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VIP

10

So much cut-and-paste from Love Live! season 1. SO MUCH.

I want to like this show, I really do. But so far it's spent way too much time trying to tell me, "Look! I'm still Love Live! See how similar I am?"—and that feels incredibly cheap, like the writers couldn't think of any original ideas so they paraphrased the story outlines from the first show.

A little bit of originality crept in here at the end (when it turned out people didn't come to the concert because Chika put the wrong day on the fliers), but other than that it felt like a carbon copy of how µ's got their name and the START:DASH!! concert. Sloppy writing there at the end of the episode, too. It just kind of ended, and there was nothing after the ED even though it felt like there should have been some kind of tag on it.

This is episode 3, and I usually decide whether to continue with an anime after 3 episodes. For now I will keep going, since averaging 6/10 isn't bad enough to stop me. But if I keep having to fight down the urge to rant about how much of a copy this show is, I'll eventually throw in the towel.

What I said about Tombstone's matchup in the previous episode (https://trakt.tv/comments/92722) was borne out in this one. At least three of the four summarized matches would have been more interesting to watch than Tombstone's utterly predictable victory against the lowest seeded bot.

Come on, ABC. You shouldn't even need a director to fix something this obvious.

It's also a bit annoying that they started cutting out the teams' entrances into the arena. A huge amount of showmanship goes into those, and I'd much rather they spent time continuing to show those and cut out the overly long "Red Team, ready?", "Blue Team, ready?" sequence. We learn a lot more about each team by seeing how they enter than we do from watching them push a button. (Hell, even Faruq's intros have been kind of lame lately.)

ABC's editorial judgment aside, I was pretty disappointed to see Mega Tento beat Stinger. Even though I think Lisa Winter is great at the craft, the bot's strategy just wasn't interesting in the qualifiers—and is arguably even less so now that the bot's design has been tweaked. Stinger is more interesting to watch, and I think Matt Maxham brought a better approach to robot combat into the Battle Box.

Impressive recovery by Chomp after getting caught in a killsaw. I thought it lost the match right there, but it came back fighting.

Team Yeti left a roll of electrical tape inside their bot?! WOW lol. Super impressive driving on their part so far, but that's hilarious.

Wrecks was totally still able to move when they counted him out in the rumble. WTF, producers?

I've had such a mixed bag of feelings about Ray Billings and Tombstone since getting (back) into BattleBots last summer. On the one hand, he created a brilliantly simple, superlatively effective, design. And Ray is very clearly razor sharp when thinking through his strategy, using the simplicity (and flipping immunity) of his bot to methodically chew up opponents' machines. But the man is just so goddamned arrogant on camera that I can't find it in me to really respect him. Frankly, he's kind of a dick about how good his bot is. I've seen people say he's actually a nice guy in the pits, but on screen he's mostly just obnoxiously overconfident.

That said, we got to see, in this episode (and a bit of the last), a more vulnerable side of Ray. I was going to make some joke about hoping that winning the Nut won't go to his head, but I think that would be undeserved. When all was said and done he finally showed the camera his other side—the side of him that's more concerned with sharing the experience with his son than anything else. This final episode might have really changed my opinion of the man.

Too bad the semifinals, and even the rumble, were more interesting/less predictable than the final match. But that can't be avoided; the matches go how they go, you know?

Wow.

I can nitpick a couple things—like the directorially questionable, obvious reuse of Izetta's echoing (and kind of annoying) "Hime-sama!" cry, or the jarringly unrealistic (CGI) terrain movement in a follow shot of the train early on. But even so…holy shit. I noticed when I hit "Play" that this episode was slightly longer than a "typical" anime (26 minutes; usual length is 24), but it might as well have been 15. It just flew right on by.

This is a bang-up start to the season. The character animation is fluid and expressive. In 30 seconds flat I felt like I knew what kind of person Finé-sama was, and what to expect from her. Despite the obvious "bland naming" of countries involved in World War II, the background animators clearly devoted much effort to rendering believable period settings. And what a choice of opera! The Queen of the Night's aria from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte? It fits with the action like a glove. (The Queen's stage costume is probably the least believable visual element in the whole episode.)

With this, studio Ajia-Do earned a well-deserved blip on my radar. Seems they've been around a bit longer than I expected—don't think I've ever watched their work before—but I am looking forward to more. Starting with episode 2 of Shuumatsu no Izetta. I don't know how I'm going to wait until next week…

Not entirely sure what style I was expecting. This was completely different from whatever it was.

BUT

I liked this a lot. Seems it'll be more comedic than I expected, for one, which is probably OK. A serious, dramatic anime about figure skating probably wouldn't attract much of an audience…so comedy is a good way to try and broaden the appeal. Not sure about the hot spring fanservice, but…we'll see if it reaches annoying levels. This time around it was mostly amusing seeing all the creative ways the animators came up with to conveniently censor characters.

What I would have liked to see was higher frame rates during the skating sequences. Sports anime (and figure skating is a sport, so this is included) rarely benefit from jerky motion when the actual sport is happening on screen. If anything, low frame rates make the action very confusing. I doubt this point will be improved during the broadcast season—or even in Blu-rays—but it is certainly worth mentioning that the action gets a wee bit frame-y. (Once or twice it looked like Yuuri's limbs stretched out temporarily, too…art quality might be an issue.)

The show's worth continuing, though. I'm looking forward to next week.

That utility box of whatever that gets knocked down at the beginning of the fight between Supergirl and Rhea is a great metaphor for the writing in this episode. See, it falls over and sparks and shit—looks cool, right?—but there's nothing under it! No wires, no pipes, nothing. It leaves behind a blank space. It must have been there on the rooftop for a reason, right? Nope. No purpose but to get knocked over.

This episode is full of stuff that doesn't make sense, like that. Every Daxamite soldier teleports back to their ships, but Rhea stays to beg Mon-El to save her, and dies when he doesn't? Perfect sense. Mon-El has "a few minutes" before the lead in the atmosphere kills him, but manages to make it all the way to the Kryptonian pod and has time to give a little speech to Kara? Perfect sense!

I admit to being emotionally affected by the drama, sure…but that lasted only as long as it took for my rational brain to catch up and say, "Whoa, wait up, how does that work?!" That happened a lot.

At this point, I realize why it's taken me so long to bother finishing this season. I did stall with just the one episode left, and it's definitely because the believability of the writing is meh at best. They really do go for the "Bam! Pow! Special effects!" wow-factor without really thinking about whether that actually makes sense for the characters and the plot. It gets really annoying.

Speaking of things that don't make sense for the plot, they had a great ending tied up AND THEN RUINED IT with a teaser for the next season. I'm so done.

OK, reality check: It hasn't been that long since Parker and Val won the contest, so there's simply no way the Mars bio-dome could have been suddenly moved to start "next week" in Bolivia. Given their ages, it's entirely possible (even likely) that neither of them has a passport yet. Obtaining a US Passport takes 6-8 weeks, generally. Even assuming Parker and Val both have passports, U.S. citizens require visa approval to enter Bolivia (5-10 business days after applying at any Consulate of Bolivia).

I've seen first-hand the hoops international travel can involve, especially when sponsored by an institution. I went to New Zealand on choir tour when I was about Parker's age, and my nephew went to Spain around the same age. The choir and travel agencies spent months making sure everyone's travel documents were in order, that passports were obtained well in advance (or were valid well past the planned return dates). Since the contest was run by a corporate sponsor, not a government agency, I doubt there's any possibility of diplomatically shortening the lead time necessary to get the kids' travel set up.

This episode is really good, but Parker's part could have been pulled off more believably by moving the dome to Utah's salt flats instead, if they were really set on salt flats. Still away from family (both in California and Wisconsin), similar type of terrain, but not outside the country—thus avoiding the passport & visa conundrum.

Got distracted a bit during Karen's little speech to all the kids because her audio was off sync in the wide shot, whoops.

I also noticed that some of the static shots of the house in California look severely, egregiously enlarged. Like, blown up from a 640x360 (or smaller) thumbnail enlarged. There are obscene amounts of aliasing along all the straight lines, artifacts in the facade pattern… Not sure how long it's been doing that (maybe all of season four?), but it really hit me these last few episodes, maybe because I'm actually paying attention to the show now that there's real emotional content.

7.5/10, rounded up… Any rating rounded off practically compels one to write a comment, @justin. (I added the mention in my previous shout in an edit, so it might not have generated a notification. I promise I'll stop asking for percentage ratings now!)

Is that a bowl of starfruit on Neelix's counter? Hooray for exotic Earth plants being pushed as alien foodstuffs.

Carey is absolutely Voyager's Miles O'Brien. The similarities are striking in this episode, from how he talks to his hair.

Did anyone else notice that Seska says "We have to do something!" right after Torres says "Aye, Captain" over the comm and the bridge doesn't hear her? But later Torres hits her commbadge to close the channel before they start talking about the matrix again? Sometimes these things just…slip through.

OK, enough nitpicking.

More philosophy! And this time, it has substance! No more wishy-washy flip-flopping on the subject of whether there might be an afterlife. Nay, this week it's character-building and Starfleet people getting a little taste of their own medicine regarding sharing technology.

Like so many of the one-shot alien races, the Sikarians have essentially no depth. They still manage to be a little creepy, as @LeftHandedGuitarist remarked. (They're not that creepy, though. Frankly, I think the Sikarians represent what would happen if you took "Minnesota Nice" and turned it up to 11.) That said, the most interesting thing about them is Gath's accent—which is probably because a Belgian actor played him.

Wow, they didn't even try to cover the mismatched lip sync on Wexler's entrance into the office. That was the worst audio mismatch I've seen in probably years. Just… wow.

And then there's another one on the TV in class during Ren's video presentation. Jackpot?

But I guess the real question is, where did Louis get the laptop? In a present-day episode, he sneaked into Ren's room to borrow hers without asking.

Actually, the real real question is where did Louis get thirteen sodas while stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel for two hours? Funny line, but reality check please.

And there's another lip sync issue during Larry's speech.

Hmm. Actually, all of the lip sync "goofs" are probably related. There are textual errors on props and set dressing giving the Stevens kids the name "Spivey". On top of that, the upstairs hallway set for the Stevens' house doesn't match anything we see before or after. (The Even Stevens Wikia page for this episode says it looks like the McGuire house from Lizzie McGuire.) All of this points to the episode being an excuse to use cut together footage from an unaired pilot episode, with the Stevens' original name dubbed over (hence the lip sync errors), kinda like how the unaired pilot of Star Trek ("The Cage") became "The Menagerie". I have to say, Star Trek did it better.

Hmm… Honestly? About the only enjoyable part of this was seeing Brian George. I really liked his work on The Expanse, though he didn't get much to work with here.

I can definitely see the Star Trek influence, which goes well beyond the superficial similarities in uniforms. The dramatic structure of the whole episode feels like an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation or something, albeit rushed. If anything, The Orville's debut proves why it was a good idea for typical Trek pilots to be double-length: There's so much work that has to be done establishing the world of a new show that it just won't fit in a normal-length episode that also tries to include a typical plot. (That said, in my opinion there was also considerable screen time wasted on unfunny jokes, like the "Permission to Pee" scene.)

The biggest issue with the overall plot, for me, was the fact that the Orville never really appears to be in danger. There's something in (good) Star Trek episodes of all eras that makes it seem like our protagonists might fail, even though we know they won't. That's absent here.

In case it's not obvious: No, I'm not a fan of Seth MacFarlane's humor. I would be hard pressed to find even one joke that I found funny in this show. I'll not drop it yet, in hopes that it will improve—the underwhelming pilot is another Star Trek staple, so this all might be intentional. The show deserves more than a single chance. But this won't be something I watch ASAP after the newest episode airs unless it gets drastically better.

This is more "assorted random thoughts" than a review. They're (mostly) in order of when I had them while watching the show.

"Bad joke. Bad yolk. … You know, I'm just not going to try at comedy with you anymore." Good. Stop. Now. Your yolks aren't funny anyway, man.

"Where does it come out of, the butt? […] How is that not the first thing you ask?" It's called tact. You do have a comprehensive shipboard database that you can look this stuff up in, right? It's the 25th Century, mate.

Gotta say, the "cannabis edible" was a pretty great bit though. I actually chuckled, for the first time so far. It also (arguably) makes more sense than the 20th-century pop-culture references they keep throwing in…

Given that the pilot established the existence of comm devices, why didn't Alara just call Bortus on comm? Yes, I know the in-person visit was a setup for the "request permission to enter" gag. It's just nonsensical. (But I appreciated the optical fiber bundles sticking out of ruptured bulkheads. That does make sense.)

Just one episode ago, Ed was judging Gordon for drinking at 09:15, but now he's having a beer for breakfast?

Hey, reality TV is good for something! Finally! 400 years later!

It was in the opening credits of this episode that I noticed André Bormanis's name for the first time. There really do seem to be a fair few Star Trek veterans involved behind the scenes of this show. One can only hope their influence will push it toward greatness in time.

"What a heartbreaker you are, Dr. Haas."
"Don't you have that backwards?"
So what, you wanted her to to call you a "breakhearter"? *runs away from the pun police*

"Do you give shots?"
"Well, yes. Sometimes."
"I don't like you."
Also:
"Shit!"
"We're not allowed to call it that."
The kids' lines are arguably the best part of this one.

Either that, or Ethan's serious introspection takes the cake. It's disproportionately gratifying to see him realize what kind of a man he's been and start trying to change his behavior toward women. Vivian's attempts to shrug it off (she considers that kind of behavior normal, I guess?) just make it even more poignant when Ethan insists, "No, it's not okay."

Look at that sexist nonsense about requiring the husband's consent for an elective tubal ligation. At least we give women that much freedom nowadays, right? Actually I had to check and make sure, so little confidence have I in our society. Turns out it's not completely resolved: The Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on state laws requiring spousal consent, though lower courts have ruled them unconstitutional. And apparently private hospitals are still allowed to maintain policies to the same effect. Bah.

Naito really struck me in certain scenes as a Japanese version of Marcus Kane (Henry Ian Cusick, The 100), for some reason. There was something about his facial structure & hairstyle that connected the two in my head.

Nice to see Eda-san is a good salesman, equally willing to dissuade his customer from purchasing as he is to encourage it if he believes the purchase wouldn't be in their best interest. That's true customer service!
He also keeps getting more creative with trying to make the time travel experience feel more special. Each time Eda comes up with another idea to try and make the whole experience feel properly commercial, it gets funnier. This latest thing with the safety video is hilarious, as thought he's trying to make it feel like an airplane.

I do wonder whether the restriction Eda mentioned—that the driver of the taxi can only repeat their previous actions, without changing them—is a regulation or a physical law. Strictly speaking, is he able to change his actions but forbidden from doing so, or is he bound by universal forces to repeat the same actions regardless of will? It would be an interesting subject to explore, but I doubt the drama will touch on that again in the three remaining episodes.

"Why won't my dick work?! Fuck!" The funniest line of this show so far.

Meanwhile, the best non-comedic line of the episode—perhaps also the show so far—was, "And if God wasn't invented for a time like this, then why invent him at all?" (Now that I think about it, maybe that line was comedic, at least partially. Whatever, I'm still mentioning it anyway.)

There are numerous moments in this show where Michael Sheen (as Dr. Masters) somehow reminds me of Michael Emerson (as Person of Interest's Finch). I guess there is something to be said for the way people say, "You look like a ______." They are both named Michael, eh?

I so infrequently award "10" ratings, especially for TV episodes, but this is a standout episode for all parties. Dr. Haas and Virginia. Dr. Haas and Vivian. Dr. Masters and Libby. Dr. Masters and Virginia, too. Really, everyone. The acting is incredible, and so is the writing. As a package, this episode is put together masterfully (no pun intended). I even empathized with Dr. Masters, something I didn't think possible given what an ass he was just a few episodes ago. At that point I really disliked him, but now… Poor guy.

I did a little research after finishing this episode to see if I could confirm my hunches regarding the critique @d2dyno posted a year ago.
Whether I should be surprised or not that I was basically right, I'm not sure.

My overall hunch was that Dollhouse went into the end of season one "on the bubble", with a threat of cancellation hanging over it. That would explain why "Epitaph One" seemed like a rushed, hasty closure kind of thing. I also speculated that it was ultimately renewed—too late in the season to do a "real" season ender. The true events are actually much more interesting.

Dollhouse did indeed spend its first season in the "ratings challenged" category, so there was considerable doubt surrounding its prospects for renewal. But this thirteenth episode didn't come from that. It came from the production studio, without involvement from the network. FOX ordered thirteen episodes for the first season, but the first pilot episode out of the chute was never aired. (In true television fashion, much of the unaired pilot was reused for the "real" first episode.) However, FOX considered that unaired episode to be one of the thirteen ordered, and only committed to airing the following twelve.

The production studio filmed a thirteenth "real" episode ("Epitaph One") anyway, for purposes of rounding out a thirteen-episode DVD set for the season (and for international broadcasts). This final episode eventually premiered at Comic Con, almost three months after the broadcast finale ("Omega"). But it's not really part of the season's continuity because it was, essentially, produced to fill out the production contract with as minimal a budget as possible. (FOX, again, considered that they had already paid for and received the episodes ordered for broadcast.)

I could go into a lot more detail and summarize more interviews, but the short version of the story is: It feels like this episode doesn't fit the show's continuity because it doesn't fit the show's continuity, and it wasn't produced to do so.

Sources consulted:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/04/dollhouse-omega-finale.html
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/04/dollhouse-joss-whedon-fox-eliza-dushku.html
http://armchairc.blogspot.com/2009/07/dollhouse-unaired-pilot-and-epitaph-one.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dollhouse_(TV_series)&oldid=800215447
https://tv.avclub.com/dollhouse-epitaph-one-1798217724

(I know these won't link, because Trakt only allows a small whitelist of domains, but I feel a need to cite my sources anyway for completeness—and maybe, my own future reference.)

Wait, wait, did they actually get through an entire episode without making any reference to Mercer's divorce?!

Cloaking tech? Guess there's no Treaty of Algeron analogue in the Orville universe. Would be nice if they used it consistently, though. Current Earth technology (roughly what this alien planet has) could definitely detect an uncloaked shuttle pod leaving the atmosphere. Exercise a little caution, will you, Alara?

There's something very Jeri Ryan–esque about Palicki during the landing party's first jaunt down the sidewalk.
I have to admit, I like it, whether it was an intentional homage or not.

Awkward, obvious lip sync error when Dr. Finn says "New problem," check. I didn't think that sort of thing would happen in such a high profile show.

I guess not having seen season three of Black Mirror saved me from this story feeling like a rehash of something I'd seen before. Whenever I do watch it, I'm sure it will be a nice big step beyond this. For my part, I thought The Orville did it well. (John's behavior aside—he really didn't put in any effort to appear worthy of upvotes at all. But that's probably MacFarlane's "humor" creeping in.)

Ignoring the preachy plot for a moment, the tech on display is pretty neat, even if it's a little simplistic. For one thing, the voting badges and handheld feed readers imply a mesh data network of some kind (or cellular, perhaps) that, if anything, points to what our near future might look like. (We're not quite there with cellular coverage, are we?)

Update 2018-03-17: China would like to have a word with these aliens about their tech, I think. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S

[5.3/10] Weak Kazon writing, questionable casting decision (Eisenberg), wishy-washy "Indian" schtick that isn't.

Did the Kazon fix the shuttle's aft shields while Chakotay was being held prisoner? The computer's damage report after the first attack indicated that aft shields (as well as long range communications) were offline. But when Chakotay takes off in the shuttle again, aft shields are apparently partially functional?

Still trying to figure out how the transporter worked over a distance exceeding one million kilometers when the rated maximum range of a Federation transporter system is a mere forty thousand kilometers… Sometimes plot convenience trumps consistency. (Actually, often.)

Kar, what "technology", exactly, would you take back to your people if you killed Chakotay? He's wearing a combadge, and he has a tricorder. That's all. Wow, big catch. Very effective threat. /s

Like @LeftHandedGuitarist and @splenda, I found it very difficult not to hear Nog whenever Kar spoke. Given Deep Space Nine's relatively frequent use of Aron Eisenberg in that role, it's very strange that the Voyager casting department chose him for this episode. It's possible that someone in the chain of command wanted an excuse to give Eisenberg more work on the franchise; that's my best guess.

I really wish Chakotay had been given a more believable heritage. So often it seems like the writers kind of just made shit up when they wanted to emphasize his "Native American side" for an episode. For one thing, I can't find any real-life reference to the ritual phrase associated with Chakotay's vision quests (variously transliterated, depending on what source you read, as "a cuchi moya", "ah-koo-chee-moya", "hakuchi moya", among others). Keeping the character in touch with his "Indian roots" is one thing, but they don't seem to have based Chakotay's roots on a real tribe. (Later in the series, several tribal identities come and go based on apparent story needs before his heritage is once again left open to interpretation, as if the producers gave up.) At least Robert Beltran really is part Native American, instead of a straight-up white guy playing a Native role.

I didn't notice the first time around, but this time I noticed in the opening that the "GO GO GO" and "DREAM DREAM" bits are in reverse order on screen as compared with the song lyrics. Along with the heavily pixelated/aliased logo (which I did notice in Amazon's HD version but neglected to mention for episode 1), the treatment of the opening/ending in this show is strange.

And it's time to embarrass myself a little: I spent the whole first episode thinking Suji was actually Suah. Somehow I got it in my head that she'd gotten the doctors to lie to Kang about her death so she could escape the world of idols. Only one shot (Suah motionless on the hospital bed with a heart monitor flatlining in the background) tested that theory, but I dismissed it as metaphor or something. Apparently my imagination is a bit overactive, since the real story here is much less convoluted: Suah's twin sister, Suji, hides out because she gets mistaken for Suah (twin problems) whenever she shows her face in public. Oops?

OK, I still think the pacing is kinda slow. It's taken a full 90 minutes to get to a point where the series can really start, with all the cast members assembled. Personally I think a lot of the historical exposition that was shoved into the first two episodes could have been handled less confusingly later, once the viewers are more familiar with the characters. (On that subject: Am I the only one having trouble keeping the present and the past straight? The flashbacks are hard to follow.)

I'm starting to understand why I like this series so much better than the iDOLM@STER anime, and it isn't because this show is live-action, nor because this show is in Korean (again: this is my first ever K-drama). It's the way this show's characters are developing believably, displaying plausible interpersonal dynamics, each differentiating herself with realistic emotional affects. My biggest issue with the iM@S anime was that all the girls in 765PRO felt like mostly interchangeable moeblobs—something that, if we're going to compare idol anime, I think Love Live! more or less avoided in the µ's anime*—but The [email protected] manages to have cute characters who are also believable. They have a sense of depth that was absent from the anime characters. (Also, I just love having a producer who's a real character too. Sung Hoon's portrayal of Kang Shinhyuk is one of the best things about this show, honestly.)

Believable, deep characters aren't absent from anime, but they're no more universal there than in any other genre of television. Writing quality is independent of series type—and before you argue with that observation, remember that correlation does not equal causation.

Speaking of writing quality, the narrative structure of each episode deserves a shout-out for consistently making me want to watch the next one as soon as possible. I can think of one possible exception to this so far, but generally speaking each installment of this series has ended with a tease about some character that really sets up anticipation for the next week's revelations.

* — I don't think Bushiroad & Sunrise did as well with Aqours in season 1 of Sunshine!!, but I haven't started S2.

Memory jog! Taewoo is the guy who came to meet Taeri (not Jane, as I mis-remembered while watching episode 10) in that flashback several episodes ago. Her brother dropping in like that makes sense.

No shit that the Debut Team lost. Kang insisted that their choreography was fine, but I say… what choreography? It looked like they spent the whole song sitting in chairs. I was surprised that the difference in vote counts wasn't larger. A difference of only 70 votes or so seems really small when there were over 2,000 votes cast.

Interesting technical trick during the webcast playback: Just in case the difference in on-stage performances wasn't enough for the viewers to believe the vote results, I noticed that the audio mix also used a pretty raw copy of the Debut Team's version of the song, versus the well-mixed track they used for the Rookie Team's performance. A little over the top for my taste, but still neat to point out.

Every time they do the webcast thing, the subtitles put less and less effort into even acknowledging the existence of the comments on screen. More than ever now, I wish they were fansub-level typeset. We still got the gist of what the stream comments said, but I feel left out not being able to read 95% of them all the same.

There's a lot of shit going down now. I was frustrated at not having time to watch this episode yesterday, because the previous episode was such a good cliffhanger, but it's even worse after this one. Guess I'll just have to wait, again.

"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, Captain." The best part is, this episode never had any.

First, the nitpicks.

We've never seen Ensign Wildman before, but she just happens to show up for the first time in this episode, just in time to reveal that she's pregnant at the end. That's a little… convenient? And also a little late. The next episode ("Non Sequitur") implies that Voyager has been lost for about eight months at this point. Surely Wildman would have noticed a baby bump in that time? (In reality, the unrealistically long delay is because the episode was originally produced for the first season, then pushed back to air in season two.)

The same shot of Kes' hand reaching into the bin with the beetles is used twice, very obviously.

B'Elanna's attitude toward the alien "threat" is so unbearably flat. The writers don't seem to know what to do with her other than "Oog Klingon, Oog violent, Oog treat everything as battle". It's a real shame.

I put off watching this episode. I remembered it being absolutely awful, and I dread it coming up in the rotation when I'm going through Voyager again. This time was no different, and I'm just glad it's over. Everything @LeftHandedGuitarist wrote is on point, from how simplistic the plot is to Neelix's childishness, except I don't agree that Jennifer Lien even slightly saved the episode with her acting. Honestly, "Elogium" is probably the actual worst episode of the series, in my opinion. It's definitely the worst episode of season two.

The effects really haven't aged well at all. This episode could be a good example for why Voyager needs an HD remaster, except that remastering this awful script wouldn't be worth the time, effort, or money.

Tuvok really does provide the only good lines in this one. Someone had to put Neelix in his place, after all. "Why would it be any different from what you would teach a son?" indeed.

In my Trakt feed's latest example of rating whiplash, I've gone from one of the worst Voyager episodes ("Elogium") to one of my favorites.

Objectively, the script and story aren't completely deserving of a 10, or even a 9 (which I ultimately decided to award anyway), but this Harry Kim character episode is so adorable that it's hard not to love it.

I do have questions about some plot points—for example, how is Tom's site-to-site transporter thing supposed to work? Does it transport itself? Did some alien species invent "transporter-ception", a "transporter-transporting transporter"? It's probably no more than a one-off plot device, but was it worth raising the question of whether transporters can actually transport themselves along with their cargo?

The similarity of the Yellowstone class runabout to the runabouts used on DS9 (the Danube class) bothered me, but let's face it: Designing an all-new type of ship for this single appearance probably wouldn't have have been a good use of the effects or scenic teams' time. Memory Alpha calls it an "upgraded" Danube design, which I guess allowed filming of the Yellowstone's interior scenes to take place on a redecorated set from Deep Space Nine. Though I found that distracting, I understand why it was done from a production point of view.

Oh, and just because I am that nitpicking guy: The admiral's commbadge looks crooked in the hearing with Harry and Lt. Lasca. Then Harry's badge looks crooked when he's talking with Cosimo in the next scene. So much for military precision? (I'll stop now.)

This is one of those Voyager episodes that I remember not because it's memorable, but because it's so bland.

Nobody can get where they want to go on the ship, except when they have to for plot reasons. Harry and B'Elanna got to engineering far too easily. That whole idea felt like filler, actually. They implied that the warp core would be in some critical state after the attempt, but when the attempt is complete they take no action to safe the system. Gotta love Voyager writing.

It's too bad for Ethan Phillips that Neelix was written to be so childish in two episodes that wound up airing so close together, by way of hold-back from season one. Actually, of the four episodes that were held back from the first season's production—"Projections", "Elogium", "Twisted", and "The 37's"—Neelix got to be a petulant child in two of them. That's some luck. Again, gotta love Voyager writing. It's easy to see from these first-season episodes why so many Trek fans proclaim hatred for Neelix. He was written very poorly early on. Later in the series I recall that he gets better scripts, but we'll see if that impression holds as I continue re-watching.

If I had to find something to like about this episode, it's Tom Virtue getting the most screen time he gets in any of the four episodes he appeared in. I always enjoyed watching him on Even Stevens, despite the customary low quality of the scripts there. And there's something to be said also for how Kate Mulgrew took the load of bullshit Janeway was handed in the script and made it believable anyway.

Can I just have a Blu-ray set of everything Jonathan Frakes ever directed? I see, and acknowledge, all the writing issues that @LeftHandedGuitarist pointed out, but Frakes' directing makes this episode wonderfully fun in spite of them.

Voyager as a whole may not dig into its characters overly much, it's true. With Frakes calling the shots, though, there's just so much life in all the little things. This was probably the first episode of the series so far in my current rewatch where most of the crew actually seemed like the same people I remember. ("Non Sequitur" was another, but only on Harry Kim's part, since most of the cast is absent for nearly the whole episode.) Part of that is just because it's a solid quarter of the way into season two now, but I'd say the majority of the effect is due to Frakes' influence. I adored coming across episodes of Leverage that he directed, too, while watching that series over the past year or so.

Yes, Neelix is still a jealous child in this story. Yes, the "resolution" of his and Tom's "personal problem" is trite. I really don't care. If every episode of Voyager was like this, the show might not have such a poor reputation among viewers.

Chakotay disappeared from the turbolift somewhere between the Bridge and Deck 11… Continuity is hard, huh? But how do I know Chakotay was really there in the turbolift in the first place? "But you see, he wasn't really there."

In a similar vein, they apparently gave up on creating a fancy effect for Ethan Phillips' face when Kes reflects fake-Neelix's torture back at him. The cut away to pan back up didn't really work for me, but with such a tight shot there probably really wasn't a way to make a fancier practical effect work (and this was still pretty early days for computer graphics, especially on a television budget).

The mystery element of this story is quite interesting, but I must say the delusions (or hallucinations, or whatever we'll call them) weren't very imaginative. At least 90% seemed to be romantic in nature—an easy target for pretty much any character, just pick someone they like (openly or not) and insert a fantasy. Even Janeway's—intriguing at first—turned out to be the very same thing, just more roundabout.

I wonder if this focus on romantic delusions indicates a weakness in the alien's abilities. What if he can only "prey on" other beings who have strong romantic feelings for someone? This seems like something I should bring up in /r/DaystromInstitute if I ever feel like having a go at brainstorming it further.

Tanis, the Ocampa who hails Voyager and leads the visiting party, looks like he's wearing a Red Bull can for the whole episode.

Of course Suspiria will respond within "forty-seven hours." It's Star Trek, therefore it couldn't be forty-eight hours.

Does anyone else find it odd that "Security, meet me in Main Engineering" seems to have meant "One single yellow-shirt, meet me in Main Engineering"? Something tells me that Starfleet regulations wouldn't have such a small security team confront an unknown threat in the heart of a ship. It just seems really odd. (Also, he only appears in that one short segment. He wasn't with Tuvok and B'Elanna later.)

There are parts of this episode that I really like, such as the fact that Kes really gets to be a person with side interests and not just an assistant to the Doctor. But the hokey writing around Suspiria and her band of Ocampa telepaths bothers me. So much of this plot seems to come out of nowhere, or go nowhere. Especially with regard to Suspiria herself, who has an irrational hatred for the Voyager crew because she thinks they killed the Caretaker, which is kind of resolved but not really (and nothing further comes of this later in the series).

A story like this had to happen at some point, because they did say in "Caretaker" that there was another Nacene out there for Voyager to find—and to leave that thread loose at the end of the series would have been silly. I just wish it had been more…consequential.

I rather enjoyed this one. There are plot holes—yes, Maje—and flat characters with no chemistry—yes, Maje—and inept villains—yes, Maje—but it's fun anyway. Seska had a lot of potential, and while it's sad that they weren't able to make use of its full extent in this episode I appreciate that they remembered to try.

The Kazon, in my opinion, are the Achilles heel of this story. They had the numbers to take Voyager easily, but instead they fought amongst themselves over who would lead the attack and ultimately lost their advantage when Janeway's unconventional transporter tactic came into play. Too bad, so sad.

Much as I love Seska's character, it might do her good to think a bit on the semantics of what it means "to be a father". Stealing Chakotay's DNA and using it to impregnate herself grants him no agency, and I would argue that one must take an active role in the process in order "to be a father". She'll have a fatherless child, if you ask me. Hell, with the genetic technology available in the 24th century, she could probably have used her own DNA. Am I splitting hairs? Yeah, I am. But these things matter. (Also, I'm assuming that the writers consciously made that dialogue choice, and didn't simply forget to think through the semantics.)

This episode actually blurred out the name of a shop. I'm guessing the business wouldn't grant permission to use its name on screen? First time I noticed that happening in this show.

Maybe I only noticed because my guard was already up from seeing the blur on that shop's sign, but they also obscured the brand of pop filters in the recording studio with tape. (Not well enough, though. I have a couple RØDE mics of my own, so I recognized the logotype anyway.) Either this episode had to start avoiding putting brand names on screen for some production-related reason, or I just missed it before.

20 minutes later: NOPE SCRATCH THAT they've definitely pulled the brakes hard on having any logos or brand names on screen. Yukika and Mint both have tape over the Adidas branding on their shirts at the gym. Something is even up with Yeseul's shirt, though it's not as obvious as a big old stripe of tape across the whole front. Even the small Umbro logotype on Kang's jacket breast is partially covered, along with (in a later shot) the Umbro logo on his shoulder. This was definitely a mid-season change, and a drastic one at that… They weren't blatantly obscuring things like this before. I wonder if there's any background to be dug up on it.

There's an argument to be made against the predictability of this episode, and I acknowledge that. But there are so many layers to Caylem's character that I never really caught in previous viewings!

Before tonight, I just remembered Caylem as "the hat guy" because of his little routine with the Mokra guards early in the episode. I didn't pick up on it the last time I watched this episode (several years ago), but it seems clear to me now that Caylem is suffering from a form of dementia. Perhaps I'm projecting that onto him because my grandfather recently passed after spending several years fighting his own battle with Alzheimer's, but it's really striking. His struggles to recall recent events like the letter he (presumably) forgot to write coupled with his strong, robust recall of the distant past are uncannily similar to the way my grandfather would spin his wheels sometimes trying to remember something. The way Caylem gets stuck on a topic is identical to how conversations were with my grandfather a few years ago, when he was still able to hold them but was suffering the effects of memory loss.

I tried to watch an episode of Enterprise but the hotel wireless is throttled too low to stream it, so rather than try to limit the quality or anything I just picked the next episode of Voyager in my queue instead. It happened for a reason.