{"id":6151,"date":"2017-02-15T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T21:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6151"},"modified":"2017-02-06T18:58:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T02:58:47","slug":"mark-watches-voyager-s05e12-bride-of-chaotica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/02\/mark-watches-voyager-s05e12-bride-of-chaotica\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Voyager&#8217;: S05E12 &#8211; Bride of Chaotica!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the twelfth episode of the fifth season of <i>Voyager<\/i>, what the HELL. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch <i>Star Trek<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is a fun episode, mainly due to the fact that Kate Mulgrew KILLS it while chewing every piece of scenery in the room. That&#8217;s intentional, of course, and watching her struggle to immerse herself in Tom&#8217;s 30s-era pulp is an endless delight. Otherwise? I wouldn&#8217;t say that this episode is all that memorable. It introduces PHOTONICS LIFE FORMS!!! <i>Star Trek<\/i> canon now has OTHER PHOTONIC LIFE FORMS. This was such a cool and exciting thing, especially since the Doctor got a chance to meet other lifeforms more like himself than any other species he had met.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, they&#8217;re barely in this episode. The potential for a first contact relationship to be developed is lost amidst the absurd drama of &#8220;Bride of Chaotica!&#8221; At times, I didn&#8217;t feel it mattered that much. I expected that by the end of the episode, someone on <i>Voyager<\/i> would get to talk to the unnamed beings about their world or dimension. I&#8217;m realizing now how impossible that is, but <i>still<\/i>. I feel like I was teased with this possibility, and then it was taken away from me.<\/p>\n<p>So what do we have left? Well, first of all, there&#8217;s plenty of evidence here that Janeway is much better at role-playing than Tom Paris is. HANG ON, I&#8217;LL EXPLAIN. Every time we&#8217;ve seen one of these <i>Captain Proton<\/i> holodeck stories, Tom <i>barely<\/i> commits to his character. More often than not, he&#8217;s making commentary about the story and its relevance to the time period. In fact, this episode made it seem like he&#8217;s seen <i>every<\/i> installment of this serial, so much so that nothing about it surprises him. I even wondered aloud during the video what sort of value this had for Tom Paris. If he knows it all, is any of it <i>fun<\/i> to participate in? Does Harry care that Tom constantly spoils the plot, or is <i>knowing<\/i> the whole story part of the joy of immersion? Look, I&#8217;m not saying I needed the show to address these sort of questions, especially since this episode isn&#8217;t all that meta. However, once Janeway strutted majestically into this episode, I felt that Tom was simply not having the same kind of fun she was. Her costume was better; her accent was better; her character felt like an actual part of this universe. OH MY GOD, I AM JUDGING TOM PARIS BECAUSE HE DOESN&#8217;T COSPLAY AS WELL AS JANEWAY.<\/p>\n<p>Look, I honestly don&#8217;t care about this in any real-world scenario. Instead, I&#8217;m obsessed with the fact that Janeway just upstaged Tom in this episode. SHE WAS THE BEST THING HERE. It&#8217;s too bad that there&#8217;s not much more here than that, but hey. Janeway as a femme fatale villain named Arachnia was totally awesome.<\/p>\n<p>The video for &#8220;Bride of Chaotica!&#8221; can be downloaded <a href=\"https:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/products\/mark-watches-voyager-season-5\">here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/markdoesstuff?ty=h\" target=\"_blank\">I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You&#8217;ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b><br \/>\n&#8211; I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/tour-dates-appearances\/\" target=\"_blank\">Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a><br \/>\n&#8211; My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/calendar\/embed?src=815s3sbr8clhdi9tn8k7r3tim4%40group.calendar.google.com&amp;ctz=America\/Los_Angeles\">Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0<b>My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced <a href=\"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2016\/06\/here-is-the-updated-mw-double-features-schedule\/\">here.<\/a><br \/>\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/markdoesstuff\">Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;ve got a community page up that I&#8217;m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Voyager, what the HELL. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[614,656],"tags":[615],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek","category-voyager","tag-mark-watches-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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