Jellyn’s Collection of Curiosities

Summary: That Vulcan in Engineering? Now we find out why he showed up a couple episodes ago.

“Blood Fever” — this may be the pon farr episode. It may sound like I’m obsessed with this episode, and perhaps I am mostly because it’s one I vaguely remember. There’s not a lot of episodes that I vaguely remember.

Gallicite – one more thing a starship can’t do without, apparently.

Her choices aren’t limited to the 73 male crewmembers, unless she wants to limit it that way.

Well, now, it is a pon farr episode. Although the one I vaguely recall was Tuvok’s.. hrm.

Ah, a cortical monitor. Let’s see how long it takes before he rips that off.

Okay, now I have another vague memory. The episode where Torres goes through pon farr.

Except, Doctor, I doubt the hologram can simulate anything in the way of the telepathic bond.

I think they’ve said the word ‘sex’ in this episode more than in all previous Star Trek episodes combined.

*Snerk* And now a commercial for the shake weight. For men.

And now Torres and Paris are going at it and across the screen is a black bar that says ‘Get more Action’. Gotta love ya, Spike, srsly.

Ha ha, Tuvok, very smart. ‘Commander, I see no alternative but to follow Vulcan tradition.’ Only with Chakotay is that argument likely to work so well and so quickly.

CRAP!!

Why did you have to ruin a perfectly acceptable episode by ending it that way?

*whineSeven’scomingwhinewhine*

Summary: Death is weird and trippy, man.

We start with Janeway and Chakotay alone in a shuttle. They encounter some sort of ion storm while trying to land. Do we see where this is going?

Questions: Why are the captain and first officer leaving the ship together?
Why are the shuttles, which are designed for landing on planets, always running into weather and weirdness they can’t handle?
How many shuttles do they have left anyway?
How hot and heavy will the romance be in this episode?

Wow. That shuttle out of control looked like a really bad model shot.

And, that was short. Already at the credits.

Okay, that made me laugh. Chakotay’s doing CPR and I’m about ready to type here ‘don’t you have anything more advanced than that?’ And the next minute, he’s injecting her with a hypospray that has an INSTANT effect. Why did he not do that in the first place?!

Reboot!

No win scenario. Play it over and over until you do win. You’re in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

Sacajawea? Seriously?

I had to Google, but it looks like the other named shuttles are named after people. I think I was thinking of the rivers used in DS9.

Blah blah blah. The crew liked and respected you. They’re sad you’re dead. You are dead. No, really, you’re dead. Okay, maybe not.

A silly and pointless episode.

But, hey, moonlight sail on Lake George! She probably did not mean Lake George, NY. That’d just be weird.

Okay. Google is only showing me one Lake George on the entire planet?! She really did mean Lake George? Home of The Great Escape? Wow.

Or is Google somehow narrowing it down because it knows that’s the closest Lake George to me, or somehow thinks it’s the one I want. And is just not showing me all the other ones?

Hrrrm.

Summary: The holodeck malfunctions. Or does it? No, it doesn’t. Turns out an alien chick who was living alone in her parent’s basement space station outpost thingee amuses herself by playing on other people’s holodecks. She creates a human avatar to mess with Kim’s head and further mess with Tuvok’s head, but ohnoes, love is in the recycled air. Will this antisocial gamer geek have a happy ending to her fangirl crush on a Vulcan? See the bottom of this post to find out.

Poor Tuvok. He has to teach Kes how to use her super-awesome brain powers. He has to teach the not-a-psychopath-but-he-sure-seems-like-it how to not be a killing machine. And now he has to help Kim not be in love with a hologram.

Kim should’ve gone to the doctor. A lot of that first stage of being ‘in love’ is hormonal. Just.. fix his brain chemistry and delete the hologram from the computer. Problem solved.

If it even is a problem. I mean, why should it be? So you’re in love with her. So, date her. Make mad passionate love to her. Eventually you’ll decide it’s not working and break up with her. You’ve got all the time in the world to sort it out. Probably safer than having a bad breakup with a member of the crew you later have to work with.

It makes sense that Vulcans have more terms for emotions than humans. Which means they’re capable of feeling and differentiating between more emotions. More subtle differences. Where am I going with this? Why aren’t more humans writing poetry in Vulcan?

Here’s another solution to this ‘problem’. Someone should slightly modify her program so she responds differently to Kim. So she’s not the same person he fell in love with. But not too drastically. Subtle-like.

In the middle of a nebula no one from your quadrant has ever seen before, only theorized. You don’t know how it works. But the entire first shift bridge crew is going to the luau?

But of course Kim isn’t in love with a hologram. It’s some alien energy being, probably from the nebula, that can read his thoughts and whatnot. And has now sunk her teeth into Tuvok.

Engineering Vulcan is back. Did not peg him as a love interest for Torres. (Light on the love and the interest, so far.)

Kim: I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.

Does it matter? If Torres needs you, she’ll just say ‘Torres to Kim. Get your butt down here.’

That line was only establishing he intended to go to his quarters and detoured to the holodeck instead. Other lines would’ve accomplished the same thing. ‘I’m going to go lie down and clear my head.’ or something.

Ah, turns out chick was just playing with a human avatar. And fell in love with Tuvok. See how that is worse than falling in love with a hologram?

Bleh. Whatever. Stupid ending to a stupid plot.

Summary Continued: NO! But she taught the two geekboys a lesson about friendship. And really, that’s all that matters, right?

Summary: Neelix meets up with an old friend and they lie, cheat, steal, kill, and lie some more. And I don’t think he ever did get that map.

“Fair Trade” — so this must be an episode about coffee. Or Ferengi. Or Ferengi coffee.

Why does Neelix want to be a security officer? Other than his crush on Tuvok.

Male Vulcan. I make note of, in case it becomes important (read: is contradicted) later. Although he got a name and a line, so it’s possible he’s a traitor or a goner in the very near future.

Okay, now, I guess I was going to assume that ‘gagh’ was a specific kind of worm. One which you’d think Voyager would’ve been unlikely to carry with them. Hey.. could you replicate one and them let it reproduce (probably ‘bisexually’)? Or can you never replicate it live, so gagh could never be served authentically from a replicator? Or does ‘gagh’ just apply to like.. most any kind of edible worm? And you’d think Neelix would’ve been on the ship long enough to know that most of the crew does not enjoy eating worms, live or otherwise.

Moving on from the gagh…

Now, Neelix being interested in engineering makes more sense to me than security. It could come in useful to him later. If even teaching him that stuff doesn’t violate the Prime Directive!

Now is this a case of Neelix being flaky and deciding he wants to learn everything because he can’t make up his mind? Or because he wants to be a Renaissance Man? Or because he’s been taken over by an alien entity that wants to learn all it can so it can sabotage the ship?

Yay for Torres being called sir by the Vulcan ensign.

How is Neelix intoning ‘I believe this is the region of space known as the Nekrit Expanse’ a good place to cut the scene and go to credits? It’s not like he called it ‘the region of space known as the DUST CLOUDS OF DOOM’.

Janeway: What can you tell us about this expanse, Mr. Neelix?
Neelix: It’s a vast territory.

Way to go, Neelix.

Oh, I think I see what’s going on. Neelix has finally reached the limit of his knowledge about the Delta Quadrant. Now that the snail of a ship has finally gone out where he hasn’t gone before. So now he’s angsting he’ll no longer be useful on the ship. Even though he’s the cook, and Kes is vital to the doctor. And he should know everyone well enough by now to know they’re not going to just dump a friend off on a nearby planet.

Paris: Pleasant fellow.

He’s obligated to say that whenever they meet someone abrupt.

Angst, angst, angst.

So is this Wix guy going to try to get Neelix’s job? Hey, just knock him out and swap places with him, they won’t know. Talaxians all look alike.

I wonder if by the end of this, Neelix ends up losing his ship to this guy. After he gets everyone in trouble first, of course.

Blah blah, Wix lied, he can’t be trusted. Stupid, Neelix. Blah blah blah.

Neelix is not at all equipped to handle emotional blackmail.

You really think Janeway would be surprised you were a contraband smuggler, Neelix? Really?

Good thing Troi isn’t on this ship. She would’ve known Neelix was guilty right away, and the rest of the episode would’ve been a non-starter.

Wait, wait, what? They don’t know that Neelix took a shuttle?

Never in any of this has Neelix said one thing about Kes. Like, how stealing warp plasma would put Kes’s position on the ship at risk. Or, like, how Kes would be horrified at everything Neelix is doing.

Instead of labelling the shipping containers with um.. labels, why are you not using RFID chips or something? You should be able to just scan all the containers until you find the one you want. Or tell your PADD which one you want and it would display which one it was.

Glad they had this heartfelt talk, Paris and Neelix. Lying is bad, mmkay? Don’t do it, mmkay?

I’m sorry, what’s so bad about a cryostatic prison? One-way trip to the future! Wix seems to have no friends or family. He might as well serve his prison time and then wait for the regime change and hope he does better when he gets out.

Bah, are you seriously still trusting him, Neelix? What a dope!

Neelix wakes up in sickbay. It was all a dream. And you were there, and you. But Kes wasn’t. What happened to her anyway?

Oh, look, she showed up for one line. And now Neelix is in troouuuuble.

Imagine, Neelix, if you’d just had that conversation with her (or better yet, with Chakotay) an hour ago, you could’ve saved us all a lot of stupidity and angst.