Voyager: The 37s

[Admiral X]

Of course the alternative to that is what has been (and as far as I can tell still is) the leading theory) is that she crash landed on an uninhabited island and missed out on the very brief window for rescue, and died of dehydration while the crabs picked her body apart. :/

[drewder]

Why did the victorious clones never wake up the originals, I wonder.

In the episode they're unaware that the people aren't dead.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course the alternative to that is what has been (and as far as I can tell still is) the leading theory) is that she crash landed on an uninhabited island and missed out on the very brief window for rescue, and died of dehydration while the crabs picked her body apart. :/

To be honest, the most plausible theory as far as I can see is that she just went down into the ocean and died on impact. Lot's of plane crashes never have any survivors.

[Madner Kami]

Of course the alternative to that is what has been (and as far as I can tell still is) the leading theory) is that she crash landed on an uninhabited island and missed out on the very brief window for rescue, and died of dehydration while the crabs picked her body apart. :/

To be honest, the most plausible theory as far as I can see is that she just went down into the ocean and died on impact. Lot's of plane crashes never have any survivors.

They crash-landed off of Gardener Island. At least one person, most likely Earhardt herself, made it to the island but died there, probably due to dehydration.

[bronnt]

37 is an oddly small batch to leave around though. Unless maybe the aliens had cloning tech and the originals were left in stasis so they'd always have a 'pure' source to harvest from rather than the degrading DNA of cloning the clones of the clones of the clones of... (as we all know in sf, clones always degrade with each generation).

That would make a lot of sense. That would also mean the group is dealing with some descendants of their clones. That would be weird.

It's still a pretty small group though. I don't think the writers thought that one through.

It's not 37 humans, it's humans from 1937. The actual people we see removed from stasis are only like 6, right?

It's probably a case where the aliens had several facilities like this one that each had a few humans in it, and they were cloning all of them. That allows for the possibility that they were sufficient in numbers to have sufficient genetic diversity for a sustainable population.

As for why they're being freed from stasis, I'll buy the idea that these people have become venerated entities to the locals, and that they think it'd be anathema to wake them. But wouldn't it make for a better story if the reason they didn't mess with this facility was that they were worried it might draw attention from other aliens of that species, and that Voyager inexplicably got their attention by waking them up? Chuck was right, this whole thing was meant to be a two-parter, with actual location shoots or at least new sets to get people off of the ship.

It's such a shame that they wasted their budget to animate Voyager landing on the planet when that fact doesn't advance the story at all. Nothing interesting comes out of the fact that Voyager is on the ground throughout the story-they could have just had people taking shuttles or using transporters for this plot.

[TGLS]

It's such a shame that they wasted their budget to animate Voyager landing on the planet when that fact doesn't advance the story at all.

And making a CG truck.

[bronnt]

It's such a shame that they wasted their budget to animate Voyager landing on the planet when that fact doesn't advance the story at all.

And making a CG truck.

Well, perhaps. It wasn't strictly necessary to get the plot going, but it was still relevant to the plot. I kind of like that as a plot idea-finding some old relic of a different era floating in space which serves as a clue for the plot. But Voyager's landing sequence was just pointless time filler that didn't do anything for the story.

[Dînadan]

It's such a shame that they wasted their budget to animate Voyager landing on the planet when that fact doesn't advance the story at all.

And making a CG truck.

Well, perhaps. It wasn't strictly necessary to get the plot going, but it was still relevant to the plot. I kind of like that as a plot idea-finding some old relic of a different era floating in space which serves as a clue for the plot. But Voyager's landing sequence was just pointless time filler that didn't do anything for the story.

Well the truck probably could have been done cheaper with practical effects; buy a cheap toy truck from a toy shop, grime it up a bit/repainted it to match the full size prop and hang it from some fishing gut in front of a star field backdrop.

[Madner Kami]

The truck in and of itself is still stupid, because... How the fuck did it end up in space to begin with? Besides that, the "trace of rust" they are following to find the truck, is even more stupid, as the traces of rust that would come off from a drifting truck in space are a hell of a lot harder to detect than the truck itself, which is already almost impossible to detect to begin with, because, you know, SPACE IS FREAKING HUGE. Next thing, they turn on the truck's radio (stupid) and receive an SOS signal on the AM-band? What? That shit travels at the speed of light and they follow it to a planet in a solar system somewhere. What? And of course we can trump that even further, because the signal is transmitted by an airplane. Earhardt's Airplane. What? Besides those stupidities, why the flying fuck did the aliens, who had a clear interest in abducting the humans to use as slaves (What? Why? What the flying fuck?! There are tons of species in the delta quadrant that are easier to get to than humans from the other side of the galaxy!), bring that airplane and a fucking farm-truck with them? What in the name of fuck is going on?!

[PerrySimm]

...

Then again, I was amazed the Amelia Earhart episode got a 5. That's one I'd almost give 1 just for the premise being so damn stupid and utterly non-nonsensical, on top of being creatively braindead. Twisted was sure as hell more creative and interesting than that episode.

Neither of these episodes are particularly watchable... maybe it comes down on some level to production value.

If you were to make a list of things that are "par for the course" on Voyager, it might look like this:

1) The episode has a high concept - you can sum it up pretty well in a one-liner.
2) The episode clearly has the budget to pull off whatever kind of story it wants.
3) The episode can't manage to deliver a compelling story based on that concept.

"The 37s" ticks all three boxes. They made a matte painting, hauled in a truck, did a location shoot to wander in the desert a bit. Clearly, if they put the same level of effort into the story, the results could have been better.

They trot out a concept that had been done again and again in Star Trek - stranded human colonists - and they don't really update it for the 90s, they just kind of mess around with celebrity namedrops, and essentially the climax of the episode is "Janeway is the awesomest leader" Dull in so many ways, but "Twisted" hardly had a memorable moment on a par with that time Torres couldn't identify manure!