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Yay for Sulu. Not so yay for Voyager bits. Next week, Chuck overworks himself.

Chris O'Farrell, how many of these videos did you request?

This is a decent review of Chuck's and I do understand a bit of the exasperation in Chuck's voice. This type of episode is why Braga is such a fuck up that the whole episode is a mess of continuity and technobabble and the lack of basic knowledge of any and everything (More heat speeds up cooking!). And the rating at the end reminds me that these are in context of the show, how piss poor Voyager was.

After watching reviews like this and thinking about the episodes there are days I am not amazed Star Trek lurched like some dying sloth towards the inevitable we had in the newest movie.

Hmm. This has been a full length text review as well hasn't? Certainly most of the stuff Chuck was saying was familiar from that.

Mayabird wrote:
Yay for Sulu. Not so yay for Voyager bits. Next week, Chuck overworks himself.

Chris O'Farrell, how many of these videos did you request?

Just these 3, as I thought they would work best by far as a set.

There were a lot of other episodes I would have been more then happy for Chuck to look at, but given how overloaded he is anyway, I thought I'd hold off for a while.

And people, remember that scores are RELATIVE to the series. Its not that Flashback got a 7/10 and DS9 got 9/10, boosted to 10/10 and can be directly compared, a 7/10 is probably worth a 4/10 in DS9 terms

One of these days Braga has to stumble his way into a biology textbook and learn what the word "virus" actually means.

I do like the sort of bookends with Voyager finding a gaseous anomaly while the Excelsior was out studying gaseous anomalies.

And while Chuck does bash Neelix for thinking that by adding more power to something it will go better, I would like to point out that that has been a standard Trek solution to everything since forever.

"Captain are engines aren't going fast enough!"
"Scotty, more power to the engines!"

"Captain, our shields aren't strong enough!"
"Mr. LaForge, more power to shields."
Hell, dividing your ship's power between engines, shields, and weapons was a gameplay mechanic in Star Trek Online (and a pretty good one) where you could sacrifice your ship's speed for firepower or durability, or divert maximum power to your engines and escape a battle that's gone badly.

OsirisLord wrote: Hell, dividing your ship's power between engines, shields, and weapons was a gameplay mechanic in Star Trek Online (and a pretty good one) where you could sacrifice your ship's speed for firepower or durability, or divert maximum power to your engines and escape a battle that's gone badly.

This has existed since basically forever and has been employed in many games.

Uraniun235 wrote:

OsirisLord wrote: Hell, dividing your ship's power between engines, shields, and weapons was a gameplay mechanic in Star Trek Online (and a pretty good one) where you could sacrifice your ship's speed for firepower or durability, or divert maximum power to your engines and escape a battle that's gone badly.

This has existed since basically forever and has been employed in many games.

First full fledged implementation of that idea was probably X-Wing (1993), if I remember correctly. The early Wing Commanders had something similar, but not quite up to the level X-Wing had, although me recollection of them is really hazy.

Of course, more power to the engines=more speed actually makes some sense. As in "it could work if there is only that much power, but every component can use much more than it normally receives", which is of course a sound possibility from an engineering POV (they can only build warp cores that are that good, but they can build better engines, shields etc.). And of course, we have real-life engines that produce more power when you add more energy (well, more or less like that).

Compare that to cooking: Yes, you get the job done quicker - and you absolutely ruin the flavor. Everyone who EVER cooked should know that. But then again, i think it fits Neelix character perfectly to not know basic things about life.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:

OsirisLord wrote: Hell, dividing your ship's power between engines, shields, and weapons was a gameplay mechanic in Star Trek Online (and a pretty good one) where you could sacrifice your ship's speed for firepower or durability, or divert maximum power to your engines and escape a battle that's gone badly.

This has existed since basically forever and has been employed in many games.

First full fledged implementation of that idea was probably X-Wing (1993), if I remember correctly. The early Wing Commanders had something similar, but not quite up to the level X-Wing had, although me recollection of them is really hazy.

Diverting power from one thing to another didn't occur until Wing Commander III, I believe. I and II had slowly recharging levels of guns and shields, while armor/afterburner fuel were used up and never refilled in a mission.

7 was pretty damn generous for this episode. I was expecting 5 or 6.

I loved the observation about how Nog essentially leaped over Harry Kim in rank though. Harry sucks that much.

Edit: Chuck's reviewing B5 episodes? Awesome!

I absolutely fucking hated this episode. I saw it as Brannon Braga gleefully shitting all over TOS, then rubbing our faces in it. Of course, that was before Boobyprise was inflicted on us. DS9's "Trials And Tribbleations" was goofy but a far better tribute episode to the original series without which the TNG franchise would never have existed.

I don't hate "Flashback" as such, but I'm also surprised at the relatively high 7/10 rating for a OK-ish episode (I prefered "Body & Soul") that felt a little off - it jarred with TOS in a similar manner that the Kirk flashbacks did in Generations, didn't it? By having TOS era characters sprouting out TNG style technobabble.

I hated 'Flashback' because it made me realise I would rather they had made a show called Excelsior with Captain Sulu gallivanting around the galaxy with a crew of intrepid youngsters rather than a show called Voyager with Captain Janeway gallivanting around the galaxy with a crew of intrepid youngsters.

Stofsk wrote:I hated 'Flashback' because it made me realise I would rather they had made a show called Excelsior with Captain Sulu gallivanting around the galaxy with a crew of intrepid youngsters rather than a show called Voyager with Captain Janeway gallivanting around the galaxy with a crew of intrepid youngsters.

Likewise. I'm still hoping for an ongoing novel series focused on Sulu's tenure as Excelsior's captain rather than the occasional installment.

Although Captain Sulu was likable and fairly in character in "Flashback", and I'm a big fan of the USS Excelsior design, I'm with Destructionator XIII that George Takei at the time just didn't seem to have the chops as a leading character in "Flashback" and he seemed a bit too OTT to carry a show like even Mulgrew or Bakula did, although that could've been down to the episode directing.

And what was with the arbitary plot device with the so-called mind virus? Although the goofy idea seems more palatable if that "mind virus" depicting a falling girl is seen as more akin to a computer virus than a virus, virus. Tuvok's memories are "software" and his brain "hardware", with the falling girl "mind virus" blending into his mind like a real memory (like the Antimalware Doctor virus blends in as real looking anti-virus software) but is a malignant foreign presence.