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Penny Arcade - Comic - Return Voyage
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Return Voyage
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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However, on the flip side, with the 22 to 26 episode season you would also get a lot of filler, and just less than stellar episodes as writers would sometimes through shit against the wall to fill out the season order. I think there is a middle ground. I think that around 16 to 17 episode seasons would be close to the sweet spot. That would give your characters more time to breathe and not constantly have to serve the season arc, but it would hopefully also allow the writer's room to avoid the more egregious filler episodes.
So really what I want is 26 episode seasons, and to somehow regain the time and attention span that I had as a teenager to actually watch that much TV.
So the comic suggests theres some tragic news or something with Ethan Phillips or something? He was in like, every star trek series, if not every. I'm not seeing any odd news.
Or is this just a fear of bringing up the weird ten times aging of Kes species, and how odd that translates to anything we try to communicate it as.
Or possibly better, variable width seasons. Because every season doesn't need that extra episode or two to dwell on something, but some do.
I think it's also more broadly just referring to the fact that Neelix is an annoying and often useless weirdo who doesn't have the charm or utility of his counterparts in other series (off the top of my head, Phlox, Guinan, and Quark, though obviously they are not direct analogs, but still good examples of a better character in that role).
And some have different numbers of episodes, like ST Discovery had 15, 14, 13, 13, and 10.
I've more recently revised my opinion on the character of Neelix. I won't say I've become a Neelix apologist, or defender, but I think I understand a little bit more what they were attempting to accomplish with the character and where they went wrong. I think with a couple of tweaks to the basic character concept, he could have been a very interesting and compelling character.
Writing for streaming also gives the writers a little more flexibility with plot and pacing. They don't have to structure acts around ad breaks.
Yeah, the idea of a local guy who can be a guide to the area while also making people uncomfortable because he's a weird alien creep is fine. Offhand I can think of two main problems with the execution:
1. He can't be a functional guide because of the premise--the ship is always moving at max speed through uncharted territory. Granted, the show mostly chose to ignore that fact (there really should have been no recurring enemies unless those enemies were also moving in a straight line at max speed) because they set themselves up with a premise that negated the possibility of a lot of normal Star Trek stories. But with Neelix it mostly came down to, "I've never been here before" which made you wonder why they kept the loser around.
2. Phlox is a good example of doing the weird alien that makes people uncomfortable, but one of the reasons he works so much better than Neelix is you (almost) never are made to feel sorry for him. While Neelix is constantly being thrown a pity party by the crew and the show itself. Phlox knew who he was, he knew he was the stranger on a crew of humans who had barely seen aliens, and he loved the chance to learn. Neelix is just too much of a loser to ever find his place on the ship and he always feels bad about it.
Those long seasons! They made tangents.
I've seen this whole show twice and I still have no idea what is happening in this image.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_and_Demons
In season 1 it was a running joke that shifts were going empty because his cooking was making so many people sick... But remember he made a cheese so awful it made the *ship itself* sick. He did so much damage to the ship with one rancid snack that the stores of replacement bioneural components was completely expended and entire systems had to be refit to more readily replicated isolinear components.
But then there was Basics. The episode where Seska's whole plan comes to fruition. Voyager is clear and safe of Kazon territory finally, but thanks to Neelix's help months ago Seska is able to perpetrate a deception to get them to turn around and come back, where Voyager is captured and most of the crew (except the resident serial killer they keep locked in an unused botany lab) gets forced off the ship. While exiled Neelix declares himself an expert in wilderness survival and is made a team leader. He then proceeds to get his team killed by *spectacular* incompetence.
And because he just abandoned their bodies and forgot where the cave was he also managed to kick off a series of events that got the ship captured a second time a few months later.
At the end of Caretaker Voyager had one crew member who was dedicated to its destruction, yet Neelix came closer more times than she did. It also had one crew member who really wanted to kill everyone, yet Neelix ran up a higher body count. In fact with five on screen deaths and unspecified but multiple off screen he is direct responsible for more crew deaths than any alien species except the Caretaker himself.
I'm pretty sure Phlox was the most mentally well-adjusted person on his whole ship.
(Possibly second-most; we didn't get enough Porthos-centred episodes to gauge for sure.)
His owner on the other hand... Forget the whole unhinged rant about peeing on sacred trees, the only thing you need to know about Archer's mental state is that he fed his dog cheese, experienced the results, and then *kept doing it*.