Date: November 1, 2020

Season 3, Episode 21

Musical Accompaniment: Some Skyrim music

Interstellar News: Happy first day of Thanksgiving. Christmas season doesn’t start until Black Friday, and that’s only if you celebrate. I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas with a dear friend this morning over Zoom, and it was absolutely delightful. A great movie to watch all the time, but especially after Halloween. As it’s Dia de los Muertos today, you should totally watch Coco if you haven’t already. Prepare yourself with tissues!

TL;DR: The EMH has hair and has chosen a name, Kes is a grandmother to Andrew but she doesn’t know him or anyone else. Chakotay is the captain and Kes is 9. She wakes up and meets her daughter Linnis and realizes she’s experiencing time backwards and doesn’t remember anything about her life before she woke up that morning. She and Paris married, after he lost Torres and the crew lost Janeway, they had Linnis who married Kim, and now they’re all one big weird family. She bounces back again, her 9th birthday, and Neelix is a security officer. She relives her life through medical records and finds out that her aging backwards is because of something the EMH did that activated something in a chroniton torpedo (it’s a lot of technobabble). She keeps jumping back in time, each time explaining she’s from the future and he’s how to fix her, and the EMH almost cures her but then she jumps back to her first day on Voyager and then as a kid with her father, and then her birth. Suddenly she jumps forward in time to present day, stopping at 3 years and 2 months, and decides to tell no one about anything except for the big, bad Krenim that are ahead.

Favorite Quote:

Chakotay: Doctor, any theory about what’s causing this?

EMH: In approximately six months, I will apparently expose Kes to some type of bio-temporal field in a highly experimental but nonetheless brilliant attempt to stop her aging process.

The EMH being not at all sorry for what’s happening. In fact, he’s quite proud.

“If there’s one thing that this experience has taught me, Captain, it’s that there’s no time like the present.”: This was an amazing episode. At the start, you don’t know that it’s Kes and you’re unsure if it’s an alternate timeline or something, but as time goes on you can see where the story is going to culminate. You can see Kes start to regain her tenacity as she focuses on the problem of stopping her Benjamin Button meets Quantum Leap experience. There are lots of nice touches about “the future”, aside from Kes looking old, like the EMH changing his appearance and taking a name, that people would start to take mates and procreate on the ship, and that some people would die and the ship would have to continue on home. While the massive amount of technobabble and constant leaping was a bit frustrating, everyone played their parts well. It was weird, but also not, to see Chakotay in the captain’s chair… but the even bigger bummer is that basically all of the women leads die in that episode. Kes, Torres, and Janeway… all gone and the men are left in charge, boring. Seriously, they’ll never get home at this rate because they won’t stop and ask for directions. Okay, that last bit wasn’t at all serious because I don’t subscribe to stereotypes based on what sexual organs you possess, but I did think it was slightly humorous. Anyway, 9 songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas that have been rolling through my head all day. All hail the Pumpkin King!

TA Out!

Date: October 31, 2020

Season 3, Episode 20

Musical Accompaniment: Random spooky music, because it’s sadly the end of spooky season

Interstellar News: Happy Halloween! It’s finally here! Unfortunately I’m not in the holiday spirit, but I am so glad to be writing about Trek again. I hope you missed me! Also, it was hoodie weather today… my favorite time of year, and I got to watch Hocus Pocus with a friend who had never seen it. A not terrible day.

TL;DR: A Nasari ship approaches but Kim thinks they are going to fire, so he starts the fight first. Kim has a weird dream and then develops a rash, but it’s really Taresian markings because apparently he was born to a (unknowingly) surrogate Earth mom. The Taresians help Voyager fight off the Nasari, who are apparently their sworn enemies. The Taresian women are all over Kim and another male, Taymon, explains that the children are all born on other worlds and then eventually find their way back to help perpetuate the species. The rest of the crew return to Voyager to try and make peace with the Nasari and Kim stays behind. He witnesses the marriage of Taymon to three Taresian women and then is pressured by other women to stay. He tries to escape and finds out Taymon was killed for his genetic material and the women are trying to get Kim’s. Janeway tries to rescue Kim, is locked out for a while, but beams him out right in the nick of time. Voyager also escapes as the Taresians and Nasari are more interested in fighting with each other, the EMH heals Kim (who really is an Earth man), and Paris gets his best bro back.

Favorite Quote:

Paris: I don’t see what’s so bad about being you. You’re good at your job, everybody likes you.

Kim: Being likeable is fine, but sometimes I wish I could be more, oh, confident with women. More like you.

Paris: Like me? You might want to reconsider that, Harry. There could be prison time involved. Actually, since I’ve been on Voyager, I’ve tried to be more like you.

Paris and Kim, keeping the bromance alive and well

“We are no longer being pursued. — Let’s not give them a chance to change their mind.”: I absolutely hated that Kim made it a point to say marriage was usually between one man and one woman, especially when Trek trail-blazed in so many other ways. On the other hand, I completely enjoyed that he was more enthralled with being something more than himself, rather than the possibility of being with three women at once. It was so very pure and so very Kim, he really is very young in more ways than just age. I will admit I was swept away with the thought that Kim was more than he could be, I mean Odo was sent away by his people so why couldn’t Kim’s fake alien dad have impregnated his mom? Once the EMH did some digging I was shocked and started to have the same bad feeling Kim did. Actually, it was once the “mood enhancer” came out and I was so proud of Kim for just saying “no” like we were taught in D.A.R.E. all those moons ago.

I was left more confused than anything though with the whole Taresian and Nasari blood feud. Why did they hate each other? Did the Nasari have radar for the Taresians? How did they fool Voyager‘s sensors? How do the Taresians really survive? Are there any males that weren’t stolen? I was also confused by weird Uncle Neelix at the end being creepy to Kim. I mean Neelix is usually weird but he was extra weird and I don’t know why. This was just an overall weird and creepy episode and I’m not a fan of predatory aliens who steal people for procreation. Just try mail-order-grooms, I’m sure there would be plenty of aliens who would be willing to become Taresian for unlimited wives. Here in the United States, we call them Fundamentalist Mormons. Anyway, 3 cheers for Kim who almost got to have three wives but wound up with Paris instead.

TA Out!