Story: Real Life
Written By: Jeri Taylor
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Year: 1997
This is a classic case of Voyager’s good news/bad news. The good news is that the A-story with the Doctor’s family is fairly interesting, but the bad news is that the B-story is a standard and forgettable story about some space anomaly that goes down uninteresting paths.
First the bad: The B-story is so boring, so filled with technobabble that it becomes incomprehensible at times, and so forgettable that you barely remember the previous scene by the time you return to the story. That is the big thing...it is completely jarring with the Doctor story. You got Janeway sending her crew on dangerous missions with space anomalies purely because she is curious. Worst Captain ever.
The Doctor’s family is actually a very interesting plot line, in which the hologram tries to better understand his patients through creating his own holographic family. When his creation is too perfect (makes the Cleavers seem like the Bundys), Torres decides to help him make a more realistic family by creating some random elements into the mix, which makes the Doctor have to truly deal with family and learn from the experience. It was a good idea, it could have benefited from the lack of the run of the mill b-story getting in the way and actually expanding the family more...but oh well...that’s Voyager for ya.
It’s sloppy writing, the way TNG was sloppy in it’s first couple of seasons, just slap to completely unrelated stories together.
NEXT TIME: Voth
Written By: Jeri Taylor
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Year: 1997
This is a classic case of Voyager’s good news/bad news. The good news is that the A-story with the Doctor’s family is fairly interesting, but the bad news is that the B-story is a standard and forgettable story about some space anomaly that goes down uninteresting paths.
The Doctor’s family is actually a very interesting plot line, in which the hologram tries to better understand his patients through creating his own holographic family. When his creation is too perfect (makes the Cleavers seem like the Bundys), Torres decides to help him make a more realistic family by creating some random elements into the mix, which makes the Doctor have to truly deal with family and learn from the experience. It was a good idea, it could have benefited from the lack of the run of the mill b-story getting in the way and actually expanding the family more...but oh well...that’s Voyager for ya.
It’s sloppy writing, the way TNG was sloppy in it’s first couple of seasons, just slap to completely unrelated stories together.
NEXT TIME: Voth