I liked the language thing, it helped to illustrate that by the end of the episode, Chakotay was so brainwashed he was even thinking like them. I enjoyed it, even if it's a bit odd.
Yeah I liked the speech pattern thing too. Bear in mind in this episode, we don't even know what the brainwashing alien race looks like. It's possible they all look human just to make it easier for Chakotay to empathise with them.
I think the language thing worked, it showed there was something strange going on with out expositing anything. The stuff on Voyager was a detriment to the episode, it should have stuck to the planet, or have had it all as flashbacks with the rest being the deprogramming Chakotay was going through.
I like to think that the brainwashing program has its own universal translator, but it's translator is significantly shittier than the Federation's and so the brainwashing program's dialogue always comes out mildly Babel Fished.
One of my favourite reviews, I'm glad it's back. I also liked the episode itself, though I get Chuck's scoring of it. I suppose the language could have been a clue in a way, and Chuck's joke about how "oh, that explains why they sounded like they were written by a spambot" actually makes a lot of sense. For all we know these aliens actually are very alien, and their warped mode of speaking was because this all bypassed the universal translator and was them artificially constructing a language - badly - to communicate with their victims. Either way, I enjoyed this review - it, along with Remember Me, are among my favourite SFDebris reviews of Star Trek content, though the Comic History series is probably what I've watched the most often.
I watched this episode today, and the way the fighters described the enemy, along with some of the music and the jungle setting, I expected the Predator to show up and pick most of them off one by one.
The language thing is to make them stand out and get the audience to empathize with them as they get use to the "good guys" speaking a certain way. We were sort of being programmed the same way Chakotay was. Of course it was never explained in universe, but really it didn't need to be. Also, considering they messed with Chakotay's perception, perhaps they weren't as human-looking as they seemed.
Since it turns out that the whole thing was a simulation wouldn't it be funny if the whole speech thing was just a glitchy computer and that Chakote just didn't realise?
@@navibc31 That could have been interesting too but the problem is that Chakotay and the other "recruits" would have met the real aliens after the simulation - even if they use some kind of disguise tech there is a good chance someone finds out about this.
I think the weird phrasing the aliens use is supposed to kind of mimic the military slang you might find among veteran soldiers. Though i might be giving the writers a bit too much credit.
I found this episode to be heavy-handed, but good. I didn't notice the language thing is much and I also didn't catch the twist early the same way, so the twist hit a little better for me.
The change in the language is "Orwellian newspeak". Most people think in words so if you control their words then you control their thoughts. First it simplifies thought by simplifying language, and the particular words chosen have a psychological effect. Eg. all forms of thought are reduced to "fathoming", but you been told your whole life that fathoming is something you CAN'T do! Likewise "glimpsing" means you never see anything clearly, that's someone else's job...
When I first saw this episode, I thought it was a powerful and effective demonstration of the power of propaganda and brainwashing, and so I judged it to be one of the few episodes of "Voyager" I thought was good, especially considering Beltran's moving performance at the end. Admittedly I started watching it halfway through and so missed all the ham-fistedness you pointed out. Your analysis reinforces what I've been saying for years, that what Hollywood needs is story editors and more story editors and even more story editors.
Despite of all its evident flaws, I like the final result and general idea (and obviously the pseudo plot twist of the "savage enemy" being the other way around didn't surprised anyone). The final Chakotay line it good and resumes the whole attempt.
My main question is: why was this a Chakotay episode? Wasn't he the captain of a group of rebel forces that had effectively decided to continue fighting a war because they weren't happy with the terms of the peace treaty? THIS is the guy talking about settling disputes with words? Yeah yeah, I know Voyager had long forgotten that premise, but come on. It may have been better as a Harry episode, as at least those lines would have made a bit more sense then.
Harry and Chuckles both have no real personality, so they could have easily swapped them. But yes, Chakotays reactions don't make that much sense considering his background.
It's a Chakotay episode because Chakotay was often the epitome of calm and reason within the show. Just goes to show that even the most even-handed people can easily fall for the ravages of propaganda. The episode wouldn't have worked nearly as well if way, say someone like Tom Paris, whom we already know is passionate for his causes and impulsive in his actions.
@@SerbAtheist Except he was literally a captain in a rebel/terrorist (depending on your POV) army, clearly ready to use violence to obtain their goals. So no matter how you cut it, having Chakotay say, "It's better to use words" makes no sense as he clearly isn't against using violence. Hence, at least using Harry would at least make some more sense.
They spent years rationing replicated food, but managed to crash a shuttle on almost every planet in the quadrant. Voyager needs an accounting department.
Maybe the shuttles are replicated from a material that can't be used to make food, just like how the holodecks supposedly are powered by a power source that isn't compatible with the rest of the ship. I wouldn't be shocked with all the other design flaws this ship seems to have.
It's all bullshit Janeway makes up to torment her crew. There's no such thing as a resource shortage on a Starfleet ship with a functioning warp drive.
@@mikegates8993 There really shouldn't be a material that the ship can't make unless it's somehow too complicated for the computer. And the Enterprise computer made life on multiple occasions, so nothing should be too complicated for a starfleet computer. Matter replicators work by breaking matter down into energy and then rebuilding it into a different type of matter at the atomic level. They could turn gold bars into ice cubes if they wanted. They should even be able to turn matter into antimatter to continue fueling their warp drive. So energy limitations don't make much sense either.
For me personally, i loved this episode. I thought it did a good job with the story telling, and I can remember being totally surprised by the twist when I first watched it. For me personally, Chakote has always been a favorite character of mine, and Beltran shines in this episode with his performance of an outsider being drawn in to another species' conflict. Also, I didn't really see the close your glimpses and dream of your mothers and sisters / brothers as insestious, guess you hear what you want to hear. For me personally, I can completely understand soldiers far from home fighting a war that may take their lives dreaming of going home to their loving family.
This would've been better as a multi-episode arc with Tom Paris also being brainwashed and later after everything seemingly calmed down, Tom helps a team of Vori soldiers board Voyager and take over the ship.
One thing occurs to me about comparing Nausicans (spelling) or preditors etc; if we can have 40 versions of humanoid with tiny differences, why not several similar to nausican or Klingon etc…
When I saw this as a kid I thought the altered language was so amazing and innovative. But the incest angle does make it look a little less sophisticated.
The Kradin also look a lot like Nausicaans. Fauxsicaans. I thought they were Nausicaans when they showed up. Also, was the simulation running on autopilot? All the Vori were simulations, right? There was no real Vori there to watch things.
I like the weird language. Star Trek, and especially Voyager, often doesn't do much to bring home the alien nature of the people they meet. It's also reminiscent of the way cults work, though it would have been sold better if Chakotay gradually started incorporating it in his own lines. The final meeting with the ambassador could have been more awkward if the sight of him not only triggered a feeling of loathing, but it was shown by him slipping back into cult speak. The odd cadence and the... rural cultural values of the aliens also helps sell the dream-like quality that the process really ought to have. And I kind of like that there aren't any obvious clues in the same way any other episode would do it, with the character catching contradictions and breaking the loop. The fantasy presented to Chakotay also seems tailor-made for him: The aliens appear human, and that might be intentional. They're a rag-tag bunch of vest-wearing guerilla's fighting a seemingly organized, authoritarian enemy, much like the Maquis. And their habit of desecrating corpses fits right into the sort of hate boner we'd expect from an Indian stereotype like Chakotay. Even their constant references to family may be an attempt to hook into the often told, little shown sentiment that the Voyager crew is one large family. Maybe it could have done a little more with that, and force Chakotay to look at the fact that he was not only helpless to resist their brainwashing, but that part of him got exactly what he wanted to see. His final reaction is reminiscent of Geordi's, in the episode where he was brainwashed by the Romulans. Of course, both are fine by the time the next episode rolls around, but with both I do find the idea that they were used, spit out, and left to carry the scars of it forever to be haunting.
One of my favourite episodes of Voyager. When I wrote out my top 10 list for Voyager, Chakotay episodes came up pretty often. Nemesis. Distant Origins. Unity.
How many times does Chakotay get brainwashed? At least 3 more or less. The former Borg, the Vori. Tuvak's Maquis Vedek mindmeld reprogramming. Am I missing any?
Would be fun to have an episode where someone gets brainwashed and this actually triggers a previous programming, so you have a Manchurian Candidate with conflicting goals (like Alex Mason in CoD: Black Ops).
The UT issue was a subtle nod to the mental manipulation being deployed against the soldiers. There was distortion and inaccuracy being forced upon the mind and the UT was being affected. Nthe soldiers are being shown what is there, but not the true version. The UT is being affected in a similar way.
I gotta say, it was kind of cool to see one alien race that doesn't have energy weapons. That's almost unheard of on ST. ... Or wait.... Was that just part of the simulation targeted to Chakotay??? But then why not use more up-to-date weapons? Either way I couldn't help liking it.
The UT was working just fine. They simply spoke differently, which in reality would have been far more common using the UT. Darmok and Gilad at Tanagra
According to my records, it's been 5 years since it was last posted anywhere. But it's entirely possible that during the chaos I missed something. But I know there was no YT version, I checked before I worked on it. Don't need to do the same job three times, twice is already one more than I should be!
@@sfdebrisred6555 no worries Chuck I just remembered watching it not that long ago. Sorry again you've had such shit luck with video hosts so far. Hopefully YT will be the end of it.
And yet some are decrying the recent The Least Dangerous Game of Lower Decks for ripping off Predator when Voyager did it decades before and even more blatantly.
The speech, i honestly thing was... because they had the universal translator and downloaded "english" to their systems but didn't have the context so... the dialog they spoke never came out quite right.
This could have been Voyagers own “Duet” or “Hard Time” but the writing never makes it to that level. I don’t even know if it’s the actors because they’re so rarely given anything to sink their teeth into as actors.
If they had taken out the hamfisted "YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO GET IT SO I'M SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU" nonsense that ruined the twist and had added in something that showed that the villagers and soldiers that the brainwashed met were actually tailored to them, it would have worked so much better. It could also explain why they talked so oddly; the aliens got the information out of the crashed shuttle, but its database was damaged, and so the language came out oddly. Or the real aliens are so utterly different, possibly not having vocalized speech, that the spoken words are the best they can actually do. It technically does the job, but it's still odd and wrong sounding, but the aliens behind the scenes don't know any better.
I thought overall it was a good outing for Voyager, and RB does his best to show a little emotion. Doesn't fully succeed, but he does try. It's just sad that as usual nothing can affect the future in Voyager's universe and so none of this was ever made even casual reference to again in the next episode or ever, nor do we see Chakotay taking a moment in quiet reflection in his quarters in the last scene, showing him dealing with everything that just happened, or having a brief private interchange with one of the cast discussing the same. True he does mention it in the hallway but that's not as meaningful as having a short talk in his own quarters about it. It's sad and pathetic that VOY showed it's characters taking private time together so rarely. Because who needs that! It's not like we want to actually get to know these people. By contrast TNG did this regularly. But then again those writers cared and had ability. The fact that the VOY writers don't think these small little moments matter is telling. Either they lack basic ability or just don't care. It's just not in this otherwise strong episode, it's overall. Sometimes ten seconds of characterization can tell us more than 45 mins of plot and action, if not a whole season.
So, both of these species live on the same planet? And it just so happens that the humanoid ones shoot down his shuttle? Not even a forehead ridge? Way too convenient.
The language and lack of anything of substance happening is what killed the episode. Even with the ending being ruined so early on, it could have still worked. The problem is nothing in the episode actually matters. The soldiers feel like shallow stereotypes while the village is a token attempt at tugging your heartstrings and empathizing with the struggle of the soldiers. It's too bad that all of it falls flat because the script refuses to give us stakes.
"every man skill". The proper term is "Jack of All Trades." though sometimes said as "jack of all trades master of none." This is common with things like the US Marines. You might have a marine who's trained to fly F-18's, but because they are a marine, also did ground combat training, and learned to drive tanks, and assault boats, and of course learned first aid and field dressings. The reasoning for the marines is... if you're plane get shot down, or destroyed on the ground in a combat zone... are you just going to wait to be rescued? or are you going to be a marine. Toms a pilot first, was a marquis foot solder, trained as a medic and nurse, love fixing and building things.. But in all of this, he isn't a doctor and can't really diagnose things, at best he can patch and stabalize. He isn't an engineer, he can help design and build things, but really he can't optimize them or build them as well as an engineer. He's got security and ground combat training, so he's ok in a fight, but can't match a trained MACO or such. He's a pilot, and can fly almost everything, but there are many dedicated fighter pilots out there that will out fly him. This makes tom the type of soldier you send on missions where you don't know what to expect... because his broad blanket of skills means he can adapt better to changing or unknown situations. You don't want to send a non combat doctor in. You don't want to send a dedicated engineer and warp drive specialist, you want to send someone who knows just enough about everything.
This would be a fact....if Tom wasn't shown multiple times to be exceedingly capable in almost all the fields (except Medicine....there he IS just a nurse/medic)
@@FlaschenJoe11 In engineering he makes mistakes, he often prioritizes flash and form over functionality leading to flaws, and has time and time again had to defer to his wife because he isn't the best with warp system. in combat again, he's not the best. he can hold his own but in hand to hand Torez is better, in phaser Tuvok is better. but yes, he's very good in lots of fields. But at the same time so are most of the crew.
to reassure... and because it's something that satisfies me. . nemeses... tho since nemesis was a goddess, it's a bit weird to have a plural form... greek -is = -es like crisis! and latin -us > -i... terminus> termini but greek -us > -odes platypus > platypodes octopus > octopodes
@@kommodore6691 Hey we know that different species, sometimes from different quadrants came up with the same ship designs, so having the same weapon models on different planets isn't a problem 😁
I don't know everytime I interact with a zoomer online I'm reminded of this episode. I don't even know what a boomer is anymore, I don't know what smh means. All the slang words coming out now are gibberish for all the different cults and fuck it if I can keep up, and frankly I don't want to. Because in the end the internet has become the hate fest this episode portrays. And it all starts with lingo.
This was a lot of meh. The only good part was that they decided not to have clear good and bad-guys in the end. This war has been going on for so long that finding out the truth is most likely impossible. Maybe the whole simulation was a lie, maybe not. Better leave it that way and don't ruin the ambiguity. Still would have been way more interesting if it happened to someone with a personality ...
There's been a lot of political discourse in recent years about extemist indoctrination pipelines and language control. If anything, this episode's aged a little too well in the last decade.
I'm not really bothered by the whole "brothers, sisters and mothers" thing. The choice of language seems less literal and more metaphorical in nature, not hat it's helping the awkwardness in any way to be honest, but yes, brothers are "the men of my people", while "mothers and sisters" are "the women of my people".
I glimped the nemesis, and hit them with the firesticks. They pursued and we concealed usselves in the brush. We will send them to the gloried way after and then be reunited with our brother and fathers, mothers and sisters.
"Some characters are an everyman, but Tom Paris has the skill of _every_ man" 🤣😂
I liked the language thing, it helped to illustrate that by the end of the episode, Chakotay was so brainwashed he was even thinking like them. I enjoyed it, even if it's a bit odd.
Yeah I liked the speech pattern thing too. Bear in mind in this episode, we don't even know what the brainwashing alien race looks like. It's possible they all look human just to make it easier for Chakotay to empathise with them.
I think the language thing worked, it showed there was something strange going on with out expositing anything. The stuff on Voyager was a detriment to the episode, it should have stuck to the planet, or have had it all as flashbacks with the rest being the deprogramming Chakotay was going through.
It helped to illustrate that Kenneth Biller has a thesaurus lol.
I like to think that the brainwashing program has its own universal translator, but it's translator is significantly shittier than the Federation's and so the brainwashing program's dialogue always comes out mildly Babel Fished.
@@clwho4652 That would have been a much better framing device. Sometimes telling a straight narrative as it happens is not the way to go.
Why is Tom the commando when Seven of Nine is the only one clearly not wearing underwear?
Underwear is inefficient
If I could give you more than one like for that comment, I would
Brasistance is futile
“If you need to talk to somebody about what happened, always remember my door is always both closed and locked..”. ROFLMAO 😂 🤣😂
Nemesis, an episode not about a seemingly indestructible hulking monstrosity chasing Janeway.
One of my favourite reviews, I'm glad it's back. I also liked the episode itself, though I get Chuck's scoring of it. I suppose the language could have been a clue in a way, and Chuck's joke about how "oh, that explains why they sounded like they were written by a spambot" actually makes a lot of sense. For all we know these aliens actually are very alien, and their warped mode of speaking was because this all bypassed the universal translator and was them artificially constructing a language - badly - to communicate with their victims. Either way, I enjoyed this review - it, along with Remember Me, are among my favourite SFDebris reviews of Star Trek content, though the Comic History series is probably what I've watched the most often.
I don’t know why but I was expecting an episode called “Nemesis” to have Tom Hardy and a dune buggy chase
I watched this episode today, and the way the fighters described the enemy, along with some of the music and the jungle setting, I expected the Predator to show up and pick most of them off one by one.
The language thing is to make them stand out and get the audience to empathize with them as they get use to the "good guys" speaking a certain way. We were sort of being programmed the same way Chakotay was. Of course it was never explained in universe, but really it didn't need to be. Also, considering they messed with Chakotay's perception, perhaps they weren't as human-looking as they seemed.
Since it turns out that the whole thing was a simulation wouldn't it be funny if the whole speech thing was just a glitchy computer and that Chakote just didn't realise?
I also think that those aliens don't even look like humans and that they look like what ever species shows up
@@navibc31 Nice detail
@@navibc31 That could have been interesting too but the problem is that Chakotay and the other "recruits" would have met the real aliens after the simulation - even if they use some kind of disguise tech there is a good chance someone finds out about this.
4:16 Zuko: That’s rough, buddy.
First thing I thought, too, ha. :)
I think the weird phrasing the aliens use is supposed to kind of mimic the military slang you might find among veteran soldiers. Though i might be giving the writers a bit too much credit.
I found this episode to be heavy-handed, but good. I didn't notice the language thing is much and I also didn't catch the twist early the same way, so the twist hit a little better for me.
The change in the language is "Orwellian newspeak". Most people think in words so if you control their words then you control their thoughts. First it simplifies thought by simplifying language, and the particular words chosen have a psychological effect. Eg. all forms of thought are reduced to "fathoming", but you been told your whole life that fathoming is something you CAN'T do! Likewise "glimpsing" means you never see anything clearly, that's someone else's job...
This is one of my favorite reviews. Good to see it back
Ditto - and one of the funniest!
When I first saw this episode, I thought it was a powerful and effective demonstration of the power of propaganda and brainwashing, and so I judged it to be one of the few episodes of "Voyager" I thought was good, especially considering Beltran's moving performance at the end. Admittedly I started watching it halfway through and so missed all the ham-fistedness you pointed out. Your analysis reinforces what I've been saying for years, that what Hollywood needs is story editors and more story editors and even more story editors.
Despite of all its evident flaws, I like the final result and general idea (and obviously the pseudo plot twist of the "savage enemy" being the other way around didn't surprised anyone). The final Chakotay line it good and resumes the whole attempt.
This channel makes me feel good!
Like sisters and mothers! ;)
My main question is: why was this a Chakotay episode? Wasn't he the captain of a group of rebel forces that had effectively decided to continue fighting a war because they weren't happy with the terms of the peace treaty?
THIS is the guy talking about settling disputes with words?
Yeah yeah, I know Voyager had long forgotten that premise, but come on. It may have been better as a Harry episode, as at least those lines would have made a bit more sense then.
Harry and Chuckles both have no real personality, so they could have easily swapped them. But yes, Chakotays reactions don't make that much sense considering his background.
It's a Chakotay episode because Chakotay was often the epitome of calm and reason within the show. Just goes to show that even the most even-handed people can easily fall for the ravages of propaganda. The episode wouldn't have worked nearly as well if way, say someone like Tom Paris, whom we already know is passionate for his causes and impulsive in his actions.
@@SerbAtheist Except he was literally a captain in a rebel/terrorist (depending on your POV) army, clearly ready to use violence to obtain their goals. So no matter how you cut it, having Chakotay say, "It's better to use words" makes no sense as he clearly isn't against using violence.
Hence, at least using Harry would at least make some more sense.
They spent years rationing replicated food, but managed to crash a shuttle on almost every planet in the quadrant. Voyager needs an accounting department.
All those lost shuttles add up to rationed food, apparently.
Maybe the shuttles are replicated from a material that can't be used to make food, just like how the holodecks supposedly are powered by a power source that isn't compatible with the rest of the ship. I wouldn't be shocked with all the other design flaws this ship seems to have.
It's all bullshit Janeway makes up to torment her crew. There's no such thing as a resource shortage on a Starfleet ship with a functioning warp drive.
@@mikegates8993 There really shouldn't be a material that the ship can't make unless it's somehow too complicated for the computer. And the Enterprise computer made life on multiple occasions, so nothing should be too complicated for a starfleet computer. Matter replicators work by breaking matter down into energy and then rebuilding it into a different type of matter at the atomic level. They could turn gold bars into ice cubes if they wanted. They should even be able to turn matter into antimatter to continue fueling their warp drive. So energy limitations don't make much sense either.
@@MrDj232 I was mostly joking, I had no idea how the replicators work when I wrote this.
For me personally, i loved this episode. I thought it did a good job with the story telling, and I can remember being totally surprised by the twist when I first watched it. For me personally, Chakote has always been a favorite character of mine, and Beltran shines in this episode with his performance of an outsider being drawn in to another species' conflict. Also, I didn't really see the close your glimpses and dream of your mothers and sisters / brothers as insestious, guess you hear what you want to hear. For me personally, I can completely understand soldiers far from home fighting a war that may take their lives dreaming of going home to their loving family.
I like that episode because Chakotay always had this holier than thou attitude and got knocked down a peg
This is one of those episode that I think is bad in the Voyager-verse, but is actually a really good 'Star Trek' episode.
A great concept for an episode wasted on Voyager
@@Pope-enhiemer That's how I feel about alot of Voyager episodes.
There’s still more of TNG season 1 left to do. The season that never ends! 😁
This would've been better as a multi-episode arc with Tom Paris also being brainwashed and later after everything seemingly calmed down, Tom helps a team of Vori soldiers board Voyager and take over the ship.
One thing occurs to me about comparing Nausicans (spelling) or preditors etc; if we can have 40 versions of humanoid with tiny differences, why not several similar to nausican or Klingon etc…
This is the Best episode of Voyager.
When I saw this as a kid I thought the altered language was so amazing and innovative. But the incest angle does make it look a little less sophisticated.
The Kradin also look a lot like Nausicaans. Fauxsicaans. I thought they were Nausicaans when they showed up.
Also, was the simulation running on autopilot? All the Vori were simulations, right? There was no real Vori there to watch things.
Assuming the Vori even are humanoid rather than just using humanoids as soldiers, matching each "simulation" to the morphology of the victim.
@@lukecox6317 Ooh, that's canon now.
😄 Yeah i was confused by the design of the Kradin too. All that was missing was them yelling "dom-jot!".
I like the weird language. Star Trek, and especially Voyager, often doesn't do much to bring home the alien nature of the people they meet. It's also reminiscent of the way cults work, though it would have been sold better if Chakotay gradually started incorporating it in his own lines. The final meeting with the ambassador could have been more awkward if the sight of him not only triggered a feeling of loathing, but it was shown by him slipping back into cult speak. The odd cadence and the... rural cultural values of the aliens also helps sell the dream-like quality that the process really ought to have. And I kind of like that there aren't any obvious clues in the same way any other episode would do it, with the character catching contradictions and breaking the loop. The fantasy presented to Chakotay also seems tailor-made for him: The aliens appear human, and that might be intentional. They're a rag-tag bunch of vest-wearing guerilla's fighting a seemingly organized, authoritarian enemy, much like the Maquis. And their habit of desecrating corpses fits right into the sort of hate boner we'd expect from an Indian stereotype like Chakotay. Even their constant references to family may be an attempt to hook into the often told, little shown sentiment that the Voyager crew is one large family. Maybe it could have done a little more with that, and force Chakotay to look at the fact that he was not only helpless to resist their brainwashing, but that part of him got exactly what he wanted to see. His final reaction is reminiscent of Geordi's, in the episode where he was brainwashed by the Romulans. Of course, both are fine by the time the next episode rolls around, but with both I do find the idea that they were used, spit out, and left to carry the scars of it forever to be haunting.
I fathom that you, Sfdebris, wants to nullify this nemesis of a episode to the Wayafter .
He certainly does not relish their templates of speech.
One of my favourite episodes of Voyager. When I wrote out my top 10 list for Voyager, Chakotay episodes came up pretty often. Nemesis. Distant Origins. Unity.
troll?
@@supportpatriarchyordietrying What episode is that??
What a...*subtle*...foreshadowing. No one COULD have seen it coming.
Hahahahahaha
"So tell me, toilet brush...." 🤣😂😝
Well turned out I got confused. I was remembering Allison Pregler’s recent review of this episode and thought I was thinking of one of yours
The pretender was a great show
It was well done
Dreaming of mothers and sisters, yep that is definitely Appalachia!
Stay strong, and we will dream of our mothers and our sisters in the gloried way after.
Bender fender joke,, hilarious, definitely deserves a sub
Where's Lt Munro when you need him?
🤣
This episode reminded me of the first Predator movie, somehow...
How many times does Chakotay get brainwashed? At least 3 more or less. The former Borg, the Vori. Tuvak's Maquis Vedek mindmeld reprogramming. Am I missing any?
Would be fun to have an episode where someone gets brainwashed and this actually triggers a previous programming, so you have a Manchurian Candidate with conflicting goals (like Alex Mason in CoD: Black Ops).
O'brien must suffer as Chakotay must get mind fucked.
The UT issue was a subtle nod to the mental manipulation being deployed against the soldiers. There was distortion and inaccuracy being forced upon the mind and the UT was being affected. Nthe soldiers are being shown what is there, but not the true version. The UT is being affected in a similar way.
I gotta say, it was kind of cool to see one alien race that doesn't have energy weapons. That's almost unheard of on ST.
... Or wait.... Was that just part of the simulation targeted to Chakotay??? But then why not use more up-to-date weapons? Either way I couldn't help liking it.
8:05 had me in stitches
Nemesis?
*Shinzon flashbacks*
We glimpse the review again
I was thinking the weird ass language was the universal translator trying to compensate for a confusing language… at bit like Tamarian.
I still think Voyager Nemesis is the better of the Star Trek Nemesis's.
Yeah ... this was harmeless unlike that other thing
8:00 Did some members of Red Squad get away...?
The UT was working just fine. They simply spoke differently, which in reality would have been far more common using the UT.
Darmok and Gilad at Tanagra
Huh, you did this one not that long ago Chuck, did UA-cam rip it down?
According to my records, it's been 5 years since it was last posted anywhere. But it's entirely possible that during the chaos I missed something. But I know there was no YT version, I checked before I worked on it. Don't need to do the same job three times, twice is already one more than I should be!
@@sfdebrisred6555 thank you for your efforts to bring your reviews to UA-cam.
@@sfdebrisred6555 no worries Chuck I just remembered watching it not that long ago. Sorry again you've had such shit luck with video hosts so far. Hopefully YT will be the end of it.
We glimpse your efforts and are cognizant of them.
And yet some are decrying the recent The Least Dangerous Game of Lower Decks for ripping off Predator when Voyager did it decades before and even more blatantly.
How can they criticize a show made today for being derivative if an entirely different TV show made 25 years ago was also derivative? How silly.
The speech, i honestly thing was... because they had the universal translator and downloaded "english" to their systems but didn't have the context so... the dialog they spoke never came out quite right.
I thought that way too
Y'know, since the episode IS about xenophobia (sort of, it's not well executed) maybe all the incest is intentional. Like it's supposed to be subtext.
This could have been Voyagers own “Duet” or “Hard Time” but the writing never makes it to that level. I don’t even know if it’s the actors because they’re so rarely given anything to sink their teeth into as actors.
If they had taken out the hamfisted "YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO GET IT SO I'M SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU" nonsense that ruined the twist and had added in something that showed that the villagers and soldiers that the brainwashed met were actually tailored to them, it would have worked so much better. It could also explain why they talked so oddly; the aliens got the information out of the crashed shuttle, but its database was damaged, and so the language came out oddly.
Or the real aliens are so utterly different, possibly not having vocalized speech, that the spoken words are the best they can actually do. It technically does the job, but it's still odd and wrong sounding, but the aliens behind the scenes don't know any better.
The language thing would have worked better if the attack resulted in the translator being damaged.
I thought overall it was a good outing for Voyager, and RB does his best to show a little emotion. Doesn't fully succeed, but he does try.
It's just sad that as usual nothing can affect the future in Voyager's universe and so none of this was ever made even casual reference to again in the next episode or ever, nor do we see Chakotay taking a moment in quiet reflection in his quarters in the last scene, showing him dealing with everything that just happened, or having a brief private interchange with one of the cast discussing the same. True he does mention it in the hallway but that's not as meaningful as having a short talk in his own quarters about it.
It's sad and pathetic that VOY showed it's characters taking private time together so rarely. Because who needs that! It's not like we want to actually get to know these people. By contrast TNG did this regularly. But then again those writers cared and had ability.
The fact that the VOY writers don't think these small little moments matter is telling. Either they lack basic ability or just don't care. It's just not in this otherwise strong episode, it's overall.
Sometimes ten seconds of characterization can tell us more than 45 mins of plot and action, if not a whole season.
So, both of these species live on the same planet? And it just so happens that the humanoid ones shoot down his shuttle? Not even a forehead ridge? Way too convenient.
The language and lack of anything of substance happening is what killed the episode. Even with the ending being ruined so early on, it could have still worked. The problem is nothing in the episode actually matters. The soldiers feel like shallow stereotypes while the village is a token attempt at tugging your heartstrings and empathizing with the struggle of the soldiers. It's too bad that all of it falls flat because the script refuses to give us stakes.
"every man skill". The proper term is "Jack of All Trades." though sometimes said as "jack of all trades master of none." This is common with things like the US Marines. You might have a marine who's trained to fly F-18's, but because they are a marine, also did ground combat training, and learned to drive tanks, and assault boats, and of course learned first aid and field dressings.
The reasoning for the marines is... if you're plane get shot down, or destroyed on the ground in a combat zone... are you just going to wait to be rescued? or are you going to be a marine.
Toms a pilot first, was a marquis foot solder, trained as a medic and nurse, love fixing and building things.. But in all of this, he isn't a doctor and can't really diagnose things, at best he can patch and stabalize. He isn't an engineer, he can help design and build things, but really he can't optimize them or build them as well as an engineer. He's got security and ground combat training, so he's ok in a fight, but can't match a trained MACO or such. He's a pilot, and can fly almost everything, but there are many dedicated fighter pilots out there that will out fly him.
This makes tom the type of soldier you send on missions where you don't know what to expect... because his broad blanket of skills means he can adapt better to changing or unknown situations. You don't want to send a non combat doctor in. You don't want to send a dedicated engineer and warp drive specialist, you want to send someone who knows just enough about everything.
This would be a fact....if Tom wasn't shown multiple times to be exceedingly capable in almost all the fields (except Medicine....there he IS just a nurse/medic)
@@FlaschenJoe11 In engineering he makes mistakes, he often prioritizes flash and form over functionality leading to flaws, and has time and time again had to defer to his wife because he isn't the best with warp system.
in combat again, he's not the best. he can hold his own but in hand to hand Torez is better, in phaser Tuvok is better.
but yes, he's very good in lots of fields. But at the same time so are most of the crew.
@@hypotheticalaxolotl Sorry, i didn't see it as a joke but a critique of the character.
to reassure... and because it's something that satisfies me. .
nemeses... tho since nemesis was a goddess, it's a bit weird to have a plural form...
greek -is = -es
like crisis!
and latin -us > -i... terminus> termini
but greek -us > -odes
platypus > platypodes
octopus > octopodes
So I wonder why we say "platypii" or "octopii" rather than the -odes?
Because we aren't speaking Greek, duh!
Is that a FAMAS with a toy flashlight?
Looks more like the Chinese main service weapon, Type 95, which is a weird choice.
@@kommodore6691 Hey we know that different species, sometimes from different quadrants came up with the same ship designs, so having the same weapon models on different planets isn't a problem 😁
I don't know everytime I interact with a zoomer online I'm reminded of this episode. I don't even know what a boomer is anymore, I don't know what smh means. All the slang words coming out now are gibberish for all the different cults and fuck it if I can keep up, and frankly I don't want to. Because in the end the internet has become the hate fest this episode portrays. And it all starts with lingo.
The plural of nemesis is pronounced "nemeses".
The Vori’s speech patterns don’t bother me nearly as much as the acting from the little girl.
weeee! :D
But what about our mothers and sisters?
And after he drilled chakotay, his courage grew.
Don't forget to close your glimpses and turnip of dreams.
you only glimpse them in the gloried way after.
Good review for an episode that is more boring than the Star Trek movie of the same name
This was a lot of meh. The only good part was that they decided not to have clear good and bad-guys in the end. This war has been going on for so long that finding out the truth is most likely impossible. Maybe the whole simulation was a lie, maybe not. Better leave it that way and don't ruin the ambiguity.
Still would have been way more interesting if it happened to someone with a personality ...
There's been a lot of political discourse in recent years about extemist indoctrination pipelines and language control.
If anything, this episode's aged a little too well in the last decade.
I'm not really bothered by the whole "brothers, sisters and mothers" thing. The choice of language seems less literal and more metaphorical in nature, not hat it's helping the awkwardness in any way to be honest, but yes, brothers are "the men of my people", while "mothers and sisters" are "the women of my people".
I glimped the nemesis, and hit them with the firesticks. They pursued and we concealed usselves in the brush. We will send them to the gloried way after and then be reunited with our brother and fathers, mothers and sisters.
this episode was so bad that they had to make a movie as bad as this with the same name ....
Those aliens always looked like Nausicaans to me. You know, one of the founders of the Federation from the Alpha Quadrant.
Nausicaans aren't part of the Federation by TNG's times, much less founders of the Federation.