Star Trek Voyager Ruminations: S3E10 Warlord

[@SchneeflockeMonsoon]

Lore: “Tuvok would be a great spy/agent.” Me, who remembers Caretaker: “Indeed.”

[@marcosmartins7581]

And this time we even get a Grand Admiral Thrawn quote 😉👍🏾 great content

[@Smeginator]

Damn! Never thought I’d hear that Mechwarrior theme for a long time!

[@fredrikcarlstedt393]

Voyager goes Game of Thrones in this one .

[@EnvisionerWill]

5:48 This is a rare case where I actually seem to have caught a character moment which you missed, or at least didn't think was worth comment. I almost always hate Neelix, and I almost always hated him in this scene, but the one moment where Paris and Kim (or was it Tuvok, I forget) were messing up his program, there's a moment where Neelix pauses and visibly decides whether or not to be upset about the fact that these other cooks are spoiling his soup, and consciously decides to embrace the change instead of getting upset about it. That is possibly my favorite Neelix moment in all of season 3, even though it's the wafer-thin filling in a sandwich of his usual annoying chipperness. I hate the mask that he's chosen to wear at almost all times, but a moment where we clearly see that mask slip...that's golden.

[@EnvisionerWill]

As to the episode overall, I'm surprised you didn't talk at all about how weirdly medieval the whole thing was, and how it didn't really make sense as sci-fi. It feels very much like a plot lifted from some sort of very primitive "Game of Thrones" type show (the closest contemporaries I can think of to Voyager might have been Xena the Warrior Princess or maybe The Beastmaster, both of which are fantasy, though far less political), like they took a script written for that other show and tried to retrofit it for Star Trek use. The whole idea that there's a planet-bound war of succession going on, and Voyager is trying to figure out how to storm the gates of a castle, when they could obliterate this entire army from orbit with one photon torpedo (if not for some very sketchy technobabble about how they can't, and the Prime Directive telling them they shouldn't)....it was just bizarre. Like, where exactly did that shuttle that Tyren/Kes stole and flew off in, and hid its warp trail...where did it go? It had to have wound up back at the planet, maybe on the other side of it or something...but why? Logistically the whole episode is kind of nonsense, and very much feels wrong for Star Trek in terms of the whole problem-solving approach being taken. I do agree that it's a pretty good episode (although the facial prosthetics they used on all the aliens really gross me out), and it's definitely the most interesting Kes has ever been, which is nice for a character that I always liked for no particular reason, this is one of the few occasions she's been good at all...but god, why is there an army storming a castle when there are spaceships? Just bugs me that they couldn't have reworked this story enough for it to actually make sense.

[@1skrmsp1]

I like how you touched on communication theory, and philosophy of "can the message be correct when receiver interprets differently from the sender?" with one sentence. lol

[@Springsong5]

Kes was a dead ringer for Joffrey Baratheon :)

[@calamity916]

Nice Thrawn quote.

[@Adipatus]

kudos !

[@tonebonebgky2]

I strongly disagree, Voyager is good, Enterprise struggles but definitely isn't bad either one. STD is bad.

[@MBF78]

I think the correct pronounciation is "lee-en".

[@elleoneiram]

It's so frustrating to hear about the lack of care taken with the characters. I like Voyager. But one of my biggest pet peeves in any TV-show is when writers/producers disrespect their characters or only respect the lead.

[@1skrmsp1]

Also, I think thats the theme of Voyager, wanting to smack Janeway.

[@cuteclau]

This might be an unpopular opinion, which comes from a romantic at heart, but I wanted Neelix and Kes to stay together to the end. Long-term romantic relationships do happen in real life, and I wanted to see a bit more of that in Star Trek. Have them overcome obstacles and grow as individuals AND as a couple. I hated that they broke up.

[@Flaris]

The Tuvok scene was really great. Goes to show why he was used to be a spy in the first episode of the series. The guy is just really good at this kind of thing. Forget working for Janeway, he should be the James Bond of the Star Trek universe. And yeah the best scene was pretty damn awesome. I mean just wow, great acting and just really well done. Always fun when it comes to the Prime Directive stuff. Of course I've accepted that generally I just disagree on this point. I think this episode reflected bad on Janeway. There's no point in something like that if you are going to just ignore it whenever you want to. At that point it influences no behavior.

[@AngelEpinoia]

You'd be good at teach morality.

[@BigBlackGWAR]

I was wondering Archengia, have you ever though about putting actual clips of the episode in your show? I know it may be a dumb question but, I don't see why you can't have maybe a 10-20 second clips here and there to fully explain your point in a honest, concise manner............. oh that's right, KZbin, my bad.

[@primroan5354]

Eh... I think we'll have to agree disagree on the Star Wars canon thing. Canon is beyond the control of fans, and in nearly _every_ instance that's for the best. But honestly, even though I disagree... I'm not really sure I have the grounds to. And I understand where you're coming from. Reading too much into things is interesting, and I love when you talk about it. I watch a show that has a moment which is constantly debated among it's fan community. In the show there is a character who lives on a farm. She's a farm girl, and lives with her family. Family farm business and all that. However, her family consists of just her little sister, older brother, and grandmother. Her parents are absent. During the course of the show we see some of the other character's parents, or at least some of them. Then, we have an episode centred around the farm girl character, and it's a family reunion episode. Still, no sign of her parents, and it's even said that family from across the continent showed up to the reunion and took time out of their schedules to do so. During the episode, when she's planning the reunion, she looks outside and sees two comets streak across the sky together. Then at the end of the episode when the camera pans out, the comets are shown again. Several fans including myself wondered if that was meant to symbolize her parents, and that they're deceased. When this episode released, the creator had stepped down and moved on to other projects. However, in an interview she said that she imagined the farm girl's parents were dead, and she did it because her own father died of cancer when she was really young. But due to the nature of the show, they probably weren't going to visit that issue. After that, an animator was interviewed and said that the comets did represent the deceased parents, and that it was intended as a nod to the creator of the show because they knew that's what the backstory for that character was. People still debate this, and since it wasn't mentioned in show, some people don't hold to it. They think that people shouldn't have to listen to staff interviews to get confirmation on things that should just be in the show itself. And that people like me are just reading too much into things. I don't know what to think. But I do know that my experience was made better by knowing those things, and I still think that episode is one of the more subtle and touching of the entire show. Oh... and the show is My Little Pony. Great Rumination, Arch.

[@Lutz101]

Lien is pronounced "Leen" - kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmi6nZ-Ma76UibM