'Friendship One' Review Round-up

Though many of the big-name Star Trek fan reviewers such as the Cynic and Jammer still need to put up their reviews of 'Friendship One,' several reviews of last week's Voyager episode are already available:

• Michelle Erica Green, formerly of AnotherUniverse, was highly criticial especially of the show's killing of Joe Carey:

  Voyager has a knack for establishing just enough continuity from season to season that the show can pretend to have an ongoing storyline, when in reality the writers make token references to the past and warp everything to fit their current half-baked plans. In "Friendship One," they bring back Joe Carey for the first time in years...and kill him! Paris sits around talking about his impending fatherhood with Neelix and a strange alien, but not with Carey, who leaves behind a widow and two sons I'm sure the writers have long since forgotten. Instead Paris delivers his second baby of the series (the first, also with Neelix in attendance, was in "Parturition" -- anyone remember that one at all, with the Janeway Hair Continuity Disaster?).

  Green's full review, posted at her personal review site, contains an analysis as well as a synopsis of the episode.

• Shaun Whiteaker at Section 31 also commented about the death of Carey, saying that he would have cared much more about the death if he had known more about him. "Bringing the character back a couple times each season could have set this up to be a highly dramatic moment," Whiteaker wrote, but still proceeded to award the episode a rating of 8 out of 10 in his review.

• Jason Bates at IGN Sci-Fi did not even seem to be aware of the prior Voyager history of "one Lt. Joe Carey, who is obviously a Red Shirt marked for death:"

  On the one hand it was good that they actually took the time to develop him a little and make his death that much more meaningful (this is vastly preferable to Kirk's blithe disregard for the pile of men who died under his command), but on the other hand it's so unusual for Voyager to pay this much attention to a peripheral character that you could immediately tell something was up.

  Instead, they should've started developing this guy a couple episodes ahead of time, or they should've trotted out one of the recurring non-regulars, Icheb maybe, and let them get the axe, to give the story even more dramatic punch and the series a more connected, meaningful feeling. That's a moot point by now, though.

  In Bates' full review, the episode is awarded 3 out of 5 stars.

• Jacqueline Bundy at the Trekker Newsletter was far more positive, rating the episode with a near-perfect 9/10. "This week's Voyager is a wonderful statement that the ideals of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future are still remembered by some," she wrote in her review.

• Finally, O.Deus at TrekWeb felt the episode was well-meaning but uninspired, and pointed out a possible connection with the next Star Trek series:

  In part it seems Friendship One is introduced as a possible buildup for Series V. The entire fairly extraneous conversation about the timetable for the probe's launch and Tuvok's comment about its launch "preceding Starfleet" seems like it might have been planted as possible background for Series V. Or at the very least it may have been informed by the Series V premise. And I suppose it is a measure of how little Friendship One has to offer that its most intriguing aspect involves sifting a minor piece of dialogue for clues to the premise of the next series. And it may well be a clue as to how little Voyager's seventh season has to offer as well.

  O.Deus' full review can be found here.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!