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My march through all of the #StarTrek series and films, in air date/release date order, has reached its three-year anniversary. I& #39;m now watching episodes that aired in early 1999, so the final season of DS9 and 5th season of Voyager. Some thoughts:
The final season of DS9 is pretty darn good. I& #39;ve recently watched & #39;The Siege of AR-558,& #39; and that single episode depicts war in the Trek universe in a far more compelling fashion than the entire first season of Discovery.
I& #39;ve also watched & #39;Take Me Out to the Holosuite,& #39; which is the best holodeck episode in the canon. And, honestly, holodeck episodes comprise their own weird and surprisingly expansive subgenre under the #StarTrek umbrella, but that& #39;s a different thread.
I& #39;ve seen fans make two criticisms of the final season of DS9. One is that there& #39;s too much Ezri, and the other is that there& #39;s too much Vic Fontaine.
Now, the Vic Fontaine stuff, on the other hand, is pretty nauseating. All of the characters getting really into lounge music creeps me out. It& #39;s probably THE least compelling musical genre I can think of, and I respect my heroes less for becoming infatuated with it.
Voyager has been super inconsistent for me lately. & #39;Timeless& #39; is a high point of the series for me. It fits squarely in the Trek lineage that started with TNG& #39;s & #39;Cause and Effect& #39; where the writers play around with time travel is some really fun ways.
And & #39;Timeless& #39; gives us Captain Geordi LaForge commanding the Galaxy-Class USS Challenger. AND THAT& #39;S FUN AS HELL
However, right alongside gems like & #39;Timeless,& #39; Voyager was also giving us stuff like & #39;Bride of Chaotica!& #39; And maybe it was just the mood I was in when I watched it, but that episode bored me nearly to death. Like, I& #39;d rather watch & #39;Threshold& #39; a hundred times over.
I mean, I understand the writers wanted to have fun with the tropes associated with old pulp and serial stories. And there& #39;s even some clever commentary about how Star Trek storytelling conventions are super similar to many of those older pulp sci-fi tropes.
But, in doing so, they gave us a handful of supporting cast members who are literally generic pulp sci-fi cliches. Literally nothing interesting about Dr. Chaotica. He& #39;s just a rip off of Ming the Merciless. And I guess that was the point?
Ok, but man they gave a lot of lines to a character they knew was just a walking talking cliche. The black-and-white scenes just seemed interminable to me.
