Another Couple of 'Body and Soul' Reviews

• AntonyF of Fandom has posted his review of last week's Voyager episode, 'Body and Soul'. Like most other reviewers, the biggest qualm he had was with how the episode handled Tuvok's Pon Farr.

  Fans have been talking about Tuvok`s Ponn Farr for ages, wondering when it`ll happen and how it`ll be solved. The writers copped out basically. It was definitely an A-story, and if it had to be a B-story then it shouldn`t have been this hollow, and shouldn`t have shared with this A-story. The A-story was light, so it couldn`t easily transition to a darker B-story. So its tone was certainly dictated, and Tuvok might as well have had the `flu for lack of effot the writers put into the story. Either do it properly or not at all, because this just came across as bad.

  Finally, the end scene between Seven and the Doctor. The writers aren`t being bold, as usual, with season seven. So in line with that, it would have been easy just to get Seven to go all frosty and run to plug herself into her alcove. However they moved her relationship forward with a nice scene at the end where she comes to dine with the Doctor. I like endings like this, that push things along a bit, change the dynamics. If they carry on with this, that would be good. But suffice it to say, I expect them to forget about it and have Seven back to her old self next week.

  You can find his full review here.

• Meanwhile, Tube Reviewer Jeff Bond has posted his take on the episode. Unlike Antony, however, it was the handling of the Pon Farr that actually sold him on the episode.

  Reviewers are grumbling about "Body and Soul" already but I think they've just got a hangover from the previous week's dreadful "Inside Man." Just watching Ryan do Picardo is fun enough, but director Robert Duncan McNeill has proven himself to be a master of understated farce and he fills the comic scenes with wonderful bits of business and delicious comic timing (check out the scene in which Seven goes so nuts over a piece of cheesecake that she orders a second slice and hands the half-eaten portion to the alien captain, or her launch of a climactic seduction-via-tango by unfurling her mane of blonde hair and giving a slight clearing of her throat before going into action).

  What sold me on "Body and Soul" was actually the B-story in which Tuvok finally comes down with his seven-year case of Pon Farr. This could have been disastrous, but the scene in which McNeill as Tom Paris enters Tuvok's quarters and counsels the Vulcan to "relieve himself" in the holodeck is pure, daring genius—and it's actually played rather like the Kirk/Spock revelation scene in the classic "Amok Time." The inference that crewmembers routinely have sex with holographic partners is perhaps the most inspiringly salacious moment since Kirk zipped his boots up after bedding Deela in "Wink of an Eye." Maybe it doesn't make sense (sure you might be able to have sex with photons and forcefields, but could a Vulcan mind-meld with them—and who cleans up the holodeck afterward?), but it's the kind of acknowledgement of basic human drives that we don't see much of on VOYAGER.

  To read his full review, where he rates the episode a B+, click here.

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