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That was one odd thing about Season 1 - having lots of Romulan Refugees and yet the Romulans had a whole empire, which in theory should have been able to absorb the population of just one world.

The Empire still likely exists in some form. Its political and cultural centre is gone but the Tal Shiar would have needed a huge industrial base to build a fleet that size.
I think the reason we see so many refugees is that the empire was very centralised. The empire claimed a whole swathe of space but just how much of that was colonised or developed is anyones guess. The supremacy complex might also have a part to play. Why go to other worlds when Romulus is perfect?

On Harry Kim;

Part of the issue IMO is that he exemplifies Voyager's greatest shortcoming. The status quo of the show rarely changes, no matter what happens or what lessons the crew learns. Some things come back, like the Scorpion 2 parter and Kes, but for the most part characters will have experiences and in stark contrast to both TNG and DS9, they don't really evolve from those experiences.

Except for B'lana and Tom a bit. Everyone else? Harry has all kinds of experiences, but he never really grows out of being a naive freshman ensign with little to no experience, even six years into the show.

That blame belongs on the writers IMO though. The behind-the-scenes has always been more interesting than the show and apparently Garrett Wang had a lot of issues with the show writers never letting him do things the way he wanted and rarely giving him changes to really show his character.

Honestly Voyager felt like they were trying to make Original Series. Get right back to the original roots of ST with exploring Alien of the Week every week.

This was very jarring after TNG and then DS9 had both pushed for more story based adventures. TNG started and had a few, DS9 went way way further. Even though most of the original cast actually survive till the end (I think its only Jadzia who changes and that was the Actress moving on and even then they wrote a replacement into the series really rather well).

So Voyage was the next stage in evolution and yet it went backward.
I think when you were on board each week it was ok; but when you look back you can see the oddities that it felt like a step backward in story telling and presentation after the DS9

I've said this elsewhere but it's important to remember that Trek had multiple different producers and showrunners running in parallel. Voyager absolutely was envisioned as a way to get back to 'classic' dillema of the week storylines with a return to the status quo by end of episode which is why, per Rick Berman, they needed to throw that ship as far away from the ongoing meta plot of the Dominion War as they possibly could. The problem came after, when they decided to market it like it was a perilous shakey situation where there would be danger and consequences - which they played up because Voyager was also a flagship show for a new network. If only they had made it a movieverse/tng midquel featuring the Excelsior or something.

As for Harry Kim, another fun bit in the autobiography, Janeway notes that despite being on the ops position for his sheer capability, Kim was the junior most officer on the ship, literally straight out of the academy (his parents called the captain because he'd forgotten his clarinet at home!) and despite absolutely deserving a promotion, he had an entire chain of command in front of him who'd earned their pips offscreen in crisis after crisis so it just wasn't feasible to do it. She did make a point of giving him that long overdue promotion before relinquishing command of Voyager though.

Also, his girlfriend waited for him. They got married and had a ton of kids.

Not sure if it popped up yet but S4 of Lower Decks will be out this summer with S5 currently in the writing stage.
S2 of SNW is coming out the on the 15th of June as well.

Anxiously awaiting more Lower Decks.

 LordofHats wrote:
On Harry Kim;

Part of the issue IMO is that he exemplifies Voyager's greatest shortcoming. The status quo of the show rarely changes, no matter what happens or what lessons the crew learns. Some things come back, like the Scorpion 2 parter and Kes, but for the most part characters will have experiences and in stark contrast to both TNG and DS9, they don't really evolve from those experiences.

Except for B'lana and Tom a bit. Everyone else? Harry has all kinds of experiences, but he never really grows out of being a naive freshman ensign with little to no experience, even six years into the show.

That blame belongs on the writers IMO though. The behind-the-scenes has always been more interesting than the show and apparently Garrett Wang had a lot of issues with the show writers never letting him do things the way he wanted and rarely giving him changes to really show his character.

I’d agree with that. For the most part, the cast aren’t the problem with Voyager. That almost entirely stems from the Writer’s Room. Rather than spin a compelling tale about the struggles of crossing a quadrant to get home, we got Star Trek The Next Generation But Like Over There.

Neelix and his actor can get squarely in the bin though. Utterly awful character.

"Neelix and his actor can get squarely in the bin though. Utterly awful character."
Agreed. If Voyager was a Klingon ship he would be fed to a Targ just after saying hello

Maybe it’s the Jar Jar Effect.

A potentially interesting character and role within the crew, utterly wasted by imbecilic “comedy” writing.

And morale office? Morale officer?. You find an irritating stranger, with a taste in worryingly young women, and figure “you and your craaaaaaazy zany personality are exact what my crew need to cheer them up”.

If that was a British crew, the First Officer would’ve said “Who’s this Richard Cranium” and hoofed him off the ship.

I know I’ve banged on about it at some length, but Voyager should’ve been more BSG. They get abducted, and find various other ships from different periods stranded. But given Voyager has bio-neural gel, they’re not marooned themself. Spend some time setting up a sort of mini-federation type alliance. They “we have the tech to get you all home, eventually. But we’ll need to work together”.

So much more story telling potential as they challenge each other’s cultural norms and attitudes to risk and opportunity.

But no. They’d just swept TNG’s writer’s room’s floor, and all those rubbish bits were just recycled into a nonsensical, consequence free boredom. Where no-one ever develops. Nothing significantly changes. No-one is ever truly challenged.

Hell, have the last season be where, having fled The Borg with new advanced tech previously unknown in the Alpha Quadrant, the crew of Voyager’s ragtag fleet arrive on their native turf, and try to pull everyone else together to tackle The Borg who are coming, because you mightily ticked them off.

I wonder if they’ll ever try to explain why sometimes the phasers blow holes thru changlings and kill them, leaving a corpse behind. Sometimes they just vaporize them. And sometimes they just knock them down for a few seconds and they can get right back up.

Also I know it’s hard to track numbers with shapeshifters, but we saw the boarding party and how many were in it, saw several of them getting vaporized, and then they had just as many left when they took the bridge? Unless they faked every death they didn’t seem to suffer any attrition.

Phasers have always been a bit variable. I just put it down to the fact that there's no standard power settings past stun so everyone kind of keeps them on a bit of a variable range. Which can account for how sometimes they do wounds and other times blast whole chunks away.

It might also just be how often they are fired due to battery drain and such. If you're going into a firefight you might tone the power down to last longer etc...

This was all in the same firefight though.

 AduroT wrote:
This was all in the same firefight though.

Could just be the dice didn't always roll in their favour?

Not Tuvok! You bastards!!!

I'm struggling to enjoy this again.

It’s all feeding into the Federation Just Being Good Guys Is A Myth angle. We first saw this in Section 31, and of course Captain Sisko.

If I’m completely honest? Much as I’ve enjoyed this episodically, I don’t remember the events of each episode as sharply I do The Mandalorian.

I’m looking forward to being able to watch the whole of the thing in a session or three, as I think it might play better.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I’m looking forward to being able to watch the whole of the thing in a session or three, as I think it might play better.

I certainly felt that with season 1 esp with its slower start. Which as one long watch would be fine, but did leave some chomping at the bit to get into some action/mobility in the story when it took a fairly long while to establish itself

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s all feeding into the Federation Just Being Good Guys Is A Myth angle. We first saw this in Section 31, and of course Captain Sisko.

The thing is, with DS9 I'd argue the point that the Federation is still the "good guy" power within the galaxy. It does try its hardest to do what is best for the many and to preserve galactic peace, it's just that those notions aren't effective at all levels. The Maquis are born because the Federation rightly doesn't want to escalate into another war with the Cardassians because it has other bigger problems to deal with *cough*Borg*cough*. The DMZ is a mess but not the biggest mess the Federation and Starfleet have to fix at that moment and even then efforts are still made to try and resolve it.
When it comes to Sisko, the point of him is that he gets pushed further than most Starfleet captains ever will. He has strong morals and is loyal to the ideals of the Federation but is constantly pitted against foes who force him to break the rules. The Maquis are a threat to the Cardassians for the most part but eventually they push the boundaries and start attacking Starfleet. It's then that Sisko throws out the rulebook to stop a legitimate threat to peace between the Federation and the Cardassian Empire. He starts the Dominion War because he knows if they are allowed to keep building up there won't be a war, it'll be a slaughter.
Sisko was right.
As a side note, Picard also once ordered genocide against the Borg.

I’d argue one can make a Just Choice, for entirely the wrong reason.

That the Federation did what it could to moderate its allies approach does not excuse its own actions. At all.

But this is the glorious fun of made up Sci-Fi analogies for morality.

Another thing is that many of the ST series often focus on the positive end of the scale. DS9 walked the line between the two, being generally upbeat despite also focusing on a lot of wartime challenges and trials and struggles.

Picard has gone much more for the dirty underside of things.
It 100% still has high morals and passionate captains and such, but I think its also gone length to show that the Federation isn't perfect. It's also, I think, shown that there've been some major challenges which have threatened the future and changed the Federation in subtle ways. The Dominion War being one of them, but also increased threats of races like the Borg.

The further the Federation reaches out the more dangers it finds. Heck Original series found a LOT of hostile aliens. They were just predominantly isolated in small sectors and whilst they could threaten 1 starship; they weren't often a threat to the whole Federation itself (and where they were 1 passionate crew and captain were able to thwart them)

I am getting really fed up with the stun setting on phasers being ignored.

I was theorizing that these changelings are some changelings that basically infused themselves into "solids". Basically, they evolved body-snatcher abilities. It seems like that is what has happened.
However, I'm a little unclear why there are so many of them. In that flashback scene it seemed like there were about 9 tortured changelings. It would have been better if there was a finite number of these rouge changelings. Kind of like the Cylons in BSG.
Like this whole crisis is not approved by The Dominion right? I wouldn't like it if they had a second Dominion war with the official Dominion. I thought they way the war ended the first time around was satisfyingly trekish.

What's the deal with Jack Crusher though? Before this the best theory would be that he's simply a sleeper Cylon - I mean changeling. But what's up with the psychic powers? Overall, I'm not a big fan of The Chosen One plots. It's been done too many times and is usually just lazy writing.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I was theorizing that these changelings are some changelings that basically infused themselves into "solids". Basically, they evolved body-snatcher abilities. It seems like that is what has happened.
However, I'm a little unclear why there are so many of them. In that flashback scene it seemed like there were about 9 tortured changelings. It would have been better if there was a finite number of these rouge changelings. Kind of like the Cylons in BSG.
Like this whole crisis is not approved by The Dominion right? I wouldn't like it if they had a second Dominion war with the official Dominion. I thought they way the war ended the first time around was satisfyingly trekish.

What's the deal with Jack Crusher though? Before this the best theory would be that he's simply a sleeper Cylon - I mean changeling. But what's up with the psychic powers? Overall, I'm not a big fan of The Chosen One plots. It's been done too many times and is usually just lazy writing.

Both those points were explained in this episode

 Overread wrote:

Spoiler:

From what I could see the phases did different damage, but each time they did different damage they were being held by different users. It suggests that there is no standard setting being used and each one is setting a power level they feel is suitable.

Some are going to full power with disintegration; others far less power, which appears to not always work on the changelings. What appears is that their more solid form means that if you hurt them when solid their body reacts like a solid, so they go down to minor fire. However they can rebuild and recover and then resume. They might also just take wounds or such to play dead.


The only oddity is the original, she appeared to take shots way in excess when in liquid form which is either her liquid form protecting her more so or perhaps simply that she, being the most pure of the new strain, is perhaps stronger than those changed after her.


Storyline is taking an interesting turn and the idea of a group of the Federation experimenting on Changelings 100% fits. Odo was experimented upon; and during the war factions of the Federation did develop the plague approach. So the idea that a small wing was doing experiments on a handful of Changelings fits rather nicely as another of those little dark bits of the Federation.

I liked the background about why the changelings are doing this. I don't think it's a bad thing to show that the enemies of the Federation have their own side of the story but with Odo he was experimented on because the scientist who experimented on him didn't even know he was a life-form let alone an intelligent one. It was an accident and not malevolent.
I got the sense this latest batch happened after or during The Dominion War?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I was theorizing that these changelings are some changelings that basically infused themselves into "solids". Basically, they evolved body-snatcher abilities. It seems like that is what has happened.
However, I'm a little unclear why there are so many of them. In that flashback scene it seemed like there were about 9 tortured changelings. It would have been better if there was a finite number of these rouge changelings. Kind of like the Cylons in BSG.
Like this whole crisis is not approved by The Dominion right? I wouldn't like it if they had a second Dominion war with the official Dominion. I thought they way the war ended the first time around was satisfyingly trekish.

What's the deal with Jack Crusher though? Before this the best theory would be that he's simply a sleeper Cylon - I mean changeling. But what's up with the psychic powers? Overall, I'm not a big fan of The Chosen One plots. It's been done too many times and is usually just lazy writing.

Both those points were explained in this episode

Spoiler:

1) During her story about her past, the Changling ship captain revealed that she was the original successful experiment. She alone started with the altered and functional ability to shapeshift. She then found out that she could link with others and pass on the genetic changes to herself to them. So she changed those who were also kept captive with her and then escaped Daystrum. They then went out and recruited others to their cause with her being able to change them into those akin to herself.

2) There is a small part where it mentions that Picards mental defect might not be what it seems and could be something else. Considering that he died, that died with him and now his Son is the only one who has the property. This appears to be manifesting in a way it never did in Picard and seems to be linked to the head/face that the Changling ship captain has summoned on more than one occasion.

What that thing is, what the link to Picard is and what's going on is all very much unknown.

Ah ok. That makes sense. Basically, the opposite of what ended the war is happening. Instead of Odo spreading the concept of empathy to the great link this person is spreading new found hatred. Did she make it all the way to the Great Link though? That would be bad... Or she made it but it caused a schism and not every changeling wanted to restart the war.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Spoiler:

From what I could see the phases did different damage, but each time they did different damage they were being held by different users. It suggests that there is no standard setting being used and each one is setting a power level they feel is suitable.

Some are going to full power with disintegration; others far less power, which appears to not always work on the changelings. What appears is that their more solid form means that if you hurt them when solid their body reacts like a solid, so they go down to minor fire. However they can rebuild and recover and then resume. They might also just take wounds or such to play dead.


The only oddity is the original, she appeared to take shots way in excess when in liquid form which is either her liquid form protecting her more so or perhaps simply that she, being the most pure of the new strain, is perhaps stronger than those changed after her.


Storyline is taking an interesting turn and the idea of a group of the Federation experimenting on Changelings 100% fits. Odo was experimented upon; and during the war factions of the Federation did develop the plague approach. So the idea that a small wing was doing experiments on a handful of Changelings fits rather nicely as another of those little dark bits of the Federation.

I liked the background about why the changelings are doing this. I don't think it's a bad thing to show that the enemies of the Federation have their own side of the story but with Odo he was experimented on because the scientist who experimented on him didn't even know he was a life-form let alone an intelligent one. It was an accident and not malevolent.
I got the sense this latest batch happened after or during The Dominion War?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I was theorizing that these changelings are some changelings that basically infused themselves into "solids". Basically, they evolved body-snatcher abilities. It seems like that is what has happened.
However, I'm a little unclear why there are so many of them. In that flashback scene it seemed like there were about 9 tortured changelings. It would have been better if there was a finite number of these rouge changelings. Kind of like the Cylons in BSG.
Like this whole crisis is not approved by The Dominion right? I wouldn't like it if they had a second Dominion war with the official Dominion. I thought they way the war ended the first time around was satisfyingly trekish.

What's the deal with Jack Crusher though? Before this the best theory would be that he's simply a sleeper Cylon - I mean changeling. But what's up with the psychic powers? Overall, I'm not a big fan of The Chosen One plots. It's been done too many times and is usually just lazy writing.

Both those points were explained in this episode

Spoiler:

1) During her story about her past, the Changling ship captain revealed that she was the original successful experiment. She alone started with the altered and functional ability to shapeshift. She then found out that she could link with others and pass on the genetic changes to herself to them. So she changed those who were also kept captive with her and then escaped Daystrum. They then went out and recruited others to their cause with her being able to change them into those akin to herself.

2) There is a small part where it mentions that Picards mental defect might not be what it seems and could be something else. Considering that he died, that died with him and now his Son is the only one who has the property. This appears to be manifesting in a way it never did in Picard and seems to be linked to the head/face that the Changling ship captain has summoned on more than one occasion.

What that thing is, what the link to Picard is and what's going on is all very much unknown.

Ah ok. That makes sense. Basically, the opposite of what ended the war is happening. Instead of Odo spreading the concept of empathy to the great link this person is spreading new found hatred. Did she make it all the way to the Great Link though? That would be bad... Or she made it but it caused a schism and not every changeling wanted to restart the war.

Me and my friend are just waiting for Jeffrey Combs to be back as Weyoun.

You'd figure Odo would have warned the Alpha Quadrant that this was coming. I bet the final episode will either have Odo (the actor is dead but that's not an obstacle with today's tech) or the resurrection of Sisko.

Anyways, with regards to the Phasers anyone kind of miss the beam ones? I liked the pulse ones when Abrams Trek came out. They were a cool change but now I kind of pine for that old beam and the old sound effect it made. These new ones literally blast burning holes in people which doesn't seem like something The Federation would use.

Also, they have their version of the cocking hammer sound but its that weird powering up sound. I know that's kind of cool but also impractical. Imagine a spec ops stealth team trying to operate with that wind up sound alerting everyone.

Doubtful that Odo or Sisko will show up. Using computers to de-age actors doesn't sit well with most people so resurrection outside of a tiny cameo (like in the latest Ghostbusters) is off the cards I'd say, and Avery Brooks won't make a return.