{"id":5612,"date":"2016-06-02T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T20:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=5612"},"modified":"2016-05-20T15:11:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T22:11:26","slug":"mark-watches-voyager-s02e04-elogium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2016\/06\/mark-watches-voyager-s02e04-elogium\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Voyager’: S02E04 – Elogium"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fourth episode of the second season of\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>, a chance meeting with a new life form affects Kes drastically. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Hey, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all know that I love when\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0goes for broke when it comes to weirdness. And good lord, this is a weird episode. VERY WEIRD. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little muddled at times, but I enjoyed it. LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TALK.<\/p>\n

The Creatures<\/b><\/p>\n

You know, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking back on the opening of this episode, and it cracks me up. Someone actually stated that\u00c2\u00a0maybe<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0they shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get too close to the swarm of aliens, and yet,\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0got too close and was nearly destroyed by it. This is why I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever run starships. I would have seen that pulsing crowd of aliens, I would have recorded a video of it or something, and then I would have kept working my way home. I get that the crew is aware of the unique position they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in here. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the first explorers for Starfleet who are in the Delta Quadrant! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the opportunity of a lifetime, but my ass would be thinking about\u00c2\u00a0surviving<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0the lifetime instead of documenting it.<\/p>\n

All right, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not actually criticizing the story here. I truly love the idea that a species would think that the\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0was a living organism and would be SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO IT. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elogium,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I am reminded of the beautiful and hilarious capacity of science fiction. The many writers for this episode took a very real scientific concept \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sexual attraction and competition \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and turned it into a funny and surreal adventure for the crew. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s admirable, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s be honest. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only one justification for this plot that needs to be made: Tuvok saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Captain, I believe we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lost our sex appeal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for this,\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek: Voyager<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Kes<\/b><\/p>\n

Sometimes, a writer chooses a topic that is loaded before they ever commit a word to the page. I admire the greater conversation brought up in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elogium\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c concerning\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0being a generational ship \u00e2\u20ac\u201c because it needed to happen. If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to take the crew over seventy years to get home, then they\u00c2\u00a0must<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0consider that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to procreate at some point in order to replace the crew with new people. It is inevitable at this point that unless\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0takes on more people on the way, the crew will shrink in size. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way around that. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only a matter of time before the next crew member dies on an away mission or because of some horrible thing they encounter on the way home.<\/p>\n

There are just a\u00c2\u00a0lot<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0of unspoken implications that come with Kes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pregnancy plot. First, let me state that Jennifer Lien is absolutely incredible here, switching between her brilliant comic timing to the most emotional scenes we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever gotten with her character. And the story, as messy as it felt at times, was a fantastic medium for Lien to show us how talented she is. I guess my issue comes with how jumbled the script feels. Initially, I thought the writers were making a reference to teenage pregnancy in Kes, since Kes was younger than she wanted to be to have children. But then she stated that she was less than two years old, and the whole thing felt REALLY FUCKING CREEPY.<\/p>\n

Yet I accepted that this was a metaphorical story. Kes was an adult, if a young one, so that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite match up. But then the story changed into one about puberty? Then it seemed to touch on the pro-choice movement? Then it seemed to be saying that all women wanted children? And then the show spent way more time on Neelix\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crisis over Kes asking to mate with him than it did on Kes\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 who would be having the child. Not Neelix. WHY DO WRITERS DO THIS. (We know why.) As electrifying as it was to watch Lien act, I felt like the story pulled me from one extreme to the other in trying to make its point.<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I mean by this being a challenging topic. Even if a writer doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intend for that response, there are certain ideas that will inevitably cause people to draw from their own experiences in order to understand them. In this case, I felt like the writers were trying to address multiple real-world things, but all at the same time. This totally could not be the case, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell otherwise!<\/p>\n

There are definitely a number of wonderful scenes mixed in, though. I loved watching Tuvok talk about his children and how unfortunate it was that he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see them. Janeway and Chakotay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversations were also fulfilling, and I always love scenes where Janeway allows herself to be vulnerable in front of him while she ponders a new conundrum. Overall, I still liked this episode a lot. Bravo,\u00c2\u00a0Voyager<\/i>! Season 2 is shaping up nicely.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elogium\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded\u00c2\u00a0here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– I am now on Patreon<\/a><\/b>!!! MANY SURPRISES ARE IN STORE FOR YOU IF YOU SUPPORT ME<\/a>.
\n– I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches will be Death Note<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em>. On Mark Reads, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards<\/i> series will replace the Emelan books.
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"