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 EPISODE REVIEWS | ||
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Punch Drunk Writing The Fight Review by Steve Perry Airdate:March 24, 1999 Written by:Joe Menosky (Teleplay); Michael Taylor (Story) Directed by: Winrich Kolbe File Photo || Mission Log || Opinion Poll Short Take: Not even worth watching once Brief Summary:Chakotay must box to save Voyager, or something like that Review:God, what were they thinking? "The Fight" was old territory. I remember Jonathan Frakes one time called that old TNG episode where Deanna saw "two suns in the dark" as the Enterprise was caught in the Tychen's Rift "a real piece of..." well let's just say it wasn't polite. At least that episode had a cool finish, and was interesting, with nobody getting their REM sleep. "The Fight" was stupid, a reminder of how pale a reflection Voyager is of TNG. I've liked Voyager this year, but this was an abysmal effort. It's everything bad about Trek. To begin with, it centered around Chakotay, an uninteresting character played by a man that I am convinced cannot act. How he made it so far is beyond me - the Peter Principle at work, since he isn't there because of sex appeal, as the fact he had to box in a purple short to cover his paunch shows. I'll be honest with you - I don't know how to approach this review because I don't know what this episode was about. It was confusing as hell the first time, and I refused to rewatch it. Apparently, these aliens were friends, and they wanted to help us out of chaotic space. The cliches are obvious - technobabble anomaly, technobabble solution, and the fact that in the end Voyager does what no ship, save one Borg cube, has done by escaping. Every time I heard the term "chaotic space," in all its poor attempts at sounding smart, I cringed. But the worst part was this dream mess. Chakotay apparently got the answer by winning a boxing match. Um, okay. Instead of exploring his relationship to his grandfather, we got bizarre garbage about Kid Chaos, and Chakotay being afraid to fight because it hurt or something. Thank God Janeway told him to grow up. That scene in sickbay was the only good one in the episode. What was the point of this episode? Isn't that the question? The premise was garbage. It revealed nothing about communication, or how the mind works. Certainly that babble about old hoochie mama grandpa having a bad gene made no sense. Nothing even remotely interesting about boxing was shown, just a lot of "stick and move" chatter. Aside from some of the camerawork and the music, this episode was literally a zero, the worst Voyager has done since "Rise." And to think, beloved Ray Walston had to be a part of it! For shame! If anyone can tell me why this episode worked, PLEASE post it on the TW board. Some short takes: - Boothby, a boxing coach? Sorry, doesn't work. He has to garden sometime, and that was too Burgess Meredith. - Actually, the episode had one other nice point - Doc's comments about boxing injuries were often witty and showed at least some medical knowledge. - Boy was that "chaotic space" FX bad. Rating: F Next week: Jason Alexander. Thank God he didn't have to be a part of this one. | |
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