[5.8/10] Good lord, Kaz is just a complete idiot. How he continually manages to get hoodwinked and make bad decisions in any situation he comes across is beyond me. Is this supposed to be relatable? Are we supposed to empathize with Kaz missing blindly obvious clues that he’s being taken for a ride or that things are going to go pear-shaped.
At least he does something decent for once, fixing the Fireball for Tam rather than just riding it hard and putting it back wet as usual. It’s pleasant to see him be that considerate. And him pitching in for Flix and Orka so that Flix can see his mom is nice too (even if it’s to pay off the debt). But then things just completely spin out when an obvious thief and troublemaker tries to get him out of the shop so he can steal an expensive tool, and what do you know, Kaz falls for it.
The rest of the episode, with Kaz getting stuck in a shipping crate and BB-8 trying to thwart the thief, is more static, undifferentiated action and slapstick. There’s something a little amusing about Kaz having to contend with Flix’s pet “Bitey”, but otherwise this is standard, uninspired stuff. The bit with Flix and Orka being glad that Kaz let the tool go down with the ship than let a longtime competitor get his hands on it is solid, but the bulk of the episode is just not enough to sustain your interest.
I do appreciate the hints that the First Order is mining (presumably for kyber crystals to power Starkiller Base or so their weapon can tap into that planet’s core?), but it’s a lot of nonsense to get to that point.
Overall, kind of a waste of time.
This plot might have been enjoyable if the characters were better developed. I feel like the show would feel much more like Star Wars if the focus was on Alphabet Squadron, instead of a human Jar Jar Binks. The visuals and camera angles were top notch, though.
Another episode, another conversation about the divorce. Well, at least they didn't reuse all of the "jar of pickles" joke from before.
Someone on the prop team should have caught that air bubble in the truth serum syringe. And they still have yet to create a space battle with the Krill that really feels dangerous. So far it always feels like the Orville is just holding back until they take enough damage to get annoyed and finally retaliate. (Speaking of which, the Krill probably will do just that since the Orville destroyed their ship.)
B R A D D O U R I F R U L E S !
Yep, I replaced my entire nitpick section with that. Except to call out Janeway for saying, "Work on The Doctor with it, B'Elanna." That line should have been ADR'd so fast… at least for the syndication & DVD releases, if not in time for the initial broadcast.
If nothing else, this episode sets up the first half of a really great character arc for Lon Suder. I treasure every one of Brad Dourif's guest appearances, just as @LeftHandedGuitarist seems to. His guest role on The X-Files came around my queue a couple of months ago (1x13 "Beyond the Sea") and I was beyond excited as soon as I saw his face. That Dourif only appeared in three Voyager episodes is one of the series' biggest shortcomings, if you ask me.
But, I'm not really here to fanboy. (Well, maybe a little? But I shouldn't overdo it.)
"Basics, Part I" is based¹ on a rather hokey premise—that Captain Janeway would risk endangering the ship to save a child created using her first officer's DNA, but without his consent. It presumes that Chakotay would care about the boy (and tries to show us Chakotay's own journey toward caring, through a vision quest early on). We later find out the child isn't Chakotay's, but whatever. The child is really just a plot device, both for the writers and for Seska.²
The end result makes it bearable, though. Voyager's crew are left to fend for themselves on a volcanically active planet inhabited by dangerous wildlife and hostile, primitive humanoids. They must go back to the basics³ of their training in order to survive—but I'll talk about that properly in my review of Part II.
fun episode we get a lot of insight about Lucy as a character with some pretty good action Beats
That really was a stupid decision. It's not surprising for Judy to decide what she did, but for the mercenary it doesn't make sense in the slightest. He is always the sensible one and it sure looked like the surfer guy didn't have a chance. Why he would help her doesn't make sense in the slightest.
The Traveler's physiology doesn't even register on Dr. Crusher's instruments, but somehow she knows exactly what to give him as a stimulant to bring him conscious? OK.
I think the best summary of my thoughts on this episode is: "Not as good as I remembered."
Once again, Star Trek: The Next Generation takes its title literally and does an homage to its predecessor. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (TOS 1x01, or 1x03 as broadcast) took Captain Kirk's Enterprise to the edge of our galaxy, so therefore Captain Picard's Enterprise must visit the edge of the universe—albeit under the influence of an alien life form, instead of a psionically gifted human.
We're still early in TNG's run, and the writing is still a bit (OK, a lot) off. The plot doesn't hang together that tightly, but we do at least get the setup for Wesley's eventual departure from the series in season 7. Both the Traveler's attachment to Wesley and Kosinski's self-delusion that he is responsible for the warp engine "tuning" seem much less fleshed-out than they could have been. Wesley in particular, since it becomes important years later. Too much screen time was needed for the main plot of "oh no, the ship is in semi-believable danger!" (I didn't buy Picard's extreme concern for the safety of his ship, either. Aside from his own turbolift door opening into what appeared to be the vacuum of space, no one else seemed to think anything dangerous into reality…)
Overall, I'm going to chalk this one up as "could have been better, but not awful."
At least they predicted that the Y2K bug won't happen in 2000. LoL
[7/10] I will never say no to Hondo being his hilariously immoral self, but the whole “bad guys all turn on another” bit is a cliché. Granted, you kind of have to rely on clichés when doing these two-minute stories, but still. Qi’Ra is fine, and I guess this integrates her with one semi-villain-aligned character from the prequel era and one from the OT era, but it’s fairly paint-by-numbers otherwise.
Pretty cool to see badass Jedi Luke and Leia back in action, and while the giant Ewok-imperiling monster is a little corny, it at least explains why the Ewoks had all those traps at the ready in RotJ. Plus, the animation was actually decent on this one, with some creative angles this micro-series hasn’t done before. A fun little short.
EDIT: 6/19/2022 I rewatched this one after viewing the Ewoks T.V. series and films, and...it doesn’t add much. It’s kind of fun to see Kneesa brought into canon, and seeing the Gorax from Caravan of Courage fight Luke Skywalker is fun. But overall, these are just minor easter eggs for longtime fans.
Kind of a cuteness overload, but a pleasant one. The fact that nobody in the short speaks English makes it rely on visual storytelling, which works well for these brief little interludes, and seeing Chewey help out the parental Porgs look after their porglets was too sweet for even my cold cynical heart to resist.
this awesome finale convinces me that the season should have been with 6 episodes tops! unfortunately they made it longer just to increase the number of the episodes. episodes 3 to 6 could have been condensed in just 1 or 2... great show anyway. Season Finale 10 out of 10
Biggest surprise of 2016. What a finale. Can't wait to see how the story continues!
I don't know that I really need a TLJ interstitial adventure, but this was fine. I'm a broken record, but it's hard to tell a story in two minutes, and so most of these resort to just throwing some Star Wars-y obstacle in our heroes' way and have them overcome it. As obstacles go, rainbow jellyfish are pretty mild, but again, nothing offensive here either.
This one was the right sort of bit to do in three minutes. It's a simple story (basically a riff of the lion with a thorn in its paw) but it's clear; it has some nice character moments for Rey, and there's even some of that fun creature feature stuff that Star Wars is known for. A nice bit.
Mostly fine, if underwhelming. Any episode centered around space battles is going to have tough sledding given the cheap flash animation look of the series, but it communicates what's happening well enough. Little compelling but little bad about it either.
There's a lot of storytelling shortcuts you have to take when you're trying to tell a story in 3 minutes, and it leads to a lot of these shorts feeling same-y. There's some brief danger, the danger is taken care of, followed by a brief moment of denouement. This had little to recommend it, beyond getting to hear Daisy Ridley and Jon Boyega again, but that was counteracted by the awful Harrison Ford impression and the mostly unearned "we make a great team." Not a good outing.
Another fine enough mini-story. Rescuing a cat from storm trooper is a little easy as plot go, but I suppose you have to play with ideas that are going to have instant resonance if you're going to try to tell a story in just a few minutes. The animation and character design still looks pretty off, but otherwise a fine outing.
Decent start for this little series, I really like the idea of expanding the universe with these little tidbits too.
Well, the animation is pretty atrocious and stiff, but it's a fun idea. Lays on the "Rey has the force" bit a little too strongly, but it's a fun mini-adventure. The idea of an alien creature who eats junk and travels through the sand is neat, and the obstacle works for a three minute video.
"Depressurize the shuttle bay"? What happened to the atmospheric containment field they usually have across the shuttle bay door?
Tahj (oh hey, Tahj Mowry did something besides Sister, Sister and Smart Guy) and the First Prelate actually use the word "children", so there goes the assumption excuse for Tuvok thinking they're really young kids.
Much as I appreciate having "a Tuvok episode", this isn't a great episode outside of that. I refuse to believe that none of the "children" let slip a single hint to their true age at any point.
Alcia comes around a bit too easily. She goes from incensed to friendly in practically the blink of an eye. Her line saying that "their aging process is reversed" was a nice touch in a "look who's talking" kind of way, but the three kids were more developed than her character.
The concept of beings who are born "old" and "age" in reverse has been around at least since F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button",published in 1922. Unfortunately, there's no particularly good way to square that idea with the physical realities of birth, and this episode makes the reality bit even more difficult with the Drayans' assertion of a "powerful instinct" to return to the moon when they reach the end of their life. If they evolved on the planet, how would they reach this "source of all life" in the days before their culture developed space travel? It would be an odd instinct indeed if it compelled them to do something that was actually impossible. (Plenty of animal instincts compel various species to do difficult tasks, as with salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Doing the flat-out impossible isn't really instinct territory, though.)
TIL sinuses are part of the digestive system. (Spoiler: They're not.)
"Somebody put that out!"
"What happened to automatic fire suppression?"
"That's the panel that caught fire."
Well at least the Orville has automatic fire suppression, even if it doesn't have teleporters.
Nitpick: Gordon would have been visible around that corner from where the guard was standing.
Another nitpick: Gordon's holographic disguise disappeared the tuning implement from his hand when he got it reactivated, for some reason. (Not exactly a complicated transition effect, but clearly Scott Grimes forgot to pick up the tuner prop for the second shot.)
After just introducing the possibility of a Borg encounter in the previous episode I would have preferred a couple of episodes before they pick that up. Even if it wasn't exactly THE Borg they encounter here.
I think the idea of an individual Collective (an oxymoron) interesting. But since we leave them behind there isn't that much to it. And why do those stories always have to have a romantic angle ?
And in typical Janeway style her morals are always where the story needs them to be. If something suits her needs she can bend rules and regulations, step over ethics and morals. If not....well than it´s "who am I to interfere, what do I care and think about what might happen if I do"
I guess that´s why I never liked her much.
YOU BETRAYED YOUR UNIFORM! Lol
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.
Kes trying to have emotion is one of the worst things about Voyager.
3,9/10
Fail. Kes Is like a pre Geoffry Baratheon. But Not so well written and also Not so good played. There was no Second i belived that she Is gone bad.
Love how it simultaneously uses in earnest and parodies Star Trek tropes. And the flip to exploring toxic masculinity/"Nice Guy"/fanboy culture is clever. One of the funniest Black Mirror too, and Cristin Milioti is always awesome. Maybe the first episode of the show that I wish will get sequels, as I could watch the further adventures of Milioti-clone and her crew.
Are we struggling for material... Silly premise for an episode and silly outcome
[7.1/10] If I'm not mistaken, this was Plinkett's very first video review, and it shows. The editing and production aren't as tight, and the insight isn't as refined as it would be in later videos. It's still enjoyable though. Plinkett has a great knowledge of Trek, and so it's amusing and a bit illuminating to see him contrast and compare with how things are in the movies vs. how they are in the show. And the laughs are still there with his awkward delivery and good comic timing. (The way he says "hung up their hats...their space hats" cracked me up.)
The only issue is that most of his beefs with the film are nitpicks. Sure, he does point out a few places where the story straight up makes little-to-no sense, but a lot of his criticisms are tiny things that don't really affect the success or failure of the film as a whole. What's so great about his famous Phantom Menace review is that while it points out the stupid stuff baked into the flick, it also gets into why the story doesn't work at a fundamental level, something he only grazes here.
Still, you have to crawl before you can walk, and while I roll my eyes at some of his knocks, it's still an entertaining half-hour of Trek-related criticism.
