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ralph-notman
Reviews
Star Trek: Voyager: Renaissance Man (2001)
Superfluous episode puts the doctor in a bad light
This was a poor choice for a penultimate episode. I can think of 4 or 5 episodes from the season that would have been better suited for such a position in the season. If this episode really needed to be used, it would have been better a few episodes earlier.
The doctor is forced into performing tasks, at best, unfriendly to the Voyager crew, and at worst, down right nasty. Stranding the whole crew in the delta quadrant just to save 1 person. I thought the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few (or one).
The aliens are a poor imitation of a second rate Ferengi with no dress sense, and even worse appearance. They behave in a way that the Ferengi did in early TNG episodes, before DS9 fleshed them out better. It just seemed that they dragged up a new race, they'd shown a few episodes earlier, and just hung them out to dry.
Overall, a poorly written, and not much better performed episode.
The Midnight Sky (2020)
Disjointed
This film is so slow. It took the entire film to explain that it was set in 2 time periods, and that the main character played by Cloony, was this person seen in both segments.
The film started with some kind of apocalyptic disaster, but they never explain what it is, then use the disaster to affect things but don't explain how it affects things, except that they need to wear breathing masks when outside. It looks like it may be radiation, but radiation wouldn't spread uniformly in all directions like they show (they have a sequence with a computer showing red 'circles' expanding out from lots of major cities around the world), it would be carried by winds. Also radiation would affect exposed skin as well as lungs, this doesn't. If it were biological (a virus bomb or bacterial weapon) that would also be carried by the wind, not spread uniformly in all directions. It almost seems tagged on for the sake of it, without actually giving any sort of thought into it from a scientific viewpoint. If it was a nuclear attack or biological attack, why would the other researchers at the relatively safe arctic research station want to return 'home' to potentially deadly cities?
Cloony is good, as an actor and his character is written well, but it just seems so disjointed with the flashbacks, I literally only realised they're flashbacks 5 minutes before the end. I suppose you can work it out, but it's just not done in a way that makes it plausible, let alone obvious.
The scenes set in space seem like they should be from a completely different movie. Again, it's only 5 minutes before the end that it's explained that the reason these people are on the mission, is because of Cloony's character. Then when things keep going wrong for the ship's crew, you're left wondering *why* the writers needed to make everything go wrong for them. Why kill off a character? Why make 2 of the characters choose to essentially kill themselves by returning to Earth, leaving 2 to fend for themselves without enough provisions? Why was Sully even pregnant? Surely on such an extended mission, female astronauts would be given some kind of contraception, mainly to prevent periods, let alone pregnancy.
In summary, this film had the potential to be much better than it is. It's badly written, with little explanation as to why things are happening the way they are.