VOY: "Nightingale"

[sandangel]

And once again, Voyager shoots itself in the foot when it comes to Harry Kim. Seriously, I get he's the Butt Monkey of the show, but at this point Harry could be replaced by a literal punching bag with a face drawn on, and it wouldn't make a difference. There's so many interesting things you could do with a character like Harry Kim, but Voyager just refused to do anything interesting with him, preferring to double down every time.

[FaxModem1]

The B-Plot, on the other hand, hasn't aged well at all, and it came off as weird and awkward even at the time.

I don't disagree, it is rather cringe. Nevertheless the question now turns as to ''why'' this plot turned out so badly. After all, it is a perfectly reasonable development that someone with literally ZERO social skills due to spending most of his life as a pod baby and ZERO meaningful interaction with the opposite sex would misinterpret the signs. The only other two girls on the ship are Naomi (who is too young) and the Borg Girl (who left the ship by this point). And who are his apparent tutors in the way of becoming a human man dealing with his first potential crush? A woman who is herself suffering from a crippling lack of social skills (Seven), Shithead (Neelix), and a hologram who is technically younger than he is. The fact that this poor boy has hormones should have been considered much earlier than it actually was.

This should have been a good plot. The material is there.

Aside from his mother figure(Seven), his closest relationship is with a teenage god, who he was VERY close with. It's why Icheb and Q jr have been shipped so hard.

And now I'm thinking about Icheb, and have a sad because of his ultimate fate. I'd much rather q came and picked him up, taking him on more adventures across the galaxy that how it ended.

[Ranchoth]

Anybody have any of the S3-S7 reviews? Can't find them anywhere. The repository only has S1 and S2 and a tiny amount of the rest.

Esp great eps like Scorpion.

Archive.org archives of the post-Vimeo moved ones still have the link to the Vimeo vids in the page source, in my experience...so, they're not deleted, just the links are busted.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Anybody have any of the S3-S7 reviews? Can't find them anywhere. The repository only has S1 and S2 and a tiny amount of the rest.

Esp great eps like Scorpion.

Archive.org archives of the post-Vimeo moved ones still have the link to the Vimeo vids in the page source, in my experience...so, they're not deleted, just the links are busted.

Sadly, when you try to play the video, it just says player error. Hopefully someone has them.

[Formless One]

No-one:

Chuck: "Studies have shown that judges are more lenient at the beginning of their careers and the start of the day because decision making is inherently stressful and that's why Neelix is stupid".

Sorry, but I do wonder if any other character, on any other show, had made the same remark Neelix did about decision making, if Chuck would have dug out courtroom statistics to call them dumb or simply ignored it and moved on

Gotta point this out, but unfortunately for Chuck, while decision fatigue has other evidence in support of the phenomenon, it turns out the classic "judges are more lenient in the morning" example is critically flawed. As in, the psychologists who pointed out the phenomenon as evidence for decision fatigue didn't know enough about the court system to correctly interpret the data. When people who work in the court system (lawyers mostly) took a look at the studies, they pointed out that its actually not so much decision fatigue as the judges doing it on purpose.

See, they get to choose which cases are heard in the morning and which cases to hear in the afternoon, and tend to deliberately put the easy cases-- that is, the misdemeanors and other crimes where leniency is preferred-- in the morning so they can knock them out quickly, and leave the more complicated cases-- predominately felonies or cases with particular legal complexities-- for the afternoon when they have more time to consider their decisions (not to mention the jury, where that is relevant). This creates the appearance that they are more prudent in the afternoon, but they never really go into a trial blind, and they know ahead of time which cases require prudence. If they need to, they can always defer a decision to a later date (like the next day) and literally sleep on it to render any kind of fatigue (from decision fatigue to actual sleepiness) completely moot.

I don't recall whether I first encountered this rebuttal in a psychology class, a psychology article, or somewhere else, but its a pretty good example of how researchers can completely misinterpret data simply by not knowing enough context.

[Jonathan101]

No-one:

Chuck: "Studies have shown that judges are more lenient at the beginning of their careers and the start of the day because decision making is inherently stressful and that's why Neelix is stupid".

Sorry, but I do wonder if any other character, on any other show, had made the same remark Neelix did about decision making, if Chuck would have dug out courtroom statistics to call them dumb or simply ignored it and moved on

Gotta point this out, but unfortunately for Chuck, while decision fatigue has other evidence in support of the phenomenon, it turns out the classic "judges are more lenient in the morning" example is critically flawed. As in, the psychologists who pointed out the phenomenon as evidence for decision fatigue didn't know enough about the court system to correctly interpret the data. When people who work in the court system (lawyers mostly) took a look at the studies, they pointed out that its actually not so much decision fatigue as the judges doing it on purpose.

See, they get to choose which cases are heard in the morning and which cases to hear in the afternoon, and tend to deliberately put the easy cases-- that is, the misdemeanors and other crimes where leniency is preferred-- in the morning so they can knock them out quickly, and leave the more complicated cases-- predominately felonies or cases with particular legal complexities-- for the afternoon when they have more time to consider their decisions (not to mention the jury, where that is relevant). This creates the appearance that they are more prudent in the afternoon, but they never really go into a trial blind, and they know ahead of time which cases require prudence. If they need to, they can always defer a decision to a later date (like the next day) and literally sleep on it to render any kind of fatigue (from decision fatigue to actual sleepiness) completely moot.

I don't recall whether I first encountered this rebuttal in a psychology class, a psychology article, or somewhere else, but its a pretty good example of how researchers can completely misinterpret data simply by not knowing enough context.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me. Lots of studies have flaws like that.

[Meushell]

And yet, despite all of this, he amounts to nothing in 7 years despite others being promoted beside him. Why?

Because the writers are garbage and forget what they've put their characters through? Like he's been put outside he comfort zone plenty of times and been fine, he's been in firefights, almost died more times than I care to count, been a department head for years at this point, been put in charge of voyager, and lead away missions. At this point what he deals with in this episode wouldn't even be outside his comfort zone, but the writers treat him like, not even a fresh academy graduate but like some random guy they grabbed and put in charge.

Posts like this make me wish for a like button. I agree, 100%. I never liked this episode for this exact reason, and it’s even more insulting that Seven of all people has to explain his mistakes to him.

[Deledrius]

But, at least we can be assured that, on the B-Plot front, this was the worst situation that good ol' Icheb will ever have to be involved in from now on.

Too soon.

[DisgruntleFairy]

Out of all the weird information that Star Fleet keeps around and all the different species that interact in the Federation and its work, I find it hard to believe there isn't a holographic training course on human sexuality and attraction. Because I have no doubt the confused about attraction thing is rare. When you have that many species no one could know how they all show attraction and what the socially appropriate responses are.

I would think the Doctor would go "Icheb you should review training file 2643 on human romance and sex/sexuality." I think it will be helpful for you in the long term...

That said I kinda got the vibe that Tom and B'Elanna were inviting him to "guest star."

[clearspira]

Out of all the weird information that Star Fleet keeps around and all the different species that interact in the Federation and its work, I find it hard to believe there isn't a holographic training course on human sexuality and attraction. Because I have no doubt the confused about attraction thing is rare. When you have that many species no one could know how they all show attraction and what the socially appropriate responses are.

I would think the Doctor would go "Icheb you should review training file 2643 on human romance and sex/sexuality." I think it will be helpful for you in the long term...

That said I kinda got the vibe that Tom and B'Elanna were inviting him to "guest star."

Yep. I was thinking about an early episode of Babylon 5 where Sinclair warns a guy off chatting a woman up because she is ''not on the approved species list''. And when (perhaps understandably) he is accused of being a racist, Sinclair notes that the species of the woman in question eats their mates after having sex (to which she looks back sheepishly implying that is EXACTLY what she was planning to do).

I'm also reminded of ''The Disease'' where Harry has sex with a woman without a vagina (and presumably penises as well). Then there are the date rape aliens who impregnate their men, the Ocampans who cannot be designed like us downstairs given how they give birth out of their backs, the genderless aliens who apparently impregnate some kind of husk... so yeah, it is the height of silliness that sex education training sims would not exist.