VOY - Displaced

[Makeitstop]

I always thought a load bearing villain was a bad guy whose lair is destroyed when they're defeated.

I probably would have made the name a reference to the surrender bells from game of thrones, or maybe something like "Atlas, we will have our revenge."

Also, yes, protective gear, my god why do so many sci fi stories depend on characters not being smart enough to have basic protective equipment? They didn't need space suits either, just warm clothes.

Or, you know, they could turn off the snow and turn up the thermostat. Wouldn't that have been more interesting? The residents who need arctic temperatures to survive will have to hunt the crew or die horribly and our heroes know it. The environment becomes unstable, the heroes are up against a threat that they can't kill so lightly, and the bad guys seem more villainous and less idiotic.

That could even have lead into a more reasonable motivation. They are not terribly adaptable biologically, and aren't really very physically well suited to warfare. But they capture populations, slowly dominate them, and turn them into slaves and soldiers. Ships are nice, new technologies are great, but the real prize is a diverse assortment of alien species to do their bidding. All this paradise stuff is to lull them into complacency and get them to breed a generation of impressionable youth just waiting to be indoctrinated. And hell, they might be genuine in their care for others, in the way that a pet owner cares for the pet, or a farmer care for their livestock.

[clearspira]

I would argue that even the Kazon would be a group you wouldn't want to meet this way. We all like to have a good laugh at them, but against these pilgrim types who have exactly one trick?

Linkara's right. Voyager seems to be one of the few capital ships in which this would have worked on.

[Fianna]

Seems like maybe this would have worked better, not necessarily as a two-parter, but as two distinct episodes with a bit of space between them. One a slow burn suspense story with the crew vanishing/being replaced one by one, till the last standing crew member manages to outsmart the aliens and force them to bring everyone back. Then, later, do an episode where they run into the same group of aliens (or a different group from the same society), and have them kidnap Voyager en masse at the start of the ep, then spend a whole ep on them working to escape from their gilded cage.

[Al-1701]

What I think about most in regards to this episode is how fortunate these aliens were that it was VOYAGER they ran across. I remember thinking at the time, "What the hell would these guys have done if they had run across a Borg ship? Or even a Hirogen ship?"

I wonder if they different abduction tactics given the victim. A more aggressive race would be replaced all in one go. Or they only select victims who are (ironically, given the Torres B-Plot) non-hostile.

Really, this is the problem with this concept. It needed more than one episode. When I first watched this episode, I thought it was going to be a two part episode or a two hour special (I was 12 at the time). Nope. And, I wanted more of it because it was just such an interesting idea.

Really, nowadays, this race could be a season-long or miniseries villain. Our villains would escape in the opener, but here's this incredible and novel threat that must be defeated. We would have a chance to explore how they happened on this technology, how they select their victims, and then how far they have managed to take it. We could see their spoils in the ways of subjects races, a fleet made up of captured ships, the kinds of technology and materials they have access to. Meanwhile, our heroes are working on defenses against it, and hearing that lesser ships and outposts have been taken. Perhaps someone infiltrates one of their colonies to try to get a making example of their equipment. And the villains might even try to make it look like it's the hero who's doing it to force them to concentrate on other things. The conclusion is finding the heart of the villain's empire and taking the fight to them. Their methods are defeated and they are forced to surrender.

This is a concept that I think more exposure could've helped.

[MerelyAFan]

What I think about most in regards to this episode is how fortunate these aliens were that it was VOYAGER they ran across. I remember thinking at the time, "What the hell would these guys have done if they had run across a Borg ship? Or even a Hirogen ship?"

I wonder if they different abduction tactics given the victim. A more aggressive race would be replaced all in one go. Or they only select victims who are (ironically, given the Torres B-Plot) non-hostile.

Really, this is the problem with this concept. It needed more than one episode. When I first watched this episode, I thought it was going to be a two part episode or a two hour special (I was 12 at the time). Nope. And, I wanted more of it because it was just such an interesting idea.

Really, nowadays, this race could be a season-long or miniseries villain. Our villains would escape in the opener, but here's this incredible and novel threat that must be defeated. We would have a chance to explore how they happened on this technology, how they select their victims, and then how far they have managed to take it. We could see their spoils in the ways of subjects races, a fleet made up of captured ships, the kinds of technology and materials they have access to. Meanwhile, our heroes are working on defenses against it, and hearing that lesser ships and outposts have been taken. Perhaps someone infiltrates one of their colonies to try to get a making example of their equipment. And the villains might even try to make it look like it's the hero who's doing it to force them to concentrate on other things. The conclusion is finding the heart of the villain's empire and taking the fight to them. Their methods are defeated and they are forced to surrender.

This is a concept that I think more exposure could've helped.

Its yet another potentially interesting Delta Quadrant species not lived up to their potential to add to the pile with all the others (robots from Prototype, Species 8472, Krenim, etc).

[Durandal_1707]

The thing that gets me about this one is that the ice habitat is stated to be -20°C. That's -4°F! Forget the cold-sensitive aliens, there's no way Tom and B'Elanna, or anyone else, should have been able to last there for long with no winter gear, especially when they kept touching the walls like that.

Similarly, the temperature they adjusted Voyager's climate to for the aliens' benefit was 45°C. That's 113°F. The crew should have been sweating bullets.

[CrypticMirror]

45C is heatstroke territory. I suppose we could handwave the low temps, at least for a little while, as the Starfleet uniforms being made of a smartfabric that is really good for heat retention in low temperature situations.

[DAv]

While I agree the first half is better than the second, I still quite like this episode overall.

Ditto. Also, there are now 16 episodes of Voyager left that Chuck hasn't reviewed.

Only sixteen left now? Going to be interesting to see what the last one will be and if anything special is used to mark the occasion.

[Ixthos]

While I agree the first half is better than the second, I still quite like this episode overall.

Ditto. Also, there are now 16 episodes of Voyager left that Chuck hasn't reviewed.

Only sixteen left now? Going to be interesting to see what the last one will be and if anything special is used to mark the occasion.

Indeed. The remaining ones are:

"Day of Honor"
"Random Thoughts"
"Hunters"
"Vis à Vis"
"Unforgettable"
"Night"
"Infinite Regress"
"Gravity"
"Survival Instinct"
"Riddles"
"Child's Play"
"Lineage"
"Repentance"
"Prophecy"
"Natural Law"
"Renaissance Man"

If I were to guess, tongue in cheek, I would say "Unforgettable", mainly for Chuck to joke about both how he felt the episode was forgettable (though I personally liked the idea behind it, though that applies to a lot of Voyager, with various levels of quality in how the idea is displayed, see "The Fight" as an example) and for Chuck to joke about how Voyager is unforgettable, because of how much effort he put into the reviews.

[MerelyAFan]

I think Night might be an interesting choice as its one that demonstrates both of the show's potential and its failure to live up to it. Janeway's guilt and self imposed isolation is limited to largely this episode rather than being a recurring element spread through the season or series, the real issues about waste disposal are reduced to the Malon character being someone straight out of Captain Planet, and the genuine strain and anxiety of Voyager's stressful predicament get highlighted... and wholly resolved at the end.

Given that its the story that introduced Captain Proton, there is something fitting that its also an episode that showed the series often unwilling or unable to be much more than the same kind of base sci-fi concepts it was affectionately parodying.