SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL

By The Powers That Be

That said: Did you tune into Star Trek Voyager last season? I did. (Hey, I admit my mistakes.) Now I’m gonna take a lot of heat for what I’m about to say but I cannot tell a lie. The thing I remember most about STV last year was a whole lot of shaking going on, to coin a phrase.

Voyager started off shaking and ended up shaking. Oh sure, there was a fair amount of shaking on all its predecessors. But on Voyager the ship shakes, the people shake, even the captain’s voice shakes (well it does!). At first I wrote it off as newbie jitters. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘It’s their first time in the pool and they probably feel a need to pay some sort of homage to TNG’s Generations movie. (You remember, shaking is about all that really happened in that flick. Well that and the unforgivable act of killing off Kirk, but that's a gripe for another day.) So I forgave them their trespasses. I can trek with the best of ‘em baby, but by season number two I knew it was a far more serious problem.

I began to have doubts. Is it me? I asked. Do I have some weird inner ear problem that only kicks in when Janeway and company come on? Alas. It was not me. By seasons end I think we all had to admit the truth: it was most certainly the show. Why do they spend such a ridiculous amount of time on every episode shaking the ship and her crew around like some Maytag gone mad? I’m not sure. Maybe they thought with all that shaking going on we (the unsuspecting viewer) would never see the sophomoric, incomplete, contradictory and sometimes even completely incomprehensible plots for what they were.

Maybe the TV powers that be assumed that if they gave the ship and her crew a good case of the shakes every episode we’d forgive the captain her “Look I just had a humdinger of a breakdown, so just give me back my $#!@ Jack Daniel’s and my pack of unfiltered Camels before I snap again!” voice. I dunno.

I do know this: Last year shows like Babylon 5, X files and even Sliders kicked ass. Let’s face it, we trekkers are a nit picky group but overall we’re also a pretty forgiving bunch. So we gave Voyager her grace period. Well folks, the bell has rung, it’s time for Janeway & Company to serve up more than super shaky plots, shaky 2nd rate special effects and a ship with a nervous twitch. If she doesn’t straighten up and fly right soon the next sound heard on ‘the bridge’ may just be that of millions of remote controls clicking their way into other universes.