B4FV
Season Two
Episode
Trivia
Outside of Time (Part Two)
Title Meaning: The Leda was an experimental vessel that allowed its crew to live long enough for the ship to fulfill its mission. Sort of like a stasis vessel. Simply the Leda isn't affected by passing time, or its crew weren't anyway.
Alternate Titles - I think there was one but for the life of me I don't remember it.
Inspiration - I think originally I was inspired by my first ever in the right order watch of Next Generation (with tapes recorded from BBC until we got Sky, so yeah out of order, using an episode list from TV.com for the correct order. Fun.), and discovering that a lot of episodes had the Enterprise finding or looking for another starship, which then passed on their problem to the Enterprise too. Eventually a recently released "horror"/slasher film gave me the "inspiration" for the rest.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Two months after writing part one I'm gonna assume my interest and/or ideas for this episode had run out. Part One more than made up for a poor first prequel season filled with parodies, rip offs, pointless "rewrites" of original episodes... though to be fair main Season Three was doing this at the same time as well. The episode is more than eleven years old now so it's difficult to really remember what went wrong here. I had a basic idea of what was to come, what the villain was all about (I'll get to that later), how it was going to end etc... and I seemed to write only that, nothing more.
As of writing this is the only episode of the season that hasn't been rebooted, mainly because I know without reading it there's a lot of work to do. Again as it is eleven years old I cannot recall any plot information, character stuff etc that didn't make it (which makes me think that I'm right about only writing the basic plot and calling it finished) to aid in writing new scenes and fixing any older ones. At least with Starships, Symbiogenesis etc... there's material to work with and in Symbio's case some memories of scenes that weren't there. Outside 2 has nothing other than the original plan of using the villain in later episodes. I'll go into that later. It will be rebooted, probably rewritten to hell. It's high up there on my to do list for 2015 just under finish Season Five.
It's not all bad though. During writing of the previous season, as well as the third main season, I was to put it mildly going through a lot of crap in my life and it reflected in my work. At the time I was mostly oblivious to it. Season Three tried too hard to be edgy and dark, continued S1 & 2's trend of ripping off other material despite me originally wanting to be more well... original. Prequel One didn't live up to its potential, and continued the trend of ripping off other... you get the idea. It's a miracle Outside of Time 1 turned out okay.
Long story shorter B4FV2 and Season Four were fresh starts in more ways than one. I was feeling better and I felt that with both seasons there was potential. At least for one I was right (Season Four), I'm still in two minds about this one. Sometimes yeah I think it had a few good ones in it, it had some of the important plot ones and it had the first tough episode I thought I'd never write but did without changing it/wussing out (Up In Smoke). Then I remember the filler beginning with classics such as the unreadable Starships Cannot Run (more on that later), Symbio-rewrittennowfourtimes-genesis (I wish I was kidding), and later filler like Run or Hide and I swallowed a ring Sweet Sensation. It had its stinkers and it had its great ones. All in all the season is/was good and bad.
Outside 2 definitely reflects that, I feel.
And yes I sometimes do waste the first episode of a season's trivia page talking about said season and not the episode. When it comes to a measly part two affair, there's not much I can say. When the reboot comes I should be able to say more.
There is one thing I'll mention, even though I've made a reference to it in Season Five's trivia. This one contains entire series (up to mid Season Five) spoilers that are vague and I've tried to avoid exact details about said spoilers. Still worth a warning though.
B4FV2 was the season where the FV storyarc would truly start to kick off, which is evident with the important Do's and Don'ts episode and the more subtle Broken Wreck and Death Wish. Everything regarding those three and their impact on the entire series were set in stone. What wasn't was another subtle thread in the series arc and that was the introduction of a re-occurring villain that doesn't obsess over rabbits or (spoilers for S2+) drop cubes on people. This one was more of a personal villain and yet his/her/their actions would influence quite a lot. Outside of Time's villain was a candidate. Putting it simply and less spoilery as possible, the villain had to have a personal vendetta with James. I can't stress enough that I wanted him/her/them to seem like a minor villain in comparison to the others, a personal one only, to hide their hidden until much later greater impact on the overall storyline.
In the end the Outside of Time villain was a bit 2D even in Part One and her even flatter (and terribly written back story flashback) appearance in the second half ruined any chance of her appearing again. She was at the time the weakest of four villains anyway, and a little more difficult to use later. I mean she was a ghost tied to one ship that was always going to be destroyed at the end. I'm glad I had no interest in using her.
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In the Flesh
Title Meaning: The crews fears become real, in other words they're there in the flesh. Though to be fair, there's more to it than that.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Not sure. See Misc
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)I'm probably off by a few million miles, but it's better than nothing, this is my memory for you. In The Flesh was an entirely different story, in an entirely different season. I am sure it was in the main seasons at first, then went into the B4FV1 season as the season cliffhanger, and finally it ended up here. Once it was moved into B4FV2 the story changed. Was it the Voyager In The Flesh parody? Kind of. I did not like Voyager's version. I hated it. It ruined an intriguing villain, I intentionally skip it everytime I watch Voyager as I cannot consider it canon or my health is at risk. This episode was the FV version, but with a twist. I won't bore you with it as it's long since history, and my memory has likely twisted it slightly. The jist was that Species 8472 were not technically in it. Another species was, posing as them. Again I stress that this episode wasn't following In The Flesh's storyline at all, just the erm... vague premise of it.
In the end the plot was too difficult to manage at the time it was planned. I think it was planned out all the way back when S1 and maybe 2 were, so that's how old it is. When it was moved here the plot barely resembled itself. The title is all that's left. So yeah when I said there's more to the title than what I said, I meant it. The plot was developed around the title.
Bet you're glad you read all of that for nothing, huh? Hehe.
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Crying, Dying
Title Meaning: To be honest I'm at a loss here, other than slightly altered song lyrics (haha they're everywhere). My guess here is that crying refers to the babies, dying refers to well Harry and... oh forget it. It's a terrible title, can we just leave it as that? I probably thought it was clever at the time with that comma there. Damn seventeen year olds and their stupid song lyric titles.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Deadlock
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Deadlock
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)I remember going through a phase of wanting Deadlock, then thinking I couldn't do it justice, to realising I needed it, and then not wanting it. In the end I thought I'm going to have to do something drastic here or it'll end up like the episode Broken Wreck replaced, which I forgot and was only reminded about when I found a banner for it hiding in the online version of the banner folder (and not anywhere on my computer). Anyway that drastic thing was the Janeway/James side story. James had to return either here or in episode four, I toyed with it here. Then I realised with the option of a mirror Voyager I could get away with not doing it but keeping the character. This gave me the even better idea of finally giving Crying, Dying (sigh) its more drastic change; hey, let's have it in the other Voyager's perspective. You know the doomed one that did nothing while our Voyager was pounded.
It was a change to an original episode, so that was a good thing. However that brought the issue of nothing happening until Janeway sees her ghostly image run off the bridge. Oh well, can't win them all.
This episode was written nearly twelve years ago at the time of writing, and it was one of the oldies I had to revisit to do the 200th episode Five. Older episodes had to have scenes taken from them, unfortunately I discovered that the quality of the flashback Janeway/James scenes I needed were terrible in comparison to Five. I do think I write better than I did in 2003, however some things haven't changed; speech drives a lot of the story, I still keep to mere basic descriptions (sometimes ish), so I didn't expect any issues. There were loads. In the end I had to keep the scenes side by side with the "new" ones in Five and mostly write them again word for word, yet keep what was spoken exactly the same. In the end I think I only kept two of the scenes out of three. One wasn't useable without changing what was said. It's a shame really.
It's an even bigger shame that the biggest issue with the episode, which was above, were only with the flashback scenes. I was quite happy with the Voyager present day stuff. The flashback stuff was bare and well, juvenile to be honest. I rebooted the episode by just removing the writer scenes/lines, when I could have spent time fixing this. Janeway's talk with her cousin about keeping her baby; quick and naive. The confrontation about who keeps the kid, quick again and Janeway's far too agreeable (a sign of me just rushing a scene to the end, as usual). The labour scenes and name picking was probably the only part of that story I liked. Don't get me started on the Janeway leaving scene. Five's two versions show 2003 me how it should have been done... by me, I imagine other writers could do better haha. Maybe I'll have another reboot with this one episode someday. Maybe.
I do remember that this episode had one of the only helpful, constructive criticism I ever got from fanfiction.net when the series was hosted there. Despite reading the Janeway's past book Mosaic (which is technically canon as it was written by one of Voyager's executive producers), I completely got the timeline wrong. It was relatively minor. I only remembered the one partner she had in the book, so I paired her up with him without thinking. Why I had to pair her up with anybody is anyone's guess. She didn't date Justin (not that Justin ew) until much later in her life. It should have been Chen (I think that's how it was spelt), who I don't remember at all. As she wasn't engaged to him there were a few changes throughout the series to fix this minor mistake, and again I could have changed it to seeing nobody but it must have been too hard to do, ha.
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Whenever
Title Meaning: I think... THINK that the title is referring to James waking up from the coma. Whenever you're ready, said in a sarcastic tone. It's probably not that though, so who knows if I don't.
Alternate Titles - It will have had one, and I'm not talking about the original episode title either cos I never remember it. Sigh.
Inspiration - The original episode which again, I can't remember the name of. Cold Fire springs to mind, that could be any other episode. Season Two wasn't one of my favourites.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - I'm not repeating myself haha.
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Another episode I wasn't sure about doing. I'm not a big fan of the Seska arc, I never enjoyed the Kazon as villains, I could never take them seriously. Although this episode was the only one out of it that I enjoyed. Since writing this episode I actually started to grow fond of Basics as well, actually it happened while writing my version. My crap tends to make me think it could be worse. Joke... or not? Who knows. Anyway I had no idea what to do with this episode, I knew I needed it though, just like I had to do State of Flux (another Seska episode that I didn't know the name of). State of Flux was a mess. I didn't want to write it, had no new ideas but I needed to do it. What you got was an episode very close to the original with coffee jokes and an attempt to chuck an extra character in for a few lines. Awful.
The truth is I didn't need it. While planning the prequels I had no plans to do this episode, Basics/Instinct or even have the Kazon in after Caretaker at all. Unfortunately with my ideas for Damien, or rather Rick & Brannon, as the main villain(s) fell short I had to do something else. I had a huge dislike of Seska and her story, so I guess I didn't have to, I chose to include her just so I could write her how I always saw her. I think Sweet Sensation remake and Worse Case 1 and 2 do a better job of it but never mind.
The other thing I needed to do was bring James back from his coma, as well as start his prequel arc. If you're reading this as you go through the seasons, in other words you haven't read B4FV3, steer clear for the rest of the episode's trivia. How I kick started it was a bit crappy and I knew it even then, I just didn't like changing stuff that was already written then (sigh). The stupid idea for the random telepath was to create a seed of doubt in his head about his humanity and his fear of becoming like his father. There was even stuff in late B4FV1 (Second Chance and Outside of Time). The dreams do an okay job at this, it was the telepath stuff after he woke up that ruined it if I'm honest. Also the reason why the telepath does this is lazy too, but hey! I've come to expect that with the older stuff.
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Do's and Don'ts
Title Meaning: I think (yey another think) the title is about the rules of time travel. B4FV2 has a few titles like this I'm afraid, as I was at the time stuck on what to call things. Some episodes used titles from the old episode lists of 2001 (you know the one with eight main seasons planned out before Thrown Key was written, lol).
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - N/A
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)I wish I had some trivia for you, I really do. The truth is apart from a scene near the end, I've got nothing new I can say here, yet.
Once again this episode was looked at and had bits of it used in a Season Five episode flashback and because of the quality, had to be rewritten to fit in. This was the scene I mentioned and as this is the prequel series, it doesn't seem fitting to explain it here. It's meant to be something that is overlooked here if you read the series from B4FV1 to Season Five, then the S5 episode I mentioned brings you back to this scene to hopefully make you wonder what's so special about it. Explaining it, especially here, would ruin the whole point. Ah well.
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Broken Wreck
Title Meaning: Basically the title is supposed to make you believe it's referring to the colony being a wreck, broken etc... The title actually refers to some of the characters involved once the episode is over.
Alternate Titles - Lose Our Way
Inspiration - The setting was inspired by seeing the ghost resort (which for the life of me I can't remember the name of, the shame) from afar while I was in Cyprus. The episode itself I'm not sure, but it is important enough for it to be something I made up on my own.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)While cleaning up the site for its re-launch back in 2012 I discovered a strange file in my episode banners folder. It was named b2-04 which told me it probably was some Whenever banner I forgot. I didn't have it on either computer so I downloaded it to have a look. To my surprise it wasn't Whenever and it wasn't even what was originally in episode four's slot. Nothing was originally there. The empty space in the season was always Broken Wreck, I just didn't know what to call it, what number it was going to be or how to develop it. The basic premise was to introduce Zare and the Slayer mythology. I just didn't know how at the time. After seeing the banner it all came flooding back. The episode was called Lose Our Way and the plot was divided between that and the Tom/Neelix/Kes triangle episode with the hand puppet baby dinosaur ^_^ Oh and the infamous spagh... hair bolognese fight ahem.
As Broken Wreck developed I realised there was no room for this, and I had no new ideas for the Tom/Neelix plot anyway. The episode was renamed not long after a setting was decided and the dinosaur baby plot was discarded. In the end I kept some of it for a later episode, that's another "story" though.
I always figured the only problem with this episode was the character butchering and awkwardness near the end with Jessie. Unfortunately Broken Wreck was also a victim of the 200th episode research and er... take scene from project. I discovered quite a few issues with it, some that even were changed in the episode instead of just altered in the 200th. The issue: Broken Wreck really suffers from a long, long setup. It wouldn't be the first episode ruined like that. It was supposed to be a gradual tension builder, I obviously suck at that.
Getting back to the Jessie and Zare thing. If it wasn't such a big deal I would have rewrote that whole storyline in the rebooted version. Since it is, I can barely touch it. My problem isn't that Jessie can get quite awful when she's jealous, it's that she and James never, ever have a talk about the Slayer revelation. Ever. Not even a "oh that explains a lot" line, nothing. Instead of being supportive or being an ear to this huge life changing thing, she just makes stupid comments (the shuttle impress me scene? wtf was that about?) and gives Zare a crap time. I do not like Jessie in this episode.
Don't even get me started on the awkwardness of the being ready talk, cos jesus christ. I knew Up In Smoke was coming and I figured I had to prepare for it, this was an utter failure. It's a miracle Up In Smoke turned out fine and nothing got cut from it. I'd explain what I was trying to do in that scene, well that part of it anyway, but it's just too embarrassing. I pretend it doesn't exist. I guess I kinda do have to and even now I'm stuck on how to do it without being crude in anyway, which explains why the scene turned out crap now that I think about it. Here goes... skip if not interested.
On one hand you have the originally shy and reserved Jessie. Bullied by primarily boys her whole life. To be honest her bullying is inspired by what I went through as a teenager, loosely. I was picked on by both girls and boys, but primarily boys. I was/am an odd looking person and as a girl you can't look ugly, can you? As I said loosely, Jessie's not meant to be ugly but anyway... the boys pretended to like me so they could harass me in specific ways. So yeah I thought Jessie could have a similar time like this, that's where the similarities end. Hers was orchestrated by a boy who did like her, she wasn't picked on for being an uggo like me, she was picked on for being a shy girl who matured early and she had a inhumanely strong best friend to help her out. Anyway cos of that she doesn't trust men, James was the exception to the rule, and cos of the way she was bullied the idea of... that is terrifying.
On the other hand you have James, who has had to grow up with inhumane strength with no explanation and nobody around to teach him how to manage it. Here's where the awkwardness comes in and made the scene the uncomfortable mess it is now. He's far too strong, he doesn't want to hurt any girl, let alone Jessie. The subject she brings up is as terrifying as it was to her before she became okay with it. I haven't read the awkward scene in years, but I imagine a lot of people will read it and think... well the wrong different things. I don't remember trying to explain what I just explained, I think I just assumed people would put it together themselves. Maybe one day I'll have to dive in and take a look at the scene, preferably before Outside of Time 2 is re-released and I call B4FV2 fully rebooted.
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Starships Cannot Run
Title Meaning: Heh, another "clever" title. The episode is about a race, it's a spaceship race, Voyager can't take part. No it's not clever. I still prefer it to bloody Drive though.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Voyager's Drive
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Technically none.
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Ah for a while I thought this was a nice fun little breather episode in between Broken Wreck and Death Wish. I went back to check it during the reboot planning and site revival to find that it was a garbled mess. I had no idea what was going on most of the time. The reboot didn't even fix all of the issues with it as I still haven't a clue. Just what was the point of the "cowboy" aliens? Why did the original introduce a random bully for Faye to deal with... he was never seen again. Why was most of the racers the FVDA crew? Wasn't the point that the Voyager crew worked with them? Okay I lied, only one of those weren't dealt with. One issue was removed and the other was fixed, but they were the biggest question marks for me.
I know I wrote most of the original episode with a friend of mine, a one that didn't usually hang around during FV writing, sitting nearby. I must have been in a hurry. Also it didn't help that I was asking for opinions from a guy who only liked Season One, or at least that's all he read apparently ^_^ I'm not blaming him, I'm blaming myself. By B4FV2 why was I still stubbornly writing things to a timetable? I didn't have to finish the episode that very day, sigh.
The reboot of this and the season itself though provided an opportunity for me to make fun of something that had only annoyed me after the prequel series was written; Apple. And Rihanna, who could forget? Back in 2003 Apple were only a slight pain with their taking over the mp3 player market. It didn't bother me that much as I had a far superior iRiver that is still better than anything out there. Also in 2003 the most annoying voice in music was Justin and I was already venting there. I did not know that Apple would take over Nokia's role in the phone industry and more, or that a singer sounding remarkably like Janice from Friends nasally laughing or snorting over a boring beat would release (or try to) every song on her album every damn week/month *shrug*.
I guess I can understand overpriced tat like Apple being popular (maybe) but I'll never understand why anyone likes Rihanna, she sounds awful to me. Justin Timberlake, all is slightly forgiven. She was perfect for a role with the FVDA and thus started off the Apple joke at the end of this. Who better than Rihanna, the woman who takes over the music channels, to meddle or even be related to the company who would sue another rival company for having a phone the same shape as theirs (not cos they were a half decent rival, and their dream is to be the only choice out there after all. That would be silly). Hey, I'm on their side... why not a circle or a triangle Samsung? Snigger.
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Symbiogenesis
Title Meaning: As the episode wasn't about Tuvok and Neelix anymore, I couldn't call it Tuvix. The original title and sometimes what Sky calls it was Symbiogenesis. That word is used to explain what happened to those two.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - The original
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Tuvix
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Ah the episode that was based on the one apparently loved just as much as Threshold. The episode I used to fast forward to get to Resolutions. The one I assumed people thought was actually quite good, especially cos no one but J/Cers liked Resolutions. The episode that is the number one proof of Janeway apparently being a psychotic mad woman who likes to selfishly kill people. Ahem. FYI I'm on her side in this episode. Tuvix claims both Neelix and Tuvok still live on inside him, and I'm sure Tuvok would have happily lived on forever with Neelix if she hadn't have done it. The monster. Also to be fair to Tuvix, the episode, there really isn't a right or wrong here IMO. Someone was going to die here. Tuvix himself wasn't that nice of a guy either. The way he treated Kes (leave her alone creep) and thinking he had a right to live over two people left a sour taste in my mouth.
Anyhow back on topic. I wasn't a fan of the episode for other reasons, but I liked the idea of it. The combination of Tuvok and Neelix had hilarious potential and I feel like Tuvix ruined that. Instead of trying that myself and proving me right, as I wouldn't have cos yeah I suck at writing both characters, I decided to pick two others and slightly change the premise to how I thought Tuvix should have gone. Two people are merged, but their souls remain intact and fight each other for dominance.
Of course the episode was a toughie to write and it suffered from numerous writers blocks and rewrites. The episode was finished but lost in an incident I honestly can't remember. I've looked at my old news pages from 2003 and assume that it happened when the computer before the one I had a few years ago died the exact same way. (Or rather it was the one older than that as I remember the one which died in 2012 was a surprise Christmas present and there wasn't anything wrong with what it replaced). Anyway, counting the reboot the episode has been written/edited a total of four times. The first two were the attempts to get it right, the third was after it was lost, and the fourth was the edited/new scenes rebooted version.
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Death Wish
Title Meaning: The Q involved in the episode wants to die. It's quite simple really. The extra plot added to the original one has a more er... subtle meaning for the title.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - The original
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Death Wish
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Originally Death Wish would only cover the full original story and nothing else. It then came to me that it would fit perfectly with the story I had in mind to set up Resolutions (and more) as well. I can only go into full details if you're already way, way ahead in the series. In other words Season Five ahead. For now we're in spoiler free territory but I'll warn when it is time to leave.
I was silently dreading the Q side of Death Wish as it had to be different to the original, yet it still had to follow the same plot. When I say different, I don't just mean it couldn't be a copied word for word from the episode. I mean it's not a spoiler that FV is based around an alternate version of Voyager. The clue is in the title. Death Wish still had to follow the majority of the original's plot, it had to be resolved the same, but there had to be little things to prove that the Q's are aware of this fact. That's all I can say without going in too deeply down the spoiler hole.
In the end I quite enjoyed the episode and it worked out quite well for that reason alone. I'm getting a little better writing Q, not perfect, so that helped a lot. My alterations to the other Q were silly (and inspired by a certain re-occurring gag in a film), yet they work in a way as he hints that he's been down this road before, and that can drive anyone bonkers IMO.
Before I move on to the second half of the story, the beginning. My copy of Death Wish and Basics Part 2 were missing the first scenes (oh and State of Flux had this issue too) from my recorded VHS copies. I only ever saw them when I got the DVDs. State of Flux and Basics were hidden gems, deleted scenes for me after all those years. Flux with the food supplies joke with Neelix, Tom arguing with the computer, yeah. Death Wish's intro was still unknown to me (Flux's I remember having only Season One on DVD as Voyager boxsets were £89.99 then but S1 was cheaper due to being shorter) when I wrote this, by Basics/Instinct I had Season Two. So yeah that intro isn't just a bad joke, it's a bad joke explained. And it's been explained again.
The second half of the story; this is where I introduced the second choice for a re-occurring villain (see Outside of Time 2). Unlike Outside of Time I had to decide during the episode itself if he was the one, there was very little wiggle room. If he wasn't picked I still had two other villains to toy around with. Now we go into big spoiler territory. Don't continue on unless you have gotten up to the episode titled Five.
The villain from Outside of Time could have gone on after her introductory episode. There are ways around the destruction of the Leda. She could have come back easily. Villain 3 still had until B4FV3 for me to make up my mind. Villain 4 was flexible. Villain 2, aka Frenit, his influence in FV's overall storyline started during his introduction. If it was to be him I had to decide then and there.
In the end it wasn't so complicated or stressful as that. Frenit was perfect for the role of re-occurring personal villain. The influence to the FV time/dimension paradox could easily be hidden and/or overlooked for seasons to come. Villain 1 and 4 were a lot more psychological threats, their influence on the paradox (which don't happen now, don't worry) was still to be really fleshed out. Villain 3 would have just had something similar to Frenit but later on in It's Your Duty (that scene still exists but was too good to remove - I should add to that episode's trivia about this). Frenit worked as an antagonist for James much better than the others, which was far more important as I'd have to want to keep writing that villain years later. Outside's was damned awful, Villain 3 didn't have much personality going for them, and Villain 4 ended up getting their episode deleted, then delayed until late B4FV3, AND THEN their influence in it completely removed. Their personality and motives were to be written on the spot, so nothing lost there.
My only beef with this influence is 'cos Death Wish hides the big juicy stuff and Five only shows the previous two timelines versions, that the tiny (and I mean tiny) little difference that changes how James dies, still hasn't been revealed. It has been explained as simply he doesn't die in this timeline to Frenit's attempt to snap his neck because he's stronger here. Fine. That's fine. At this point I'm worried I'm over thinking this. I probably am. The missing piece is between the failed attempt and the part that is shown; where he's pushed off the waterfall to drown. That's it.
Yeah I'm over thinking it. In my head he gets back up after Frenit's attempt to kill him, the minions step in and mostly all die like the others (DW does mention he killed a lot of them), Frenit decides then and there it would be more fun to torture him instead of killing him quick. Was the drowning attempt meant to kill him? Maybe, maybe not. I decided to erm not to decide, both ways work. It's not a big deal now that I've written it. It's just this scene is an important thread in the paradox, very important and I guess it's natural for me to pick it apart and worry over it. No matter, it's written down now.
Last but not least, the reason I picked Death Wish to share this story with? Firstly, the Q side of the plot is connected to it in a way. Second the title. Death Wish starts off James' impulsive almost suicidally reckless stunts that will go on until the end of B4FV3. Death Wish is more than an apt title.
Spoilers end.
Just a minor note. The nutty Q, he's a horrible, horrible person but he's so damn fun to write. I think the same way about Damien. I wonder if that says a lot about me.
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Marooned
Title Meaning: The six crewmembers are marooned on a planet. Easy.
Alternate Titles - Resolutions Part 1, Resolutions Saga: Marooned. You get the idea.
Inspiration - The original episode
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Resolutions
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)As someone who became a J/Cer from watching Q and the Grey and Scorpion, while not yet knowing about Coda or Resolutions, I can safely say that the idea to make this a saga of five episodes wasn't (solely) because I'm a mad shipper. Just partly, ha. When I did eventually get around to seeing this episode I actually thought it was a missed opportunity that it wasn't a two parter. I wanted to see more of the crew dealing with this, I wanted to see more of this planet and how the stranded two cope with it. I was curious about the planet. I loved it still despite it. While writing my Voyager rip off... no sorry while planning my Voyager rip off novel series, Resolutions' chapter got a whole lot bigger. When I wanted to write an actual Voyager novel series, Resolutions was picked to be some sort of prequel. Resolutions wasn't the first that came to mind when I wanted to make a prequel series to FV, but it was definitely one of the reasons I went ahead with it. And here we are, five episodes. What on earth could I do in five episodes of this?
Some of the stuff that appeared in my Kidz Trek version did slip into this, unfortunately a lot of it wasn't the good stuff. One took over the second episode, more or less, so I'll mention that there. The other thing that slipped in was the bet. I think it was the second trip, whichever one had multiple people on it. I thought it would be more of a laugh than it was.
Everything else was created solely for FV. To be honest I don't remember the primary plot being in Marooned, so I'll leave it as that.
Coming Soon
Filled My Dreams
Title Meaning: Another inspired song lyric title. It was picked as there's a lot of dreaming going on, and even though it's not really spelt out, the characters lives on the planet are jerked around by these dreams.
Alternate Titles - Resolutions Saga: Filled My Dreams
Inspiration - Resolutions and my insane versions of it.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Resolutions
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Getting back to my KT inspirations. I made a daft re-occurring joke that the song Upendi (Lion King 2, youtube it, I dare you) would well... happen, except not as um, extreme as that ^ It was a stupid joke that anyone going to this planet had to suffer this water ride with a mad man singing in the background. That was never going to work so I changed it to have Lisa suffer the dreams of this. It wasn't good.
Instead I used a different love song from the same film in a later episode and I was in tears while writing it. Not because it was so moving and crap, but because the image of Janeway and Chakotay doing all of this was too hilarious to me. It never crossed my mind to get rid of it. Oh and FYI the original trip to the KT version of this planet, the same thing happened. Upendi's the only one forced on the visitors haha.
As stated in title meaning, the dreams are the reason for most or all of this episode happening.
Janeway dreams about coffee and eventually finds some. Easy. Also after looking at the episode the first dream leads her into the storm, likely just a joke but just as likely foreshadowing for the plasma storm later.
Lisa's dream about Upendi. Oh dear. It does lead her and Ian to go for that walk that brings about their break up.
Chakotay appears to be having a nightmare at the beginning too. He's very touchy in this episode.
Overall the dreams leave the gang with little to no sleep. James didn't have a nightmare (or it wasn't shown) but he was up and about anyway. Everyone's on edge as a result, which leads to that opening shouting match.
It's not the cleverest of premises, not even close, but that's it. Marooned and Filled My Dreams were never meant to be the good ones. Marooned was a setup episode, while Filled My Dreams tried to get the insane stuff from my KT versions out of the way. No, I'm not a big fan of these two.
More Coming Soon
Into the Darkness
Title Meaning: The power cut. That's the reason for the title. Easy.
Alternate Titles - Res... oh you get the idea.
Inspiration - Original episode
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Resolutions
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Into the Darkness and Is There Something were going to be one episode, as you can see that didn't last. The idea was to divide up the Voyager scenes and the planet scenes so they'd each have an episode to themselves. Darkness ended up having a setup scene for Something, but other than that Darkness ended up fine. Something on the other hand. Well I'll get to that.*
*Darkness was recently edited during the reboot to replace the setup, or edit it as Something ended up changing quite a bit during the reboot. I've already mentioned my reasons for the change back in Starships Cannot Run.
I was very worried about how I was gonna pull off the ending to this episode. Before writing it I had little experience in writing anything romance, my previous efforts were rushed and/or badly written. The truth is I was uncomfortable writing something out of my comfort zone. A lot of things fit into that back then. You know plots, endings and good character development... joke, maybe ^_^ Darkness had the J/C stuff blossoming, which had to stay like the original until after the fade out, and the James/Jessie scene. J/C was easier, I had a scene to use. J/J though, yeesh. It started out okay as he's nervous and not sure what to say, which is perfectly in character for both, but then one of them is worried about the bet, which they're not. The line doesn't fit. Meh it could have ended better. Let's just be thankful I didn't have the nerve to keep the joke Lisa or Ian use later about how the monkey warned Janeway about them. Be very thankful.
Last but certainly not least; the power cut. I think this is the saga's biggest problem. Due to all the drama of Up In Smoke's second half it is forgotten about. Not by the characters, but seemingly by me. The explanation for it didn't make the cut. True there were deleted scenes (aka scenes planned but not written), that wasn't one of them. The reason is pretty obvious in the end. None of the crew did it, the monkey didn't, who else is on the planet? Meh. At the time I assumed it wasn't needed.
More Coming Soon
Is There Something
Title Meaning: Short for is there something I should know. The title was referencing Neelix and his jealousy spat with Tom over Kes. Unfortunately a lot of that got dialed down, again, for another story (twice).
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Well the first half was Resolutions, the second... The original version was me desperately trying to change the Voyager side to the story and coming up with that. The reboot was inspired by the fact that the prequels were written too early to take the piss out of Apple and this was my only real chance.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Resolutions
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)This episode definitely suffered the most out of the season (so far) from the reboot. Unlike other episodes rebooted, half of the episode was rewritten from scratch. Not edited, not a few new scenes here and there. No, completely rewritten. Why? I did mention I wanted to make fun of something that annoyed me greatly which I never got the chance to, but the opportunity was already there. The original story was already planned to go. The reasons were simply that it was just too damn awful and it used Season One's made up fanfiction/tv shows are in different dimensions excuse. Well probably not really, it was just a joke, just like Season One mostly was. No matter, I hated it and it had to go.
The replacement had to be another Damien and his crew affair. When I was rebooting Starships I thought of a similar story to what was in Something already, but making fun of something more up to date. Instead of the Fox network trying to cancel Fifth Voyager for being unpopular, with its annoying characters as crew, it was the Apples trying to erase Fifth Voyager for being... well you get the idea. As explained above, my beef with Apple in a very tiny nutshell is they dominate every market they're in, leaving very little choice if you don't want to buy from them. My gripes with them definitely are highlighted in all of the episodes anyway.
The point of this episode and the few others in this season was for me to vent. That's what the FVDA were created for in the first place. I feel better if I can laugh at what's bothering me. The FVDA storyline was made for taking shots at Apple and Rihanna years before I either gave a damn about them or they weren't "singing" then. God knows what I'll do when something else bothers me years down the line and I only have reboots of Season Two+ left.
And no, no I don't care if you don't agree with me about Apple, although I did worry I'd piss people off with this episode. There's a reason why I resort to jokes. I'm sure they're okay for some people. I, like many others, just would prefer a bit more freedom of choice. For me Apple is the Borg of our time. I think you gathered that from some of the "jokes" though.
Still better than Fox as the villains ^_^
Coming Soon
Up In Smoke
Title Meaning: Song title, song title. Say it with me. No? For those familiar with the song, yeah I know the song was about a boyfriend doing drugs. I know. I worried that people would tell me this after releasing the episode, no one has though. Anyway title meaning is a reference to Light The Fire. That episode's title was hinting to the start of James/Jessie's relationship. Smoke tends to be all that's left of the fire once it's out. The fire refers to the James/Jessie get together, the episode covers the aftermath of it. It was also meant to make some people think, if they understood both titles, that trouble was afoot with their relationship. In fact it was the other way around. They "split up" to get together properly, instead of the excuse of the practice relationship.
Alternate Titles - It had one but I don't remember, sorry.
Inspiration - Original episode
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Resolutions
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Before there was Closing of the Eyes, Dark Page, Burnt out and Falling, End of the Day, Death of the Soul... heck Season Five as a whole, there was Up In Smoke. There are a lot of episodes of FV that were planned so much that I had it all memorised in my head, the entire plot. Up In Smoke was the first one to be written where I didn't skip hard scenes, or change them, the plot stayed the same and they turned out how I imagined them. At the time it was a big moment for me as the previous Resolutions episodes hadn't gone well, so I expected the same here.
Before you ask I don't mean this is the first episode ever to accomplish sticking to its plot and point. It wasn't. There were plenty that did what they were supposed to, probably because I didn't plan them scene by scene until they were due to be written, years in advance. Up In Smoke was, with the exception of the Love Will Find A Way gag. I used to get way over my head with episodes such as Disconnected (best example yet) that were too hard for my teenage self to commit to. I was determined to get this one right.
The only change made during the reboot was the removal of the writer scenes, I guess that was the other unplanned stuff in the episode. That's it. In fact before the reboot, several scenes were taken out. Before anyone thinks that I've just contradicted myself, I'll explain why. One scene was an extended version of James and Janeway talking about her losing her temper, her apologising and him accepting that he overreacted too. I thought of it during writing and decided to move it elsewhere, I didn't want to add anything too much to something I had planned for years. It didn't fit around the scenes already there. Up In Smoke was supposed to be one part and it was already on its second. It ended up as a flashback in Season Four. It seemed to fit better there.
Now I do have to explain something else entirely; The "goons" that attack at the end of part 1 and the start of part 2. I will likely cover this in a later episode, there's only one where it will work tbh, yet I'll explain here anyway. It comes up a lot in Season Four as well. There's frequent references to them attacking James as a kid. Now normally I wouldn't have to say more, it's mentioned often enough and it is still canon. The problem is they were mentioned so many times before I noticed a little issue with it. It's not a plot hole, just a problem with my memory. The goons are the Masters servants, are telepathic and can go out in the day. They're sometimes sent to kill off the Chosen candidates at the age when one of them is picked, if possible they take out the younger siblings too. It's not mentioned but the reason they run away when spotted and only attack then, and not later (daylight immunity and telepathy is super handy to these guys) is because they're weak in comparison to normal vamps. This is why in Up In Smoke they pick on Jessie and not James, and how she sorts them out like they were nothing.
James mentions here that he was attacked twice by the goons. I'm honestly baffled. I know I haven't shown or described what really happened that first time. I had a scene like it in Mind Games but that was resolved so differently. I don't remember this second time though. As he mentions it was close each time, it must have happened in his childhood too. I remember that first encounter, it's one of those scenes cemented in my head along with everything left unwritten in Season Five. I can picture it. I just can't remember this second encounter. Seeing this episode and this line has bugged the hell out of me. I doubt it's mentioned in the series anywhere so I'm at a loss. I hate it when I forget important stuff like this. All I knew before looking at Up In Smoke was that I had forgotten something minor about the goons tale. Minor my ass.
More Coming Soon
Lately
Title Meaning: Guess what? It begins with a S and T. Yep song title. This was another episode where I struggled to choose a title so I either looked up my old discarded episodes from 2001 or looked through my music collection. Lately was picked as Danny hallucinates most of the episode, lots of strange things start happening not long after she's attacked. "Lately I've been having trouble figuring out what's real" blah. Yeah it's not good.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Futurama episode The Sting.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)The Sting is one of my favourite episodes of Futurama, so in my eighteen year old brain that meant I could steal its plot as I had an open slot to waste. Yay. What more is there to say?
Coming Soon
Memories
Title Meaning: Chakotay's memories are lost. This is an oldie so the title will either be ridiculously easy to figure out or a song title. Heh.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Not sure
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Originally placed at the beginning of the main Season Two and replaced by Saturday Night when I got stuck on it. Gather round kids, there's a tale to be told... luckily not all of it can or will be told. If you have not read Season Two, the main one, you best skip this rather dull tale.
It was 2001, I was sixteen and I had decided to bring my Kidz Trek (original series) storylines into Fifth Voyager, after finally figuring out that it was not a good idea to try and publish a series that ripped off everything. The clue was always in the title. The first to appear, other than the character of Lilly herself, was the main species in the series; the wayward and far more advanced Humans inhabiting a lone hidden island named after a crossbreed of a lion and a tiger. Or more accurately named after a badly made up surname for a family of characters. So yeah the Ligers. With them they brought the Lillyia fleet. Despite giving up Kidz Trek, I wanted to keep that so they were renamed. Bit silly really as it was just Lilly with a IA on the end. Kids ey.
The storyline that came with it was there was an evil wannabe(s) out there who enjoyed pain and was allergic to good. In KT the pair were members of the crew gone rogue. In FV Damien seemed a logical choice, despite being dead and all. In KT these two would steal a ship and fight against the Lillyia, hoping to take control of the Liger race (Lilly was a royal like she is in FV). Damien however wanted revenge on Voyager first and had seen an opportunity in the war the Ligers were in the middle of, and had tricked their opponents into doing what he wanted. This species in S1 attacked Voyager at least once, I only remember Mirror Universes.
After the episode Games Resistance was out of the way I was free to start this storyline that would go on throughout Season Two. It was the closest that season had to a story arc. Unfortunately like most things in KT even bits of my own tale had been stolen. The two villains turned rogue in a rip off of another series chapter, (later ripped off in FV as a parody in Season Three) and the aliens the Ligers were warring with. Let's never speak of them.
I'd better cut further to the chase. The next episode Dimension Jump, the one that should have started out a mostly original arc didn't turn out the way I hoped. It was ruined so much that now, thirteen years later, I don't remember how it was going to go. Personal problems got in the way. I was furious. I likely broke my keyboard writing that trash. Back then I had to release an episode once a week, and that I did.
Memories was to come next. At least that's how I remember it. I know I moved things around a bit when I removed it, as evidenced by the strange mess I had with website designs I had at the time. The site had been taken over, I was moving hosts, changing everything. It's no wonder I'm not 100% sure. The thing is Memories was cancelled completely as I just could not concentrate on it. The episode would have continued this arc. Damien would have been mostly responsible for what happened, just to distract Voyager. I was just too angry to pull it off. I knew I had mucked up with Dimension Jump and couldn't risk that again. I did the right thing and replaced it with the violent, but harmless Saturday Night.
I still wanted to use the episode, it had no place in the main seasons anymore. And so ends the tale of Memories move to B4FV2. Well I thought it was interesting to mention anyway, ha.
As it was based five years before its original placement, a lot had to be done to integrate Memories into the prequel series. Damien was barely a threat at this point, just a troublemaker (I know, calling him a threat in the main seasons is still a bit of a stretch, but the guy had a "species" on his side and his own Voyager. Bit more of a threat than a bunch of celebs), so he couldn't have much to do with this. All of the Liger stuff had to go, as well as the jokes about a character called Evil C as what happened to him couldn't happen until main Season Two (he was still Clive here), and the forgotten side plot had to be replaced by something else.
I was a little excited to have a go at this old gem I couldn't write two years before. It was a challenge, a one I couldn't pass up. Unfortunately it was a challenge I couldn't manage. Memories ironically was mostly forgotten. All of the stuff I remembered had to be removed, or it had been written anyway. I'm glad this series isn't popular or probably not even read at all. Finally releasing an episode that was cancelled two years before would have been hyped a tad, and well at least this way no one was disappointed.
More Coming Soon
Paper Bag
Title Meaning: I think it's explained in the episode. A character is so broken she wants to hide her face, and unmentioned she is suicidal so putting a bag over a head is definitely fitting. Though the title was inspired by a song, which has nothing to do with any of the issues in this episode. Thankfully. It was 2003, trust me, there was a lot of music titles/lyrics I could use haha.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Real life... not the Voyager episode, just real life.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)If you've been in Season Three's trivia page you know that the writer of this site was/is a depressed loon, with a few breakdowns on her belt. This episode was my way of writing what I know and venting about a particular problem I was having. 2001 to 2003 were bad years for me. Little did I know 2010 to 2014, in particular 12 and 14 would be worse. Meh. The character of Faye was based on me. Despite my hatred for myself I cannot tell you why I did this, although as evidenced by this season and the last, I like to make fun of things I hate.
So yeah, Paper Bag existed probably as a cry for help or just somewhere I could voice my feelings without anyone noticing. Again, it's good FV is a nobody. There were times that I wanted to be invisible so nobody could see where I was or what I was doing, anything to escape from everyone. I guess I was tired of everything in my life and being invisible meant I could not be apart of it and no one would notice. Yeah I was a mess.
Faye's wish is granted and she goes a little mad with it. It's the flashbacks and the er... way she turns invisible that are the real downers. Her time on Voyager, everything there, with one exception, are Faye's experiences, the flashbacks and that one exception are mine, so to speak. The last time I pulled a life story stunt (S2's Why oh Why) like this it was seen as an attack, so it was a huge risk to take. I even made a random comment saying something like "best be careful here, change a few details, don't wanna get sued as that'll be next". Poor joke. Nothing happened though, at least I don't remember anything. Paper Bag remains mostly untouched, yet IMO was more "biased" than anything Why Oh Why ever was.
Coming Soon
Run or Hide
Title Meaning: Unfortunately the title got lost and that's where the side story came in. Kids love hide and seek, that's the only hint you have to the original story (for now). The side story of the shower became the real title meaning which is very sad.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Originally it was an original episode, but the side story took over and that was ripped off from Friends.
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)The reboot does nothing to fix the side story, mainly because it is referenced in the untouched B4FV3 season, and with slight edits it isn't that bad as long as it remains a side story. All the reboot did was give the main story its role back, it originally had less scenes than the side story did.
The original and very basic premise was; vampires sired a child on a ship. That child then sires his or her friends, they in turn eat their parents. Vampire kids wouldn't want their bossy parents around, so why sire them? Once Voyager discovered their secret they'd run off, or rather fly off and they'd have to hunt them down.
It wasn't bad, but there was a flaw. Despite being vamps, they were still kids and I couldn't write a story where the good guys hunt down and would have to kill off children. Changes were made and I still couldn't get James to do it either. Unknown to readers at the time he had killed off a vamp child already, and that was difficult enough. This is why the story ended up so damn rushed. I couldn't kill them but they couldn't live either. Their core overloaded, it was the only way I could think of. Voyager were just guilty of letting it happen.
Its a shame really, I wish I had more stones back then. With Parental Advisory under my belt now, I may have been able to do it these days. The reboot though couldn't change something in the prequel season two so drastically. Never mind.
More Coming Soon
Sweet Sensation
Title Meaning: I imagine drinking coffee after a long time without for Janeway would be described as such, maybe. The truth is... drum roll... song lyric. Yay.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - No idea
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Reboot used Alliances, original nothing.
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)Just when you think Starships Cannot Run (original and probably reboot) would win the title for the most ridiculously useless and garbled mess of B4FV Season Two, Sweet Sensation enters the fray with its "yo Starships I'mma let you finish but I make the least amount of sense out of anything, for all time, all time." Yeah I'm a few years out of date for that crap joke. Let me run down the original's story, not that the reboot could save it;
Janeway drinks the coffee retrieved in Lately. Strangely the coffee made from bats that have poisonous self defences causes delusions if drank too much. Janeway is forced to not drink it. Neelix has tricked her away from the replicator. Oh sorry that's the reboot, the original didn't explain this point, though Voyager rarely did too.
The crew think that Janeway off coffee is swell, despite the nice flashback proving that's not the case. Ohno it was the coffee patches that did it.
So yeah Janeway's off the coffee, party time. Any excuse for drunk characters.
Oh yeah let's include a plot a friend and me came up with while chatting and probably drinking far too much coffee and/or Cherry Coke ourselves. James is so damn hammered he gives Jessie a ring. You know what kind. Some random girl comes along to eat it, just cos. She's drunk too, I guess?? I have no idea at this point as I stopped reading to skip to the later stuff.
Damien decides to show up so he can trade normal coffee for the killer coffee. Chakotay's more than happy to accommodate him. The coffee bat escapes and well everyone leaves, of course Justin Timberlake dies. The trade still happens.
Damien isn't happy as the coffee doesn't work on his immortal crew, easy Damien mistake to make. He's allowed to get the bat for himself which is still roaming the Mess Hall.
Meanwhile the ring stuff is resolved. The girl probably explains she gets mixed up between rings and onion rings and everyone's happy. I dunno. I don't read this plot.
Janeway has proper coffee back and she's happy. The end.
Summing that up gave me a headache. The reboot did its best but the episode is still trash. The ring plot disappears completely, instantly giving Starships Cannot Run its useless pap part of the title back. In its place I tried to think of an episode from the original second season to mix in with what's left. Enter Alliances. As my only liked part of the original SS was the bat flying around after killing Justin, Gareth warning people and everyone ignoring him, the story still had to include the party. I was too quick to think of memorial party gone wrong. There are a few minor and some major changes to bits and pieces of the rest to make it work. I still don't think it works. I know I had to go back as I thought Damien wanted the bat originally and some scenes were very similar to Aggression's plot.
Anyhow the episode is still IMO a hot mess, but the changes at the very least gave it a tiny ickle point or two. Seska/Cullah make one more appearance before Basics/Instinct, Damien also appears hinting he'll be around until they leave Kazon space (he follows them anyway but hey, better for him to admit it) which also helps with Instinct. Oh did I mention the ring plot is wiped? Too bad I have to keep the original and as such talk about it here. I really don't know what I was thinking. I'm starting to think the coffee was real and I was suffering delusions while writing the original.
No Matter What
Title Meaning: *cries* song *continues crying* lyric *wah* title. Seriously. I think a lot of these titles came from the old main Season Three list, I swear, that thing's theme was going to be character arcs only and that meant song titles everywhere. This is getting beyond a joke. Anyway meaning. I'm sitting here now laughing after a few minutes thinking about it and you know what, I don't know. I did remember that the lyric was from an all time favourite song called Bittersweet, so I think the title is short for the full line. "No matter what I know that I'll get by". If so the title is ironic as no "getting by" happens, things go sour fast. No I still haven't a clue.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - Nope
Original Voyager Episodes Used - N/A
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)It is one of my favourites for this season but it is a problem. It's fine if the series is read main seasons first, prequels later or in between Season Five release gaps. It's not fine if you read in chronological order. To be fair though, No Matter What isn't the first episode to spoil the only good stuff in Season Three episode New Earth; ie the plot twists. Light The Fire in B4FV1 did this too. If you're not sure what I'm blabbing about, I'll explain.
New Earth was the big crap has hit the fan episode. However the fan didn't work very well and crap remained in the general vicinity. Yeah my metaphors are terrible, I'll move on. New Earth was written during my breakdown/depression period of my life (round 1), and as such wasn't written that well. It still had the plot twists, shocking and all, just poorly done. I think that's why I decided to spoil one of them in Light The Fire, which was Janeway was James' birth mother. A second chance I guess. The second was that he could lose himself in grief, not figuratively, literally and become a potential serial killer. All he needed was a first kill.
Having No Matter What spoils the surprise later on. I wrote the prequels as well, prequels, so I didn't think for one second that someone may read FV from the beginning, especially once the prequels were done and there were no gaps in between B4FV and Season One. This episode goes a step too far, assuming everyone who reads it has gotten to Season Three. I do recommend going through the main seasons first, and this is one of the reasons why.
Maybe it would help if the prequels weren't first in the episode archive. Meh. I guess one way to look at it is that if you read New Earth first, that serves you the plot twist in its own way, and No Matter What is a nice prequel "treat" to read later. While if you read No Matter What first, that is the initial plot twist episode and New Earth is just a continuation of the story. I guess it's not all that bad.
On another topic, I do like how I introduced this Security test to assign better members to better teams, keep similar members together etc... and yet I just kept James, Foster and Thompson in the same team every damn season. As well as assign them to the first team as well. It's almost like it was forgotten about. Haha. Ha. Tuvok probably sees them all as lost causes and leaves them as such, which brings further questions as James is only there as he's being punished. Why was he tested? Especially when he always caused problems during said tests. It's not a problem in my eyes, it's just amusing to me. Yeah James could be useful in an emergency, but would you really want him in a half decent team? Keep him with the ones who are afraid of their shadows and skive a lot, that'll keep him out of trouble. It does work, sort of, and is probably why I never changed it for B4FV3 after this episode.
Coming Soon
Basics
Title Meaning: It's an original title, so I'm just guessing. Voyager crew is dumped on a primitive planet without technology, so they're back to basics. Interesting really as that only happened in the last five minutes of part 1, and didn't happen yet in my version. Gotta love it.
Alternate Titles - N/A
Inspiration - The original
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Basics
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)B4FV Season Two's ending went back and forth between two episodes until the very last minute. It was a toss between this and It's Your Duty. When it was just Basics, I'm not sure what I was going to do about the fact that just Basics would mean B4FV2 only had 21 episodes (or technically 20 as I never count the second part of a season cliffhanger). But no matter, that's what happened. I've poured over my awful news pages from 2003 and still none of the wiser.
At least I learned a bit about Images In The Mind, the cancelled and then eventually revived episode in B4FV3. It hung in there for a while, even after this season was finished. Maybe that's what I was going to do about the 21 episodes instead of 22; eventually release Images somewhere amongst the last few episodes and re-number *shrug*. Never mind.
I learned that as I was hoping to concentrate solely on Season Four (at least until Closing of the Eyes anyway it seemed), I had rushed through the last few episodes of B4FV2 to release them as a marathon over a few week period in December. A lot of them were released in December shockingly, while Sweet Sensation, Basics and its counterpart were released in January on the same date. At least that explains the later episodes poor quality. They weren't even released in the right order either. From episode 17 onwards I must have wrote and released whatever was ready.
With no "Instinct" in sight until 2004's news page, my memory of that becoming the season finale at the last minute is definitely spot on. Also I knew the reason I ended up choosing the Basics storyline over It's Your Duty was because I was worried that I would ruin Duty. The news mentions I was in a hurry as the finale was supposed to appear before 2003 ended, and it didn't. I didn't want to rush It's Your Duty. Basics I mustn't have been too bothered about.
Getting back to the 21 episodes issue, Images In The Mind was getting nowhere, something had to fill that episode 22 void. This is likely why Instinct came into being. Of course it's not the time for that, so moving on.
Basics itself ended up doing mostly the same thing as its original, and is likely why it was delayed to that January as I do hate writing episodes too close to the original. I don't usually set out to do it on purpose, not really. Even Death Wish had a few jokes and extra scenes/lines thrown in to make it different, despite needing to follow the original closely. It just happens when I cannot think of a way to do it differently that isn't a Hunters/Phage massacre. See it could be worse. By the time I was on part 2 I had to think of something or I'd end up with more of the same for part 2. Then came Instinct....
Instinct
Title Meaning: I wanted a similar title to Basics, something to join them together without sticking a Part 2 on the end. Basic Instinct came to mind, or technically Basics Instinct. Heh.
Alternate Titles - Basics Part 2
Inspiration - The original episode
Original Voyager Episodes Used - Basics
Miscellaneous (Other Trivia)With Basics following the original's story a little too well, it was time for changes. Part Two of Basics basically did what the next season finale did in its second half, try to change its tone. Alternate Scorpion only changed the Borg's behaviour in the end, but "Basics 2" changed enough that it didn't feel like the same episode anymore. I needed an "episode 22" anyway so it seemed more than fitting that it became a separate episode. Both together would have been far too long for B4FV2. With Images In The Mind still unfinished and unknowingly creeping its way into the third prequel series, Instinct taking the episode 22 role made sense. It was better than rushing It's Your Duty's first half and chucking a newly made up cliffhanger in the middle of the story. If you know the episode, you can imagine that, that would have been a disaster.
As I mentioned, I was writing Instinct as Basics Part 2 when I decided on this. When I did I went back to the beginning to change the regular "Last time on FV" recaps I used to have there, into a silly fourth wall scene with a character doing the recap. I don't think I had any reason to do it. Just once Instinct was chosen I got that feeling I did when Death of the Soul was liberated from Queuing Forever. The feeling of freedom, which opens the idea floodgates. Not all of them are gems, shockingly enough. I liked it anyway. Whether anyone else does is another matter. The reboot removed the "last time" recaps. Only the prequels did this in every damn episode. I think I only did it as the prequels were short episodes unintentionally at first, so you can imagine the horror of editing B4FV3 like this. Never mind, the joke didn't need me to keep them, not really, not after a slight tweak to the scene.
At the time of writing, or at the very least not long after it, I had new computer issues which did get in the way of the FV marathon/writing. Instinct, or rather Basics Part 2 had plenty of opportunities to parody my battles. So yeah that's why there's the Tom Vs Computer scene, the pink button in Engineering that installs Windows ME (ah painful memories), yeah. I think the only thing I didn't have was the battle with the keyboard I vaguely recall. 2003 was the year I got that computer which died in 2012 (so it lasted a while in fairness... however it was the hard drive which wasn't that old that caused it *shrug*), and I remember its first issue was an old keyboard which wouldn't work. It's hard to write stories, crap or otherwise, without one of those. Since it was Boxing Day sales time, you can imagine the "trauma" of finding a working one. It was almost as funny as the mouse that wouldn't work story. Imagine using windows without a mouse. Even now I still know all the damn keyboard shortcuts to things. Damn, Windows ME was the Vista of its time. It will not be missed.
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