VOY - Inside Man

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v952.php

This almost felt like a sadly fitting encapsulation for Voyager's treatment of various main characters; a plot building on the development of a character from another series while still having Harry essentially still acting like he was circa season one. The crew acting like gullible idiots even seems to demonstrate the lack of care they had for the crew's characters at this point.

[LordFeagans]

I completely forgot this episode was a thing. It's just everything bad:

-Retcon the Doctor using the array to visit his creator

-the Doctor is confined to Sickbay and bitching

-the crew just takes everything at the word of the impostor hologram. At least when it was the alien picture plant monster, that made sense. Here, it comes across like they are too stupid to figure out how to get dressed without putting their heads up their pant legs, or the crew is so miserable that they don't care anymore "So either we get home and this comes to an end or we die and this comes to an end? Sweet relief either way."

-the crew taking away the Doctor's freedom of movement and not caring

-the crew has yet another chance to get home that the audience back home doesn't believe is going to work. At least past attempts in the previous few seasons shortened the trip by a few thousand lightyears. Here, it is just like a season one failure. An attempt is made and in the end, nothing is gained from it.

-the goal once again revolves around Seven because of her Borg implants (At least the beta canon novels took away the Borg and Seven's Borg implants for good)

-the growth that Barclay went through was basically out the window. "Things are good, I have a girlfriend now." this is a great thing. "She was a spy out to use her body for information on my project for her Ferengi employers." Man, what a fucking dick punch. And in some ways, there is a second dick punch to Barclay from Deanna Troi of all people. When she's on the beach and notices Reg there, she is in her swimsuit and she STILL covers herself up. "Yep, don't mind showing cleavage for the kids on the beach, the teenaged boys on the beach, the men on the beach, even those teens and men who are here for the sole purpose of checking out the women in their swimsuits, but creepy Reg Barclay? Hell no, cover up that small bit of cleavage."

-that plan to create a gateway between two locations via linking two stars together seems to me, at least, the worst sounding idea in all of Star Trek (worst sounding as in, of all the ideas ever mentioned for transwarp travel, this makes the least amount of sense. Transwarp being a new set of engines makes sense in the same way that supersonic flight required jet engines over propellors. Transwarp being possible as seen in the episode "Threshold" I will take over just tech-teching two random stars. If both stars had to be blown up with weapons similar to what is seen in "Star Trek Generations" at the same time to create a temporary wormhole, that would make SO much more sense, explain why the idea is NEVER mentioned again, because why not find a way to actually protect the crew and make this a viable option?

[Mabus]

Ah the geodesic fold, a quick look on memory-alpha shows that this is the only time this tech-tech of the week ever appear in the Star Trek universe. I guess everyone wanted to forget about this ever being a thing.

[DanteC]

Having not watched the episode, but the review, why would Reg's girlfriend work with the Ferengi? Is it ever mentioned? Edit: It's one of my gripes about Star Trek, in that they don't really flesh out human society outside Star Fleet. In a post-scarcity society, you wouldn't want for anything, so you wouldn't have drastic need for anything either. The Ferengi should have been offering something that she had no other way of getting, it's just a shame they never seem to want to develop on those ideas.

Also, they didn't get messages the previous month, cause they wanted to try the hologram technology. Um, why not say that they were going to try it rather than it being a surprise?

Finally, I realized a sense of fridge horror. If they had gotten to the Alpha quadrant at that point, they'd have taken Neelix with them. What horrors could he unleash? Would he try to open a restaurant competing against Sisko's father? Build a diner in DS9, and we get a comedy episode where Sisko, Odo and Quark band together to get Neelix thrown out an airlock, when he's then taken by the Prophets and becomes the newest religious figure of the Bajoran people, to the point where Q turns up and even he turns away in disgust?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Having not watched the episode, but the review, why would Reg's girlfriend work with the Ferengi? Is it ever mentioned?

My guess is the gold pressed variety.

[clearspira]

I completely forgot this episode was a thing. It's just everything bad:

-Retcon the Doctor using the array to visit his creator

-the Doctor is confined to Sickbay and bitching

-the crew just takes everything at the word of the impostor hologram. At least when it was the alien picture plant monster, that made sense. Here, it comes across like they are too stupid to figure out how to get dressed without putting their heads up their pant legs, or the crew is so miserable that they don't care anymore "So either we get home and this comes to an end or we die and this comes to an end? Sweet relief either way."

-the crew taking away the Doctor's freedom of movement and not caring

-the crew has yet another chance to get home that the audience back home doesn't believe is going to work. At least past attempts in the previous few seasons shortened the trip by a few thousand lightyears. Here, it is just like a season one failure. An attempt is made and in the end, nothing is gained from it.

-the goal once again revolves around Seven because of her Borg implants (At least the beta canon novels took away the Borg and Seven's Borg implants for good)

-the growth that Barclay went through was basically out the window. "Things are good, I have a girlfriend now." this is a great thing. "She was a spy out to use her body for information on my project for her Ferengi employers." Man, what a fucking dick punch. And in some ways, there is a second dick punch to Barclay from Deanna Troi of all people. When she's on the beach and notices Reg there, she is in her swimsuit and she STILL covers herself up. "Yep, don't mind showing cleavage for the kids on the beach, the teenaged boys on the beach, the men on the beach, even those teens and men who are here for the sole purpose of checking out the women in their swimsuits, but creepy Reg Barclay? Hell no, cover up that small bit of cleavage."

-that plan to create a gateway between two locations via linking two stars together seems to me, at least, the worst sounding idea in all of Star Trek (worst sounding as in, of all the ideas ever mentioned for transwarp travel, this makes the least amount of sense. Transwarp being a new set of engines makes sense in the same way that supersonic flight required jet engines over propellors. Transwarp being possible as seen in the episode "Threshold" I will take over just tech-teching two random stars. If both stars had to be blown up with weapons similar to what is seen in "Star Trek Generations" at the same time to create a temporary wormhole, that would make SO much more sense, explain why the idea is NEVER mentioned again, because why not find a way to actually protect the crew and make this a viable option?

I never thought of it that way before today and now I can't stop thinking about it. Troi spent six years on the Enterprise with half of her knockers hanging out and yet the first person she ever covers up for is Reg? And here's the million dollar question: was he invited to her nude wedding in ''Nemesis''? Because I see the senior crew, I see Guinan, I see Wesley (who apparently took time off from being a god to attend) but I do not see Reg.

The only half-hearted justification I can think of is that Troi's empathic abilities would allow her to know which of the men around her most have a hard-on for her and Barclay happened to have one for her when he approached her on the beach that day. I say ''half-hearted'' because again, the woman had her cleavage out all day every day for six years, I would have thought that she would have gotten used to that particular human emotion by now.

[MerelyAFan]

I'm not really going to blame anyone who feels inclined to cover up regardless of what they've worn in the past. Also in Troi's defense she's been aware of Reg's attraction to her before and given her role as his occasional therapist her instinctual reaction could be rooted in not wanting him to see her in that kind of way. It may be less about viewing Barclay as a creep (though him following his vacationing counselor doesn't help in that regard) and more about the proper kind of professional/appropriate boundary between the two of them.

[Captain Crimson]

You know, it's funny, I'd watched this episode like ten years ago, or so, and I remember really liking it, so much that I had a lot of fond memories for it, even now. Yet that's clearly more nostalgia based, since I really did love Pathfinder. I'm also more of a semi-hardcore ST fan than a hardcore ST fan.

However, hearing Mr. Chuck list all its glaring deficiencies, I'm beginning to like it less and less.

Others are right, this episode is a fitting encapsulation to VOY's overall wasted potential. Good story in the short-term, low on intelligence, low on substance given the lack of episode-to-episode continuity.

At this stage, repeating Pathfinder's roaring success wasn't a good idea. Pete's characterization worked in that episode given Barclay's history and the episode's plot. You'd think after that story wrapped up, he'd be willing to give Barclay more leeway. It just stretches credulity Pete isn't willing to give him a shot here, to reinforce his reasonable authority persona, unless, I don't know, he'd made an offhand comment like Dr. Weir did over on SGA about Rodney in Trinity, but we don't even get that.

Hate to say it, I think the reason this episode failed is that it was VOY's story, not Barclay's and not Pete's, like it was for Pathfinder. Pathfinder worked because despite a few minor flaws, it was fresh, new, and smart, which is what VOY desperately needed. This is not an Alpha Quadrant story, since those work very well on VOY. And that shows the disconnect between writers' intent and what shows up on screen, since I think a preferable alternative would be to MAKE this an Alpha Quadrant story. VOY only ruins main characters when they don't learn anything, so I think a true ending to this should have been, subvert audience expectations.

My idea, Voyager actually does make it home. Keep the mystery running to make it look like there's something up with HERB, and there could be, but that this isn't the usual "will they get home" plot we know is going nowhere, it succeeds, and it gives you a whole season to explore what's happened in the Alpha Quadrant since we left. Bring back Mr. Moore and let him do his trial of Janeway idea once those log reports are studied in greater detail. Maybe you could even bring back Quark for this. The problem just seems that VOY wasn't terribly good at subtlety that way.

Dang it, can't watch this again. Thank you, Mr. Chuck, for being just cruel enough to show me the full extent of VOY's failures.

[LordFeagans]

I completely forgot this episode was a thing. It's just everything bad:

-Retcon the Doctor using the array to visit his creator

-the Doctor is confined to Sickbay and bitching

-the crew just takes everything at the word of the impostor hologram. At least when it was the alien picture plant monster, that made sense. Here, it comes across like they are too stupid to figure out how to get dressed without putting their heads up their pant legs, or the crew is so miserable that they don't care anymore "So either we get home and this comes to an end or we die and this comes to an end? Sweet relief either way."

-the crew taking away the Doctor's freedom of movement and not caring

-the crew has yet another chance to get home that the audience back home doesn't believe is going to work. At least past attempts in the previous few seasons shortened the trip by a few thousand lightyears. Here, it is just like a season one failure. An attempt is made and in the end, nothing is gained from it.

-the goal once again revolves around Seven because of her Borg implants (At least the beta canon novels took away the Borg and Seven's Borg implants for good)

-the growth that Barclay went through was basically out the window. "Things are good, I have a girlfriend now." this is a great thing. "She was a spy out to use her body for information on my project for her Ferengi employers." Man, what a fucking dick punch. And in some ways, there is a second dick punch to Barclay from Deanna Troi of all people. When she's on the beach and notices Reg there, she is in her swimsuit and she STILL covers herself up. "Yep, don't mind showing cleavage for the kids on the beach, the teenaged boys on the beach, the men on the beach, even those teens and men who are here for the sole purpose of checking out the women in their swimsuits, but creepy Reg Barclay? Hell no, cover up that small bit of cleavage."

-that plan to create a gateway between two locations via linking two stars together seems to me, at least, the worst sounding idea in all of Star Trek (worst sounding as in, of all the ideas ever mentioned for transwarp travel, this makes the least amount of sense. Transwarp being a new set of engines makes sense in the same way that supersonic flight required jet engines over propellors. Transwarp being possible as seen in the episode "Threshold" I will take over just tech-teching two random stars. If both stars had to be blown up with weapons similar to what is seen in "Star Trek Generations" at the same time to create a temporary wormhole, that would make SO much more sense, explain why the idea is NEVER mentioned again, because why not find a way to actually protect the crew and make this a viable option?

I never thought of it that way before today and now I can't stop thinking about it. Troi spent six years on the Enterprise with half of her knockers hanging out and yet the first person she ever covers up for is Reg? And here's the million dollar question: was he invited to her nude wedding in ''Nemesis''? Because I see the senior crew, I see Guinan, I see Wesley (who apparently took time off from being a god to attend) but I do not see Reg.

The only half-hearted justification I can think of is that Troi's empathic abilities would allow her to know which of the men around her most have a hard-on for her and Barclay happened to have one for her when he approached her on the beach that day. I say ''half-hearted'' because again, the woman had her cleavage out all day every day for six years, I would have thought that she would have gotten used to that particular human emotion by now.

I don't think Reg was invited to the Riker-Troi wedding. For starters I think that was an Enterprise crew only event, or selected members of the Enterprise crew.

Crewman Jones "Where are we going this week?"

Crewman Johnson "Oh, we're on our way to Betazed for a wedding."

Jones: "Who's getting married?"

Johnson: "Our first officer and the ship's therapist."

Jones: "Sweet. A wedding on Betazed, you know that that means?"

Johnson "We're crewmen, so low on the chain of command that we have to salute the tampon dispensers before refilling them, don't get your hopes up for a naked Commander Troi and a room full of naked female shipmates. Someone has to stay behind and beam these naked assholes back up, and the only worse than a naked klingon is a drunken horny naked klingon being beamed up from his ex-girlfriend's wedding. But look on the bright side, Wesley Crusher is going to be naked at that wedding, sitting next to his naked mom. Any time the Captain will see the Doctor during the ceremony, she will be naked, and he will see her son next to her naked."

Jones: "Wesley is attending? Suddenly staying on board doesn't sound so bad."

[Captain Crimson]

This episode just gets worse every time I think about it, like... that's VOY's biggest flaw. Don't think, just consume, which is more suited to the stereotypic perception of SW, not ST.

I mean, if they'd known about this potential avenue home all along, then why didn't they, I dunno, steal the metaphasic shields from the S2 episode, Resistance? I know that's obviously a writer using the term without understanding what it means, but that is literally your way home! And being a dictatorship, there should be no ethical issues here or Prime Directive pontificating at all. I know it aired years before this episode and I actually like that story for what it was, but... it just illustrates the inherent issues in having no long-term story arcs.

Now that I think about, going back to S3 episode False Profits, it probably wouldn't take much tweaking to alter Arridor and Kol so that at some point they'd worked with Dr. Reyga, and it could even partially be the reason they were interested in the Barzan Wormhole. This adds a new dimension to the story, a conflict of interest, where the Ferengi eventually used the information on transit gathered in the shuttle to perfect metaphasic shielding, they just preferred to rule in the Delta Quadrant as Quark had fantasized about for Roswell Earth. This actually explains why they'd be so willing to kill Neelix as they had long-term plans in overthrowing the Nagus, kinda like what Brunt had planned in Ferengi Love Songs, not Profit and Lace. ("ACTING Grand Nagus Brunt!" anyone?)

So you have the Ferengi offering Voyager a path back home in return for letting them rule here as overlords, and it begins a real ethical debate, kinda like Prime Factors' brief discussion on the Prime Directive. You could have a Maquis mutiny planned, and just... like, wow. Just... were you ever trying to be decent TV, VOY? Even just a little?