the Covington kids? It's the fact that these things can go either way is the problem and the zealousness on trying to come to a conclusion that you want first on the basis of your respective a person rather than Judgment of activities and facts is the problem. Especially when you are motivated by very valid and concerning signs. 7 does have deep-seated trauma that's starting to emerge. the brain scan as well as her response to the therapy and her anxiety reactions all point to that. It's just that that doesn't then equal evidence. It needs to be cooberated. That's kind of not in line with listen and believe.

This one take is saying why investigations have to be rigorous why they happen - difficult and retraumatizing as they are - and why someone just can't accuse someone and then have them punished. You have everything from the me-too movement but you also have mattress girl the Duke lacrosse scandal. These things become about punishing institutions with accusation incidents as a springboard it can easily get out of hand

This gets more so as for once they can't just run a tricorder over something and then get a perfect recollection of events. It often comes down to that you said she said with evidence that doesn't point one way or the other so it's often the matter of what's good and what's bad. And the whole magistrate arresting him is a bit much but how so different from fire him from his jobs or those kids need to be suspended. See also the questionable College campus procedures

I'm not saying him running proved anything. Well it did for one thing. that he was a fugitive because he was under arrest and he resisted and left. He was also willing to fire on them. But at the same time the reason why someone may not want to be arrested just because they really do not believe in the system especially if past a certain point you're guilty just by being accused.
Simply put if someone decides to arrest you for manslaughter unless nobody died and you weren't even remotely involved in the incident it's almost impossible to disprove.BThus in say the Trayvon Martin case when a prosecutor insisted on going for Murder One I pretty much knew that Zimmerman was going to get off.
By all accounts of the incident this might be misapplied self-defense and thus as an active defense would not alleviate his guilt. But it wasn't a planned murder. But the case went through because people wanted quote-unquote Justice for Trayvon Martin. So they prosecuted to the fullest when an initial investigation by the experts said yeah all we can hope to get is a self-defense case. And the only kind of self-defense that's viable in court or at least easy to prove by defense attorney is going to have to come from assessment of recommendation of the investigators. Being in the affirmative defense claiming self-defense means you're saying your client killed them but it's not murder on the technicality that they were defending their life. It's much safer and better to Simply indicate no responsibility of your client being involved in the death at all. That's forcing the prosecution to prove that you are at fault even if you do end up going something defense because then they have to likely bring in evidence of how that happened in the circumstances around it. It avoids having your client confess as Step one
That is ignoring the fact that most cases actually don't go to trial
it wasn't a sign of police corruption to not charge him they just simply said okay all evidence of this case points to this was a self-defense we are going to tell the da it self-defense and so the state actually not going to prosecute because it's a self-defense case and they're not going to get a win let's save us all the money. That's pretty damn common how these things go but everybody wanted their Court drama and they got it and they didn't get a conviction because they upended the purpose of the process in order to Sate outrage

Same thing here they could at the very least I put it in an incident report of about him selling shotting products treating someone and so on. But they were so eager to avenge 7 that they jumped to the harshest possible conclusion rather than go step-by-step and it's only with two locks of moderating influence the things don't get that bad off of bat.

[pilight]

You have to remember also that this came out not long after the OJ Simpson murder case. Running = guilty was a very popular sentiment at the time. Heck, lots of people still think OJ was guilty despite being acquitted.

[Enterprising]

Not being able to replicate their own torps is dumb anyways. The stuff they use as explosives is readily available to the ship anyways, as it's the same ingridients as what their fuel is made up of, namely anti-matter and matter, more specfically, hydrogen and anti-hydrogen. They can find the former literally everywhere, no matter how much the writers fuck that important detail up and they have facilities to create the later on board. Building some torpedo-housings and the necessary electronics should be first grade class-stuff for the engineers. It just makes no sense to limit their torpedo supply.

You could be right, but the reason you can't be in the end is due to both lack of, and contradicting information from the writers. It's never conceptualised how much anti-matter is required for a torpedo, how relative that is to their overall supply, and what other materials could be required. It isn’t until all the way to Enterprise we get some sort of gauge how much anti-matter a ship has after they had a bunch of it stolen in the expanse.

We had 2 episodes in Voyager where deuterium was seen to be this ultra rare, but critical material they need to have the ship function to any sort of decent level, for only then to piss on that concept in Void, where they get Tom Paris to say “you can get that stuff anywhere!” referring to both deuterium and anti-matter. Then it’s dumped on completely by Endgame, when they made both that bat armour, and far more advance torpedoes that one-shot Borg Cubes.

Just so much potential of this show wasted away from the get-go, all in the name of having a convenient, brainless, and easy to do episodic TV show.