I get that this was probably a lot of fun for the writers and actors. It's not any fun to watch, though. It took all my strength not to just turn it off half way through and pretend it never happened. It disregards any character continuity for the sake of comedy (and it's not even funny, just cheesy and actually very boring). For some reason the show keeps insisting that Tom Paris is a geeky boy scout instead of the ex-con with authority issues. I don't get it, and I hate it.
Why does Janeway continue to stay in character even after the mission is over? Why don't we find out anything about the photonic aliens? Why doesn't the crew even bother to learn about them? No, it's more important to do the holodeck fantasy - which conveniently can't be shut down because reasons. I can't believe people got paid to write this.
It's interesting to compare this to DS9's 'Take Me Out To The Holosuite', which aired fairly close to this one and which is similarly bizarre but managed to succeed.
I knew that Voyager would be a struggle for me to get through, but I don't think I expected it to get as bad as this.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2024-06-19T05:15:00Z
[4.6/10] An episode like “Bride of Chaotica” needs to be charming or fun, and in high doses. This was neither, at least not for me.
I can appreciate the idea of doing an homage to 1930s B-movie sci-fi. It is, to some extent, the wellspring that the original Star Trek, and by extension Voyager emerged from. Co-writer Michael Taylor also penned “Far Beyond the Stars” on Deep Space Nine, which pays homage to early science fiction on the page, so you can tell this all comes from a place of passion and genuine interest. Using a show that reflects contemporary hopes and visions for the future to measure itself against the visions of the future in similar programs from yesteryear could pay dividends.
There’s a few problems, though. For one thing, we don’t actually get much of that. Tom rattles off some 1930s sci-fi vocabulary. He pokes fun at the prospect of slave girls and reused sets (which seems like a dig at Voyager’s 1966 predecessor). And he notes the validity and fascination of looking back at the past and exploring what they thought the future would look like. (I mean hey, from the vantage point of the modern day, we’re still waiting on the Bell Riots and the Irish Reunification predicted by 1990s Trek.) But those bits are, at best, side dishes to the main business of the episode.
That main business is just...straight up doing a 1930s sci-fi pastiche. That's all “Bride of Chaotica” really has going for it. If you enjoy that era of Flash Gordon-inspired storytelling on the screen, you may appreciate and enjoy it. For me, it got old quickly.
Some of that's just my own personal tastes. I’ve seen a handful of classic sci-fi reels, and I can recognize the tropes of malevolent warlords and clunky killer robots and dashing square-jawed heroes that are with us today, albeit in different forms. But I don’t harbor much affection for them. (In contrast to, say, classic animation which has a style and a sense of flourish that earns homages and affection to this very day.)
So there is very little charm in all of this for me. Yes, it was mildly amusing to see Tom masquerading as Captain Proton for a single scene here or there in the season premiere, but that's about all the mileage this concept has. By the time you're stretching it out to a full episode, the novelty is all but drained away. And if you don’t already love 1930s science fiction B-movies, then what “Bride of Chaotica” presents will do nothing to turn you into a fan. Instead, you just have to suffer the same dull shtick for an extra thirty minutes while you check your watch, waiting for it to end.
There’s also not much in the way of humor. There’s a few gags about the old timey robot that are worth a mild chuckle. Kate Mulgrew earns some plaudits by giving a vampy, classic Hollywood starlet performance that presages the comical exaggerations of “Timeless” Toni Storm. The Doctor gets in some mildly amusing jokes about portraying the President of Earth. But that's about it.
What’s odd is that “Bride of Chaotica” plays this one surprisingly straight. There’s some inherent absurdity to how the likes of Chaotica himself, his chief enforcer, Lonzak, and the other members of his goon squad chew the scenery. But honestly, it plays as pure homage rather than something poking fun at the excesses of the subgenre. If you’ve seen the old black and white flicks in this vein, this isn’t so much an exaggeration as it is a fairly accurate rendition of the tropes.
The results are, well, boring. If you’re (generously) under the age of fifty you probably don’t have much personal connection to these films. Any novelty or charm the homage might have wears off quickly. And the rendition of it isn’t comical enough to make up for all of that with a barrel of laughs.
So everything else about this looks worse by comparison. I’m not one to take issue with plausibility in Star Trek. Especially in comic relief episodes, I’m more than willing to throw out the usual internal logic in the name of going along for the ride.
But it feels like they barely even tried here! It’s plain that the writers wanted an excuse for our heroes to be compelled to playact as old school sci-fi characters for a while. That's nothing new for Star Trek! Hell, Voyager itself did it back in season 1’s “Heroes and Demons”! So all this claptrap about Voyager being stuck in a subspace “sandbar” with tears that prevent them from halting the holodeck until they defeat the bad guy from Tom’s holonovels feels unconvincing and lazy.
If there were enough charm or laughs, we might not notice. But with how lackluster everything else is, the shakiness of the premise Voyager uses to throw its characters into yet another holodeck malfunction becomes that much more evident and irksome.
Worst of all, the episode squanders a perfectly good idea! As my write-up for last week’s “Latent Image” confirms, I am a sucker for a good “discovering and affirming new life” story. The discovery of a dimension full of photonic lifeforms, who consider biochemical beings to be the ones who aren’t real is a fascinating opportunity to flip the script! “Bride of Chaotica” does next to nothing with the concept! It’s a minor obstacle in a vain attempt to add stakes to the B-movie mishegoss, with a couple forgettable comments from the EMH before everyone moves on. Candidly, Voyager would have been better off reducing the Chaotica portions to a side dish, and made engaging with this unexpected form of life the main event of the episode.
“Bride of Chaotica” is not totally devoid of merit. Kate Mulgrew does her best to carry some weak material, and has her greatest success when rolling her eyes, literally or figuratively, at the corny nonsense Tom expects her to participate in. The costumers do a nice job of replicating the look of those old getups. And the Captain’s exchange with Neelix over coffee is an all-time funny (and relatable!) scene.
But those are occasional gems in what is otherwise a pile of black and white dirt. At one point in the episode, Tom Paris declares that, after this miserable experience, as soon as he’s able, he’s going to delete the whole Chaotica program. If only Voyager’s creative team had the same forethought, and could have erased this episode before it reached us woebegotten earthlings.