This Week's Episode: "Good Shepherd"
Summary: Following a crew efficiency report performed by Seven of Nine, the Captain discovers that there are three crewmembers on board who have never been on an away mission. Thus, in attempt to improve their weaknesses, and integrate them into the crew, she takes the three of them on the Delta Flyer to investigate a spatial phenomena. The mission soon becomes complicated when one of the crewmembers is abducted, and an alien creature invades his body.
Rating: 7
Best Scene: The stunning exterior shots of Voyager.
Worst Scene: The final anticlimatic scene when Mortimer is in the escape pod, a tiny little windows-like arrow cursor is visible hovering around on the monitor....I guess Microsofts domination of the computer operating system industry extends to the 24th century as well.
Best acting award goes to: The Young Bajoran officer.
Best Line: None are jumping out at me...
Impressions:
Before I sum up "Good Shepherd", I should explain my absence in updating the site ;). As many University students are well aware of, the first week after Spring Break is horrendous. This year was no exception. On top of finishing two projects, writing three midterms, my VCR accidently taped an hour of MuchMusic instead of last week's "Child's Play". You win some, you lose some I guess. And with no real news during this period of the year (the lull in the TV world until sweeps in May), there hasn't been a lot of inspiration to update the site. And I apologise for that.
On to "Good Shepherd"...this episode can be summed up pretty quickly: It's Voyager's less than successful attempt at trying their hand at TNG's "Lower Decks". That episode, much like this week's Voyager episode, dealt with the 'minor' crew of the Enterprise (including a nervous female Bajoran) and their attempts to fit in. TNG was certainly more successful in capturing the perspective of the little guys, but "Good Shepherd" is a little more than that.
When Captain Picard didn't know everyone on board, it was excusable. With over 1000 crew on board, and with constant transfers and additions to the crew, it's pretty hard to get to know your senior officer. But Captain Janeway doesn't have that excuse. She's on board a ship with 150 people, with few crew transfers (except the occasional defection to the Kazon, and the addition of lost Borg), and she is expected to know her crew. Hey, she's been trapped for six years...that's pretty much 2200 days to get to know all 150 of them. But our beloved Captain has overlooked three crewmembers: a nervous Bajoran lacking any self esteem, and is destined to fail; a hypochondriac in the same ranks as Reg Barclay, who has multiple visits to Sickbay each week, and owns his own medical tricorder; and a stubborn anti-social genius, who prefers the company of claustrophobic compartments to social interaction with the crew. Oh boy, does the Captain have her work cut out for her.
"Good Shepherd", like many Voyager episodes, starts out promising. We see some interesting shots of the exterior, and even some new shots of the interior...we get introduced to each of our three "misfits" rather quickly, and unlike some members of the senior crew (Harry) actually have a personality and interesting little nuances. I found that all three actors portraying the crewmembers were fantastic...did you miss the small cameo performance by the guitarist from "Rage Against the Machine" (I forget his name...Tom Morello??). He's the crewmember Janeway runs into on Deck 15.
Things keep looking promising even up to the Delta Flyer, as we see a confrontation with Mortimer and Janeway, and his cold statement along the lines of accusing Janeway for holding back his progress as becoming a cosmologist. However, things take a turn for the worse when the hull is mysteriously breached. The writers soon log onto their computers, and use their technobabble search engine to find a term that could be used to describe the mysterious entities which seem to be stalking the Delta Flyer. Deuterium is the number one hit, but since this has been done before, they move onto the next match: dark matter. Hey, that has been used in "One Small Step", but what the heck, the viewers don't know any more about science than we do, right? Although I won't admit I'm much of a scientist when it comes to dark matter, it was a hot topic in respect to the reference of the dark matter asteriod reference in "One Small Step".
Following the abduction and subsequent return, the episode just gets messy. It seemed as though the writers ran out of steam, and lost their focus, and then decided to try to resolve things as fast as they can. So, Janeway shoots officer, alien expelled. Then, Delta Flyer flyes into nearby rings, evades the aliens, but eventually escapes (but just barely). So, they could have been a little more inventive. At the end however, I thought the whole episode would be redeemed. We expect all three to stay with Janeway to be heroes, showing how much they've grown as individuals as they've gotten over their failures and obsessions in the space of half an hour. But, the writers have Mortimer leave. I think "brilliant". It shows how Janeway wasn't able to save all her "sheep". To leave it at that, that would have been guts and taking a stand. But no. Mortimer can't retreat, but he has to go towards the approaching aliens. Boring. The end was so anticlimatic, it just made the episode feel like such a waste of an hour. We know we will never see this crew again (don't agree with me? Have we seen Carey, Wildman, the Equinox crew lately?), so what was the purpose? One of Voyager's big faults is its inability to get good recurring guest stars to appear. TNG benefited from Guinan, Keiko, O'Brien, while DS9 excelled with Garak, Nog and Rom. But Voyager has been unable to find it's "Garak". Certainly each of the three crewmembers have potential in future episodes, I don't think we'll be seeing them any time soon.
One big beef with this episode is with Denise Okuda...who you ask? Well, she and her husband are responsible for the infamous L-CARS, as well as those output screens you see. Okuda must have been on a coffee break or something while shooting some scenes, as in one, after the crewmember is taken over by the alien and is lying in the biobed, you can see a selection menu active on the screen at the head of the bed (like the one when you right click...try it now!). Things get worse when in the final scene in the escape pod, when a small windows-like arrow cursor is seen zipping around on the screen (you see it in the top left corner). Yikes, I'm surprised this got by everyone without them seeing it. Maybe I'm too picky. But when the episode started to get dull, my eyes started to wander, and I pick up on little things like that.
Overall, a mediocre episode which certainly had the potential to be a highlight of the season. There were many missed opportunities, but isn't that Voyager in a nutshell? 7 out of 10.
Next week: Reruns have begun...yippee!!!
