Chris

Chris

Title inspiration:




source
Far Beyond the Stars didn't do much for me either. I suppose it did do a good job reminding us of the prejudices in the past. Unfortunately a lot of those prejudices still exist.

crazy_diamond

TFTNT Chris

Chris

You're welcome.

DigificWriter

Sometimes rewatching a franchise like Star Trek results in a change in perspective in terms of viewing order, a case in point being the following: I followed the Netflix order in watching A Man Alone and Past Prologue (in that sequence), and ended up realizing that, narratively, it actually would've made more sense to stick with my original plan of watching the episodes in the order in which they're listed on Paramount Plus.

Chris

You don't know until you try.

crazy_diamond

agreed

Waldfrau

DS9 is much more serialized than TNG or VOY, so some stuff can get difficult to follow if the order of the episodes gets confused.

crazy_diamond

true..

Chris

Yes, I found that too. There's often brief references to what happened in previous episodes, which is nice continuity,

DigificWriter

TNG yes, VGR no.

VGR is actually very serialized, but it manifests that serialization in a different way than DS9 did.

VGR merges DS9's serialized approach to Star Trek with the episodic style of TOS and TNG through multi -episode stories and story arcs and the progression of its characters, and UPN airing the series the way that it did actually disrupts that flow.

Two good examples of this are the 'love triangle shenanigans' with Tom, Kes, and Neelix, and Samantha Wildman's pregnancy.

Because UPN chose not to air the episodes Projections, Elogium, Twisted, and The 37s in their correct sequential order, what was supposed to be a multi-episode arc featuring Neelix's jealousy over the growing friendship between Kes and Tom doesn't get to progress organically and ends up being rather abruptly resolved.

That same decision also screwed up the natural progression of Samantha Wildman's pregnancy and stretched it from 9 months to like 2 years and forced the writers to come up with convoluted 'handwavium' in later seasons.

With regards to DS9, my experience with A Man Alone and Past Prologue actually echoes/foreshadows/reinforces the way that VGR manifested its serialization because, on the surface, there's not actually anything in either of those episodes that overtly requires them to be viewed in the order in which they were aired rather than the order in which they were produced, but when you actually watch them and pay attention, they really don't end up working narratively if viewed in production order.

The episode Dax also falls into this same category, although in that case, there's a conflict between the narrative content of the story and the Stardate(s) given in it, and it doesn't end up working if you move it from the order in which it was produced/aired and instead try to place it where its Stardate(s) indicate that it ought to be.

Chris

I'd agree that there is some serialization in Voyager. I didn't realize the issues with Samantha Wildman's pregnancy storyline.

To me the picking up threads from previous episodes is much more noticeable in DS9.

DigificWriter

Voyager is a rare Science Fiction example of a subcategory of television that I refer to as the Serialized Procedural, which is a series that, on the surface, seems Episodic in nature, but actually tells serialized stories that are linked through character progression, recurring guest characters, direct callbacks to previous episodes, and story arcs that are spread out over multiple episodes or seasons.

Some other prominent examples from this subcategory are Doctor Who, ANGEL, Haven, BONES, Elementary, Lost Girl, iZombie, and CSY: NY.

There are also, as noted, elements of DS9 that fit into this subcategory as well, although they fall away as the series morphs into a more traditional Serialized Drama.

Waldfrau

That's a format I like very much. With Voyager I wish they had paid a bit more attention to the details and planned some developments more carefully. (Seven + Chakotay came quite out of the blue f.ex.)

Chris

"Serialized Procedural" is a great way to describe it. Agree about liking the format. It's nice to be able to just jump in and watch any episode and feel that you understand what's going on, while it's also nice to give regular fans the added depth since they're familiar with the backstory.