{"id":6077,"date":"2017-02-15T09:36:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T09:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prettygoodbritain.com\/wp\/?p=6077"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:36:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:36:31","slug":"voyage-into-better-than-good-badness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prettygoodbritain.com\/wp\/?p=6077","title":{"rendered":"Voyage into better than good badness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star Trek comes in handy. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve needed a pop culture reference and reached for Kirk & Co. They\u2019ve also provided fan fiction mulch on a few occasions.<\/p>\n

This despite that I rarely rate it higher than Good Bad, the category which naturally falls below Good and above Bad. There\u2019s also a Good Good, but I see no need for a Bad<\/a> Bad.<\/p>\n

I turn on the subtitles when watching anything. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m hard of hearing; it\u2019s more that I always have a nagging worry about missing dialogue, and prefer the redundancy. These days all my viewing is done on a computer, making it easy to collect screenshots along the way.<\/p>\n

The following are from the Voyager episode Alter Ego<\/em>, which may have been the first to make me sit up from my usual half-interested slouch, one eye on the Netflix window, the other on some fresh hell in my chosen opinion aggregator, and say to my Oreo<\/a> \u201cHey, this is better than Good Bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After the preliminaries, which are nothing special else I would\u2019ve taken snaps of them, we are presented with the sight of the ship\u2019s senior logic jockey fiddling with one of those Vulcan games that make you wonder if this advanced race is all it\u2019s cracked up to be. Humans discovered Pick-up sticks centuries ago.<\/p>\n

In walks Harry:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cGrasshopper,\u201d he forgot to add. Harry calls it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The troubled<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

as I was saying, the obviously troubled Operations Officer<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nwrong \u2013 this is the holo doc\u2019s training tool for fumble-fingered humans<\/em><\/p>\n

has come seeking wisdom from Lt Cdr \u201cKnow-It-All\u201d Tuvok, who like Spock only has one name, all others having been dispensed with probably around the time the Vulcan High Command outlawed any emotion more severe than a raised eyebrow.<\/p>\n

Harry has woman woes. A step up from Tribble trouble, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, this is Star Trek. Specifically, Harry is smitten with a holodeck character (\u201cComputer, give me something from Baywatch, aged to perfection\u201d) who\u2019s the only one who really understands him. Or at least that\u2019s what I assume the project notes said.<\/p>\n

Tuvok looks into the situation<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nthere\u2019s something about\u00a0Mary<\/em><\/p>\n

and comes to appreciate what Harry sees in what\u2019s-her-name. But it turns out all is not what it seems. Marayna (all writing is improved by research) isn\u2019t in fact just another saucy tomato.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nclose enough<\/em><\/p>\n

She\u2019s a highly intelligent forehead being of the sort the crew is forever running into. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself in my rush to finish this before I run out of screenshots.<\/p>\n

Mary lives on a space station, her job to keep an unruly nebula tame by twiddling dials to maintain that wondrous dampening field technology that awaits future generations. She\u2019s a little like a lifeguard keeping her entire race safe, suffering from not-so-splendid isolation.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s managed to infiltrate the Voyager\u2019s CPU or whatever and project herself as holobait. She\u2019s done things like this before, to other ships. It passes the time.<\/p>\n

Only this time she didn\u2019t reckon to meet a mind as fascinating as Tuvok\u2019s. She falls for him. She must have him, or else. The imminent destruction of the Voyager awaits, unless the crew can figure all this out before the credits roll.<\/p>\n

A highlight of the episode is the hilarious fight between holo Hawaiian hotties (resistance to alliteration is futile) and B\u2019Elanna.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEmmy for the new category of Bad\u00a0Goodness<\/em><\/p>\n

One wonders if junior Vulcan Voric paid to have that set up, fuel for the obvious Pon farr smoldering behind his bedroom eyes earlier in the show.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is the usual meeting of the minds (Neelix is often the mascot begging for scraps at the table, but he\u2019s too busy adjusting the feng shui on the holodeck of this love boat) who struggle to find a solution which doesn\u2019t violate the prime directive of being too earnest. They fail, of course, as Tuvok allows himself to be beamed into the lair of the highly intelligent forehead being, who his tricorder identifies as the reincarnation of Alex from Fatal Attraction<\/em>, to be faced with an ultimatum: be hers, or she\u2019ll use her plasma nebula powers to boil the crew of the Voyager like so many bunnies.<\/p>\n

There follows a genuinely touching exchange whereby Tuvok talks her out of this act of extreme jealousy<\/p>\n