UNCUT - Basics Part 1 (VOY S2E26) | Star Trek Journey 417

OMG, stop focusing on trivia. Your constant whinging about two parters is really wearing thin.

I Laughed hard at JANESWAYS NIGHTMARE: she cant self destruct.

I felt like I was having a stroke or something when you guys kept talking about "pro-life". It wasn't "pro-life", abortion was not the topic, there was not a moment where the question for Chakotay was whether the child should be alive. It was "anti-deadbeat-dad" at best. Or, looking back to illegitimate children/bastards, whether the father should acknowledge their child.

43:20:17 (on the inner video timestamp) would also be a good meme clip

It wasn't spoiling any surprise with the part one. It was expected in Trek at this time, everyone expected season ending cliffhangers. People loved them and got excited for them. It was a disappointment when there wasn't one. You say, "I'm just... not interested"... I question just how big of fans you are???

Two part finales are fine. Get over it!

The "pro life" argument at the beginning isn't pro life at all. It has nothing to do with abortion. It's about the worth and nature of a child's life who was brought here by an act of evil. And I'm VERY glad the show does this here because too often, media presents the idea to us in things like Harry Potter with Lord Voldemort, or in the X-files episode Aubrey, that if a child is born as a product of evil, than the child themselves must also be evil. And that is the most terrible thing you can tell a real person watching those things who is here themselves due to messed up reasons. There are millions of children born everyday either as a product of rape, abuse, mental illness, abandonment by a parent, or they are born to completely loveless and toxic families. Those people should never feel like they are destined to become as messed up as their parents are, or that they are fundamentally flawed because of the nature of their own conception. The people paying the price should be the people who comitted the crimes. Not the innocent children that get caught up in it all. Those kids are clean slates. They aren't destined to become evil Lord Voldemort just because their mom used a love potion on their dad. And they're not destined to become an evil serial rapist due to genetic memory of their father or grandfather being an evil serial rapist. It also brings up the real issue of what do you do if you want to be there for your child, but doing that means constantly having to deal with the other toxic and manipulative parent. I wish we had more positive representation of these real issues in our media today, instead of using them as tropes for villain plots.

Voyager pushes the concept hard. You both may need emotional seatbelts.

And hey, you guys have been asking for a camping trip episode for like 9 months. Finally got your wish.

Forget about waiting a few weeks or even the whole summer to see the conclusion. Back when I first saw this episode, it was recorded on VHS by my brothers friend from school. We didn't have cable. Due to various factors, it was over 2 years before I finally saw part 2. And yes, nobody seriously believed they wouldn't get Voyager back, but we still wanted to know HOW. Sure we speculated that Tom got away and guessed Suder and the Doctor would play some part, but it's still 1 shuttle and 1 guy on the ship. The Doctor can't leave sickbay. Odds are stacked heavily against them. I do think the episode is a B- or C+. It has issues to be sure, the main one being the kazon, but it did enough well with the execution to be reasonably enjoyable. I would agree it's stupid that the crew didn't piece together the self destruct being disabled, but in their defense, by the time that was the case, they were trying to retreat and their escape route was cut off. Realistically Tuvok could just detonate a torpedo inside the ship or Torres could grab a phaser and shoot the warp core. More than one way to skin that cat. Also I would question the kazon taking the ship without killing a bunch of the crew. Don't think their phasers have stun settings. Still, the battle was fairly well done(I know you don't care), it was cool seeing Suder back, and if there's one good thing about this episode, it's finally paying off on this season and a half kazon obsession with getting their hands on Voyager. Hear me out, the Kazon are lackluster villains to say the least(though I do find Culluh's "boomerishness" amusing), but their recurring appearances have been leading up to this kind of story. Maybe it's best for the writers to get it out of their system and perhaps move on to more interesting stories. I would say though that in Chakotay's place, I would have insisted on Janeway continuing on and ignoring the message. I may have called Tuvok in there just to bounce logical points off of. Of course I'd never blame the kid for Seska's actions in his shoes, and if I could Q snap him to Voyager with no risk I'd do so. However with the information available at the time there were only really a couple possibilities. First, this was a trap. If that's the case then the message was a performance, and Seska and the baby will be just fine and need no rescuing. They knew this was a possibility, they acknowledged it, and foolishly went anyway. Second possibility, if Culluh was so offended the baby was Chakotay's(even though I assume Culluh was in on the plan as a way to get a hook into Voyager's first officer), that he really did intend to kill Seska and the baby. Well he found her at the end of that transmission, she had the baby with her. If Culluh intended to kill the baby and Seska, why would he wait? By the time they were discussing it, let alone the days it would take to come up with a plan and go after them, they both could have been long dead. Now later on Teirna did say the kid was going to be raised as a servant, which certainly isn't a good fate, but it's not death. Is it worth risking the entire crew of Voyager, including another baby, to attempt a rescue? Especially on information coming from a clearly unreliable source. So in short if Culluh planned to kill Seska and her kid, there's no rescue attempt because it's already done, and if not then the most likely scenario and ultimately the one that turned out to be true is that the message was bait and the whole thing is a trap. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE JANEWAY!!!! Anyway, see you in S3

The second best part 1 is coming. The first best two parter later

This is one of the best 'so bad it's good' episodes of Voyager. It's terrible, and yet one of the best watches of the season.

Wildly misinterpreted version of Josh this episode intro: - "Life begins at the molecular recombinator" - "Bajorans and bananas are 70% genetically identical which is why I slice them into my frosted flakes"

Okay quick part 1 rewrite thoughts: The Suder plot basically the same; Seska reaches out for help (for real) things are bad, the Vidians have determined that the Kazon have dna also resistant to the phage. The Kazon have been decimated. Seska transmits the coordinates of an escape pod containing the baby just before the Vidians enter and kill Seska; Voyager tries to rescue baby undetected and fail they are overwhelmed and the Vidians take the ship. The crew is sent to a medical research/detention facility; Basically the same premise just use the Vidians

Let’s face it, season ending cliffhangers and episode naming conventions aside, the real problem here is the Kazon fucking suck and it’s a double whammy to be told right off the bat ‘guess what it’s a Kazon two parter!’

I'm fairy progressive but I do think abortion is a tough issue.... But... I felt like the father vision was saying don't take out your hatred on a baby already born.

Day 2 of begging you to do the Orville after Enterprise. It's more star trek than any new trek. I've no doubt others will agree. Orville is the spiritual successor to TNG.

Some neat combat concepts (i.e. holo ships) and scenes, but aside from that... another meh Voyager episode with a boring plot and minimal characterization. The Kazon have overstayed their welcome by at least half a season, and I never liked them to begin with. Combat scenes that have real stakes behind them can be incredible. Sad these guys can't appreciate that. (That being said, "Basics Pt. 1" does NOT have believable stakes.)

Your talk of pro-life was confusing me, especially in light of the historical framing of Chakotay's dad's story. I was like, "one wasn't exactly pro-choice back then, not when the choices are give birth, or basically die, given abortions as we know them weren't a thing." Then I realized you were talking about conception without concent. All I'll say is that, given all we know about Chakotay's dad, it's totally within reason the guy would argue for the more traditional view - not necessarily Pillar's view. Just because a character argues for something, doesn't mean the writer is.

This is a lame episode. 2 part season finales were tired by this point. The success of Dallas' big cliffhanger and TNG's BoBW in keeping people talking about the shows, and buying the merch and even hyping the coming seasons as people who didn't even watch the shows heard about the cliffhanger over the following months from word of mouth and wanted to see what would happen is lightning in a bottle and to have that level of success is rare. It's basically the writer's/networks own bit of gambling, playing the odds to see if their part 1 will hit the jackpot. (I'll still defend nuBSG'a Kobol's Last Gleaming 1 & 2 as a whole story though, even if it ends on a "To be Continued" That episode was the culmination of everything in the season coming to a head. Not just set up for Season 2, but the narrative end point of the established dynamics. Moore had a good grasp on TV storyelling - how an episode's narrative could end after 45 minutes, but not resolve, as the next episode picks up that story, but has a totally different narrative arc, so 2 episodes are linked, but not considered the same story, or he'll have episodes that are Part 1s and 2s and it's basically "we have to cut this one story in half to fit into the time slot of the week, but it IS one story." Baaically how an episode can have a narrative arc, but the end of that arc isn't always resolution. To be continued as "The arc is done, but the resolution has it's own seperate narrative arc." I like that)

That scene between Chakotay and his father: What utter garbage. What the hell happened to Michael Piller? Also the main question remains: Why the FUCK are they still in Kazon space!? Third point - Garret Wang's fucking acting, Jesus CHRIST, "Maybe...Tom's Shuttle....got through". They should have killed him off permanently in Deadlock.

Season 2 is generally seen as the weakest of the 7 Seasons. The first half is rough, but there are still good episodes. Season 3 is generally seen as a step up, but still weaker than the other seasons. I love Voyager now, but I remember watching it as televised; while I stuck with it, I wasn't super-engaged until later seasons. It was always Next Generation's red-headed stepchild. Eventually, it breaks away and creates it's own identity, but honestly, all of us who watched it spent our early days comparing it to Next Generation and complaining about it. So one day, you will look back favorably on some of these early episodes that you "don't care about" right now, but hey, I get it. I felt the same way back when it originally aired.

Mid-season and/or final Pt 1 & 2s don't bother me at all. It's just one story, so as always it just comes down to execution. I think X-Files always does a good job with the multiple episode alien stories IMO.

would've been kinda cool if Tom was still on the Kazon ships, having earned the trust of Seska over the course of a few episodes to betray her now and unveil his true mission, wouldn't it? Oh well.

Ciffhangover.

I think it’s funny how they glaze Brad Dorif but can’t understand our love of Jeffery Combs. It’s literally the same thing in reverse.

Kind of interesting how the attitudes surrounding abortion have become so inflamed, that a scene from a progressive 90s TV show expressing compassion for children of rape is seen as pro-life now.

Yeah yeah part 1 whatever. I know it annoys you guys but it really shouldn't shock you at this point.

Boys sorry to say but S3 has a similar trajectory of S2, be curious if you disagree.

Having been around when these shows first aired, I think I can safely say we, the fans, did not look so negatively on 2-parters between seasons as you both have. Star Trek fandom has generally had the ears of the producers, and if we had responded as negatively towards them as you both have, they would have ceased doing them. I think you risk enjoying an episode by prejudging a TV episode based on whether it is a self-contained episode, a 2-, (or 3-) parter. It sets up a predetermined mindset. We saw a good 3-parter at the beginning of season 2 of DS9. So, in my mind, length and continuation of episodes has little to do with it - it falls into the same trap of "more than 2 writers, and the episode will be bad"; we've seen exceptions of that, as well. And I agree with you about the X-Files season 1 finale: it was truly a great season ender. It all comes down to how well were they written and what Josh and Alex keep hammering home: execution. That’s it, period. 2-parter or single episode should have nothing to do with it.

I came away with a general feeling that seems similar to yours: C+/B- with the elevation from just a C due to the return of Brad Dourif.

It’s a bit contrived just to get us to that cliffhanger…

I dislike when the writing makes the crew look incompetent. Hey, the Kazon keep attacking the same spot and damaging the secondary command processors... anyone know what those do? Wanna run a quick search maybe? Ask the computer! I just don't believe the crew would be that stupid. There is already a suicide bomber on board. Making him somehow disable self-distruct before blowing himself up would have been more graceful. At least it wouldn't have relied on the entire bridge crew having blinders on.

I prefer the DS9 approach to season finales a lot more. Tell a complete story, and then set up the next season with a hook.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the Kazon blowing himself up. You seemed to like that part. Yea, nobody ever trusted him, but I didn’t expect him to be a suicide bomber.

I suppose when most media bombards the audience with pro-choice / pro-abortion messaging, having a (not even really, but kind of) pro-life scene would seem weird.

Before you started watching Trek, did any shows you watch end with season-ending cliffhangers? And did you dislike them then, or this something that you realized post-BOBWI? Part of the fun at the time with these Trek cliffhangers was that you had three months to speculate with friends and family or with other fans online (for those who were online) about how they would resolve. So I think they had a useful purpose in the sense that the cliffhangers kept the conversation about the show alive in the break between seasons.

I do have a solution for the part 1 issue you guys have. Whenever you see one pop up, why not just watch part 1 and 2 at the same time, and no I am not suggesting that so we get content faster lol (although thats a bonus). But this way you can watch it as one unbroken long 88min mini-movie. Problem solved, no? I get it may throw off your schedule a little but that may be the lesser of two evils for you. Most reviews I have seen, don't rate each part anyway, but rather the whole. That may be the better way to do it, and tbh it's the standard way I at least have seen done with reviews. Not just Trek, but any part 1 and 2. It's usually treated as one entity.

I thought it was a good season finale. I think they had been building towards it for half the season.

I think Seska pleaded with Cullah to not kill the crew.. She alluded to something similar in an earlier episode " I'll have to use all my influence..."

So not to get into politics, but if you're pro-life then you really believe an unborn baby has the right to not be killed as it's seen under that framework so it wouldn't be relevant whether the baby is the product of consensual sex. I think that's the view most pro-lifers hold, and the thing is, that seems outrageous to you if you're pro-choice, but from the pro-life perspective that really considers it a life with the inherent right to exist or develop into one that makes sense. I mean, if you say you're pro-life it would actually be pretty hypocritical to say it was ok to abort in the case of rape, because that suggests you're not actually motivated by a sincere conviction that it's baby with survivak rights and that suggests your real motives are something else. If you're pro-choice then it makes total sense but you wouldn't really expect someone who was pro-life, assuming they were sincere in what they said, to think it suddenly became ok if the child was born of assault because that's not the child's fault. However, I don't agree with TA's interpretation that was the intended message meant to be expressed here. I think the point was that Chakotay shouldn't let his feelings about the mother affect his feelings about the child, and he used that example to harshly illustrate the point.. that the tribe didn't hold the crimes of the fathers against the children and in facr many people including chakotay had ancestors who had done this, and so Chakotay should think of the child independtly from Seska. At this point the baby was already born so pro-life/pro-choice doesn't come into (unless one of of the fairlly radical opinion that supports "post birth abortions.) The guy was saying that the natives treated those children with love no matter wher they came from, the question of possibly aborting didn't come into it because Iwe are talking about pre-modern (to us) times and back then many natives probably didnt have the means to perform abortions while protecting the safety of the mother. I don't know, various specific tribes might have know of abortofacient herbs, but I'm talking about what I think the episode was doing, I don't think the queston of abortion was even supposed to come up at all. I think you guys heard "had the children despite being SAed" and immediately thought of abortion because that's probably the context where that type of thing would come up in terms of when you've heard it. It's not like this was made before that was an issue or anything, but I think we can read sensibilities into older media that wouldnt have been there. I think at the time, televsion executives would have shot down anything mentioning the topic at all.

The ship battle is the one part I liked. And it's phasers, not lasers, come on now.

It sounds like you guys think this episode is kind of... basic.

Actually, the crew all gets eaten by the dinosaur and from now on we're going to be following the adventures of the Kazon as they control the Voyager.

"hey, with the Kazon controlling the ship I can indulge my passion for serial killing AND have it be doing something for the ship"

I definitely agree, the leaving them on the planet thinks strains credulity. It feels like the writing of a childrens cartoon where the villians never kill the heroes when they capture them but trap them somewhere from which they can later escape. I wish they had at least given some kind of plausible reason, like the Kazon thinking it my be possible they will need them later if they can't figure how to repair or maintain something with Voyager and they leave all of them because they expect a lot of them to die out there. Just something to rationalize what is a completely out of character move because the Kazon have been depicted as violent thugs who kill at the drop of a hat and this really doesn't make any sense for them to do without some kind of explanation

i would say chakotay talking to his dad was stretching and that part before they find the kazon was pretty dull. Of course that comes from the fake native american consultant. Which by the way is a pretty ridiculous concept as natives weren't one monolithic culture... so did he claim to be an expert on all native cultures? Or did people just think, eh, there basically all the same

See, for things like this you would think the controls would have some kind of biometric id lockout or... passwords or something rather then just anyone being able to use them. I guess we have to assume the kazon could fake the biometric info

I mean.. its kind of plot convenient that they're taking them to a planet instead of just executing them which seems more consistent with the kazon way

Sutter's eyes are hella creepy

I think they mean that usually Kazon are loyal to other members of their faction wherehas here there are Kazon who aren't members of any faction and are just working with the other Kazon on their individual ship, loyal to no one besides their own crewmates and then maybe barely so.

Michael Pillar did so much good for Star Trek but you can really feel his time coming to an end here. He’s really out of ideas by this point. It’s the most obvious part one of all trek. It’s so by the numbers that you know exactly what is going to happen next.

I have to wonder.... At what point in his life did Chakotay's father realize that he forgot to give his son a first name? Even he calls him "Chakotay". Is it a one-name thing, like "Cher" or "Madonna"?

The reason why this had a “Part 1” in the title is because four episodes produced during season two were held over to season three. Part 2 was the last produced episode of season two with the other three episodes being produced between Part 1 & Part 2. Part 2 is the S3 season premiere with the other three episodes aired later in the early part of season 3.

I wonder if the way you're watching is part of the reason you don't care for season finale cliffhangers. My recollection is that back in the day, fans (myself included) really liked them, and I think a big part of that was having to wait all summer with the anticipation of part 2. This was also a time when Internet message boards were taking off, and I remember excitedly discussing with other fans what we thought would happen. Yes, we would have come back for the next season anyway, but at the time a lot of us found the cliffhangers fun. Not saying this to try to change your opinion, but just to give you a different perspective. I don't think they existed just because the producers thought the audience would forget about the show and not come back next season without them; maybe that was part of it, but to some extent they were also giving the fans what they wanted.

Michael Piller's background was as a writer, and he came on TNG as head writer in season 3 before he became an executive producer. Though I think you're right that he had more of a corporate management mindset than someone like Ira Steven Behr. I don't think the speech by Chakotay's father was intended as pro-life, though I can certainly see how it comes across that way. But note that he does say, "Many of the women had their babies." To me, this implies that others chose not to. I think the intention was to say that you shouldn't hold the circumstances of someone's birth against them.

I'm not understanding how a title means/changes anything. It should never be a factor to what we see on screen, guys. Sometimes you let little things affect your enjoyment of something. And if I'm defending Voyager, that means something! lol. Just...you know...don't sweat the small stuff. As someone who binged, you know how many titles I never even noticed because I was distracted by something in the first minute? :P (im also someone that doesn't really read or pay attention to the credits unless a major guest star name pops up which I can't help but notice.) But yeah, personally I don't believe anything to do with written generated text affects the enjoyment. This was a solid-ass finale and cliffhanger. Yes, we know what will ultimately happen here of course, I mean there's five more season of Voyager lol, but it's about HOW. Not IF. This is where stakes do not matter to me. It's the journey. For a piss-poor season aside from a couple A's and one S (The Thaw!!), at least season 2 ended on a good note. I would be lowkey comfortable giving this a B+ or possibly an A-, because while it's nothing jaw dropping, it's solidly enjoyable from start to finish. It's not 🔥 but there's definitely 💨

In this review, Josh makes a bold political stance.

yeah, see I'd immediately be suspicious of the fact the ship with seska was so close to Voyager when Voyager has been traveling presumably towards the alpha quadrant. That has to men at least that Kazon ship is following Voyager.

One thought I had when you mentioned Suder's scenes (because he's technically in four scenes - the intro, meeting Janeway, the explosion and him in the vent) - why did they put the Kazon in the quarters next to Suder's? So they only needed the one guard to cover both doors? Either way - without doing that, Suder would likely have been put on the planet too!

I really liked how this episode demonstrated Janeway's tactical prowess during the battle before the sui*ide bomber blew up inside the ship. She was a boss in that scene owing the other ships.

Not a favorite episode or finale imo, with you there but, eh... I'll never understand your disdain for a show wanting to hook their viewers for the next season during the break with a two-parter. Just makes good sense. A bit of a tease I guess. But I like being teased here and there... well, as long as no feathers are involved.

I'm a fan of the non-numbered multi-parter formula myself. DS9 did that that with The Circle arc and with Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast. A lot of the time you can tell its going to be a multi-parter midway through the episode, but its a lot better then it getting revealed right at the start.

Two of the most important officers on the ship? Way too dangerous to contact Vidiians on the off chance they might be hostile. Random baby? All hands on deck for an obvious trap against the most hostile species in the sector. Fun episode though. B+

I love how the plan to take Voyager was such a Cardassian style of plot. This is truly a peak finale, everything has gone to hell in such a perfect way.

Damn. I'm kind of shocked to hear you guys criticize an episode of Voyager in the way I would. Oof. It doesn't make me happy you didn't care for it, but it does make me feel like less of a grump! Re: ship battles At this point in time Paramount is desperately chasing the 14 year old boy demo. I really appreciate the restraint of TNG. That's why Yesterday's Enterprise, and the Best of Both Worlds stand out so much as all time bangers.

Regarding Chakotay's first name, I like Kate Mulgrew's theory that he's actually an Irishman named Chuck O'Tay.

I have no problem with 2-parters. So long as each half of the story holds up... and the overall arc is strong... then I appreciate a storyline taking its time. Not that it the story should be SLOW. But a 2-parter can get into some DEPTH.

lmao, The Kazon, sorry can't take them seriously. If you lose to the Kazon you deserved it. At least we got Chakotay praying to his deity Cootchy Mama.

I remember how mind-blown I was when the self-destruct wouldn't work. Realizing they'd set it up through the whole episode, that the Kazon's whole purpose the entire time was to take the ship intact... it's kind of tropey stuff now, but in the mid-'90s it took me out. Otherwise, decent episode, neat twist for a season ending. It's fine. And in my head canon, his full name is Chakotay Jones.

I like this rhythm of one new Trek drop every evening. You guys should go to conventions more often.

Foooooorrrrrrrrkkkkkk.... I already called in sick for FOR THE CAUSE..... LOL Well... I guess I am more serious than before... but if you post Part 2 on Saturday Night... between preseason NFL and that, you I'll have to cut off my leg to keep my job/excuse alive.