Star Trek Voyager Ruminations: S2E10 Cold Fire

[@Eelco_de_Boer]

Just to add background information: the guest actor's name is Gary Graham, to SF-fans probably best known for his role as ambassador Soval in ENT and Matthew Sikes in Alien Nation (next to more than a hundred notifications on IMDB). He is actually a great fan of StarTrek. And I am a great fan of Alien Nation :-)

[@williamozier918]

random comment about the Ocampa lifecycle: It would've worked if Ocampa women could only have children once, and when they did they always produced twins, one male, one female. As contrived as that is it would make more evolutionary sense, but still keep the precarious nature of the species. Just point out that when the Caretaker and Sisperia screwed up the planet, it caused just enough of a balance in the Ocampa brith/death rate that the species would go extinct. So the Caretaker created this whole terrarium for them because he is protecting the species until they reach population levels ready to re-populate the world with a stable population...however the Ocampa have become too comfortable and dependent on the Caretaker. The split between Sisperia and the Caretaker was when she realized the Ocampa were not just being culturally lazy and so she left but the Caretaker stayed behind out of a feeling of guilt and obligation.

[@aaronlea9559]

Your catalogue is amazing, very many many thanks

[@EnvisionerWill]

I forget exactly when this happened, but at some point in the recent past (no more than 2 years, probably closer to 1, maybe even 6 months - actually that's it, it was between July and November of 2019, so more than 6 months and less than a year), AFTER having rewatched Cold Fire, I sad and went through my mental list of all Voyager episodes, trying to reconstruct the list of 170-ish from memory (relying heavily on the handful of your ruminations I had watched, by the way). And after listing Cold Fire on my list, I sat there for god knows how long, going "But what was the name of the episode with the female Caretaker in it?" I remembered Cold Fire as the "Kes's mental powers" episode, and *completely* forgot Suspiria was involved in this same plot. I think that kinda says it all doesn't it? They absolutely SHOULD have been two separate plots, and in fact some of the screwier episodes in the future, notably including "Fury" (and also "Twisted" which is in the past) but also a lot of Season 2 episodes involving things like the Beory or the Rubber People, could probably have been tied in with Suspiria and made a lot more sense of.

[@EnvisionerWill]

I struggle to think what Star Trek would look like if they had made the original 1960s show as a complete non-continuity show akin to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (the original one; the Showtime reboot in the 90s did occasionally do sequels to itself). It might have been possible to have a continuous setting and even continuous characters, but totally self-contained stories, but even that is baffling to think about. Apropos of nothing, I've started watching the Comet network's reruns of "Night Gallery", a show that Rod Serling made after the first Twilight Zone ended, which is basically the exact same show, but with a really interesting framing device of paintings (and a bunch of episodes that were literally spliced in from a different show that did have a continuous main character, but that's the only continuity in the show as far as I know). It's an interesting concept, and it makes me idly imagine a version of Trek where there's some admiral in a starbase looking at starmaps or personnel logs, and those lead into isolated stories much the way the Night Gallery's paintings do. That's the best guess I can come up with of what the original concept for "The Trek Zone" (aka "Twilight Star") might have been.

[@Wrath7878]

btw, I think your changes were great ideas: From Sesperia being the source of Tanis' power and of Kes' 'awakening'... to Kes being stronger than Tanis in the end, because while his powers were just handed to him, Kes' were tempered through mental discipline.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Ah yes, the Ocampan Tannen... his friends call him Biff.

[@fredrikcarlstedt393]

In this, Kes gets mind- manipulated by the Ocampan Soval .

[@Vorodill]

Am I the only one who watches these Star Trek Voyagers ruminations without having seen the episodes? :P

[@williamozier918]

commenting as I go, vis-a-vis Tuvok creating the back up plan weapon: I always thought the way the magic meeting room should have gone, on ALL the shows really should have been less of the Captain picking one plan, but showing how each officer prepares a response to the current situation. They would do that sort of by having everyone throwing out suggestions, but I thought it should have been more of each department reporting their techno-babble solution to the problem at hand, then the drama to use the audience would be watching the Captain whip out each plan as the situation evolves. See what I'm saying?

[@GamerNationTecno]

5:27 DEMON!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!!!!

[@danielshottopics8187]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely not if you are disciplined enough it depends on the upbringing if you come from a good stock or good family and taught right from wrong at an early age you can have all the super power you can get and you will use it wisely it also depends on the individual for example Clark Kent he is superman does he go around trying to take over the world no he protects it cause he was given a good example from his stepfather Jonathan Kent.

[@WanderingHands_]

Where do you live? It could be regional.

[@theirongreengiant]

sorry, already fixed the problem, i had to do a lot of things.....but it finally works.

[@mutopis]

I like Carpenter St. I feel attacked.

[@theirongreengiant]

arch, i don't understand why you don't put ads. i want to click on the ads to help you but i'm not getting any. maybe its just my computer or some type of error but if it is you, please, i would like to do you the favor.

[@MBF78]

I actually share your position about the whole "superior ability" thing. It's been done to death, mostly in the wrong way, and a whole discussion could be had about the issue.

[@danielshottopics8187]

Roberto Orrci is talking to CBS about reviving star trek for TV Hope it takes place in the prime universe post Voyager not JJ Abrams new Universe

[@Vorodill]

It's you. I can see ads.

[@murphykitty44]

wtf, carpenter street is amazing.

[@murphykitty44]

nm, i was thinking of carbon creek. carbon creek rules.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

see what they did with that in ST.Prodigy !!!! want to say more, but do not want to spoil.....

[@Wrath7878]

I do love Kes as a person, but as we've established the Okampa are ridiculous... their age, the elogium, (their powers imo), etc. Then in this ep, Tanis did for Okampa what Lwaxana Troi did for Betazoids... make me think the species they represent consists of terrible terrible ppl. Sadly Kes didn't have much of a character arc other than her race. ... sorta like how Chakotay doesn't have a character arc other than his race.

[@trueshy]

That's not remotely true. Her various arcs were = being a representative of her race, nurse's job = especially as a field medic, mentor to the Dr., lover to Neelix, later with a "love triangle" with Paris, provide pregnancy care to Samantha Wildman to deliver her baby, gardener, clairvoyant, outsider to Star Fleet rules (with Neelix), outsider to Alpha Quadrant social customs & history (with Neelix), futuristic fashion model for females, surrogate daughter to Janeway (before 7 of 9 but never really given the proper credit) etc. She was more 3 dimensional then most Trek fans give her credit for & she accomplished all of that in just 69 episodes of the series. Not bad at all for a female Trek character that lasted 2.5 seasons out of 7.

[@Crensler]

I miss the Imperium stuff >.

[@Crensler]

Relax, it's just his opinion >>

[@irredeemable4197]

In all fairness, even though i agree with you to a certain extent, Clark Kent is a charater in fiction, therefore his example is not perfectly valid.

[@meamishere1166]

Did the female Caretaker ever get mentioned again in Voyager again? I'm pretty certain not and that's frankly just odd.

[@wcoleman99]

they didn't mention her or the caretaker ever again after this episode. it's like well we're here and if you started with the series after this episode and didnt see the others. its like how did they end up here

[@trueshy]

@@wcoleman99 They mentioned the Caretakers several more times over the years. The most notable that comes to mind was "The Voyager Conspiracy" when 7 Of 9 spins conspiracies to both Janeway & Chakotay that include how they were trapped in the Delta Quadrant.

[@wcoleman99]

The female caretaker should've been the reason for all the stuff 7 was spouting and was keeping voyager from getting closer if not outright getting home.

[@theirongreengiant]

oh, sorry for wasting your time.