UNCUT - Sacred Ground (VOY S3E7) | Star Trek Journey 432

I missed this episode in first run so this was my first time watching. Alex was very constructive here which I appreciate it. It was alright but would not care to watch again.

._. -{ I d i d n o t e n j o y t h i s )

Another one that I did not enjoy, I did not feel or see anything in this one that would make someone think about faith. The test seemed pointless to me. Maybe I was just checked out. but it was dull.

Oof. Voyager is no better than I remembered.

If I were to make an argument for an F-tier, this episode would be the most powerful argument.

I think you Alex and Josh talk about camera angles, writing, editing, etc. when they fail to engage with an episode. They are both disconnected from religion. The mere mention of it causes immediate jokes. I think Kate Mulgruw in this episode was masterful in her performance. From the energy she had swinging the tricorder around with her coffee, to her being sunken in the chair and completely humbled. The scene ended the way it did, her walking out for an actual reason. It's telling a story in itself. 🤷🏾‍♂️🫡✌🏾Wish you guys the best.

So...was this character development?

It's amazing that Josh remembers the episodes so well but forgets that Klingons have clocks. 🤷‍♂️🤔

"...and then we'll be back with hopefully, a better one" '( o.o) (o.o )'

Welp, I think we're all just wanting to see the next episode

It's been interesting rewatching Season 1 to 3 with TA as I always skip these seasons on rewatch to get to the good stuff. Thank god back then they didn't cancel shows early on like they do now otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the peak of TNG, DS9 or Voyager based on their opening seasons.

this episode rly is one of the worst and overall its pretty hated xD

Bottom of the barrel ranking of 5.8 on IMDB, lol.

VOY S3 has its moments but overall: a weak and boring season. It does get better! And I'm not even VOY's biggest fan.

Well, once again, I won't be getting that hour back... More mystical nonsense from Voyager.

I like this episode quite a bit for what it's trying to say, even though I know it's execution is terrible, and I get why most people can't stand it. I appreciate the show trying to do something that is deliberately abstract. Especially since that's a risky move, because most people aren't going to want that, or understand what you are trying to say. Look what happened to the movie "The Fountain." It's a masterpiece of a film, but most people had no idea what they were watching, including me the first time. I actually got a lot of important messages and guidance from certain Voyager episodes growing up, and this episode is one of those. I've always viewed the universe as something more abstract than we can fully perceive. We already know that spacetime itself is a fourth-dimensional thing. There's only so much that we flatlanders can learn through experimentation. We're not even able to observe the entire universe, let alone test it, and even then, we only understand things in terms of 3D space. Our universe may actually exist in a way that goes well beyond 3D, but if it does, we have no way to perceive that. Our understanding of the universe we live in will continue to grow, but the full truth of what all of nature actually is may be forever incomprehensible to us, unless at some point we all become fourth dimensional energy beings able to experience it differently, like the prophets. I like that this episode tries to show that abstractness. I also like what DS9 tries to show with the prophets. Part of that being, that if fourth dimensional energy beings exist and interact with us, we would perceive those beings as gods just because their understanding of the true universe would be so far beyond our own. Maybe the spiritual people in this episode encountered those beings long ago, and this episode is them trying to explain part of what they learned? The whole thing does feel like an Orb experience. Maybe the Spirits are fourth dimensional energy beings? This episode also reminds me a bit of Doctor Suess's "Oh, The Places You'll Go" with things like the waiting room. Some people can waste their entire lives away in the same endless loop because they think they just have to wait for something to happen, or wait for retirement before they can be happy, or wait until they aquire some other outside thing. Other people will put all sorts of unrealistic demands on themselves, like the snakes, because they think that's what they have to do in order to be successful in life; constantly push themselves non-stop without rest until they give themselves a heart attack. I interpreted the vision quest that these people wanted Janeway to embark on, as well as possibly their entire religion, as them living a metaphor for all of us trying to figure out what life is, what we are doing here, and what we are supposed to be doing when we all actually know nothing. And that's something none of us will ever fully know the answer to. The closest answer we have, and the one this episode tries to show, is there are no right or wrong answers, just choices to be made and experienced. It's all about the journey we choose, not the destination. But some of us get so focused on the end destination, like trying to save Kes, or trying to get into Heaven, or trying to understand the entire universe scientifically, that we lose sight of the journey. And the beginning of embracing that journey is to first acknowledge that we are all in the same boat, and we all in fact, no matter what we do, know nothing.

One of my 5 least favourite Voyager episodes!

Another dull season 3 episode. I really don't know what the writers were thinking during much of this season.

Man, i wish i saved this Episode for the Evening. Would really helped to fall asleep better. Chekotey as the spirituell one been against it at the End, is a.... choice. And the only nice shot was the lighting on Janeways Face by the old screws.

Dont worry, there are many good episodes in the next 4+ seasons. Many mediocre ones. and mostly meh crap. Enjoy the good ones when they come.. :-)

You know it’s going to be good when the total length is just over an hour when the episode is 45 minutes.

Here we have an episode of Voyager, and episode that........yeah I got nothing. First I will say, it's not the worst episode of Trek. Not quite as boring as Imaginary Friend, it tried to have a message about letting go of preconceptions and being open minded, and it's not egregiously bad or cringe in any particular way. However the way it's executed, it just kind of feels like random, disjointed things happening for much of the runtime. When the guide says "everything you went through was meaningless", she could just as easily have been talking to the viewer. Also I find it odd that Janeway, who previously chose to embark on a vision quest with Chakotay, is now completely dismissive of a nearly identical concept from another culture, and that Chakotay himself seems convinced it's all bullshit. I'll give it a D+ for at least trying to say something, even if it ultimately fell flat.

I guessed Civil Defense right away for DS9 3x7. I may not be Josh, but I have my moments. Also won't say what eps or series, but teasers in Trek range from about 18 seconds for the shortest, to 14 minutes and 19 seconds at the longest.

What I like about this episode is how relaxed and sleepy it makes me feel, a perfect before-bed episode to send you into a blissful sleep

A perfect D episode.

This is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes. There is room for spirit and brain in every scientist

I think the biggest stand out is Kate's acting. By halfway through the episode she really does look exhausted. I think what she was doing it harder than it looks.

Boy that was a real Snooza Palooza. They should have let Kes die

The show will get better, can't remember when, but it does.

The awkward editing was the most interesting part of the episode. Threshold is Q Who compared to this.

A half-hour TV episode stretched out to an hour. And not a good episode, at that. As you sometimes say, Josh: this is ASS. E-rating from me.

The message of the episode was good, the script and some choices were bad, but season three is my least favorite if Voyager though I think the second half of the season improves, and I have liked 4 episodes in this season. Season 5 of DS9 being one of my favorites of their seasons may not be helping.

I love the effort you both put into remembering episodes title/order of all past seasons. This is a skill that I don’t think I want to build, but find very amusing to watch someone else show it off.

One of the very few times I skipped the reaction and only came to the discussions. I don't remember all of Voyager like I do TNG and DS9, but I remember this episode putting me to sleep on my rewatch. Even if I didn't have ADHD, I wouldn't have the attention span or ability to care about this one.

What the hell did I just watch? Never seen this episode, regret it now. Its boring as hell. I wished Kes would have been possesd after beeing to curious in a cave and would blackmail Neelix to do help kill the whatever lives in the celestial whatever... However a better ending would have been that Janeway accepts the doctors scientific explanation and is confirmed in her belief that with enough time and data you understand the problem and the solution instead on believing something just because someone else said so

I'm a Voyager fan (it gets better as the saying goes) but this episode sure made me miss the Deep Space Nine run we've been enjoying. Robert Duncan McNeill is still going strong. He directed the last two episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe this season.

I like this episode quite a bit, personally, despite the possibly terrible execution of this script, lmao. Great reaction! The whole "you have faith in science" bit has stayed with me. It's surprisingly accurate and deep, atleast for me, as someone who was studying science at the time and now works in neuroscience research. I do want to say, it's not religion VS science, atleast to me. It's just acknowledging that EVERYTHING humans think they "know" comes down to subjective belief. We really take for granted that "science", AKA the idea that humans can learn anything and truly understand the universe; is just an egotistical assumption we made. We might hit an impassible wall in scientific research, it might not be possible for us to understand the universe completely with our limited minds and perception. Not many people seem to be self-aware enough to acknowledge that. I personally have faith that the universe can be completely known; science is completely solvable; but I also understand that is just a belief, not a fact. (This was my first exposure to this particular concept in media so maybe I'm bias, but I do understand this is a pretty well known concept in philosophy.)

This was an episode that happened. Nothing HAPPENED in this episode though

Exactly what I pictured the thumbnail would be

This is RDM first time directing; He said on his Delta Flyers podcast; He was a last minute replacement. Another director bowed out. I think the script was so convoluted even after many watches I still do not understand the story and I am one who'll fight for Voyager to the death. RDM does a few more Directing Star Treks episodes. If you look at his IMDB page He has a long list of directing, producing and being a show runner.

"Welcome to our world, Starfleet crew! Our home is your home. We won't give you any guidelines. Please do anything you like." [The crew does one innocent thing] "NO NOT THAT!!!" But at least they didn't run on the lawn, am I right?

Imagine your life is actually on ds9, but you are in a holo suite and forgot.

It all finally makes sense. George Constanza is from the Delta quad and is the son of an old lady sitting in a cave talking and making no sense.... I now get it. I hope we find an origin story of Krammer..... wait maybe Krammer is the off spring of Neelix somehow. I mean barging in to situations uninvited, making everyone feel uncomfortable. Being generally stupid.... WOW seinfield is based from the Delta

I don't watch all the Voyager content, so forgive me if somebody already brought this up, but this is the last of the 3rd season episodes that were held over from the second season. The others were Basics Part II (so your comment about it being a better season finale than opener was astute), Flashback and False Profits. (Edit: Just got to the part of the chat where it's brought up. Also looked it up: the reason the episodes were held back was partially so Voyager could start in early September, partially because Flashback as an anniversary episode made more sense in the new season.)

Let's try giving these recent episodes TOS-esque names. For the Ground is Sacred and the Journey Meaningless Assignment: Wormhole The Remember Syndrome Operation -- The Ship! Every Tom, Zio, and Harry Tuvok's Brain The EMH's Memory Circuits

Goodness, how I despise this episode.

I guess I can cross Freaks and Geeks off of the wishlist of shows for you to react to.

This was voyager's Move Along Home moment

I did the math. The longest Trek opening in your journey so far is “The Nth Degree” at 7 minutes 20 seconds. “The Paradise Syndrome” is a little over 5, making it the 4th longest for TOS (“I, Mudd” holds the record.) many DS9s start hitting 6 minutes, including “Way of the Warrior” and “If Wishes Were Horses”. “Deadlock”is the longest for VOY so far. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I hate to dislike an episode with so much Kate Mulgrew screentime. She really tries to make the best of it too. But alas, the episode that featured a character staring at a rock perfectly mirrored the audience watching one. Dull and next to pointless.

Voyager's wild swinging in quality put a lot of people off in the 90's. I can't really say what caused it, but its undeniable. Its the best and the worst Trek at the same time.

Sigh..... I need a drink.....

This season certainly has a lot of episodes of television.

This is the second time I've seen this episode, and I still hate it. E tier.

Most people miss the meaning of the episode on the first watch. It really is an episode that gets better on re-watches purely because there really is more layers to the story than face value. For example, is her Guide really ever there or is it one of the "spirits" or a manifestation of all the "spirits" A very cerebral episode that requires a lot of thinking and some knowledge of theology and Kantian philosophy. It isn't about Religion vs Science in spite of the surface level discourse. Janeway is faced with a gruelling experience of Conditioning and Indoctrination, yes, but she learns that her logic and mathematics has limits. The Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem plays a big role here, which states that any system capable of mathematics has truths which cannot be proven. A Gödel Sentence. This means that Janeway must have absolute faith in Mathematics, almost to a religious degree to defend it as absolute, despite there being fundamental issues with proving mathematics, which is that you can't as whole. At the end there is an explanation for everything including the miraculous non-recovery as the Monks say. However, is that really what happened. Was it purely because of the Iridium ions that Kes was saved? I suppose it is a perfectly reasonable and acceptable explanation. Easy S tier episode.

Hang in there boys. The season does get better.

Yeah not the best episode sometimes I like it but its rare for me to watch it

I remember watching this when it aired as a new episode. I also remember viscerally going "wtf is this nonsense". I'm going to fast forward to the review portion, I don't hate myself enough to watch this again.

The good ds9 and terrible voyager episode combo is so funny.