KEY
Edit: Most of the original episode remains intact, with new and/or longer scenes.

Extension: An edit, but with a lot more new scenes which outnumber the originals.

Rewrite: The basic idea of the episode remains, but it is rewritten from scratch.

New: Speaks for itself, a new episode replacing an old one.

Resistance Is Futile  EXTENSION/REWRITE
Originally known as Thrown Key.

I've gone back and forth about what I want or don't want in this new version of the season finale. I still wasn't 100% after reading through the originals for the ReRead side project, since there was a lot in them I had forgotten about, and a few of my new ideas didn't go. I've pretty much gone back to the drawing board for this reboot.

Only read this is you know the original, or don't care about being spoilt. It's pretty vague but just in case.

Part 1 doesn't really go anywhere for quite a while, then the finale/cliffhanger kicks in out of nowhere, and I suspect that's due to how I wrote and released episodes back then. I only really had weekends to type, and I had it in my head that I had to release something weekly, so instead of complaining about it in the news page (as much I suspect), I tended to rush to the end. It does have some good in there, the character stuff up until the final scene is pretty good and I'm eager to expand on it in the reboot. The Unimatrix Zero plot is ridiculously stupid, but in a good IMO way (with the exception of the origin story, that's plot hole heaven).

In a nutshell, if this was a reboot of just this part, then I'd reboot it like I recently did either VTV/Drinking Game or Too Q. Chuck a few new scenes in there (not as many as Live Games I assure you), edit the current ones and call it a day. However Thrown Key Part 2 exists and that's a, literally, different story. Not to the same level as Aggressions Part 1 and 2, nothing will beat the whiplash there, but I certainly gave it a go.

While Part 2 has a similar structure to Part 1; character scenes, brief exposition/story, more character scenes, oops my time's running out rushed finale. It does it in a completely opposite manner. The character scenes in early Part 1 have some semblance of realism in there (here's the spoilery part), I sympathised with Morgan since she was going through what I did one year after writing the episode, the J/C tension while a bit OTT was suitably and intentionally frustrating, even if I did in the ReRead complain about the yelling at Kiara and found it too much, I since calmed down a tad. Jessie's olive branch to Morgan in her time of need was sweet, and repaired a lot of damage the season had done to her character, it showed promise for the seasons to come.

Back to Part 2 on the other hand, everything character related is super forced, awkward, boring, and I just wanted to go in and delete most of it. It wasted so much time. Part 2 is roughly twice the size of Part 1 and I'm willing to bet all my savings that the difference in parts is due to all the character bickering, bad jokes, and prequel characters asskissing.

Another example, Part 1's Unimatrix Zero seemed a little rushed and I wanted more of it so the cliffhanger made some sense, to show why the cliffhanger happened differently to original Voyager's. Part 2's Unimatrix Zero I didn't care that it was rushed, the story was poor, full of plot holes and bullcrap that I was glad when it was over.

Soooo, Part 2 needs a tonne of work and I think that some of it needs to start in Part 1. Why? Well it all comes down to the intended leads for the episode, Morgan and Seven. Morgan's story in Part 2, with relation to the J/C plot, pretty much gets forgotten about until Janeway is suddenly needed. Then she's chucked back to the frontlines. Seven's is a bit tricker cos in the originals, she was intended to be killed off in Part 2 but the C/7 thing happened and so in between the season break I decided to keep her on and make her into the Kenny of the series. Though Morgan was meant to be Seven's replacement, it wasn't supposed to be as blatant as the series sometimes did (Dark Frontier, big example). When Thrown Key was Seven's final outing, she was supposed to still have a big role alongside Morgan, cueing the change to the original events leading to the different cliffhanger. Part 1 was a tad lazy but it looked like I was sticking to it sometimes, but Part 2 chucked her away for comic relief.

Another nutshell, Morgan and Seven need to be the stars of both parts again, and to do that in Part 2, Part 1 needs to not forget about them either. Morgan needs the earlier sections of Part 1 to matter, effect what she does in both parts, not to be shrugged off for "my Cherry Coke is in that locked room" jokes. Seven just simply needs to act more like my S1 Seven and have more relevance to the story.

I've been building up to to new plans for this in the last few episodes, so I'm hoping it'll all work out.