VOY - The Darkling

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v861.php

This definitely falls at the weaker end of "Trek character goes evil" episodes. Even Picardo, who can typically rise above Voyager's weaker scripts and would be fairly effective as the morally dubious EMH in Equinox, feels pretty blah here.

Based on Chuck's comments, I guess a blistering review of DW's Kill the Moon is coming soon enough.

[PerrySimm]

These aliens feel a bit like proto-Hirogen - solitary rogues that roam space and only gather at hunting lodges.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

You can't avoid Kill the Moon forever Chuck!

[Fianna]

Chuck calls this episode "stage play presented as television" as though that's a bad thing, when you could also use those words to describe Cheers, one of the best sitcoms of all time.

[BlackoutCreature2]

When I marathoned Voyager on Netflix awhile back I remember this being one of the last episodes to feature Kes in a significant role before she left and it kinda showed. Watching this episode it really felt like Jennifer Lien was done with the show and the show was done with Jennifer Lien and they were just trying to get through this so they could both move on to things they found more interesting.

[bronnt]

Yay, finally back to reviews of shows I've actually watched!

Okay I'm gonna go watch the episode now. Edits to come.

EDIT: Oh yeah, THIS episode.

As it is, it was another tiresome use of the reset button. But I was also disturbed by the Doctor's behavior here, and a reason why early episodes suggested it might be best if he wasn't allowed to rewrite his own program. Exactly what happened in this episode is that he started rewriting his own program, and then attacked several people as a result of those modifications, and then at the end, there's zero ramifications to the EMH because it wasn't really him hurting people.

What?

At the very least...they need to lock him out from ever modifying his own program again. He's shown poor judgment here that only avoided killing MULTIPLE people through sheer luck. This is the sort of situation where, if I'm a crewmember on Voyager, I'm asking why it's okay to let this psychopath continue to have a mobile emitter. But no, after this episode, everyone forgets that this ever happened, and any sense of personal responsibility is banished.

[Rocketboy1313]

Chuck calls this episode "stage play presented as television" as though that's a bad thing, when you could also use those words to describe Cheers, one of the best sitcoms of all time.

2 things

1) Cheers and other sitcoms that have a stage oriented toward an audience still have the production value of a TV show to differentiate them from a purely stage production, Extras being the top item, to fill out the massive set of a bar that is well lit; Cheers feels rather alive. Darkling by contrast feels like an empty stage. It is darkly lit to hide how small and empty everything is.

2) Star Trek is not a sitcom, it is not a great comparison to pull in Cheers as a measure of how to produce a science fiction exploration show.

[clearspira]

Another episode where I contest that the Doctor isn't actually alive. If you can turn yourself evil this easily at the flick of a switch then your free will is still at ''appliance'' level. Equinox is the de facto worst example of this though.

''Doctor, cut up the brain of your crush.''
''Never!!''
''Ethical sub routine deactivated.''
''I wonder if Seven, Janeway and Torres would look good as a human centipede...''

Compare to Data, whom Lore had to flood with rage and anger in order to make that face heel turn believable, not just turning him evil by flicking a switch.

I am always full of praise for Red Dwarf and here is another occasion why this budget British sitcom is better than Voyager. In the curry episode where they save Kennedy from his assassination, it isn't Kryten who is cooking humans because Lister deactivated his ethical chip, its Spare Head 2, because the script writers realised that Kryten knows better than to do something like that even if you DO turn off his morals. But the Doctor is one program away from Dr Mengele apparently. But then, this is probably why Starfleet did away with the whole notion of EMH and LMH programs in the first place and not just ''terrible bedside manner'' as is often implied.

[clearspira]

I knew this reminded me of something!

[clearspira]

When I marathoned Voyager on Netflix awhile back I remember this being one of the last episodes to feature Kes in a significant role before she left and it kinda showed. Watching this episode it really felt like Jennifer Lien was done with the show and the show was done with Jennifer Lien and they were just trying to get through this so they could both move on to things they found more interesting.

Its funny because we still have the whole ''long hair'' era of Kes to go yet, but yeah, I do see it too.
The thing I always remember about Kes from here on is that she starts to wear proto-Seven catsuits whereas before she very much had an elf thing going on. This can be explained in part by her short lifespan (she's approaching 40 in universe if we take her 9 year lifespan as 10 human years to every 1 Ocampan year). Given the mentality of the writers of Star Trek though and how it treats its female leads (Yar, Kira, Hoshi and Dax's deliberately tight uniforms, Troi, Seven and T'Pol's catsuits, T'Pol's sweaty Pon'Farr, Stripping Hoshi's shirt of for no reason etc) I am lead to wonder if part of the reason they got rid of her is that she lacked the ''assets'' they wanted after a failed attempt to sex her up to their satisfaction.
I will be fair to STD, and I have always been fair on this point: the men and women are at least dressed like they are part of a completely equal society. Because that is certainly not the impression we were getting before.