This may be Lower Decks finest penultimate episode yet. I definitely feels at this point like McMahan has a five season plan. At least for the OG Lower Deckers.

Definitely an episode that plays the emotional fiddle for TNG fans with the Sito reveal as well. Currently weighing up whether to get my partner to watch First Duty and Lower Decks before we watch it together later.

Laughed out loud at the Endor Moon base inexplicably being on this random insane weather planet.

Great to have Robbie McDunc back as Locarno as well. If nothing else this may finally kill the urban myth that they didn’t use Locarno in Voyager due to royalties once and for all. I can but only hope.

I also like that they’ve let Freeman come into her own as a Captain more than previous this season. She’s really demonstrating not just top tier tactics and diplomacy but also actually clearly keeping tabs on her crew and addressing out of character behaviour. With that said, Rutherford felt included just for an excuse to follow Freeman which was a shame.

Billups as the masked pilot surprised me. I expected it to be Locarno.

The fake out Balok puppet had be howling.

They’ve announced a small number will be made available for purchase tomorrow at 9AMPT

Perfection.

Thank you! Still being tweaked mind so may post an updated version in coming weeks/months

It does, but I didn’t have the imagination in me to come up with a Voyager C,D,E,F,G,H and I

The allegory was trans people. Hence all the talk of needing to ‘pass’ to be accepted and the wonderful lil touch of Unas child cast being the colours of the Trans flag

These sets look great, but I really hope they change the slip cover of the complete Picard series within the Legacy collection.

To not feature Rios, Jurati, Dahj/Soji or Elnor when they were main characters for two seasons is pretty insulting.

I feel like the ‘boring’ rush from sequence to sequence is happening a lot in media right now. I remember feeling the same during a couple of episodes of the last season on Mando.

Almost like paying and rewarding writers properly, so you get their best work is important.

Best I can put it down too is that they’re keen to make the characters seem strong and powerful, but they forget to set up proper flaws, tension and stakes/the ones that used to exist have been ruined by now over a decade of magic resurrection macguffins whenever somebody dies in popular media that fans like.

As sub par as TNG Season 1 was, and regardless of the toxic behind the scenes environment that led to it, we can’t deny that them killing off a principle character was a bold move than really set the stakes that anybody could die and that it wouldn’t always be in a blaze of glory.

There’s been a fan theory for a while that the reason for Discovery’s really long nacelles was that the ship (and Glenn) were specially modified for the spore drive experiments.

This episode would seem to reinforce that.

Also interestingly the saucer seems to be the one from the original (substandard) CG teaser Discovery saucer, rather than the final show version.

Removed by mod

I mean, I think the entire episode which revolves around how quick they can build the Delta Flyer is that reference…

C’mon Fair Haven gave us the line ‘Delete the wife’, it deserves awards for that alone

Interestingly it was almost an opposite phenomenon, Voyager was widely liked at the time but became less popular as serialised TV shows took off.

It’s now coming back again as people are getting a bit burned out by everything having to have a season long plot line

It always amuses me that Seasons 1&2 had the most serialisation, but are often the least liked by the same people that complain the show wasn’t serialised enough

There were a number of angles for Chakotay I think.

The romance with Janeway was obviously squashed by Mulgrew but could have been an interesting one to explore.

But the biggest missed opportunity was not making him into a more official counsellor/advice position - we have here a highly spiritual man who manages to keep a cool head in most situations. Use that. Don’t have Seven go to The Doctor for social lessons (as fun as blind leading the blind plots are), have it be Chakotay.

I feel like they kind of realised this angle in S7 when they had Seven working with the Chakotay hologram, but the less said about how that turned into that ridiculous romance the better.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a show about people in a dire situation, where instead of everything being shit the lights are on and they’re productively working together to accomplish their aims.

A feel like that Ronald D. Moore rant that came out after he left the show really damaged the perception of the show in many fan circles. This damage getting even worse when Moore went on to create BSG which is some spectacular television.

Many of the continuity/‘reset button’ complaints seem to stem from it and today even Moore admits that he was being unreasonably harsh on the show. His issue was with Brannon Braga and his own problems taking instruction/being led by somebody he’s had creative clashes with who used to just be a colleague.

But Voyager could not and never would be BSG. The Federation is far more advanced than the colonies were as a prime sticking point. Are we really going to see the ship get damage over the course of the series as though replicators aren’t onboard?

Did Voyager play it safe in some areas? Sure. But it was a network tent pole for UPN. Much of the aspects of DS9 that people love wouldn’t exist without Voyager being the ‘star’ at the time at taking the networks attention. Not to mention that DS9 was as bad for, if not worse at reset buttons - remember that pylon that got blown up and was just fine the next ep? Remember how they blew up the Defiant and just went ‘lol here’s a new one with different carpet’ for the finale?

That was just the reality of TV at the time. CG got significantly cheaper in the years after they both went off air - as evidenced even within Trek with the persistent damage in Enterprises third season.

I’m also really glad that you mentioned Seven and how brave they were with a number of those stories. There was clearly network pressure for ‘T&A’ and they could have gone the very easy (TNG) route of having a character in a skin tight outfit that rotates through love interest and sexual assault plots for focus episodes but otherwise just stands around stating the obvious (Sorry Troi), instead they introduced an attractive character in a catsuit and immediately made her but heads with the Captain, run around like a maverick and in the process gave us one of Treks very best character development arcs (somewhat at the expense of other members of the cast mind).

We also have to remember that they wanted (and needed due to VHS recorders being unreliable at best) a show where you could kiss a few episodes but still tune in and have a good time. I think, perhaps better than any other Trek Voyager succeeded in its aims in this regard.

Coolant leak!