Three New Voyager reviews

• There are three new, if somewhat delayed, Voyager reviews today, looking at last week's telemovie, 'Flesh and Blood'. First off the mark is the Cynic at the Cynic's Corner, and he wasn't all that taken with the episode, awarding it a 6.5.

  CONTRIVANCE OF THE WEEK: More computer science hoohah can be found in the idea that phasering Iden's holographic manifestation destroys the underlying program. There's not really a good reason for it, especially since Iden had been phasered and "killed" dozens of times by the Hirogen, unless the mobile emitter was damaged, and there's no indication of that. Then again, I suppose the Doctor's offer to surrender the emitter could have been an empty one, because he knew it was trashed...

  SCOFFLAW OF THE WEEK: The Doctor gets the patented "I trusted you, and you let me down" speech from Janeway (or, more precisely, he gives it to himself so that he doesn't have to listen to her); as is usually the case, except for the pain of having to hear Janeway speak, the perpetrator gets off scot free. But there's someone else that deserves to suffer through that speech too, and that's Torres. After all, because she got the super-holoimager working, Iden and his holo-cult was able to get to their planet and kill most of the Hirogen. Oh, and she went to a transwarp conference and apparently didn't learn anything...

  To read the full review, click here.

• Secondly, there's Julia Houston's, About.com Star Trek Guide, take on things.

  I have a major mix of emotions over this episode. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed it. On the other, I can't believe a plot complication I've been waiting seven years for barely gets a few scenes.

  They're good scenes...but yeesh. Tuvok was going through Pon farr, for Pete's sakes! Shouldn't that be a bigger deal?

  ::sigh::

  Anyway, I did love the episode, and it's definitely one of my all-time favorite outings with Seven.

  To read a sumamry of the episode and more of what she thinks, please follow the link.

• Last but not least, there is another Eon Magazine Tube Review. Rating it a C-, reviewer Jeff Bond wasn't very taken with the telemovie.

  The episode's opening does give a promising glimpse of location shooting (or at least well-disguised greenery-infused soundstage shooting), but only enough to remind us that VOYAGER has been the most ship-bound of all the STAR TREK series--even the space station-set DEEP SPACE NINE showed us more alien planets than VOYAGER, which began with the promise of showing us an entire new quadrant of the galaxy and has really just shown us the same five sets ad nauseum for the past six years. "Flesh and Blood" also continues VOYAGER's seeming determination to declaw every villain in TREK history. The Hirogen, like the CGI-created Species 347, were thrown into the VOYAGER mix to make up for the neutering of the once-great Borg, but every time VOYAGER invents a new threat its creators find it necessary to find something pathetic about them that spacegoing Earth Mother Janeway can nurture.

  That's bad enough, but when you start nurturing holograms the pathos gets to be a bit much. Janeway has now been betrayed by just about every member of the crew at one time or another, which you would think would make the poor woman rather more bitter and wary than the ceaselessly optimistic and trustful character we've seen week after week. "Flesh and Blood" might be more compelling were its central antagonist, the holographic messiah Iden, not such a bland, handsome hunk of Bajoran--every time I see a Bajoran other than Major Kira I want to take a nap, and watching the Doctor argue semantics with Iden doesn't exactly get the blood racing. Once "Flesh and Blood" introduces the idea that all sorts of races in the Gamma Quadrant have created holographic people the show begins bending itself into a logical pretzel--if other races have holodecks, why did the Hirogen need to barter with Janeway to get their version? Why didn't they conquer one of these seemingly inferior holodeck-creating races decades ago?

  To find out why Jeff gave it such a poor rating, read the full review.

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